collar bomb
Explosive device locked around a victim's neck to force them to commit crimes
A collar bomb is, in American crime terminology, a homemade explosive device constructed so that it can be locked around a person's neck in the form of a metal collar or hinged ring with a locking mechanism. The device functions simultaneously as a means of coercion and as a weapon: the victim is physically unable to remove it without the correct key or code, and the threat of detonation is used to force the person to carry out criminal acts. The term is a criminological expression and not an independent legal category defined in any particular American statutory provision.
In practice the term is inseparably linked to the Pizza Bomber case from Erie, Pennsylvania, in 2003. There, pizza delivery driver Brian Wells was fitted with an explosive metal collar locked around his neck before being sent into a bank to carry out a robbery. The bomb consisted of a hinged collar construction with integrated explosive charges and a locking mechanism that Wells could not open himself. He died when the bomb detonated after police had arrested him outside the bank.
The case illustrates how a collar bomb serves a dual purpose within the criminal scheme it forms part of: it secures the perpetrators' control over the victim by making resistance or escape life-threatening, and it creates a situation in which the victim formally appears to be the offender in the eyes of the public and the authorities. In the Erie case, according to the investigation, Wells carried out the bank robbery under duress while wearing the bomb. The investigation's conclusions indicated that the collar bomb construction had been planned and manufactured by persons other than Wells himself, and that he was the victim of a coordinated criminal scheme. The case ended with convictions of those behind it, including for armed bank robbery and use of explosives resulting in death.
The collar bomb construction as a method is extreme and documented as extremely rare in American criminal annals, and the Pizza Bomber case is regarded as the best known and most thoroughly investigated example of the use of this type of device in the United States.
