Ex-husband of Missouri ‘angel of death’ arrested in Johnson County in child sex abuse case
Charles Scott Bell, an ex-husband of killer Jennifer Ann Hall — a respiratory therapist who last year was convicted in the deaths of two patients, but who was long suspected in the deaths of as many as nine — has been arrested in Johnson County on a charge of indecent liberties with a child under age 14.
Bell, 46, who is also listed as being a private security officer for the company Taps KC, was married to Hall between 2008 and 2012. He was arrested Thursday afternoon by the Merriam Police Department on a warrant issued out of Leavenworth County.
He was booked in the Johnson County jail on Thursday and remained there Monday pending a $250,000 bond. No attorney was listed for Bell. Attempts to reach his employer were unsuccessful.
Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson reserved comment on the case other than to say that the charge against Bell, at this point, refers to a single victim who is now 18 years old, but who was 14 or younger when the alleged crime occurred.
“All I can say is that he is innocent until proven guilty,” Thompson said. He added, “This case does not appear to have any connection to Miss Hall.”
Bell’s arrest, posted on social media by his sister Suzie Hartford-Bell, spurred hundreds of comments on Facebook and TikTok. Hartford-Bell, from Overland Park, told The Star that she has no doubt that her brother is guilty of what he is being accused. She is confident, she said, that there are more victims than the one at that center of the current charge.
Hartford-Bell claims that her brother sexually abused several young girls over the decades, including a relative who is not the focus of the current indictment.
“I just want to do what I can to stop this from happening to anyone else,” Hartford-Bell said.
Jennifer Ann Hall
In August 2023, Bell’s former spouse, Hall, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. She had been living in Overland Park. The couple had had a tumultuous relationship. Hall pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the 2002 deaths of two of her patients, Fern Franco, 75 and David Wesley Harper, 37.
Both had been patients at Hedrick Medical Center in Chillicothe, located in Livingston County, where Hall worked for approximately six months from December 2001 to May 2002. In that short period, the hospital — which typically averaged one “code blue” cardiac or respiratory arrest event each year — logged 18 among Hall’s patients. They also logged nine “medically suspicious deaths.”
Hall was placed on administrative leave on May 21, 2022. Tissues samples from Fern Franco’s remains, obtained by a search warrant, revealed the presence of both morphine, which suppresses respiration, along with the drug succinylcholine, a paralytic used to relax skeletal muscles as during intubation. Hall for years was rumored to have been an “angel of death,” a figure of speech used broadly to describe medical professionals tasked with healing, but who instead purposefully kill their patients.
In 2010, the families of five patients who died filed wrongful-death suits against the hospital accusing Hall of being a serial killer who poisoned their loved-ones. The Missouri Supreme Court, however, ruled that the lawsuits could not go forward because the statute of limitations had expired on bringing a civil case.
In 2012, Livingston County Prosecuting Attorney Adam Warren pledged to reopen a criminal investigation. Twenty years after the deaths, Hall, who was living in Overland Park, was criminally charged on May 4, 2022 with the first-degree murder of Franco. Her arrest at an Overland Park hotel in May 2022 came nearly 20 years to the day of Franco’s death.
The following February, she was also charged with the first-degree murder of David Wesley Harper. Hall, in April 2023, accepted a plea deal in Livingston County Court to two counts of first-degree manslaughter and one count of second-degree assault.
Hall is currently serving her time at the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Corrections Center in Vandalia, Missouri.
This story was originally published September 30, 2024 at 5:00 PM.
