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