Collar Bomb

This may be the strangest crime story I've ever read. It's told in a straight chronology, for the most part, with few visible narrative devices or stylistic flourishes, and I was spellbound to the end. Is there such a thing as letting the story tell itself? No. But when you've done the reporting to get material this stunning, it's not such a bad idea to get out of the way.

Here's Rich Schapiro: At 2:28 pm on August 28, 2003, a middle-aged pizza deliveryman named Brian Wells walked into a PNC Bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He had a short cane in his right hand and a strange bulge under the collar of his T-shirt. Wells, 46 and balding, passed the teller a note. "Gather employees with access codes to vault and work fast to fill bag with $250,000," it said. "You have only 15 minutes." Then he lifted his shirt to reveal a heavy, boxlike device dangling from his neck.