Brian Douglas Wells (November 15, 1956 - August 28, 2003) was a pizza deliveryman who was killed by a time bomb fastened to his neck after he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank - purportedly under duress from the maker of the bomb.

A high school dropout in 1973, Wells had done little other than deliver pizza for 30 years, until he recieved a call to deliver at an address a few miles from the Erie, Pennsylvania pizzaria 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, Wells had entered a bank with a home-made shotgun disguised as a cane and demanded $250,000. When police intervened, Wells claimed that the bomb was placed there by three unnamed persons who had provided Wells with the weapon and instructed him that he had to commit the robbery and several other tasks, or be killed.

Unfortunately for Wells, the police were unable or unwilling to disarm the device. 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 dor 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. Investigators relate that, based on the distance between locations, Wells would never have had time to complete more than the first two tasks.

External links

• The Strange Death of the Pizza Guy
• Was pizza deliverer a robber or a victim?