BANK ROBBERY Coroner's report has new details in neck-bomb case

The bomb killed the man as he pleaded with police.
ERIE, Pa. (AP) -- A pizza-deliveryman-turned-bank-robber who died when a bomb locked onto his neck exploded had just 55 minutes to disarm the bomb, according to details from a coroner's report.
Brian Wells, 46, died shortly after he robbed an Erie bank Aug. 28 wearing a crudely made metal collar that enabled a pipe bomb to be attached to his neck. State police apprehended Wells after the robbery, but he was sitting, handcuffed in a parking lot surrounded by police who kept their distance while waiting for a bomb squad to arrive when the device exploded.
The report by the Erie County Coroner's Office includes previously unreleased details about the crime, including instructions in a letter that Wells said he was given by an unknown group of people who locked the bomb onto him, the Erie Times-News reported in Sunday's editions.
"The subject was given 55 minutes to rob the bank and follow the remainder of the written directions, which included an elaborate scheme of traveling from one location to another to find additional instructions on what action to perform next, where to leave the money he had stolen and how to safely disarm the explosive device in order to save his life," the report said.
Complicated instructions
The FBI has declined to release many of the above details, although agents have said that the instructions Wells received in the handwritten letters were too complicated for him to have completed them before the bomb exploded.
The FBI has said that Wells was instructed by the letters to drive to a nearby McDonald's, and to locations along Interstates 79 and 90, though they wouldn't say what he was supposed to do at those stops. The FBI has also refused to say whether the letters contained instructions that would have helped Wells defuse the bomb or remove it from his neck.
On video taken just before his death by WJET-TV, Wells can be heard telling authorities that somebody locked the bomb onto him.
But the coroner's report does differ in one respect from what Wells told troopers that day: The report said that Wells told authorities a group forced him to wear the bomb, even though Wells referred only to an unknown "he" as he pleaded with police to remove the collar that day.
"He pulled a key out and started a timer," Wells can be heard telling troopers on the tape. "I heard the thing ticking when he did it."
Suspicions about Wells
The FBI has not ruled out that Wells participated in the scheme to rob the PNC Bank in the Summit Towne Centre that day, which has angered Wells' family. They believe Wells' claim that he was accosted when he was called to deliver a pizza to what turned out to be a television transmission tower at the end of a dirt road that afternoon.
Special Agent Bob Rudge, who heads the FBI office in Erie, declined comment on the coroner's report, but said agents are making "very good progress" in the case.
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