"I still don't know what it is and it's getting bigger, it's starting to hurt more, its more irritating than ever, it keeps me up throughout the night (because I can't sleep with the pain), and I'm scared," Bell wrote to warden J.C. Zuercher in July 2009.
The growth proved to be non-Hodgkin lymphoma — a cancer spread through the body via the lymph nodes. Bell didn't get a CT scan on the mass in his arm until the cancer was in the late stages. He died in 2010, a year after being released from prison. Now, his family in Michigan and the federal government have reached a $975,000 settlement over negligence claims related to the case.
"He deserved better," said Bell's attorney, Sheila Hiestand of Louisville. "By the time he died, he was just a small, skeletal thing." More
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