“ACT NOW, THINK LATER OR YOU WILL DIE”
There aren’t too many events in the news that I actively try to keep up with. Sure, I read story after story about the war in Iraq and a few about the various scandals in the Bush administration, but it would be difficult to avoid that kind of news. There are a few news stories, however, that I’ve tried to track over the years, but most of them sort peter out.
For example, in 2005 there was a story reported on CNN.com about a car crash in Japan in which a father and son were killed instantly. The body of the mother was also found in the wreck - but according to the medical examiner, she had been dead at least a day before the crash! Well, my periodic searches for new information over the last couple years turned up nothing, and I discovered recently that my links to the original news story no longer even work. A perfunctory search reveals a handful of references to the story, but all of these are blogs directing the reader to now nonexistent pages on Yahoo or CNN. That’s better than nothing. If I were unable to find any references at all, I would suspect that I had imagined this story.
The story that has most attracted my interest over the years is that of the so-called collar bomber, Brian Wells. And, to my delight, it looks like this one may actually be resolved.
I remember reading about it on CNN. A man named Brian Wells entered a bank, approached a teller, and told her that assailants had locked a bomb to his neck and made him rob the bank. He told her to give him money. She gave him money. He left the bank, where he was detained by police. They handcuffed him and made him sit on the ground. He said he was a pizza delivery man. He said that he had delivered a pizza to a remote location, and three to seven assailants had locked the bomb to his neck. He told the police that the bomb would explode if he didn’t deliver the money. They thought he could be lying. Eventually, they called the bomb squad. The bomb exploded. Wells died. About forty-five minutes had gone by.
A handful of details came to light. Mr. Wells had a note on him with a complicated series of instructions about where to go and what to do after getting the money from the bank in order to find the key to the collar bomb. Indeed, according to the note, there were multiple keys and additional instructions he had to find to unlock the bomb. The police questioned whether it was even possible to complete the instructions in the allotted amount of time. His assailants had given him a shot gun shaped like a cane to deal with anybody who got in his way.
There were few developments. I remember that a man, a black one I think, was sought as a person of interest because he was seen running up the street at around the same time. As it turned out, he was running to catch the bus. The police assumed that Mr. Wells had been in on the plot, and there were many news stories about his character and his life. From what I remember, they unanimously reported that he was unambitious, a loner, a career pizza delivery man, well-liked, and pretty much incapable of being involved in such a plot.
Not a lot happened for a while after that. Several months later, a crappy episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent aired that was loosely based on these events. No more information came to light, and, eventually, the FBI offered a $100,000 reward for information, offered a profile of the perpetrators, and, most interestingly, finally released slightly edited photographs of four of the nine pages of instructions given to Mr. Wells. 1
They also released a photograph of the shotgun-cane.
(It’s funny how these things fade away. I can no longer even find a picture of the gun on the FBI’s website. This picture is from the Wikipedia article, taken, of course, from the FBI’s now nonexistent website).
About a year and a half had passed since Brian Wells’ death, and Brian Wells’ brother, understandably frustrated over the case’s lack of progress and by the police’s insistence that his brother was, at least at some point, a willing participant in the plot, started a webpage at Brianwells.net in which he accused the police of incompetence, argued that his brother was innocent, and begged for readers to come forward if they knew anything. In fact, he keeps a timer on it that counts how long his brother’s killers have gone free (3 years, 10 months, and 18 days, it says).
The website is pretty heartbreaking. In the first few revisions of the website, Brian’s brother, John Wells, hardly even mentions the investigation into the crime’s perpetrators. In the earliest version I can find, he posted a picture and the names of the officers who initially responded to the bank robbery, and he demanded that they resign for their inadequate reaction (according to him, they waited thirty-two minutes to call the bomb squad). In a version of the page several months later, he entreats the same officers to call him and tell him what his brother said before he died. Later, he rails against the police for their treatment of his brother’s body: he says that nearly twenty hours after the explosion, the bomb squad still couldn’t be sure the bomb was harmless, and the coroner’s office wound up having to remove Mr. Wells’ head to get it off. In later revisions, however, he posted pictures of the collar bomb, the note, and the gun, and he asks anybody who knows anything to tell what they know. He called the perpetrators punks, killers, and even terrorists.
For a long time, I don’t think anything happened. I seem to remember reading a news story about a woman walking into a bank and claiming that she likewise had had a bomb forcibly attached to her, but it turned out she was screwing around. I’ve searched a bit but cannot find any evidence that my memories are correct. Perhaps this never happened.
In 2004, more intrigue: a Mr. Rothstein came to the police’s attention. He had long been suspected of being involved, mainly because Rothstein lived near the location of Wells’ last pizza delivery before he appeared at the bank with a bomb around his neck, because he used the pay phone that day that called Wells to that fatal appointment, and because Rothstein was known to tinker with machinery, but now he was involved in another murder case. Apparently, a former girlfriend, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, approached him with a problem. She had killed her boyfriend, and she needed Rothstein’s help to get rid of the body. Rothstein helped her wrap up the body, and they stored it in his freezer. When Diehl-Armstrong wanted to get an ice-crusher to dispose of the body, that was too much for Rothstein. He went to the police.
Diehl-Armstrong was tried and imprisoned.
But Rothstein had cancer. He died. Even on his deathbed, he said that he had not been involved in Wells death.
So that was 2004. I figured that was the end of the line, that nothing else would ever come to light. I checked into the case occasionally and found nothing.
And so I was pretty surprised a few weeks ago when I saw a picture of Wells on the front page of CNN.com. Finally, after all of this time, the police think they have cracked the case, and now the indictments are flying. But the information is confusing and scanty.
Prosecutors claim that Diehl-Armstrong was the plot’s mastermind. They say that she wanted to rob a bank and use the proceeds to pay a man named Kenneth Barnes to kill her father. 2 They say that Wells was at least initially involved in the plot, but he may have changed his mind once the bomb was attached to him (in the courtroom, Wells’ sister responded to this claim by shouting, “Liar! Liar!”; Wells’ brother John likewise maintains Brian’s innocence). They say that Rothstein helped build the bomb and attach it to Wells. They say that there are other people, at the moment unnamed, involved. They say that Diehl-Armstrong killed her boyfriend to prevent him from revealing the plot.
These claims are pretty crazy. So far, the prosecutor hasn’t submitted any evidence - but I desperately hope that that evidence exists. I want to know what happened to Brian Wells.
I think about him sometimes - handcuffed, surrounded by police, begging them to let him go, or maybe begging them to call the bomb squad, terrified he would die at his friends’ hands, knowing his friends had betrayed him, were willing to kill him. But I still can’t understand some things. Why didn’t he tell the truth? Forty-five minutes went by. Why didn’t he name names? Did he not think the bomb would explode? Did he think the police would let him go? Did he think his friends were there, watching him as the note claims, ready to detonate the bomb if he incriminated anyone? He must have been so scared.
1The note (“ACT NOW, THINK LATER OR YOU WILL DIE”):
page 1
page 2
page 3
page 4
2Diehl-Armstrong is 58 - how old could her father be? Why couldn’t a woman like Diehl-Armstrong kill him herself? I can’t even find out what her father thinks of all of this or even whether he is alive.
For example, in 2005 there was a story reported on CNN.com about a car crash in Japan in which a father and son were killed instantly. The body of the mother was also found in the wreck - but according to the medical examiner, she had been dead at least a day before the crash! Well, my periodic searches for new information over the last couple years turned up nothing, and I discovered recently that my links to the original news story no longer even work. A perfunctory search reveals a handful of references to the story, but all of these are blogs directing the reader to now nonexistent pages on Yahoo or CNN. That’s better than nothing. If I were unable to find any references at all, I would suspect that I had imagined this story.
The story that has most attracted my interest over the years is that of the so-called collar bomber, Brian Wells. And, to my delight, it looks like this one may actually be resolved.
I remember reading about it on CNN. A man named Brian Wells entered a bank, approached a teller, and told her that assailants had locked a bomb to his neck and made him rob the bank. He told her to give him money. She gave him money. He left the bank, where he was detained by police. They handcuffed him and made him sit on the ground. He said he was a pizza delivery man. He said that he had delivered a pizza to a remote location, and three to seven assailants had locked the bomb to his neck. He told the police that the bomb would explode if he didn’t deliver the money. They thought he could be lying. Eventually, they called the bomb squad. The bomb exploded. Wells died. About forty-five minutes had gone by.
A handful of details came to light. Mr. Wells had a note on him with a complicated series of instructions about where to go and what to do after getting the money from the bank in order to find the key to the collar bomb. Indeed, according to the note, there were multiple keys and additional instructions he had to find to unlock the bomb. The police questioned whether it was even possible to complete the instructions in the allotted amount of time. His assailants had given him a shot gun shaped like a cane to deal with anybody who got in his way.
There were few developments. I remember that a man, a black one I think, was sought as a person of interest because he was seen running up the street at around the same time. As it turned out, he was running to catch the bus. The police assumed that Mr. Wells had been in on the plot, and there were many news stories about his character and his life. From what I remember, they unanimously reported that he was unambitious, a loner, a career pizza delivery man, well-liked, and pretty much incapable of being involved in such a plot.
Not a lot happened for a while after that. Several months later, a crappy episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent aired that was loosely based on these events. No more information came to light, and, eventually, the FBI offered a $100,000 reward for information, offered a profile of the perpetrators, and, most interestingly, finally released slightly edited photographs of four of the nine pages of instructions given to Mr. Wells. 1
They also released a photograph of the shotgun-cane.
(It’s funny how these things fade away. I can no longer even find a picture of the gun on the FBI’s website. This picture is from the Wikipedia article, taken, of course, from the FBI’s now nonexistent website).
About a year and a half had passed since Brian Wells’ death, and Brian Wells’ brother, understandably frustrated over the case’s lack of progress and by the police’s insistence that his brother was, at least at some point, a willing participant in the plot, started a webpage at Brianwells.net in which he accused the police of incompetence, argued that his brother was innocent, and begged for readers to come forward if they knew anything. In fact, he keeps a timer on it that counts how long his brother’s killers have gone free (3 years, 10 months, and 18 days, it says).
The website is pretty heartbreaking. In the first few revisions of the website, Brian’s brother, John Wells, hardly even mentions the investigation into the crime’s perpetrators. In the earliest version I can find, he posted a picture and the names of the officers who initially responded to the bank robbery, and he demanded that they resign for their inadequate reaction (according to him, they waited thirty-two minutes to call the bomb squad). In a version of the page several months later, he entreats the same officers to call him and tell him what his brother said before he died. Later, he rails against the police for their treatment of his brother’s body: he says that nearly twenty hours after the explosion, the bomb squad still couldn’t be sure the bomb was harmless, and the coroner’s office wound up having to remove Mr. Wells’ head to get it off. In later revisions, however, he posted pictures of the collar bomb, the note, and the gun, and he asks anybody who knows anything to tell what they know. He called the perpetrators punks, killers, and even terrorists.
For a long time, I don’t think anything happened. I seem to remember reading a news story about a woman walking into a bank and claiming that she likewise had had a bomb forcibly attached to her, but it turned out she was screwing around. I’ve searched a bit but cannot find any evidence that my memories are correct. Perhaps this never happened.
In 2004, more intrigue: a Mr. Rothstein came to the police’s attention. He had long been suspected of being involved, mainly because Rothstein lived near the location of Wells’ last pizza delivery before he appeared at the bank with a bomb around his neck, because he used the pay phone that day that called Wells to that fatal appointment, and because Rothstein was known to tinker with machinery, but now he was involved in another murder case. Apparently, a former girlfriend, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, approached him with a problem. She had killed her boyfriend, and she needed Rothstein’s help to get rid of the body. Rothstein helped her wrap up the body, and they stored it in his freezer. When Diehl-Armstrong wanted to get an ice-crusher to dispose of the body, that was too much for Rothstein. He went to the police.
Diehl-Armstrong was tried and imprisoned.
But Rothstein had cancer. He died. Even on his deathbed, he said that he had not been involved in Wells death.
So that was 2004. I figured that was the end of the line, that nothing else would ever come to light. I checked into the case occasionally and found nothing.
And so I was pretty surprised a few weeks ago when I saw a picture of Wells on the front page of CNN.com. Finally, after all of this time, the police think they have cracked the case, and now the indictments are flying. But the information is confusing and scanty.
Prosecutors claim that Diehl-Armstrong was the plot’s mastermind. They say that she wanted to rob a bank and use the proceeds to pay a man named Kenneth Barnes to kill her father. 2 They say that Wells was at least initially involved in the plot, but he may have changed his mind once the bomb was attached to him (in the courtroom, Wells’ sister responded to this claim by shouting, “Liar! Liar!”; Wells’ brother John likewise maintains Brian’s innocence). They say that Rothstein helped build the bomb and attach it to Wells. They say that there are other people, at the moment unnamed, involved. They say that Diehl-Armstrong killed her boyfriend to prevent him from revealing the plot.
These claims are pretty crazy. So far, the prosecutor hasn’t submitted any evidence - but I desperately hope that that evidence exists. I want to know what happened to Brian Wells.
I think about him sometimes - handcuffed, surrounded by police, begging them to let him go, or maybe begging them to call the bomb squad, terrified he would die at his friends’ hands, knowing his friends had betrayed him, were willing to kill him. But I still can’t understand some things. Why didn’t he tell the truth? Forty-five minutes went by. Why didn’t he name names? Did he not think the bomb would explode? Did he think the police would let him go? Did he think his friends were there, watching him as the note claims, ready to detonate the bomb if he incriminated anyone? He must have been so scared.
1The note (“ACT NOW, THINK LATER OR YOU WILL DIE”):
page 1
page 2
page 3
page 4
2Diehl-Armstrong is 58 - how old could her father be? Why couldn’t a woman like Diehl-Armstrong kill him herself? I can’t even find out what her father thinks of all of this or even whether he is alive.