A Childlike Pizza Deliveryman at the Center of a Puzzling Crime
September 5, 2003
By JAMES DAO
ERIE, Pa., Sept. 4 — He was a single, 46-year-old man who lived with three cats, slept on a mattress on the floor and listened to music in his spare time. He was shy with people but animated with pets, the kind of person who would get on all fours to play with a neighbor's dog.
But if the man, Brian D. Wells, was something of a loner with a stooped-shoulder gait and oversized Elton John-style glasses, he was also courteous and gentle, acquaintances said. He would engage neighbors in chat about the reality show
mystery novels and lawn mower engines. On many Sundays he would invite his widowed mother over for a steak dinner and a television movie. On the street, he would smile and wave to neighborhood teenagers. "Survivor," So just who was Mr. Wells, the pizza deliveryman at the center of one of the strangest crime stories of the year?
Last Thursday, Mr. Wells walked into a PNC Bank two miles from the pizza shop where he worked, pulled up his shirt to show a bomb locked to his neck, and demanded money. He did not get far: the state police pulled him over a few hundred feet from the bank parking lot.
But as the police waited for a bomb squad to arrive, the device around Mr. Wells's neck exploded, blasting a wallet-size hole in his chest. He died sitting cross-legged in the street.
Mr. Wells had told the police that a dark-skinned man attached the bomb to his neck, clicking it closed with a combination lock that seemed to set a timer. Mr. Wells had also said the man told him he must rob the bank and return with the money before the bomb would be defused.
Now dozens of investigators are trying to figure out what, if anything, is true about his story. Did he act alone? Was he a willing dupe in a conspiracy that went awry? Or was he coerced into a suicide mission?
To the few people who seemed to know Mr. Wells in this aging industrial city of 103,000 along Lake Erie, the answer is clear: there is no way, they contend, the childlike Mr. Wells could have concocted, much less carried out, such an elaborate scheme. He was either forced to commit the crime or duped into being an accomplice by people he trusted.
"He's the last man you'd imagine being part of this kind of crime conspiracy," said Danelle Stone, 42, who lived next door to Mr. Wells on a shady block of single-family homes in Millcreek, a suburb west of Erie. "It just doesn't add up."
Mrs. Stone's 15-year-old son, Joshua, interjected, "He was too simple."
There are indications that investigators have reached the same conclusion. F.B.I. agents leading the investigation have said they doubt that Mr. Wells acted alone, but they have not ruled out the possibility that he knew, and was perhaps working with, the mastermind of the crime.
Mr. Wells dropped out of high school when he was a sophomore, seemed only modestly capable as a mechanic, did not own a computer and did not seem to know how to navigate the Internet. Few people who knew him believe he had the skills to make a crude bomb, much less the metal collar locking the device to his neck. Investigators have said that collar was sophisticated.
The authorities say they have seen few such collar bombs in the United States, though criminals and terrorists in Colombia have been known to use the devices equipped with remote-control detonators.
He was far from well off, but Mr. Wells showed little interest in money or possessions, living a spartan existence with few complaints, friends said. Having lived with his parents and a brother at different times during his adult life, he seemed content just to be on his own.
He even told his landlady that he would rather go homeless than move in with his mother after his car was wrecked in an accident and he had no way to deliver pizzas. The landlady helped him buy a used Geo Metro for $1,800, which he paid back a week before he died.
"He was proud," said his landlady, Linda Payne, who rented the five-room white cottage behind her home to Mr. Wells for nearly five years. "He'd never accept the food we offered him, except maybe a cookie."
Mr. Wells was born and raised in the Erie area, one of at least six children, investigators said. His father died about a decade ago; his mother lives just east of the city.
In his freshman year at East High School in Erie, records show, he failed algebra and Spanish, earned D's in English, science and geography and earned his lone A in swimming. He attended only 39 days of school in his sophomore year before dropping out to work, records show.
Though neighbors and investigators knew little about his early work history, it seems clear that Mr. Wells spent much of the past decade, and perhaps longer, delivering pizzas.
About two years ago, Mr. Wells moved to Arizona to live with a younger brother and work at his tool and die shop, Mrs. Payne said. He threw away most of his belongings, expecting never to return. But the shop closed and Mr. Wells was back at the Paynes' doorstep less than a year later, she said.
His last day alive seemed to begin like most others. Mr. Wells went out to buy breakfast at
and pick up the daily newspaper. He then drove to work at Mama Mia's Pizza-ria, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that shares space with a karate studio and an herbal products store in a strip mall on busy Peach Street. McDonald's Just after 1:30, investigators said, the pizza shop owner, Tony Ditomo, took an order for two pizzas from a caller claiming to be a member of a construction crew.
The address turned out to be a dirt road leading to a white cinder-block building, a transmission tower belonging to a local CBS affiliate. and some satellite dishes. The building is empty most days, investigators said.
It is not clear if Mr. Wells ever reached the tower. What is known is that at around 2:30, he showed up at the PNC Bank off Peach Street carrying the bomb and a note for the tellers. Investigators say the handwriting is being analyzed.
He had barely driven out of the bank parking lot before state troopers pulled him over in the driveway of an Eyeglass World store up the street. Kari Edkin, a 24-year-old optician at Eyeglass World, watched the arrest outside her window until police ordered her building evacuated. Moments after she crossed the street, she heard a loud pop and thought the police had shot the captured man. But it was the sound of the exploding bomb — so small that it did not crack a single window in the eyeglass store.
The sight of Mr. Wells's body slumped over the pavement haunted her for days. "I just couldn't believe this guy could have done something to bring so many police around," she said. "He looked so average, so common, so confused."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company