Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
They Strapped a Bomb To His Neck - The Pizza Bomber story
10 Feb 2025
This is the story Brian Wells, the pizza bomber, as well as Kenneth Barnes, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, and William Rothstein and their plot to rob a bank.
Full Episode
So one day, a pizza delivery man is out delivering pizzas. But when he shows up to the delivery address, there appears to be no one there. It's just an empty field with a TV tower in it. So he gets out of his car, and then suddenly, three people appear. And they've got pew-pews pointed at him. And they grab him, and they lock a collar around his neck. A collar that contains a bomb.
And then they hand him a nine page long handwritten note that tells him they need him to rob a bank for them. And if he doesn't follow these very specific instructions, the bomb will go off and he'll die. So the pizza man, his name's Brian. And poor Brian, he doesn't know what to do. And they suddenly hand him a shotgun that's modified to look like a walking cane.
This is an actual picture of the walking cane shotgun. I guess to help him protect himself while he robs this bank for them. And then they're like, okay, Brian, the clock is ticking. We'll be watching. Minutes later, Brian pulls up to the bank, and with the collar bomb still on him, he walks inside.
And he goes up to the counter, and he slips the bank teller a note that says to put $250,000 in a bag. Now the teller, I guess she can't get $250,000, so she puts around $8,700 into a bag. And she gives it to Brian and Brian leaves. And he gets in his car and the instructions tell him to go to a nearby McDonald's.
So he speeds to the McDonald's to get the next clue, which ends up being a note hidden under a rock there. So Brian gets the note and then he drives away toward the next location to find whatever clue is after that. But that is when police finally catch up to him for the bank robbery. And they get him out of his car and then they handcuff him. And poor Brian's like, wait, but I'm a hostage.
And then he tells them about the three people who put the bomb around his neck and made him do all this. So police, they see the bomb and they immediately call the bomb squad. And Brian, he tries to tell them, like, you don't understand. I don't have time. I need to finish this scavenger hunt or this bomb will go off. And as the bomb ticks away, it gets louder and louder.
And Brian, he gets more and more anxious. And a bit of time passes and the bomb squad hasn't shown up yet. And everyone's just kind of standing around waiting for them. And he feels like no one is listening to him. And then suddenly, kaboom! The bomb explodes and Brian is unalived. Now, because this is such an unusual case, the FBI gets involved.
And pretty quickly, they get contacted by this guy, William. And William tells them, hey, look, I had nothing to do with any collar bomb, but I know who did. And he tells them that the mastermind behind this whole bank robbery is this other woman who lives in that town, this woman, Marjorie. And then William also tells them that Marjorie had unalived her own boyfriend without
poison and then paid William $2,000 to hide the boyfriend's body in his freezer. Well, now we're getting somewhere. So then the FBI finds the boyfriend's body in William's freezer and they go and they arrest Marjorie. Now Marjorie, she claims she's innocent in this whole collar bomb thing, but she ends up taking a plea deal for unaliving her boyfriend and they throw her in prison.
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