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ERIE (AP) ― A pizza deliveryman who robbed a bank and was then blown up by a bomb locked around his neck was a participant in the robbery plot, federal authorities said Wednesday in announcing the first indictments in the nearly four-year-old case.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and her friend Kenneth E. Barnes were charged with bank robbery, conspiracy and a firearms count in an indictment unsealed Wednesday. Authorities said the plot was concocted so that Diehl-Armstrong could pay someone to kill her father.

The two contrived a series of notes to make it appear pizza deliveryman Brian Wells was "merely a hostage," authorities said in court papers. Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes also planned to get the robbery money from Wells so that, if he were caught, he could claim he was a hostage and an unwilling participant, authorities said.

Diehl-Armstrong is currently serving a state prison sentence for killing her boyfriend, James Roden. In the indictment, authorities say she killed him to keep him from disclosing details of the robbery plot.

Barnes is jailed in Erie County on unrelated drug charges.

Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes used a live bomb to assure that Wells completed all their instructions and turned over the money, according to the indictment.

"If he died, he could not be a witness," authorities said in the indictment.

Wells was identified in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator. Authorities used only his initials, as well as the initials of William Rothstein, a former boyfriend of Diehl-Armstrong who helped her dispose of Roden's body.

Rothstein had been questioned in Wells' death before he died of cancer in 2004. The indictment said Rothstein helped Diehl-Armstrong concoct the bomb and timers placed on Wells.

On Aug. 28, 2003, Wells set out to deliver an order for two pies - sausage and pepperoni - to a mysterious address that turned out to be the location of a TV tower near Rothstein's house. Wells then turned up about an hour later and roughly two miles away at a PNC Bank branch in Summit Township, with a note demanding money and saying he had a bomb.

Wells took $8,702 from a teller, got into his Geo Metro and was surrounded by police a short time later in a parking lot. State troopers pulled him out of the car and handcuffed him. Hanging from his neck under his T-shirt was a triple-banded metal collar and a device with a locking mechanism that kept it in place. Attached to the collar was a bomb.

"It's going to go off," Wells said. "I'm not lying."

Someone had started a timer on the bomb, Wells said, and forced him to rob the bank.

While police waited for the bomb squad, the bomb exploded, killing Wells. Police found a gun resembling a cane in the car and a nine-page handwritten letter that included detailed instructions on what Wells was to do with the bank money and how he could unlock the collar by going through a kind of scavenger hunt, looking for clues and landmarks.

The note also included a list of rules and a threat that Wells would be "destroyed" if he failed to complete his mission.

Jim Sadowski, a former co-worker of Wells, said he doesn't believe his friend could have been involved.

"I worked with him and I knew him. I just don't see him doing anything like that. He was a nice person," Sadowski said.

Diehl-Armstrong, 58, has been linked to the Wells investigation because Roden's body was found in the freezer of Rothstein's home, which is near the TV tower where Wells made his final delivery. She pleaded guilty but mentally ill to killing Roden and is serving a sentence of seven to 20 years in state prison.

In letters sent to several media outlets earlier this year, Diehl-Armstrong claimed she knew something about Wells' death but had nothing to do with the scheme.

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