Mania and Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong - by Jerry Clark & Ed Palattella (Hardcover)

About the Book

Throughout history there have been a number of female serials killers, but what drives these women to kill? Clark and Palattella dive deeper into this question by examining the case of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, and provide a history of how the criminal justice system has handl...

Book Synopsis

Throughout history there have been a number of female serials killers, but what drives these women to kill? Clark and Palattella dive deeper into this question by examining the case of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, and provide a history of how the criminal justice system has handled complex and controversial issues surrounding mental illness.

Review Quotes

Clark and Palattella's riveting true crime narrative, wrapped in a history of forensic psychiatry, offers a disturbing tour inside the baffling mind of an anger-driven female serial killer. Meticulous and probing, they unravel the psychiatric and legal back story of the bizarre Pizza Bomber killing and the demented woman who devised fatal solutions to her "poor luck with men." A tangled tale of losers, hoarders, swindlers, and manipulators that offers all the right stuff for criminologists and true crime fans alike.

Former FBI agent Clark and journalist Palattella take a deeper look at the woman behind [a] gruesome crime... Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong is best known for her role as an accomplice in the 2003 bank robbery in Erie, Pa., that led to the death of Brian Wells, a pizza deliveryman, but she had killed before. Clark and Palattella provide chilling details into her gunning down of two boyfriends, starting with the 1984 murder of Bob Thomas, also in Erie. After shooting Thomas in his sleep, she confessed her crime to a stranger and offered her $25,000 to help dispose of the corpse. The authors trace Diehl-Armstrong's evolution from bright student to murderer and look specifically at how mental illness is used as a defense to criminal culpability in Anglo-American jurisprudence. Diehl-Armstrong was diagnosed as bipolar and had been anorexic as a child, but, as the judge who sentenced her to life for her role in the bank robbery noted, others with those illnesses don't turn violent. Despite the authors' detailed knowledge of their subject, readers will emerge from this well-written volume wondering what exactly led this once-promising woman to a life of violent crime.

One in almost every six serial killers is a woman, according to serial killer expert Eric Hickey. The case of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, a female accomplice in the bizarre Pizza Deliveryman Collar Bomb Heist, is a shocking eye-opening account of just how predatory and dangerous a female serial killer can be.

The case of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong is a labyrinth of lies, deceit, and violence. Fraught with diagnoses of mental illness and mental disorders, authors Clark and Palattella delve into convoluted psychopathology of one of America's most twisted female serial killers. Her amazing story is a dichotomy of good and evil, of victim and victimizer, of innocence and guilt. This is a must read for those fascinated by the Darkside.

About the Author

Jerry Clark, PhD, retired as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2011 after twenty-seven years in law enforcement, including careers as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. He is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he is also co-owner of Clark & Wick Investigations LLC.

Ed Palattella joined the Erie Times-News, in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1990. He has won a number of awards, including for his investigative work and his coverage of crime.

Both are the authors of Pizza Bomber: The Untold Story of America's Most Shocking Bank Robbery and A History of Heists: Bank Robbery in America, which was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015.