Lawyer floats alibi in death of pizza man - another death

PITTSBURGH - Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong's lawyer has floated an alibi for her in the bizarre death of one man: the bizarre death of another man.

James Roden's body was in a freezer in August 2003, when Brian Wells robbed a bank with a bomb locked to his neck. Before the explosive killed Wells, the pizza deliveryman told police he had been forced to commit the crime.

Authorities announced Wednesday that Diehl-Armstrong and a friend, Kenneth E. Barnes, had been charged with the deadly robbery, after a nearly four-year investigation. They say she hatched the plan so she could pay someone to kill her father.

Federal prosecutors believe Wells was involved in planning the crime but may have become an unwilling participant.

Diehl-Armstrong is in prison for murdering Roden, a former boyfriend. Her attorney, Lawrence D'Ambrosio, told the Associated Press he believed she was too obsessed with that killing to have been involved in the robbery plot. She has a tendency to focus - and even obsess - on major events in her life, he said.

The indictment says she killed Roden to keep him from disclosing details of the robbery plot.

Diehl-Armstrong, 58, was valedictorian of her high school class, but her trial in Roden's death showed that her life since was full of severe mental problems, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia - and a deep hatred of men. Two decades earlier, she was acquitted in the killing of another boyfriend, Robert Thomas, that she said was in self-defense.

Diehl-Armstrong had been repeatedly questioned about Wells' death. All the while, she asserted her innocence in letters to news outlets.

"I'm sane, not on psych[iatric] meds" and have the "equivalent of five college degrees with honors," she wrote to ABC News.

In 2005, Diehl-Armstrong pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murdering Roden on or around Aug. 13, 2003, about two weeks before Wells' death. Roden's body was found in a freezer at the home of another former boyfriend, William Rothstein, after he tipped off police in September 2003.

Rothstein, who has since died of cancer, said he came forward after Diehl-Armstrong suggested using an ice crusher to get rid of the remains.

In February, she focused her anger on Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera. In papers filed in Erie County, she preserved her right to sue him down the road over a 2005 broadcast report on her criminal past and how she came to be linked to the bank-robbery investigation.