Woman proclaims innocence in Erie collar-bomb death

Associated Press

ERIE, Pa.

A Pennsylvania woman accused of helping plan a heist that ended with a pizza delivery driver killed by a bomb strapped to his neck says she couldn’t have been in on the plot because she was angry at a man who admitted his involvement.

Sixty-one-year-old Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong told a federal courtroom Wednesday that she suspected her co-defendant had been involved in stealing money from her. That alleged robbery happened three months before Brian Wells was killed outside an Erie bank.

Diehl-Armstrong testified that she believed co-defendant Kenneth Barnes planned the robbery of her home that netted about $130,000.

Prosecutors, however, produced a police report showing Diehl-Armstrong exaggerated the theft. The prosecutor says she reported only $2,300 stolen.

Diehl-Armstrong and her attorney, Douglas Sughrue, contend she knew Barnes and others who planned the Aug. 28, 2003, robbery but wasn’t a part of the plot herself. To bolster that assertion, she testified that she was so angry with Barnes about the robbery at her home that there was no way she would have worked alongside him to plot the collar-bomb heist three months later.