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WHY MEN ARE USING THE INTERNET TO CHEAT
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ANGELINA JOLIE REBEL W¡TH
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www.razorma gazine.conr
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features edge profile
'o.
Angelina Jolie By Bret Love
the strange death of the pizza guy
'.
ì'//,' "fl
By Jesse Hicks
american icon Martin Scorsese By Nicholas Pileggi
31 movies that changed the face of cinema By Bichard Roeper
she says G¡Ve a L¡tt|e
virtually cheating By Sam Boykin
holiday gift guide By Hayley Gudat a tale of two cities Photos byTim Dalton
temptation 21 S¡ns to Commit in 2005 By Hayley Gudat
the ult¡mate temptress By J. Rentilly
master & student Photos by Rob Epstein
sex files Modern Love By Anna David
the uttimat€ tem
ptress 9t
6
roqzon
DEcEMBER/JANUARY2oos
; ¡{t "¡
The Stpange
eath
f the P¡zza Gug f
Brian Wells, a 46-year-old pizza delivery man, never asked to be famous. A bizarre bank robbery and his grisly televised death made him infamous. A year later, the cameras have gone, but the mystery remains. By Jesse Hicks
s,¿å;;
"Why is it nobody's try¡ng to come get thrs th¡ng off me?" asks the tall, broad-shouldered man who s¡ts cÍoss-legged on the pavement dressed in jeans, sneakers and a white Guess
At 3:18 pm, w¡thout warn¡ng the bomb goes off. A sharp crack like the sound of a large firecracker echoes. Windows ratlle but don't break. A thick cloud of black and yellow debris
JeansT-shirt. Arms handcuffed behìnd his back, he shifts awkwardly. Locked around hìs neck is a blue tr¡ple-banded metal collar wìth four keyholes and a threedigìt comb¡nat¡on lock. Attached lo the collar. hidden beneath hisT-shìrt, is a heavy metal box. He shifts again, looking to ease the pressure on his neck, asking the state troopers standing nearby to remove the cuffs so he can lift the
envelopes the man. His body
weight f ronl hìs chest. They refuse. lnside the metal box, hanging over the man's heart and lungs, is a live bomb. "ldon't have a lot of t¡me," he says, h¡s tone almost apologetìc. A crowd gathers in the br¡ght afternoon sun. They watch. Traffic slows. The police aim their
guns. The lìghts on the¡r cru¡sers flash. Surrounded bv speclators, he sits alone, the weight on his neck growing heavier.
is thrown
back
onto the pavement, a postcard-sized hole punched into h¡s chest. A piece of metal flies high in the air landing seconds later w¡th a highpitched clìnk. An oflicer jogs up to peer at the body, then slowly backs away as other troopers warn about a possible "secondary explosionl' The bomb squad arrives three m¡nutes later. On August 28, 2003, in the parking lot of Eyeglass World, Brian Wells, 46 year-old pìzza
deliveryman dies. The explosion small, sad, deadly was Brìan Wells' entrance into infamv. While the bomb squad didn't arrive in time to save h¡m, the media arrived in plenty of t¡me to define
-
-
him. As Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Wolf Blitzer, Geraldo Rivera, journalists from the AP lhe
New York Times, New York Daily News and countless otlìers descended on Ërìe,
Wells a master thief or an innocent victim?" USAToday spent over 2000 words on the incident, a virtually U/ysses-sized eff ort for America's McPaper. John Kupetz, an assistant professor of journalism at Gannon Un¡vers¡ty
¡n
Erie. was quoted ¡n The Er¡e Times-News, "lThe medial will follow this, I think, until there is a resolutionl' By the end of the month, the reporting stopped.
Not to blame them. More than a year after Brìan Wells' death, the câse rema¡ns unresolved. The nat¡onal audience doesn't have the pat¡ence for a long, trudg¡ng investigation with no happy ending in s¡ght, so Brtan Wells - the half-remembered "Pizza Bomber"- joins the hundreds of passing tragedies that march through our living rooms every day. Stooped and not very photogenic, neither a pregnant woman nor an innocent ch¡ld, he was just a grown man
I
Locked aPound his ncck is a triple-banded metal co¡lan blue w¡th foun kegholes and a threedigit combination lock. A local televisìon crew their news van emblazoned proudlv w¡th the "JET-TV Action News 24" logo, is on the scene. lmages snake from the¡r two cameras to the news van, where the signal takes to the a¡r. Anyone with an antenna can pull down the man's plight, live and in color. "He pulled the key out and started a timer. I heard the thing ticking when he d¡d ¡t. lt's gonna
go off," says the man, without mentionìng who
he is. "l'm not lying:' No one responds. He shakes his head slowly. A few yards away sits his green Geo Metro wh¡ch had just been paid off the previous Friday. lnside the car ¡s a black garbage bag filled w¡th cash. "Did you call my boss?" he asks. "Yes we did," responds a trooper. He grows quiet, stops fidgeting. Time passes without incident as troopers wait for the bomb squad to arrive. A couple of minutes later he appears desperate, h¡s movements more frantic. Squirming backward as best he can with shackled hands and legs folded under him, he tr¡es to get away from the terror locked around his neck. W¡tnesses claim they heard the bomb begin to beep rapidly; maybe he heard ìt too, maybe he knew what was com¡ng.
5?
nnzon
DEcEMBERyJANUARY 2oo5
Pennsylvania, a rust-belt communrty on the shore of Lake Erie w¡th a populatìon of just over 100,000, "Brian Wells" - a name certainly not qu¡ckly punchy enough for headline wr¡ters became "ïhe Pizza Bomber." Nationally, ¡t was the fourth-biggest story that week; the networks devoted as much time to the parking lot explosion as to the continuìng combat in lraq. WJET-TV's footage (minus the explos¡on, a scene deemed too graphic for television but which later c¡rculated on the world's electrìc unconscious, the lnternet) looped as NBC's Ron Allen ¡ntoned somberly, "For 20 tense minutes pol¡ce kept their d¡stance waiting for the bomb squad to arrive. But they d¡d not get there ¡n t¡mel' CNN's Soledad O'Brien summed up her report w¡th: "lncredibly bizarre story. Brian Wells. of course, blowìng himself uPl' The print media, with more space and t¡me,
-
who delivered pizzas, strange enough to p¡que our curiosity but not wholesome or beautiful enough to hold our gaze. Our attent¡on and empathy moved on, but Br¡an Wells is still dead, his family st¡ll grieving, his death still a haunt¡ng myslery.
Noth¡ng about the early life of Brian Wells suggested he'd eventually, however brief ly, hold the national media spotlight. He was one of seven children - four boys, three g¡rls - born to Rosie
were sl¡ghtly more probing. The New York Times ran a short profile titled, 'A Childlike Pizza Deliveryman at the Center of a Puzzling Crime!' Time magazine's eulogy. "Death of a
Marìe Martin Wells and Harold C. Wells. His father returned home from World War ll and io¡ned the National Fuel Gas Co., a job he held for 22yeaß before multiple sclerosis forced him to retire in 1971. An unremarkable student, Brian dropped out of East High School in 1973 to help support his family. For most of the next three decades he
Pizza Mani' asked "How did a loner who lived w¡th three cats become enmeshed in a bizarre and fatal bank he¡st?" People echoed a similar sent¡ment, asking, "Was mild-mannered Brìan
staved ¡n Erie, delivering pizzas and do¡ng other odd jobs. He moved to Arizona w¡th his younger brother John, spending less than a year work¡ng at a tool and die shop that soon closed. ln 2001
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ffii:ç,ñiffiË.i1,ffi',Ë** he returned to Erie, moving to
Millcreek
Township, a leafy suburb east of the city where
he rented a small wh¡te coftage from
Linda
Payne. He spent most of his free t¡me listen¡ng to music - from Abba to The White Stripes _ and work¡ng on his car. He resumed deliveríng pizzas at the same place he had for the previous six years: Mama
Mia's Pizza-Bia. lt was a small shop tucked in between an herbal remedy store and a FedEx at the southern end of the long asphalt vein run_ n¡ng through the center of Erie, peach Street. Thursday, August 28, 2003, started off as usual. Wells arrived at Mama Mia,s at 1l :30 am to work the lunchtime rush as he often did. Just
before 2 pm the phone rang. Owner Tony Ditomo answered in his slight ltalian acceni,
"Mama Mia's." A deep-voiced caller ordered
two
sausage-and-pepperoni pizzas to 9631 Peach Street, an unfamiliar address less than three miles away. Wells offered to drop them off on his way home.
Almost 40 m¡nutes later, Brian Wells was in the lobby of the pNC Bank in
stand¡ng
Summit Town Centre, at 7200 peach Street. He
waited patiently in line. When his turn came. he handed the teller a four-page note demanding $250,000 in cash. Welts lifted his shiÍr to reveat the bomb locked around his neck, cla¡ming that ¡t would go off in 22 minutes. There was ,,no possible way" to disarm it, the note claimed. ln addition to the bomb, Wells had a shoþ gun disguised as a cane - the kind of thing a
wannabe James Bond might make
in
his
þasement workshop. But Brian Wells was no
but said he could come back later for the rest. He left the bank and climbed into his car. Bv 2:38 pm, silent alarms ¡ns¡de the bank had aleri_
ed police, as did w¡tnesses who phoned
in
Wells' license plate number Wells didn't get far. A g1.l caller saw him stop at the McDonald's just over a block away and search the ground near the drive_through s¡gn. As he drove away, state troopers arrived. pulling him over in front of Eyeglass World.
"This pow€nful, boobg-trapped bomb can be p€moved onlg bg following oup instructionsl' suave super-spy; ¡nstead of trying to pass it off as a cane, he cradled the weapon g¡ngerly in his arms.
The teller handed Wells a bag filled with money. According to
a
w¡tness in the bank
lobby, Wells didn't think ¡t tooked tike $2S0,000.
Once out of the car and handcuffed, Wells told
police he had a bomb around his neck and begged them to remove it. At 3:04 they called the Er¡e Bomb Squad. By then it was too late. Brian Wells, time had run out.
DEcEMBER/JANUAnyzoos
n¡zon 53
With Brian Wells dead, investigators lost the¡r best piece of evidence: an eyewitness' They never pieced together the full story about what happened between the time Wells left Mama Mias and the time he showed up at the bank. The site of his last deliverv, 8631 Peach Street, is a long gravel driveway that winds several hundred yards into the woods beside the road. lt ends not at a house but at a clearing dom¡nated
leave you short of time to follow ¡nstruct¡ons. DO NOT DELAYi' His first task was the bank robbery; after that Wells would have to make four more stops, each of which promised "a key
and/or combination-word you will need to decifer lsicl the combinationl'
It was a hopeless task. Wells, who Linda Payne said, "used to really like scavenger hunts," was sent on a death scramble. From the
found no evidence of bomb-making mater¡als; they also searched the area around 8631 Peach Street and the checkpoints descr¡bed in the note. The bomb remnants were flown to the FBI lab in Ouantico, Virginia. The two sausage-and-peppeÊ oni pizzas were never found. For the next few weeks, dozens of agents chased down leads, a strategy retired FBI agent Jim Fisher says was entirely wrong. "Too many
Reconstructed model of the collar bomb worn byWells
by a tall telev¡s¡on transmission tower suffounded by large satellite dishes. lt was there, Brian Wells told police, that three people chased him,
bank he was to head north for several miles through the dense Peach Street traffic, merge onto Route 79 and head west for two miles
fired a gun at him and locked the bomb around his neck. The men also gave him a note, according to Wells, that sent him on an elaborate, sadistic scavenger hunt. Five pages of closely-spaced
Another several miles north and he would reach a yellow traffic warning light where he would find h¡s next ¡nstruct¡ons. lnvestigators est¡mate that 55 minutes to complete the scavenger hunt was an impossible task given the complexity of
With Brian Wells dead, investigators had lost their best piece of evidelìc€. printing (possibly traced from a typewr¡tten version), including a map and detailed drawings of local landmarks, warning Wells that he only had 55 minutes before the bomb exploded. "Stay
the instructions. There simply wasn't enough
calm and do as ¡nstructed to survivej' it read.
formed a task force with members of state and local police, the Er¡e Dlstr¡ct Attorney's Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Searching Wells' home, they
"This powerful, booby-trapped bomb can be removed only by following our ¡nslruct¡ons. Using time attempt¡ng to escape it will fail and
54
n¡zon
DEoEMBEFyJANUARY
2oo5
time. Wells was never meant to survlve. That evening, the FBl, whose jurisdiction
automatlcally extends to bank robberies, had
cooks" lead to bureaucratic ego clashes that hurt the invest¡gation, according to Fisher. "Bring in two Ph¡ladelphia homicide detectives, ass¡gn them six people and go about solving the casel' Special Agent Bob Rudge, currently in charge of the case, ¡s no stranger to such criticism. That kind of second-guessing by people on the outside, he says, is "irresponsible and can be harmful to the investigationJ' Whatever the merits of their approach, ¡n the weeks following Wells' death, investigators made little headway. The physical evidence revealed that the "Collarbomber," as dubbed by the FBl, was skilled with tools and probably had his own workshop - common in the blue-collar region of northwest Pennsylvania. Shortly after Wells' death. the FBI released three compos¡te sketches of men wanted for questioning. One sketch, of a man seen running near lnterchange Road (one of Wells' checkpo¡nts) was Jerome Jackson. a construct¡on worker running to catch a bus at the t¡me of the bomb¡ng. The other two men, both shaggy-haired and wh¡te - one seen running from the woods near PNC Bank, the other spotted on lnterchange Road remain
un¡dent¡fied. lnvestigators also searched a local
family's garage, confiscating some tools; on September Z they seafched the apaftment of Jimmy Johnson, whose girlfriend was cousin to Brian Wells, taking a laptop and pair of pliers. Neither search yielded a suspecr.
nearby payphone the day of Wells, death, according to h¡s lawyer, Gene placidi _ the same pay phone used to call in the order to Mama Mia s. lnvestigators searched Rothstein,s house where, in addition to the body, they found a sui_ cide note wr¡tten by Rothstein which proclaimed
Rothstein was cxacflg the kind of ccc€ntnic pcpson descnibed in the FBI's pnofile. On September 20, another piece of the puzzle emerged. William Rothstein called the
state police and confessed he was hiding a body in his freezer. He claimed his former
that he had nothing to do with the death of Brian Wells.
The police scrutiny didn,t last lono. a poligfapn, a test which
Rothstein's lawyer claims he passed
veteran agents often
fhe "Pizza Bomber" case grinds on. New information is scarce; on the one-year anniversary of Wells'death, the Fgl doubled the reward
offered for any leads
- it
now stands
The national media checks in now and again.
Last January, CNN's Anderson Cooper brieflv revisited "the perplexing case of Brian Wells_ the pizza delvery man who robbed a bank w¡th a bomb strapped around his neck,,, before mov_ ¡ng on to Bethany Ham¡lton, ,,a remarkable young woman," who survived a shark attack and courageously cont¡nued surf¡ng.
Brian's brother, John Wells, doesn,t soeak to the med¡a. When approached, he refuses to comment but does ask, ,,Have you heard anv_ thing new?" This despite the fact that the FBI briefs him every two weeks. There just isn,t anyth¡ng new to report. lt seems a stone_cold
fiancée, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, had killed her boyfriend, James Roden. She then con_ vinced Rothstein, an eccentric substitute shop teacher who spoke multiple languages and coached the local high school,s robotics team, to help dispose of the body in exchange for $70,000. Both Rothstein and Diehl-Armstrong had been in s¡milar circumstances before. ln 1g77, Rothstein had helped a friend dispose of a hand-
gun used in a murder; he received immunity in exchange for his testimony in the case. DiehlArmstrong was acquitted of murdering an earlier boyfriend in 1984. Bothstein hid Roden's body in a freezer in his garage. Rothsteins home, a small, dilapidated house sunk back from the road, is located at 8645 Peach Street, not three hundred yards from the clearing where Brian Wells claimed he was forced at gunpoint to wear the collarbomb.
Police began looking for any connecttons between the two cases. To some, including Jim Fisher, seemed a perfect match: William Rothstein was exactly the kind of eccentric,
it
highly-intelligent and tool-wise person
described in the FBI's profile; he lived near the scene of the crime and he'd made a call from a
dismiss as unreliable. Former FBI profiler
Candice Delong says, ,,The day a polygraph is infallible is the day the world changes.,, Special Agent Rudge won,t confirm or denv
Rothstein's polygraph results, but says, ,,We had good reason to rule him out.,, Soon after, the
FBI offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the ,,Collarbomber.,, On July 30, 2004, William Rothstein died of cancer, tak¡ng whatever knowledge he had of the Wells case with him to rne grave.
at
$i00,000. Special agent Rudge doesn,t go a day w¡thout thinking about it; two full-time agents conttnue to work the ever-colder leads.
whodunit as the leaves change and another wrnter oveftakes us. The people of Erie don,t forget. County Coroner Lyell Cook says Brian Wells comes uo wnenever people gather, a restless ghost whose story continues to haunt. Linda payne,s neighbors stop her in the grocery store to ask if there's any news. There isn't, and the mystery cont¡nues ¡n the death of a simple man, a man who took pleasure in his cats and his music. A man who loved delivering pizzas.
DEcEMBÊR/JANUAny
zoos R¡zon
55
\r STYIE
&
SUBSTANCE
'*
\ \
t¡,
t'
Í
-9 .l '
-"4
/ .-'-"'iî'
// ,/
\{r \r ,l
\,\
ai
st' tW,
st
\
'l
'2
TO
IN
\J
GIFTS TO
&
RECEIVE
I
l,'
ANGELINA JOLIE REBEL W¡TH
A CAUSE
à
N
t, t
,
www.razorma gazine.conr
N ilffiruruililüilIIilililil USA S
4.99
Cana
Dcccnrbcr/Janu¿ìry 2005 Vo1. 5 No.'l
\
features edge profile
'o.
Angelina Jolie By Bret Love
the strange death of the pizza guy
'.
ì'//,' "fl
By Jesse Hicks
american icon Martin Scorsese By Nicholas Pileggi
31 movies that changed the face of cinema By Bichard Roeper
she says G¡Ve a L¡tt|e
virtually cheating By Sam Boykin
holiday gift guide By Hayley Gudat a tale of two cities Photos byTim Dalton
temptation 21 S¡ns to Commit in 2005 By Hayley Gudat
the ult¡mate temptress By J. Rentilly
master & student Photos by Rob Epstein
sex files Modern Love By Anna David
the uttimat€ tem
ptress 9t
6
roqzon
DEcEMBER/JANUARY2oos
; ¡{t "¡
The Stpange
eath
f the P¡zza Gug f
Brian Wells, a 46-year-old pizza delivery man, never asked to be famous. A bizarre bank robbery and his grisly televised death made him infamous. A year later, the cameras have gone, but the mystery remains. By Jesse Hicks
s,¿å;;
"Why is it nobody's try¡ng to come get thrs th¡ng off me?" asks the tall, broad-shouldered man who s¡ts cÍoss-legged on the pavement dressed in jeans, sneakers and a white Guess
At 3:18 pm, w¡thout warn¡ng the bomb goes off. A sharp crack like the sound of a large firecracker echoes. Windows ratlle but don't break. A thick cloud of black and yellow debris
JeansT-shirt. Arms handcuffed behìnd his back, he shifts awkwardly. Locked around hìs neck is a blue tr¡ple-banded metal collar wìth four keyholes and a threedigìt comb¡nat¡on lock. Attached lo the collar. hidden beneath hisT-shìrt, is a heavy metal box. He shifts again, looking to ease the pressure on his neck, asking the state troopers standing nearby to remove the cuffs so he can lift the
envelopes the man. His body
weight f ronl hìs chest. They refuse. lnside the metal box, hanging over the man's heart and lungs, is a live bomb. "ldon't have a lot of t¡me," he says, h¡s tone almost apologetìc. A crowd gathers in the br¡ght afternoon sun. They watch. Traffic slows. The police aim their
guns. The lìghts on the¡r cru¡sers flash. Surrounded bv speclators, he sits alone, the weight on his neck growing heavier.
is thrown
back
onto the pavement, a postcard-sized hole punched into h¡s chest. A piece of metal flies high in the air landing seconds later w¡th a highpitched clìnk. An oflicer jogs up to peer at the body, then slowly backs away as other troopers warn about a possible "secondary explosionl' The bomb squad arrives three m¡nutes later. On August 28, 2003, in the parking lot of Eyeglass World, Brian Wells, 46 year-old pìzza
deliveryman dies. The explosion small, sad, deadly was Brìan Wells' entrance into infamv. While the bomb squad didn't arrive in time to save h¡m, the media arrived in plenty of t¡me to define
-
-
him. As Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Wolf Blitzer, Geraldo Rivera, journalists from the AP lhe
New York Times, New York Daily News and countless otlìers descended on Ërìe,
Wells a master thief or an innocent victim?" USAToday spent over 2000 words on the incident, a virtually U/ysses-sized eff ort for America's McPaper. John Kupetz, an assistant professor of journalism at Gannon Un¡vers¡ty
¡n
Erie. was quoted ¡n The Er¡e Times-News, "lThe medial will follow this, I think, until there is a resolutionl' By the end of the month, the reporting stopped.
Not to blame them. More than a year after Brìan Wells' death, the câse rema¡ns unresolved. The nat¡onal audience doesn't have the pat¡ence for a long, trudg¡ng investigation with no happy ending in s¡ght, so Brtan Wells - the half-remembered "Pizza Bomber"- joins the hundreds of passing tragedies that march through our living rooms every day. Stooped and not very photogenic, neither a pregnant woman nor an innocent ch¡ld, he was just a grown man
I
Locked aPound his ncck is a triple-banded metal co¡lan blue w¡th foun kegholes and a threedigit combination lock. A local televisìon crew their news van emblazoned proudlv w¡th the "JET-TV Action News 24" logo, is on the scene. lmages snake from the¡r two cameras to the news van, where the signal takes to the a¡r. Anyone with an antenna can pull down the man's plight, live and in color. "He pulled the key out and started a timer. I heard the thing ticking when he d¡d ¡t. lt's gonna
go off," says the man, without mentionìng who
he is. "l'm not lying:' No one responds. He shakes his head slowly. A few yards away sits his green Geo Metro wh¡ch had just been paid off the previous Friday. lnside the car ¡s a black garbage bag filled w¡th cash. "Did you call my boss?" he asks. "Yes we did," responds a trooper. He grows quiet, stops fidgeting. Time passes without incident as troopers wait for the bomb squad to arrive. A couple of minutes later he appears desperate, h¡s movements more frantic. Squirming backward as best he can with shackled hands and legs folded under him, he tr¡es to get away from the terror locked around his neck. W¡tnesses claim they heard the bomb begin to beep rapidly; maybe he heard ìt too, maybe he knew what was com¡ng.
5?
nnzon
DEcEMBERyJANUARY 2oo5
Pennsylvania, a rust-belt communrty on the shore of Lake Erie w¡th a populatìon of just over 100,000, "Brian Wells" - a name certainly not qu¡ckly punchy enough for headline wr¡ters became "ïhe Pizza Bomber." Nationally, ¡t was the fourth-biggest story that week; the networks devoted as much time to the parking lot explosion as to the continuìng combat in lraq. WJET-TV's footage (minus the explos¡on, a scene deemed too graphic for television but which later c¡rculated on the world's electrìc unconscious, the lnternet) looped as NBC's Ron Allen ¡ntoned somberly, "For 20 tense minutes pol¡ce kept their d¡stance waiting for the bomb squad to arrive. But they d¡d not get there ¡n t¡mel' CNN's Soledad O'Brien summed up her report w¡th: "lncredibly bizarre story. Brian Wells. of course, blowìng himself uPl' The print media, with more space and t¡me,
-
who delivered pizzas, strange enough to p¡que our curiosity but not wholesome or beautiful enough to hold our gaze. Our attent¡on and empathy moved on, but Br¡an Wells is still dead, his family st¡ll grieving, his death still a haunt¡ng myslery.
Noth¡ng about the early life of Brian Wells suggested he'd eventually, however brief ly, hold the national media spotlight. He was one of seven children - four boys, three g¡rls - born to Rosie
were sl¡ghtly more probing. The New York Times ran a short profile titled, 'A Childlike Pizza Deliveryman at the Center of a Puzzling Crime!' Time magazine's eulogy. "Death of a
Marìe Martin Wells and Harold C. Wells. His father returned home from World War ll and io¡ned the National Fuel Gas Co., a job he held for 22yeaß before multiple sclerosis forced him to retire in 1971. An unremarkable student, Brian dropped out of East High School in 1973 to help support his family. For most of the next three decades he
Pizza Mani' asked "How did a loner who lived w¡th three cats become enmeshed in a bizarre and fatal bank he¡st?" People echoed a similar sent¡ment, asking, "Was mild-mannered Brìan
staved ¡n Erie, delivering pizzas and do¡ng other odd jobs. He moved to Arizona w¡th his younger brother John, spending less than a year work¡ng at a tool and die shop that soon closed. ln 2001
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ffii:ç,ñiffiË.i1,ffi',Ë** he returned to Erie, moving to
Millcreek
Township, a leafy suburb east of the city where
he rented a small wh¡te coftage from
Linda
Payne. He spent most of his free t¡me listen¡ng to music - from Abba to The White Stripes _ and work¡ng on his car. He resumed deliveríng pizzas at the same place he had for the previous six years: Mama
Mia's Pizza-Bia. lt was a small shop tucked in between an herbal remedy store and a FedEx at the southern end of the long asphalt vein run_ n¡ng through the center of Erie, peach Street. Thursday, August 28, 2003, started off as usual. Wells arrived at Mama Mia,s at 1l :30 am to work the lunchtime rush as he often did. Just
before 2 pm the phone rang. Owner Tony Ditomo answered in his slight ltalian acceni,
"Mama Mia's." A deep-voiced caller ordered
two
sausage-and-pepperoni pizzas to 9631 Peach Street, an unfamiliar address less than three miles away. Wells offered to drop them off on his way home.
Almost 40 m¡nutes later, Brian Wells was in the lobby of the pNC Bank in
stand¡ng
Summit Town Centre, at 7200 peach Street. He
waited patiently in line. When his turn came. he handed the teller a four-page note demanding $250,000 in cash. Welts lifted his shiÍr to reveat the bomb locked around his neck, cla¡ming that ¡t would go off in 22 minutes. There was ,,no possible way" to disarm it, the note claimed. ln addition to the bomb, Wells had a shoþ gun disguised as a cane - the kind of thing a
wannabe James Bond might make
in
his
þasement workshop. But Brian Wells was no
but said he could come back later for the rest. He left the bank and climbed into his car. Bv 2:38 pm, silent alarms ¡ns¡de the bank had aleri_
ed police, as did w¡tnesses who phoned
in
Wells' license plate number Wells didn't get far. A g1.l caller saw him stop at the McDonald's just over a block away and search the ground near the drive_through s¡gn. As he drove away, state troopers arrived. pulling him over in front of Eyeglass World.
"This pow€nful, boobg-trapped bomb can be p€moved onlg bg following oup instructionsl' suave super-spy; ¡nstead of trying to pass it off as a cane, he cradled the weapon g¡ngerly in his arms.
The teller handed Wells a bag filled with money. According to
a
w¡tness in the bank
lobby, Wells didn't think ¡t tooked tike $2S0,000.
Once out of the car and handcuffed, Wells told
police he had a bomb around his neck and begged them to remove it. At 3:04 they called the Er¡e Bomb Squad. By then it was too late. Brian Wells, time had run out.
DEcEMBER/JANUAnyzoos
n¡zon 53
With Brian Wells dead, investigators lost the¡r best piece of evidence: an eyewitness' They never pieced together the full story about what happened between the time Wells left Mama Mias and the time he showed up at the bank. The site of his last deliverv, 8631 Peach Street, is a long gravel driveway that winds several hundred yards into the woods beside the road. lt ends not at a house but at a clearing dom¡nated
leave you short of time to follow ¡nstruct¡ons. DO NOT DELAYi' His first task was the bank robbery; after that Wells would have to make four more stops, each of which promised "a key
and/or combination-word you will need to decifer lsicl the combinationl'
It was a hopeless task. Wells, who Linda Payne said, "used to really like scavenger hunts," was sent on a death scramble. From the
found no evidence of bomb-making mater¡als; they also searched the area around 8631 Peach Street and the checkpoints descr¡bed in the note. The bomb remnants were flown to the FBI lab in Ouantico, Virginia. The two sausage-and-peppeÊ oni pizzas were never found. For the next few weeks, dozens of agents chased down leads, a strategy retired FBI agent Jim Fisher says was entirely wrong. "Too many
Reconstructed model of the collar bomb worn byWells
by a tall telev¡s¡on transmission tower suffounded by large satellite dishes. lt was there, Brian Wells told police, that three people chased him,
bank he was to head north for several miles through the dense Peach Street traffic, merge onto Route 79 and head west for two miles
fired a gun at him and locked the bomb around his neck. The men also gave him a note, according to Wells, that sent him on an elaborate, sadistic scavenger hunt. Five pages of closely-spaced
Another several miles north and he would reach a yellow traffic warning light where he would find h¡s next ¡nstruct¡ons. lnvestigators est¡mate that 55 minutes to complete the scavenger hunt was an impossible task given the complexity of
With Brian Wells dead, investigators had lost their best piece of evidelìc€. printing (possibly traced from a typewr¡tten version), including a map and detailed drawings of local landmarks, warning Wells that he only had 55 minutes before the bomb exploded. "Stay
the instructions. There simply wasn't enough
calm and do as ¡nstructed to survivej' it read.
formed a task force with members of state and local police, the Er¡e Dlstr¡ct Attorney's Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Searching Wells' home, they
"This powerful, booby-trapped bomb can be removed only by following our ¡nslruct¡ons. Using time attempt¡ng to escape it will fail and
54
n¡zon
DEoEMBEFyJANUARY
2oo5
time. Wells was never meant to survlve. That evening, the FBl, whose jurisdiction
automatlcally extends to bank robberies, had
cooks" lead to bureaucratic ego clashes that hurt the invest¡gation, according to Fisher. "Bring in two Ph¡ladelphia homicide detectives, ass¡gn them six people and go about solving the casel' Special Agent Bob Rudge, currently in charge of the case, ¡s no stranger to such criticism. That kind of second-guessing by people on the outside, he says, is "irresponsible and can be harmful to the investigationJ' Whatever the merits of their approach, ¡n the weeks following Wells' death, investigators made little headway. The physical evidence revealed that the "Collarbomber," as dubbed by the FBl, was skilled with tools and probably had his own workshop - common in the blue-collar region of northwest Pennsylvania. Shortly after Wells' death. the FBI released three compos¡te sketches of men wanted for questioning. One sketch, of a man seen running near lnterchange Road (one of Wells' checkpo¡nts) was Jerome Jackson. a construct¡on worker running to catch a bus at the t¡me of the bomb¡ng. The other two men, both shaggy-haired and wh¡te - one seen running from the woods near PNC Bank, the other spotted on lnterchange Road remain
un¡dent¡fied. lnvestigators also searched a local
family's garage, confiscating some tools; on September Z they seafched the apaftment of Jimmy Johnson, whose girlfriend was cousin to Brian Wells, taking a laptop and pair of pliers. Neither search yielded a suspecr.
nearby payphone the day of Wells, death, according to h¡s lawyer, Gene placidi _ the same pay phone used to call in the order to Mama Mia s. lnvestigators searched Rothstein,s house where, in addition to the body, they found a sui_ cide note wr¡tten by Rothstein which proclaimed
Rothstein was cxacflg the kind of ccc€ntnic pcpson descnibed in the FBI's pnofile. On September 20, another piece of the puzzle emerged. William Rothstein called the
state police and confessed he was hiding a body in his freezer. He claimed his former
that he had nothing to do with the death of Brian Wells.
The police scrutiny didn,t last lono. a poligfapn, a test which
Rothstein's lawyer claims he passed
veteran agents often
fhe "Pizza Bomber" case grinds on. New information is scarce; on the one-year anniversary of Wells'death, the Fgl doubled the reward
offered for any leads
- it
now stands
The national media checks in now and again.
Last January, CNN's Anderson Cooper brieflv revisited "the perplexing case of Brian Wells_ the pizza delvery man who robbed a bank w¡th a bomb strapped around his neck,,, before mov_ ¡ng on to Bethany Ham¡lton, ,,a remarkable young woman," who survived a shark attack and courageously cont¡nued surf¡ng.
Brian's brother, John Wells, doesn,t soeak to the med¡a. When approached, he refuses to comment but does ask, ,,Have you heard anv_ thing new?" This despite the fact that the FBI briefs him every two weeks. There just isn,t anyth¡ng new to report. lt seems a stone_cold
fiancée, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, had killed her boyfriend, James Roden. She then con_ vinced Rothstein, an eccentric substitute shop teacher who spoke multiple languages and coached the local high school,s robotics team, to help dispose of the body in exchange for $70,000. Both Rothstein and Diehl-Armstrong had been in s¡milar circumstances before. ln 1g77, Rothstein had helped a friend dispose of a hand-
gun used in a murder; he received immunity in exchange for his testimony in the case. DiehlArmstrong was acquitted of murdering an earlier boyfriend in 1984. Bothstein hid Roden's body in a freezer in his garage. Rothsteins home, a small, dilapidated house sunk back from the road, is located at 8645 Peach Street, not three hundred yards from the clearing where Brian Wells claimed he was forced at gunpoint to wear the collarbomb.
Police began looking for any connecttons between the two cases. To some, including Jim Fisher, seemed a perfect match: William Rothstein was exactly the kind of eccentric,
it
highly-intelligent and tool-wise person
described in the FBI's profile; he lived near the scene of the crime and he'd made a call from a
dismiss as unreliable. Former FBI profiler
Candice Delong says, ,,The day a polygraph is infallible is the day the world changes.,, Special Agent Rudge won,t confirm or denv
Rothstein's polygraph results, but says, ,,We had good reason to rule him out.,, Soon after, the
FBI offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the ,,Collarbomber.,, On July 30, 2004, William Rothstein died of cancer, tak¡ng whatever knowledge he had of the Wells case with him to rne grave.
at
$i00,000. Special agent Rudge doesn,t go a day w¡thout thinking about it; two full-time agents conttnue to work the ever-colder leads.
whodunit as the leaves change and another wrnter oveftakes us. The people of Erie don,t forget. County Coroner Lyell Cook says Brian Wells comes uo wnenever people gather, a restless ghost whose story continues to haunt. Linda payne,s neighbors stop her in the grocery store to ask if there's any news. There isn't, and the mystery cont¡nues ¡n the death of a simple man, a man who took pleasure in his cats and his music. A man who loved delivering pizzas.
DEcEMBÊR/JANUAny
zoos R¡zon
55
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