review of Jerry Clark & Ed Palattella's "Pizza Bomber - The Untold Story of America's Most Shocking Bank Robbery"

review of

Jerry Clark & Ed Palattella's

"Pizza Bomber - The Untold Story of America's Most Shocking Bank Robbery"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2347. "review of Jerry Clark & Ed Palattella's "Pizza Bomber - The Untold Story of America's Most Shocking Bank Robbery""

- complete review

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- uploded to my Critics websie June 19, 2025

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticCOLLARBOMB.html

review of

Jerry Clark & Ed Palattella's

"Pizza Bomber - The Untold Story of America's Most Shocking Bank Robbery"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 16, 2025

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticCOLLARBOMB.html

the truncated review is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7664729401

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13543210-pizza-bomber

I rarely read 'True Crime' bks. I reckon I just don't like that much. I do get engrossed in them - but not to get my jollies off, I find them consistently tragic. I'm from Baltimore, where I was exposed to more than enuf debased humanity to last multiple lifetimes. I read this b/c I remember hearing about the crime when it happened & didn't ever hear about its solving. Even after reading this, I feel unsettled - as if we'll never know the true story - esp the true story of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong & Bill Rothstein.

One might ask: Exactly what do I mean by "debased humanity"? I mean people who've gotten so deranged that they no longer have much feeling for other people, people who want to hurt other people w/ the same detachment that people generally treat inanimate objects. Usually, this state-of-mind comes about from a more general lack of ethics in their environment coupled w/ excessive drug use - esp crack & speed. Having a megalomaniacal mindset contributes but isn't absolutely necessary.

The crime was committed in 2003 but the bk wasn't copyrighted until 2012 - that's a long time coming. The "AUTHORS' NOTE" begins:

"This account draws from personal observations, contemporaneous notes, interviews, court documents, transcripts and other official records, as well as news media reports, particularly those in the Erie Times-News. The opinions expressed in this book are the authors' alone and not those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." - p -iv

The "Introduction" begins:

"Since the founding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 1908, its agents have infiltrated the Mob, probed corruption and pursued terrorists. But fewer than three hundred of the FBI's investigations have earned Major Case status, which refers to the bureau's most complex and serious probes.

"The first Major Case was the investigation of the Lindbergh kidnapping, on March 1, 1932. Six decades later, the FBI opened a string of some of its most famous Major Cases in recent times, OKBOMB, Major Case 117, covered the investigation of Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, in Oklahoma City, on April 15, 1995." - p 1

Jerry Clark, the coauthor of this bk, was the FBI agent in charge of the COLLARBOMB (Pizza Bomber) investigation. His coauthor, Ed Palattella, was a reporter for the Erie Times-News who covered the case. As such, it's not surprising that the presentation of the FBI wd be a fairly straight-forward presentation of it as the country's main law-enforcement agency out to do capture major criminals for the protection of the citizen. Many people wd beg to differ. 1st off, J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's notorious boss for decades, was a closeted gay man w/ well-known biases that interfered w/ any actual detection work. His orientation was to create a PR image, his reality was that he was very oppressed & oppressive. He's sd to've denied that organized crime even existed. Black Panthers were certainly framed by the FBI - as were Native American political activists. Even the Oklahoma City Bombing has been under scrutiny: the FBI allegedly had infilitrators in Right Wing groups connected to the bombing, they allegedly knew it was going to happen.. & did nothing to stop it. In other words, trusting the FBI isn't exactly something that its record gives confidence for - but nowhere in this bk is the FBI or any of the other law enforcement agencies called into question.

"Before joining the FBI, Clark investigated large-scale drug trafficking as a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, in Cleveland; before that, he had worked as a forensic therapist, a probation officer and a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, the NCIS. Clark had more experience with bank robberies and other violent crimes than any of the six other FBI agents in Erie at the time; his whole FBI career he had been assigned to violent crimes-fugitives, kidnappings, bank robberies. He had a bachelor's degree in forensic psychology. He had wanted to be a psychological profiler, who used clues to develop the protrait of a criminal." - pp 25-26

One of the reasons why I don't like True Crime bks is that, for the most part, they're tragic & I don't like tragedy. The COLLARBOMB case is tragic b/c Brian Wells, a pizza deliverer, was killed after robbing a PNC bank w/ a bomb strapped to his chest. Wells was caught almost immediately after robbing the bank, he told the police that the bomb was going to go off & kill him & that he didn't know how to stop it. The bomb squad didn't get there in time to stop it & Wells had a large hole blown thru his chest. The bomb squad supposedly had traffic problems. Really? If it had been one of their guys who had the bomb strapped to them do you think the bomb squad wd've gotten there in time?! Maybe they're not familiar w/ sirens & flashing lights, they're used for navigating thru traffic. I cd care less about the bank being robbed of a mere $8.000+ - that's trivial in contrast to Wells's death.

"As the police questioned Wells and a television camera rolled, the homemade contraption exploded and tore a fatal wound into his chest." - p 2

Maybe they shd've taken the situation more seriously. Easy for me to say, right? I wasn't there.

The author(s) quote from Wells' high school psych profile.

"The study found Wells suffered from nascent psychological problems. "The . . . record appears to indicate psychpathic tendencies along with paranoid flavor," it said.

"The school psychologist gauged Wells' 'self-projection" by having him draw a person. Wells drew "a make figure that appears to be physically strong and dominant," according to the study. "This large figure appears to indicate slight manic and gradiose signs in this adolescent. It appears to be related somewhat to studies of aggressive psychopaths."

"The study portrayed Wells as an intelligent but troubled and defiant loner with no need for authority. "He claims that he will not please others," the study said, "and he presently sees adults as being too demanding and that he will lead his own life in his own time."" - p 9

I can't say that I'm very impressed by the above psychoanalysis & find it close to useless for knowing who Wells was around the time of his death. It seems to me that having "no need for authority" is a healthy thing & that seeing "adults as being too demanding" was probably equally sensible. Much of the way he's described just seems like a portrait of adolescence. Dropping hints about psychopathia doesn't seem to've been born out in his life.

We come to the robbery:

"Lapinski told him the manager was at lunch and would be back in about a half an hour, or around 3:00 P.M.

""I don't have until 3:00," the man said, "I don't have that kind of time. I need $250,000."

"He lifted the baggy white T-shirt. A graycolored device hung from his neck and rested on his chest. It looked like a bomb.

"Lipinski looked at the man. He still wanted $250,000." - p 17

"Lipinski got more cash from other teller stations. She put the money in a white canvas bank bag and gave it to the robber: $8,702.

""It's not enough," he said.

""What do you want me to do?" Lipinski said.

"She told him it was all the money she had." - pp17-18

"The robber got out. He walked to the McDonald's drive-through sign, which was posted in a flower bed. He got down, lifted a rock that was embedded in the landscaping and grabbed a piece of paper stuck to the bottom of the rock. The robber stood, read the note and lifted his eyes. He looked toward an Eat'n Park restaurant on the other side of Peach Street." - p 19

Erie isn't far from Pittsburgh. PNC banks & Eat'n Parks are quite common. Reading these descriptions makes me feel like it happened in my home turf.

Wells gets caught.

"The robber told Stafford he was wearing a ticking time bomb.

"Stafford shouted a warning. The troopers fell back. Weibel called the Erie police, the only local department with a bomb squad. The call reached the Erie police station, six miles north of the Summit Towne Sentre, at 3:04 P.M." - p 20

"He said a black man locked the bomb around his neck and ordered him to rob the bank.

"Here we go, Dawdy thought. He had heard this story before." - p 21

Somehow, I doubt that Dawdy had heard this exact same story before.

""Holy shit," he thought. "This man is dead."

"It was 3:18 P.M.-ninety-one minutes after Wells left Mamma Mia's, seventy-eight minutes after he left the TV tower site, fifty-one minutes after he walked into the bank, forty minutes after he left the bank, twenty-nine minutes after Trooper Weibel stopped him in the parking lot, fourteen minutes after Weibel called the bomb squad."

[..]

"Clark and the others backed off. Three minutes after the detonation, at 3:21 P.M., the bomb squad pulled up; they had driven as fast as they could through the traffic." - p 28

It took them 17 minutes to get out of the police stn & to drive 6 miles. Let's say it took 5 minutes to get in their vehicle. That leaves 12 minutes to drive 6 miles. That's a mile every 2 minutes. That means an average speed of 30 mph (not counting lights).

"As he reviewed this finding, Jason Wick, the ATF agent, thought the late arrival of the Erie bomb squad had been a blessing. If the bomb techs had arrived before the bomb exploded, they might have moved the wire mesh to get to the gust of the collar bomb. Then not only Wells would have died." - p 106

"No one wanted to cut the bomb off Wells' neck. Vey, using a newly sharpened dissecting scalpel, cut off his head instead." - p 88

The authors (well, presumably, the reporter half of the duo) present some setting-the-scene history about Erie.

"At its best, the city mined its heritage to its benefit. Erie became famous in the War of 1812 as the port where Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry built the ships he used to defeat the British fleet near the present-day Put-in-Bay, Ohio, in the Battle of Lake Erie, on September 10, 1813." - p 32

One of my favorite movies that I've made is called <u>Bent</u>. A minor portion of it was shot at a reenactment of a military camp in Put-in-Bay. Here's a link: https://youtu.be/pq9wSjKJf9E

"Some nights on the South Pier, Diehl-Armstrong would laugh with Barnes about another murder-how, twenty years earlier, she shot and killed another live-in boyfriend on July 30, 1984. She would chuckle how she was acquitted in the case that established her notoreity.

""I shot the motherfucker six times," Diehl-Armstrong would say, "I got away with it."

""How'd you do that?" Barnes would say.

""I told them he was beating me up."" - p 34

Note that that purported dialog is presented as if it's a factual recounting when, in fact, it's a reenactment of an alleged conversation, reenacted by a crack head 20 yrs later. What's the likelihood of its being accurate or even anything other than imaginary?! It's this sort of thing that makes me question this bk. The writing is that of a 'news'paper reporter, the style is such that it's presented as 'reality', the typical 'news' approach - &, yet, the news is often fabricated w/ a manipulative end in mind - even when there's a degree of innocence involved, it's basic to the nature of the 'news' to put forth its stories as 'fact'.

Now, I don't think it's contested that Diehl murdered her live-in boyfriend from 5 to 7 ft away w/ a handgun that she brought into the rm where he was for that purpose. As for the allegations that her boyfriend, a Vietnam Vet w/ PTSD, was actually beating her up? This bk provides no evidence that this was true. It may be the case that Diehl was completely making this up in order to justify her murder of him. Keep in mind that this was 1984, the yr of "The Burning Bed":

"The Burning Bed is a 1984 television drama film starring Farrah Fawcett, Paul Le Mat, and Richard Masur. Based on the 1980 non-fiction novel of the same name by Faith McNulty, it follows battered housewife Francine Hughes and her trial for the murder of her abusive husband, James Berlin "Mickey" Hughes. Hughes set fire to the bed her husband was sleeping in at their Dansville, Michigan home on March 9, 1977, after thirteen years of physical domestic abuse at his hands.

"The film was written by Rose Leiman Goldemberg and directed by Robert Greenwald. It aired on NBC on October 8, 1984. The movie premiered with a household share of 36.2, ranking it the seventeenth highest rated movie to air on network television and NBC's highest rated television movie." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burning_Bed

While Diehl's murder was committed before the Oct 8 broadcast of "The Burning Bed", I'm speculating that her trial was after the broadcast. It seems likely to me that the popularity of the TV program was highly influential on Diehl's being acquitted. Her defense didn't have to based in reality, it only had to appeal to the public mindset of the time. According to the narrative of this bk, this was her 1st murder - there was at least one more to come & the possibility of several more.

A footnote on page 40 adds another mysterious death around this time of another man who'd dated Diehl:

"While Diehl was incarcerated and awaiting trial," [for this 1st murder of Bob Thomas] "another death occurred in the rented house on Sunset Boulevard where she had killed Thomas on July 30, 1984. On April 4, 1985, the owner of the house, E.C., a sixty-five-year-old man whom Diehl-Armstrong once dated, was found hanging from a nylon rope in the house's entranceway. The coroner ruled the death a suicide and reported that E.C. left two suicide notes and was suffering from throat cancer but was also distraught over Thomas having been killed inside the house. A fiend of E.C. told the coroner that E.C. "had been extremely distressed since this murder," according to the coroner's report. "He had been the object of much harassment.""

One cd potentially count this as violent death #2 that Diehl was at least patially responsible for.

"The first criminal case against Diehl resulted from her work for an abortion clinic. The Erie police charged her in a sting in April 1980. The police accused her of telling an undercover female Erie police officer that the officer was pregnant, based on the results of her urine sample. The police said Diehl recommended the officer pay at least $150 for an abortion at a clinic in Buffalo. The urine sample was that of a male police officer. The police charged Diehl with conspiracy and attempted theft by deception.

"Without pleading guilty, Diehl entered a program for first-time, nonviolent offenders. She got two years of probation, which included sixty hours of community service." - p 38

While my overall tendency is to believe that Diehl-Armstrong was a murderous & highly manipulative person, I keep questioning the narrative that's presented about her. Sting operations aren't to be trusted, they're entrapment - that doesn't mean that the above story isn't true, it just makes me wonder what the defense's version of the story was & if it differed significantly from the prosecution's.

This bk depicts the younger Diehl as attractive, charming, & sexual. As such, maybe it's no wonder that even after murdering her boyfriend she managed to get married 7 yrs later.

"Marjorie Diehl became Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong in 1991. Her first and only marriage ended in death. Her husband, Richard Armstrong, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had such a fear of germs and bacteria that he drank bleach with meals. Diehl accused him in April 1990 of threatening to kill her, mutilate her and burn down her house. He entered into a plea bargain and was sentenced to a month in prison in early January 1991. Richard Armstrong married Marjorie Diehl while he was on parole, on January 23, 1991.

[Uh, there are so many red flags w/ the above that it's practically record-breaking! She gets him put in jail for threats of violence against her & then marries him while he's still on parole after he gets out! Surely, that's a sign that violence turns her on.]

"Armstrong died twenty months later. Paramedics arrived at Diehl-Armstrong's new house, at 1867 East Seventh Street, in Erie, and found him sitting on the floor, having vomited, and resting against a couch, unable to walk. He said he had been suffering from headaches for two days, had become increasingly dizzy and fell that afternoon and struck his head on a table. He sadi, according to Diehl-Armstron, that it felt as if something had busted in his head or a hammer had hit him. The damage left him with a brain hemorrhage. Armstrong fell into a coma at the hospital, was declared brain dead and died on August 24, 1992. He was forty years old." - p 45

Um, does that seem suspicious to anyone? The author(s) of this bk are careful to not accuse Diehl-Armstrong of a 2nd murder here but I don't think a suspicion of such is uncalled-for.

Much of the bk is spent on diagnosises of Diehl as manic-depressive &/or otherwise mentally ill. This, of course, is used to explain her homicidal & other behaviors.

"["]some of the greatest artists and writers who ever lived were bipolar."

"Diehl-Armstrong considered herself a part of this illustrious group-the rarified ensemble of the socially and artistically brilliant and praised-rather than a member of a certain class of murderers.

""I am not," she once said, "one of these people that goes around like Ted Bundy and does these horrible things."" - p 48

& it's this aspect of Diehl that's so unsettling to me in the sense that while I believe she's guilty of "horrible things" I'm not really sure of what truly went on in her mind. She's depicted in this bk as having talent as a child - but as an adult, she's mainly depicted as living in deranged squalor. Did she ever play concerts as an adult? Did she ever publicly display talent of any kind? Was her private life full of creativity? These questions aren't answered in this bk. One friend of mine who's a prison activist says: "People aren't the worst thing they've ever done." That doesn't mean that people such as Diehl shd be excused for murder, it does mean that if we really want to understand her it wd help to know what her life was like when she wasn't murdering people.

I've had 2 ex-girlfriends who asked me to murder men in their lives, one a fiancé, another a husband. I declined in both cases. Even tho I agreed that both men were disgusting there was no way I was going to murder them (or anyone else). The point being that I've known women who considered murder as an option. BUT, I also knew what they were like the rest of time, I knew them during the times when they were lovable. We don't get much of that about Diehl(-Armstrong) - although I imagine there was plenty there. Lest you misunderstand, my sympathy is w/ her victims - but that doesn't mean I feel the need to totally reduce her to a monster. On to her next boyfriend/victim:

"He cut her thigh by pushing her into a broken glass panle of a stove door in July 1994. He pleaded guilty to simple assault and got three months to a year in the county prison. He got another six months later in 1994 after police charged him with violating a restraining order Diehl-Armstrong had taken out against him. Roden threatened "to kill me" and also to burn down the house, Diehl-Armstrong wrote in the complaint. A year later, in July 1995, Roden got another six months in prison for violating another restraining order. Roden, Diehl-Armstrong said, "threatened to burn down the house with me in it."" - p 51

I find it hard to believe that Diehl is an 'innocent victim' on a trail of bad luck. The same woman who asked me to kill her husband had opted to be involved w/ a wd-be gangster type who wd rape her at knife-point. She got a restraining order against him. Then she picked the guy who became her husband. They separated & he kept doing things like acting as if he was going to run her over w/ his pick-up truck. She got a restraining order against him. In the midst of all this he got another woman pregnant & SHE got a restraining order against him too. Two restraining orders at once. He was, apparently, a crackhead. This woman was very nice, she & I got along fine - so what was up w/ her choice of these other 2 guys? I think her sexuality was made most intense by brtual behavior from men - I wdn't exactly call her a masochist, it was something more confused than that. The point is that she was a willing partner in all this brutality but she was unable to recognize that in herself. If Diehl really was being abused by these men why did she keep getting involved w/ them if not for some sort of sexual turn-on? After this violent beginning w/ Roden she ended up living w/ him for 10 yrs.

Diehl-Armstrong was supposedly NOT an illegal drug abuser, if she had been some of her behavior might've 'made sense'. INSTEAD, she was on psychiatric drugs. So what about placing some blame on them?

By May 2003, Diehl-Armstrong was prescribed a cocktail of mood-stabilizing drugs. They included Buspar; Klonpin; Stelazine, used to treat schizophrenia; and Wellbutrin, an antidepressant. Her final treatment, outside of a prison setting, occurred on May 21, 2003. She struggled to focus her thoughts, and she "kept talking, not making any sense," according to the treatment notes. The psychiatrist advised Diehl-Armstrong to keep taking all her medication. She did not.

"She stopped taking them nine days later, after her house was burglarized, on May 30. Diehl-Armstrong said the drugs made her sick and slowed her down so much that she couldn't react quickly enough to defend herself against the robbers." - p 54

Diehl-Armstrong's reason for stopping the drugs seems reasonable to me. Later, she buys a shotgun from a private individual, that seems like a sign of premeditation qualifying her for what seems to be 1st degree murder.

"She walked into Roden's bedroom. She held the Remington shotgun with the nice stock made of American walnut. She stood five to seven feet behind the bed.

"Roden was facedown, resting. He might have been asleep.

"She fired twice." - p 57

[..]

"Diehl-Armstrong finally reached Rothstein at his house and said Roden was dead and she needed his help. She pulled out $78,000 in cash and offered it to Rothstein to get rid of Roden's body. He accepted. They went to work." - pp 57-58

Rothstein bought a freezer & he & Diehl-Armstrong put Roden's fetally-positioned body into the freezer & left it there in Rothstein's garage. What's wrong w/ this picture?! 1st, being Diehl-Armstrong's boyfriend or husband really was not to be recommended, instead of being Bluebeard she was Bluebeaver. 2nd, when she's caught she uses as a partial excuse that Roden didn't help her solve a robbery from her house to the degree that she wanted. She accuses a guy named Ken Barnes of pulling the robbery, she still hangs out w/ him anyway - this, beside trying to have him arrested for the burglary. The robbery was for a large amt of cash but she still has enuf to give Rothstein $78,000! She apparently had money to spare. Then Rothstein's brilliant (NOT) plan for disposing of the body is to keep it in a freezer in his garage whre it freezes stiff?!

Ok, Rothstein was in love w/ Diehl-Armstrong & had been engaged to her for a long time before she rejected him. Rothstein wants to help the woman he loves & doesn't give a shit about Roden b/c he was jealous of him & hated him. But putting Roden in a freezer?! That hardly seems like getting rid of the body. & didn't anyone notice Roden wasn't around anymore?!

I mean, WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE & how did they get to be this way?! Ok, I'm from Baltimore, there were plenty of conscience-disabled people around. My best friend as a kid only had sex w/ prostitutes. There was one in particular who had a pimp give her a gun he'd used to shoot another pimp. Basically, he was implicating her in connection w/ his crime. She kept the gun at her mom's house where her sister-in-law used it to shoot her husband b/c he was fucking the mom. The prostitute went to prison for murdering her pimp, ostensibly b/c he was burning her w/ cigarettes, her sentence wasn't that long. I cd go on & on.

Diehl-Armstrong & Rothstein were sd to be very 'smart'. To me, his is the socipathic 'smartness of capitalism. I'm reminded of when I was working at a museum w/ my foreman, who was someone I liked: he told me a story, I forget what it was, about someone who ruthlessly fucked-over his fellow employees to get a better position & better wages. The foreman was impressed by how 'smart' that was. I was shocked! Here was a generally nice guy who was praising someone who had no scruples at all! He was accepting the viciousness of capitalism. I'm further reminded of the ENRON adminsitrators: weren't they called "the smartest guys in the room"? Sure, they made tons of money until it was discovered that they'd robbed all their employees of the retirement money + whatever other crimes they'd pulled. They, too, were 'smart' in the sense of 'winning'-at-the-expense-of-everyone-else. Wdn't 'smart' be to satisfy one's goals W/O victimizing anyone?!

I was raised religiously, wch means that I was at least somewhat instilled w/ things like "Thou Shalt Not Kill", but it didn't take long for me to realize that I didn't believe in God, that I didn't believe Jesus was an actual historical figure. I also noted the almost total hypocrisy in the Christian environment around me. Christians were generally very dumb as a result of their religious beliefs. However, I didn't need the religion I rejected to still think that not killing people was a good idea. I've never killed anyone & hope to never do so unless under extreme duress of self-defense or defense of a loved one. The point is: why do I have these values of concern for other people while other people seem to have no such concerns at all?! It's certainly NOT b/c I have such a deep love for humaity, I find many humans to be extraordinarily depressing & repuslive. Still, I'm not w/o feelings for them. If I were to kill someone I'd probably be haunted by it in my dreams for the rest of my life. & as for being bipolar as an excuse for Diehl's viciousness? I'm one of the most extreme manic-depressives I've ever known but I've never acted w/ Diehl's callousness, as such I don't accept the excuse - I DO, however, wonder about what her cocktails of pills did to her.

Therefore, my question is: don't these people have any friends who say things like: 'Don't kill yr pimp, just move to a different state & stop being a prostitute.' - in other words, friends w/ some sense & a conscience whoadvise them w/ their best interest at heart?! Apparently not, apparently these people reinforce each other's craziness - the way Rothstein reinforced Diehl-Armstrong's by taking the body off her hands.

"Rothstein had experience disposing of a murder weapon. On February 2, 1977, a friend, Louis Allessie, told him he had just killed someone in Erie. Rothstein testified that he unsuccessfully tried to burn the murder weapon, a .25 caliber pistol. He said he put it in a plastic bag and threw it in the trash.

"Rothstein did not tell anyone about the pistol for two years. When he did, he testified for the prosecution in 1979. He helped convict Allessie of shooting the boyfriend of Allessie's former girlfriend in the head. Allessie got five to ten years in state prison." - pp 60-61

& the dead just accumulate.

"The dead man, Suschek was told, was Robert Pinetti, who had worked with Brian Wells at Mama Mia's." - p 79

& here he is, Brian Wells's friend, dead of an OD 3 days after Wells died from the bomb.

"Pinetti's mother told investigators her son suffered from alcoholism and depression; she said the death of Wells, his friend, had left him despondent." - p 80

[..]

"Pinetti appeared to have died of a drug overdose. He had a drug problem; a local hospital had treated him for an overdose that spring." - pp 80-81

"The FBI had interviewed Pinetti on Saturday, August 30, two days after Wells was killed. Pinetti was at Mama Mia's. He was nervous and vague and kept saying he couldn't talk to the agents because he had stuff to do. The agents said they would get back to him. After the agents left, Pinettit said he could not understand why the FBI wanted to talk to him. The agents never talked to Pinetti again." - p 83

Later in this bk, Pinetti becomes implicated.

"Robert Pinetti was involved in the plot, Stockton said. He said his job was to persuade Wells to cooperate. Barnes was paying Pinetti with drugs, Stockton said. He said Pinetti panicked after Wells was killed and that Barnes gave Pinetti the drugs-the methadone mixed with alprazolam in the Xanax-that killed Pinetti. The deadly misture had a name, Stockton said. It was called a "hot-shot." He said Rothstein called it "super dope."" - p 297

A "hot shot", as I understand it, is any fatal drug that can be used to appear to be a non-fatal one - hence tricking the user into injecting it. It's not just the name for this particular concoction. SO, Pinetti either committed suicide b/c of a bad conscience over convincing his friend, Brian, into going to his death OR Pinetti was give a hot shot to stop him from talking about the people behind the COLLARBOMBING.

"Brian Wells had been killed in a plot likely developed over months with the type of precision usually reserved for criminal masterminds on the order of the Unabomber." - p 99

Was FC really a "criminal mastermind"? There're currents of normal propaganda running thru this bk that probably shdn't go unchallenged. Ted Kaczynski was an intellectually precocious child who went to Harvard young where he was psychologically abused by a sadistic professor. He went on to develop an anarchistic philosophy that foresaw the computer age as one of greater control & surveillance. He sent out bombs to people he saw as progenitors of this oppression. I sympathise w/ the people who were bombed & wd prefer that they hadn't been so victimized. I also see Kaczynski as a victim fighting back. I don't see him as a "criminal mastermind", such language demonizes him w/o acknowledging his better sides.

A little backstory:

"Rothstein expanded his social circle to form his own groups. He was a founding member of what he called the Tall Club, a gathering of men and women who were at least six feet two inches tall (Rothstein's height; he set the standard) and who got together regularly to eat lunch and solve the world's problems. Rothstein led another group: the Fractured Intellectuals. He and five or six friends (Diehl-Armstrong was not among them) met at 6:00 P.M. on Friday nights at an Erie pizza parlor (not Mama Mia's) to eat pizza and other Italian food (Rothstein was a vegetarian who subsisted mainly on tofu, vegetarian pizza and Dr. Pepper) and dissect the news. No one understood the Fractured Intellectuals except themselves. Rothstein held court as the most brilliant jester of them all." - p 114

Both the Tall Club & the Fractured Intellectuals show an absurdist sense of humor, I like them for that. I never knew any of the people involved in this horrible mess so I don't have personal opinions about them. Maybe Rothstein was as arrogant & conceited as the author(s) say he was. If I got the story straight, Rothstein was living on family money. I lived, fortunately briefly, w/ a guy who lived on family money who was very arrogant & perceived himself as a great genius, he, too, "held court". I found him insufferable. Still, despite his pretenses at greatness, he had little or no imagination & certainly wdn't've been able to come up w/ something as absurd as the Fractured Intellectuals (evocative of "Fractured Fairytales" perhaps?).

Anyway, both Rothstein & Diehl-Armstrong are reputed to've been very brilliant but what, if anything, did they ever actually accomplish other than make life hell for other people? Did they ever actually MAKE anything? Write a bk, e.g.? If they did, it's not mentioned in this bk.

"Diehl-Armstrong believed that money would be their legacy one day.

"In the summer of 2003, she was again livid at her father, this time because he was giving away his money" $100,000 to one neighbor, $50,000 to another, $100,000 to another, $1,000 to the mail carrier. His friends and neighbors had been good to him a long time." - p 119

I can understand Diehl-Armstrong being distraught over seeing money she was hoping wd be hers being given away but, still, what we're ultimately talking about here is greed. What was Rothstein's excuse?

"Mental illness undoubtedly complicated Diehl-Armstrong's relationship with her father and with money, and mental illness surely stunted her career path. Rothstein suffered from no known mental illness. His outsize ego, his narcissism, made dealing with him difficult and made his keeping a full-time, nine-to-five, work-for-a-boss job more difficult still. It would not be until 1991 that Rothstein would earn a college degree, a bachelors in education from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, in southern Erie County. The degree allowed him to obtain his teaching certificate as an instructor in middle school and high school science." - p 120

Later, when Rothstein's under investigation in connection w/ the COLLARBOMBING he's given a polygraph test.

"Investigators had found literature in his house that explained how to outsmart lie detection machines. First Stockton passed, and then his pal Rothstein, for Clark, the twin success was not a coincidence." - p 156

Rothstein had informed the police of Roden's body being in his garage freezer, thusly establishing himslf as a cooperative witness & putting the heat on Diehl-Armstrong. At this point, neither of them are under arrest for the bank robbery & the murder of Wells.

"On March 22, 2004, the Erie County judge presiding over the Roden case ordered Diehl-Armstrong to undergo a six-month psychiatric review at Mayview State Hospital near Pittsburgh, where she had been sent during the Bob Thomas case. The defense requested the exam, which would determine whether Diehl-Armstrong was mentally competent to stand trial in the Roden case." - p 186

"In 1983, infuriated by the acquittal a year earlier of John Hinckley Jr., statehouses across the United States, including in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, established a new verdict in criminal cases: guilty but mentally ill." - p 189

Hinckley, the attempted assassin of President Reagan, was found not guilty by reason of insanity & incarcerated in St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington DC, the same hospital that the poet Ezra Pound had been confined in decades earlier in order to avoid a verdict of treason against him for supporting the Italian Fascists during WWII.

In James W. Clarke's "American Assassins - The Darker Side of Politics" I got the impression that insanity was a preferable verdict for political assassins b/c it set the standard that no sane person wd attempt to assassinate a politician, esp a president.

Much of the 'evidence' used against the various culprits when they eventually came to trial was just testimony provided by the people implicated. One of the suspects, Floyd Stockton, managed to manouever himself into total immunity. Diehl-Armstrong had this to say:

"Rothstein and Floyd Stockton were lovers, she said, who used to work on cars in the garage of Rothstein's friend, D.M., whom Rothstein had mailed $10,220 at the time Rothstein said he was contemplating suicide in September 2003. Diehl-Armstrong said Rothstein knew Wells, and that Rothstein talked Wells into wearing the bomb and robbing the bank. Wells, she said, was "a flunky pizza delivery driver"" - pp 202-203

"The U.S. Attorney's Office can bestow two forms of immunity on a witness. Transactional immunity, also know as full or blanket immunity, provides a witness complete protection from getting indicted, as lon as that person provides truthful testimony. Use immunity, also known as letter immunity or informal immunity, provides much more limited protection to a witness and does not preclude prosecution." - p 291

"She talked at length about Rothstein, how he read books by 1960s activist Abbie Hoffman, subscribed to Soldier of Fortune magazine and kept The Anarchist Cookbook around his house." - p 204

This is another one of those things that possibly few people other than myself wd notice or be bothered by: "1960s activist Abbie Hoffman" - confining Hoffman's activism to the "1960s" is a way of reducing it to a trend of a decade - & thus minimizing its importance. Hoffman was an activist until at least his confinement in prison for coke dealing, perhaps all the way up to his alleged suicide in 1989. Mention of The Anarchist Cookbook also seems like an attempt to stereotype. Many anarchists suspect The Anarchist Cookbook as something not to be trusted. Did Rothstein also read Jane Austen? If he had, it wdn't've seem noteworthy b/c it didn't carry implications of violent overthrow. Even tho it's never explicitly stated, it seems to me that there's a subtle undercurrent of Diehl & Rothstein implied to be being inflenced by Leftism - her working for an abortion clinic, his reading revolutionary bks.

"The Roden case had ended with Diehl-Armstrong's plea of guilty but mentally ill and her sentence of seven to twenty years." - p 223

Another light sentence - even tho this is the 2nd murder that she's committed that the court knows about, w/ at least 2 more suspicious deaths independent of the COLLARBOMB case, she gets the possibility of getting out in 7 yrs. Amazing, given that Pennsylvania is a state w/ Life without Parole sentencing. If she'd been black wd she have been treated this way?!

I've hardly mentioned Barnes so far. He was another of the prime movers in this case.

"Barnes knew Hoopsick. They had met three years earlier through a mutual friend, a drug dealer. She regularly rented a room from Barnes at 617 Perry Street for $20 and used it to have sex with Wells, in exchange for money and crack, which Wells would get for her. Barnes also paid for sex with Hoopsick. Barnes knew Wells through Hoopsick. Barnes thought Wells looked mentally disabled." - p 254

Some of the testimony against Diehl-Armstrong eventually used in connection w/ the COLLARBOMB case was from fellow prisoners while she was in for the Roden murder. One of them was named Brininger.

"Diehl-Armstrong, Brininger said, was reading a book called The History of Murder, an enyclopedia of slaying through the ages, and was trying to get another book, called The Temptress, a pulp romance about an heiress who fends off two men who kidnap her. Diehl-Armstrong no longer referred to herself as the "Freezer Queen," Brininger said. She called herself the "Black Widow."" - p 270

That seems appropriate.

What seems strange to me is how much the COLLARBOMB case was built on testimony from people generally presented as liars: the people directly involved who initially pretend to have no idea what the investigators are talking about & who claim to not know Wells, etc; then there's testimony from people quoting Diehl-Armstrong while she's in prison for murdering Roden - not only are these 'witnesses' jockeying to early release but, at best, they're quoting a woman who's consistently been deranged & whose word about anything is questionable. THEN:

[Clark] "and Wick had closed FBI Major Case 203 with what they were certain was unassailable evidence." - p 320

"Unassailable"?! Testimony from self-serving liars?! Well, Diehl-Armstrong wasn't having it. She told Palattella over the phone:

""I am 100 percent innocent," she said. "I am trying to get extricated from this maze. I am trying to see daylight."" - p 322

She was also hoping to get out of prison early from the Rodens case w/o facing further prosecution for the Wells case.

"Diehl-Armstrong called Palattella again the next day, and the day after that ans the day after that. Starting on November 7, 2007, Diehl-Armstrong, with few exceptions, such as when she was in transit between prisons, called Palattella collect at least once a day, every weekday, for three years straight. She sometimes called three or four times a day, often phoning seconds after she had hung up, apparently having bullied every other inmate" - p 333

Diehl-Armstrong is appointed a Public Defender. Palattella considers him to be one of the best.

"Patton, who was thirty-nine years old in 2007, was originally from Illinois and had made his career as an assistant federal public defender. he knew the intricacies of federal law and was committed to his clients with an intensity that Palattella admired."

[..]

"Diehl-Armstrong wanted Patton fired.

"Her request was nothing new. She had berated the attorneys in her previous cases, including Leonard Ambrose, considered the best defense lawyer in northwestern Pennsylvania, whom her parents had hired to represent her in the Bob Thomas homicide case. Diehl-Armstrong, in general, detested public defenders-"public pretenders," she called them" - p 336

It seems that Diehl-Armstrong wd have bad experiences w/ something, PNC Bank & Public Defenders being two instances, & wd develop an over-generalizing grudge. That's not a completely unreasonable thing to do. A person poor enuf to require a public defender at trial is more or less at the mercy of whomever they get. Given that the quality of that person's defense will be a major part determining whether they go to jail or not it's important to the defendant that they trust & respect the defender.

Barnes testifies against Diehl-Armstrong. He's hardly a person whose integrity is to be believed in - he's a crackhead & a crack dealer who rents out a rm in his house for a prostitute to turn tricks. Diehl-Armstrong comments on him.

""I am not cut from the same cloth as Ken Barnes," she said. "I am higher on the food chain. I am going to be telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth."" - p 354

Diehl-Armstrong isn't to be believed either. She's been blatantly responsible for the death of 2 men close to her & suspiciously close to the deaths of 2 more - w/ an additional 2 on the way. A problem is that it's not only Diehl-Armstrong who's dishonest &/or inaccurate.

""I noted her to do three things," Powers testified. "She watched televsion a lot, she slept and she went down to the cafeteria to eat.""

"Diehl-Armstrong shouted from the defense table.

""How could I when I was on unit restriction all that time!" she said. "I couldn't go down to the cafeteria to eat. That's a lie right there!"" - pp 356-357

"Diehl-Armstrong had been correct about not eating in the cafeteria; Powers later acknowledged that she herself had been wrong, that the staff at FMC Carswell had indeed restricted Diehl-Armstrong so she could not eat there." - p 358

SO, if the witness had been wrong about something as simple as that the implication to me is that she cd've been wrong about anything else she sd. Leslie Powers, according to this bk, was a "forensic psychologist for the Federal Bureau of Prisons" (p 356) & the prosecution's "main witness this time around" (p 356). It seems to me that her testimony shd've been stricken from the record as unreliable.

In the meantime, Diehl-Armstrong is found to have cancer. Bill Rothstein has already died of cancer w/o ever making it to trial for the COLLARBOMB.

"Her cancer would not change her defense. She said she would never admit to being part of the Wells plot.

""I'm telling you that if I died today, I would never confess that. I am not going to say I did something that I didn't do. This case is killing me."" - p 365

"Clark wondered how many people were going to die in the pizza bomber case, which by now seemed cursed. At this rate, the cancer would claim Diehl-Armstrong. The only people still alive would be Barnes, who was in prison and in poor health, and Stockton, who was in poor health from his heart problems and had immunity." - p 365

"Ken Barnes once said Diehl-Armstrong, when soliciting him to kill her father, told him her father was worth $12 million and that she was due to inherit all of it. In actuality, Harold Diehl, upon the death of his wife, Agnes Diehl, in 2000, was worth about $1.8 million, primarily in municipal bonds. And in actuality, Harold Diehl willed only $2,000 of that to his daughter." - p 366

Barnes claimed that he agreed to murder Diehl-Armstrong's father for $250,000, $100,000 payable in advance. He claimed he no intention of killing Harold Diehl & that he was going to take the $100,000 & run. The theory surrounding this whole mess is that Diehl-Armstrong masterminded the bank robbery partially as revenge against PNC bank b/c they let her father access his wife's safe deposit box after she died & partially so she cd get the money to pay Barnes. The whole thing seems so demented to me that it's hard to believe that the conspirators believed in it.

"She had a chance to avoid a trial. Piccinini in 2009 and into 2010 offered her a deal: plead guilty in the Wells case, and the U.S. Attorney's Office would ask for a sentence of no more than tweny-five years. Diehl-Armstrong would serve that sentence concurrently, or at the same time that she served her sentence of seven to twenty years for Roden's murder. Once Diehl-Armstrong finished the twenty years, she would have to serve only five years in te Wells case. Five years for a bank robbery in which the robber died when a bomb locked to his neck exploded! It was a good deal." - p 370

TWO MURDERS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!!

"Diehl-Armstrong rejected the plea deal. She said she was innocent. She was concerned she would never get paroled in the Roden case if she pleaded guilty in the Wells case." - p 371

Hhmm.. she's already known to've killed 2 men.. & there shd be concern about her connection to 2 other suspicious deaths.. & she's finagling for early release.

"Diehl-Armstrong told Palattella she would never accept the plea offer from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

""I'll tell them not only to wipe their ass with it," she said, "but to shove it up their ass."" - p 372

Why is it that someone who's already murdered at least 2 people isn't very convincing in her protestations of innocence?!

It goes to trial 7 yrs after the robbery/murder.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office had blown up photographs of the five faces to movie-poster-size and placed the portraits on easels. At the base of the easels for Diehl-Armstrong, Rothstein and Barnes rsted blown-up photos of their respective junk-ridden houses." - pp 373-374

More despicable manipulations: the prosecution is trying to prejudice the jury against the accused by showing them as hoarders. Hoarding isn't against the law, it may be, in their cases, indicative of a level of dysfunctionality - but not of criminality - still, the prosecution knew that the jury wd be biased by this. Hoarding had been a popular TV subject in the early 2010s - shortly before the trial. Just as Diehl-Armstrong had used the "Burning Bed" to influence the jury in her favor after she murdered Bob Thomas, so were the prosecution using "Hoarding".

Diehl-Armstrong has claimed that she'd had a large amt of cash stolen in a burglary committed by Barnes & unsuccessfully tried to have him prosecuted for it. Nonetheless, she continued to associate w/ Barnes. Diehl-Armstrong claimed that she was angry w/ Roden for not helping her solve the burglary that she claimed Barnes committed.

"Barnes said he did not break into the house. He said he told two of his friends that Diehl-Armstrong had plenty of cash and would be a good target; he said he cased her house with her friends. But he said those friends burglarized her house themselves, without telling him about the heist beforehand. For Diehl-Armstrong, who had derided the police and the district attorney for not filing charges over the burglary and robbey, Barnes' testimony vindicated her in this one instance: she had indeed been burglarized and robbed, her privacy violated, just as she had told the police. She had not been lying. She was not crazy." - p 383

Was her money then recovered for her? If the police followed up this testimony to right this particular wrong there's no mention of it in the bk.

"Clark encapsulated Diehl-Armstrong's position: that she was only at certain places on August 28,2003," [the date of the COLLARBOMB robbery & murder] "because Rothstein directed her to be there, and that Rothstein framed her in the Wells case because she refused to marry him." - p 387

Diehl-Armstrong's believability is close to zero by this point but that doesn't mean that the above isn't possible - esp the part where "Rothstein framed her in the Wells case because she refused to marry him". Of course, one wonders why anyone wd want to marry someone whose long-term live-in relationships died violent deaths, at least 2 of wch were at her hands.

"D'Ambrosio" [Diehl-Armstrong's long-time lawyer friend & adviser] "testified that Diehl-Armstrong signed a movie deal with a California production firm, SilverCreek Entertainment, on July 17, 2007-eight days after the grand jury indicted Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes." - p 394

?!?!?! Welcome to the capitalism capitol! What a stroke of capitalist 'genius' on Diehl-Armstrong's part! To kill multiple people & to then try to make money off the crimes (or off her feeble claims to innocence) w/ a movie deal! Will it never stop?! Judging by a cursory online search, SilverCreek Entertainment didn't make the movie. Netflix made a miniseries called "Evil Genius" produced by Duplass Brothers Productions & acomedy called "30 Minutes or Less" was produced by Stuart Cornfeld, Ben Stiller, & Jeremy Kramer. I checked out the latter, I was worried it wd be grossly insensitive to the real events but I found it to be funny in a way that gave the whole mess a happy ending (of sorts). The pizza deliverer in the movie is depicted as young & happy-go-lucky & he gets out of the bomb in time.

At her trial, Diehl-Armstrong make sthe following claim.

""My father was an abusive alcoholic and my mother protected me from him," Diehl-Armstrong said.

""In what ways?"

""He was sexually molesting me as a child and as an adolescent. he evn tried when I lived there until I was twenty-one. My mother always tried to be a buffer and protect me. She was a good woman.""

[..]

"Diehl-Armstrong's allegation of child abuse surprised Jerry Clark, who had no reason to believe the claim. In all his interviews with Diehl-Armstrong, she had never said she was molested as a child. None of the thirty years of psychiatric reports that Clark had reviewed quoted Diehl-Armstrong as saying her father sexually abused her." - p 398

One wonders if Diehl-Armstrong concocted that tale after hearing molestation stories from her fellow prisoners. I've had all-too-many friends who claim to've been molested as children who've then grown to be adults w/ alcoholism &/or heroin addiciton problems &/or other mental difficulties. Such an outcome of children manipulated into sex w/ adults is all-too-believable for me. But where does reality end & fantasy begin w/ Diehl-Armstrong? She seems impossible to trust.

"Piccinini stipulated that Diehl-Armstrong's eyesight was 20/200 in each eye. A measurment of 20/200 is considered nearly legally blind. Diehl-Armstrong persisted in her claim that she might not have seen anyone in the car with her if she had been on I-79." - p 413

& yet she was still driving?! This was another aspect of her trying to get out of people's testimony against her on the day of the robbery/bombing. At one point, she was accused of driving on the wrong side of the road. That might fit w/ her poor eyesight.

"Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong would appeal her conviction and sentence. She would proclim her innocence to anyone who would listen. Those people would include Ed Palattella, who would still regularly take her calls at the Erie Times-News." - p 430

This was one of the craziest things I've ever read about. Let's recap: 6 men potentially connected to Diehl-Armstrong died violent suspicious deaths: Bob Thomas (1984, her boyfriend), E.C. (1985, her landlord at the place of Thomas's murder), Richard Armstrong (1992, her husband), Jim Roden (2003, her boyfriend), Brian Wells (2003, bank robber presumably used as a pawn), Robert Pinetti (2003, Brian Wells's friend & fellow pizza deliverer). Despite Diehl-Armstrong's having been caught for 2 of the murders she still proclaims innocence in connection w/ Wells's death & is never directly connected to the other 3. While I don't feel like the full truth of this case is revealed in this bk I attribute that to the general dishonesty & deviousness of the main perpetrators. I reckon Palattella & Clark did a far better job than wd be likely to expect - but I'm still not convinced.

Diehl-Armstrong died from breast cancer in prison on Spril 4, 2017. Kenneth Barnes died in prison from diabetes on June 20, 2019. William Rothstein died a 'free man' of cancer on July 30, 2004, long before the COLLARBOMB trial began. Floyd Stockton Jr died a 'free'man on August 10, 2022. He was so successfully manipulative that he managed full immunity for himself by testifying that Diehl-Armstrong was the mastermind of the robbery/murder.

p.s. The more I think about Diehl-Armstrong the more I wonder whether she had some sort of beyond-the-pale hormonal flux. Of the 40+ women I've been lovers w/, 13 of whom I lived w/, many or most of them were subject to PMS. That meant that one wk out of every mnth I was attacked mercilessly in ways clearly designed to make my life miserable &/or to provoke a physical fight. Of all those women, I only recall ONE of them ever admitting to PMS making her irrationally vicious. Most other women seemed to be in denial of it.

Now, most of my ex-girlfriends are menopausal. One of them was prone to talking more or less constantly, as Diehl-Armstrong is sd to've done, but now that she's menopausal she tends to SHOUT constantly (at least in conversation). She attributes this change to menopause & finds it very unpleasant but, apparently, doesn't feel like she has much control over it. Someone not knowing her wd probably want to get away from her quickly. I have to wonder whether such hormonal extremities might've been more important in Diehl-Armstrong's case than her being bi-polar & if it went undiagnosed b/c drs are afraid of seeming to be attacking women in general.

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