Diehl-Armstrong

ERIE — Barring appeals, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong will spend the rest of her life in federal prison for her conviction in a disjointed and deadly plot that killed a pizza delivery driver who was forced to rob a bank wearing a metal bomb collar that later exploded.

The driver, Brian Wells, of Erie, was 46 when one of two pipe bombs connected to egg timers exploded at the base of his neck — an FBI bomb expert said the other pipe bomb malfunctioned and was thrust away from Wells' body by the blast on Aug. 28, 2003. Wells' grisly fate can still be viewed on bootleg news footage on the Internet, and his highly publicized death has spawned a Wikipedia page and countless conspiracy theories belying his previously inconspicuous life. His siblings continue to claim he had no role in the plot and was a purely innocent victim.

The 61-year-old Diehl-Armstrong, who has metastasized breast cancer according to her attorney, is already serving seven to 20 years in prison for pleading guilty but mentally ill to the murder of her live-in boyfriend, James Roden, 45. Another plotter, Kenneth Barnes, 57, is serving 45 years in prison for pleading guilty two years ago to his role, but could have that sentence reduced for testifying against Diehl-Armstrong.

William Rothstein, a handyman and substitute science teacher who allegedly built the bomb collar, died of cancer in 2004. Rothstein unwittingly began the chain of events that helped investigators link Diehl-Armstrong to the collar bomb plot when he called police in September 2003 and told them about a body he was hiding in a freezer in his garage.

The body was Roden's, who authorities would later determine killed by Diehl-Armstrong 18 days before the collar bomb robbery after threatening to reveal the plan. Rothstein claimed Diehl-Armstrong gave him $75,000 to get rid of the body, but that he balked and called police when she began talking about grinding up the corpse in an ice crusher. At trial, she testified that Rothstein's claims were part of a plan to frame her.