May 17, 2018 • 42 mins
The collar bomb heist is the crime caper that keeps on giving. Every time the story seemed like it was figured out, another layer appeared. Tune in today to hear Josh and Chuck detail this very odd and twisty story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there, and
this is Stuff you Should Know, the True Crime edition again. Yeah,
(00:21):
we've done a few of these, right. True crime is
so hot right now? Hey, man, we were we were
dabbling on the periphery of true crime when most of
these people were wetting their diapers. That's right, man, that
is right. I'm glad somebody finally said it. We were
occasionally doing a poor job of covering true crime ten
(00:42):
years ago. That's right. We're gonna do it again, right,
we continue that great rich history. Yeah, because true crime
can be extraordinarily interesting, especially when you're talking about an
extraordinarily over complicated heist that results in a man's bizarre death,
death by bizarre means and involves what really ultimately, you
(01:08):
could make a case as an unsolved mystery still today,
even though it's technically bureaucratically been solved. A lot of
people say, no, this thing hasn't been solved yet. You
got you got homemade bombs, you got a scavenger hunt,
got a crreck dealer, well, you gotta have a correct dealer,
(01:30):
got prostitutes, m got pizza and yeah, and let's start
with the pizza Geo Metro right, which, by the way,
I just wanted to point out ahead of time, there
is no more pizza delivery car two thousand three than
a geometro, a tal one, no less. The thing is,
(01:52):
it's almost like they rolled them right off the line
in two thousand three, with the straight to a pizza place,
with the pizza guy inside already and the little signed
magneted on right a little crooked yep. So the whole
thing does start, actually with a pizza guy, a pizza place,
and a teal Geo Metro. And like you said, the
(02:13):
whole thing starts in two thousand three in Erie, Pennsylvania.
And there was a and still is I looked it up.
There's a pizza place called Mama me Is Pizza Rhea.
But fine, sure it gets the job done right. And
at about two pm on August two thousand three, a
(02:36):
pizza delivery guy named Brian Wells I think he was
forty six at the time. He was about to end
his morning shift when a call came in for two
small sausage and pepperoni pizzas, and the the delivery was
I guess the opposite way of where Brian was going
to go on his way home. But he said, you
(02:57):
know what, I'll take this one last order and he
walked out the door at about two And the next
time that Brian Wells was seen in public again, he
was entering a p NC bank branch just down the
street from his pizza place, a few miles up the road,
and he looked a lot different than he did when
(03:17):
he left the pizza parlor about twenty eight minutes earlier. Yeah, so,
first of all, he was he was walking with a cane,
kind of a funny looking kane uh. And then under
his T shirt he had clearly and if you've seen
the footage and the photos, you can see a warning
(03:38):
by the way for video, yeah, for the future. It's
quite graphic. It's out there, but it is out there.
But he had clearly some large, boxy looking thing. It
looked like he's wearing a shoe box around his neck
with a T shirt pulled over it kind of butt in.
The teller at the bank's defense could have been an
(03:59):
artific shell torso, and she probably didn't want to draw
attention to it. She yes, she was being very kind, right.
So one thing I want to point out too, there's
already discrepancy what we're like a minute into the story,
and there's already a discrepancy. That shirt he was wearing
over that boxy thing underneath his shirt said guests on it.
(04:19):
And I've seen that it was written somehow, like in
spray paint or marker, or that it was an actual
guest Jeans T shirt. Really, so either an officially licensed
or not license but whatever brand shirt or a homemade
jankie spray painted version. Yeah, And if you look, the
pictures don't really show one way or another. It looks
(04:41):
more like it's homemade. And I looked up to see
if there was a guest shirt that, you know, if
I could find the actual guest shirt, it wasn't. Couldn't,
so I think it may have been homemade. Regardless, he's
wearing this shirt that says guests on and he walks
up to the teller and he hands the teller a note,
and the note says, I have a bomb. Get everybody
(05:02):
who has access codes to the safe together and put
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into a bag and
bring it to me. I think he said, you have
fifteen minutes to do this, which is kind of a
long time if you're a bank robber, it is. It's
like almost like luxurious. And what said, like sixty seconds, yeah,
(05:22):
or this should have happened yesterday, chop chop. So he um.
He stands back and waits, apparently grabs a dumb, dumb
lollipop out of the little basket while he's waiting, because
why not. And the teller says, sir, um, we don't
have like, we can't get into the safe. That's just
not how things work. I'm sorry, but as a consolation prize,
(05:43):
I'm going to put two dollars into a bag for
you right here and send you on your way. Okay. Yeah,
And and importantly we did not mention he lifted his
shirt up and showed this teller this this bomb, this
what's called a collar bomb, strapped around neck. Right. So
he walks out of the bank a freeman. And the
(06:05):
next time that he's seen in public is about fifteen
minutes later, and he's seen in public by some Pennsylvania
State troopers who are on the lookout for this guy.
And he's still wearing that shirt, he's still got the
big bulge, and he's standing around his geometro parked in
a parking lot that is actually shared with that p
(06:25):
NC bank and the McDonald's and he's in a parking
lot right there. So basically he left the bank robbery
and went about a hundred to two feet away from it,
and that's where he was found like a full fifteen
minutes later. Yeah. So these these these coppas, these troopers
come over and uh, he says, hey, guys, this is
(06:48):
a bomb around my neck. A group of a group
of black men chain this bomb around my neck at gunpoint,
forced me to rob this bank for them. I'm not
gonna I'm not lying here. A thing is gonna go off.
So the cops called the bomb squad and they do
I saw, you know his The family of Wells is
(07:08):
still angry about the fact that she says they did
nothing to save them. But I would be too. By
the way, we should shout out Wired magazine. Oh yes,
we really really should. A lot of this came from
a great, heavily researched story by Rich Shapiro for about
eight years ago, called The Incredible true story of the
color bomb heist. So thank you Rich for your work.
(07:32):
But the dudes on the ground, he said, I mean,
if you I kind of remember this happening, because when
I went and looked at the still images, I was like,
wait a minute, I've I've seen this. And this is
guy sitting on the ground, uh, with this thing around
his neck, kind of just waiting, seated on the pavement
(07:52):
for about twenty five minutes. He says, very uh interestingly,
like did you call my boss at the pizza place? Uh?
And then all of a sudden, this bomb starts beeping fast,
which is never a good sign. And when I was
reading the story, I thought, well, that's just a ruse.
But no, this thing detonated and killed him. It blasted
(08:13):
a hole in his chest. Um, it did not blow
his head off like the internet says. No. But it
was a violent, awful death. Yeah, it was, and it
was pretty quick. And then three minutes after the bomb
goes off, the bomb squad showed up, so they so
he's dead. This, this guy, Brian Wells, is dead. And
(08:34):
the whole time he was protesting, He's like, you know,
this is I was forced to rob the bank. Are
you guys gonna get this off of me or what? Um? Yeah,
he said something like did you call my boss? Because
apparently he was a very um loyal employee. He'd been
working at MoMA MIA's for how long, like ten years
or something like that, for years and years, and he'd
(08:55):
only called in late once, not even sick late once
when his cat died. That Rich Shapiro and that Wired article,
so um, it seemed like he actually was telling the
truth that he had been abducted and forced to rob
the bank and then had been a victim. I think
the bomb going off really kind of put an exclamation
(09:16):
point on his story that he was not a willing
participant in this, right. Yeah. So the cops obviously check
out that geo metro uh and it's sweet sweet styling,
and they saw his cane in there. It turns out
the reason why the cane was funny looking is because
it was also a gun. And it really looks a
(09:36):
lot like a gun. Yeah when you when you look
at it. Um, the bomb was clearly homemade, had a
couple of different parts to it. It was this this
banded metal collar that he wore around his neck. It
was like locked to his neck. Head, four key holes,
and then a combination lock. It was really locked to
his neck, and then an iron box with two pipe
(09:56):
bombs loaded up ready to go. And then interestingly, and
this will figure uh, put a pin in this one
because this will figure in the in the case later. Uh.
It had two kitchen timers in there in addition to
an elect an electronic countdown timer, yeah, which was I
guess the thing that started beating faster and faster. Yeah.
(10:18):
And then some decoy wires. You'll always gotta have those
if you're if you're making a bomb. Sure, but I mean,
like that's pretty smart. So there's decoy wires. They were
apparently also stickers that said like don't do it or
you know, skull and crossbones or rat poison whatever. Yeah,
and uh oh that's a good nine to five reference.
I just saw that the other night. Um, so it
(10:39):
was a it was a homemade bomb, but it was
by all accounts a well made bomb too, and it worked,
which I think is one of the the big the
big questions about any homemade bomb is whether it will
actually work or not. And this one worked with deadly effect.
That's right. So the most important thing they found in
this car though. Um were some letters, some handwritten notes
(11:04):
addressed to bomb hostage. So one of them said, I
mean these were instructions basically on what this guy should do,
which further kind of cemented like, hey, this guy is
probably telling the truth. It said, go rob this bank
of two fifty grand, and then very strangely outlined this little,
uh scavenger hunt basically to where eventually you will land
(11:28):
upon the keys to in combination to get you out
of this thing by going all over town and finding
these various hidden notes, and at the last note you
will you will be able to free yourself. Yeah, the
last one will give you the keys and the combination.
But you better hurry because you have a limited amount
of time. If you stop and think you're going to
waste time and you're going to die, we can detonate
(11:50):
this remotely and we're going to be following you. It
was written pretty crazily. Have you read any of the note, Yeah,
so like there it's it's got a lot of um
like just like a lot of jump jump cuts and
or jump scares in it. You know, like you'll it's
like go do this and and then go do that
after that, and then don't try anything in funny, we're
(12:11):
gonna blow you up. You know. It has those every
once in a while. And there's drawings in there of
where he could find, like like the notes and all that,
So that he made it as far as the first note,
which was McDonald's. It was in that that McDonald's that
shared a parking lot with the PNC bank. That was
where the first note was. So he made it to
that that McDonald's grabbed that note, and that note was
(12:32):
directing him out of town um to another note, and
he didn't make it that far. But when the cops
caught up with him. Yeah, so the scavenger hunt was
he like he said, he had gotten just to the
one place. So the cops then say, well, here's what
we're gonna do. We're gonna complete the scavenger hunt. And
(12:52):
they were like, whoa, you just blew my mind. That's
some great policing. Should we take a break, sure, all right,
scavenger hunt has just started, by the coppas, we'll be
right back. All right, we're back. So the scavenger hunts
(13:31):
still on, Chuck, I mean, they make it. The cops
follow from the note that Brian Wells had to the
next clue, and they found the next note, and that
directed them to another place even further out of town,
to where they found the jar where the note was
supposed to be. But the note was gone. Yeah, and
(13:52):
they don't really know what that means. They didn't know
if it was just something to keep them busy, preoccupied.
They didn't know if the person who was designing this
scavenger hunt got interrupted or knew that the cops were
around and they were doing it sort of in real time.
But at any rate, the unfortunately the scavenger hunt just
kind of pizzled out, because that was kind of a
cool part of the story. Yeah, it really was. It
(14:14):
was like, it's one of the things that makes this
it's just an incredibly bizarre crime. Why the scavenger hunt,
It's going to keep coming up again and again, Right,
So when the true when the scavenger hunt ran out,
the trail actually went cold. The case started to get
cold for a few months. The cops sniffed around Brian Wills,
tried to figure out, you know what, why him, what
(14:35):
happened with him, And they went back to his place
of employment and they they kind of checked out the
kind of person he was right, yeah, And they very
smartly said, well, wait a minute, why don't we why
don't we check out what that last delivery was supposed
to be. There may be a clue there. And it
was an interesting place it was at the It was
(14:56):
you can only get there by dirt road and it
was right next to a TV transmission tower and a
kind of a remote wooded area. And cops combed the area,
found shoe prints that matched wells. They found those classic
iconic geometro tire tracks that everyone could recognizes, Bye Bye Sight.
(15:20):
But there really weren't any more clues as far as
the cops were concerned at that location. So where the
cops had found a dead end, a reporter uh and
photographer for the Eerie Times News went and did a
little investating of his own. And I saw this house,
you know, next door where the pizza was delivered, and said, ween,
I'm just gonna go knock on the door. This guy
(15:40):
answers the door. Um, And his name was Bill Rostein,
and he actually said, you know, you can look around
if you want. He's fifty nine years old, he's a handyman,
wasn't married, had lived there his whole life. And apparently
he seemed really smart. Um had a very uh articulate
way of speaking and apparently was fluent in several of
the languages. And the journalists kind of did a little
(16:03):
poking around and didn't really see much and took off.
But he made contact with Bill Rothstein. He's the first
person that kind of was went a knocking, right, but
nothing came of it, and the cops, as far as
I know, never went and met with Bill Rothstein, even
those houses right next to the delivery place where Wells
(16:23):
was supposedly accosted, right. And then a few like I said,
the case has gone cold by this time, if a
couple of months have gone by, the whole the whole um,
I mean, you've got this crime, this very public caper
that's captured the public's attention. A guy died by by
being blown up while the while under police supervision. And
(16:47):
there's no leads, there's no nothing. And then finally, uh,
several weeks, a few months I think after the call Um,
there's a nine one one call from Bill Rothstein and
he tells the police that in his freezer he has
one of those serial killer chest freezers. There's actually a
(17:07):
body a man's body and that it was Um, it
is not someone he murdered, but he helped cover up
the murder of this man who was the boyfriend of
Bill Rothstein's ex girlfriend from way way back in the day.
And now the chain of events has been set off, right.
(17:29):
And if you're like me and you start hearing wife
of the ex girlfriend's dad's cousin, your brain gets a
little jumbled. So just very plainly, he used to date
this woman. This woman called him up and said, Hey,
I've murdered my current boyfriend or was it her husband? Uh,
it was her boyfriend, and she said, and I need
(17:51):
your help here. Um, I blasted him with a with
a shotgun, and I know we tated, oh twenty years ago,
but we come help me out because they were still
in contact. I guess they remained friends. I guess. So
in this racked Bill Rostein. Apparently he thought about committing suicide.
Apparently there was even a note. They found, a suicide note,
(18:11):
but he maintained, like you said with the cops, that
he didn't have anything to do with anything. But most
of the clean up, the clean up, getting rid of
the murder weapon and then holding onto the body. Yeah,
but what which the reason he held on the body
was supposed to get apparently supposed to grind this body up.
And that's where he finally stopped short and was like, Jesus,
(18:32):
I can't do this, And he said he told the
cops that the reason he called them finally lose because
since he wasn't going through with grinding up the body,
he was worried what this woman, Marjorie Deal Armstrong was
going to do to him. He's like, I dated this lady, right,
She's not a nice person. And so when he says
Marjorie Deal Armstrong to the eerie cops, just alarm bell
(18:53):
start going off because by this time, already Marjorie Deal
Armstrong was a local legend as far as crew roles
are concerned. She was this very very bright woman um
who I think, at the age of thirty five back
in the eighties, had been indicted for killing one of
her boyfriends, shot him six times. She played that she
(19:16):
had killed them in self defense, that he was an
abuser of her, and she was actually acquitted. A few
years after that. She was married to a guy named Armstrong,
and he showed up at the hospital with a head
trauma and actually died of a cerebral hemorrhage, but there
was no coroners in quest or anything like that, and
so it just was something suspicious, you know, the second
(19:39):
second significant other of this woman to die under suspicious
or violent circumstances. So so when Bill Rothstein said I'm
worried about what Marjorie deal Armstron's gonna do to me,
the cops seemed to have taken it very seriously, well,
extremely seriously, because the next day they arrested her. That's
pretty serious for murder. Uh And about a year and
(20:01):
a half later, a little short of that, she pled
guilty but mentally ill. She was sentenced to seven to
twenty UM. And then Rothstein, on for his part, eventually
died of cancer in two thousand four. Right, and so
you said that he had considered killing himself and even
wrote a suicide note. Right, Yeah, there's something very very
(20:23):
odd on Bill Rothstein's suicide note. And again he didn't
kill himself. He died of cancer. But he was able
to actually show the cops where as suicide note was,
and they read it, and the first line of it,
from what I understand, was this has nothing to do
with the collar bomb heist or the Brian Wells murder. Yeah,
(20:43):
that that's a it's a weird thing to put if
you had nothing to do with that, you know, right,
that's just a very odd thing to do. It's like
when the cops come in and you go, there's nothing
under the bed, don't don't there's no reason to look there, right,
they said, we just fun to make sure your fire
alarm is working part of a community service. Cool, but
(21:04):
the bed's fine. Right. So that is a very weird
thing to say, and that definitely piqued the interests of
the cops. But like you said, the cops convicted or
the state convicted Marjorie deal Armstrong of the murder of
um James Roden or Jim Roden. Right, she's already in prison,
and when she's in prison, somehow this is what I'm
(21:28):
unclear on, somehow it comes up or she starts talking
or something like that, that Jim Roden's death very much
had to do with the Wells case, with Brian Wells murder,
this collar bomb heist, and that she knows a lot
about it, and if they'll transfer her to a minimum
(21:49):
security prison close to Erie, she'll she'll start talking Yeah,
she has for the old Hannibal electric treatment. So is
that how it came up, like she approached them, because
I'm I'm unclear on that. I mean, I think so
this is in the Wired article it said that, um,
that there was a phone call from a state cop
(22:10):
who had just met with her about something unrelated, like
a different homicide, and she just and and it kind
of makes sense though now actually when we as we
will learn, Um, she talked a lot, Yeah, a lot,
So it doesn't surprise me that another cop was just
meeting with her about something unrelated. She's like, by the way,
(22:31):
that whole collar bomb thing, I got all the skinny
on that, right, So there's a couple of things going
on here. By then, Um, by the time she calls
the cops, the cops have already spoken apparently with several
informants that have shared cells with her or spent time
with her in jail already, Um, who are saying like, uh,
this lady is the mastermind of that collar bomb heist
(22:54):
that's making you guys look bad. Yeah, And eventually, you know,
when they met with her about this, she she admitted
that she was involved, but um, well she didn't met
she was involved in the plot, but she said, I
knew about it. I gave him. I gave him those
two kitchen timers, and I was really close by when
(23:14):
it happened. Uh. And by the way, the guy who
blew up with the collar bomb, Mr Wells, he was
actually in on it too, And Rothstein headed the whole
thing up, right. But for her deal Armstrong, she said,
but I had nothing to do with it, even though
I had all these other little things to do with it.
I never met Brian Wells. I didn't know Brian Wells.
(23:35):
I had nothing to do with his death aside from
supplying the kitchen timers. Um, and know all about it
right exactly. Um. So, now it's just getting weird, right,
because there's the Jim Rodent murder, who she says that
she killed because he was abusing her, who Rothstein said
she killed over a dispute with money, but is now
(23:56):
she's saying is tied to the Wells case, and which
she knows a lot about but really nothing about and
had nothing to do with. So the cops are like, well,
let's just get this lated talk all we can, And
one of the things they got out of her was
her she agreed to a tour around Eerie, showing them
(24:17):
all these places where she had been, and these were
all places that were related to the crime. Like I
believe she said she'd been at the pizza delivery site.
I think she said she's been within a mile of
the of the bank when it was robbed. Like all
of this stuff. She's just like, they just keep giving
her this rope and she's just wrapping it around her
neck again and again and again, and then finally chuck
(24:40):
at the end of this car ride, after she's been
interviewing with the cops multiple times, giving him tons of info.
What does she say? She asked for immunity at this
point after she hit basically completely incriminated herself. Uh. And
previous to all this, a lot more happened. There were
(25:01):
four different informants who had come forward and said that
this lady has been talking about this for a while,
she very much had everything to do with it. And
then a couple of months after she had started talking
to the Feds, another big break came. This witness came
forward and said, Hey, there's this crack dealer named Kenny Barnes.
(25:22):
That is a correc dealer's name Kenneth Barnes, and he
was involved. Uh, they used to go fishing together, Armstrong,
Deal Armstrong and Barnes, and she sang like a canary
to him basically, and said, here's what she did. She
her brother in law put him in touch with Barnes
while he was already in jail on unrelated art charges basically.
(25:47):
And so Barnes was already in prison, said hey, I
think I can shorten my time. So I'm gonna try
and get a reduced sentence at least by spilling the
beans on Deal Armstrong. Right. And Barnes brother in law
was who turned him into the cops. So Barnes is like,
I'm already I'm in jail for selling crack. That's way
different from being you know, very much involved in this
(26:09):
collar bomb heist. Um. So he said, okay, I'll tell
you guys everything you want to know. I'll be your
star witness. Um, just reduce my sentence in the for
my involvement in this. And he started talking. When he
started talking, it was at Marjorie Deal Armstrong's um trial,
(26:30):
which was a pretty spectacular trial from all accounts. Yeah,
and and before the trial even he told his story
was is that she wanted me to kill her father.
He was spending what would end up being her inheritance,
she felt, and so she wanted him dead. And so
she was doing this collar bomb heist to raise money
(26:53):
to pay me to kill her dad, which I mean, like,
that's just the biggest face palm I've ever heard of.
Yeah for a real So, okay, we'll start Marjorie Deal
Armstrong's trial. Um, after we take a break, how about
that man? That sounds good? Okay, okay, chuck. So, before
(27:37):
Marjorie Deal Armstrong goes to trial, and remember, she's already
in prison for the murder of Jim roden Right, shooting
him in the back with a twelve gage shotgun. Um,
Bill Rothstein is dead. I want to call him a
Rothstein so Ace Rothstein, so bad. But Bill Rothstein is dead.
He died of limp foma a couple of years before.
(27:57):
And by the time Marjorie Deal Armstrong is is brought
to trial for her involvement as the mastermind of the
collar bomb plot, they have to, um, they have to
verify that she's actually mentally competent to stand trial. And
that's kind of touchy because remember when she she was
(28:19):
charged with killing her boyfriend back in I think six
she was She was deemed incompetent seven times by psychiatrists
before the judge finally said, I'm I'm throwing all that
out and deciding that she is competent. We're going to
go ahead with the trial. They also found like four
(28:39):
hundred pounds of butter and seven hundred pounds of cheese
in her um in her house when they were investigating
that particular murder. And in in between and the time
she was tried in the collar bomb heist, she had
been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, So there it was actually
kind of question of well, whether she was mentally competent
(29:01):
to see and trial um. And right as they were
about to start the proceedings, I think the judge rule
that she was competent to sand trial. Um. She was
diagnosed with cancer herself, that's right. So they waited for
the cancer diagnosis or prognosis, and the cancer doctor came
back and said three to seven years, and the prosecutors said,
(29:24):
giddy up, that's right. So previous to this, she she
had gotten the indictment. But in that indictment it's very
important that she was not I mean, granted she was
the only one technically indicted, but they in the indictment
it said that Rothstein was definitely a conspirator and Wells,
the man who was who was the victim, supposedly he
(29:45):
was definitely involved in this thing from the beginning. Yeah,
you're absolutely right, as a very important thing that that
showed up in this indictment. Yeah, they said he agreed
to rob this bank, he thought it was a fake bomb,
and uh, he was told the scavenger hunt was a
ruse to full the cops and if and when he
did get caught, he could say, you know, I was
(30:06):
just following orders basically what he did, right, And so
Brian Well's family did not like this at all. Apparently
during the the the press conference where the d A.
Evere County is announcing this, you know, this case case
is closed. This is the indictment that they have, Um
the Wells, some of Brian Well's sisters were shouting liar
(30:26):
at her. They did not take the idea that their
brother was an accomplice in this at all, Um very well. Yeah,
I mean there was a lot of uh, there's a
lot of back and forth about whether Wells was in
on the thing from the beginning, or whether or not
he was in from the beginning and then at one
(30:46):
point wanted out and was forced to do this, or
whether he was forced from the beginning. Everyone's telling a
different story. Uh. And you know, basically the trial is
where we will learn, you know, if all that is true,
what really happened. So, um, Marjorie deal Armstrong's lawyers said,
you know, to heck with with caution, let's put you
(31:08):
on the stand. Okay, you've already incriminated yourself multiple times.
Why not do it in open court too? And um,
she apparently was quite a She put on quite a
performance on the on the stand over like two days,
I think five and a half hours of testimony. Um,
she yelled, she cried, She berated the prosecutor and her
(31:32):
own lawyer. Uh. She when she did mention Brian Well,
she said, I've never met the guy. I learned of
his death when everybody else did on the TV news.
And she she stuck with her story though that she
had nothing to do with this. She knew a little
bit about it. She knew the the conspirators. The real
mastermind was Bill Rothstein, and it wasn't her. That's what
(31:56):
she maintained though throughout the trial and even after word.
That's right. But before she took the stand a few
days earlier is when they trotted out Kin Barnes and
he took the stand, and he said he had you know,
by the time she took the stand, he had given
a different account of the story then she would later do.
(32:17):
So he got up there and said she was behind
all this. She was the mastermind. Rostein was involved. She
just recruited him. Basically, she recruited Wells because Wells needed money.
And here's where the where the prostitutes come into play.
Apparently Wells had a relationship with the prostitute who was
also a crack addict, so he would buy crack to
(32:40):
give her um, presumably as trade for sex. He ended
up falling into debt with these crack dealers and needed money,
and so basically the plot of Boulan rouge uh and
he contends um Barnes did that that up until the
day of the time, Wells was thought this whole thing
(33:03):
was fake, realized that it was a double cross. It
was a real bomb, and he tried to run away
and was tackled and they put a gun to his
head and locked him into this device. So imagine this choke.
Imagine being Brian Wells and you're agreeing to to put
on what you are presuming is a fake caller bomb
(33:24):
to go carry out a real bank robbery because you
need money, because you're indebted to crack dealers, because you
borrowed from crack from them to give to your girlfriend,
who's a prostitute who you have to give crack two
to be with. And then you find out on the
day of that this is a real bomb and they're
putting it on you, whether you like it or not.
(33:46):
What a horrible what a horrible turn of events for
this poor guy. I mean, that's just so sad, no
matter how you slice it. And then if you take
his family's uh, if you take his family's opinion that
he was innocent, he really was um delivering pizzas and
was accosted and had nothing to do with any of this,
which I take with a pretty big grain AsSalt. I mean,
(34:09):
that's just as bad. But it's bad either way, whether
he was an accomplice at one point or not. It's
it's very it's super sad. There's a very sad thread
that's running through this story in the form of Brian Wells,
you know. Well, yeah, and on the final day of
her trial, at the very very end of her taking
the stand, is when she finally said that she didn't
(34:29):
know him, never met him, and the first time she
had ever laid eyes on him was on the news
that day. Right. Basically, he and Marjorie deal Armstrong are fishing, right,
they're fishing buddies that she he's somebody that she would
turn to, and she's finding out that her father is
blowing through her inheritance and she wants to put a
stop to it, and so he she approaches Barnes to
(34:52):
get him to kill her father. But to get that
two K two that he says he will kill her
father for, she's got to rob a bank. So she
turns to her friend Bill Rothstein to come up with
this collar bomb to put it on this other person,
Brian Wells, who's going to carry this out. You know,
by the way, we're also going to come up with
a scavenger hunt to either throw the cops off or
(35:14):
to actually make Brian Wells feel more comfortable, give him
some sort of cover in case he is caught. And
that's what we're gonna go with go team and Marjorie
deal arms trunk. So that's preposterous that that wasn't me.
Kenneth Barnes said, that's that's exactly what happened. And then
Bill Rothstein wasn't alive to to contradict any of it.
(35:34):
That's right. So she's sentenced, right, she's convicted as the
mastermind of this pot. Yeah. The jury took about eleven
hours and she was convicted of armed, armed bank robbery, conspiracy,
and using a destructive device in a crime of violence.
That's a big one. I'll bet a bet that carries
a hefty sentence with it. Yeah, and she would she
(35:57):
would die in prison, just like her prognosis said she
and I think she lasted a few years now. They
gave her three to seven years and she lasted seven. Yeah,
so she finally passed away, and you know, that's kind
of the end of the story. Even though there's a
retired FBI investigator named Jim Fisher who said, I think
(36:17):
they got this all wrong. I think that Rothstein was
the guy the whole time, and he makes a decently
compelling case, but it's you know, everyone's dead now. Yeah,
Jim Fisher has gone a little bit down the rabbit
hole if you ask me. Yeah, I mean it's it's
kind of hard to tell with literally everyone having died. Um,
(36:37):
but for his money, he thinks it was Rothstein. Yeah,
And so there's probably not many people who are familiar
with the case who would say that it wasn't Rothstein
who built the bomb. But what Jim Fishers saying is
like Bill Rothstein was behind everything, and Marjorie deal Armstrong
murdering Jim Roden was just like a gift that dropped
(37:01):
in Bill Rothstein's lap that he could use to make
all these puppets dance, including the cops, and that the
whole point of it was to create this elaborate scheme,
this elaborate crime that would puzzle people for for for
years and years to come, which it's it's doing that,
and that that was the point, and that Brian Wells
(37:23):
was going to die one way or another, right because
I think the FBI said they concluded the whole scavenger
hunt was a hoax and that Brian Wells was never
going to survive this, didn't they. Yeah, So so this
is Jim Fisher's position. But like you said, now that
everybody's dead. Really, the only question is you know just
how how complicit was um Brian Wells is the is
(37:45):
the last big question that's right. And then there's one
other guy who seems to have got off scott free
named Floyd Stockton. Did you look into him a little bit?
So he's a guy who was there. He was he
was there. He supposedly ended Rothstein the bomb to put
around Brian Well's neck. He was staying with Rothstein as
(38:06):
a buddy on his couch, fleeing a rape charge in Washington. Um,
and somehow, for some reason he got immunity and was
not indicted even though he was very much involved in this,
and he got off scott free and Brian Wells families
going nuts over the fact that this guy's out there
walking free. That he was he was a part of this,
(38:27):
this caper and he he didn't see a second inside
of a jail. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if there
were more people involved. Demon So what do you think
do you think Brian Wells was was complicit? And if so,
how much? Oh? Man, I don't know. I mean, it
sounds like I kind of believe the story that they
were all in it together and he was probably double crossed.
(38:50):
But this is just from reading about this thing many
many years later. Do you think Marjorie deal Armstrong was
the mastermind? I don't know. I don't know either. Maybe
we'll never know, but we might, but probably not. Have
you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
(39:11):
if you want to know more about the collar bomb case,
you can type that word in the search bar your
favorite search engine and it will likely bring up a
very great article. I'm wired from Rich Shapiro. Read that
start there. It's great, And since I said Rich Shapiro,
it's side for the listener mail, I'm gonna go with
one on emoji and John Adams. Hey guys enjoyed the
(39:35):
recent podcast about the history of emojis and emoticons. Reminded
me of a discovery I made in the diaries of
John Adams that makes a historical figure who's sometimes described
as a loof, seemed completely charming. When the future president
was about twenty two years old, he made an entry
in his diary uh in seventeen fifty six, saying, a
cloudy morning about ten and he drew a little sunshine
(40:00):
gout a warm day. He used a little line drawing
in the sun that I always call an eighteenth century emoji. Uh.
He likes a little creation so much he readsed it
a month later in the same diary, A Misty Morning,
Little sunshine breakout about noon. On the Massachusetts Historical Society website,
the text of his letters and diaries is faithfully transcribed,
(40:22):
but in the cases a In these cases, a parenthetical
note tells readers that there are small drawings of the
sun and advises them to refer to the scans of
the handwritten page where you can actually see this. Um.
Apparently he grew out of his habit, though, because his
later diaries do not use the adorable little son. Keep
up with great work. My wife and I host a
(40:43):
local history podcast for Boston. It's tightly scripted. Oh man,
he didn't tell me what it was. I would have
totally shouted it out. Uh. I know, big, big missed
opportunity there. Jake, one of these days will be confident
enough to have an unscripted conversation like you guys to
and that is from Jake Scan Yours. Okay, so everybody's
(41:04):
look up Jake scan Yours Boston history podcast, and it
will probably bring it up right, probably so thanks a lot, Jake,
thanks for keeping up the good fight up there. That's
pretty cool. Good story too. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Jake did, tell us about
your podcast, that's great. You can tweet to us. I'm
at josh oam Clark and at s Y s K podcast,
(41:25):
and Chuck is at movie Crush all on Twitter. On Facebook,
you can go to Facebook dot com slash Stuff you
Should Know or Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
If you can send us all an email. The Stuff
podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(41:48):
of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there, and
this is Stuff you Should Know, the True Crime edition again. Yeah,
(00:21):
we've done a few of these, right. True crime is
so hot right now? Hey, man, we were we were
dabbling on the periphery of true crime when most of
these people were wetting their diapers. That's right, man, that
is right. I'm glad somebody finally said it. We were
occasionally doing a poor job of covering true crime ten
(00:42):
years ago. That's right. We're gonna do it again, right,
we continue that great rich history. Yeah, because true crime
can be extraordinarily interesting, especially when you're talking about an
extraordinarily over complicated heist that results in a man's bizarre death,
death by bizarre means and involves what really ultimately, you
(01:08):
could make a case as an unsolved mystery still today,
even though it's technically bureaucratically been solved. A lot of
people say, no, this thing hasn't been solved yet. You
got you got homemade bombs, you got a scavenger hunt,
got a crreck dealer, well, you gotta have a correct dealer,
(01:30):
got prostitutes, m got pizza and yeah, and let's start
with the pizza Geo Metro right, which, by the way,
I just wanted to point out ahead of time, there
is no more pizza delivery car two thousand three than
a geometro, a tal one, no less. The thing is,
(01:52):
it's almost like they rolled them right off the line
in two thousand three, with the straight to a pizza place,
with the pizza guy inside already and the little signed
magneted on right a little crooked yep. So the whole
thing does start, actually with a pizza guy, a pizza place,
and a teal Geo Metro. And like you said, the
(02:13):
whole thing starts in two thousand three in Erie, Pennsylvania.
And there was a and still is I looked it up.
There's a pizza place called Mama me Is Pizza Rhea.
But fine, sure it gets the job done right. And
at about two pm on August two thousand three, a
(02:36):
pizza delivery guy named Brian Wells I think he was
forty six at the time. He was about to end
his morning shift when a call came in for two
small sausage and pepperoni pizzas, and the the delivery was
I guess the opposite way of where Brian was going
to go on his way home. But he said, you
(02:57):
know what, I'll take this one last order and he
walked out the door at about two And the next
time that Brian Wells was seen in public again, he
was entering a p NC bank branch just down the
street from his pizza place, a few miles up the road,
and he looked a lot different than he did when
(03:17):
he left the pizza parlor about twenty eight minutes earlier. Yeah, so,
first of all, he was he was walking with a cane,
kind of a funny looking kane uh. And then under
his T shirt he had clearly and if you've seen
the footage and the photos, you can see a warning
(03:38):
by the way for video, yeah, for the future. It's
quite graphic. It's out there, but it is out there.
But he had clearly some large, boxy looking thing. It
looked like he's wearing a shoe box around his neck
with a T shirt pulled over it kind of butt in.
The teller at the bank's defense could have been an
(03:59):
artific shell torso, and she probably didn't want to draw
attention to it. She yes, she was being very kind, right.
So one thing I want to point out too, there's
already discrepancy what we're like a minute into the story,
and there's already a discrepancy. That shirt he was wearing
over that boxy thing underneath his shirt said guests on it.
(04:19):
And I've seen that it was written somehow, like in
spray paint or marker, or that it was an actual
guest Jeans T shirt. Really, so either an officially licensed
or not license but whatever brand shirt or a homemade
jankie spray painted version. Yeah, And if you look, the
pictures don't really show one way or another. It looks
(04:41):
more like it's homemade. And I looked up to see
if there was a guest shirt that, you know, if
I could find the actual guest shirt, it wasn't. Couldn't,
so I think it may have been homemade. Regardless, he's
wearing this shirt that says guests on and he walks
up to the teller and he hands the teller a note,
and the note says, I have a bomb. Get everybody
(05:02):
who has access codes to the safe together and put
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into a bag and
bring it to me. I think he said, you have
fifteen minutes to do this, which is kind of a
long time if you're a bank robber, it is. It's
like almost like luxurious. And what said, like sixty seconds, yeah,
(05:22):
or this should have happened yesterday, chop chop. So he um.
He stands back and waits, apparently grabs a dumb, dumb
lollipop out of the little basket while he's waiting, because
why not. And the teller says, sir, um, we don't
have like, we can't get into the safe. That's just
not how things work. I'm sorry, but as a consolation prize,
(05:43):
I'm going to put two dollars into a bag for
you right here and send you on your way. Okay. Yeah,
And and importantly we did not mention he lifted his
shirt up and showed this teller this this bomb, this
what's called a collar bomb, strapped around neck. Right. So
he walks out of the bank a freeman. And the
(06:05):
next time that he's seen in public is about fifteen
minutes later, and he's seen in public by some Pennsylvania
State troopers who are on the lookout for this guy.
And he's still wearing that shirt, he's still got the
big bulge, and he's standing around his geometro parked in
a parking lot that is actually shared with that p
(06:25):
NC bank and the McDonald's and he's in a parking
lot right there. So basically he left the bank robbery
and went about a hundred to two feet away from it,
and that's where he was found like a full fifteen
minutes later. Yeah. So these these these coppas, these troopers
come over and uh, he says, hey, guys, this is
(06:48):
a bomb around my neck. A group of a group
of black men chain this bomb around my neck at gunpoint,
forced me to rob this bank for them. I'm not
gonna I'm not lying here. A thing is gonna go off.
So the cops called the bomb squad and they do
I saw, you know his The family of Wells is
(07:08):
still angry about the fact that she says they did
nothing to save them. But I would be too. By
the way, we should shout out Wired magazine. Oh yes,
we really really should. A lot of this came from
a great, heavily researched story by Rich Shapiro for about
eight years ago, called The Incredible true story of the
color bomb heist. So thank you Rich for your work.
(07:32):
But the dudes on the ground, he said, I mean,
if you I kind of remember this happening, because when
I went and looked at the still images, I was like,
wait a minute, I've I've seen this. And this is
guy sitting on the ground, uh, with this thing around
his neck, kind of just waiting, seated on the pavement
(07:52):
for about twenty five minutes. He says, very uh interestingly,
like did you call my boss at the pizza place? Uh?
And then all of a sudden, this bomb starts beeping fast,
which is never a good sign. And when I was
reading the story, I thought, well, that's just a ruse.
But no, this thing detonated and killed him. It blasted
(08:13):
a hole in his chest. Um, it did not blow
his head off like the internet says. No. But it
was a violent, awful death. Yeah, it was, and it
was pretty quick. And then three minutes after the bomb
goes off, the bomb squad showed up, so they so
he's dead. This, this guy, Brian Wells, is dead. And
(08:34):
the whole time he was protesting, He's like, you know,
this is I was forced to rob the bank. Are
you guys gonna get this off of me or what? Um? Yeah,
he said something like did you call my boss? Because
apparently he was a very um loyal employee. He'd been
working at MoMA MIA's for how long, like ten years
or something like that, for years and years, and he'd
(08:55):
only called in late once, not even sick late once
when his cat died. That Rich Shapiro and that Wired article,
so um, it seemed like he actually was telling the
truth that he had been abducted and forced to rob
the bank and then had been a victim. I think
the bomb going off really kind of put an exclamation
(09:16):
point on his story that he was not a willing
participant in this, right. Yeah. So the cops obviously check
out that geo metro uh and it's sweet sweet styling,
and they saw his cane in there. It turns out
the reason why the cane was funny looking is because
it was also a gun. And it really looks a
(09:36):
lot like a gun. Yeah when you when you look
at it. Um, the bomb was clearly homemade, had a
couple of different parts to it. It was this this
banded metal collar that he wore around his neck. It
was like locked to his neck. Head, four key holes,
and then a combination lock. It was really locked to
his neck, and then an iron box with two pipe
(09:56):
bombs loaded up ready to go. And then interestingly, and
this will figure uh, put a pin in this one
because this will figure in the in the case later. Uh.
It had two kitchen timers in there in addition to
an elect an electronic countdown timer, yeah, which was I
guess the thing that started beating faster and faster. Yeah.
(10:18):
And then some decoy wires. You'll always gotta have those
if you're if you're making a bomb. Sure, but I mean,
like that's pretty smart. So there's decoy wires. They were
apparently also stickers that said like don't do it or
you know, skull and crossbones or rat poison whatever. Yeah,
and uh oh that's a good nine to five reference.
I just saw that the other night. Um, so it
(10:39):
was a it was a homemade bomb, but it was
by all accounts a well made bomb too, and it worked,
which I think is one of the the big the
big questions about any homemade bomb is whether it will
actually work or not. And this one worked with deadly effect.
That's right. So the most important thing they found in
this car though. Um were some letters, some handwritten notes
(11:04):
addressed to bomb hostage. So one of them said, I
mean these were instructions basically on what this guy should do,
which further kind of cemented like, hey, this guy is
probably telling the truth. It said, go rob this bank
of two fifty grand, and then very strangely outlined this little,
uh scavenger hunt basically to where eventually you will land
(11:28):
upon the keys to in combination to get you out
of this thing by going all over town and finding
these various hidden notes, and at the last note you
will you will be able to free yourself. Yeah, the
last one will give you the keys and the combination.
But you better hurry because you have a limited amount
of time. If you stop and think you're going to
waste time and you're going to die, we can detonate
(11:50):
this remotely and we're going to be following you. It
was written pretty crazily. Have you read any of the note, Yeah,
so like there it's it's got a lot of um
like just like a lot of jump jump cuts and
or jump scares in it. You know, like you'll it's
like go do this and and then go do that
after that, and then don't try anything in funny, we're
(12:11):
gonna blow you up. You know. It has those every
once in a while. And there's drawings in there of
where he could find, like like the notes and all that,
So that he made it as far as the first note,
which was McDonald's. It was in that that McDonald's that
shared a parking lot with the PNC bank. That was
where the first note was. So he made it to
that that McDonald's grabbed that note, and that note was
(12:32):
directing him out of town um to another note, and
he didn't make it that far. But when the cops
caught up with him. Yeah, so the scavenger hunt was
he like he said, he had gotten just to the
one place. So the cops then say, well, here's what
we're gonna do. We're gonna complete the scavenger hunt. And
(12:52):
they were like, whoa, you just blew my mind. That's
some great policing. Should we take a break, sure, all right,
scavenger hunt has just started, by the coppas, we'll be
right back. All right, we're back. So the scavenger hunts
(13:31):
still on, Chuck, I mean, they make it. The cops
follow from the note that Brian Wells had to the
next clue, and they found the next note, and that
directed them to another place even further out of town,
to where they found the jar where the note was
supposed to be. But the note was gone. Yeah, and
(13:52):
they don't really know what that means. They didn't know
if it was just something to keep them busy, preoccupied.
They didn't know if the person who was designing this
scavenger hunt got interrupted or knew that the cops were
around and they were doing it sort of in real time.
But at any rate, the unfortunately the scavenger hunt just
kind of pizzled out, because that was kind of a
cool part of the story. Yeah, it really was. It
(14:14):
was like, it's one of the things that makes this
it's just an incredibly bizarre crime. Why the scavenger hunt,
It's going to keep coming up again and again, Right,
So when the true when the scavenger hunt ran out,
the trail actually went cold. The case started to get
cold for a few months. The cops sniffed around Brian Wills,
tried to figure out, you know what, why him, what
(14:35):
happened with him, And they went back to his place
of employment and they they kind of checked out the
kind of person he was right, yeah, And they very
smartly said, well, wait a minute, why don't we why
don't we check out what that last delivery was supposed
to be. There may be a clue there. And it
was an interesting place it was at the It was
(14:56):
you can only get there by dirt road and it
was right next to a TV transmission tower and a
kind of a remote wooded area. And cops combed the area,
found shoe prints that matched wells. They found those classic
iconic geometro tire tracks that everyone could recognizes, Bye Bye Sight.
(15:20):
But there really weren't any more clues as far as
the cops were concerned at that location. So where the
cops had found a dead end, a reporter uh and
photographer for the Eerie Times News went and did a
little investating of his own. And I saw this house,
you know, next door where the pizza was delivered, and said, ween,
I'm just gonna go knock on the door. This guy
(15:40):
answers the door. Um, And his name was Bill Rostein,
and he actually said, you know, you can look around
if you want. He's fifty nine years old, he's a handyman,
wasn't married, had lived there his whole life. And apparently
he seemed really smart. Um had a very uh articulate
way of speaking and apparently was fluent in several of
the languages. And the journalists kind of did a little
(16:03):
poking around and didn't really see much and took off.
But he made contact with Bill Rothstein. He's the first
person that kind of was went a knocking, right, but
nothing came of it, and the cops, as far as
I know, never went and met with Bill Rothstein, even
those houses right next to the delivery place where Wells
(16:23):
was supposedly accosted, right. And then a few like I said,
the case has gone cold by this time, if a
couple of months have gone by, the whole the whole um,
I mean, you've got this crime, this very public caper
that's captured the public's attention. A guy died by by
being blown up while the while under police supervision. And
(16:47):
there's no leads, there's no nothing. And then finally, uh,
several weeks, a few months I think after the call Um,
there's a nine one one call from Bill Rothstein and
he tells the police that in his freezer he has
one of those serial killer chest freezers. There's actually a
(17:07):
body a man's body and that it was Um, it
is not someone he murdered, but he helped cover up
the murder of this man who was the boyfriend of
Bill Rothstein's ex girlfriend from way way back in the day.
And now the chain of events has been set off, right.
(17:29):
And if you're like me and you start hearing wife
of the ex girlfriend's dad's cousin, your brain gets a
little jumbled. So just very plainly, he used to date
this woman. This woman called him up and said, Hey,
I've murdered my current boyfriend or was it her husband? Uh,
it was her boyfriend, and she said, and I need
(17:51):
your help here. Um, I blasted him with a with
a shotgun, and I know we tated, oh twenty years ago,
but we come help me out because they were still
in contact. I guess they remained friends. I guess. So
in this racked Bill Rostein. Apparently he thought about committing suicide.
Apparently there was even a note. They found, a suicide note,
(18:11):
but he maintained, like you said with the cops, that
he didn't have anything to do with anything. But most
of the clean up, the clean up, getting rid of
the murder weapon and then holding onto the body. Yeah,
but what which the reason he held on the body
was supposed to get apparently supposed to grind this body up.
And that's where he finally stopped short and was like, Jesus,
(18:32):
I can't do this, And he said he told the
cops that the reason he called them finally lose because
since he wasn't going through with grinding up the body,
he was worried what this woman, Marjorie Deal Armstrong was
going to do to him. He's like, I dated this lady, right,
She's not a nice person. And so when he says
Marjorie Deal Armstrong to the eerie cops, just alarm bell
(18:53):
start going off because by this time, already Marjorie Deal
Armstrong was a local legend as far as crew roles
are concerned. She was this very very bright woman um
who I think, at the age of thirty five back
in the eighties, had been indicted for killing one of
her boyfriends, shot him six times. She played that she
(19:16):
had killed them in self defense, that he was an
abuser of her, and she was actually acquitted. A few
years after that. She was married to a guy named Armstrong,
and he showed up at the hospital with a head
trauma and actually died of a cerebral hemorrhage, but there
was no coroners in quest or anything like that, and
so it just was something suspicious, you know, the second
(19:39):
second significant other of this woman to die under suspicious
or violent circumstances. So so when Bill Rothstein said I'm
worried about what Marjorie deal Armstron's gonna do to me,
the cops seemed to have taken it very seriously, well,
extremely seriously, because the next day they arrested her. That's
pretty serious for murder. Uh And about a year and
(20:01):
a half later, a little short of that, she pled
guilty but mentally ill. She was sentenced to seven to
twenty UM. And then Rothstein, on for his part, eventually
died of cancer in two thousand four. Right, and so
you said that he had considered killing himself and even
wrote a suicide note. Right, Yeah, there's something very very
(20:23):
odd on Bill Rothstein's suicide note. And again he didn't
kill himself. He died of cancer. But he was able
to actually show the cops where as suicide note was,
and they read it, and the first line of it,
from what I understand, was this has nothing to do
with the collar bomb heist or the Brian Wells murder. Yeah,
(20:43):
that that's a it's a weird thing to put if
you had nothing to do with that, you know, right,
that's just a very odd thing to do. It's like
when the cops come in and you go, there's nothing
under the bed, don't don't there's no reason to look there, right,
they said, we just fun to make sure your fire
alarm is working part of a community service. Cool, but
(21:04):
the bed's fine. Right. So that is a very weird
thing to say, and that definitely piqued the interests of
the cops. But like you said, the cops convicted or
the state convicted Marjorie deal Armstrong of the murder of
um James Roden or Jim Roden. Right, she's already in prison,
and when she's in prison, somehow this is what I'm
(21:28):
unclear on, somehow it comes up or she starts talking
or something like that, that Jim Roden's death very much
had to do with the Wells case, with Brian Wells murder,
this collar bomb heist, and that she knows a lot
about it, and if they'll transfer her to a minimum
(21:49):
security prison close to Erie, she'll she'll start talking Yeah,
she has for the old Hannibal electric treatment. So is
that how it came up, like she approached them, because
I'm I'm unclear on that. I mean, I think so
this is in the Wired article it said that, um,
that there was a phone call from a state cop
(22:10):
who had just met with her about something unrelated, like
a different homicide, and she just and and it kind
of makes sense though now actually when we as we
will learn, Um, she talked a lot, Yeah, a lot,
So it doesn't surprise me that another cop was just
meeting with her about something unrelated. She's like, by the way,
(22:31):
that whole collar bomb thing, I got all the skinny
on that, right, So there's a couple of things going
on here. By then, Um, by the time she calls
the cops, the cops have already spoken apparently with several
informants that have shared cells with her or spent time
with her in jail already, Um, who are saying like, uh,
this lady is the mastermind of that collar bomb heist
(22:54):
that's making you guys look bad. Yeah, And eventually, you know,
when they met with her about this, she she admitted
that she was involved, but um, well she didn't met
she was involved in the plot, but she said, I
knew about it. I gave him. I gave him those
two kitchen timers, and I was really close by when
(23:14):
it happened. Uh. And by the way, the guy who
blew up with the collar bomb, Mr Wells, he was
actually in on it too, And Rothstein headed the whole
thing up, right. But for her deal Armstrong, she said,
but I had nothing to do with it, even though
I had all these other little things to do with it.
I never met Brian Wells. I didn't know Brian Wells.
(23:35):
I had nothing to do with his death aside from
supplying the kitchen timers. Um, and know all about it
right exactly. Um. So, now it's just getting weird, right,
because there's the Jim Rodent murder, who she says that
she killed because he was abusing her, who Rothstein said
she killed over a dispute with money, but is now
(23:56):
she's saying is tied to the Wells case, and which
she knows a lot about but really nothing about and
had nothing to do with. So the cops are like, well,
let's just get this lated talk all we can, And
one of the things they got out of her was
her she agreed to a tour around Eerie, showing them
(24:17):
all these places where she had been, and these were
all places that were related to the crime. Like I
believe she said she'd been at the pizza delivery site.
I think she said she's been within a mile of
the of the bank when it was robbed. Like all
of this stuff. She's just like, they just keep giving
her this rope and she's just wrapping it around her
neck again and again and again, and then finally chuck
(24:40):
at the end of this car ride, after she's been
interviewing with the cops multiple times, giving him tons of info.
What does she say? She asked for immunity at this
point after she hit basically completely incriminated herself. Uh. And
previous to all this, a lot more happened. There were
(25:01):
four different informants who had come forward and said that
this lady has been talking about this for a while,
she very much had everything to do with it. And
then a couple of months after she had started talking
to the Feds, another big break came. This witness came
forward and said, Hey, there's this crack dealer named Kenny Barnes.
(25:22):
That is a correc dealer's name Kenneth Barnes, and he
was involved. Uh, they used to go fishing together, Armstrong,
Deal Armstrong and Barnes, and she sang like a canary
to him basically, and said, here's what she did. She
her brother in law put him in touch with Barnes
while he was already in jail on unrelated art charges basically.
(25:47):
And so Barnes was already in prison, said hey, I
think I can shorten my time. So I'm gonna try
and get a reduced sentence at least by spilling the
beans on Deal Armstrong. Right. And Barnes brother in law
was who turned him into the cops. So Barnes is like,
I'm already I'm in jail for selling crack. That's way
different from being you know, very much involved in this
(26:09):
collar bomb heist. Um. So he said, okay, I'll tell
you guys everything you want to know. I'll be your
star witness. Um, just reduce my sentence in the for
my involvement in this. And he started talking. When he
started talking, it was at Marjorie Deal Armstrong's um trial,
(26:30):
which was a pretty spectacular trial from all accounts. Yeah,
and and before the trial even he told his story
was is that she wanted me to kill her father.
He was spending what would end up being her inheritance,
she felt, and so she wanted him dead. And so
she was doing this collar bomb heist to raise money
(26:53):
to pay me to kill her dad, which I mean, like,
that's just the biggest face palm I've ever heard of.
Yeah for a real So, okay, we'll start Marjorie Deal
Armstrong's trial. Um, after we take a break, how about
that man? That sounds good? Okay, okay, chuck. So, before
(27:37):
Marjorie Deal Armstrong goes to trial, and remember, she's already
in prison for the murder of Jim roden Right, shooting
him in the back with a twelve gage shotgun. Um,
Bill Rothstein is dead. I want to call him a
Rothstein so Ace Rothstein, so bad. But Bill Rothstein is dead.
He died of limp foma a couple of years before.
(27:57):
And by the time Marjorie Deal Armstrong is is brought
to trial for her involvement as the mastermind of the
collar bomb plot, they have to, um, they have to
verify that she's actually mentally competent to stand trial. And
that's kind of touchy because remember when she she was
(28:19):
charged with killing her boyfriend back in I think six
she was She was deemed incompetent seven times by psychiatrists
before the judge finally said, I'm I'm throwing all that
out and deciding that she is competent. We're going to
go ahead with the trial. They also found like four
(28:39):
hundred pounds of butter and seven hundred pounds of cheese
in her um in her house when they were investigating
that particular murder. And in in between and the time
she was tried in the collar bomb heist, she had
been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, So there it was actually
kind of question of well, whether she was mentally competent
(29:01):
to see and trial um. And right as they were
about to start the proceedings, I think the judge rule
that she was competent to sand trial. Um. She was
diagnosed with cancer herself, that's right. So they waited for
the cancer diagnosis or prognosis, and the cancer doctor came
back and said three to seven years, and the prosecutors said,
(29:24):
giddy up, that's right. So previous to this, she she
had gotten the indictment. But in that indictment it's very
important that she was not I mean, granted she was
the only one technically indicted, but they in the indictment
it said that Rothstein was definitely a conspirator and Wells,
the man who was who was the victim, supposedly he
(29:45):
was definitely involved in this thing from the beginning. Yeah,
you're absolutely right, as a very important thing that that
showed up in this indictment. Yeah, they said he agreed
to rob this bank, he thought it was a fake bomb,
and uh, he was told the scavenger hunt was a
ruse to full the cops and if and when he
did get caught, he could say, you know, I was
(30:06):
just following orders basically what he did, right, And so
Brian Well's family did not like this at all. Apparently
during the the the press conference where the d A.
Evere County is announcing this, you know, this case case
is closed. This is the indictment that they have, Um
the Wells, some of Brian Well's sisters were shouting liar
(30:26):
at her. They did not take the idea that their
brother was an accomplice in this at all, Um very well. Yeah,
I mean there was a lot of uh, there's a
lot of back and forth about whether Wells was in
on the thing from the beginning, or whether or not
he was in from the beginning and then at one
(30:46):
point wanted out and was forced to do this, or
whether he was forced from the beginning. Everyone's telling a
different story. Uh. And you know, basically the trial is
where we will learn, you know, if all that is true,
what really happened. So, um, Marjorie deal Armstrong's lawyers said,
you know, to heck with with caution, let's put you
(31:08):
on the stand. Okay, you've already incriminated yourself multiple times.
Why not do it in open court too? And um,
she apparently was quite a She put on quite a
performance on the on the stand over like two days,
I think five and a half hours of testimony. Um,
she yelled, she cried, She berated the prosecutor and her
(31:32):
own lawyer. Uh. She when she did mention Brian Well,
she said, I've never met the guy. I learned of
his death when everybody else did on the TV news.
And she she stuck with her story though that she
had nothing to do with this. She knew a little
bit about it. She knew the the conspirators. The real
mastermind was Bill Rothstein, and it wasn't her. That's what
(31:56):
she maintained though throughout the trial and even after word.
That's right. But before she took the stand a few
days earlier is when they trotted out Kin Barnes and
he took the stand, and he said he had you know,
by the time she took the stand, he had given
a different account of the story then she would later do.
(32:17):
So he got up there and said she was behind
all this. She was the mastermind. Rostein was involved. She
just recruited him. Basically, she recruited Wells because Wells needed money.
And here's where the where the prostitutes come into play.
Apparently Wells had a relationship with the prostitute who was
also a crack addict, so he would buy crack to
(32:40):
give her um, presumably as trade for sex. He ended
up falling into debt with these crack dealers and needed money,
and so basically the plot of Boulan rouge uh and
he contends um Barnes did that that up until the
day of the time, Wells was thought this whole thing
(33:03):
was fake, realized that it was a double cross. It
was a real bomb, and he tried to run away
and was tackled and they put a gun to his
head and locked him into this device. So imagine this choke.
Imagine being Brian Wells and you're agreeing to to put
on what you are presuming is a fake caller bomb
(33:24):
to go carry out a real bank robbery because you
need money, because you're indebted to crack dealers, because you
borrowed from crack from them to give to your girlfriend,
who's a prostitute who you have to give crack two
to be with. And then you find out on the
day of that this is a real bomb and they're
putting it on you, whether you like it or not.
(33:46):
What a horrible what a horrible turn of events for
this poor guy. I mean, that's just so sad, no
matter how you slice it. And then if you take
his family's uh, if you take his family's opinion that
he was innocent, he really was um delivering pizzas and
was accosted and had nothing to do with any of this,
which I take with a pretty big grain AsSalt. I mean,
(34:09):
that's just as bad. But it's bad either way, whether
he was an accomplice at one point or not. It's
it's very it's super sad. There's a very sad thread
that's running through this story in the form of Brian Wells,
you know. Well, yeah, and on the final day of
her trial, at the very very end of her taking
the stand, is when she finally said that she didn't
(34:29):
know him, never met him, and the first time she
had ever laid eyes on him was on the news
that day. Right. Basically, he and Marjorie deal Armstrong are fishing, right,
they're fishing buddies that she he's somebody that she would
turn to, and she's finding out that her father is
blowing through her inheritance and she wants to put a
stop to it, and so he she approaches Barnes to
(34:52):
get him to kill her father. But to get that
two K two that he says he will kill her
father for, she's got to rob a bank. So she
turns to her friend Bill Rothstein to come up with
this collar bomb to put it on this other person,
Brian Wells, who's going to carry this out. You know,
by the way, we're also going to come up with
a scavenger hunt to either throw the cops off or
(35:14):
to actually make Brian Wells feel more comfortable, give him
some sort of cover in case he is caught. And
that's what we're gonna go with go team and Marjorie
deal arms trunk. So that's preposterous that that wasn't me.
Kenneth Barnes said, that's that's exactly what happened. And then
Bill Rothstein wasn't alive to to contradict any of it.
(35:34):
That's right. So she's sentenced, right, she's convicted as the
mastermind of this pot. Yeah. The jury took about eleven
hours and she was convicted of armed, armed bank robbery, conspiracy,
and using a destructive device in a crime of violence.
That's a big one. I'll bet a bet that carries
a hefty sentence with it. Yeah, and she would she
(35:57):
would die in prison, just like her prognosis said she
and I think she lasted a few years now. They
gave her three to seven years and she lasted seven. Yeah,
so she finally passed away, and you know, that's kind
of the end of the story. Even though there's a
retired FBI investigator named Jim Fisher who said, I think
(36:17):
they got this all wrong. I think that Rothstein was
the guy the whole time, and he makes a decently
compelling case, but it's you know, everyone's dead now. Yeah,
Jim Fisher has gone a little bit down the rabbit
hole if you ask me. Yeah, I mean it's it's
kind of hard to tell with literally everyone having died. Um,
(36:37):
but for his money, he thinks it was Rothstein. Yeah,
And so there's probably not many people who are familiar
with the case who would say that it wasn't Rothstein
who built the bomb. But what Jim Fishers saying is
like Bill Rothstein was behind everything, and Marjorie deal Armstrong
murdering Jim Roden was just like a gift that dropped
(37:01):
in Bill Rothstein's lap that he could use to make
all these puppets dance, including the cops, and that the
whole point of it was to create this elaborate scheme,
this elaborate crime that would puzzle people for for for
years and years to come, which it's it's doing that,
and that that was the point, and that Brian Wells
(37:23):
was going to die one way or another, right because
I think the FBI said they concluded the whole scavenger
hunt was a hoax and that Brian Wells was never
going to survive this, didn't they. Yeah, So so this
is Jim Fisher's position. But like you said, now that
everybody's dead. Really, the only question is you know just
how how complicit was um Brian Wells is the is
(37:45):
the last big question that's right. And then there's one
other guy who seems to have got off scott free
named Floyd Stockton. Did you look into him a little bit?
So he's a guy who was there. He was he
was there. He supposedly ended Rothstein the bomb to put
around Brian Well's neck. He was staying with Rothstein as
(38:06):
a buddy on his couch, fleeing a rape charge in Washington. Um,
and somehow, for some reason he got immunity and was
not indicted even though he was very much involved in this,
and he got off scott free and Brian Wells families
going nuts over the fact that this guy's out there
walking free. That he was he was a part of this,
(38:27):
this caper and he he didn't see a second inside
of a jail. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if there
were more people involved. Demon So what do you think
do you think Brian Wells was was complicit? And if so,
how much? Oh? Man, I don't know. I mean, it
sounds like I kind of believe the story that they
were all in it together and he was probably double crossed.
(38:50):
But this is just from reading about this thing many
many years later. Do you think Marjorie deal Armstrong was
the mastermind? I don't know. I don't know either. Maybe
we'll never know, but we might, but probably not. Have
you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
(39:11):
if you want to know more about the collar bomb case,
you can type that word in the search bar your
favorite search engine and it will likely bring up a
very great article. I'm wired from Rich Shapiro. Read that
start there. It's great, And since I said Rich Shapiro,
it's side for the listener mail, I'm gonna go with
one on emoji and John Adams. Hey guys enjoyed the
(39:35):
recent podcast about the history of emojis and emoticons. Reminded
me of a discovery I made in the diaries of
John Adams that makes a historical figure who's sometimes described
as a loof, seemed completely charming. When the future president
was about twenty two years old, he made an entry
in his diary uh in seventeen fifty six, saying, a
cloudy morning about ten and he drew a little sunshine
(40:00):
gout a warm day. He used a little line drawing
in the sun that I always call an eighteenth century emoji. Uh.
He likes a little creation so much he readsed it
a month later in the same diary, A Misty Morning,
Little sunshine breakout about noon. On the Massachusetts Historical Society website,
the text of his letters and diaries is faithfully transcribed,
(40:22):
but in the cases a In these cases, a parenthetical
note tells readers that there are small drawings of the
sun and advises them to refer to the scans of
the handwritten page where you can actually see this. Um.
Apparently he grew out of his habit, though, because his
later diaries do not use the adorable little son. Keep
up with great work. My wife and I host a
(40:43):
local history podcast for Boston. It's tightly scripted. Oh man,
he didn't tell me what it was. I would have
totally shouted it out. Uh. I know, big, big missed
opportunity there. Jake, one of these days will be confident
enough to have an unscripted conversation like you guys to
and that is from Jake Scan Yours. Okay, so everybody's
(41:04):
look up Jake scan Yours Boston history podcast, and it
will probably bring it up right, probably so thanks a lot, Jake,
thanks for keeping up the good fight up there. That's
pretty cool. Good story too. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Jake did, tell us about
your podcast, that's great. You can tweet to us. I'm
at josh oam Clark and at s Y s K podcast,
(41:25):
and Chuck is at movie Crush all on Twitter. On Facebook,
you can go to Facebook dot com slash Stuff you
Should Know or Facebook dot com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
If you can send us all an email. The Stuff
podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(41:48):
of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com
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