All language subtitles for FBI.True.S06E02.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

- We get the call,
bank robbery.

- Brian Wells said he was
a pizza delivery driver.

He said a group of
Black men shot at me

and put this bomb around me
and told me to rob the bank.

- You hear this faint
beep, beep, beep.

We were interviewing
Brian Wells' co-workers

at the pizza shop.

Robert Pinetti said,

"Can you come back on Monday?
And I'll talk to you then."

Monday never happened because
Pinetti dies on Sunday.

Now you have two
dead pizza delivery guys

from the same restaurant.

Three weeks after
the whole bombing incident,

Bill Rothstein said that
there's a dead body

in the freezer of his garage.

- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze!
- FBI.

- FBI!
- Action!

- But they don't know
the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking
agent-to-agent.

This is "FBI True."

- I remember getting the
call on a Sunday morning.

And it's like, oh, my God,

now we have a dead body
in the freezer, potentially?

But what's interesting and why
it piqued our interest

is 8631 Peach is the tower site

where Brian Wells
delivers the pizzas

before the bank robbery.

Two steps over is 8645 Peach,

the house where
this dead body is.

Bill Rothstein said that
a female that he identified

as Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong...

- He said the dead body
was her boyfriend.

His name is James Roden.

She killed him and that's why
he's in the freezer.

- Bill and Marjorie were
actually engaged in the '70s.

They never got married.
They still remained friends.

Bill was someone that she
would have do favors for her.

- So Pennsylvania State Police
gets a search warrant

for Rothstein's residence.

We were able to
accompany them in there.

- So you go in the front door.

- Things everywhere, total
disarray, dirty, garbage,

just an amazing mess.

- The freezer
readily visible or no?

- Not really.

It was sort of tucked in,
but immediately apparent

that there's a long freezer.

Everyone's standing around
taking a look, and going,

what are we going
to find in here?

When it's opened up,
there's something in there.

It's wrapped in tarp
and plastic and duct tape,

frozen solid,
I mean, hard as a rock.

Because of the rigidity
of the, now we know,

body that was in there,
couldn't move it.

So we had to unplug the
freezer, put it in the van,

take it to the
coroner's office.

And it sat for--
- It took days to thaw out.

- Days.

- Three dead bodies
in three weeks,

all in close proximity.

What the hell is going on?

- So immediately during the day
and into the evening,

Rothstein is being interviewed

by the Pennsylvania
State Police...

Sitting in their overalls.

He always wore
these bib overalls.

His story was that Marjorie
had shot James Roden

twice on the bed with
a 12-gauge shotgun.

- That she murdered him.

- So those were her words?
"I murdered him?"

Or "I killed him?"
- No, that's not--

I don't know what
her exact words were,

but that is what she said.

You know what I'm saying?

She indicated that
she did murder

or that she had killed him.

- He went over to help her
dispose of the body.

- The body in her house
that she wanted to remove,

I helped her with it.

I put it, basically,
in my garage.

That Saturday, she
wanted it completely destroyed.

- He said he had nothing
to do with the killing

except for the fact that
he moved the body for her.

- Went into, like, histrionics,
which is basically like,

oh, she leaned back
in the chair and said,

nobody can help me.

You're the only one
who can help me,

or something like that.

- I went to the barracks

and I wanted to interview
Rothstein

because I'm trying to
figure out if this is linked

to the Brian Wells case.

I open the door.
I go in, introduce myself.

I say, hey, Bill,
how are you doing?

Jerry Clark from the FBI.
I'd like to talk to you.

And he said, listen,
I need to tell you something.

And I go, what?

And he goes, I'm the
smartest guy in this room.

And I looked at him, and I--

I said, well, my wife
tells me that every night,

so let's get started.

So I said, hey, do you
mind us asking you questions

about the Brian Wells case?

Well, he's saying this is
not related to Brian Wells.

Hey, have you ever been
down the tower site,

you know,
right next to your house?

No, I never go back there.
Hell, no.

I don't--I don't do
anything back there.

He was a narcissist.

And so I thought,
you know what?

I'm gonna play to that.

And I said, Bill, listen,

I'm just--I'm at a loss.
Mind helping me out?

I said, why wouldn't
Brian Wells, has that collar,

put around his neck and go
right to a police department?

Why does he go rob the bank?

He looked right at me.
He goes, hypothetically?

Yeah, yeah, Bill,
hypothetically.

He said, what if they told them
there were wires in the collar

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

I swear, I almost
slid out of my chair.

- That's not
public information.

- No.
- Right.

- There were wires
in the collar.

And nobody knew that

except the bomb builder
and any of the investigators.

I go, you know what?
Here's another thing.

I just can't figure this out.

I wouldn't even know
how to make a bomb.

How would you make a bomb?

And he said, well,
hypothetically?

Yeah, hypothetically.

Well, I'd cut the tops
off of shotgun shells

and use the black powder
to pour into the pipes.

Again, nobody knew

that it was Remington
12-gauge shotgun shells

that they'd cut open
to use the black powder.

So two singular pieces
of information

he knew and nobody else did.

I walked out of that room,
like, beating my chest,

going, this guy's involved.

And I don't know the links
yet, but he's involved.

- Rothstein blames
Roden's death

on Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

Had you heard that name before?

- Boy, I sure had.

And if you were from Erie,

you knew the name
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

She had a lot of death
around her.

She was on trial in 1988 for
killing a boyfriend of hers.

She shot six times while he
was on the couch sleeping.

She actually was
acquitted in the case

for one of the first
battered spouse defenses

used in Erie County.

Even though acquitted
on that case,

she was charged with having
a firearm that was unlicensed.

I actually was a parole officer
in Erie County in the '80s.

I had her on supervision.

- I thank God
and I thank the jury

and everybody that
has always believed

to help me get through this.
- OK.

- After being acquitted
of that case,

years later, got married
to Richard Armstrong.

He died of some blunt
force trauma to his head.

And she explained
that he had fallen

and hit the coffee table.

There was always
this belief that

she had some connection
to that.

So Rothstein takes us
on a guided tour

of both Marjorie
Diehl-Armstrong's house

where James Roden was
shot on the bed

twice with a 12-gauge shotgun
and at his house,

where he had moved the body
from her house to his house.

- Ready to go, or?
- Let's go.

- Some of the tools are mine

and some
of the tools are Jim's.

- Jim?
- The guy who died.

- OK.

- I dumped
hydrogen peroxide here

once probably maybe
Friday or Thursday

or something like that.

- Why?

- To get rid of any evidence of
blood because she thought

that gets rid of evidence
of blood.

So I dragged this bedsheet over
to here on top of the tarp.

Then I took the tarp
and folded it up around it

and tried to use some, uh,
duct tape and packaging

tape to wrap it up.

- He ends up talking all about
how she shot him,

how he took all the material
from her house to his house,

including the mattress
James Roden was shot on.

- There's the mattress
that came off the bed.

- Bill, where did
the body come in?

- Through the front door.

There wasn't this much
clutter because

I hadn't put this much
stuff here.

- Was it just he moving
the body, or did he have help?

- So he did it all himself.

- So I tied the rope across.

I think I tied the two things
into the pulley

and tried to just use it up
as a single-lever pulley.

And it was real tough and
I used my body to do it also.

- So the story he
tells you is they

take the entire crime
scene out of her house

and put it in his house.

- That's exactly
what they were doing.

And the first thing
they thought of

was, well, let's put
him in the freezer.

Once he's frozen solid,
we'll use a chainsaw,

cut him into pieces, and then
put them in an ice chipper,

and then we'll throw
and scatter

all the pieces around town.

So that was their initial plan.

And that's when Bill Rothstein
became highly nervous

and didn't seem like he
wanted to go through with it.

And that's why he called 911
and turned her in.

- When do we go talk
to Marjorie?

- Marjorie, when she
initially is arrested

for the death of James Roden,

she immediately asked for a
lawyer,

so we can't really
interview her.

- They're going to get a
negligence suit filed by me

from my--my jail cell
if necessary.

- But as she was being moved
in the county courthouse,

you know, reporters
would be there.

And she mentioned
Bill Rothstein's

name and the Brian Wells case.

- What do you say
about Rothstein?

- Rothstein should be charged
with the murder of Brian Wells

and a lot of other charges.

- He says
you committed the murder.

- Rothstein is a filthy liar.

- You didn't shoot
that guy, Marjorie?

- It'll come out in court
what happened and you'll see.

- So another thing
about Marjorie is

she had a history
of mental illness

in the behavioral
health system.

She declared incompetent to
stand trial on the state case

because Roden's death was
still a homicide in the state

because it's not linked to
the Brian Wells case yet.

So she's sent away
for restoration.

In July of 2004,
11 months after the bombing,

I had heard that Bill Rothstein
was in a local hospital.

So we go to the hospital
and I look at Bill Rothstein

and I go, oh, my gosh.

And I, you know, watched
my father die of cancer.

And Bill was far along
in that process,

much further than
I even thought.

So now I'm thinking, this
may be my last chance, right?

So I start going at it
a little bit.

Hey, Bill,
you gotta help me here.

Are these connected?

Meaning Brian Wells case
and James Roden's death.

I said,
don't bring this with you.

Cleanse your soul.
- Yeah, yeah.

- Lay it out.
Tell me now.

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

He wrote it, like N-O.

- I said, hey, Bill,
don't bring this with you.

Are these connected?

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

And four days later,
he was dead.

He would never want you to
think that you figured it out

and were smarter than him.

He would never give you
the satisfaction.

He'd rather bring it with him.
And he did.

Witnesses started coming
forward that were

really helpful that didn't
come forward for two years.

So in 2005, a UPS driver
driving by the Shell station

on Peach Street where the
phone call was made

ordering the two pizzas
that Brian Wells delivered

to the tower site at 1:30,

the UPS driver,
he's driving by.

He sees Bill Rothstein and
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

at the pay phone.

To his credit,
he knew Bill Rothstein,

so it wasn't even...
- Oh, OK.

- An eyewitness
identification issue.

- Right.

- The best thing about
him being a UPS driver,

he has logs of his stops.

So it's not just, oh,
somebody's just saying,

hey, I was there.

And when he turned and saw him,
he made a comment to himself,

nice bibs, because Bill
had on, you know,

bib overalls
that he always wore.

- When do you finally
get to interview Marjorie?

- She's two years
in the restoration process

until she's finally restored.

She comes back to Erie,

pleads guilty
for killing James Roden,

and really gets handed
an amazingly light sentence,

quite honestly,
7 1/2 to 20 years.

She's then sent to
State Correctional Institution

at Muncy in the middle
of the state of Pennsylvania.

As soon as she's competent
and already pled,

we're on the highway, right?

We're going to see her.

She sits down and I say, hi,
I'm Jerry Clark.

We're here to talk to
you about the Wells case.

And so she immediately
blurts out,

I'm not talking to you
about Wells.

She would never admit

that she was involved
in the Wells case.

But at one point
in one of the interviews,

Marjorie lets it slip out

that Bill Rothstein was
looking for two kitchen timers.

And we thought, oh, man,
nobody knows that

there were two kitchen timers
in that device.

As we were getting up
to walk out,

she said, and you better check
out a guy named Ken Barnes.

And we go, Ken Barnes,
all right.

And we had heard
that name before.

He was a local crack dealer.

And we knew we had crack
in this case

from one of our prostitutes,
Jessica,

because she had told us
that Brian Wells would

drive her around for her
to buy crack cocaine.

And now we're thinking we're
going to go back to Jessica

and say take us to every place
that you bought crack cocaine.

And she took us
to Ken Barnes's house.

We started to figure
out that, all right,

Ken Barnes now knows Jessica,
Jessica knows Brian Wells.

She introduces those two.

The state police, they ended up
charging Ken Barnes

for selling crack
to some undercovers.

And at least now we knew he was
in the Erie County Prison

and we could interview him
where we knew he'd be.

- How'd that go?

- We probably did 12 to 13,
14 interviews

until Barnes finally said,

all right,
here's what happened.

Basically, they all met each
other at Ken Barnes's house.

Brian Wells
would drive Jessica over

to buy crack cocaine.

She and he would have sex.

Brian Wells would pay her.

She would then take that money
and buy crack.

While they were there, they
started to meet with Marjorie

at one point
and discuss a bank robbery.

Hey, Brian, if we did this,
you could make $5,000

by robbing this bank wearing a
fake bomb and being a hostage.

And all that would happen is
if you get caught,

you get to walk away because
it's a hostage situation.

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

It's fake anyway.

And, uh, we'll give
you the five grand.

They then tell Pinetti,
Brian Wells's coworker,

who also hung out
at Ken Barnes's house.

Brian seems a
little wishy-washy

about wanting to do this.

If you get him to cooperate,
we'll pay you $5,000.

And so Pinetti was going to
get something out of it, too.

- And Ken also gives us
the reason why

they wanted to rob the bank
for $250,000,

that Marge Diehl's father was
giving away money

she thought was hers.

She wanted Ken
to kill her father

so she would have that money
that she believed was hers.

- She asked me if I
would kill her dad.

And I said, why?
- Just like that?

- Yeah.
- Would you kill my dad?

- Yeah.

She said that he was
giving away her inheritance.

And she was so damn
obsessed with it.

- Ken agreed to do it, but said
I need the $250,000 down.

- I said, well, Marjorie,
I said, that would cost you.

And she goes, well, how much?
I said $1/4 million.

- That's why they put it
on the bank robbery notes.

We need $250,000.

- And we corroborate
what Ken Barnes tells us

with a guy named
Floyd Stockton

who was living with
Bill Rothstein

when they were planning
the robbery.

- What did you learn
everyone's role was

from this gang of misfits?

- Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong
wanted the money

to kill her dad
to get the inheritance.

Bill Rothstein's role was
to come up with the plan,

which is the scavenger hunt,

the bank robbery plan,

and making the device
and the cane gun.

Ken Barnes was a very
computer-savvy guy.

He was actually a television
repair man at one point.

So those timers that
were used in the device

was actually designed
by Ken Barnes.

So according to Ken Barnes,
the day before the robbery,

there was a
pre-planning meeting.

The device wasn't shown
to Brian Wells,

so he didn't know
what it looked like.

The next day when he shows
up to deliver the pizzas,

and they open the back
of Bill Rothstein's van,

pull out the device,

Brian Wells looked at it and
said, you know what?

This looks too real.

I don't want
to do this anymore.

Brian started to run away.

Ken grabbed him, punched him,
knocked him to the ground.

That's why he had dirt
on his knees

in the photo in the bank.

Bill Rothstein
shoots a gun in the air,

expended one shell casing.

And that's when
he told Floyd Stockton

to put that device
around Brian's neck.

They duped him.
They convinced him it was fake.

And then they murdered him,
basically.

I still to this day
in my heart

don't believe
he knew it was real.

- Did you ever find out

why Brian Wells was
given the cane gun?

- Ken Barnes told me when
Brian was robbing the bank

and saying he had a bomb,
if they didn't believe him,

he was to raise up the cane
and say, I have a shotgun here.

You better believe me.
And I need the money.

- So how was Roden
connected to this?

- Roden, he had a role
going into it.

And Marge was concerned
he was going to talk

to the authorities,
and so she killed him.

- It's interesting.

There were never
any Black guys

who forced Wells
to Rob the bank.

They were all white.

They got rid of
all of the people

that were the supporting cast
to this caper.

- They sure did.

They weren't allowing
for any witnesses.

And many times, in all the
discussion about this case,

everybody thinks
of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

as the mastermind.

- Were you the mastermind
behind this Brian Wells case?

- I wasn't even involved.
- You weren't involved?

You didn't know what
was going to happen?

- I did nothing.

- You didn't do
the collar bombing?

- Nothing.
I'm innocent.

- Was Bill Rothstein
the mastermind?

- Bill Rothstein and the
government are framing me, OK?

Framing me, OK?
And the rest of these lying--

lying, perjuring witnesses.

- Rothstein's dead.
He can't defend himself.

- There's no physical evidence.

- But Bill Rothstein really
masterminded this thing.

He put together the device.

He made the cane gun.

He had the scavenger hunt.

And it was his plan,
not Marjorie's.

So to me, Bill Rothstein
is the mastermind.

- So now that it's two decades
later, what are your thoughts?

- I guess, in my career--

you know, I've--I've
worked counterterrorism,

I've worked drug cases--

this is the most bizarre
and heinous crime...

- Yeah.

- You know, that I was
involved with in the FBI.

- I have such interesting
thoughts about this case

because it really became
a part of my fabric

of what my whole life
had turned out to be.

Three people died
in a horrific way,

and I'll never forget that.

And what doesn't help me is,
21 years later,

I still have people come up
to me in Erie and say,

hey, did I ever tell you this
about Marjorie?

Or did I ever tell you this
about Bill?

And I'm thinking,
why didn't you tell me that--

- Yeah, exactly.
- All that time ago?

So it's still--you know,
it still is with me,

whatever I do.