That is somewhat bizarre.
If something like that was on TV, most people would laugh at the idea as preposterous.

I remember watching the events on TV when that whole thing went down. I was very frustrated that the police (or anybody else for that matter) did NOTHING to try to save that guy's life. They handcuffed him and then retreated to a safe distance to watch him get blown up and die. The whole time, he sat there saying "Why aren't you helping me? This thing is going to go off. Why won't you help me get this thing off? I'm going to die."

I'm betting this is one of this stories where we will never really know the truth of what really happened.

the weird thing is, you'd think any group of people clever and resourceful enough to cook up and implement that sort of plan should be capable of earning more than the eight grand take of the bank robbery, legitimately, in not too much longer than they had to have worked on that shit...

i keep hearing how criminals are usually pretty stupid, or they wouldn't be criminals. but these people don't seem to have been stupid, or even unimaginative, so why the blazes couldn't they have thought up some less bizarre, less homicidal way to make bank?