Episode 17. Who Put Bella Down the Wych Elm.
In the spring of 1943, on April 18, four young boys from Worcestershire, England were exploring Hagley Woods, located in the estate of Hagley Hall. The boys were spending their day together poaching on the estate belonging to Lord Cobham but they found much more than they bargained for when Bob Farmer climbed a large wych elm to look for birds nests. He glanced down into the hollow of the tree and found what he first thought was an animal skull, before noticing human teeth and hair. Spooked, he and his friends Robert Hard, Thomas Willetts and Fred Payne, left the skull where they had found it and fled. They agreed not to tell anyone about their discovery since they were on the estate illegally. However, being shaken by the event, the youngest of the four, Thomas Willetts, confessed to his parents about what they had found.
Police were engaged to investigate the boys’ finding. Upon inspection they discovered an almost complete skeleton, along with a shoe, a wedding ring and clothing fragments. The skull was mostly in tact, the body, not so much. The remains of a human hand were found at a distance from the tree. There was hope that the identity or at least some details of the identity may be determined due to the in tact dental pattern and the remaining human hair on the skull.
The skeleton was sent for forensic examination by Professor James Webster. It was determined that the body was that of a woman who had been dead for at least 18 months, concluding that time of death was sometime around or before October 1941. It is suggested, though I couldn’t confirm, that Bella may also have been a mother.
There was a scrap of taffeta in the woman’s mouth which suggested that she may have been suffocated. The body itself was found in a trunk, and it was determined that the woman was placed in the trunk either while still alive or some time before rigor mortis set in, as she would not have fit otherwise. Rigor mortis is the third stage of death in which the body stiffens. In humans, this can occur within 4 hours of death.
Police were able to determine what the woman may have looked like and attempted to compare her details to the records of several missing persons reports from the time of her death. Unfortunately, none of the records seemed to match the evidence. Her dental records were also sent to dentists but again, there was no match.
In 1944, a message was written on a wall in Upper Dean Street, Birminham, reading “Who put Bella down the Wych Elm?”. Other messages supposedly in the same hand appeared in the years following. In the 1970s the slightly different message, “Who put Bella in the Witch Elm” was written on the Hagley Obselisk near the woman’s resting place.
To this day the case remains unsolved.
There are multiple theories regarding who the woman might be and how she may have met her demise.
In 1944, a possible victim was reported to police, in their words, as a prostitute named Bella who had worked on Hagley Road. Bella had disappeared three years earlier. The graffiti artist using the name Bella in their writing suggested they may have been aware of the woman’s identity. Could this have been a case of murder at the hands of a man who frequented the road?
In 1953, Una Mossop made a statement that her ex-husband, Jack Mossop, had been told by a man named van Ralt, that he had been the one who put Bella in the tree. Van Ralt claimed that he had been with a woman that night who had passed out, drunk, while they were driving. He claimed that the men put the woman in a hollowed out tree so that when she awoke she would be frightened of what had become of her. Jack Mossop ended living the remainder of his life in an insitution has he had recurring nightmares of a woman staring at him out of a tree. He passed away there and it was 10 years before his wife would come forward with her statement. The statement was questioned because of the amount of time it took to come to light. It also begs the question that if this were a prank, why was the body then found in a trunk and who stuffed taffeta down Bella’s throat?
There have been two theories that Bella was a spy who was caught and murdered. However, one of these theories, naming her as Clara Bauerle, was dismissed as it was determined that Clara had in fact died in Berlin on December 16, 1942. The other theory was the Bella was actually Clarabella Dronkers, killed by German spies, for, quote, “knowing too much”. While this theory is both ominous and intriguing, there is no evidence to support it.
In 1945, Margaret Murray proposed that Bella’s murder was a ritual killing, involved with witchcraft. She suggested this ritual was the Hand of Glory, in which the left hand of the person who has killed or committed a crime is severed. The left hand often being symbolically connected with evil or Satanism throughout history. This, however, would imply that Bella was herself a murderess, or perhaps someone equally as evil as the people who murdered her.
As for whether we will ever have answers? Unless DNA was extracted somehow, before the skull suddenly disappeared, it’s unlikely that we ever will.
Bella’s skull went missing, or was “lost”, by Birmingham police. While there have been multiple searches into the documentation and possible location of the skull, it has not been located. You might think this is an impossible situation, but this isn’t the first time a person’s organs, bones, or documents have gone missing in a case still under investigation.
Unless someone happens to stumble across a photograph resembling Bella’s sketch, it’s unlikely the woman’s true identity will ever come to light. The thought of disappearing in history so completely seems impossible in the modern age, with paper and electronic trails that we all leave behind.
Tell me what theory you believe fits this case: Was Bella a spy? An unlucky woman who came across the wrong man? Let me know.
Good Nightmare 