- 10 hours ago
A botched bank robbery and bomb-clad hostage lead Erie detectives through a bizarre, convoluted scavenger hunt that starts with a pizza delivery, ends with multiple victims, and was concocted by a deranged perpetrator who has plans to kill again.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:07We have a bomb or something wrapped around his neck.
00:13We hear a faint, beep, beep, beep.
00:18And it exploded.
00:21Investigators found pages upon pages of a bizarre scavenger hunt.
00:26It was going to be an over-complicating scheme no one can solve.
00:30Having a human being go to sites to try to save his own life, I've never seen anything like it.
00:36Not only was there a plan, but there was a plan upon a plan upon a plan.
00:42There's a frozen body, it's in the freezer in the garage.
00:45They tricked him, they duped him, they killed him.
00:49It was just maniacal.
01:13And what is an emergency?
01:14Yes, this is an emergency.
01:16We have a bank robbery at PNC Bank on Upper Peach.
01:20Is anyone hurt?
01:21No.
01:22The guy just walked out with a bomb or something wrapped around his neck.
01:28He's sitting in the parking lot of McDonald's.
01:34I got a phone call at my desk that there was a bank robbery in progress and gave me the
01:40location on Peach Street.
01:42Peach Street is one of the main throw fairs of Erie.
01:44It goes from south to north.
01:48On the way there, the FBI was also called because they handle all bank robberies.
01:53The initial details I received that there was an individual who entered the bank, had something underneath his shirt.
02:01He had said that it was a bomb.
02:04The suspect left the McDonald's parking lot, pulled over into the Eyeglass World parking lot, where he was stopped.
02:13They asked the individual to get out of the vehicle, walk slowly back toward them.
02:18They had him turn around, handcuffed him, and immediately the guy said he was forced to wear the bomb and
02:25to do the robbery.
02:27At that time, they backed away from him and started to set a perimeter up.
02:36That's when I pull up.
02:38He identifies himself as Brian Wells.
02:41He was working for Mama Mia's Pizza.
02:44He received the call to deliver two pizzas to a location on Peach Street.
02:51And at that point, he was accosted by a group of individuals who told him, you need to go rob
02:59this bank.
03:00And they put the bomb around his neck.
03:03Immediately, our dispatch called Erie City Police, which has a local bomb squad.
03:10While we were waiting for the bomb squad, all of a sudden, we hear a faint beep, beep, beep, beep,
03:17beep, beep.
03:18I told the guys to take cover, and no sooner than that word bomb got out of my mouth, it
03:25exploded.
03:29I watched Mr. Wells, who was sitting cross-legged, fall directly back.
03:36And I'll never forget this.
03:38I watched his chest go down, and it never came back up.
03:45And I thought, oh, my God, this is fatal.
03:48You know, this is just absolutely the worst thing I had seen.
03:53I felt the bomb blast with little particles hitting me.
03:57But it wasn't enough to hurt anybody else or anything like that.
04:02Within minutes of the bomb detonating, the Erie bomb squad arrived on scene.
04:08They rolled it safe to where the investigators could check.
04:13So when approach was made, you could see the trauma that Mr. Wells had to his chest.
04:20There was a big cavity all the way down to his spine.
04:27The only thing left of the device itself was still locked around Mr. Wells' neck.
04:35The box that contained the bombs had detonated, and those were the pieces landing on the ground.
04:44We called our evidence response team to collect all those pieces.
04:49So the FBI Quantico lab could figure out how that was all put together to help identify the builder of
04:58the bomb.
04:59Traffic is stopped both ways on Peach Street, and obviously people are wondering what in the world is going on.
05:06Once we heard that the bomb went off and someone was killed, who would do this?
05:11Was it terrorism? Was it some kind of organized effort?
05:15It was just so odd and so horrible and so tragic.
05:19With it being just a middle-class kind of area, more of a sleepy kind of town, it was something
05:23that people were like, how could this happen here?
05:27At this point, it was kind of an all-hands-on-deck type of scenario because law enforcement just hadn't
05:32encountered anything this bizarre before in Erie.
05:37After Mr. Wells was taken from the scene to the coroner's office in Erie, you have to start with what
05:45you know.
05:46You know you have a deceased individual who robbed the bank.
05:51You're going to talk to the victim tellers, you're going to talk to anybody that was at the bank.
05:57Witnesses identified Mr. Wells as very cavalier, carrying a cane, and it was described as black, long pipe that he
06:08had.
06:10He'd come in the bank and he stood in line to go up to the teller.
06:15There was some lollipops there. He actually took one out, unwrapped it, put it in his mouth.
06:20That was such a psychology dichotomy for me.
06:25How could you be that calm knowing that you had a live device around your neck?
06:30I, early on, thought he had to have some knowledge of the plan and my belief because of the way
06:36he acted.
06:38And then he ended up jumping the line and gave a note to the teller demanding money.
06:46We got the note. This was nine total pages of notes. I've never seen anything like it.
06:53They're very repetitive about how it was a bomb hostage.
06:57This bomb's going to go off. We've been planning this for a long time.
07:03The bank robbery notes identified what the bank teller needed, which was $250,000 in cash.
07:11And not to call the police or hit any alarms or the bomb would detonate and cause destruction.
07:20Banks do not keep that much cash on hand.
07:23And so the teller gave him about $8,700 and he walked out of the bank.
07:32And then during the search of Mr. Wells' vehicle, we saw the cane.
07:38And we immediately knew this was different than any regular cane that we had ever seen.
07:44Once the handle was open, you could see that it actually contained a 12-gauge shotgun round and was fully
07:51able to fire that.
07:54We saw the bag of money. Then we saw notes.
07:58They were instructions to Mr. Wells to rob the bank as a bank hostage and then go on a series
08:06of stops like a scavenger hunt to unlock the collar around his neck.
08:12The first site was to go to the McDonald's, which he did, into the flower bed, turn over a stone
08:19and receive another page of notes.
08:21And that note indicated he used to go back around the eyeglass world into the parking lot where there was
08:28a fire hydrant in front of the eyeglass world.
08:31And he was to tie an orange ribbon on that fire hydrant to indicate he had received the money from
08:37the bank.
08:39And then someone was supposed to come by in a car and pick up the money.
08:43It never got to that point.
08:46That's where he was pulled over by the Pennsylvania State Police. He never got to the fire hydrant.
08:51And so the bomb detonated and he was killed.
08:56Because Mr. Wells couldn't do these additional sites, we did them.
09:02The investigators, as fast as they could in real time, they started moving forward to try to catch more clues
09:10down the road in this hunt.
09:13After the eyeglass world, he was then to head on I-90 heading towards Cleveland, get off towards 79 northbound
09:23and go to another location that was at the 180 exit
09:28and go into the woods and receive another note.
09:36So we went into the woods and we saw an orange ribbon.
09:42And attached to that orange ribbon was a Folgers jar.
09:47Open it up, there's another note.
09:48And it would tell Mr. Wells to get back on Interchange Road, head I-79 southbound to a McCain Township
09:57sign where he would go back into the woods and receive another note.
10:02But as it turned out, the McCain Township sign that we went to had the orange ribbon, but it was
10:09torn and there was nothing at the end of that.
10:12So we don't know if he was going to receive additional instructions or that's where the bomb was to detonate.
10:20But either way, he never got to that site.
10:25It was just maniacal when you think about having a human being go to sites to try to save his
10:30own life.
10:31Now the investigators wanted to find out how did Brian Wells get involved in this and picked as a victim.
10:40We get a call about someone who was well known, and there was a lot of death around her.
10:47He said that he helped her to get rid of the body.
10:50All right, rocks right here.
10:52Why?
10:53To get rid of any evidence of blood.
11:08So after the bomb detonated and Brian Wells was killed, investigators found a bizarre scavenger hunt.
11:17Because of some of the references in the notes, there's some indication that they were local people.
11:22But there's no telltale signs in the notes who might have done this.
11:27So the investigators wanted a lot more information about Brian Wells to figure out how did he get involved in
11:34this.
11:34You don't know if he's a hostage. You don't know if he's a participant.
11:39We're going to try to find out as much as we can about him.
11:46We immediately had people at the pizza shop talking and interviewing individuals there, including the owner of the pizza shop.
11:55What we learned is that Brian Wells had been a pizza delivery man for at least 10 years.
12:00He had a number of friends that he worked with. They described him as quiet, laid back, easy going.
12:10Brian Wells was 46 years old, single, never married, no children, lived in a cottage-like house behind another house.
12:21Brian Wells grew up in Erie, was close to his mom. He had siblings as well.
12:27He liked the Survivor television show, puzzles, and what we learned was probably his favorite puzzle was something called the
12:34Great Key Hunt.
12:36One of the newspapers in Erie, they would put clues in the newspaper where people would have to find this
12:42key.
12:43And then if you got the key, you'd go to the newspaper and open a lockbox and there'd be a
12:48prize in the lockbox.
12:50In the past, Brian came pretty close to winning a car for following clues from one location to the next.
12:58So that would show me that somebody knew Brian well and purposely targeted him with the scavenger hunt in the
13:06notes.
13:08And we backtracked at Mamma Mia's because that's where the initial call came in to order the pizzas.
13:16It was determined that a call came in around 1.30.
13:19From what we were told, it was a mail.
13:23Brian Wells took the call and got the information for the pizza order.
13:28And left heading towards 8631 Peach Street, which is a tower site that is not seen from the road and
13:37it's enclosed by trees.
13:39And we're going to immediately search that area to determine what evidence we can find there.
13:46And at that location, they found tire marks that ultimately matched with Brian's car.
13:53They also matched shoe impression marks with shoes on his feet at the time of his death.
13:59And there was a scuff mark on the ground in the dirt that really determined to us that there was
14:06some struggle that took place back there.
14:10But there was very little else in the vicinity.
14:15Then the phone call to Mamma Mia's Pizza was traced back to a Shell station.
14:22The call was made from a pay phone outside the Shell station, which was up the street from the tower
14:30site.
14:32And so we obtained video footage from the Shell station, pulled all the cash register receipts to try to figure
14:40out who had called for the pizzas.
14:42But nothing was found on the video.
14:46No evidence as to who might have done this.
14:49We then obtained a search warrant for Mr. Wells' house.
14:54It had very little furniture or much in the closet at all.
15:00But on the desk in the living room were two notebooks.
15:06And in these notebooks were the names and phone numbers of pretty much everybody he knew.
15:14And we started to identify every person on that list.
15:21There were two names on that list, Angie and Jessica, that Brian Wells' family didn't recognize.
15:28We immediately want to talk to them.
15:30And with their phone numbers, we do a subscriber check, we find out who their identities are.
15:37We find both had criminal history for prostitution.
15:41We couldn't locate Angie, but Jessica was interviewed.
15:48And she ended up saying that Brian Wells was a friend of hers and he would drive her around in
15:56the city of Erie to purchase crack cocaine.
15:59That information was interesting to us.
16:04But at that point, we were still running down all the initial things related to the order for the pizzas.
16:11And one of the employees who also was a pizza delivery driver from Mamma Mia's Pizza, Robert Panetti, was working
16:17that day.
16:18When we went to see him, he said he was on his shift.
16:21Would you mind coming back on Monday?
16:28But then, on Sunday night, we get a call that Mr. Panetti was found deceased.
16:39Two dead pizza delivery drivers within three days.
16:42You're immediately thinking, this can't be a coincidence.
16:57Two dead pizza delivery drivers within three days, both working at the same pizza shop.
17:05There's no coincidences in homicide, right? This can't be one.
17:10It seemed odd that a fellow pizza delivery individual by the name of Robert Panetti died within a few days
17:18of his buddy, Brian Wells.
17:21He had an overdose of Xanax and Methadone, which killed him.
17:28When we talked to family members of Mr. Panetti, we determined that this was out of his character.
17:33But they had said that right after the bombing, he had been very nervous and that he was talking to
17:40people about trying to get a gun.
17:42And we found that to be very interesting.
17:46Could it have been where he was worked up because of what happened to Brian and then took something to
17:53calm himself down and just didn't watch what drugs he was using?
17:58Or was he purposely poisoned?
18:01What we call a hot shot, where somebody would give him something that would automatically overdose him.
18:07But when they did the autopsy, they weren't able to say this is an overdose caused by somebody else.
18:14So that added another layer of mystery as to what happened here.
18:19At this point, the investigators aren't ruling out anything.
18:23But there was nothing initially determined if Mr. Wells, Mr. Panetti's death were connected.
18:30So we had to move on to the next evidence for the case.
18:34And then our lab at Quantico did an amazing job with both the explosive device and the cane gun.
18:42Our experts were saying the builder of the cane and the builder of the bomb were probably the same individual
18:49because of the craftsmanship and the manner that they used to construct it.
18:56The bomb itself was angle iron and pieces of pipe that was filled with just regular gunpowder to make the
19:03bomb explode.
19:04But the timing mechanism in this device was really, really well designed.
19:10The timers were wired in series, so the first timer would run its 30 minutes and then it took the
19:17second timer to run to where they would make contact that would detonate the bomb.
19:24The ultimate goal of this premeditated plan was to see someone killed.
19:31This plan is so unbelievably diabolical.
19:35So investigators, including myself with the behavioral analysis unit, worked on the profile of the bomb builder for a few
19:44weeks.
19:49The profile indicated that the bomb builder was probably a shop teacher or a handyman, was very meticulous, probably a
19:59loner.
20:01The person who did this was most likely a pack rat, someone who collected things, someone very intelligent, electrical engineering
20:10background.
20:11So more than a hobbyist.
20:14This was a profile of who we would be looking for.
20:37This was a profile of who we would be looking for.
20:43Yes.
20:44This case just kept getting crazier and crazier.
20:47How do you know that, sir?
20:49I'm the guy who lived there.
20:52Somebody calling in saying, hey, I have a body in my house is very odd.
20:57There's a frozen body in the freezer.
21:00In the garage, that is correct.
21:02Ross Dean was very distraught, said he was contemplating suicide.
21:07He wanted to get investigators involved to get the body out and arrest this lady, who he identified as Marjorie
21:14Deal Armstrong, who was responsible for the murder.
21:17Okay, and Marjorie Deal is at that residence now?
21:20Yes.
21:21He said the person in the freezer is an individual named James Roden, who was the boyfriend of Marjorie Deal
21:28Armstrong.
21:29He said that they got into a fight and that she shot him, and he helped her to get rid
21:33of the body.
21:34He did not tell us what they were arguing about.
21:38He just said they had an argument.
21:41But Marjorie Deal Armstrong, if you were from Erie, you knew who she was.
21:59Marjorie Deal Armstrong was an interesting, interesting woman.
22:03Born and raised in Erie, she had stayed here her whole life.
22:08Marjorie had a history dating all the way back to the 80s, when she shot and killed a boyfriend while
22:15he was laying on the couch.
22:16She tried to expose the body afterwards, making frantic phone calls, trying to pay people to dispose of the body.
22:23But ultimately, she was acquitted for a battered spouse defense and was freed.
22:32So then, in 1992, her husband at the time went to the emergency room, and she said he had fallen
22:39and hit his head on a coffee table.
22:41And that led to an aneurysm, which he later dies from.
22:46And there's some speculation that she might have been involved in his death.
22:50But there was never any charges rendered.
22:52And then, she did have a landlord who hung himself, unfortunately.
22:57She definitely wasn't involved in that.
22:59But he did say that, according to the coroner's report, that he was being harangued.
23:04And we think that was by her.
23:08There was a lot of death around her at that point.
23:12The police convinced Mr. Rothstein to actually come to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks, which he did.
23:21While Bill Rothstein is detained, investigators are going to his residence.
23:27Once we got to Bill Rothstein's house, we saw a lady sitting on the bed, in the bedroom, learning her
23:34to be Marjorie Dill.
23:36Marjorie was angry, and she lost it.
23:38She was just hollering, and she wanted us out of there.
23:41And I had a couple of troopers stand by in that bedroom, while I go out and search their garage.
23:48There's junk on both sides.
23:49You have to actually make a path to get through all the junk.
23:54But I found the freezer, opened it up, and there was a body in the fetal position, wrapped up with
24:03clear plastic.
24:05Once I found the body, Marjorie was in a state of shock.
24:09And I said, Marjorie, I'm not placing you under arrest for killing James Broden.
24:14As the police are searching Bill Rothstein's house, they find what is a very peculiar suicide note,
24:21in which Bill says that this has nothing to do with the Brian Wells case.
24:26Why would you even put that in a suicide note?
24:30It was very bizarre.
24:35That information was passed on to the federal law enforcement agents investigating the Brian Wells case.
24:42Bill Rothstein's house, that's exactly next door to where the pizzas were delivered by Mr. Wells.
24:49That cannot be a coincidence.
24:52And so my job was to determine if Mr. Wells, Mr. Panetti's death, and Mr. Roden's death are all in
25:02one case.
25:03And so immediately, I responded to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks.
25:08However, I could not interview Marjorie Deal Armstrong because she had requested a lawyer.
25:15But they allowed me to interview Mr. Rothstein, and that's what I did.
25:21So Bill Rothstein identifies his relationship with Marjorie Deal Armstrong as going all the way back to the 1970s,
25:29where they had met at his father's roll-a-cola business.
25:34They dated, and they were actually engaged at one point.
25:38And they sort of drifted a little bit apart, but still were very good friends.
25:44When I asked Rothstein about the Wells case, he was sticking with the story.
25:50I don't know anything about the Wells case.
25:53I've never been back on the tower site road.
25:56Also, Mr. Rothstein was one of the most arrogant people I had ever interviewed.
26:03He was a true narcissist.
26:04I picked up on it, and I worked with that.
26:08I said, Bill, I just can't figure this out.
26:11Hypothetically, how would you even go about making a pipe bomb?
26:14And he said, hypothetically? Yeah, hypothetically.
26:16He said, I would cut the tops off of shotgun shells and pour the black powder into the pipes.
26:23I almost slid out of the chair because I knew from our lab that that's exactly how that bomb was
26:29constructed.
26:31Also, we find out he was a shop teacher.
26:33He worked in HVAC.
26:36He lived alone and was a loner.
26:38He had a shop in his garage, and he was a pack rat.
26:41He would fit a number of the characteristics in the profile of the bomb builder perfectly.
26:47I knew he was involved, but he's not going to make any confession right there.
26:52So I terminated the interview at that time, said, Bill, hopefully we can talk again soon.
26:57He was further detained at that time for the dead body in the garage.
27:02And he was in discussions with the Pennsylvania State Police on James Roden's murder,
27:08helping cooperate against Marjorie Deal Armstrong.
27:11Bill told us he feared that she was going to kill him if he didn't do something.
27:17And that's why he turned her in.
27:21When I had already searched Bill Rothstein's house, we found the body.
27:26So two days later, we obtained a search warrant for Marjorie Deal's house where she killed Roden.
27:33Ready to go? No. Are you still writing?
27:36Mr. Rothstein went to Marjorie Deal Armstrong's house with the investigators.
27:41His body was lying roughly 45-degree angle on the bed.
27:46During the admission of Bill Rothstein, it was discovered that Marjorie Deal purchased a 12-gauge shotgun,
27:54shot James Roden, and solicited Bill Rothstein to help her clean up the crime scene.
27:59They dumped hydrogen peroxide here.
28:02Why?
28:04To get rid of any evidence of blood.
28:06So what the investigation determined was that Marjorie Deal Armstrong was responsible
28:11for James Roden's death.
28:13But Marjorie and Bill were not yet connected to the Brian Wells case, other than the note at Bill's.
28:19Bill Rothstein pled guilty for abuse of corpse and disposing of evidence.
28:24But Marjorie Deal Armstrong was immediately declared incompetent to stand trial for the James Roden case.
28:32Investigators prohibited my law from talking to her about the Wells case.
28:36And that puts everything on hold.
28:39This was a real obstacle in this case.
28:46And then I hear Bill Rothstein's in the hospital, very ill.
28:51Bill Rothstein was suffering from cancer.
28:54The last time they interviewed him, he essentially was dying.
28:58I say, Bill, don't take this with you.
29:01Cleanse your soul.
29:02Tell me these cases are related.
29:05And he lifts his big arm out of the bed and makes a no.
29:12Four days later, he dies.
29:15This was really a huge blow to our investigation because we knew he had knowledge about the Brian Wells case.
29:23He just wasn't sharing it.
29:24And now that he's gone, we weren't going to get it.
29:28We were going to get it.
29:28With Bill Rothstein dead, we really needed to talk to Marjorie.
29:32But we had to wait until 2005.
29:38In January of 2005, she pleaded guilty but mentally ill in Williams' death.
29:48She was sentenced to seven to 20 years in state prison.
29:52Once she got there and her mental health had stabilized, then the investigators were able to talk to her about
30:00the Wells case.
30:02And the first piece of information that she gave was that they should take a look at a man named
30:07Ken Barnes.
30:09He had something to do with robbery.
30:12This plan, it just kept unraveling into this one giant, really diabolical scheme to kill.
30:31In Erie, the State Police and the Erie City Police knew Ken Barnes, whose name first arises from Marjorie Deal
30:41Armstrong in 2005, as having been a known crack dealer.
30:45We started thinking, wow, that's interesting because we did have crack in this case come up in the past.
30:53And that was with Jessica, whose name was in Brian Wells' notebook.
31:01This woman didn't have a car, and so she was a friend of Brian Wells, and Brian would drive her
31:06to buy drugs.
31:07And we started thinking, wow, maybe here's our connection.
31:12We started interviewing Ken Barnes, and he initially would say he doesn't know anything.
31:19He knows Marjorie, he knows Bill Rothstein, and he knows Brian Wells,
31:25because Brian Wells would drive Jessica over to his house to buy crack cocaine, but wasn't linking them together.
31:36During that time, we received a tip from a UPS driver that he had seen William Rothstein and Marjorie Deal
31:44Armstrong at a payphone outside near the PNC bank,
31:48the exact payphone where the call was made to order the pizza.
31:53So we started going back to the footage that we had inside the Shell Station
31:58and determined that we had Ken Barnes inside the Shell Station.
32:02So we interviewed him again.
32:06But Ken Barnes, initially he wasn't very cooperative or forthcoming.
32:13It was a series of just interview after interview after interview for years.
32:19It was intense at times, but we all cared, and I just was not going to let it go unsolved.
32:27Every time we went to have a conversation with him, he'd talk with us.
32:31It may only be for a short time, but he would talk to us.
32:35Until finally he reached the point where, okay, I'm just going to tell you everything I know.
32:41Ken Barnes finally decided to tell the truth and to, in fact, act as a cooperating witness.
32:50He said he knew Marjorie Deal Armstrong because they would go fishing at the South Pier in Erie.
32:56He knew Bill Rothstein because he was friends with Marjorie Deal Armstrong.
33:02The way Ken Barnes puts it, Marjorie Deal Armstrong is upset because her father was worth about more than a
33:10million dollars at the time.
33:11And he is handing out his money to friends and neighbors, even the mail carrier, because he doesn't want her
33:18to get money when he dies.
33:22She believes that that money belongs to her. That's her inheritance.
33:27And then if he dies now, she'll get the money.
33:30So Marjorie Deal Armstrong solicits Barnes to kill her father.
33:34And Barnes said he'd do it for $250,000.
33:37So Marjorie Deal Armstrong, Bill Rothstein came up with this plot to rob this PNC bank branch.
33:44And that money would be used to pay Ken Barnes as a hit man.
33:50According to Ken Barnes, Bill Rothstein decides, well, I'm going to come up with the perfect crime.
33:58It was going to be an overcomplicated scheme. No one can solve.
34:03Let's use a patsy to rob the bank.
34:06They'll be a hostage. We'll get rid of them as a witness.
34:10They all decided Brian Wells would be perfect for this.
34:13He's that guy that comes over with Jessica.
34:16He is very naive, and we could talk him into this.
34:20What they told Brian was that if he was caught, just say, hey, I don't know who did this.
34:24I was a bomb, honestly.
34:27Ken Barnes had told law enforcement that Brian Wells agreed to participate in the bank robbery in exchange for $5
34:33,000.
34:35But we don't think that Brian really knew the full extent of what he was agreeing to do.
34:41He was told the device would be fake, and then Barnes said there was a pre-planning meeting on August
34:4827th, the day before the robbery, and Mr. Wells was there.
34:53But he never saw the real device.
34:56The day later, when the bank robbery happens, Brian Wells shows up, delivers the pizzas.
35:03They go to put the bomb on him. He sees it. He goes, that looks too real. I don't want
35:07to do this anymore.
35:08Ken Barnes grabs him, punches him, knocks him to the ground, and that's when they put it around his neck.
35:17They give him the notes, and they give him the cane gun, and then he's on his way.
35:22And they told him that if he disclosed what happened, then we're going to kill him.
35:27But he was never going to survive because he would have never had time to accomplish all those routes he
35:35was to do.
35:35That bomb was just going to detonate wherever he was in the scavenger hunt.
35:41They tricked him. They duped him. They killed him.
35:45And it was horrific what happened to him.
35:49We also had other corroborating witnesses from the various prisons that Marjorie had been incarcerated at.
35:55She would sit in there, and she would tell everybody what she did, brag about being involved in the Brian
36:02Wells case,
36:03and that she shot her boyfriend, James Roden, because he would not cooperate.
36:12Through the inmate witnesses, we determined that James Roden was part of the scheme to rob the bank.
36:21And in the end, he had an argument with Marjorie, and he threatened to contact law enforcement and tell them
36:27about their plans to commit the bank robbery.
36:29And that's why she killed him, to keep him quiet.
36:33Before his death, Bill Rothstein had said that they had an argument.
36:37But it turns out that argument becomes pretty important as to what they were arguing about.
36:44The inmate witnesses also told us there was an individual that was living in Bill Rothstein's house right before the
36:52bank robbery.
36:53His name was Floyd Stockton.
36:58After doing criminal history, we realized that Floyd Stockton was a wanted fugitive from the state of Washington for a
37:07rape charge.
37:08And he had been hiding out in Erie, Pennsylvania.
37:13So we found Mr. Stockton and arrested him for the rape charge.
37:18And before he was extradited back to Washington state, we interviewed him.
37:23Tell us about the Brian Wells case.
37:35Floyd Stockton was a very close friend of Bill Rothstein and gave a long statement and made the admission he
37:45was involved in the case.
37:46Mr. Stockton was at the pre-planning meeting and his role was to put the bomb around Brian Wells' neck.
37:55Also, he saw Robert Panetti, the other pizza delivery driver.
38:01His role was to make sure that Brian Wells continued to cooperate and he was going to get money to
38:10do that.
38:13Panetti talked him into it, basically.
38:15They were friends.
38:16Now we know Panetti was definitely involved in the plot.
38:21After the death of Brian Wells, I think he panicked.
38:24I think he was looking for something to calm him down.
38:27And I think Ken Barnes gave him a hot shot.
38:30That's never been charged, but that's what we think happened.
38:34So it all pieces together.
38:36And this plan is like no other we've ever seen.
38:46Marjorie Deal Armstrong is furious when she learns that her father has been spending his money that she believes to
38:54be her inheritance.
38:55So she solicited Ken Barnes for $250,000 to kill her father.
39:01And they would get the $250,000 by robbing a PNC bank.
39:06Then they found somebody who was allegedly a hostage, Brian Wells, to further their plan.
39:13Over a couple of months, Bill Rossi constructed the bomb and given the cane gun and came up with a
39:19scavenger hunt.
39:21One day before the bank robbery, all of the co-conspirators got together at the tower site to discuss the
39:27robbery.
39:28The next day, call comes into the pizza shop.
39:31Brian Wells delivers the pizzas.
39:34The device is attached to his neck.
39:38And then Brian Wells drives directly to the bank and robs it, still believing that that device is a fake.
39:47He got into his car and he began the scavenger hunt.
39:52And then at some point, they were going to intercept him to get the money.
39:57But during the rest of the scavenger hunt, the bomb was set to explode.
40:01And that would eliminate Brian from going to the police.
40:07Not only was there a plan, but there was a plan upon a plan upon a plan.
40:12It's difficult to think that somebody was tricked into death.
40:20I still feel horrible for the Wells family.
40:23The co-conspirators treated Brian Wells as a thing, not as a person.
40:28He was treated as a means to an end.
40:38Ken Barnes and Marjorie Jo Armstrong were charged with three offenses.
40:43Conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, committing the armed bank robbery.
40:46And then they were charged with using a destructive device to commit the armed bank robbery.
40:51They were not charged with murder. There is no federal charge for murder.
40:55But the conspiracy charges applied to bank robbery involving a death.
41:02William Frosting was already deceased, so he wasn't included in the indictment.
41:07Floyd Stockton, we chose not to charge him, but to use his cooperation to be able to charge Ken and
41:14Marjorie.
41:43And the prosecution was possessed by今回.
41:45The crime of the rescuing 이야기를 were charged with three min build.
41:48this is probably the most premeditated case you'll ever see
41:53their whole plan was crazy you're going to hire a guy to kill your father he wants $250,000 so
42:00you're going to have a guy rob a bank then you kill three men and at the end of it
42:06marjorie
42:06didn't inherit any money it's such a bizarre situation it's a very strange case and the
42:14strangest one I've ever worked on something nobody will ever forget this plan and this plot is evil
42:23just no consideration of human life this happened in Erie Pennsylvania a town I love and adore and
42:32I'm just really really glad that we were able to get to the bottom of it and bring justice
Comments