Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?`

Around 30 minutes outside of Birmingham lies the village of Hagley, a pretty standard English village complete with a noble estate, Hagley Hall, and its adjacent grounds, Hagley Park, home to the wonderfully named Hagley Wood. In 1758, Lord Lyttelton, owner of nearby Hagley Hall, built the Wychbury obelisk on Wychbury hill. In recent years, the obelisk has become renowned for its graffiti, asking about a certain wych elm tree.

Wychbury hill, the Wychbury obelisk, and the wych elm tree have nothing to do with witches—which is quite ironic, as we’ll see later. Other than a love of repetition and a wonderful opportunity for word play, nothing much ever happened in Hagley.

That all changed in 1940 when the German Luftwaffe started dropping bombs on London and industrial cities, like nearby Birmingham, as part of the Blitz soon after the start of WWII. Times were tough, but against the backdrop of the hardships caused by the war in Europe, another tragedy closer to home led to a mystery that has never been solved, and a question that has yet to be answered: Who put Bella in the wych elm?

The story of Bella is filled with contradictions and imaginative theories—trying to figure out what is fact and what is fiction is a quest worthy of a knight of the round table. As such, the story you’re about to enjoy is both a look into the mysterious case of Bella and an attempt to dispel some of the more persistent, and most likely false, theories. Perhaps clearing away the vines of fiction will allow armchair detectives to focus on the facts and finally solve the riddle.

A Body is Found in Hagley Wood

On April 18, 1943, four teenage boys—Robert Hart, Tommy Willets, Fred Payne, and Bob Farmer—were making their way through Hagley Wood, Worcestershire, England. According to some storytellers, they were looking for birds’ nests and eggs, while others claim the four lads were hunting for rabbits or fowl in order to stretch their families’ limited wartime rations just a little bit. Regardless of what they were doing in the woods, they were trespassing on Hagley Hall estate, private property belonging to Lord Cobham.

Catching a glimpse of what they assumed was a nest in the crook of a deeply unsettling wych elm tree, one of the boys, Bob Farmer, climbed into the creepy tree—straight out of Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow”—to get to the eggs. Only, it wasn’t a nest with an egg; it was a skull. Initially, Farmer thought it was the skull of an animal and was suitably impressed with the find. However, when he picked it up, the skull wasn’t that of an animal—it was the skull of a human.

There was still a small patch of rotting flesh and lank hair attached to the skull. Now freaked out by the find, the boys promptly put the skull back where they found it and skedaddled.

The young trespassers were understandably terrified. They may have uncovered a murder, but more importantly, they had been trespassing at the time which could land them in serious trouble, so they made a pact to keep their discovery a secret and never tell another living soul of what they found. The pact held for a couple of hours before the youngest, Tommy Willets, spilled the beans to his father, telling him all about what the boys were up to and their grisly discovery. To his credit, Mr.

Willets, instead of shrugging it off as a mischievous prank or the imagination of a child, immediately contacted the police.

The police went to investigate and it didn’t take long for the gruesome discovery to be confirmed. Only, it wasn’t just a skull. In the narrow space of the hollow trunk of the wych elm tree, an entire human skeleton was found, curled up, with the knees drawn up to the chest. Well, it was almost an entire skeleton—one hand had been severed and the bones of the hand were scattered around the tree.

Well-known forensic scientist, Professor James Webster, then director of the West Midlands Forensic Science Laboratory, was called in to examine the bones. Despite the limitations of forensic science in 1943, Professor Webster managed to learn quite a lot from the skeletal remains. He determined that the skeleton was that of a woman, around 35 years of age, who had probably given birth to at least one child. She was quite short, only around 5 feet (1.51m) tall.

From the hair still stuck to the rotting piece of flesh on the skull, Webster could tell that she had light brown hair, and she also had irregular teeth.

And now we come to the first of many conflicting details. Some reports claim that Webster identified a lower jaw deformity. However, according to other reports, he was actually referring to the overlapping upper frontal incisors that can clearly be seen in photographs of the skull.

Of course, it’s possible she had both a deformity in her lower jaw as well as the distinctive upper teeth—point is, it was the kind of mouth a dentist would remember. Police contacted every dentist in the area, hoping someone would recognize the distinctive teeth and/or jaw deformity, but no one had records for a patient that matched the woman in the tree, and missing persons’ reports didn’t turn up anything either.

Most of the woman’s clothes had rotted away, but some scraps remained and the police were able to determine that she was wearing a mustard coloured skirt with a blue and yellow striped cardigan. She also wore a light blue belt, a peach coloured taffeta petticoat, and probably wore blue crepe soled shoes as one shoe was found at the scene where she died. The scraps of clothing that remained were described as poor quality in the press.

The shoes were traced to the Waterfoot Company, in Lancashire, and all but six of the owners of that particular model of shoe were eventually found. Six pairs were sold at a market stall in Dudley, around 11 miles (18km) from Birmingham, and the stall holders didn’t keep any records of who bought the shoes. If the victim had bought her shoes at the stall in Dudley, it probably meant she was local.

It was a promising lead, but it led nowhere.

The woman was also wearing a rolled gold wedding ring—a thin strip of gold bonded to the outside of a brass or copper ring. It was a cheap alternative to a solid gold wedding ring. This suggests that she was either married or, if she was a single mother who had a child out of wedlock, she might’ve been pretending to be married as an unwed mother in the 1940s would’ve had a hard time.

Webster determined that the woman had been dead for about 18 months to two years, meaning she most likely died around October 1941, and he believed it was murder. A piece of peach taffeta, most likely from the woman’s petticoat, had been stuffed deep into her mouth suggesting asphyxiation. He felt that it was an unlikely place for a suicide, and he couldn’t see how a woman could slip and get stuck inside a hollow tree trunk.

He believed she was intentionally shoved into the hollow trunk, feet first, shortly before or after death. Rigor mortis, the stiffening of the joints and muscles, sets in around two hours after death and would’ve made it impossible for her killer or killers to shove the body into the narrow tree trunk. Some people have pointed out that rigor mortis only lasts between one and four days, so the body could’ve gone into the trunk after rigor mortis passed; however, by then you have a decomposing body on your hands—one day if you’re lucky, four days if you’re not—which fans of CSI will tell you comes with its own host of problems.

Regardless of when the body went into the tree, the forensic scientist cried murder, and since he was there and we weren’t, it’s his word we’ll be trusting.

However, the taffeta in the woman’s mouth presents a bit of a problem. According to the Evening Despatch of March 29, 1943, it was Robert Hart, not Bob Farmer, who discovered the skull. Apparently, the boys raked the skull out of the tree with a stick, then put it back in the tree using the same stick with a piece of fabric wrapped around the tip and wedged into the mouth of the skull. If the taffeta was torn from her petticoat, as suggested by Webster, this scenario doesn’t make a lot of sense—did the boys rip the taffeta from her petticoat and wrap it around the stick? Another report also mentioned a police officer at the scene for some reason thinking that a piece of taffeta lying near the skull had been in the mouth and had fallen out, so he dutifully put the cloth back in the mouth. Unfortunately, by the time the police got to the body, the scene had already been greatly disturbed by animals and the four boys, so whether the strip was stuffed in her mouth by her killer, or whether it ended up in her mouth sometime after her death, will forever remain a mystery.

The fact that the woman was found stuffed into a hollow tree trunk in the woods on private property has three important implications. Firstly, since she probably went into the tree trunk before rigor mortis set in, she was most likely killed at, or very close to, the spot where she was found. However, a lot of time had passed, so there were no clues to find.

Secondly, stuffing a fully grown adult body, especially a dead one, into a hollow tree trunk isn’t easy—that’s a lot of dead weight to lift. It wasn’t obvious from the ground that the trunk was hollow, and Bob Farmer had to climb the tree to find the skull, so we’re talking about a trunk at least shoulder high. While some people would certainly be able to lift a dead body shoulder high to stuff it into a hollow tree trunk, it’s more likely that there was more than one killer or, at the very least, more than one person involved in hiding the body.

Finally, and this is a detail that many of the theories about the Hagley Wood murder completely overlook, whoever stuffed the woman into the tree probably knew it was there. You don’t go lugging a dead body around the woods hoping to stumble across a conveniently hollow tree trunk before rigor mortis makes your life even more complicated than it already is seeing as how you’ve got a dead body on your hands. So, unless the killer, or more likely killers, had the luck of Beelzebub on their side, at least one of them probably knew the woods and knew where to find a hollow tree.

After the discovery of the Hagley Wood murder, as it was known at the time, the police decided to check their own records and discovered two reports back in 1941, when the woman probably died, that looked promising. A local businessman and a school teacher separately contacted the police to report that a woman was screaming uncontrollably in the woods. The police did visit the scene, but couldn’t find anything, so the sound was chalked up to foxes. After the body was found, the lead was revisited by detectives, but like all other leads, it didn’t turn up anything useful.

Around 19 months after the body was discovered, a handbag was found in Hagley Wood in November of 1944 by Special Constable R. Sheppard. Of course, everybody involved with the case immediately wondered if the bag possibly belonged to the woman found in the tree.

The brown leather lady’s handbag was discovered some distance from the wych elm. The bag was empty, covered with green moss, and falling apart, so the police reckoned that it had been exposed to the elements for quite some time. After checking police records, it was discovered that the bag belonged to Doctor Dorothy Edith Markham and had been stolen from her car parked on Hagley Wood Lane on December 16, 1939.

There are some tales floating around on the internet claiming that an identity card was found. The police apparently traced this card to a woman who didn’t even know her card was lost and claimed to have never been near Hagley Wood. There is nothing to support this ever happened; however, the story probably has its roots in this bag which turned out to have nothing to do with the Hagley Wood murder.

In the 1940s, police didn’t have the technology we have today, so DNA testing wasn’t an option. However, technology has come a long way and many cold cases have since been solved using DNA. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option anymore.

Webster donated the skeleton to Birmingham University, apparently for further tests, and from there, the skeleton mysteriously disappeared. The West Midlands police have confirmed that they don’t have the body either. The pathology reports probably went into a police file, but these too have apparently been lost.

This led to some speculation that there was something on the remains or in the pathology reports that someone was worried would be noticed in a follow-up investigation, so the skeleton and the pathology reports were made to disappear in order to protect someone—perhaps the killer or someone who had stolen the victim’s identity.

Disappearing skeletons are certainly a bit mysterious; however, before we consider the possibility of a cover-up, we need to remember that universities, especially medical schools, have hundreds, if not thousands, of skeletons. In fact, Britain has a particularly large collection of academic skeletons of archaeological interest; the Centre for Human Bio-archaeology in London houses over 20,000 sets of remains from all time periods. Considering that the skeleton went to a university, it’s possible that her remains got mixed up with other bones or that the box containing her remains wasn’t properly marked and catalogued.

She’s probably still at the university, but no one has the time to check every single set of remains, hoping to find the skeleton of a woman who died in 1941—anyone affected by the death of the woman in the wych elm are all dead and gone. We would love to solve the mystery, but to the victim and those closest to her, it really doesn’t matter anymore.

The case of the woman found in Hagley Wood was sad, and the police spent as much time and resources as they had available to look into the case. However, the tragedy of WWII eclipsed the horror of a single woman found in the woods, and with no real leads, the case soon went cold.

The Graffiti Adds to the Mystery

With the war raging and people having other priorities, the case didn’t get as much attention as it would’ve gotten today. However, six months after the skeleton was found, someone decided to remind the good folks in Birmingham and its surrounding areas about the unidentified victim.

The first piece of graffiti was discovered at Hayden Hill Road, Old Hill, and read “Who put luebella down the wych elm.” However, the message wasn’t connected to the murder of the woman found in Hagley Wood until the next message appeared, on the wall of an empty premise on Upper Dean Street in Birmingham, reading “Who put Bella down the wych elm – Hagley Wood?” Now that the graffiti artist literally spelled it out, the police made the connection. The message continued to appear over the next several months, in different formats until it eventually became the standard question we all know today: “Who put Bella in the wych elm?”

It appeared that someone knew the victim, or at least suspected who the victim was, and perhaps knew more about the death of the mysterious woman found in Hagley Wood. The police also had a name—Bella. The police re-checked their missing person’s lists, looking for a Luebella or Bella, but came up empty again. They asked for anyone missing a Bella to contact the police, but this too led nowhere. The name Bella stuck though, and the Jane Doe found in Hagley Wood has been known as Bella ever since.

Failing to find a missing Bella, the police asked for the artist to come forward, but no one ever did. Police believed the original messages were all written by the same person, and claimed that the writing on the wall was too high to have been done by boys. The graffiti was always being done at night, or in the very early morning hours, leading to some speculation that it was done by someone coming into the city early in the morning with farm produce.

The blackouts at night to prevent towns from being spotted by enemy bombers made it very easy for the graffiti artist to get their work done and disappear into the dark. Was the graffiti meant to be a clue, or was the killer just taunting the police? Worse, was it just a prank by someone who knew absolutely nothing but was eager to keep the mystery alive?

The graffiti is one of the reasons this case still captures the imagination of so many, and the original writer was never identified. In the years since, the phrase “who put Bella in the witch elm?” still showed up sporadically in Birmingham and its surrounding areas, the most recent graffiti appearing in 2016, though by now it’s probably the work of a copycat, unless the original killer is shuffling around Birmingham with a walker and a can of paint.

Theories

So far, no one has been able to answer the question haunting Birmingham and surrounds. We have no idea who put Bella in the wych elm. We don’t even know who Bella was, if that was in fact her name. Over the years, a number of theories have been suggested, mostly involving espionage; however, witchcraft is another fan favourite. So let’s see if any of these theories can shed any more light on the mystery.

A Spy Among Us

The idea that Bella had something to do with espionage isn’t that far-fetched. Birmingham was the third most bombed city during the Blitz. It was considered an important industrial and manufacturing center, and if you add the munitions factories dotting the Midlands, you have a prime target for the Luftwaffe. And if the Luftwaffe considered it important enough to bomb into oblivion, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Germany had a spy or two operating in the area.

One of the first stories suggesting espionage came from the pen of a journalist for the Express and Star, Lt. Col. Wilfred Byford-Jones. In the fall of 1953, Byford-Jones, under the name Quaestor, wrote a series of very sensational articles about the murder that took place in Hagley Wood because even back then, nothing sold papers quite like murder. On November 18, 1953, he received a letter from a woman named Anna, with a return address in Claverley, claiming that she knew what happened to Bella and that it had nothing to do with witchcraft, black magic or moonlight rites. In fact, there was only one person who could solve the mystery, but, alas, he had conveniently died insane in 1942. All she could reveal was that Bella was Dutch and she had arrived in England illegally in 1941.

The editor of the Express & Star wisely sent Anna’s letter to the police. The police investigation had not turned up any leads in a while, so obviously the police were quite interested in Anna and what she had to say. Perhaps she could shed some light on the mystery. They made an appeal for Anna to come forward, and on December 3, 1953, Anna finally sent another letter to Byford-Jones. She agreed to meet with him and officers of the Worcestershire C.I.D at the Dick Whittington pub the next evening, December 4, to tell her story and hopefully help the police in their investigation.

There’s no actual record of this meeting between the police, the journalist, and this mysterious Anna at the Dick Whittington on the night of December 4, 1953. However, five years later, in January 1958, a newspaper article appeared in which Byford-Jones claimed that he had been sworn to secrecy about the meeting that night, but after seeing an interview with a pathologist on television, who stated that the woman in the tree had been identified, though this wasn’t the case, Byford-Jones felt that he was now free to tell his story about the meeting with Anna five years before. And what a dramatic story he had to tell.

According to Anna, late one night, in April 1943, an officer—a relative of Anna’s who’s never named but the main character in the story—arrived at Anna’s house and told her that something terrible had happened. Since Bella died in 1941, we’re not off to a good start. The officer had been driving somewhere with a male trapeze artist, a friend of his, as well as a Dutch national, and a woman named Lubella, all in the back seat.

Bella was sitting between the two men. As the car was descending Mucklow Hill, Halesowen, something happened—we don’t know what—and the woman collapsed. The officer stopped the car but the two men in the back told him that the woman, Bella, was dead and that he had to keep driving.

Anna describes the circuitous route the men took, but eventually they ended up in Hagley Wood where the three men proceeded to stuff the body of the woman into the hollow trunk of the wych elm tree. The officer was understandably terrified, and the next night he returned to the woods to double check that what he thought happened actually happened and he wasn’t imagining things. Sadly, the body was still in the tree where they left it the night before, so it wasn’t some kind of fever dream.

The officer suspected that both Bella and the Dutch national were German spies, and he believed Bella was murdered because of this spy connection. Anna also claimed that the officer sometimes came home with large sums of money, and he couldn’t explain where the money came from. The whole incident with the woman ending up in Hagley Wood affected the officer deeply, so much so that he had a nervous breakdown and finally died in a mental hospital.

According to Byford-Jones, some of the facts in Anna’s story were verified, but this mysterious Dutchman could never be found. Neither could the trapeze artist. Byford-Jones also claimed that at this point, MI5 was brought into the case; however, there’s never been any confirmation from MI5 that they had any interest in the case of the woman found dead in Hagley Wood. It’s a very entertaining story, but is there anything to it?

As it turns out, Anna was actually a real person: Una Hainsworth. In December 1953, police took a statement from Hainsworth though whether this was at the same meeting so delightfully embellished by Byford-Jones is unclear. Una’s version of events is less fanciful than Anna’s though there are some similarities.

In 1940, Una was married to Jack Mossop who was employed at the Standard Aero Works at Coventry. Jack had a friend, Van Ralt, who always had a lot of money despite not being employed. Una believed Van Ralt was Dutch and a spy for Germany. Jack would often have lots of money after meeting this Van Ralt character so she suspected her husband of being a spy as well.

In March or April 1941, her husband returned home at around 1 a.m. in the morning, white as a sheet and agitated. He told her that he had been down at the Lyttleton Arms with Van Ralt and the “Dutch piece,” presumably Bella, when things got awkward, whatever that means. They left the Lyttleton Arms, Mossop getting into the driver’s seat, and the “Dutch piece” got into the car next to him with Van Ralt in the back.

The woman fell over, towards Mossop, and he told Van Ralt that she had apparently passed out after having too much to drink. Van Ralt directed Mossop to drive to Hagley Wood where they stuffed the unconscious woman into a hollow tree and left her there, either as a prank or to teach her a lesson—the drunken mind is a terrifying thing. Mossop returned home and Van Ralt apparently disappeared off the face of the earth never to be seen again.

Between April and December 1941, Mossop seemed nervous and was drinking more than usual. He had a lot more money to spend despite being absent from work quite often, and he would sometimes leave for a couple of days, never telling his wife where he went. Una finally had enough and left Jack in December 1941.

On one occasion after leaving him, she was trying to get some of her stuff back when he told her that he thought he was losing his mind as he kept seeing the woman in the tree leering at him. In June 1942, Una learned that Jack had been admitted to the Mental Hospital at Stafford where he finally died in August 1942, probably of a stroke.

Una only told her story 12 years after it all supposedly went down, by which point anyone who could be questioned to verify her tale had died or couldn’t be found. She claimed she hesitated because she only made the connection between the story Mossop told her and the woman found in Hagley Wood after the body was found, and she didn’t want to get any further involved because she had since remarried and had three young children. Una’s story is nowhere near as exciting as the one supposedly told to Byford-Jones by Anna, but it does seem slightly more plausible. The police didn’t find her to be a very credible witness though since she had a lot of debt and possibly told a story in the hopes of getting a monetary reward.

While I doubt very much that things went down the way Una described, I’m not entirely convinced we should ignore the story altogether. A friend of Jack Mossop also told police that Jack often took off from work and had a lot of money that he claimed he inherited. Mossop wasn’t mentally stable enough to be a spy, but he might’ve been involved in the black market.

If he was moving in dodgy circles, spending a lot of time in pubs and bars, he may have overheard something about a woman being murdered and dumped in a tree, and his drunken, unstable mind filled in the rest of the story. Unfortunately, that doesn’t bring us any closer to finding out who Bella was and what happened to her.

To further bolster the spy theory, a possible candidate for who Bella might be was linked to an actual German spy—Josef Jakobs. Many articles report that Jakobs was a Gestapo agent, but this is false, he was actually an agent for the Abwehr. He had a bit of a colourful past which made him unsuitable to serve as an officer in the army, but apparently spy recruiters had less scruples, so Jakobs was recruited and trained as a spy in Hamburg.

On the evening of January 31, 1941, Josef was dropped over Cambridgeshire, England. Having never practiced a parachute jump or landing, which seems a bit of an oversight, he broke his ankle in the attempt. Instead of setting off on his spy mission, he spent the night in an English potato field belonging to Dovehouse farm, covered in his parachute, and smoking his supply of cigarettes all through the night.

By early the next morning, the pain had become too much and he fired some shots into the air, looking for aid. Not long after, he was finally found by two farm hands. One stayed with Josef while the other went to find the police. Josef was searched and the police uncovered a wireless transmitter partly buried, two identity cards, one in the name of James Rymer, lots of cash, and a photo among other things.

Rightfully assuming that they’d caught themselves a spy, Josef was arrested and sent on to London. What’s important to our story, however, is the photo.

The photo was of a woman and on the back was a message: “My dear, I love you, For ever, Your Clara. Landau, July 1940.” After a moment of understandable paranoia, MI5 was able to determine the handwriting was most likely German and Landau was a city in south-western Germany, it wasn’t an odd spelling for London.

Jakobs claimed that the woman in the photo was his lover, German cabaret singer, Clara Bauerle. His story changed a bit every time he told it, but it seemed like, according to Jakobs anyway, Clara was also a German spy and the plan was that she would join him in England. However, since he failed to make contact, seeing as how he spent his only free night in England lying in a potato field, Clara’s mission would most likely be cancelled.

Quite a few articles claim that Clara Bauerle had lived in the UK and performed in music halls in the Midlands before the war. She even spoke with a Birmingham accent. None of this is true—Jakobs himself said that Clara started English lessons in Hamburg with him. This wouldn’t be necessary if she spoke fluent English with a Birmingham accent.

In fact, Jakobs insisted that Clara had never been to England. The confusion probably arises with another Bauerle, Klara Sophie Bauerle, a German national born on June 29, 1906, in Stuttgart. Klara Sophie had arrived in the UK on October 10 or 20, 1930, and had left for Germany at a later unknown date. The Central Register of Aliens was informed that she had left the country for Germany on June 21, 1932.

There’s no evidence that she ever returned to England after that.

It seems strange that a spy would carry a photo of a fellow spy in his pocket. However, he was caught one day after arriving, so James Bond the man was not. The date on the photo is also odd.

The photograph was signed July 1940, but Jakobs claimed that he only met Clara in October. His explanation for that was that Clara was a capricious woman who was always giving him picture postcards of herself with various dates. This seems like a very weird explanation, so he was probably hiding something—I’m guessing an affair since he was a married man, and he was not married to Clara.

Karel Richter, another Abwehr spy caught by the English, claimed that he had met Josef and Clara several times in Hamburg but didn’t consider Clara to be a very attractive woman. He also mentioned that she was very tall, something Bella in the wych elm certainly wasn’t; however, the theory that Bella was none other than Clara Bauerle, though how she ended in the wych elm was never explained, persisted.

In 2016, Giselle Jakobs, the granddaughter of Josef Jakobs, tracked down Clara’s death certificate. Clara Bauerle, full name Hedwig Klara Bauerle, passed away in a Berlin hospital on December 16, 1942. She was suffering from a lung infection, possibly pneumonia, and died of Veronal poisoning. Clara Bauerle is not Bella in the wych elm.

Of course, conspiracy theorists were quick to point out that we can’t trust German war records. If Clara Bauerle was a spy that parachuted into England, perhaps the records were falsified to cover this up. However, I personally think we have to start somewhere and until proven otherwise, I’m going to assume that the hospital records of a random Berlin hospital are, in fact, correct.

As for Josef Jakobs, after he healed from the broken ankle and was thoroughly interrogated by MI5, he was charged with treason, tried, and executed by firing squad on August 15, 1941. He has the dubious honour of being the last man executed at the Tower of London.

In 1968, writer Donald McCormick revisited the espionage theory in his book Murder by Witchcraft. McCormick wrote quite a few history books, but his work has been torn to shreds by the academic community. According to some critics, his claims were controversial while others have labeled him a fraud and a liar—their words, not mine, please don’t sue us. His theory on Bella reads like spy fiction, complete with ex-Nazi spies, informants, recruiters and even one ex-Nazi living in Paraguay under an assumed name. Of course, he never explained how he managed to find this secretive South American Nazi. I bet Mossad would’ve been very interested in his contacts list.

According to McCormick, a spy ring operated in the Midlands during the war—a spy ring so successful, the British government never found out about them, yet McCormick did. Apparently, a female spy, codenamed Clara, parachuted into England and was never heard from again. One informant leads him to another informant who eventually leads him to a contact in Amsterdam who claimed that Clara could’ve been a Dutch woman named Dronkers, first name unknown, who was involved in the occult which brings us to the whole witchcraft angle, but we’ll get into that later.

McCormick also talks about a German recruiter whose Dutch mistress was well acquainted with Britain. Apparently, she had an unhappy love affair with a man living in Stourbridge, about five miles from Hagley Wood, before the war. She had lived in England for around five years and spoke fluent English with a Birmingham accent; this is all sounding very familiar. The South American Nazi claimed to have met this woman and her description fits Bella very well—she was intelligent, attractive, and around 30 years old before the war and she had irregular teeth.

It’s almost like McCormick saw a newspaper report describing Bella before writing his book. He also thought the woman was Dutch, which fits very well with Una Mossop’s story. This mistress may or may not have been the spy code-named Clara who may or may not have been the woman found in a tree in Hagley Wood.

Some online articles even claim that McCormick identified the spy “Clara” as Clarabella Dronkers, a relative of the executed spy Johannes Marinus Dronkers. Dronkers was a very bad spy who was arrested, tried and executed towards the end of 1942, and his wife apparently died in Amsterdam, so it’s doubtful that this mystery woman had anything to do with Dronkers. While McCormick’s theory is convoluted and downright contradictory at times, he never mentions the name Clarabella, so where that came from is another mystery altogether.

McCormick has no proof for any of his theories and since much of his research relies on stories told by ex-Nazi agents hiding in Paraguay, none of it can be verified. I think we can safely relegate his theories to the realm of fiction.

Considering the title of McCormick’s book, Murder by Witchcraft, it’s clear he was more interested in the witchcraft theory than the spy theory anyway, so, where do the witches come into the story?

The Witches Did It

Right from the start, clues as to what could’ve happened to the unfortunate woman stuffed into a wych elm were scarce, and, to their credit, the police actually followed up on any and every clue that came their way including the supernatural ones—which brings us to Margaret Murray.

Margaret Murray was an Egyptologist, archaeologist and folklorist teaching at University College in London from 1894 to 1935. She wrote a series of books focusing on witchcraft, and claimed that Bella’s death had the hallmarks of the occult. Murray thought the name in the graffiti, Bella, referred to the word Belladonna, or Deadly Nightshade, a plant that’s been linked to witchcraft since the middle ages, and suggested that Bella was possibly killed by occultists and was perhaps even a witch herself. She based her theory on two case points: the amputated hand and the tree in which Bella was found.

Right at the beginning, I mentioned that the skeleton was mostly complete except for a missing hand. According to some articles, the hand had been cut off and buried while others state that the finger bones of the hand were scattered around the tree in an almost ritual fashion. The one thing they all agree on, and which drew Murray’s attention, is that the hand was separated from the body.

This reminded Murray of an occult practice to create the Hand of Glory. To make a Hand of Glory, the hand of a criminal—a thief or murderer—had to be cut off while the criminal was hanging on the gallows. The hand cut off had to be the hand used to commit the crime.

The hand, once pickled and dried, became an object of great power. It could send the occupants of a house into a deep trance, so very useful for thieves. It could protect you from evil spirits, disable an attacker, and even lead to buried treasure.

So, the removal of the hand suggested to Murray that the occult was involved. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. There’s nothing to suggest that Bella was a criminal, and she wasn’t hanged.

She was murdered and stuffed into a tree. If her hand was cut off, whoever cut it off left it there which kind of defies the whole point if your goal was to create a Hand of Glory.

As for the tree, according to Murray, several pre-Christian European societies believed that burying criminals, or witches, inside a tree would trap the spirit of the individual in said tree. This would make it hard for the spirit to then go and take revenge on those who put it in the tree in the first place. According to Celtic folklore, the wych elm also protects the dead, and, on a more practical note, makes really nice coffins. All this led Murray to theorize that Bella might’ve been killed for committing a crime against her coven.

The murder of farmer Charles Walton in Lower Quinton, 40 miles from Hagley Wood on Valentine’s Day in 1945 further cemented Murray’s theory of an occult connection. This theory gets a bit convoluted, but bear with me. While working on his farm, Walton was stabbed with his own scythe and then pinned to the ground, through the throat, with his own pitchfork.

According to McCormick, a cross was carved into his chest; however, I think we’ve determined that McCormick isn’t the most reliable source. As for how this murder relates to witchcraft—in 1875, a woman was murdered in Long Compton, fifteen miles from Lower Quinton. She was rumored to be a witch and was killed ritualistically and pinned to the ground with a pitchfork.

Her killer, James Heywood, was described as “simple-minded” by kind folk and as a “village idiot” by less kind folk. He was tried for her murder but spent his life in an asylum where he told anyone who would listen that he was a witch hunter and would kill more witches if they ever let him out. Wisely, they never did and as far as I can tell, he died in the asylum.

However, the idea of secret groups of witch hunters going around hunting down witches and Satanists, even though it happened sixty years before Bella was found in the wych elm, certainly went a long way to convince folks that witches were to blame.

Some articles claim that, according to local legend, Hagley Wood was also associated with witchcraft; however, in my limited experience, most woods are associated with witchcraft. A more diligent journalist asked local people about the rumors of witchcraft, but they all agreed that if witches were performing moonlight rituals in Hagley Wood, they’ve never heard of it.

With no other leads to follow, this occult theory was as good as any, so the police considered it, but finally decided that the hand was most likely separated from the body due to animal predation and decomposition, not by an angry satanic coven. I suppose it’s possible that cutting the hand off was symbolic, but I find the black magic theory to be a little far-fetched. The police also couldn’t find any evidence of a coven operating in Hagley Wood during, or even before, the time Bella was probably murdered and stuffed into a tree. So, odds are, we’re not dealing with witches.

More Realistic Theories

The stories about spies and witches, and spies that were witches, captivated the public imagination, and are still the first theories mentioned in almost every article or podcast ever created about the case of the murder in Hagley Wood. The police, however, had a few more realistic ideas of what fate could’ve befallen Bella.

In 1944, a local sex worker contacted the Birmingham police to report the disappearance of another sex worker, Luebella, who used to work the streets around Hagley Road. Apparently, Luebella had gone missing around three years before, so around 1941, the same time Bella died, and considering that the first piece of graffiti asked “Who put Luebella down the wych elm?” this seemed like a very good lead. The police thought it possible that Luebella, or Bella, was lured to Hagley Wood and murdered by a client or someone posing as a client.

They looked into the lead, but nothing ever came of it. A few articles suggest that Luebella was eventually traced to her mother’s address, but I couldn’t find anything to confirm this.

Another theory placed the blame on Gypsies. Apparently, in 1941, a group of Travellers had camped out in the vicinity of Hagley Wood. Depending on who was telling the story, Bella was either murdered by the Travellers, or she was herself a Traveller who was murdered by her own people for some reason. It’s unclear if the police ever took this seriously, but the theory seems to be rooted in people’s suspicion of Travellers rather than any concrete evidence.

The police concluded that the most likely theory was that Bella was a transient and wasn’t reported missing since there was no one to miss her. Hagley Wood became a popular place of refuge during the Blitz—it wasn’t uncommon for people to go seek shelter from the air raids. So, Bella probably lived in Birmingham and, when the air raid started, she found shelter in Hagley Wood where she ran afoul of someone with murderous intent or perhaps a rape gone wrong.

However, people in distress can manage amazing feats. It’s plausible that Bella did manage to get into the tree by herself if she was scared enough but, once the danger passed, she couldn’t get out, and no one heard her calls for help. Perhaps the woman screaming in the woods in 1941 was Bella, but by the time help arrived, she’d already fallen unconscious and so was never found.

Personally, I think she was murdered by someone who knew the area. The cheap wedding ring and the fact that she had probably given birth makes me wonder if the killer and the father of the child was the same person. Hagley Lane was a popular lover’s lane where couples would go do what couples do. It’s possible that she was killed during a lover’s quarrel or perhaps by a jealous partner who knew about the tree and never reported her missing.

If anyone asked, he could claim that she had died in an air raid while visiting relatives. There was a war on—no one would’ve questioned it.

A New Clue

In 2018, British anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University, created a facial reconstruction of what Bella might’ve looked like when she was still alive. Wilkinson had previously made a facial reconstruction of King Richard III when his remains were uncovered in a Leicester car park back in 2012—how far the mighty have fallen. Wilkinson and her team were hired by Pete Merrill and his 15-year-old son Alex as part of their research, and the final reconstruction was first published in Alex’s book Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

Since Bella’s skull disappeared along with the rest of her skeleton, Wilkinson and her team only had photos of the skull to work with. Using a 2D image to create a 3D model provides some challenges—the flattened planes on the image leads to a loss in perspective and a loss of key details, like how deep the eye orbits are. However, valuable clues provided by the photo gave Wilkinson and her team a good idea of the shape of Bella’s nose, the general shape of the jawline and the size of the mouth and thickness of the lips.

Bella’s distinct protruding teeth could also be seen on the photo and the bit of scalp still attached to the skull gave an indication of hair length, possible style and possible color. Without the skull, the reconstructed image is an approximation at best, but it’s still more than what we had previously. The hope was that someone going through old family photos tucked in a shoebox in the attic might recognize Bella or, perhaps, someone who had a family member go missing in the late 1930s or early 1940s could find photos to see if Bella was their lost relative.

So far, no one has come forward, so the mystery of who Bella was, and who put her in the tree, remains unsolved.

Conclusion

There has been some criticism towards the police about how the case was handled and about the skeleton and police reports going missing; however, there was a war on. The majority of able-bodied men who could fight, including coppers, had been called up for military service, so the police force relied heavily on volunteers. Resources were limited, and people were going missing all the time.

Homes were destroyed in bombing raids, so people fled the cities leading to an influx of strangers that often disappeared as quickly as they appeared. Trying to keep track of who was living where was a near-impossible task. Considering the challenges, the police did the best they could, and it appears they did quite a bit more than some police forces today.

For those who love visiting dark, macabre sites, I have bad news—the creepy wych elm that served as Bella’s grave is long gone. The trunk was so narrow, the tree had to be chopped down in order to get the skeleton out. However, have no fear, it’s possible that Bella’s ghost is still roaming the woods and visiting the pub opposite Hagley Wood.

Apparently, the spirit haunting the pub isn’t malevolent, just a bit of a nuisance, opening doors and moving things around as ghosts apparently love to do. So, perhaps Bella is patiently waiting, in a pub throwing back some ale or having a cup of tea in true English fashion, for the final clue to be revealed and the mystery that was her life, and death, to finally be solved.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the significance of the Wychbury obelisk?

The Wychbury obelisk was built in 1758 by Lord Lyttelton and is located on Wychbury hill. It has become renowned for its graffiti, which asks about a certain wych elm tree.

When and where was the body of Bella found?

The body of Bella was found on April 18, 1943, in Hagley Wood, Worcestershire, England, by four teenage boys.

What were the initial theories about why the boys were in Hagley Wood?

Some storytellers claimed the boys were looking for birds’ nests and eggs, while others suggested they were hunting for rabbits or fowl to stretch their families’ limited war-time rations.

What did the forensic scientist determine about the skeleton found in the wych elm?

The forensic scientist, Professor James Webster, determined that the skeleton was that of a woman around 35 years old, who had probably given birth to at least one child, was about 5 feet tall, had light brown hair, and had irregular teeth.

What was the significance of the graffiti found in Birmingham and its surrounding areas?

The graffiti, which first appeared in 1943, asked ‘Who put Bella in the wych elm?’ and was believed to be connected to the murder of the woman found in Hagley Wood. The graffiti continued to appear sporadically over the years, with the most recent sighting in 2016.

What were some of the theories about Bella’s identity and the circumstances of her death?

Theories included espionage, witchcraft, and more realistic scenarios such as Bella being a sex worker, a transient, or a victim of a lover’s quarrel. Some theories suggested she was a spy, while others linked her to occult practices.

What was the outcome of the police investigation into Bella’s murder?

The police investigated various leads, including reports of a woman screaming in the woods and the discovery of a handbag, but none of these leads provided conclusive evidence. The case eventually went cold due to the challenges posed by World War II and the lack of modern forensic technology.

What happened to the skeleton of Bella?

The skeleton was donated to Birmingham University for further tests and subsequently disappeared. The West Midlands police also confirmed that they do not have the body, and the pathology reports have been lost.

What was the significance of the facial reconstruction of Bella created in 2018?

The facial reconstruction, created by British anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, aimed to help identify Bella by providing a visual representation of what she might have looked like. The hope was that someone might recognize her from old family photos.

What is the current status of the wych elm tree where Bella’s body was found?

The wych elm tree was chopped down to retrieve the skeleton, so it no longer exists. However, some believe that Bella’s ghost may still haunt the woods and a nearby pub.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?`
• Hero image source by User:Hassocks5489 / openverse, cc0.