Murder With My Husband - 28. The Pizza Bomber Part 1

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

In this two-part story, Garret and Payton discuss The Pizza Bomber.  LIVE ONLINE SHOW TICKETS HERE! https://www.moment.co/murderwithmyhusband Case Sources: Evil genius Netflix documentary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Wells https://www.wired.com/2010/12/ff-collarbomb/ https://allthatsinteresting.com/brian-wells-evil-genius-marjorie-diehl-armstrong https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/evil-genius-finale-questions https://www.goerie.com/news/20180828/15-years-later-where-are-pizza-bomber-characters-now https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial/comments/cqz83e/the_death_of_brian_wells/ Socials: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Moryland. And I'm Garrett Moryland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. We're coming at you on a Thursday, which is kind of weird, but I promise you guys that I would give you an extra episode this week. And really what I meant by that was we're doing a two-parter, so you're going to get two episodes this week. It's still two. It's still two. We just want to say, hey, to all of our new listeners, and if you're a continued listener, thank you so much for listening. Thank you, everyone, for sharing. Please go follow us on our social media. It's murder with my husband on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We post photos and images from every story we tell,

and we get some good discussions going on there. So it's really fun. So if you want to, and I know you do, please go follow us. Okay, Gary, let's just jump right into this. Okay, let's do it. So my sources this week are wikipedia.org, wire.com, all that's interesting.com,

thrillist.com, go eerie.com, reddit, and there's also a Netflix documentary on this called Evil Genius. It's a four part series, and it's really good. Also, this case was suggested to us by Lynn Sprigian. I hope I said that name right from Instagram, so thank you so much, Lynn, for suggesting this case. I actually had never heard of this and I don't know how I had it, but this one is a roller coaster. So are you ready, Gary? Yeah, let's do it. So the Netflix documentary that is about this case actually follows an investigative journalist who dove into this case just a year after it first happened and hopes to get some more answers and that he did

So I will also be telling kind of his story through the case because I think it's really cool that he dove into this and got answers that police didn't The date is August 28th 2003 we are in eerie Pennsylvania and does that sound familiar to you Garrett? It does, but why? Because we watch that show undercover billionaire. And that's where he went. Oh, yeah.

This is the town he went. Oh, okay. That's a good show, by the way. You guys haven't seen that. But this is the, you want to tell him what the show's about? No, it's okay. We love TV recommendations. You can.

It's just basically this billionaire goes into, well, I don't know if he's a billionaire. I think so. It's called undercover billionaire. But he goes into eerie don't know if he's a billionaire. I think so. It's called undercover billionaire. But he goes into eerie Pennsylvania. I mean, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true. But he goes into eerie Pennsylvania. And he starts from nothing.

He has like $100 or something. $100 or something. And then he has to make like a million dollar business in 30 days or is it 60 days? Yeah. Anyways. And he literally starts from ground zero. Like he's shiring at the gas

stations. He's getting raw minoodle packets and filling them up with the water from the gas station. It's pretty crazy. That's a cool show. But anyway, so it's a small town, Erie, Pennsylvania. It's around 2.30 p.m. and a 46 year old man named Brian Wells enters the PNC bank branch on Peach Street. He has a shirt wrapped around his neck that says guests on it. So it's like a guest branch shirt, but it just says guests. OK. He also has an odd looking cane that he's holding because he can't really walk with it

because it's only like two feet tall. He walks up to the line in the bank and waits behind the person in front of him for a minute and then he decides to step out of line and he walks up to the front of it, cutting everyone. According to climbusium.org, Brian then hands the bank teller a note that says, gather employees with access codes to vault

and work fast to fill the bag with $250,000. You only have 15 minutes. Well, that's creepy. He then showed the teller. He lifts up his guest shirt that's tied around his neck and shows the teller a bomb, which is locked around his neck underneath the shirt that said, guess. Okay, so question real quick. Are the tellers and the customers separated by a big glass piece? Do you know?

No, I don't think they're separated by glass. Or a plexiglass or something. No, I think it's just like a desk or a podium that they're standing behind. The teller told Brian that she could actually not open the vault and know in their code right now, but she placed $8,702 into the bag he had. Keep in mind, he went in for $250,000. Brian is unusually calm in the security footage of this whole entire scene.

For having a bomb literally strapped around his neck underneath a shirt, he's just so casual, he casually grabs a lollipop out of like the free basket, like candies, and just plops it in his mouth before walking out of the bank with $8,000. Oh man. So he, and keep in mind he went in and was gonna wait in line, even though he told them that they only had 15 minutes. So he like waited in line first and I was like, oh maybe I should

cut. Okay. When I've been cut. Brian heads across the street to a McDonald's parking lot. He picks up another note at the parking lot. So keep in mind he went in with a note to the teller. He goes over to the McDonald's parking lot and picks up a note in the parking lot and gets into a vehicle that was left there for him. He heads down Pete Street but doesn't get very far. The police had been called and state troopers pull him over only 15 minutes after he had walked into that PNC bank that afternoon. Police handcuffed Brian and he's extremely calm. He then informs them that he has a bomb around his neck.

So if they lift up the hanging shirt, they'll see it. I'm surprised they just went and handcuffed him that they didn't know he had a bomb before because one of the bank told him that. Hey, this guy has a bomb. Maybe I don't know. So you feel like they wouldn't have gone up. I think they were worried about restraining him first. Okay.

So at this point, police has it tally lift up the shirt and see the contraption that is locked around Brian Wells' neck. Media has arrived, meaning that you can actually go back and watch the real footage of everything I'm about to explain. I watched the video. Cops back up immediately and duck behind their cars. Their guns are still drawn on Brian as he just robbed a bank. They ask him what happened after isolating him in the middle of the road.

They lock down all traffic unsure of whether the bomb around his neck is fake or not. Brian claims that some black men had come up, mobbed him, put the bomb around his neck, giving him the notes to go rob the bank and sent him off. He says if he doesn't go to the next place, the bomb will go off and he will die and that he doesn't have much time left. Now keep in mind the scenario. Brian is handcuffed with a bomb around his neck, sitting on his knees in the middle of the street all alone. All traffic is shut down and there's multiple police cars surrounding him.

They all have their guns drawn and are pointing them at him. This entire conversation between the cops and Brian is being loudly said back and forth because police are too nervous to get close. At this point, bomb squad is on its way, they've been called, but because the city shut down traffic due to the bomb, bomb squad is stuck in traffic. So although they are originally only 10 miles away, they can't get through to get there. The video of this whole scene made me really sad for Brian. It was really hard to watch.

It's kind of like the movie Speed. Have you seen that movie? No. Oh, okay. We don't have to get too off topic, but basically, I mean, I've been year since I've seen it, but they're all on a bus. And if they go over like 55 miles an hour or something

for a certain extent of time, the guys, the bus will automatically explode. I can't remember exactly, it's been so long since I've seen it, but. But a similar lockdown situation. Okay, you guys, we are getting into an ad. I know you guys have both heard the story about how Garrett and I were both paying separately

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d-e-o dot com slash husband or use promo code husband at checkout native do dot com slash husband and use promo code husband. So police are pretty confused at this point. Brian is talking so calm. He just keeps saying over and over why is nobody helping me? It's gonna go off. But he's not like yelling it. He's not freaking out. He's just sitting there talking to police. Yeah. So police don't really know if he really is a victim or if he's been a willing participant in this whole bank robbery and was using the bomb as a facade and it's not actually real. Watching the footage, I'm sad because it seems like Brian is under pressure of the cops

after he just robbed a bank. He couldn't act out. There were guns pointed at his face. He was obeying authority. He's handcuffed, you know, like, I don't know what, I mean, yes, he's not like screaming like there's a bomb around my neck. But also, I'm sure he's kind of scared to move, like if there's really a bomb around his neck. Um, cops ask Brian where he met the supposed assailants who put the bomb around his neck. And he explains that he's a pizza delivery man for mama me is pizza ria which is a good name he says that they got a call around 1.30 p.m. that day for a

two pizza delivery on 8.6.31 peach street so they're on peach street right now okay um just a few miles from where the actual pizza shop is. So the pizza shops on Peach Street, the delivery address where he delivered the pizzas that day was on Peach Street, and he's on Peach Street right now. That's creepy. He headed out there to the delivery address with the pizzas, but it ended up not being a residential address, rather a radio tower at the end of a dirt road. He claimed that it was while he was waiting for the payment for the pizzas that he was jumped. At this point in the video, a beeping starts radiating from the device around Brian's neck. You can hear it in the video, just like beep beep beep and it wasn't making any noise before. Brian starts to get a little bit antsy. Oh, I'm sure.

He tells the cops again like, help me. me it's gonna go off and everyone just stands there No one will even come close to him at all And bombs guard still not there nope. He says again, you know if you followed the instructions on the note that I just picked up at McDonald's to the next site It'll give you keys that can get the collar off of me Trigger warning if you watch the video you should know that it shows what happens next, and I wish that I wouldn't have watched. At 3.18 pm, just three minutes before the bomb squad would arrive on scene, the collar bomb around Brian Wells' neck detonates. Oh no. And it's all on video because the media was there. The bomb creates a hole in Brian's chest where he slowly bleeds out,

so he doesn't immediately die. Although it's scary and they don't know if there's any more explosion planned or if it detonated the whole way or if there's more, no one runs up to check on Brian. No one goes to help him after the bomb detonates. I'm sure everyone was in some sort of shock too. Oh yes.

This is almost a, oh, this only happens in the movies, sort of scenario. And I mean, I know the cops probably couldn't touch the bomb. They're not the bomb squad. Like safety protocol, they probably can't go up to him and try to help him. Yeah. But it was seriously the worst feeling watching someone sit there

and plead for help like so casually obeying just law enforcement and just casually pleading, please help me. Like the bomb's going to go off. I'm not lying. He kept saying that I'm not lying. I'm not lying. And then the beeping just gets faster and faster. And then he slowly just dies on camera and no one does anything

It's like such a helpless feeling. Yeah Police find a total of 9 messy and unorganized handwritten notes inside the vehicle Brian Wells was driving from that McDonald's parking lot They referred to Brian in the notes as bomb hostage. They are, the notes are insanely detailed telling Brian where to go, what to do and how to do it. They say the bomb is booby trapped and it would take multiple keys from multiple places to diffuse the bomb. The bomb squad and police follow the directions on the note that lead them to more notes and clues and places.

It's like a little scavenger hunt. According to Wire.com, they found a note directing them two miles south to a small road sign where the next clue would be waiting in a jar in the woods nearby. When they got there, they found the jar, but it was empty. Whoever had set this whole ordeal in motion, seen it seemed as if they had called it off once the cops had appeared. They'd probably been watching every step of the way. I was just thinking that like, were they watching from cameras?

Like what? What was the doing? Because the note stopped being left for him. I'm not out of defuse it. Like did he hack industry cameras or like what was going on? When cops actually pull up to the last known Destination because it the clues stopped being given a blue van was actually at the site as well But when cops pulled in the van got smoot spooked and drove away and they lost him

They couldn't catch the van that was at that site. Okay The FBI actually get involved in the case at this point, and they go to Brian's house in hopes to find anything linking him to the bomb. They are still under the assumption that he wasn't an innocent victim in this whole mess. Really? Yeah, they find no, I think because of his behavior in the bank, because he wasn't taking it very seriously. Uh-huh. I think that they think that he was part of a team.

Well, my thoughts would be if he think that he was part of a team. Well, my thoughts would be if he really thought he was going to die, which he obviously knew he would have. He was just trying to do what the note said. Yeah. So he was just trying to get it done. They find absolutely no physical evidence linking him to the case back at the scene. Police and the coroner are trying to figure out how to get the bomb off of Brian's neck. Because the bomb was strapped on to his neck with like a custom device that functioned like a giant handcuff for the neck. So it opened like a claw and like with two pieces it opened like a claw and then it closed notching its way in and

then it would lock when it notched. When the bomb went off, it didn't unlock. So the handcuff device was actually still locked around his neck because the bomb was just attached to the handcuff. They make the gruesome and horrifying decision at this point, at the scene, to actually decapitate Brian's head in hopes of sliding the device off and preserving the evidence. Can you do that? Like is that legal?

I mean, you can, but the family was obviously upset because, I mean, first you just sat there and let their loved one die, basically, without helping him. You had guns to his head the whole time. And I know he just robbed a bank, but he was telling them, like, it wasn't my fault, you know? Yeah, that one's hard. And so, and then after that, they just decapitate the head off, you know, so they mutilate the body.

And I know it's because they were preserving evidence, like I understand the reasoning why, but it was offensive to the family. Yeah, it still grew some. Yeah. So to think of all this guy has been put through and then after that, they just do it as well. As investigation starts, the FBI discover that the call to the pizza shop was made from a shell gas station pay phone close to the radio tower where Brian delivered

the pizzas to. Brian's boss actually says that he originally took the call, but was having a hard time understanding the customer so he handed the call off to Brian. When the radio tower is searched, they find Brian's delivery cars, tire marks, and his chuprints, and it looked as if there had been a struggle at the scene. Almost like he made the pizzas, took him to the delivery site, got out, something bad happened. Okay. Further proving that maybe Brian had been telling the truth all along and he was a victim in this. There is no physical evidence in the case so far and the FBI is

struggling with leads. A couple days after what has come to be known as the pizza bombing. This is what that's called because he was a pizza delivery guy. So they call the actual case the pizza bombing and then they call the suspect the pizza bomber. Okay, got it. A coworker of Brian's named Robert Panetti mysteriously overdoses on drugs at his home. Unsure of whether it was accidental or not, people are suspect when friends and co-workers come forward claiming that Robert had actually been acting super frantic since Brian's death claiming that the people who killed him were coming for him next. And then he mysteriously dies a couple days later. So were they actually what the heck? That's great.

So what are the chances? Two co-workers from the same pizza shop in a small town die. That's nuts. Okay. As investigators go through the evidence, they discovered that the cane that Brian had used at the bank was actually a homemade custom gun. The handle of the cane had a trigger, and the barrel was the two feet long cane itself. Okay, wait. So now this is a little weird.

So Brian, did he know that? Do you think he knew that? itself. Okay wait so now this is a little weird so Brian did he know that? Do you think he knew that? Yes. Okay. The notes that were in his car had told Brian to use the gun if he needed it and it was loaded. Okay. So he knew he had a gun. They also discovered that the handwritten notes had actually been printed off on a computer first and then traced over with pen. So he or she wrote the notes on a computer, printed it off and then retraced over it with their handwriting. After reconstructing a duplicate of the collar bomb, scientists discovered that there was a little pin on the collar that if had been pulled, it would have given Brian another hour.

Oh wow. Yeah. There was also random wires and buttons on the device that were there to throw off investigators. And there was shrapnel that should have exploded. So the bomb was actually full of shrapnel. So when the bomb went off the shrapnel was supposed to like explode and go into Brian. But it didn't break when the bomb went off the strap and I was supposed to like explode and go into Brian, but it didn't break when the bomb went off. So the whole chunk went into his chest and that's what made the whole. So do we know if the bomb was detonated remotely or if it was detonated off of time? So I can't figure this out because sources differed.

I saw a couple sources that said it was a remotely dead detonated bomb. But then another source said that there were two kitchen timers in the bomb and they had like a little handle on it and when the handle hit down to the bottom it triggered the bomb. But then why would he put a pin in there that would give him another hour. I don't know because I think it slowed the kitchen timer down. Okay I got it. I don't know. I don't know why there a lot of the bomb doesn't make sense. There was actually like warning labels on the bomb like if you push this button it's going to go off in 30 seconds and if you rotate this way up and down like literal drawings like handwritten drawings when they

reconstructed the bomb. Okay. Like the work the amount of work that went into this bomb was unreal. There was actually indeed four key holes in the bomb that you had to insert for keys to like disarm the bomb, but upon investigation, it's discovered that only two of those holes would have actually needed keys to unlock the collar. So they put four in, but you actually only needed to. The whole collar was to confuse people. Like they, like I said, they just had random

wires going through it. So if someone did try to defuse the bomb, they wouldn't like, what are these random wires for? They connected to nothing. It's so strange. It's almost like he knew that he was going to get caught. So he just put all this stuff on the bomb. Yeah. So after attempting the scavenger hunt themselves, investigators discover that it didn't matter how fast Brian went. Even if he had pulled that little thing that gave him an extra hour, there was no way he could have finished the route and time to get the bomb off. So it sounds like it was like a timer then. Yes.

Okay. Yeah, so I don't know why some sources said it was remotely detonated. Because it sounds like, like what you just read, it sounds like no matter what. And I literally watched and explained the whole kitchen mechanism of how it went off. So I think some of the stars, oh, three weeks after the pizza bombing, a 911 call comes in in Erie, Pennsylvania from a 59 year old man named Bill Rothstein. And I'm going to warn you now, this story has like 10 characters. So just keep in mind, we have Brian, who is the victim. We have Panetti who is the co-worker who passed

and now we have Bill Rothstein who just made a 911 call three weeks after the pizza bombing. Okay. He claims that there is a body in the freezer in his garage at 8.645 Pete Street and a woman named Marjorie Dill Armstrong is in the house and they should go talk to her about it He tells them that the guy in the freezer is Marjorie's ex-boyfriend named James Rodin and She killed him and then Bill helped her hide the body in his freezer. I think if we ever go to eerie Pennsylvania we should stay away from Peach Street Okay, let's do it. Okay. So Bill comes into the police station and tells police he's, you know, known Marjorie for 30 to 35 years. They were actually on and off again. They'd even been engaged

at one point. Bill was a quirky guy. Growing up, he was kind of bullied. He thought he was smarter than everyone in the room, but he was actually brilliant. He just never followed through with anything. He was kind of lazy, he dropped out of college, and Marjorie had him wrapped around her finger. Okay. He had never dated another girl really besides Marjorie. Someone like one of his friends explained it that he lived in her psyche. Okay, got it. Yeah. So Marjorie on the other hand had dated lots of men and all of them seemed to be dead now. She was beautiful when she was growing up. She got a master's degree, graduated top of her class, also

brilliant, but her parents always knew something was a little wrong with her. Through the years, Marjorie had been diagnosed with just about everything. By polar disorder, depression, anxiety, manic behavior, she was very mentally ill. When she was around 23 years old, she couldn't hold down a job and started to let herself go. This was when things got pretty bad for Marjorie because she could no longer rely on her good looks to get her by. Her first husband died when he mysteriously hit his head on their coffee table. Her next boyfriend hung himself, and her next boyfriend was shot and killed by her in self-defense, but he was sleeping and she shot him six times and was

never charged. Because self-defense, that's what she claimed. Okay, sorry, I'm trying to wrap my head around all of this. I told you. It's a crazy one. It's a crazy one. So she basically killed a lot of people and she's never been charged. Yes. I mean, more of the story is over.

Killed, I mean, the first two were like, he committed suicide. He actually fell in his head. The third one, yes. She shot him in his sleep. A bunch of crazy coincidence. Yes. And now Bill, her on and off again boyfriend. It is now dead.

No. Now just called the cops and said, hey, she just killed her next boyfriend and his body's in my freezer. Got it. OK. Geez. Yeah.

So when police respond to the 911 call at Bill's house, they are disgusted. They can barely get into the house and walk around because the hoarding was so bad. When they get to the garage, they find the body of James Rodin. Marjorie's ex-boyfriend, he was shot dead with a shotgun, stuck in fetal position, frozen to the sides of the freezer. Oh my gosh. So they arrest Marjorie, but couldn't ride in the car with her to the station because

she stunk so bad. Police search Marjorie's house where Marjorie states, Bill killed her ex-boyfriend, James Rodin out of jealousy, and Bill claims Marjorie killed him because she's crazy. Marjorie's house was even worse than Bill's. It was so hoarded that there were even dead cats lying around the house. What? So both of them are hoarders. Bill walks the cops through both houses and explains how everything happened on his

end of cleaning up what Marjorie did. He says that he had attempted suicide after because he felt bad, but he couldn't do it. And in Bill's suicide note that he shows police, the very first line says, this has nothing to do with the Brian Wells case. And this is the first clue that leads police to theorize that the murder of James

Rodin and the murder of Brian Wells could be related. That is so weird that he would put this has nothing to do with the murder of Brian. And that's the end of part one. That's it. Oh. I'll leave him on that cliffhanger. I kind of wanted to keep going. I was in the zone. So, here's the thing. Do not go look up how this case ends. We are posting the next one on Sunday so you don't have to wait that long. Wait for us to get part two out and we can figure out if and how

Brian Wells and James Rodin's murder cases are connected. Stay off Netflix, stay off the internet. Yes, stay off until we finish it. No phone for three days. And we'll see you guys on Sunday. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye. This summer, PXU Energy is back, the ultimate summer path, starting 50% off energy charges

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