The Mastermind 38:34

Due to the nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, violence, and suicide. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health and suicide, visit spotify.com slash resources. On the evening of September 20th, 2003, Bill Rothstein scurried down his driveway, hopped in his van, and sped away.

Then he pulled out a cell phone and dialed 911. Heart pounding, Bill explained that there was a suspicious woman at 8645 Peach Street and there was a body inside the garage freezer. The operator was skeptical. How would Bill know about a body at that address?

Bill responded that the house was his, and the woman inside was Marjorie Deal Armstrong. He said he had helped her do some stuff he shouldn't have, but that he'd never killed anybody. The operator said the authorities would need to question him anyway, and Bill promised to stop by the station later that night. Little did the police know this was the first in a chain of clues that would lead them not only to Jim Roden's dead body,

but to the perpetrators behind Brian Wells' bank robbery and death. Bill himself was a key player, but he wouldn't live to see the case unravel. I'm Carter Roy, host of Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Wednesday, and be sure to check us out on Instagram at TheConspiracyPod.

To conclude our discussion on the pizza bomber, I'm once again joined by my friend and host of Serial Killers, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me. Glad to have you here. Stay with us.

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- Bocas del Toro, Panama.

Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

In the weeks after Brian Wells' failed robbery and death, Marjorie Deal Armstrong and her co-conspirator Bill Rothstein scrambled to cover their tracks. One of their first moves was to silence Robert Panetti, Brian's coworker who had convinced him to take part in the plot. With the help of another accomplice, Ken Barnes, they slipped Robert a lethal cocktail. He was dead within hours.

Meanwhile, local authorities and the Pennsylvania FBI office were piecing together the few details they knew about Brian Wells' death. He had clearly been a hostage, and Robert Panetti's death indicated that a larger crew was at work. After all, why would two employees from the same pizza restaurant turn up dead within days of each other, unless they had been pawns in the same robbery?

Then, on September 20th, investigators learned of a third body. Bill's phone call tipped them off to the murder of Marjorie's ex-boyfriend, 45-year-old Jim Roden. Marjorie had killed him weeks before the robbery even took place. Now, his body was stashed inside a freezer in Bill's garage. Bill and Marjorie had planned to dismember Jim's frozen body with an ice crusher and get rid of the pieces.

But Bill had another scheme in mind: to serve Marjorie to the police. At 8:14 p.m., he slipped out of his house and called 911. Bill told officials about the body in his freezer and gave them permission to search his house, though he refused to return home until he knew they had arrested Marjorie. By now, he knew better than to cross her and show his face, at least not until they were in court.

An hour later, Bill called the police again, asking if Marjorie had been apprehended. Despite having an essential role in the entire plot, Bill now played the part of a frightened accessory to Marjorie. He even told the authorities he was experiencing suicidal ideation. He offered to drive down to the police barracks so they could talk further.

Bill noted that as long as the police didn't read him his Miranda rights, he would provide them with information off the record. He was already crafting a deal for himself, and the police readily agreed.

Bill arrived at the police barracks around 10 p.m. and provided them with a slew of testimony implicating Marjorie in the death of Jim Roden. Through it all, Bill was careful to say nothing that would connect him to the Brian Wells case or Robert Panetti's death. He was there to clear himself of Jim's murder, not to be incriminated in a different murder. Early the next morning, state troopers barged into Bill's home on Pete Street.

Inside, they found Jim Roden's body in the garage freezer, just as Bill had promised. Marjorie was there too. Apparently after Bill had taken off, she was still determined to get rid of Roden's body herself. And for someone with a notoriously quick temper, she didn't put up a fight. She went calmly with the arresting officers, saying nothing except that she'd had a history of poor luck with men.

Meanwhile, FBI agent Jerry Clark awoke to a phone call telling him to report to the house next to the TV tower on Peach Street. A third body had been found. Clark's eyes grew wide. Brian had referenced that very same TV tower in the minutes before his death. In fact, the authorities had already visited that house in the days following the bombing to ask if Bill had seen any suspicious activity.

There wasn't any evidence directly linking this murder to the first two, but as Clark drove over to Bill's house, he couldn't help but feel it was all connected. When they entered the house, Clark and the other investigators quickly realized that Bill was a hoarder. They had to wade through piles of junk to identify any relevant evidence.

But their persistence paid off. They found the ice crusher and a revolver on the seat of a broken-down van outside. To their surprise, they also found a letter written by Bill suggesting he'd planned to take his own life before he decided to go to the police instead.

It read, Police, my body is in the bedroom on the first floor in the southeast corner of the house. One, this has nothing to do with the Wells case. Two, the body in the freezer in the garage is Jim Roden. Three, I did not kill him nor participate in his death. Clark was stunned. This was the first time all night and morning that Bill had brought up Brian Wells.

Why would he go out of his way to mention the Wells case in his suicide note if he wasn't involved? Exactly. Back at the police barracks, the officers pressed Marjorie for information. She declined to make a formal statement. But she did offer an interesting piece of information. Bill Rothstein had recently allowed a convicted rapist to hide out at his house. His name was Floyd Stockton.

Later that day, they traced Floyd to his girlfriend's apartment and arrested him. Floyd admitted to Clark and the other FBI agents that he had just moved out of Bill's house about two or three weeks prior. This placed him at Peach Street on the day of the robbery.

However, when Floyd was questioned about his involvement in Brian Wells' death, he offered a suspicious account. Floyd claimed that at 3:00 p.m. on August 28th, roughly 18 minutes before Brian died, he heard a knock on the front door of Bill's house. He had looked out the window and noticed a police cruiser, and rather than answer the door, he turned on the TV to check the news.

Clark was astounded by Floyd's tale. Why would anyone turn on the news to determine why a police cruiser was parked outside of their home unless they knew a major crime was unfolding? It seemed to him like Floyd was just shooting from the hip. Floyd was given a lie detector test, but he managed to foil it. However, Clark remained leery.

Regardless of Clark's suspicions, his FBI superiors trusted the test and moved to clear Floyd as a suspect. Floyd was still made to answer for existing rape charges and sentenced to two years in prison. But during that time, he would be off limits for further questioning. Meanwhile, Marjorie was quickly charged in the murder of Jim Roden, thanks to Bill's statements. She neither admitted nor objected to the charges against her,

Instead, she continued to exercise her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Bill, however, was happy to keep talking, provided he was given protection. As authorities drafted the criminal complaint against Marjorie, Brad Folk, the district attorney, agreed to consider charging Bill with a lighter crime as long as he would provide testimony against Marjorie in court.

On September 21st, the day after Jim's body was found, police officials questioned Bill for nearly five hours. He detailed Jim's murder and the subsequent plot to dispose of evidence. Through it all, he maintained that he had only ever assisted Marjorie because he was afraid of her.

As Clark waited his turn to interview Bill, he continued mulling over the suicide note. Why would Bill go out of his way to deny his participation in the Brian Wells case? Clark was beginning to suspect that Bill had planted evidence to twist the facts in his favor, and this manipulation was about to show its true colors. Soon as Clark walked into the interrogation room, Bill looked up and said...

This was just the first of many ways in which Bill would struggle to control the conversation. He refused to speak in anything but hypothetical statements, and he often turned the questioning on to Clark.

He was even physically demanding, constantly shifting from chair to chair, complaining that he couldn't get comfortable. Clark, however, was unfazed. And after some preliminary questioning, he cut to the chase. He pressed Bill about the events of August 28th, the day of Brian Wells' death. Bill had his alibi ready.

He said he had picked up Marjorie at the local Walmart and spent the day with her in a nearby town before dropping her back off at Walmart that evening. When he was asked about the call he placed from the Shell station, Bill conceded that he had probably been there sometime on August 28th, since it was so close to his home.

He casually mentioned that he may have even used the payphone. At last, Agent Clark decided it was time to use Bill's arrogance against him. He knew that Bill couldn't resist the opportunity to prove his intelligence. And so Clark asked him point blank why he thought Brian Wells wouldn't have gone straight to the police after having a bomb put around his neck.

Bill took the bait, launching into a long-winded explanation. He told Clark that the bombers may have put electrical charges in the collar to ensure that Brian would stay on his route. He said they might have even used a radio-controlled transmission to detonate the bomb.

And by now, Bill was on a roll, eager to show off his knowledge of explosives. He said that if he wanted to build the collar, hypothetically, of course, he would have used smokeless powder from shotgun shells.

Clark listened with suppressed satisfaction. He had successfully leveraged Bill's need to be the smartest person in the room. Now, he was convinced that not only had Bill participated in the Brian Wells case, he had played the role of puppeteer, orchestrating at least the bomb, if not the entire plot.

Like Floyd, Bill passed his polygraph test, but Clark was unimpressed by this. Investigators had actually found instructions in Bill's home on how to outsmart lie detectors. And yet, despite all the evidence, Clark's FBI peers were sure that Bill was not their man.

They still couldn't comprehend why someone who lived so close to the TV tower would plot a crime right there. It seemed too careless for someone like Bill, who at least attempted to think one step ahead of the police. Okay, so far, Clark didn't have enough evidence to indict Bill in the pizza bomber case, but he wasn't completely off the hook.

On October 9th, the Pennsylvania police charged Bill Rothstein with four crimes in connection to the Jim Roden murder: abuse of a corpse, conspiring to abuse a corpse, tampering with evidence, and conspiring to tamper with evidence. Bill was released on bond and waived his right to a preliminary hearing. In accordance with his plea bargain, he went on to testify against Marjorie at her preliminary hearing.

It would be the first time in months that the two masterminds met face to face. On January 20th, 2004, five months after Brian Wells' death, Bill Rothstein sat in the witness chair at the Erie County Courthouse. He testified that his former friend, Marjorie Deal Armstrong, had murdered her ex-boyfriend Jim Roden.

When asked why Marjorie did it, Bill said that she was upset with Jim for not having done enough to investigate a break-in at their home. Throughout the hearing, there was no mention of Brian Wells and the pizza bomber investigation. Though Jim and Brian's murders seem linked by geography, they were being treated as separate cases entirely. Bill rattled on, insisting that he had nothing to do with Jim's murder, while Marjorie sat silent as a stone.

Her true colors wouldn't come to light until after the hearing, when Marjorie stormed out of the courthouse, livid at how heartlessly Bill had betrayed her. Immediately, she was greeted by a swarm of reporters.

Suddenly, the path to revenge was clear. Marjorie knew what she could do to get back at Bill. She stepped up to the cameras and called Bill a filthy liar. He had committed crimes of his own. One of them, she said, was the death of Brian Wells. It was the worst possible blow Marjorie could have dealt Bill, but he wouldn't live to feel the consequences.

Just a few months later, in the spring of 2004, Bill was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Bill was dying, and quite possibly he had known all along that he was sick. If this was true, he may have incriminated Marjorie as one final act of showmanship.

Meanwhile, Marjorie's legal proceedings continued for the murder of Jim Roden. Her defense team was well aware of her experience with bipolar disorder, and they hoped to use it to Marjorie's advantage. On March 22, 2004, the judge granted a request for Marjorie to undergo a six-month psychiatric review at Mayview State Hospital. This would determine whether she was mentally competent to stand trial.

The FBI was prohibited from speaking to Marjorie while she was at Mayview, so Agent Jerry Clark and his team pivoted towards other persons of interest. In late July, Clark received a call from District Attorney Brad Folk informing him that Bill was in the hospital. Clark moved to question him immediately. With Floyd Stockton in prison on rape charges and unavailable for questioning, Clark knew Bill was his last opportunity to connect the cases.

But Bill's mind was foggy from the drugs he was given to treat his lymphoma. His answers were vague and noncommittal, and ultimately he maintained that he hadn't been involved in the Wells case. Clark left the interview empty-handed.

It was the last time he would speak with Bill. Three days later, on July 30th, 2004, Bill Rothstein died, taking everything he knew about Brian Wells with him. With Bill gone, Clark could only rely on Marjorie for more pieces to the pizza bomber puzzle. Luckily, she was about to do some of the heavy lifting for him.

After six months at Mayview Hospital, the judge and the examining psychiatrist found Marjorie competent to stand trial. On January 7, 2005, Marjorie Deal Armstrong pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts in the Jim Roden case, third-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. The presiding judge acknowledged both Marjorie's intelligence and history of psychological disorders and

and sentenced her to seven to 20 years in state prison. However, Marjorie's plea afforded her the right to continued treatment at Mayview. She was to start serving her sentence at the state hospital, where she would continue to be off-limits to investigators for a few more months. Finally, on April 27th, Agent Clark got another chance to speak with Marjorie.

He entered the state correctional institution at Muncie, Pennsylvania, feeling slightly nervous. Clark had conducted thousands of interviews over the course of his career, but for some reason, Marjorie frightened him. He had seen her erratic, menacing behavior firsthand in front of reporters. Now he braced himself for the worst. He began his interview by complimenting Marjorie's teeth, hoping to appeal to her ego, but

But Marjorie's guard was up. She stood behind her statements in court and insisted she had nothing to do with the Wells case. Instead, she insisted that the plot belonged to Bill. Marjorie said that Bill had needed the money to make payments on his mother's house, which his sister had wanted to sell. This much was true. Bill had been interested in the robbery because he needed the money for the house.

She also claimed he'd been at Barnes & Noble on the day of Brian Wells' death. Another truth, but this was as much as Marjorie was willing to say. Fortunately, whatever restraint Marjorie possessed in her interviews with Clark, she lacked entirely in prison.

Marjorie developed a special kinship with a fellow inmate named Kelly Makala. Kelly told Marjorie she'd once aspired to be a police officer, and Marjorie hoped she could use this understanding of police procedure to her benefit. Marjorie flooded her with information, while Kelly took notes on the sly. On June 8, 2005, she brought what she'd learned to Jerry Clark,

Marjorie had admitted to her that Jim Roden's murder was indeed tied to the Brian Wells case. Jim had backed out of the plot, and Marjorie had murdered him to ensure his silence. At last, Clark was vindicated. His suspicions had been correct all along.

Marjorie had also told Kelly that Bill Rothstein built the collar bomb using scraps of metal. She said Brian was supposed to rob the bank and give the money to Floyd Stockton.

Marjorie had even admitted to poisoning Brian's co-worker, Robert Panetti. If this wasn't enough, Kelly's notes alone were horribly incriminating for Marjorie. One said point blank, Marge told me that Bill, James, Floyd, and the other pizza guy, and Wells, planned the robbery. Clark couldn't believe what he was reading. But he knew an inmate-to-inmate confession wasn't enough.

he still needed more evidence to tie Marjorie to the pizza bombing, and so he had to pursue the only other living people mentioned in the notes, Floyd Stockton and Ken Barnes.

In the summer of 2005, Floyd Stockton was still locked away at a correctional facility in Spokane, Washington, serving out a two-year rape sentence. Twice a day, he placed a call to his girlfriend back home in Erie, Pennsylvania. Unbeknownst to Floyd, Clark began meeting with his girlfriend in an attempt to "tickle the wire." This is a technique where an investigator plants an idea in the mind of someone related to their target.

If all goes well, this person will turn around and mention the topic directly to the target. Clark's maneuvering paid off. Before long, on one of her calls to Floyd, the girlfriend said, they think the two things are related. She didn't have to explain what the two things were, and Floyd didn't have to ask. When Clark listened to the tapes of their conversations, he was convinced that Floyd knew more about the Brian Wells case than he'd let on.

On July 19, 2005, Jerry Clark sat across from Floyd in a prison meeting room. For someone who'd previously fooled a lie detector test, it didn't take much to get Floyd talking this time around. When Clark asked why Jim Roden had been killed, Floyd replied that it was because of the collar bomb conspiracy.

He said that Marjorie and Bill had concocted the plot because they needed money. After that, he refused to say more, but it was already plenty. In an effort to foster a relationship with Floyd, Clark hugged him and told him he'd done the right thing. He knew he needed to earn Floyd's trust if he wanted his help in bringing Marjorie to justice. By the fall of 2005, the district attorney had given Jerry Clark all of the evidence from the Jim Roden murder trial.

Among the items was a letter Marjorie had written to the Department of Revenue in 2000. In it, she complained about how the PNC Bank in Erie had handled her deceased mother's safe deposit box. It was the same bank Brian Wells had robbed, glaring proof of Marjorie's grievances and possible motivations. ♪

In late 2005, Agent Clark turned his attention to another individual who was mentioned in Kelly Makala's notes, 51-year-old Ken Barnes. Clark was hopeful with his new lead, but he had to proceed carefully to gain Ken's trust.

Ken, meanwhile, had had plenty of time the two years since Brian Wells' killing to think of an alibi. When Clark asked Ken if he knew Brian, Ken said that he didn't, but that he'd heard of his death through a mutual acquaintance, a sex worker named Jessica Hoopsick. Ken said that Brian was one of Jessica's clients.

Clark immediately remembered Jessica's name. It was in a contact book that had been found at Brian's home. At once, the pieces fell in place. Jessica was the link from Brian to Ken to Marjorie and Bill.

In another interview, Ken admitted to Clark that Marjorie had approached him about killing her father prior to the Brian Wells robbery. He said she'd complained that her father was spending her late mother's money, which she believed was rightfully hers. He said Marjorie had also asked if he knew how to build a bomb with a timer and if he would drive a getaway car.

Ken denied any actual participation, but the information he had given so far was extremely helpful in shoring up Clark's suspicions. On December 9th, 2005, Ken met with the Assistant U.S. Attorney, Marshall Piccinini, to prepare for a grand jury hearing. He'd be testifying against Marjorie in the Brian Wells case.

Clark was there to watch the interview. At one point, Piccinini mentioned what Marjorie had said about going to Barnes & Noble on the day of Brian's death. He asked Ken if he'd been with Marjorie at the store, and Ken said yes. Suddenly, a realization hit Clark. This was the first time Ken had linked himself to Marjorie on the day of the robbery, indicating that he had been involved in the case one way or another.

The investigators scrambled to bring Ken back to the office for further questioning. Possibly knowing he'd been cornered, Ken returned to the office and gave a detailed and factual account of what happened before, during, and after the bombing. He told them about Brian's debts to Jessica Hoopsick's drug dealers, which may have motivated Brian to participate in the robbery. He even told them how Bill had built the collar bomb.

Ken had elevated himself from a witness to a person of interest. And the FBI's access to him became much easier in March of 2006 when he was arrested on an unrelated drug charge. If Clark needed Ken, he could simply look him up at the Erie County Prison.

And this wasn't the only advantage to Ken's arrest. After he was taken into custody, his estranged half-brother, Ricky Barnes, stopped by the FBI office in Erie to sign for his brother's wallet.

Ricky disliked Ken. He felt he'd mistreated their family, and he had no problem with Ken's being in prison. Clark saw an opportunity to capitalize off this, roping in Ricky as an informant. Ricky visited Ken in prison, eventually tricking his half-brother into admitting more critical details about the Brian Wells case.

Ken told Ricky that Brian had indeed been forced to wear the bomb, and all of the materials used to make the explosive had been dumped at a landfill. All these facts were filtered back to Agent Clark and his team, who were getting closer and closer to an indictment. They decided to try their hand with Marjorie again. On May 10th, Marjorie led investigators on a guided tour of her movements on August 28th, 2003.

She pointed out the exact spot where she had parked that day. It was the same place that Kan had said they sat watching the robbery through binoculars. But then Marjorie clammed up. She refused to say anything more without immunity.

This was a major consideration throughout the investigation. Who should be given immunity and why? With three key players, Marjorie, Floyd, and Ken still alive, the FBI would have to decide which two fish to fry and which one to cut loose. It all came down to evidence. By mid-2007, Clark felt a grand jury already had more than enough to indict Marjorie and Ken —

Both had unwittingly talked themselves into incrimination, Marjorie through Kelly's notes and Ken through his own testimony. But while Clark felt there was plenty of evidence against them, the U.S. Attorney's Office was more cautious. They wanted another witness.

And so, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Piccinini turned his attention to Floyd Stockton, who had been released from prison in 2005. Piccinini felt that the evidence against Floyd wasn't strong enough to indict him. And even if they could, Floyd's involvement in the case seemed less extensive than Marjorie and Ken's. Piccinini decided Floyd was the perfect candidate for immunity.

Floyd had already provided details about the events of August 28, 2003, but he seemed to be withholding information for fear of being indicted. So in mid-2007, Piccinini decided to offer Floyd a "clean for a day" proffer. This meant that Floyd would be given one day to talk with at least partial immunity. His confessions, however, could still be used to collect further evidence against him.

On March 27th, 2007, Marshall Piccinini and Agent Clark arrived at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Seattle, where they met with Floyd and his lawyer. Over the next 13 hours, Floyd gave them a full account of the events surrounding the bombing. He admitted to giving Bill the idea for a bomb heist. He told him that he himself had suggested the use of a pizza delivery man.

Floyd even shared that he had helped Bill cut two pieces of metal to fashion into a collar.

In admitting his part in making the collar bomb, Floyd had arguably become an accessory to murder. And by the time they left, Clark wanted to indict him. After all, they hadn't promised full immunity. But they still needed Floyd as a witness against Marjorie. If they refused to protect him, they risked Floyd recanting his statements.

And without his testimony, the case against Marjorie and Ken would be severely weakened. The investigators considered their options and ultimately decided that Marjorie and Ken were more important suspects than Floyd.

So, on June 26th, 2007, Floyd Stockton testified before the grand jury with full immunity. Two weeks later, the grand jury finally secured indictments against Marjorie and Ken. They were charged with the same three felonies: conspiracy to commit armed robbery, aiding and abetting an armed bank robbery involving a death,

and aiding and abetting the use of a destructive device in a crime of violence.

Ken Barnes pleaded guilty to two of the three charges. In return, the third charge was dropped. And on December 3rd, 2008, a judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison. The sentence was reduced to 22 and a half years in 2011, but for Ken, it amounted to the rest of his life. He died in prison in 2019.

Marjorie Deal Armstrong's trial wouldn't come to a close for almost two more years. But on November 1st, 2010, the jury announced their verdict, guilty on all three charges. Marjorie was sentenced to life in prison. She passionately maintained her innocence until her death in 2017. Over seven years had passed since Brian Wells' death.

and Agent Jerry Clark had finally come to a conclusion. He would later state that the crime couldn't be explained by any rationale because the two main conspirators, Marjorie and Bill, were devoid of it. According to Clark, Marjorie was blinded to the pitfalls of the plan and Bill didn't even care if they succeeded or failed. To him, it was all a game.

And he was willing to sacrifice anything, even innocent lives, for the sake of winning. Thanks for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast.

We'll be back next week with a new episode. And be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. For more information on Marjorie Deal Armstrong, amongst the many sources we used, we found Mania and Marjorie Deal Armstrong by Jerry Clark and Ed Palatella, extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth. Stay safe out there.

Conspiracy theories and serial killers are Spotify podcasts. This episode was written by Natalie McKeeran, edited by Kate Gallagher and Chelsea Wood, researched by Adriana Gomez, fact-checked by Cara Macerlene, and sound designed by Sam Baer.

Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson. And Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. Serial Killers is hosted by Vanessa Richardson. And Conspiracy Theories is hosted by me, Carter Roy. This episode is brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition.

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