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(#1) Brian Wells Was In On It, Until The Device Was No Longer Fake
Wells helped plan the holdup and was by all accounts a willing participant until he was told that the device was real - not fake, as he'd been led to believe that it would be. They gave him a cover story to tell the police, instructing him to say that he was a hostage and that three Black men forced the collar on him. The people who strapped the device on him believed the police would think Wells was an innocent victim and that Wells would conceal the identities of his real accomplices.
However, none of this worked out as planned. As soon as Wells learned the device was real, he tried to back out. His accomplices held him at gunpoint, even firing a shot in the air as a warning to Wells, before securing the device around his neck and sealing his fate.
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(#2) He Worked As A Pizza Deliveryman For Nearly 30 Years
After dropping out of high school, Wells spent much of his adult life delivering pizzas. In fact, he did it for nearly 30 years. He had been working for Mama Mia Pizza-Ria for the last 10 years in Erie, PA, prior to the incident. His co-workers and bosses described him as a reliable, hardworking employee, which made what came next even more baffling.
Around 1:30 PM on August 28, 2003, he delivered an order to a phony address that turned out to be a TV transmission tower. There, the device was placed around his neck and he received his instructions. Later on, police went to the address and combed the scene, finding Wells's footprints and the tire tracks from his car, but little else.
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(#3) He Carried A Wooden Cane That Had Been Turned Into A Single Barrel Shotgun
When the police searched Wells's car, they found a wooden cane that had been turned into a shotgun. Reportedly, this was given to him by his co-conspirators, just in case things went south when he was in the bank. Wells carried the homemade single barrel with him while holding up the bank.
He handed a note to the teller, demanding $250,000, but the teller told him they didn't have access to that amount. Wells ended up walking out with under $9,000.
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(#4) The Device Was Professionally Made, But Consisted Of A Number Of Different Objects
Police investigators and experts examined the collar device after the incident and came to the conclusion that it was professionally made. The device was on the clasp of the collar, which meant that it would detonate with any attempt to remove it. There were also fake wires attached, designed to confuse anyone trying to disarm it.
Several kitchen items were also part of the design, as well as a countdown timer. Essentially, it was two incendiary pipes connected by a bunch of extemporaneous pieces and attached to a collar.
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(#5) Wells Worked With Several Accomplices To Plan The CBH
The bank holdup itself was planned by Wells and two of his co-conspirators, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes. Diehl-Armstrong contracted Barnes to take her father's life, leaving her to inherit his money. He wanted $125,000 to perform the hit. In order to finance the contract, Diehl-Armstrong convinced Wells to shake down a bank for at least $250,000. Diehl-Armstrong promised Wells a cut of the loot; he needed the money because, apparently, he had a bit of a prostitution-induced debt problem.
After Barnes was given his $125,000, the rest of the money would be split by those involved, which included the man who built the device, William Rothstein, and another man, Floyd Stockton.
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(#6) He Had A Series Of Notes With Instructions To Follow
In order to survive the ordeal, Wells had to follow a very specific set of instructions, all of which were written down on paper. He left some of the instructions behind at the bank, where they were recovered by police. More written notes were obtained when they stopped Wells's car and apprehended him. Apparently, Wells had to make four different stops in a certain amount of time. Each stop would have further instructions about the next one on the list.
At the last stop, he would be met with a man who held the key to the collar. However, Wells only made it to the first location before police intervened.
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(#7) The Police Didn't Believe That The Device Was Real Until It Went Off
When Wells was apprehended, he told police that he had an explosive affixed to his neck and it was timed to go off. They didn't seem to believe him, even after he asked why they weren't trying to remove it. According to the authorities, they didn't think it was real because Wells wasn't acting panicky or agitated.
Instead, he was fairly calm, which they took to signify the device was fake and he was involved in the plot. He calm and cognizant enough to ask, "Why is it nobody's trying to come get this thing off me? I don't have a lot of time." Wells even went so far as to acknowledge the skepticism, saying, "It's gonna go off. I'm not lying. Did you call my boss?" Any doubts the authorities may have had flew out the window when the collar started beeping, however, and the device detonated, ending Wells's life.
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(#8) Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong And Kenneth Barnes Watched The Holdup Go Down
As it turns out, both Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes, from the same car, watched with binoculars as Wells entered the bank. William Rothstein was there as well, having followed Wells in his own vehicle. They then retreated to Rothstein's house, where they all got inside of Rothstein's car.
On the way to their undisclosed destination, Diehl-Armstrong made them stop by the side of the I-79 so that she could pick up something that she had left in a wooded area. She tossed this unknown item into the backseat of the car.
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(#9) The Plan Was Changed At The Last Minute
The day before the PNC Bank holdup, Wells and the accomplices discussed the original plan with a fake explosive strapped around Wells's neck, in order to get the bank employees' attention and hopefully net them more money. Rothstein was to follow Wells to the bank and intercept the money from him after exiting. The idea here was to have Wells empty-handed if the police should pull him over in his getaway vehicle.
Sometime after this, the device became real, and a system of instructions for Wells to follow was put into place.
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(#10) Diehl-Armstrong's Boyfriend Was Found Hidden In A Freezer
In a weird twist, the body of James Roden, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong's boyfriend, was found contained in a freezer at a house occupied by William Rothstein and Floyd Stockton. What does this have to do with the volatile situation? Well, Diehl-Armstrong reportedly killed Roden because he knew too much about the conspiracy.
Diehl-Armstrong also once dated Rothstein, who was described as a loner and criminal. So, it's plausible that Rothstein would hide Roden's body for her. It's also possible that Diehl-Armstrong didn't want to share her inheritance with Roden once her father had been taken care of.
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(#11) Authorities Believe That William Rothstein Planned The Whole Thing
William Rothstein passed of lymphoma back in 2004, not long after the CBH took place. He left behind a lot of unanswered questions, and authorities believe he was the person who engineered the entire plan and that the other players were simply his pawns. Rothstein is the one who built the device, and he had a connection to Diehl-Armstong since they had dated in the past.
Rothstein also had a fairly long rap sheet, and the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit believed that the money gained from the holdup was never the motive. Instead, Rothstein wanted to create a unique puzzle of a case, which he certainly did.
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(#12) There Might Be A Movie About The CBH In The Works
In 2012, five producers purchased the rights from authors Jerry Clark and Ed Palattellato - who released numerous books related to the events - to make a full-length movie about the CBH case, according to Movie Insider. Although this feature is still listed as "in development" on IMDB, the working title is The Collar Bomb. No director or writers are listed, and as of 2019, no one has been cast.
The producers have also optioned the rights for Wired's 2010 article of the events, written by Rich Schapiro.
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(#13) '30 Minutes Or Less' Reminded Moviegoers Of 'The Pizza Bomber,' But Filmmakers Said It Was Pure Coincidence
Although 2011's comedy feature about "[a] pizza deliveryman forced to [holdup] a bank while wearing a bomb on his chest" - according to US Weekly's synopsis - shares striking similarities with the true-life story of the CBH, filmmakers claimed their story had no connection with the real-life incident or Brian Wells's 2003 passing.
Wells's family was reportedly not happy by the film's trivial and comedic portrayal of such a sobering event, but producers insisted they hadn't even heard of the IRL tragedy before the film went into production and may have been "only vaguely familiar" with the story. The stars of the show - including Aziz Ansari, Jesse Eisenberg, and Nick Swardson - also maintained there was no connection.
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(#14) In 2018, Netflix Released A Docuseries About The Case
In 2018, Netflix released a four-part docuseries detailing the bizarre events surrounding the CBH. Evil Genius: the True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist centers around Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and tries to piece the mysterious circumstances surrounding Wells's very public and very shocking passing. In a 2018 interview with Newsweek, co-director and writer Barbara Schroeder said:
It could have gone down a lot of different paths putting this together, but it became clear pretty early on that the story tells itself. There are a lot of crazy twists and turns but there are also a lot of 'Wait! What?' moments. It's a bank heist, wait, there's a body in a freezer.
Trey Borzillieri, a documentary journalist and the co-director of the series, has been drawn to the case from the beginning. He was on-scene in Eerie the day after Wells's passing to shed light on the questions surrounding one pizza deliveryman's untimely end.
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