Prosecutor calls Pa. collar bomb suspect ’twisted’

ERIE, Pa. (AP) — A federal prosecutor says a Pennsylvania woman was part of a group of “twisted, intellectually bright individuals” who “completely outsmarted themselves” when they devised a bank robbery plot involving a collar-bomb.

Prosecutor Marshall Piccinini told jurors Friday to open the trial of 61-year-old Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong that she was an “aider and abetter” in the plot that killed 46-year-old pizza deliveryman Brian Wells in August 2003.

Prosecutors have long said she hatched the plot to get money to pay someone to kill her father. But Piccinini says all he has to prove is that she knowingly participated.

Piccinini says Wells was forced to wear the bomb collar. He says Wells may have initially believed the device would be a decoy. Wells died when it exploded after the robbery.