Baker - Pizza bomber: the untold story of Americas most shocking bank robbery

THE UNTOLD STORY
OF AMERICAS
MOST SHOCKING
BANK ROBBERY

BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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PIZZA BOMBER

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the authors

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley premium edition / November 2012

Copyright 2012 by Jerry Clark and Ed Palattella.

Cover photos: Bomb Squad Walking by Janet B. Kummerer / Erie Times-News;

Squad with Body courtesy of Times Publishing Company.

Cover design by MSNStudios.

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ISBN: 978-1-101-61198-2

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ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Danielle, Michael and Isabelle

For Chris, Henry and Nina

This account is drawn from personal observations, contemporaneous notes, interviews, court documents, transcripts and other official records, as well as news media reports, particularly those in the Erie Times-News. The opinions expressed in this book are the authors alone and not those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In selected instances, we have chosen to identify individuals by initials. These include individuals who were informants or persons of interest but who were not charged nor shown to have credible or relevant information about the events chronicled here.

J.C.

E.P.

Erie, Pennsylvania

December 2011

It is easier to commit murder

than to justify it.

Papinian, Roman jurist

There is nothing more deceptive

than an obvious fact.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

S ince the founding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 1908, its agents have infiltrated the Mob, probed corruption and pursued terrorists. But fewer than three hundred of the FBIs investigations have earned Major Case status, which refers to the bureaus most complex and serious probes.

The first Major Case was the investigation of the Lindbergh kidnapping, on March 1, 1932. Six decades later, the FBI opened a string of some of its most famous Major Cases in recent times. OKBOMB, Major Case 117, covered the investigation of Timothy McVeighs bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, in Oklahoma City, on April 15, 1995. CENTBOM, Major Case 130, referred to the investigation of Eric Rudolph for bombings that included the blast at Centennial Olympic Park, in Atlanta, during the Summer Olympics, on July 27, 1996. The FBI gave the name PENTTBOMB to Major Case 182, which covered the investigations of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001.

On August 28, 2003, what would become FBI Major Case 203 originated on the outskirts of Erie, Pennsylvania, a medium-sized industrial city on Lake Erie that usually makes the national news only because of its record snowfall. A pizza deliveryman by the name of Brian Wells robbed a bank wearing a time bomb locked around his neck. He was carrying notes that told him where to find clues to disable the bomb, but the plan went unfinished. As police questioned Wells and a television camera rolled, the homemade contraption exploded and tore a fatal wound into his chest.

COLLARBOMB is what the FBI called Major Case 203. The public came to know it as the pizza bomber case. Its investigation and prosecution would take more than seven years.

T ony Ditomo heard a rush of wind on the other end of the line. He had picked up the phone to take an order at Mama Mias Pizza-Ria, just south of Erie, Pennsylvania. Ditomo, the stores owner, could barely make out this customers words: the deep male voice drifted in and out. It was 1:30 P.M. Thursday, August 28, 2003.

Do you deliver to upper Peach? the caller asked.

Mama Mias is squeezed in a strip mall at 5154 Peach Street, one of the busiest roads in Erie, a city of 102,000 that anchors Pennsylvanias northwestern corner, on Lake Erie. Fast-food restaurants, gas stations, car lots, banks, shoe stores, a hospital: they all line Peach Street. It gets more congested to the south, as it stretches away from Erie and into Millcreek Township, where Mama Mias is located. Interstates 79 and 90 feed the traffic on the southern section, which includes the Millcreek Mall. That section is known as upper Peach.