Woman denies role in bomb plot

Associated Press

ERIE, Pa.

A Pennsylvania woman fidgeted and whispered angry denials as a federal prosecutor told a jury that she played a role in a devious scheme to lock a bomb onto the neck of a pizza deliveryman and force him to rob a bank.

“That’s a lie,” Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, 61, of Erie, hissed into her attorney’s ear at one point. “Makes me sick.”

Diehl-Armstrong’s trial began Friday on armed bank-robbery and other charges in the plot that killed 46-year-old Brian Wells. She faces a possible life sentence.

Diehl-Armstrong’s trial marks the widest window yet into a bizarre plot that captivated northwestern Pennsylvania in the waning days of summer in 2003. The other people implicated in the case are either dead or have pleaded guilty.

On Aug. 28, 2003, Wells walked into a bank with a bomb strapped to his neck and walked out with $8,702. He was stopped by police nearby and was sitting on the ground in handcuffs when the bomb went off, killing him, as officers waited for a bomb squad to arrive.

In 2007, when federal authorities announced charges against Diehl-Armstrong and her friend Kenneth Barnes, investigators revealed that they believed Wells was in on the plot, at least at the start — an accusation his family denies.