ERIE -- The FBI seized letters written by a convicted rapist and interviewed his ex-wife as part of their investigation into the death of a pizza deliveryman killed when a bomb locked onto his neck exploded, according to a published report.

Janet M. Ponsford, who now lives in Aitkin, Minn., told the Erie Times-News for Wednesday's editions that the FBI also took shoes belonging to her ex-husband, 58-year-old Floyd A. Stockton Jr., who is now serving a rape sentence in Washington state. She said the FBI wanted the shoes and letters "to compare things to."

Ponsford, who said she was married and divorced from Stockton three times, said he is mechanically inclined, can be violent, and "likes to doodle."

Those characteristics generally fit the FBI profile of a man who wrote a nine-page letter that directed pizza deliveryman Brian Wells to rob a bank.

Wells went to deliver a pizza near a television tower at the end of a dirt road on Aug. 28, 2003. That afternoon, he robbed a PNC Bank branch in Summit Township with a pipe bomb locked around his neck with a crudely constructed collar.

Wells told police he was forced to wear the device. He died when it exploded as he sat, handcuffed in a parking lot, while police waited for a bomb squad to arrive.

The letter found in Wells' vehicle contained detailed instructions and drawings about how he was to rob the bank and drop off the money by following a specific route, the FBI said. During the drive, he was also to receive instructions about how to get the bomb collar unlocked, the FBI said.

Special Agent Gerald Clark wouldn't say Wednesday whether the FBI interviewed Ponsford, but said the investigation has "actively picked up and we pursue it vigorously every day." Ponsford didn't immediately return a message left at her home by The Associated Press.

The Times-News detailed several other links between Stockton and the Wells case, most notably his longtime friendship with a now-dead handyman, William Rothstein.

Rothstein, 60, a former high school shop teacher who died last June, was questioned in connection with Wells' death because he lived near the TV tower where Wells went to deliver his last pizza. Ponsford told the newspaper Rothstein had known Stockton, who went by the first name Jay, for decades.

"He's been a friend of Jay's ever since I can remember, and I have known Jay since 1971," Ponsford told the newspaper.

The FBI has said Stockton was living at Rothstein's house about the time Wells was killed, but they initially found nothing linking him to their investigation.

Wells' brother, John Wells, of Glendale, Ariz., said his family learned of Stockton's connection to Rothstein about a month after his brother's death and was surprised that law enforcement didn't aggressively question Stockton then.

"Until people are arrested, the family won't be satisfied," John Wells said Wednesday.

Rothstein and his longtime friend and former fiancee, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, ran into legal trouble around the time of the bank robbery when a man's body was found in her freezer.

Diehl-Armstrong is serving a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty but mentally ill in the third-degree murder and subsequent dismemberment of James Roden, her boyfriend at the time.

A retired college professor also told the newspaper that the FBI questioned him about seeing Diehl-Armstrong driving the wrong way on the berm of southbound Interstate 79 the day Wells died. That stretch of interstate was part of the route Wells was instructed to take in the note.

Diehl-Armstrong's attorney, John Moore of Erie, didn't immediately return a call for comment Wednesday.

On the same day police charged Diehl-Armstrong in Roden's death -- Sept. 21, 2003 -- they found Stockton living in an apartment near Erie and arrested him on a warrant from Bellingham, Wash.

Stockton was sentenced to two years in prison after entering a plea in December 2003 to charges that he raped 19-year-old developmentally disabled woman he lived with in 2002, according to prosecutors in Whatcom County, Washington.