A federal jury has convicted a 61-year-old Erie, Pa., woman for a 2003 bank robbery in which she outfitted an accomplice with a collar bomb that later killed him.

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was convicted of criminal conspiracy, bank robbery and using a weapon during a crime of violence in the so- called pizza bomber case. She will be sentenced Feb. 28 to life in prison plus 30 years.

She was accused of plotting to rob a PNC branch with several others, including pizza deliveryman Brian Wells, who walked into the bank carrying a shotgun fashioned to look like a cane and with an explosive device locked around his chest and neck. He fled with more than $8,000 but was apprehended soon after. The device exploded while he was handcuffed and state police waited for the bomb squad, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explains.

Wells, who was 46, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. His family doesn't believe he was part of the plot and was instead murdered. Last week, his brother called the proceedings "a circus show trial."

Diehl-Armstrong has been in prison since 2005 for pleading guilty but mentally ill in the shooting death of her boyfriend, and earlier this year she was diagnosed with cancer and given three to seven years to live, GoErie reports.

(Posted by Michael Winter)