Free Republic

A massive emergency operation involving ambulances, rescue teams and bomb squad officers had sealed off Burrawong Avenue at Mosman on Sydney's elegant north shore in the early afternoon after 18-year-old Madeleine Pulver rang police. Four police officers were in the room towards the front of the house with the teenager, examining what they described as a suspicious device, as her distraught parents waited outside. Police last night said the parents had not been allowed to speak with their daughter. The house where the drama unfolded is owned by the Pulver family and the teenager's father is the high-profile business executive...

ERIE, Pa. – A man who took part in a bizarre bank robbery plot that turned deadly when a bomb affixed to the neck of a pizza deliveryman exploded was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison Wednesday. Kenneth Barnes was "intimately involved" in the plot and not just a minor player, U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin said. Barnes suggested bomb parts, provided magazine articles about bomb making and was present when the bomb was put on Brian Wells before he robbed a bank in 2003, McLaughlin said.

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

A defense attorney says his client will plead guilty to conspiracy in a bizarre 2003 bank robbery that led to the collar-bomb death of a Pennsylvania pizza delivery man. Attorney Jamie Mead of Erie said Friday that Kenneth Barnes will plead guilty Wednesday to his role in planning the heist.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two people are expected to be charged Wednesday in connection with the bizarre 2003 case in which a pizza deliveryman died after a collar bomb attached to him exploded, CNN has learned. Brian Wells died August 28, 2003, in Erie, Pennsylvania, after he claimed gunmen grabbed him, locked the bomb around his neck and ordered him to rob a bank. Police detained him following the robbery, and the device exploded as he waited on the pavement. A bomb squad was en route to the scene but did not arrive in time. Authorities have not said whether they...

PITTSBURGH - Federal authorities have figured out how a pizza deliveryman wound up in the middle of a bizarre bank robbery scheme that ended with a bomb around his neck exploding, and the identities of the plotters, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Brian Wells, 46, robbed a suburban Erie bank on Aug. 28, 2003, with the bomb attached to his neck and then was killed when it exploded as he sat handcuffed in a parking lot while police waited for a bomb squad. No one was charged as authorities struggled to determine who was behind the plot...

FBI Raids Erie Home After Man's Bombing Death Man Robs Bank, Dies With Bomb Strapped To Body Gina Redmond POSTED: 5:35 p.m. EDT September 5, 2003 UPDATED: 5:42 p.m. EDT September 5, 2003 PITTSBURGH -- Late Friday afternoon, the FBI raided another house in downtown Erie in search of answers in a pizza delivery man's death. And there's another bizarre twist to the death of Brian Wells, who was killed by a bomb that blew up after he robbed an Erie bank last week. Police said Wells was carrying a second customized weapon during the bank robbery. The transcript from...

FBI appeals for help after pizza man 'forced to rob bank' is killed by bomb fixed around his neck By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 03 September 2003 The FBI has released pictures of a metal collar that was found fixed around the neck of pizza deliveryman who robbed a bank and then died when a bomb that was locked to the collar exploded. State troopers arrested Brian Wells shortly after he robbed a bank outside the town of Erie in Pennsylvania last Thursday. He told the officers that he had been forced to rob the bank and that he was...