Exclusive: Pizza Bomb Victim Was Part of the Plot

July 11, 2007 — -- Federal prosecutors will announce today that pizza-delivery man Brian Wells was involved in the bomb-strapped bank robbery plot that took his life, a well-placed law enforcement source has told ABC News' Law and Justice Unit.

After the robbery occurred in Pennsylvania in August 2003, Wells was killed when the collar bomb he was wearing exploded while he was in police custody.

ABC News first reported Tuesday that charges were being brought against two Pennsylvania criminals in the bizarre case.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was served with what is known as a federal retainer in prison in Pennsylvania Tuesday afternoon and charged with three felonies related to the case — bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery and felony use of a firearm in connection with a crime, her attorney told ABC News.

Diehl-Armstrong, who is imprisoned on an unrelated murder charge, says she is innocent, according to her lawyer, Lawrence D'Ambrosio.

Kenneth Barnes, a second longtime suspect, was served with the same federal retainer outlining the same charges Tuesday at a county jail in Erie, Pa., a source close to the case said. Barnes is serving an 11- to 23-month sentence on unrelated drug charges. A source close to the case said that murder charges could be forthcoming.

Hours after ABC News first reported the charges, U.S. attorney Mary Beth Buchanan announced that a news conference would be held today in Erie, Pa. She promised a "significant announcement" in the case. It is expected she will announce the indictments of Armstrong and Barnes.

A law enforcement source involved in the case confirmed late Tuesday that Wells was, in fact, involved in the plot, but could not elaborate on his specific role.

It was August 2003 when Brian Wells walked into an Erie, Pa., bank wearing a bomb attached to his neck by an elaborate, locked metal collar. He was also carrying a gun disguised as a walking cane.

Cornered by police in a nearby parking lot after the robbery, Wells said that armed gunmen had locked the bomb around his neck and sent him into the bank. Police seized a multiple-page note full of instructions that told Wells to move swiftly to a variety of seemingly unrelated spots around the area or the bomb would detonate.

"Why is nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" he yelled to authorities as he sat handcuffed near a police car. "I don't have enough time."

He didn't. With a small crowd gathered that included curious media, the bomb exploded, blowing a hole through Wells' chest and killing him instantly. He was 46 years old.

The case has taken numerous twists and turns over the years, and investigators have acknowledged at times that they were simply stumped. Authorities have taken their time to piece together the exceptionally unusual case.

One of the FBI's top bomb experts, who served time in Iraq, was flown to Pennsylvania to testify before a grand jury, two sources told ABC News. Through a combination of cooperation — Diehl-Armstrong's attorney has acknowledged that Diehl-Armstrong cooperated with investigators — and gumshoe detective work, authorities are finally ready to spell out the scenario that led to one of the strangest crimes post-Sept. 11 America has yet seen.

Two witnesses, including a jailhouse informant who spoke to ABC News exclusively in February, say Wells knew two of the suspects in the case.

John Wells, Wells' brother and the family's spokesman, has repeatedly and sometimes angrily defended his late brother's innocence in the plot and chided officials for not clearing Wells' name. Federal authorities, for their part, have never ruled Wells' out of the plot, but have also never specifically implicated him.

It's expected they will today. Repeated calls to John Wells' home were not answered.