Blood in the Water

Malcolm Bell was the whistleblower who had worked in Simonetti’s office as his chief assistant. He revealed that their team “had worked deliberately and systematically to prevent the prosecution of the troopers and correction officers who had committed crimes at Attica” (397). He also accused Simonetti’s office of a cover-up of the cover-up of those crimes. Bell himself was a conservative and therefore an unlikely candidate for this role.

Bell had been assigned to work on the so-called “shooter cases” of troopers’ illegal use of firearms in the retaking. From the start he had concerns about the way the troopers had lied about the shootings and how there had been evidence tampering by the NYSP. For example, the NYSP had “actively tampered with the photographic evidence” (411), in one case planting a weapon on a dead inmate then taking a photo.

Nevertheless, Bell was able to take cases of a few attempted murders, perjuries, and various counts of reckless endangerment to a grand jury. After three months of work in front of the grand jury, Simonetti abruptly informed Bell, in August 1974, that the potential indictment of state troopers was being suspended. Bell suspected this had something to do with the upcoming

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