Heists, Hustles, and Homicide

"The Pizza Bomber: A Robbery Designed to Kill"


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On August 28, 2003, a pizza delivery driver walked into a Pennsylvania bank with a bomb locked around his neck and a note demanding money. Minutes later, he was dead - killed by an explosive that detonated live on television.

But this wasn’t a robbery gone wrong.

In this story-mode episode of Heists, Hustles, and Homicide, we unravel the disturbing truth behind the Pizza Bomber case - a crime built not on desperation, but on calculation. A scavenger hunt designed to fail. A bomb designed to never be disarmed. And a man placed at the center of it all who may never have had a real choice.

As investigators peel back the layers, a cast of deeply fractured minds emerges: a brilliant but violent mastermind, a bomb builder with nothing left to lose, a drug dealer chasing one last score, and a delivery driver whose role - willing participant or expendable pawn - remains bitterly contested to this day.

This episode explores not just what happened, but why - and why this case still unsettles investigators, families, and listeners decades later. Because the most horrifying part isn’t the bomb. It’s the realization that the cruelty was intentional…and the outcome was always the same.

Listener discretion advised.

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Heists, Hustles, and HomicideBy Steven W