Released Bell’s wife in suicide
The “jailhouse” wife of paroled three-time cop killer Herman Bell committed suicide by leaping from the roof patio of her California nursing home, The Post has learned.
Nancy Jacot-Bell, 71, had married the notorious cop hater 20 years into his 47-year state prison stint for the ambush assassination of NYPD Officers Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones.
In a parole-board decision that sparked widespread outrage, Bell was sprung from a New York prison on April 27.
He has been paroled to Brooklyn, according to officials with the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
But he had told the parole board that he wanted to transfer his parole to California, “which is where my family resides,” according to a transcript of his March 1 parole-board hearing.
Bell even had a full-time archivist job lined up there, and planned to be “speaking at schools,” according to the transcript.
Instead, his wife — a longtime Bay Area resident, according to public records — was admitted about a week after his release to the Bayside Park assisted-living and rehab center in Emeryville, Calif.
On May 12, three days into her stay, Jacot-Bell plunged from the fifth-floor roof patio, according to the Mercury News.
Her death has been ruled a suicide, according to the Alameda County coroner.
Jacot-Bell had been admitted to the facility for only a short stay, a staffer told the Mercury News.
She fell from the roof to the sidewalk below, said the newspaper, which made no mention of Jacot-Bell’s relation to her infamous husband.
Bell’s lawyer, Robert Boyle, hung up on a Post reporter and did not return a voicemail message asking for comment.
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association fought hard to keep Bell jailed, and is continuing to appeal his release.
The news of Jacot-Bell’s death — and of Bell losing a spouse — came as a shock to Piagentini’s widow, Diane.
“I really don’t know what to say,” she said in a phone interview Thursday night. “Anybody who commits suicide, that’s a terrible thing for any family.”
In his March parole hearing, Bell assured officers that now “you would want me to be your friend.”
In an October 24, 2008, story in the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, Bell’s wife spoke warmly of her close relationship with her husband, of their son Kamel, and two grade-school-aged granddaughters.
She spoke on the occasion of Bell being temporarily moved to a San Francisco jail for an ultimately failed prosecution on a cold-case 1971 cop killing.
“My husband and I speak on the phone every night,” she told the paper.