Original subtitles

[Lyell Cook] What we discovered was, whoever shot him...

stood at the foot of the bed with a shotgun,

and fired twice.

[gun cocking, gunshots]

[Robert Schug] This is at least the second occurrence of this.

[gunshots]

And so, this is a pattern.

[Kelly Makela] Marjorie wasn't gonna let anybody turn on her.

And dead men tell no tales.

[opening theme music playing]

Welcome to Very Scary People.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was a real-life monster,

a toxic combination of murder, manipulation, and madness.

Her high IQ, combined with a willingness to kill,

made her a danger to anyone who crossed her path.

Especially men.

Marjorie left a trail of bodies in her wake.

But one particular killing was so diabolical, so bizarre,

that it sent shock waves around the world.

This is the man eater.

[phone rings]

[operator speaking]

[man speaking]

So, August 28, 2003...

[sirens wailing]

I get a call...

and evil happened that day.

[man speaking]

It's another one of those calls that you get

as a law enforcement officer that you think,

"Is this really possible?"

The 911 operator was talking to the 911 caller,

actually following the suspect.

"Hey, he's exiting the bank.

He's going around the back. I can see him now."

He stopped at the McDonald's, and then, was going around

the back of the Eyeglass World.

[tire squeals]

And that's when police see him.

[sirens wailing]

"Stop your vehicle,

turn the keys, put the keys out the window,"

you know, "come to my voice."

And that's when they place him under arrest.

[Dave Gluth] He says, "Hey, I got a bomb on me."

And the one trooper who went over and cut his shirt open was like,

"Holy cow, this looks like a real bomb." And then, they back out.

You know, you hear all these stories about

a bomb being involved in something.

You never think of it in small town, America, where you're at.

[Clark] I was going as quickly as possible. Lights, sirens, the whole thing.

And there's the Pennsylvania State Police, already talking to this man,

hands behind his back, handcuffed.

The bomb squad was en route, but it hadn't arrived yet.

[Ed Palattella] This is on live television.

One of the TV stations had a camera.

So, we're wondering what's going on here.

This guy's got a bomb around his neck.

Who is this guy?

What happened? How did he get there?

[Wahlberg] The bank robber identifies himself as 46-year-old Brian Wells

and gives police a wild explanation of why he's there.

He said, "I'm a pizza delivery driver.

I was delivering two pizzas to a tower site location,

and a group of Black men shot at me,

put this thing around my neck."

And the great question from the trooper

was, "Describe 'em."

He couldn't.

So, immediately, no,

that whole story, it sounds concocted.

[Wahlberg] As the minutes tick away,

police and bystanders gather.

No one's exactly sure what to do.

And while we're waiting for the bomb squad to make an approach,

you hear a faint beep, beep, beep...

[beeping]

[explosion]

Bam, detonation.

He fell backwards.

And I saw his chest go down and it never came back up.

And I thought, "Oh, man, total fatal situation we have here."

Everyone thinks, because of a bomb that he was blown to bits,

which was not the case at all.

The only real injury was a laceration

to the upper chest, over the heart

from this really small explosive that caused his death.

[Gluth] The bomb malfunctioned and only half of it detonated.

Luckily for law enforcement and everybody else,

and the viewers... I mean, it was live on TV.

If it would have been the whole bomb,

there may have been more people that were hurt.

You're in shock of what you just witnessed.

I wanted this solved for myself, for my agency, of all those things.

But for mostly, for the people here.

This is my hometown, and I love it.

I didn't want Erie to be thought of in a bad light.

I said to myself, "I've got to have this case."

A supervisor from the FBI was there, and he said, "It's yours."

And here we go.

Everything in my world changed after that.

[Wahlberg] Investigators begin by retracing Brian Wells' steps

on the day of the robbery,

and they're stunned by what they learn.

It was confirmed right quick that he was a pizza delivery guy.

He was called, and went on a call for pizza delivery.

And the delivery thing was a remote area,

a power site for one of the local TV stations.

[Clark] Mr. Wells then went

from the tower site location

straight to the bank,

where he had the device around his neck.

But the story wasn't making sense,

how he got the device there.

To me, it's not what people do.

They can do things in a number of ways.

But why do they do it?

[Gluth] We get the video from the bank.

You see him at first, he stands in line

when he comes into the bank,

and then, he gets a little antsy, nervous.

And then, he goes up with this note to hand it to the teller,

and follow out these rules.

Other bank robberies that I've handled are, you know,

"Give me all the money" on a little note

that's a napkin or a ripped a piece of paper from a receipt.

This was a multiple-page, you know, block printed,

with a map and everything

as to what Brian Wells was supposed to do.

[Wahlberg] The note instructed the teller and Brian

to finish the heist in 15 minutes.

It also warned that, if anything went wrong, the bomb would go off.

[Sughrue] The note said, "I need $250,000 in cash."

Banks just don't have that much cash sitting out indoors, ever.

She said, "Well, then, all's I can give you is what's in the drawers."

So, he got $8,207,

well short of the $250,000.

[Wahlberg] The note also has a series of strange directions

and instructions for Brian to follow once he has the money.

[Clark] Mr. Wells' role was to rob the bank,

then go on a series of stops

to receive keys, like a scavenger hunt,

to unlock the collar to take the collar off his neck.

So, the interesting part about this bomb is,

it had two kitchen timers

as the detonator dialed for the 60 minutes.

But because it had detonated after an hour,

and he couldn't do those stops, we did it.

"Leave the bank, go to the McDonald's,

go into a flower bed,

turn over a rock, and receive another note."

That note told him, " Head southbound, get on I-90,

head toward Cleveland, get back on I-79,

get off at the exit for Kearsarge,

go into the woods."

There was a Folgers Coffee jar with a twist-off top.

And inside that was another note.

It said, "Get back on Interchange Road,

head 79 southbound,

and get off at the McKean Township sign.

We got there and there was nothing.

The thing we did not find at any of the sites were any keys.

So, that tells you that device was never coming off,

and that he was just an expendable witness

that would never be able to testify.

The notes were so meticulously written.

The act of harming someone and thinking about how it was going to happen

must have been pleasurable for them.

The idea that it was meant to be a failure,

there was no way this could have been done,

suggests a kind of a sadistic quality.

[Clark] So, whoever came up with that plan was very smart,

with evil intentions.

To start the investigation, you've got to go backwards on the victim's life

to see why he would get involved in this.

Brian Wells lived in Millcreek Township,

single,

never married,

sort of a loner.

He didn't have a lot of materialistic things,

and just lived a very calm, easygoing life.

[Gluth] Brian was relatively clean,

didn't have real criminal history background.

So, it wasn't like, you know,

you would think of when you're talking about

somebody involved in a bank robbery.

So, who's the mastermind behind this?

[Wahlberg] Buried in the pages of the notes is an entire page

addressed to the police, bragging about the brilliance of the scheme.

[Clark] The nine total pages of notes were an immediate send off to me

that we've got somebody involved here

that has some personality traits that are very interesting.

The fact that they designated notes to the police themselves,

and the tone of them were a taunting:

"Hey, you're not going to figure this out."

And then, there were drawings in the notes.

And there were maps in the notes.

Things that you would never take the time to do.

Someone took great care, if not pleasure,

in putting those things together.

This seems to almost be an embellishment of an imagination.

[Tom Kubinski] During the investigation,

they were trying to figure out,

how could anyone convince this guy

to put a bomb around his neck, locked, go in and rob a bank?

Who could ever convince someone to do that?

And I thought, "Marjorie Diehl could."

[Wahlberg] When investigators first dug into the case

that the media dubbed "The pizza bomber,"

Marjorie's name didn't come up.

But she was already well known to law enforcement.

If you were from Erie, you had heard of

or known of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

She was, like, uh, one of those

legends of crime.

If a bad thing happens, here in Erie,

my suspect pool starts with Marjorie.

[Schug] Marjorie Diehl Armstrong was born in Erie, Pennsylvania,

which was a rather small town.

Only child.

Parents were basically working middle class.

[Palattella] Her mother was a schoolteacher,

and her father worked at what was then

the General Electric plant in Erie, making locomotives.

[Schug] Her mother was highly educated.

But her father dropped out of high school.

Her father was... I remember him as

a real big guy, kind of like a bear.

And he was gruff, I would say, but not mean.

But he was just a big, gruff guy.

Her mother was a higher class.

She was always dressed up and conservative, kind of protective, too,

I thought, of Marjorie.

Marjorie's relationship with her mom was loving but tense,

that her mom was always pressing on her to succeed.

[Sughrue] Her grades were all very good,

and she received letters of recommendation

throughout her childhood and early high school years.

She was able to get piano lessons and cello lessons,

and she was first chair in orchestra and symphony

and those sorts of things when she was growing up.

Marjorie was raised by a perfectionist mother to be perfect.

If she was to feel loved,

she had to do something extraordinary.

It's not a very healthy way to grow up, because, over time,

you can become sort of very fragile,

and particularly focus on achievement,

rather than true emotional connection.

[Kubinski] In my neighborhood, during those days,

everybody just went out and played in everyone else's yard.

All the kids knew each other.

During the time we were growing up together, I didn't see her a whole lot,

but she was a little bit of a loner, I would say.

She always thought she was better than everybody else.

And I believe that even she thought she was better than her dad.

Her mom took care of her, and she believed her mom, like, walked on water.

Anybody who got against either her mom or her, she didn't like.

You know, like, her dad

didn't treat her like the queen all the time.

[Wahlberg] At times, Marjorie alleged that her home life

could be volatile, even violent.

At one point, there was some

allegation from Marjorie that her parents fought.

Her perception or her experience

with her parents' relationship at home was not all that great.

At some point in childhood, it's alleged that...

Marjorie witnessed her mother attack her father with a knife.

She's learned that a woman could hold a weapon,

a woman could put someone else's life in danger,

that a man can acquiesce.

Also, the act of violence is modeled for the child.

The child learns something that day:

How to be violent.

[Wahlberg] Marjorie goes to Mercyhurst College in 1967,

and that's where her obsession with being the best goes into overdrive.

Marjorie was never afraid to tell you how smart she was

and was never afraid to go down what her resume was.

She was always the best at everything,

the smartest, and that sort of stuff.

[Wahlberg] But beneath the star student

is a deeply troubled young woman,

and when she leaves college,

she struggles to make a life for herself.

She was a substitute teacher for a while.

Then she worked as a secretary for an executive,

but she couldn't hold a regular job.

The narcissistic side of her personality

didn't allow her to work her way up like the rest of us have to do.

It was a slow decline.

But over a period of a decade or more,

it just went down, and down, and down.

[Sughrue] She would ask her parents for money.

Sometimes, they would give her money.

She applied for a Social Security disability

and any sort of program she could get

to make her life as easy as it could be for her.

[Schug] Marjorie was very good at manipulating psychological evaluations.

Her education gave her some exposure to mental illness

and how it presents and the symptoms of mental illness.

In her mind, rather than going out and facing the working world,

it's much easier for me to just try to put one over on the welfare system,

and get free stuff because I know it'll work.

[Wahlberg] Now 30,

Marjorie has discovered she craves far more money

than her parents and the welfare system will provide.

So, she comes up with a scam:

Posing as a pregnancy counselor.

She required urine samples to determine whether the client was pregnant.

She said the client was pregnant.

She would take a $150 fee from them,

and then, counsel them if they wanted to get an abortion.

She just doesn't care about the law.

The consequences mean nothing to her.

There were complaints, the police set up an undercover sting,

gave her a urine sample of a man.

She said it tested positive for pregnancy,

and of course, that can't happen.

The police arrest her and take her to the police station.

She's processed.

[Palattella] This was the beginning of her evil.

[Wahlberg] Marjorie Diehl is charged with conspiracy and fraud

over the abortion clinic scam.

[Palattella] For a so-called abortion clinic,

Marjorie was running out of the Erie library.

She ended up getting probation and did community service.

[Wahlberg] Around the time Marjorie is finishing her community service,

the 34-year-old meets a man named Bob Thomas.

They bumped into each other at the food bank in January of 1984.

And they struck up a relationship.

They were both on food lines.

They were keeping each other company.

He was also a troubled soul.

[Ambrose] He has post-traumatic stress

because he was on a ship during the Vietnam War.

A Navy physician, a psychiatrist, examined him

and then, said he should be mustered out of the service, he's unfit.

So, he comes back to here. He has some odd jobs that never last.

[Palattella] She found him. He found her,

and they were the best that they thought for each other.

So, Bob Thomas is an interesting match, if you will, for Marjorie.

It begs the question,

why would Marjorie be drawn to that?

When you look at the men that Marjorie chooses for herself,

she has achieved more than they have.

That was familiar to her. That's how she grew up.

Marjorie needed some element of control with the relationships she had.

If she is going to share her life with someone who's succeeding,

it would make her feel bad, right?

Because she needs to be the one,

the top head on the totem pole.

So, I think Marjorie had some desire or pull towards men

that are lesser than her In her eyes.

[Palattella] But they definitely had a volatile relationship.

He's paranoid, and he is potentially dangerous.

Marjorie reported that and other people witnessed

that Bob Thomas beat her on a food line at least once.

There were public beatings and, in addition to, Marjorie testified,

there were private beatings.

[siren whoops]

[Wahlberg] And on July 29, 1984,

their twisted relationship of six months finally explodes.

The police and the coroner's office

were called to Sunset Boulevard

in Erie for a reported death.

The police entered and found Robert Thomas, 43-year-old male,

dead on the couch, with gunshot wounds.

He was living there with Marjorie Diehl.

So, she naturally became the assumed assailant.

She was charged and arrested for the murder of Bob Thomas.

The way she recounted it, that night,

it was his birthday, kind of a romantic night.

And as a birthday gift, she had purchased a handgun...

along with the bullets

that we saw on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

[Palattella] They were watching An Officer and a Gentleman together,

the Richard Gere movie.

[Ambrose] He accused her of wanting to have sex with Richard Gere,

and she tried to dissuade him that wasn't the case.

Then, they got into a fight.

So this continued on. They were arguing all night.

At some point in time, he had grabbed a knife.

She was cut on her chest. He was cut on his chest.

And ultimately, it wound down.

But he kept on telling her, "I could kill you anytime I want."

So, at some point, she went into bed.

He goes to sleep on the couch.

But later, she gets up, and he's on the couch

and he starts to wake up asking her, "Where are you going?"

The gun is loaded at this point in time.

It was on the coffee table.

Marjorie testified that he starts to reach towards the gun.

He says, "Maybe I should shoot you."

And at that point in time, she grabbed the gun and backed up.

And she said that, as he started to get off the couch,

because he was going to get the gun, in her mind, and kill her,

she shot him.

[Wahlberg] But soon, witnesses come forward with testimony

that discredits Marjorie's claims of self-defense.

[Palattella] Marjorie had a small settlement from an automobile accident.

Around that time, she was getting disability benefits.

So, she's carrying around all this cash.

After Bob Thomas was killed, Marjorie had a bag of $18,000,

and she went out with that bag and solicited two women.

They had met in the food lines and had witnessed some of the beatings.

She says, "I need a favor.

Would you help me remove a body...

from the house?

I have a chainsaw, we can cut it up

and put the parts in various places."

Marjorie's so-called friends, they were appalled at this type of behavior.

They didn't want anything to do with it.

So, they called the police, and that's how Marjorie was arrested.

She overestimated her ability

to convince someone to help her and keep it secret.

[Wahlberg] Police find further disturbing evidence

of Marjorie's troubled mental state.

[Palattella] During the search of her house,

they just found it was filled from floor to ceiling,

even the attic, with surplus food,

that she was getting from food banks around town.

The dollar amount of the food at that time was more than $9,000.

We're talking an inordinate amount of food here,

including 37 dozen eggs, 399 pounds of butter,

seven hundred and twenty seven pounds of cheese.

And the temperature in the attic was 95 degrees.

[flies buzzing]

Police officers at the scene said it was

some of the foulest smells they had ever experienced.

[Schug] Hoarding has historically been classified as an anxiety condition,

specifically a variant of obsessive compulsive disorder.

They're so worried about losing something or throwing something away

that they're going to need

that they don't throw anything away.

And so, holding onto meaningless items

becomes a way to combat those obsessive thoughts.

Marjorie claimed she was in an abusive relationship,

and that she was defending herself by killing Bob Thomas.

[Cook] But when the body was taken to the coroner's office for autopsy,

I determined that there were approximately six gunshot wounds.

[gunshots]

She emptied a revolver into him.

It wasn't like this was one shot, "What have I done here?"

It was six rapid shots into a guy.

[Cook] There were bullets found in the couch,

which indicated that he was lying on the couch

at the time he was shot.

[Ambrose] The prosecution's theory was, she shot him six times

while he was sleeping on his sofa.

[gunshot]

So, it was an execution.

The evidence against Marjorie is mounting,

and prosecutors believe they have

an airtight murder case against her.

But they'll soon find out there is a method to her madness,

more cunning than anything they've ever seen before.

[Wahlberg] Marjorie Diehl is charged with first degree murder...

[gunshots]

...for killing her boyfriend, Bob Thomas.

She claimed she shot Thomas in self-defense.

But after a mental evaluation,

Marjorie is sent to a hospital for further testing.

Her parents hire an attorney to fight the charges.

[Ambrose] She comes in the room,

and she sits down and she says, "Who in the hell are you?"

I gave her my name and I said, you know,

"Your parents are asking me to represent you on this."

And she threw all her papers on the floor.

And then she indicated,

"I don't think you're intelligent enough to handle this case

because I'm a very intelligent person."

And I said, "I've done a number of these cases, about 30,

and I think I'm fine for representing you."

My assessment was that this woman was in need

of serious mental confinement

in a humane facility for long term treatment.

Now, our legal system is set up in a way

that if an individual has a mental illness,

and because of that mental illness,

cannot participate in their defense,

they are not allowed to go to trial.

And if you're incompetent to stand trial,

you go to the state hospital system

until you are restored to competency,

and can then be brought back to jail, and then, to the court.

[Wahlberg] Doctors at a state mental hospital treat Marjorie for months

and declare her fit to stand trial.

But, over time, her behavior becomes more deranged.

She'd go off on tangents and she'd be talking about things

totally unrelated to the case.

And I told the court I was going to be filing a motion

so she could be sent to Pennsylvania State mental hospitals

until she was ready to go to trial.

[Clark] You know, Marjorie was really manipulative.

She knew what the system was,

and she knew everything about how that operates,

or was she actually battling mental illness?

Marjorie had the presence of several personality disorders.

She had obsessive compulsive disorder,

where a person gets an intrusive thought,

and then they have to engage in some sort of behavior,

like handwashing or checking a door handle or something

to ease the anxiety associated with that thought.

[Palattella] The doctors noticed that she would

obsessively brush her teeth.

Thirty-two times, brushing each tooth.

[Schug] Borderline personality disorder

is this pervasive pattern of instability,

instability in the way one perceives themselves, their identity.

[Schug] The narcissistic personality disorder.

This is a pattern of grandiosity,

of inflated self-worth.

She had to be... look the best,

she had to think the best, she had to outwit you.

She was very much into showing that she was smarter than you.

[Schug] And then, finally,

the antisocial personality disorder.

This is just a pervasive pattern of disregard

for the rights of others.

And so, you might see deceitfulness, and lying,

and irresponsibility,

along with potential criminal activity.

And at times she got aggressive towards me.

[bleep]

[Ambrose] And I said, "Listen, I'm the only thing

that stands between you and life in the [bleep] hole here that you're in."

[Schug] She was in a state hospital for four years,

which is an exceptionally long period of time.

[Wahlberg] Finally, in 1988,

Marjorie is ruled fit to stand trial.

Prosecutors claim she knew exactly what she was doing when she shot Bob Thomas.

The state argued, the purchase of the gun before

was evidence of planning or premeditation.

I needed to put her on the stand.

Because she had to testify that she was in a state of fear,

which was the first prong of self-defense.

And this was because of the beatings, the public beatings,

and a cycle of the battered-woman syndrome.

We got a trial date,

and then, all I did was work on her case for a month and a half

to try to get her prepared.

And the key with Marjorie is to get her to settle down,

to testify in a way that the jury can see her as a human being

rather than just a crazy person. And she did that.

[Ambrose] And then, the trial went on for roughly three and a half weeks.

The jury was out three days in this case.

When the jury goes out, that's the most difficult time

because you think about all the things

you could have done, would have done, should have done.

And it's self-punishment.

[Palattella] So, that was basically her word against the prosecution's.

And she won.

[Wahlberg] On June 1, 1988,

Marjorie is acquitted of first degree murder in the killing of Bob Thomas.

It was a stunning verdict.

[gunshot]

[Schug] She learned that she's capable of killing someone.

She probably realized, "Oh, this is a way I can solve problems now."

And that, if she plays her cards right,

she gets to walk scot-free.

[Wahlberg] Marjorie is acquitted of murdering Bob Thomas,

but she's convicted of using an unlicensed firearm during the shooting,

and sentenced to probation.

Back in 1988,

I was a parole officer for Erie County Adult Probation,

and I was assigned as Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong's

intensive supervision officer.

In a regular parole officer caseload of 200,

there was nobody like Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

That energy that came off of her

wasn't like an energy of excitement or someone you want to be around.

[Clark] She could go from laughing, and joking with you,

and talking normally, to all of a sudden...

"What did you say? Why are you asking me that?"

Or "What are you doing to me?"

Just an amazing change in personality.

Even though she could follow the rules,

she would often come as near as she could to violating them,

and she never liked somebody giving her orders.

She never liked the fact that, "Hey, I have authority over you

to make sure you finish this probation and get integrated back into society."

She did what she had to do in order to get off of it.

But, inside, it was all just a game to get her where she needed to be.

[Wahlberg] Once she's off probation,

forty one year-old Diehl meets someone new,

Richard Armstrong.

He, too, lives an unstable, chaotic life.

Richard Armstrong grew up in Cleveland, played the trumpet,

played in a number of bands,

and then, ended up moving to Erie,

and basically, worked for one of the food banks.

He was what Marjorie Diehl described as her true love.

According to Marjorie, they met one day in downtown Erie.

She walked by, he commented on her beauty,

and said, "I've never seen someone so beautiful."

Their relationship blossomed from there.

[Wahlberg] But the relationship was rocky from the start.

[Palattella] During the course of their relationship,

there were a lot of incidents of violence and abuse.

In May 1990, Armstrong threw a brick at Marjorie Diehl.

She claimed he was assaulting her.

He was convicted, was sentenced to six-to-12-months in prison.

The following January, there was another incident...

in which she claimed he broke some glass that cut her.

He was sentenced to 30 more days and got probation.

Despite all this, they ended up getting married in January of 1991.

[Wahlberg] But, "till death do us apart" came early in this marriage.

[sirens wailing]

The case of Richard Armstrong, was very, very unusual.

[Palattella] The circumstances are a little murky.

But Marjorie claimed that he wasn't feeling well,

and that he was kind of unsteady on his feet.

And that he fell and hit his head on this table.

[medical device beeping]

[Cook] Richard Armstrong was pronounced dead in the emergency room

at one of the local hospitals...

-[flatline sound] -...which by law has to be reported to the coroner.

And then, it's up to us to decide

whether we need to investigate further or release it.

Well, they never called us,

and the body was immediately taken somehow.

They couldn't tell us who picked the body up.

We don't know where it went.

So, we have absolutely no record of what he died from.

But we did find out later on that he had been cremated immediately by Marjorie.

And what better way to get rid of evidence of a murder than to cremate?

Because, now, all you have is 12 pounds of calcium.

Game over.

And so, consequently, we have absolutely nothing.

It's certainly suspicious, knowing her behavior with other men.

[gunshots]

[Wahlberg] Soon after cremating her husband,

Diehl-Armstrong cashes in on his death.

Marjorie raised complaints about how the hospital treated him,

and whether they recognized early on the true extent of his injuries.

She ended up suing the hospital

and settling for a quarter of a million dollars.

There was never any indication that she was a suspect in his death.

I mean, it's just a very strange situation.

And there's no way of knowing if that was all part of the plan.

But it does sort of suggest,

in a moment where one would be grieving

the loss of a partner,

that Marjorie is focused on financial matters.

So, Marjorie is in her '40s now,

and she's connected to two deaths of men

that she was close to in some way.

-[gunshot] -Bob Thomas and Richard Armstrong.

Even one death is challenging enough to explain.

But, with Marjorie, there are now two.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

believes she's always the smartest person in the room,

and can scheme and talk her way out of anything.

Now, she's learned a perverse lesson.

Sometimes, you can get away with murder.

And she's going to put that lesson into practice

by masterminding a bizarre and heinous crime that will shock the world.

[Wahlberg] Bob Thomas and Richard Armstrong are dead,

and their suspected killer, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong,

is on the prowl for a new man and maybe a fresh victim.

[Palattella] She visited a psychic and came to believe

that she was going to meet another man of her dreams.

Nine months later,

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong meets James Roden.

She met him at a tavern.

She was there on a date

and Roden could not keep his eyes off of her.

They became boyfriend and girlfriend.

[Palattella] He had alcohol issues, substance abuse issues.

[Sughrue] Marjorie loved him.

She looked to him for protection.

She looked for him to be her partner

in whatever scheme she wanted to do.

They also fished together. They did everything together.

So he was a material part of her life

for a significant period of time, lived with her.

He ended up moving in with Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

[Wahlberg] But like all her previous relationships,

that honeymoon phase doesn't last long.

They got into many arguments.

Physical arguments.

He cut her thigh, tried to push her through a glass window.

The neighbors ended up calling the cops to save her.

He went to jail for it.

She got a protective order against him,

stayed with him, just like the other instances.

[Schug] We always have to consider the possibility

that perhaps Marjorie was staying in this relationship

because she had some feelings for him.

They feel an emotional connection.

If they broke that connection,

that would be far worse than enduring the abuse.

Although with Marjorie, because she's complex,

the power differential is one reason that would make it worth staying.

Perhaps he was feeding her ego,

you know, telling her how great she is.

There could be a lot of ways she would be benefiting from this relationship.

Marjorie had her father bail James out of jail.

Marjorie says, "I need you to help and you will help me with this."

[Wahlberg] Marjorie's father was another man she was able to manipulate.

Maybe her first.

But she now manages to drive him away, too.

[Palattella] Their relationship really fell apart

to the point of no return

after Marjorie's mother, Agnes, died in July 2000.

[Palattella] The will made Marjorie's father the executor of the estate.

I heard about the death of Marjorie's mother from her father.

-[phone ringing] -I was an attorney and he called my office

and asked me if I would take care of his wife's estate,

and I said I would.

Now, I hadn't spoken with Margie in 40 years.

The mother's will named the father and Marjorie as heirs.

The estate had $150,000, including the house.

And so I sent out the notices to the heirs,

and a few days later I got a phone call from Marjorie.

She started off the phone call very friendly, you know.

"Oh, Tommy Kubinksi from the neighborhood. How are you doing?"

And within a minute or two, she went on a rant

that I couldn't believe.

She didn't want money going to other people.

Every time I said anything,

and she had three responses one after the other.

[Kubinski] I finally had to hang up.

In the end, I completed the estate.

She got about $50,000.

At that time, Harold Diehl had about $1.8 million in assets.

[Palattella] He was pretty frugal, but also good with investing.

Marjorie believed that all that money should go to her.

But it was still her father's.

She'd scream on the phone to her dad.

She would ask him for money

and she would tell him she hated him.

She wished he would die.

[Clark] The money that he had, he was not gonna give to her,

and she thought,

"I'll just get it through an inheritance.

But if he's alive, I'm never going to get it,

and I'm not gonna wait until he dies."

And that's where this whole plot came from.

[news presenter] A pizza deliveryman, Brian Wells, robs a bank

with an elaborate bomb locked around his neck.

[Clark] Right around 3:18,

while we're waiting for the bomb squad to make an approach,

you hear a faint beep, beep, beep, beep.

[beeping]

[explosion]

It's one of those moments, I had thought I had seen a lot.

I had never seen that.

So we were able to pull back, gather our wits among us,

and start collectively thinking, "Oh, my gosh, what do we do now?"

This case immediately was full of challenge.

Challenge after challenge.

Number one, you have a bank robbery,

but you have a deceased body in the parking lot.

I would say that was one of the biggest challenges of the investigation,

is multi agencies being involved,

and it was leading in multiple directions.

Three weeks later, we still did not have any initial suspects.

[Wahlberg] But their luck turns when police get an unusual call

from a man named Bill Rothstein.

On September 21, 2003,

Bill Rothstein calls the state police 911,

and said, "I'm driving around town,

I've got a gun in the van, and I'm gonna kill myself".

[911 operator speaking]

Rothstein and Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

had a history all the way back to the '70s.

[Palattella] Bill Rothstein was most likely

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong's first,

what she would consider, a romantic relationship.

[Clark] He's a smart guy, graduated college.

He was able to start his own handyman company,

where he was doing HVAC stuff and electrical work.

He also taught as a substitute teacher.

[Schug] In many ways, they're very similar people.

The most prominent similarity is the grandiosity.

Both, in their own minds, had this increased intellectual ability.

They were always kind of in and out of each other's lives.

He was very dependable to her.

Later on, she knew whenever she was in trouble, he was always there.

Marge had that about her, with the men.

They were kind of like mesmerized by her.

And they would listen to anything

and everything she would say like it was gospel.

And they would do it.

[Clark] It's the best of times, and it's the worst of times,

all in one relationship.

They would fight, they'd get along,

they'd argue, they'd get along.

And that was her history any time she was with men.

And it was mostly over the manipulation factor.

If she could manipulate him to do something, she would do it.

So between the power that she had

or the black widow of her, or the sex...

I don't understand the control,

but that was definitely involved in this case.

[Clark] She got men to do some of the most crazy things you could think of.

She had that, that... that lure over men.

It was incredible what she could get them to do.

[Wahlberg] But as Rothstein talks to police,

it's clear his devotion to his old flame is waning.

[Gluth] He said, "Marjorie Diehl comes to my house

and somehow talks me into disposing of a body for her,

help dispose of the murder weapon of her boyfriend she killed."

"Marjorie's at my house right now,

and you have to go arrest her."

[Clark] I arrive on scene, police everywhere.

Erie Police Department, Pennsylvania State Police, now FBI.

You get in there and everything's just in disarray.

[Cook] The first floor of Marjorie's house

was stacked to the ceiling

with things that looked like an archeological dig.

There were stacks of newspapers, magazines, pizza boxes, a dead cat,

and a bunch of cutting wheels and muriatic acid

on the kitchen table,

which you would think of using to dispose of a body

This is a woman who may have been exaggerating

psychological symptoms for her own benefit.

And a good way to do that

would be to have your house be messy.

And we went into this gigantic garage, and it was even worse.

If you can imagine searching just a big, huge junkyard.

In the garage was a half-length chest freezer.

Clearly brand new.

[Clark] You're thinking, "Is it possible we're going to open this

and actually see, you know, a human?"

We opened it up and there was a body.

It was wrapped in green tarp, and taped and tied.

I reached in to try to move the body,

and it was frozen right to the sides.

So we came up with a plan to unplug the freezer,

put it in the back of a van,

drive it to the coroner's office.

And we set it up on its side, opened the door,

and then just let nature take over.

We waited until we determined that the body had thawed enough

to continue with the autopsy.

What we discovered was, whoever shot him

stood at the foot of the bed with a shotgun,

and fired twice.

[gun loading]

[gunshot]

[gun loading]

[gunshot]

[Wahlberg] When the body of James Roden

is discovered at Bill Rothstein's house,

police race to find a connection

between his murder and the bank robbery.

Rothstein admitted that this occurred at 7th and Bacon,

which was Marjorie's house on the east side of Erie.

He was saying that Marjorie calls him

and says, "Hey, you got to come get this body."

So he goes over to Marjorie's house.

The bed was roughly around here,

and his back against here.

Like about here, his body was lying roughly...

Forty-five-degree angle on the bed.

[officer] And his head? His head was here?

-This is his back here. -Okay.

He was facing that way.

[Schug] This isn't a fair stand-up fight.

This is killing someone while they're not conscious.

This is at least the second occurrence of this.

Bob Thomas was sleeping on a couch,

and Marjorie shot him six times while he was there.

[gunshots]

And so this is a pattern.

And put a cut piece of green tarp down here to put his body on.

And then we took the tarp and folded it up around it,

and tried to use some duct tape

and packaging tape to wrap it up.

And then pull the body back down here and pull it downstairs.

[Cook] Rothstein did an admirable job in covering his tracks.

He had tore out the steps where they dragged the body down,

painted everything, so there was absolutely no evidence there whatsoever.

[Rothstein] This is where he cut up the rifle.

He used an acetylene torch here

to cut it up completely and reduce it to slag.

So it wasn't really cut up. It was more like, melted.

[Wahlberg] And as the body thaws,

Rothstein reveals to police who they will find in the freezer.

He said, "The body is a guy named James Roden,

and he was a boyfriend of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong."

And Rothstein said

he was afraid she was gonna kill him, too.

I don't know for sure.

What are we talking, hours or days?

I don't know.

The body was found to be in a moderate state of decomposition,

with fly larva,

so he'd obviously laid in the open

for some period of time before he was wrapped and frozen.

[Rothstein] I had to maneuver things around.

I was putting the freezer over there.

Did she know that-

She knew the body was here, though, right?

She knew it was in the garage.

So why did Bill Rothstein never turn in Marjorie anyway?

He even went as far as taking care of a homicide scene for her.

[Clark] It was because he was afraid of her.

As it turned out, Marjorie was rushing Bill.

She's saying, "You've got to get this body cut up.

We gotta get rid of this body."

[Wahlberg] As detectives search the scene,

they discover a strange coincidence.

We've got a body in the freezer, in a garage.

8645 Peach Street.

Now I'm remembering that 8631 Peach Street

is where the pizza were delivered by Brian Wells for the Pizza Bomber case.

[Gluth] And Shazam.

That's right at the road to where the bomb

was allegedly put on Brian Wells.

[Clark] It's steps away from the tower site.

[Wahlberg] And while police begin to connect the dots between the two cases,

they narrow in on Marjorie's whereabouts.

Marjorie had taken off, and she had got to her house,

and that's when law enforcement made the arrest.

I could tell she didn't want to flee to another state.

She didn't want to get out of town.

She was just going to wait to see what happened.

Bill Rothstein, I think really deep down, loved Marge.

He would do anything for her, I mean.

So she had control over Bill Rothstein.

[Wahlberg] And because Rothstein destroyed any evidence,

there's nothing tying Marjorie to the murder of James Roden.

It's his word against hers.

She was confident she was going to work her way out of this.

She had gotten out of it before,

and was acquitted of killing someone.

And I really believe she felt that she was going to get out of this one, too.

After she was charged and arrested and sent to jail,

Marjorie even phoned me from prison.

She wouldn't stop for 10 minutes

before the conversation would automatically end.

Marjorie's wickedness has so far cost three men their lives.

She's beaten the system at every turn,

and seems to be invincible.

Is she gonna get away with murder again?

Or can police stop the Man Eater before she takes another life?

[Makela] Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

was brought into the Erie County Prison.

She was at one end of the table,

I was at the other end.

And she looked lost, lonely, she needed a friend.

The other inmates were scared to death of her

because they saw the news reports

of her wanting to chop up Roden into little itty-bitty pieces.

I offered her a cup of coffee.

She said, "Are you talking to me?"

And I said, "Yeah."

She's like, "You're not afraid of me." and I said, "No."

And she's like, "But everybody is."

So as our friendship began to grow

over that little cup of coffee,

she's of course, denying everything.

She's telling me she didn't kill Roden,

and she did not want to be tied to the Pizza Bomber case.

[Wahlberg] As detectives consider the link between these two cases,

they zero in on an odd clue

left at Bill Rothstein's house.

[Wahlberg] A suicide note

for a suicide he never attempted.

[Clark] The suicide note

a number of items listed on it,

and number one on the list

was, "This has nothing to do with the Wells case."

And I immediately thought, "Now, why would you have to tell somebody that?"

I interviewed Bill Rothstein,

and I walked in and I said, "Hey, Bill, how you doing?

"Jerry Clark from the FBI. You mind if I talk to you?"

And he said, "Yeah, you can talk to me,

but I need to tell you something.

I'm the smartest guy in this room."

I kept telling him,

"I know you say you know nothing about the Brian Wells case,

but, boy, can you help me out with this?

I'm having trouble."

I was playing to his ego.

And I said, "Bill, hypothetically,

why would Brian Wells

get a device put around his neck,

and not drive straight to a police department,

say, 'Get this thing off me. It's a bomb.'"

He said, "Hypothetically,

"What if they told him there were wires in the collar,

and if he veered off course, they'd give him a shock."

And I sat in the chair there trying not to look astounded,

because I knew there was wires in the collar

and he didn't, unless he made it.

He knew things that no one else would know after I interviewed him.

And then I see he's attached to Marjorie,

I knew she was involved.

I didn't know how, I didn't know why yet,

but I knew she was involved.

[Wahlberg] In January 2004,

Bill Rothstein is charged with abuse of a corpse and evidence tampering.

Based on his confession,

police charge Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

for the murder of James Roden.

But once again,

Diehl-Armstrong and her attorney argue she isn't fit for trial.

[Clark] There is no doubt in my mind

that she knew exactly what she was doing.

But she was going to make this thing be as difficult

and as challenging as possible until it went away.

I would speculate that Marjorie knew what to do

to not be restored to competency,

so she could go to the state hospital

as opposed to having to go to jail

or eventually face trial and perhaps face prison.

I think this underscores her manipulative nature.

Marge knew how to play the game.

So I said to her, I'm like, "Marge do you think you're crazy?"

She would say, "I'm crazy like a fox, Kelly".

[laughter]

She knew exactly what to say, how to say it, what to do.

She learned all these tricks from the first murder.

[gunshots]

So she's sent to Mayview Correctional Facility,

where they're going to do an evaluation.

Everything becomes more difficult the longer it takes you

to get somebody to trial because anything could happen.

She knew that, and she was just playing us along.

[Wahlberg] Now under psychiatric evaluation,

Diehl-Armstrong can't be questioned again

until she's deemed competent and put on trial.

But, if and when she does go to trial,

the prosecution will be without its star witness.

Mr. Rothstein had become very ill with Non-Hodgkins lymphoma,

which is a form of cancer.

[Clark] And I thought I'd better go see him.

He's lying in his bed.

I thought he was just sick.

And now I see him, he's dying.

So I start going at him.

"Bill, don't take this with you. Cleanse your soul.

Tell me right now, are these two cases related?"

And he lifted his big arm out of the bed and he made a "No."

Bill Rothstein was dead four days later.

[Wahlberg] After more than a year at a mental hospital,

Diehl-Armstrong is ruled fit to stand trial in the Roden murder case.

But once again, she throws prosecutors a curveball.

[Clark] In 2005,

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong pleads guilty for killing James Roden...

[gunshot]

...which was completely out of character for her because she fights everything.

She realized the risk-reward for her was too tight,

and she was gonna take the deal she had.

The plea she negotiated for the Roden case

was a seven years to 20 years.

So in Pennsylvania,

that meant upon the expiration of seven years,

she could come up for parole.

[Clark] Now I'm afraid of what she's gonna do if she gets out.

We really have to look at the body count,

as men around her die at an alarming rate.

Does that mean more men will die?

Seven and a half years for killing somebody.

She wouldn't do all of that even with good behavior.

It was the deal of the century in my mind.

So she gets sent to a state correctional institution in Muncy, Pennsylvania,

and I can go interview her.

We're in the underbelly of this prison.

I can hear Marjorie shuffling with her chains on her feet, coming to us,

and she walks in the room and sits down.

And I said, "Hey, Marge, we're here to talk to you about the Wells case."

And she immediately goes to, "Well, I'm not telling you anything about that

until you move me closer to Erie."

She wanted to be in a prison closer to home.

And I said, "Well, Marge, I'll see what we can do."

That's when she said to me, going out the door,

"You better check on that guy named Ken Barnes."

Ken Barnes, we knew, was a local crack dealer,

and he sampled his own product.

He was very smart.

He actually was a television repairman for many years.

Could take a television apart, put it back together.

Same with your computer.

At that time,

he and Marjorie would get together with their friends

in a group they called themselves the "Fractured Intellectuals."

The people she hung out with also lived the same way.

They're just sort of one step away

from the bottom coming out of their lives.

This cast of characters had Bill Rothstein and James Roden,

and found each other with like-minded evil intent.

And they did engage with criminal activity.

[Gluth] Ken Barnes was looking for money.

I mean, that's the bottom line.

Easy score.

He was the type of person I would think

would be involved in a bank robbery.

So we went and talked to him.

He went from, "Yeah, I've heard the name Brian Wells",

to, "I solicited the same lady as he did, Jessica Hoopsick."

[Clark] We found Jessica had been arrested

multiple times for prostitution,

and Jessica used to drive over to Ken Barnes' house to get crack cocaine.

Turns out, Brian Wells drove her there.

So now, we have Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong,

who knows Ken Barnes,

who knows Jessica,

who knows Brian Wells,

and we're finally starting to make the links we need in the case.

[Wahlberg] In late 2005,

two years after the bank robbery,

Ken Barnes is arrested on drug charges,

and he cracks wide open.

Once we picked Ken up, Ken went the whole way,

and told us stories about the day of the bank robbery.

Marjorie said, "Hey, my father has some money.

I'd like him dead. Who can kill him?"

It's really hard to say if Marjorie was serious about this plan

to kill her father.

I just- We can't rule it out.

Of course she would, right?

It's just like it's too consistent with her character.

[Clark] And Ken Barnes said, "Hey, I'll kill your father.

But I need $250,000."

And she said, "Where am I going to get $250,000?"

"Let's rob a bank."

And Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong had a plan.

She said to Rothstein, "Do you know how to build a bomb?"

And he said, "Of course," you know?

And then he explained different ways,

he said "Remote detonation."

[Clark] This bomb only had one purpose, and that was to kill somebody.

They took a knob of a kitchen timer and screwed it in,

and then dialed that knob for the 60 minutes.

It had wires that went to nowhere and did nothing.

It had a back plate in it so that the shrapnel would come out.

It was intended to kill first responders

that they were trying to adjust it.

So this was just a horrific device.

[Wahlberg] The collar bomb is ready.

Now they need a neck to hang it on.

Ken Barnes asked Jessica Hoopsick if she knows any guys

who might want to make some easy money.

Jessica suggests a loyal client.

Pizza delivery man, Brian Wells.

Brian Wells was a very naive, gullible, nice guy.

He was in their mind,

simple minded and easy to control.

He was introduced to these people by Jessica.

So they meet Brian Wells at Ken Barnes' house

and start talking to him.

Hey, Brian, "Would you be interested in making a little money?"

He says, "What do I have to do?"

"Well, we'll give you $5,000 if you just wear this device.

It's not real.

If you get caught, you're a hostage.

If you don't get caught, we'll take it off you

and we'll pay you the money. You're all set."

He never in his mind would ever understand

how diabolical Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong really was.

That takes this kind of, you know, antisocial piece

of Marjorie to a new level,

that she enjoyed harming someone,

and thinking about how it was gonna happen.

With a man who just- He had no chance.

[Wahlberg] But there's a snag in this malevolent plan.

James Roden decided he didn't want to go through with it.

And he kept telling Marge, "I'm done. I'm out.

I don't want anything more to do with it.

I'm not robbing any banks."

[Clark] And she immediately thought,

this guy, I'm not gonna be able to trust anymore.

[Makela] Marjorie wasn't gonna let anybody turn on her.

And dead men tell no tales.

[gun loads]

[gunshot]

[Wahlberg] And with Roden out of the picture,

the Fractured Intellectuals continue with their grisly plot.

[Clark] That day, Ken Barnes

was at the tower site location where the pizzas are delivered

with Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Bill Rothstein.

Brian Wells shows up, delivers the pizzas.

They pull the device out, and they're gonna put it on.

He says, "No, no, no, no, no.

I'm not gonna do this anymore. That looks real."

[Gluth] Ken Barnes even admits "I punched Brian Wells in the mouth.

He tried to run, knocked him down.

We put the bomb on him."

[Clark] They tell him, if you're caught,

a group of Black guys did it to you, and go rob the bank.

[Gluth] When he comes into the bank,

Marjorie and Ken had a pair of binoculars

and was watching the bank robbery happen.

[sirens blaring]

So we had Ken Barnes,

who admitted to his involvement in the crime.

Now we need to talk to Marjorie.

[Clark] We picked Marjorie up in the jail,

and said, "Marge, we're gonna go take a ride.

I want to show you some of the sites for the pizza bomber."

She'd say, "Sure."

[Gluth] I'm driving the car.

Her personal attorney leans up, and he says,

"You know, Dave, Marjorie sort of likes you."

I turn around and I says, "Marge, no disrespect,

but it seems to me,

guys you take a liking to don't last very long."

Well, she starts this manic laugh,

and I can still remember her hands,

for a woman, she had incredibly big hands,

she's slapping her leg laughing,

sort of send chills down your back.

So we go out and we start a drive-around,

and we're going through where she was.

She'd say, "Oh, yeah, I was where the call was made, ordering the pizzas at 1:30,

but I don't know why I was there.

Bill wanted me to be there."

And, "Oh, yeah, I was across the street from the bank

when it was getting robbed,

sitting with Ken Barnes watching,

but I didn't know why I was there."

Her whole goal was to convince us

that even though she was at multiple sites

involved in the Pizza Bomber case,

that she was only there because Bill Rothstein directed her to be there,

and that she had no idea why she was there.

So that didn't make sense to anybody.

[Wahlberg] Diehl-Armstrong puts herself at the crime scene,

but never confesses.

However, there is someone who's heard the entire story in the Man Eater's own words.

Marjorie started telling me stuff.

And she would shift gears from one subject to another subject.

We talked about the Pizza Bomber case.

They needed a patsy.

That was Wells.

Marjorie opening up to her cellmate, Kelly,

after denying all of this for years and years was strange.

Was there some sort of secondary gain that Marjorie got

from sharing this information with Kelly?

Could it have helped her case in any way?

She knew I knew how cops did things,

and I could help her get out of it.

So I got to write it down, you know.

And little by little, like peeling back an onion, I got to the truth.

Wells was, in their mind,

simple-minded and easy to control.

She's like, "We sat him down in a chair,

in the kitchen, Rothstein's house,

and we measured his neck for the collar."

And then she burst out laughing.

I really was trying to help her get out of it.

In the beginning, I really- She was my friend.

And then when I realized,

if she gets out, she's gonna kill again.

And I couldn't let that happen.

[Wahlberg] In the fall of 2010,

seven years after the bank robbery,

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong is once again found fit to stand trial.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was the star of her own trial.

Whenever she came into that courtroom,

you could feel kind of the crackle in the air just by her being there.

When the jury went out of the box,

and the judge left the bench,

she'd swing that chair around and she'd look right at me, and she'd go,

"Jerry Clark, you're a dumbass."

[Sughrue] In Marjorie's case,

she had always said that she was going to testify,

and there's just no reason to fight it.

When I was taking her through her direct testimony,

she got more angry with me than she did the prosecutors.

The theme and theory of our defense was that

she was forced to do what Bill Rothstein wanted her to do.

Otherwise, maybe Bill Rothstein

would turn her in on the dead body case.

Which, by the way, he did do.

The worst piece of evidence for Marjorie

was Marjorie's statements to other people.

There is nothing that's more persuasive

than someone's own words being used against them,

and to a large extent,

we could try to show that what the inmate testified to

was in the newspapers somewhat, but not all of it.

Had she stayed silent,

had she not trusted those people with certain facts,

the case would have been much harder to prove.

She had to talk.

She had to have that. She had to look important.

She had to look involved.

[Diehl-Armstrong laughing]

[Wahlberg] On November 1st, 2010,

after three weeks of testimony from more than 50 witnesses,

the jury reaches a verdict.

[Sughrue] She was found guilty of the crime of conspiracy to commit bank robbery,

bank robbery, and use of a destructive device

and furtherance of a crime of violence.

[Palattella] When Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong heard the verdict,

there wasn't wailing in the courtroom or anything like that.

It was almost as if it was a foregone conclusion

and she was prepared for it.

If society looks and wonders, "Was Marjorie regretful?"

The answer would be no.

With the mixture of personality disorders

and mental illness that Marjorie had,

it was impossible for her brain

to view herself as anything other than a victim.

Marjorie sentenced to life imprisonment,

plus an additional 30 years

for using a destructive device.

So she was never getting out of jail.

Brian Wells, by all means, was a very average guy.

And the fact that they tricked him and duped him

into doing something like this was just sinful.

Whether or not he participated, and-

That didn't matter to me.

He was killed in a very, very nasty way.

[Palattella] Why she was so violent,

why she carried out these things,

you can't discount her mental illness.

What's the link between mental illness and murder?

In Marjorie's case,

these murders are consistent with her personality disorders.

You know, most of us have empathy.

We don't want to hurt people.

She's free from those restraints.

She just did not care one ounce

what other people were feeling

or how bad she was making people feel.

[gunshots]

But we also have to consider

that even people with severe mental illnesses

can commit crimes

for the reasons that everyone else commits crimes,

because they're angry at people,

because they need money or something, right?

So the mental illness may play no role at all whatsoever in the crime.

[gunshot]

I fully believe that Marjorie's "Why?" in this case,

is greed.

That's why she was looking to kill her father.

The money that he had, right,

she just couldn't get enough money.

[Palattella] She would use people to meet her own ends,

and then when when she didn't have any need for them anymore,

she would just discard them or kill them.

[Wahlberg] Seven years into her sentence,

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong dies of cancer at the age of 68.

[Makela] When I heard she passed on the news, I felt bad.

She was my friend at one time.

But, you know, she chose that life.

She chose those roads.

She knew she was doing wrong.

She just thought she'd get away with it.

[Cook] She was a brilliant woman.

But there was that fine line between brilliance and sanity

that she was bouncing back and forth over.

[Clark] I hate to say evil about anybody,

because God created us all,

but some people have evil mind and evil intent,

and she certainly had it.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

was a brilliant and talented woman,

but her evil impulses drove her to commit crimes

of unimaginable darkness.

Her malice, mixed with greed,

fueled a lifetime of gruesome violence,

culminating in one of the most shocking crimes in our history.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.

Next time on Very Scary People...

[boxing bell dings]

Thomas liked to hurt people.

I told Lisa he's going to kill you.

She was dead in her bedroom with her child.

This dude is just evil.

??

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