Collar Bomb Robbery

On August 28th, 2003, a phone call is made during lunchtime rush to Mama Mia's Pizza, located at 5154 Peach Street.
Tony Ditmo, the owner of Mama Mia's takes an order for two large sausage and pepperoni pizzas.
Tony cannot understand the customer telling him the address, so he hands the phone over to his employee, Brian Wells.
Wells is about 5'3", age 46 and balding on top.
Wells takes down the address, 8631 Peach Street and heads out south on Peach Street, for what seems to be an ordinary delivery, and yet roughly two hours later, Brian Wells is on live TV for robbing a bank.
He is handcuffed and surrounded by state troopers in the parking lot of Eyeglass World with a bomb strapped to his neck.
After about 30 minutes of gently trying to communicate his plight, Wells says to the police,
“Why is it nobody’s trying to get this thing off me? I don’t have a lot of time… its going to go off, i’m not lying. Did you call my boss?”
At about 3:18 P.M. the collar starts emitting a loud and rapid beeping noise, and then the bomb detonates and Wells falls backwards, slowly dying while medics and police are baffled in the background. Wells dies on the pavement. Two minutes later the bomb squad finally arrives.
Collar bombs have only been known to be used by Colombian drug lords in turf wars, making the use of one in Erie, Pennsylvania especially strange.
Even more odd, police found several pages of instructions, telling Wells how to rob the bank, and remove his explosive collar. The notes were addressed to the "bomb hostage". The instructions were hand-written with illustrations.
This case seemed pretty cut and dry, but as more details arose, it appeared that Wells, may not have entirely been a victim.
Admittedly, none of his behavior seems to scream high profile bank thief.
Wells's landlady and neighbor, Linda Payne, stated that he was a perfect tenant. Wells lived alone with 3 cats and was a dedicated employee at Mama Mia’s Pizzeria.
The phone call to the pizzeria was made around 1:47 P.M. Wells would've arrived at 8631 Peach Street at about 2 P.M
During investigation, it was found that the delivery location was not a home, but a TV transmission tower site in a wooded area off of Peach Street. It was only reachable by a dirt road. The area was swept and they found footprints that matched Wells' footwear, and the tire tracks of his Geo Metro. But one thing is clear, it's during this time, that Wells was outfitted with the collar bomb.
20 minutes later, at roughly 2:20 P.M., Wells walked into the PNC Bank wearing the collar bomb. The bank was about two miles back up Peach Street. And Wells was wearing a T-Shirt with the word Guess across the chest. A shirt that relatives say was not his.
Wells was instructed to "go to the bank quietly.
"Enter with the weapon you were given. Avoid panicking the tellers or customers. Use the weapon if anyone does not cooperate or attempts to leave the bank."
Jon Sekel, a witness at the bank robbery The bomb was already around Wells's neck at this point. Wells gave a bank teller a white envelope, and spoke in a low voice. Wells's note to the bank teller said He then lifted his shirt and showed the teller his bomb, which the note confirmed.
At one point the teller yelled "Audrey!", the code for a robbery.
One teller whispered to a customer to leave and a group of people began to exit the building.
The teller told Wells that there was no way to enter the vault at that time, and was only able to hand over $8,702.
Sekel said that Wells didn’t appear scared or cocky, he was actually calm. Wells then left a sealed note for the police, along with his drivers license with the teller, as he was told to do.
A woman with a cell phone called 911, and about three minutes later Wells walked out of the bank sucking on a Dum-Dum he took from the bank counter.
Police would later find pages of instructions in Wells's car.
The first note read: “exit the bank with the money and go to the McDonalds restaurant. Get out of the car and go to the small sign that says Drive Thru/Open 24 hr. In the flower bed by the sign is a rock with a note taped to the bottom. It has your next instructions.”
At the McDonalds, Wells collected a two page note that directed him to go up Peach Street, to a wooded area several miles away.
Shortly after, Wells was stopped by state troopers and handcuffed while he told them about the bomb.
The troopers left him sitting on the ground, shouting for help. They called the bomb squad as soon as they visually confirmed the device around his neck.
And the rest is history.
The notes directing towards wells stated: “This powerful, booby trapped bomb can be removed only by following our instructions. Act now, think later, or you will die.”
If Wells did as he was instructed, which included driving around the city to gather passwords, clues and keys that would disarm the bomb,
Wells would end up with the combination to free himself from the bomb, however it seemed based of the instructions that Brian Wells never stood a chance.

Cops tried completing the hunt themselves, hours after Wells had died. Bouncing from clue to clue until eventually one of the clue locations came up empty. It seemed that whoever was executing this plan had called it off once the police interfered. One thing to note is that the instructions contained words like "we" and "us", making it appear that there were multiple conspirators.