Many Erie natives have heard about, if they don’t also remember, the story of the 2003 “Pizza Bomber,” now known as the murder of Brian Wells, an unwitting participant in a botched bank robbery on Peach Street. As the details unraveled over several years, the intrigue and interest of the public was captivated. After many more years in correspondence with Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, one of the primary conspirators of the plot, Trey Borzillieri, narrator and co-director to Barbara Schroeder, walks us through the mystery and uncertainty of the events that unfolded after the bombing in the Netflix documentary, “Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist.”

 

The documentary is split into four parts (The Heist, The Frozen Body, The Suspects, The Confessions) and begins captivatingly enough with uncensored footage of Brian Wells’ death. This will be the last time the documentary makes a point of purely showing, instead of telling. Despite an approx. 3-hour total runtime, the series employs only a handful of primary accounts: a state police officer, an FBI agent, a news reporter, and others in minor roles. The explicitly mentioned three are used extensively, and the largest source of storytelling in the documentary. A far cry from the masterful editing (and efficiency) of Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line,” wherein no explicit frame is established from the beginning, Borzillieri prefaces much of the documentary with loaded transitions and introductions.

 

Before we know anything of Armstrong, we are told how smart and manipulative she is, with great stress put on her mental illness and various diagnoses. The documentary may be about a crime Armstrong was involved in, but the way the documentary handles such complex issues is a crime in itself, as mental illness is painted as a primary contribution and prerequisite for heinous crime. This may be true (all squares are rectangles after all), however at no point is a psychological health expert consulted or interviewed during the documentary. Excruciating details concerning the uncovering of the crime’s details are no problem, but significant information is devoid.

 

The documentary handles the other coconspirators backgrounds with similar finesse (or total lack thereof), offering extensive, but again insignificant, information on Bill Rothstein (how clever and conniving he was), and tending to gloss over Ken Barnes and James Roden (who were by comparison rather unintelligent and even more uninteresting). The storyboarding of the events surrounding the conspirators, while chronological, tends to waste a great deal of time, and reserves key witnesses (like Brian Wells’ prostitute/friend) for the final segments of the miniseries. This “creative” decision to present everything chronologically, and as spread out as the events were in the contemporary press, is a convenient bonus, and a move which makes no effort to hide the fact that Netflix, Schroeder, and Borzillieri are merely playing for time.

 

Altogether, “Evil Genius” succeeds in the sole capacity of providing information to the passive binge-watcher but offers nothing in the way of meaningful insight, indicating a strong preference for increasing streaming runtimes. The miniseries treats sensitive topics without a modicum of tact, aiming instead for gratuitous implications, instead of accurate ones. In an ideal world, “Evil Genius” could have been an excellent, well-edited 60 Minutes special. But that’s not the world we’re in, and any curious individual would be better served spending far less time reading an extensive Wikipedia article.