Paul Bell, longtime Kansas City minister and jail chaplain, dies at 71 Bill Lukitsch, The Kansas City Star Mar. 14—Editor's note: This feature is part of a new weekly focus from The Star meant to highlight and remember the lives of Black Kansas Citians who have died. Rev. Paul Lavern Bell, a longtime Christian minister remembered in part by family for volunteering his time as a chaplain to the incarcerated, died Feb. 25 in NorthCare Hospice House. He was 71. Friends and family remembered Bell as a man of deep faith. He worked as a chaplain in the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1987 until 2006, they said. He also spent time as an assistant chaplain with the Jackson and Wyandotte County jails.