ERIE Cops chase leads in bizarre death of bomb victim

Was the victim a willing participant in the robbery?
ERIE (AP) -- A week after a bomb killed a pizza deliveryman who told police he had been forced to rob a bank, an FBI spokesman said Thursday the bizarre case won't be solved quickly and cautioned the public to be patient with the investigation's pace.
Federal, state and local law enforcement continued to chase down leads into the death of Brian Douglas Wells, an unassuming 46-year-old deliveryman who authorities say robbed a bank outside Erie before a bomb clasped to his chest by a locking metal collar exploded, killing him the afternoon of Aug. 28.
Investigators were still trying to determine whether Wells was a willing participant in the robbery or whether, as he told police officers, someone had put the bomb on him and forced him to rob the bank.
On Thursday, authorities reversed an earlier decision to have a news conference, at which they were considering releasing information about a second weapon found with Wells and an extensive note with instructions both for him and for bank employees that apparently was used during the robbery.
Note's instructions
A law enforcement source told The Associated Press that the note instructed Wells to go to three locations after robbing the bank. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported for today's edition that the note said Wells would find instructions at the locations on how to disarm the explosive, but the source would not confirm that to The Associated Press.
FBI agent Bill Crowley, who is acting as a spokesman for the investigation in northwestern Pennsylvania, said officials decided it was not worth the time it would take to release the information, even though he said a previous decision to release photos of the heavy metal collar and lock from which the bomb hung over Wells' chest has paid off with several leads.
He said agents are still working on analyzing the note and developing profiles of Wells or anyone else who may have been involved. The second weapon has been described as a "sort of gun" by one FBI official, but authorities refused to discuss the weapon or its design.
Locked collar
Korac Timon, the Erie County chief deputy coroner, said the most important piece of evidence recovered from the blast that killed Wells appears to be the collar locked around his neck. The FBI posted photographs of it on the bureau's Web site Tuesday, hoping that someone would recognize it.
According to manufacturers in the Erie area, the person who fashioned the collar could have done so with little more than limited experience in metalworking or welding.
"It could have been just a guy fooling around with metalworkings," said Bob Heinlein, president and owner of H & amp;H Machined Products Inc. in Erie. Heinlein said the collar could have been welded from pieces of metal and didn't require much expertise to put together.
Ralph Pontillo, president of the Manufacturing Association of Northwest Pennsylvania, said construction of the device wouldn't be a difficult task for anyone "with some kind of basic knowledge about machining or fabrication."
Converted, maybe
Charlie Rutkowski, who runs Industrial Sales and Manufacturing Inc., a fabrication shop in Erie, says it would be easy to alter a collar that was intended for piping and turn it into a neck collar. The collar could have been "pulled out of a junkyard," Rutkowski said.
Although Wells was known as someone who could tinker with his car, a former FBI agent said it's unlikely the deliveryman -- who didn't own a computer and apparently needed help from neighbors in removing a motor mount from his vehicle -- could have built the collar.