Bomb Kills Pizza Deliveryman After Arrest in Bank Robbery

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

In the beginning it appeared to be a run-of-the-mill bank robbery.

Brian Douglas Wells, 46, a pizza deliveryman, walked into a bank on a busy street in Erie, Pa., on Thursday, slipped the teller a note and walked out with a bag of cash, said Special Agent Bob Rudge, a supervisor in the F.B.I.'s Erie office.

But in a twist that has experienced local and federal investigators perplexed, Mr. Wells had a bomb around his chest that detonated and killed him shortly after he was stopped by the state police and taken into custody.

When he was arrested, investigators said, Mr. Wells claimed that someone had forced him to wear the bomb, set a timer and sent him out to rob the bank.

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who were called in to work on the bank robbery were now helping the local police look into whether Mr. Wells's death was a homicide, Mr. Rudge said.

"There is information that he was forced to don this type of apparatus," Agent Rudge said in a telephone interview yesterday. "That is what we are investigating. Whether or not that is the case we just don't know yet."

The story took another turn yesterday when a friend and co-worker of Mr. Wells's was found dead.

The Associated Press quoted the police as saying that there was no obvious connection between the two deaths. Nevertheless, as a precaution, the authorities sent a bomb squad to search the house where the man's body was found.

Investigators said that the 43-year-old man, identified as Robert Pinetti by The Associated Press, lived in the house with his parents.

The police said they received a call early yesterday asking for medical assistance at the home, but that Mr. Pinetti refused it. A few hours later, the authorities were called to the house again after his parents had found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead.

"There was nothing overtly obvious as to the cause of his death," Cpl. Mark Zaleski of the state police said, "but because there's a relationship between the two individuals, we are over there."

Both Mr. Pinetti and Mr. Wells worked for Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria on Peach Street, a busy commercial strip.

It was about 1:40 p.m. on Thursday when Mr. Wells set out to deliver a pizza to a residence on the same street, Mr. Rudge said. F.B.I. agents said they believed that Mr. Wells did make the delivery. Investigators did not find a pizza in the car.

But what happened after that is unclear.

Officials do know that an hour after leaving for his delivery, Mr. Wells was slipping a note to a teller at the PNC Bank, also on Peach Street.

The note asked for money and said that Mr. Wells was carrying a bomb, investigators said. The teller gave him the money, Mr. Rudge said, and he left.

As Mr. Wells went to his car, witnesses called the state police. There were troopers nearby and they pulled Mr. Wells over before he left Peach Street.

After they took him out of his car and handcuffed him, they learned that the case might be more than a typical bank robbery.

He told them he had a bomb strapped to his chest, that it was about to explode and that someone else had put it there, investigators said.

"It's going to go off," Mr. Wells is heard saying in videotape taken at the scene by a local television station, WJET-TV. "I'm not lying."

Indeed, he was not. As the authorities waited for a bomb disposal team to arrive, the device strapped to Mr. Wells exploded and he was killed in the blast. He was the only casualty.

Agent Rudge said that the state police had ordered Mr. Wells to sit on the pavement near a police car. He said they had cleared an area around him and called in the Erie police bomb squad, but that the bomb went off before they arrived.

It is not unusual for bank robbers to force tellers to hand over money by claiming to be carrying explosives. But bank robbers who actually have explosives are a bit more unusual, and bank robbers who actually die when bombs go off are virtually unheard of, Mr. Rudge said.

"What makes this case different is the robber was killed," Mr. Rudge said.

The state police did not return a call seeking comment.

Someone who answered the telephone at the pizza shop would only say: "You tell me what's going on. What I know I told the F.B.I."

Update: Sure, it's possible that their deaths are coincidental, despite the connection between them, or that they are related, but not in any way connected to the crimes under investigation, (for instance, Man B is despondent over the bizarre death of his friend, Man A, and commits suicide or accidentally ODs because of it), but I'll bet that's not the way the investigation is proceeding, that they're looking for ways in which the deaths are related and will continue to do so until they rule out any connection relevant to the crime. And that's what they should be doing, because it's only common sense to proceed in that manner.

So why, then, make a silly public statement disavowing any connection before they know that's the case? Such pro forma announcements are damaging in that they whittle away, bit by bit, at the public's trust of the responsible authorities. (Although, it's perhaps an open question -- after years of lying, corruption, scandals, the attempted overthrow of a legitimate sitting President over matters of personal behavior not related to his official duties, and the stealing of an election away by use of bully-boy tactics and the Supreme Court of the United States -- if the public has any trust left at this point.)

Update (9/5/03):

Unusual gun found in car of neck bomb victim

Friday, September 05, 2003

By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

ERIE, Pa. -- As they continue to search for the maker of the unusual neck-clamp bomb that killed pizza delivery man Brian Douglas Wells, investigators are also examining an equally unique gun found in Wells' car to determine if it was made by the same person.

The gun-like weapon, which some investigators have likened to a cane that could fire a projectile, was found last week in Wells' car after he was killed by the explosion of a rectangular, metal-sheathed device that had been clamped around his neck.

Investigators said the gun -- like the bomb -- appeared to have been specially made in a machine shop, rather than modified from other objects.

The weapon is so distinctive that investigators considered releasing photographs and details about it yesterday at a news briefing, as they did earlier this week to seek tips from the public about the origin of the neck-clamp bomb. But they abruptly canceled yesterday's briefing, saying they wished to withhold details about the gun while they study how it was made and determine whether its construction resembles that of the metal-collar bomb.

"From an investigative standpoint, we prefer not to go before the public right now," said state police Cpl. Mark Zaleski.