One of the most perplexing true crime stories of the last 20 years was the Pizza Bomber heist.
This extraordinary case, also known as the “collar-bomb robbery,” became the basis of the 2018 true-crime documentary series Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist.
Now, it’s getting the Hollywood treatment.
Directed by Courteney Cox, starring Patricia Arquette and David Harbour, the film is being produced by Jason Bateman.
Inspired by the documentary, Evil Genius will reportedly delve into the “human story of deception, desperation, and the line between victim and villain,” as per Deadline.
“I’ve been fascinated by Evil Genius since I first saw the documentary,” Cox said. “It’s stranger than fiction. At moments darkly funny and yet deeply emotional. A story about love, loneliness, manipulation, and the people on the fringes who get pulled into something much bigger than themselves.”
Because we know everyone will leave the cinema curious about whether what they just watched was, in fact, a true story, we’ve got all the facts here.
Is Evil Genius based on a true story?
Yes. Evil Genius was inspired by the true crime documentary of the same name.
Made in 2018 by Barbara Schroeder and Trey Borzillieri, it traced the story of the Pizza Bomber, aka Brian Wells.
Wells made international headlines after he walked into a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania on August 28, 2003 with a collar bomb locked around his neck. A pizza delivery man, he also had what appeared to be a shotgun disguised as a walking cane, the world watched in stunned fascination.
Brian Wells handed a note demanding $250,000 in cash, stuffed a bag with more than $8,000, and tried to walk out. Instead, police surrounded him.
He sat on the ground pleading for his life as the bomb beeped faster and faster, before it exploded.
From the outset investigators were perplexed by the design: a collar bomb festooned with four locks and a combination dial, instructions tied to a scavenger-hunt style follow-through, and a victim who claimed he’d been forced into it.
Their attention soon fell on Marjorie Diehl‑Armstrong, a highly educated woman with a master’s degree and a history of bizarre violence, whom prosecutors determined had orchestrated the whole plot because she believed her father was wealthy and needed him removed.
She allegedly asked Kenneth Barnes how to build a pipe bomb, provided egg timers to William Rothstein (who likely built the device around Brian Wells), and essentially framed the heist.
Was Brian Wells a mastermind or a pawn?
Key to the fascination of the case, and to the storytelling of Evil Genius, is the question of Brian Wells’s role.
Investigators ultimately found that he may have been involved in planning to a “limited extent” but other people, like Wells’s family and friends, insisted he was coerced and an unwilling participant.
The handwritten instructions found in his car detailed bank robberies followed by a complex scavenger hunt of codes and keys. However, forensic investigators concluded the collar bomb was never meant to be safely removed. It defied logic.
Where are Kenneth Barnes and Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong now?
In 2007, ultimately Barnes pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit armed robbery and using a destructive device, earning a 45-year sentence.
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, meanwhile, was convicted in 2010 of armed bank robbery, conspiracy, and using a destructive device and received life plus 30 years. She died in prison in 2017.
The case remains unsatisfactorily resolved in some respects. There are still questions about exactly who plotted what, and whether Wells was more than a tool.
What elements of Evil Genius are fake?
While precise details of the film’s script will adapt and dramatise, the core facts will most likely remain vivid. Brian Wells entering the bank with a weapon and a bomb, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong as the mastermind behind a wild plot, and the collar device that could never safely be removed.
Because the real events were stranger than fiction, filmmakers have the latitude to amplify characters, motives, and tensions while still rooting their narrative in the documented truth.
The emotional weight lives in the human catastrophe. Wells dying under the bomb, conspirators turning on each other, and the eerie sense of a plan that was always doomed.
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