Woman dies in prison
ERIE — A woman convicted in a bizarre bank robbery plot that left a pizza delivery driver dead when a bomb strapped to his neck exploded has died in prison.
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong died Tuesday of natural causes, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. She was in the Federal Medical Center-Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, bureau spokesman Justin Long said.
Diehl-Armstrong, 68, was serving a life sentence plus 30 years for the suburban Erie bank robbery plot, which ended in the death of Brian Wells when a bomb locked to his neck exploded following the robbery. A federal appeals court last year rejected her bid for a new trial.
Wells, later identified as an unindicted co-conspirator although his family maintains he was a hostage, told state troopers he was forced to wear the collar at gunpoint shortly before robbing the bank in 2003.
The case remained a mystery until Diehl-Armstrong and her fishing buddy Kenneth Barnes were indicted in 2007 on charges they concocted the plot along with her ex-boyfriend William Rothstein.
By the time Diehl-Armstrong was indicted, she was serving seven to 20 years in state prison in the death of another ex-boyfriend, William Roden, two weeks before Wells died. Prosecutors said she killed Roden with a shotgun to keep him from going to authorities about the bomb plot, but she insisted it was a crime of passion prompted by his abuse.
