Brian Wells

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Brian Douglas Wells (November 15, 1956 – August 28, 2003) was a pizza deliveryman who was killed by a time bomb explosive fastened to his neck, purportedly under duress from the maker of the bomb. After he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank, the bomb exploded. The bizarre affair was subject to much attention in the mass media, and remains unsolved.

[edit] Biography

Wells dropped out of high school in 1973, and had primarily worked as a pizza delivery person for 30 years, until he received a call to deliver to an address a few miles from the Erie, Pennsylvania "Mamma Mia Pizzeria" for which he worked. It was later found that the address was that of an unmanned radio tower at the end of a dirt road.

Within an hour of leaving for the delivery, Wells had entered a bank with a home-made shotgun disguised as a cane and demanded $250,000. When police intervened, Wells claimed that three unnamed people had placed a bomb around his neck, provided him with the shotgun, and told him that he had to commit the robbery and several other tasks, otherwise he would be killed.

The police made no attempt to disarm the device. The bomb squad were finally called at 3:04 PM, at least 30 minutes after the first 911 call. At 3:18 PM, it exploded, blasting a fist-sized hole in Wells' chest just a few minutes before the bomb squad arrived. The story remained in the news for several days after the event, with various media outlets speculating as to whether Wells had been an innocent victim, a co-conspirator, or the lone perpetrator of these events.

The crime has never been solved, despite a $100,000 reward offered by the FBI, but a note found on Wells had instructed him to carry out four tasks—the first of which was the bank robbery—in a set period of time before the bomb went off. Wells would gain extra time with the completion of each task.

However, it was later determined that regardless of what unfolded, Wells would never have had enough time to complete the tasks to get the bomb defused.

On September 17, 2005, the story of Brian Wells was featured on America's Most Wanted with newly released evidence in hopes that officials could gather new clues behind the puzzling case.

On October 13, 2006, the story was featured on Anderson Cooper 360. The show dealt with FBI's most mysterious cases, and featured AMW's John Walsh. A document from the Erie police stated that "this investigation is now at a critical point," leading one to assume that the crime may be soon solved.

[edit] Popular culture

The story of Brian Wells was used as a basis for the pilot episode of 2006 series Heist.
Wells' story was also used as the basis for "Pas de Deux", an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
An episode of CSI: Miami was also based on this incident.
The Brian Wells story was featured on The 99 Most Bizarre:Crimes and was one of the "Most Bizarre" on the show.
Brian Wells' story is mentioned in Dean Koontz's 2006 fictional thriller novel The Husband.
A collection of news articles that reported developments in the Brian Wells story was analyzed in a scientific study of information novelty (see Figure 5 in Section 5.2 of the paper).