Indictment: Bomb Victim in on Bank Plot

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong is lead to court for her preliminary hearing on charges that she shot a man and then stuffed his body into a freezer with the help of her former fiancee at the Erie County Courthouse, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004, in Erie, Pa. Two people, including Diehl-Armstrong, who is serving time on unrelated charges, have been notified by federal authorities that they face possible charges of bank robbery, conspiracy and using a firearm in connection with a violation in a perplexing case in which a pizza deliveryman was killed when a bomb attached to a collar fastened to his neck exploded. (AP Photo/The Erie Times-News, Janet B. Campbell, File) MEADVILLE OUT (AP)

Barnes, 53, is jailed in Erie County on unrelated drug charges. Authorities have described him as Diehl-Armstrong's fishing companion.

On Aug. 28, 2003, Wells set out to deliver an order for two pizzas to a mysterious address that turned out to be the location of a TV tower. He turned up about an hour later and roughly two miles away at a PNC Bank branch in Summit Township, with a note demanding money and saying he had a bomb.

Wells took $8,702 from a teller, got into his Geo Metro and was surrounded by police a short time later in a parking lot. State troopers pulled him out of the car and handcuffed him. Hanging from his neck under his T-shirt was a triple-banded metal collar and a device with a locking mechanism that kept it in place. Attached to the collar was a bomb.

"It's going to go off," Wells said. "I'm not lying."

He said someone had started a timer on the bomb and forced him to rob the bank.

While police waited for a bomb squad, the bomb exploded, killing Wells. Police found a gun resembling a cane in the car and a nine-page handwritten letter that included detailed instructions on what Wells was to do with the bank money and how he could unlock the collar by going through a kind of scavenger hunt, looking for clues and landmarks.

The note also included a list of rules and a threat that Wells would be "destroyed" if he failed to complete his mission.

Buchanan said Wednesday that while Wells was in the bank, Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes had watched from across the street, and Diehl-Armstrong was later seen twice along the route described in the notes.

Jim Sadowski, a former co-worker of Wells, said he doesn't believe his friend could have been involved.

"I worked with him and I knew him. I just don't see him doing anything like that. He was a nice person," Sadowski said.

Diehl-Armstrong has been linked to the Wells investigation because her boyfriend's body was found in the freezer of a home near the TV tower where Wells made his final delivery. She pleaded guilty but mentally ill to killing her boyfriend and is serving a sentence of seven to 20 years in state prison.

The man who owned the home, William Rothstein, was questioned in Wells' death but has since died of cancer.

Diehl-Armstrong's attorney Lawrence D'Ambrosio has said he believes she had nothing to do with Wells' death but may have known the people behind the robbery.

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Associated Press writer Joe Mandak in Pittsburgh and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington contributed to this report.