'A Million Little Pieces'

July 11, 2007 — -- Dan Holland had a hand-held camcorder focused on pizza deliveryman Brian Wells when a bomb around Wells' neck blew in August 2003.

"It was shocking to see, absolutely shocking,'' said the former cameraman for WJET in Erie, Pa., where the long unsolved "pizza bomber" case is expected to finally be unraveled at a press conference scheduled today by federal prosecutors.

"I've been to so many [crime] scenes where…there's a bomb involved, or supposedly something's about to go off. But no one ever expects it to go off, especially when you're looking through a viewfinder and the guy's 60 yards away.''

He said the explosion was so loud it felt like it was "right next to you."

"And then you just heard a million little pieces of metal and whatever else was involved just hitting the ground around you,'' he said. "It seemed like it was slow motion and then you heard little pieces falling all around you."

Federal authorities are expected to announce that Wells was somehow involved in the plot that took his life, spawned a cottage industry of Hollywood scripts inspired by the case, and challenged the government's best investigators for years. They are also expected to announce the indictments of two incarcerated local criminals, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes on robbery, conspiracy and firearms charges.

Holland was one of four ABC cameraman on duty in the sleepy Western Pennsylvania town of Erie on Aug. 28, 2003, when word got out about the bank robbery and the subsequent arrest. Local news crews from around the area were scrambling to get to Peach Street.

"I walked in the station and saw two other reporters and crews running out the door,'' he said. "I asked someone, 'What's going on?' and my boss said, 'Go grab a live [satellite] truck. There's a guy with a bomb around his neck on Peach Street.'''

He drove the short distance from the station to the mall parking lot as fast as he could.

"A state policeman had cleared the parking lot so it was so new that there was no one on scene, so I pulled right up [into the empty parking lot] and there was Brian, 60 yards away from me.''

Holland, who said he's reviewed the shaky video footage he shot that day many times, said when the bomb detonated, "you can hear me going 'Oh my God,' and then the [on air] reporter going 'Did you get that?'"

Holland said audio problems delayed WJET's live broadcast in the moments before the explosion.

"We were literally 30 seconds from going live. If we hadn't have had audio problems that [detonation] would have been live on television. That would have started a whole new ethics debate on 'should we even be live' on something like that?'' Holland, now an educational consultant, said. The tape was cut to exclude the portion that shows the bomb going off.

"But it was breaking news on a main street in Erie. I mean, this was going on." Holland said police were rerouting traffic away from the area and that, on its own, warranted coverage.

"I don't think it would have been in poor judgment to go live, but it was just kind of a blessing that we didn't, especially for the Wells family and for our viewers who that may have been too much for.''

Holland said he still gets the chills when he thinks about that day.

"The weird thing about it was that he was so calm. His words made it seem like he was innocent, but his actions were just so calm. He was yelling to the cops, 'I'm not lying. They put a bomb around me.'''

Wells, according to ABC footage from that day, also asked police to call his boss and warned that the bomb was going to go off.

Said Holland: "If it was you or me, we'd probably be freaking out, and he just sat there, with his hands behind his back in handcuffs and his legs kind of crossed, and just seemed so calm."

"It's so weird,'' he said, pausing. "It's just so weird."