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Bella In The Wych Elm. - BIAD - 05-18-2023
Our yarn today is a simple one in its initial appearance as it is about four kids finding a body and the mystery of who
it is. Even today, the conundrum of the identity of the female entombed in the hollow of a tree remains something
that entices the best of investigators.
I will now fail to resist need to remedy some of the Journalistic narratives that have grown up around the case and put
their assumptions down to their social-class settings. Bird egg-collecting has been a hobby for generations of young
boys and was an integral part of development in finding one's niche with one's peers. Trading items can bring certain
skills and confidences to a growing person that are not solely the abilities of the well-off.
Nuff' said.
.................................................................
Bella In The Wych Elm.
Hagley Hall, a large manor house and home of the Lyttelton family on the outskirts of Birmingham, England went through
what many aristocratic domains in the country went through in the seventies and fell into some disrepair. But in the evening
of 18th April 1943, the condition of the grandee building wasn't on the minds of the four boys sneaking about the surrounding
woodland in search of bird's nests.
The region. Hagley Manor. A possible description of Bella.
Robert Hart, Fred Payne, Tom Willetts and Bob Farmer were were trespassing and they knew it. Lord Cobham --a Lyttelton
and the owner of the estate after inheriting the place from his father, wasn't a fan of having the commoners on his property
and hence the need for caution. The 11th Viscount Cobham had employed a Gamekeeper and having one's ass peppered
with buckshot wasn't something easy to explain to one's parents back in '43.
Some researchers suggested the quartet of lads were looking for rabbits and eggs to supplement their families’ meagre meat
ration due to the nightly German Luftwaffe’s bombing raids over Birmingham. However, I suspect this is to placate a reader's
judgement on the boys' infringement on private property and establish them as mere innocent chess-pieces in this mystery.
After a while, Bob Farmer noticed a Wych Elm, a type of tree that usually can reach the height of thirty feet. The one Farmer
was deliberating on for having a nest in its explosion of branches was covered in galls and stunted through Dutch Elm disease.
Still, if the elm was so badly damaged, there was a good chance a Tawny Owl or another type of feathered predator had
taken up residence in the hollow centre of the timber once used in the construction of coffins.
Up Bob went and sliding himself through the stiff curtain of sticks, he peered down into the rotted hole in the Wych Elm.
Due to the fading daylight, he first thought it was the blanched remains of a small animal that gotten stuck in the tree and
then leaning closer, he grasped the full horror of what he was seeing, it was a skull of a human. Eyeing the clumps of hair
clinging to the staring cranium, he glanced down at crooked teeth smiling up at the boy who'd found it. After relaying
his grisly find to his companions, the four youngsters agreed to never to tell a soul about what was entombed in the
blight-stricken Wych Elm for fear of getting into trouble.
We've all seen the movie 'Stand By Me' and some of us may all recall from our youth just how shallow a vow or secret
impacts on our position in a group. So it was 17-year-old Tom Willetts who informed his parents of their discovery when
he arrived home from that evening's egg foray. Mr Willetts -not one for feeling the excitement of cloak-and-dagger,
promptly contacted the Police and our wood-skulking search-party of youths fall away from the story.
The Bobbies of the village where the drummer of Led Zeppelin would reside years later, quickly sprang into action and
cordoned off the area. The morning light brought more information as the Police investigators found it was a female's
skull encased in the rotten tree and the rest of the skeleton was scattered close by. The skull was examined and a piece
of taffeta fabric was found stuffed inside the mouth, further foraging around the area discovered an imitation-gold ring
and a pair of crepe-soled shoes.
Professor James Webster was the medical examiner on the scene and announced the victim had been suffocated. After
some more examination, he concluded that the woman was around 35 years old, had irregular teeth in her upper jaw, had
light brown hair, and was just 5 feet (1.52 meters) tall. He also determined that the woman had given birth to one child in
her lifetime and estimated that she had been dead for around 18 months.
The Wych Elm. Some of the graffiti. An idea of what Bella looked like. More graffiti.
Adding further, Professor Webster estimated the time of death for the woman was around October of 1941, almost two
years before the discovery. He later stated: “I cannot imagine a woman accidentally slipping in there, neither do I think
it reasonable for a woman to crawl into that place to commit suicide.”
He also concluded that the woman had been placed inside the hollow trunk before rigor mortis had set in, otherwise the
body would have been too stiff to fit inside the narrow tree trunk. Taking in the full facts of from what he and the Police
had gathered, Webster rationalised that the victim would most likely have been killed close to the spot where she was
found otherwise the killer would not have been able to transport her body to the tree before rigor mortis set in. Finishing
his initial investigation, Professor Webster added: “It was an excellent place for the concealment of a murder and I think
it indicates local knowledge".
By now the Worcestershire County police were involved and so their first task -generated from what physical evidence
they had, was to contact every dentist in the area in the hope that one of them would recognise the deceased woman’s
distinctive protruding teeth. Missing persons reports matching the description of the victim were trawled through and
the manufacture of the crepe-soled shoes was researched. The Waterfoot Company of Lancashire produced the footwear
and the investigators were able to find the owners of all but six pairs, which had been sold from a market stall in Dudley,
a small town in the vicinity of 7 miles (11 km) from Birmingham.
Weeks passed and as World War II took its toll on the British people, the trail to find out who the tree-entombed woman
lost energy. The 'Tree Murder Riddle' became a cold file on the desk of those more focused with those dead and injured
among the rubble of a bombed-out city. Then as Christmas of 1943 rolled around, mysterious graffiti appeared on a wall
in the village of Old Hill, a couple of miles from where the dead woman's shoes were purchased.
Scrawled in chalk on the side of a house, it read: “Who put Luebella down the wych elm?” This was the first time that a
name had been used to suggest to the deceased woman's name. As 1944 arrived, similar messages appeared, all written
by the same hand and increasingly taking on the same word form: “Who put Bella in the wych elm?”.
Just as Banksy today, those of the establishment sought the artist of the intriguing defacement, but appeals by Police to
find out who was sending the message that they knew the name of the woman proved unsuccessful. As the soul-weary
effects of the war receded, England began to turn from the bloodshed across the Channel and ponder possible theories
on what had brought about the strange funeral of the mystery woman some call Bella.
Anthropologist Professor Margaret Murray proposed the fact that the deceased’s hand was severed from her arm, she may
have been a victim of a black magic ritual. An occult ceremony known as the 'Hand of Glory', requires its followers to use
an amputated hand in a particular sacrament and this act will give the holder of the appendage to have the power to unlock
any door the carrier encountered.
Professor Murray also believed the woman's murder was somehow connected to another act of foul play in the nearby
village of Lower Quinton. For reasons unknown, the Anthropologist formulated that Bella's demise in 1941 in Hagley Woods
was linked to the murder of a casual farmworker Charles Walton, who was found stabbed and found firmly secured to the
ground with his own pitchfork in the evening of 14th February 1945.
Since Hagley Woods had been attached via folklore to witchcraft. Professor Murray made the loose connection that the use
of Belladonna -Deadly Nightshade, was often involved with occult rituals and the curt name 'Bella' had been daubed on a
wall, evil necromancy was going on in the outskirts of Birmingham.
If we ignore the disciplines of the Hand of Glory requires the severed extremity from a hanged person and one of items
used to kill Walton was a tool often used by farm labourers, the only connection is the man who performed both autopsies
on the victims separated by two years. That was Professor James Webster.
However, this 'Witchy' theory was grabbed by the public and even today, it's a prominent belief. But cloaked po-faced
mumblers with evil on their minds stumbling through the rain-soaked greenery of a nobleman's land isn't for everybody
and so the backdrop of the war would make a fine platform to explain Bella's unusual demise.
Occasionally used for propaganda purposes and sometimes in real-life, German spies were captured in the UK during
World War II. Therefore, eight years after when Dwight D. Eisenhower was being sworn in as the 34th President of the
United States, the theory that the woman found in the Wych Elm was involved in espionage was inevitable.
In 1953, The Wolverhampton Express and Star newspaper received a letter from someone who identified herself only as
Anna of Claverley. This mysterious person agreed to expand the accusations that Bella was a spy by meeting journalist
Wilfred Byford-Jones and being interviewed. 'Anna' was later identified as Una Mossop, who claimed the dead woman of
Hagley Wood was a member of a German spy ring searching for local munitions factories that could then be targeted by
the Luftwaffe.
Una went on and described how her husband Jack Mossop -a RAF pilot, had become involved in a spy-ring along with a
Dutchman called Van Ralt. Mrs Mossop stated that it was Van Ralt who had picked up Bella in his car and later strangled
the woman because of her intelligence associations.
A simpler reworking of this offbeat tale was that Jack Mossop and his Dutch friend had been downing drinks in a local
pub with an unnamed woman and when she passed out due to drunkeness, the two men stuffed her in a tree to teach
her a lesson. Waking from her booze-snooze, she was unable to escape her timbered prison and died.
The media enjoyed the public's intrigue around the mystery and reported that Jack Mossop died in a Staffordshire hospital
before the bones were found in the Wych Elm allegedly due to a mental breakdown over the accidental murder. Van Ralt
was never found and Una Mossop's testimony was seen to be nothing more than hearsay.
But like most tales on the internet, it needed some grown-up spice to flavour a mystery. Year later, declassified MI5 files
offered some weight to the spy notion. Disclosed information from the agency showed a German spy named Josef Jakobs
was captured after breaking his ankle while parachuting into Cambridgeshire in 1941, the same year Professor Webster
suggested Bella died.
Further research showed that after Jakobs’ arrest, a creased photograph was found in his pocket of a glamorous German
actress and cabaret singer called Clara Bauerle. Jakobs told his interrogators that the woman was his lover and that the
Third Reich had recruited her as a spy. Supposedly, Bauerle had parachuted into the West Midlands in 1941 and disappeared.
Clara Bauerle. Josef Jakobs.
It makes a helluva an explanation except for a couple of things. Clara Bauerle was around 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 meters)
and the body from Hagley Wood was only 5 feet (1.52 meters) in height. Also, in 2016 it was discovered that Clara Bauerle
had died in a Berlin hospital in December 1942.
Other theories have been tossed onto the table of who Bella was, a barmaid murdered by an American GI or Gypsies camping
in Hagley Wood killing one of their own. But the mystery is still ongoing and now in 2023, Bella in the Wych Elm is still holding
her secret.
RE: Bella In The Wych Elm. - EndtheMadnessNow - 05-19-2023
Fascinating spooky mystery & tall tales. Came across a podcast about the case.. In 2014, forensic biologist John Lund who was 101 years old at the time, gave an interview to the BBC about the scant clues left behind by the killer. The body was donated to a University and when DNA testing became available the 'bones' had mysteriously disappeared! But what about the record files?? Gone, no where to be found! But, a new witness comes forward. Listen to the very end that offers the most likely answer that Mr detective found. Though nothing certain!
Steve Punt turns detective to investigate a mystery from the Midlands (27 min)