The Pizza Guy, the Bomb, and the Heist: The Final Delivery of Brian Wells

Who Was Brian Wells?

Brian Douglas Wells was, by all accounts, the human equivalent of a reliable clock. Forty-six years old, a pizza delivery man with a decade-long tenure at the same pizzeria, and a guy who didn’t just show up—he always showed up. He never called in sick. He was late exactly once, and that was because one of his cats died—a valid excuse, really, because those cats were pretty much his whole world. He lived alone in a small apartment with three of them, sticking to a routine so predictable you could set your watch by it.

Each day, he’d wake up, grab breakfast at a local café, read the newspaper, and head to work. Then repeat. Day after day. Same breakfast, same paper, same pizza joint. It wasn’t flashy, but it was Brian’s life. Simple. Uncomplicated. Until it wasn’t.

The Bank Robbery That Was Anything But Ordinary

August 28, 2003, began like any other day for Brian Wells. He got up, went to work, and then made a stop at the bank. He walked in with a cane and a white envelope in hand. When his turn came, he slid the envelope across the counter to the teller and stood there, calm and waiting.

The teller read the note, looked up at Brian, and noticed him gesturing toward something under his shirt collar. Whatever it was, it convinced her not to argue. Following the instructions in the note, she emptied her till, handing over everything she had. It wasn’t the $250,000 Brian was asking for—it was just $8,000—but Brian didn’t complain. He nodded, smiled, took a lollipop from the counter, and walked out the door as if it were just another transaction.

It was only after Brian drove off that the teller informed everyone they’d just been robbed. But this wasn’t your average robbery. The cane Brian carried was actually a shotgun disguised to look harmless, and under his collar was something far more alarming: a bomb strapped tightly around his neck. The teller had seen it herself and knew that resisting wasn’t an option.

The $8,000 wasn’t even close to the amount demanded in the note, but Brian left without making a scene, as if the job was done. Of course, if this were a typical bank robbery, that might’ve been the end of it. But nothing about this case was normal. This was only the beginning.

A Deadly Treasure Hunt or a Setup from the Start?

It took police two hours to find Brian Wells, but when they did, things went from strange to downright baffling. Brian didn’t deny robbing the bank. Instead, he showed them the bomb strapped tightly around his neck and calmly explained that he was being forced to do it. According to Brian, he’d been sent on a delivery to an address on Peach Street earlier that day, where three men ambushed him at gunpoint. They strapped the bomb to his neck, handed him a series of instructions, and gave him the worst to-do list ever created.

The rules? Simple—follow the trail of clues exactly, collect pieces of the combination to the bomb’s lock, and eventually, if everything went perfectly, remove the device and live. Of course, failure wasn’t an option. If Brian strayed from the plan? Boom. Took too long? Boom. Called for help, entered the wrong code, or looked at the thing sideways? Boom.

The letters led him all over town on what can only be described as a demented scavenger hunt, each stop either giving him another piece of the combination or further instructions. One of those stops, naturally, was the bank. But by the time police found him sitting on the side of the road, the treasure hunt had hit a dead end. Brian was calm—eerily so—but even the most patient man would have his limits. Eventually, he broke the silence to ask the police a very reasonable question: were they planning to get the bomb off him or just stand around swapping theories?

The police assured him the bomb squad was en route. And it was—just not fast enough. Almost as soon as the words left their mouths, the device started beeping. Seconds later, it detonated, leaving a gruesome scene and Brian dead. The bomb squad showed up, but not in time to save him.

What was left in the aftermath was chaos. While one team of investigators stayed behind to process the scene—a job no one envied—another team picked up the letters and continued the hunt, retracing Brian’s steps. They followed the clues one by one, hoping to piece together the rest of the combination or, at the very least, find answers. Instead, the trail fizzled out.

The deeper they dug, the clearer it became: Brian was never supposed to survive. The instructions seemed designed to buy just enough time for the bomb to do its job. As for that “address” Brian had been sent to earlier? It wasn’t an address at all, just a TV transmission tower. No clues there, no suspects, no nothing.

And just like that, the case went cold. Brian Wells was left as the victim of a robbery, kidnapping, and murder so bizarre it sounded more like a movie script than real life. But for the police, there were no credits rolling—just more questions and no one to answer them.

The Connection Between a Frozen Body and a Bomb Collar

About a month after Brian Wells’ death, the police received a phone call that cracked open the case in the strangest way possible. On the other end of the line was William Rothstein, a high school shop teacher with a guilty conscience and, apparently, no concept of subtlety. Rothstein calmly informed the authorities that he had been involved in a murder. Specifically, he had helped cover up the death of a man named James Roden.

And where was James now? In Rothstein’s freezer.

That’s right—Rothstein had stored Roden’s remains in his basement freezer, and the guilt had been eating him alive. So much so, in fact, that he’d written a suicide note. That note, however, ended up being a strange twist in its own right, as it opened with a very bold disclaimer: “This has nothing to do with the Wells case.”

Naturally, this screamed to investigators: “This absolutely has everything to do with the Wells case.”

The note expressed Rothstein’s remorse over James Roden’s death but was oddly insistent that he felt no such guilt about what happened to Brian Wells. Strange coincidence, right? Then there was the matter of Rothstein’s address: Peach Street—the same location where Brian had allegedly been ambushed and the bomb strapped around his neck.

Suddenly, investigators found themselves with two bodies, one freezer, and a rapidly multiplying number of questions. The most pressing, of course: what was the connection between Rothstein, the body in his basement, and Brian Wells?

Rothstein was quick to explain. He insisted that he hadn’t killed Roden. His only crime, he claimed, was agreeing to help conceal the body—a request from a woman named Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong. Who was she? According to Rothstein, Marjorie was Roden’s murderer. And, as investigators would soon discover, she had a backstory as wild and messy as this case itself.

Mastermind or Pawn? The Jury’s Still Out

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong wasn’t just William Rothstein’s ex-fiancé; she was the kind of ex you don’t stay in touch with unless you enjoy chaos. And chaos was Marjorie’s specialty. Her track record included a long history of mental illness, hoarding tendencies that bordered on legendary, and a curious pattern of men in her life dying under suspicious circumstances.

She once shot and killed a boyfriend, successfully arguing self-defense. That set the tone for her relationships going forward. Her husband and several other men she’d been involved with didn’t fare much better, including James Roden, her most recent partner. But when James ended up dead, Marjorie didn’t just shrug and move on. She turned to her old pal William and asked if she could store James’ body in his freezer—like leftovers you weren’t quite ready to deal with yet.

William agreed, because apparently his boundaries were as fragile as his moral compass. But when Marjorie allegedly suggested he go one step further and grind up James’ remains in an ice crusher, even William had to draw the line. Instead of diving headfirst into that nightmare scenario, he called the police, thus opening the door to a whole lot of questions about James’ death—and whether Marjorie had something to do with Brian Wells, too.

The connection wasn’t immediately obvious. William was a mechanic and an engineer, making him the kind of person who could design a bomb like the one strapped to Brian. But his motive? That was a harder sell. Why risk it all for a bank heist when hiding one body had already pushed him to the brink of a nervous breakdown?

As it turned out, Marjorie was the missing link once again. She needed cash. Not just for the usual bills, but to hire a hitman. Her father, a wealthy man with a rapidly shrinking bank account, was burning through what Marjorie considered her inheritance. She couldn’t afford to wait for nature to take its course, so she enlisted Kenneth Barnes to take care of the problem. Kenneth agreed but made it clear he needed the money upfront.

And that, as they say, was the rub. With no money in hand, Marjorie had to get creative. Investigators believe Kenneth, who knew both Brian Wells and Marjorie, introduced the two. Whether Brian agreed to help or was dragged into it unwillingly remains a mystery, but soon enough, he was wearing a neck bomb—allegedly built by William—and heading into a bank.

Witnesses later placed Brian at both Marjorie’s and William’s houses in the weeks leading up to the robbery. The theory goes that James Roden, Marjorie’s boyfriend, got wind of the plot and realized it was doomed from the start. Maybe he even tried to warn Brian. If so, that sealed his fate. To protect her plan—and, of course, her inheritance—Marjorie allegedly killed James and stashed his body in William’s freezer for safekeeping.

The heist fell apart when Brian was stopped by police, but the co-conspirators were temporarily off the hook thanks to Brian’s death. That fragile safety net unraveled when William cracked and spilled his secrets to investigators. Unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to see the case resolved, dying of cancer before the full story could come to light.

That left Marjorie and Kenneth, the last two players standing. Kenneth took a plea deal, testifying against Marjorie, and both were convicted. William Rothstein and James Roden, both deceased, were posthumously implicated, which left just one name hanging in the air: Brian Wells.

Was Brian a pawn, manipulated into his tragic end, or was he a willing participant who underestimated the people he’d teamed up with? The jury’s still out. Authorities suspect Brian played some role, but with the key witnesses either dead or pointing fingers at each other, the truth may never be fully known.