Evil Genius

Three things you need to know

about Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

The first... she was never what you would call normal.

As a kid, she grew faster, was awkward...

lonely.

When her parents built her this life-size dollhouse,

the neighborhood kids finally came over to play.

Marjorie grew up to be a beautiful, smart, young woman.

She earned a master's degree in education.

People found her captivating.

Especially men, who would do almost anything for her.

I've been talking with Marge for over a decade.

This is one of the boxes of letters from Marge.

And this is probably about...

Oh, I don't know, maybe half of the letters through the years.

Yeah, there's just-- It's just endless.

I'm trying to get her to tell me the truth

about a pizza deliveryman and a crime that became FBI major case number 203.

I'm trying to prevent your movie from being a flop.

I am not some evil genius who was greedy and wanted some guy

to rob a bank for me.

I didn't have anything to do with the goddamn crime!

- 911, what's your emergency? - We've been robbed.

- Okay, stay on the line. - Okay.

- Is anyone hurt? - No.

The guy walked out with I don't know how much cash in a bag.

He had a bomb or something wrapped around his neck.

He's sitting in a parking lot on upper Peach.

I'm watching him out my rearview mirror.

The man told police that the bomb had been strapped to his body

and that he was forced to rob the bank.

Maybe you can get the keys? To get out of this thing.

I don't know if I have enough time.

I'm not lying!

It's gonna go off.

My name is Lamont King.

A retired corporal with Pennsylvania State Police, crime unit supervisor.

On the, uh, 28th of August...

...of, uh, 2003,

uh, I was in my office, and received information that the PNC Bank,

located directly across here,

uh, had been robbed by an individual apparently wearing a collar bomb.

Brian Wells walked into the bank with a cane and the collar around his neck.

We later learned that the, uh, cane, it was actually a gun, a cane gun.

He handed the teller a note.

The notes were nine pages. They were quite rambling in places.

There were a couple that were instructions for Brian. There were...

One that he was to give to the bank manager.

One was for police.

Bank notes are... "I have a gun. Give me all your money."

I mean, they're not usually dissertations

that are miles long.

He had asked for $250,000.

In the end, all he got was what was in the drawers, somewhere around $8,000.

He exited the bank, stopped at McDonald's

and picked up apparently, a note.

Got his vehicle on the road, proceeded to head south on Route 19,

which is Peach Street, when our units arrived,

at which time our units spotted his vehicle

and pulled him over in the Eyeglass World parking lot.

I was assigned to the patrol unit here in Erie,

and was riding my motorcycle.

I was made aware of the situation going on over on Peach Street.

Police captured Brian Wells, age 46,

a pizza deliveryman, just minutes after he left the bank.

We got him and handcuffed him.

And Brian said something about a bomb.

It was Trooper Syzmanski who went up and, using a small pair of scissors,

cut the sides of the shirt, because whatever he had was underneath.

When Syzmanski lifted the shirt, he goes:

"Yeah, that looks like a bomb."

That's when they sat him down to isolate him.

I'm gonna need a radio out here.

This guy's looking right at us.

Shoo them all over to 90.

When I pulled up, the general consensus is it was probably a fake bomb,

but we never know, so we act like it's real.

When I arrived, uh, he was already on his knees, cuffed,

and he was talking calmly.

We were going back and forth with him being a willing participant or a hostage.

Can you at least take these freakin' handcuffs off?

I look through binoculars, and he's talking.

He's nervous, but he's not talking agitated. He's not agitated.

Why is it nobody's trying to come to get this thing off of me?

He was concerned about getting the collar off.

It's gonna go off!

Soon as we believed we had a bomb, the call went to Erie bomb squad.

It's just unfortunate that they were probably over ten miles away.

And another unfortunate thing is that in the process of protecting the public

by closing down Peach Street, we've now created a traffic problem

that the bomb squad has to contend with this traffic.

-Did you call my boss? -Yeah, we called him.

We realized what pizza shop he worked at,

and I sent two guys there to conduct interviews.

Coworkers at Mama Mia's Pizzaria saw Wells leave

to deliver two sausage and pepperoni pies to a remote location,

an unoccupied radio tower.

He said black people, uh, jumped him and put the collar around his neck.

He pulled the key out and started a timer.

I heard the thing ticking when he did it.

He never said who it was.

He couldn't describe the black individuals he claimed put the bomb around his neck.

You know there's probably not a black person involved,

but that's what they're gonna say.

I was wondering if you guys could get those instructions to go get the keys.

At that time, I start hearing a beep.

-His whole demeanor changed. -

Maybe you can get the keys?

To get out of this thing.

I don't know if I have enough time now.

It's at that time that he realized that it is a real bomb.

I'm not lying.

I don't think he realized until it started beeping.

...tell you where to get the keys.

Can you go to the next site in the car?

-I don't have a lot of time. -We're gonna have to...

He was getting excited, and then

I kept hearing it. It, you know, was going beep, beep.

I was zoomed in on his face.

It's gonna go off!

-I'm not lying! -

His eyes just got real wide.

Then they went to the back of his head. And that was the end of him.

A few minutes ago, I was looking in that direction.

The man was sitting there as he was since about 3:00

when all of a sudden a loud explosion, and he flipped onto his back,

and the police troopers scrambled. They're still holding guns on him.

They're still not sure of his condition.

My name's Tom Stankiewicz. On August 28th, 2003,

I was the bomb squad commander for Erie Police.

Within about four blocks of our arrival,

we received information over the radio a bomb exploded on this suspect.

He had still been breathing up until a couple of...

Really until the moment before we had arrived.

We put on bomb suits, took up the necessary equipment we might need.

On approaching the person at the scene, it was evident that he was deceased.

The suspect still had part of the device secured to his neck.

We went through to make sure there were no more explosive devices on him,

and searched his vehicle for any potential further explosive devices.

Brian was to go on a scavenger hunt.

He was supposed to go from point A to point B to point C to point D

to get further instructions to eventually lead him to a location

where the keys would be given to release this bomb.

He was following instructions from the McDonald's to this site.

Contacted the bomb squad. They came in and swept the area.

The clue was sitting in the, uh--

In a coffee can, maybe five or ten yards off the berm.

Just to the right of this sign. It's not too far from the sign.

From the drop-off point number one, which was Interchange Road,

he was to go to his next drop-off point, which was on 79 South,

pretty close to the McKean Township exit.

Where we are is the second place for the scavenger hunt

that he was directed to come to.

What we found here as we were looking for other items...

Uh, we found an orange tape sign with "Vietnam" on it.

As we were looking in through here,

I noticed way back on the other side of that field

a minivan coming this way and started to come towards us.

But it looked like he was coming to this point also and we surprised him.

And, uh, when he saw us, he stopped for a while,

hesitated, backed up, and took off.

And he was so far away, we couldn't drive up through here. He basically got away.

It was like a, uh, blue type, dirty blue type van.

I figured whoever was responsible for leaving the notes was in that van.

Leaving the notes at both the drop-off points.

Actually, that van always bothered me.

Always bothered me.

We did our preliminary investigation and referred it right back to the FBI,

but the van was never mentioned again.

Initially when the call came in, it was a state police case

because we had had a crime committed within our jurisdiction.

And being a bank, federal investigators would eventually be brought in.

Of course, there's always a brief jurisdictional dispute.

ATF and the FBI and the state police, everybody had a huddle.

And they're like, "Whose case is this?" ATF says,

"We have jurisdiction because it's an explosive device."

Uh, state police said, "This was on our turf."

FBI said, "No, this is a bank robbery case, which the FBI handles."

They went back and forth a bit. Turned out that the FBI was gonna take point,

assisted by the state police and the ATF.

My name is Jerry Clark.

I was the lead investigator as a special agent for the FBI.

Night of the bombing, I drafted an affidavit with the, uh,

U.S. Attorney's office,

and we executed a search warrant at Brian Wells' residence.

We made entry into Mr. Wells' residence using an explosive breach,

because we weren't sure what we were gonna find.

Once inside, we didn't find a whole lot.

But we did find interesting things, including an address book

that had the names and telephone numbers of some local prostitutes.

We never did find any physical evidence that linked him to the bombing.

It was 3 in the morning by the time we transported him back

to the coroner's office.

We started discussing the collar.

It was the primary piece of evidence at the time.

Uh, and, of course, uh, the other agencies didn't want that disrupted very much.

It said in the note the collar was booby-trapped, but my concern was safety.

That's when the decision was made to do a, uh,

essentially a surgical decapitation of the body.

In order for them to remove the device,