Who put Bella in the witch elm?
The Wych Elm tree in the Hagley woods,
inside of which the woman’s body was discovered in 1943
Source:Birmingham Mail
Who put Bella in the witch elm?
It’s been 75 years and this mystery still remains
unsolved and for our very own crime junkies out there we know how much you guys
love an unsolved mystery so we can spend hours trying to solve it and come with
our own endings. So here is one for you guys.
On a warm summer evening in April 18th 1943
four young boys named Bob Hart, Tom Willetts, Fred Payne, Bob Farmer were out
poaching birds or hunting for rabbits or maybe looking for eggs in the estate
of Lord Cobham in Worcestershire, England and trespassing when young Bob farmer
came across a tree named the witch elm due to its peculiar appearance. Thinking
he hit the jackpot when something white hit the sunlight he reached for it and
to his surprise it turned out to be a skull and not that of an animal because
of the human hair and teeth. This would naturally freak him out and the four of
them decided that they would put the skull back and never speak of it again,
well obviously since they were trespassing.
At night in their homes young Tom Willetts was ridden
with guilt and confessed to his parents and then the police were notified.
The
crime scene:
At the scene of crime not only did the police find a
skull but nearly the entire skeleton stuffed in the hollow of the tree trunk.
There was also a gold wedding band and a shoe as well as few clothes. The weird
part is that there was a piece of taffeta cloth stuffed in the mouth of the
skull and a hand was missing. A little distance away from the tree the hand was
found scattered on the ground like the bones were crushed. While this could be
done by the killer it could also have been done by the animals and a that’s a mystery
we don’t solve but some interesting theories are revolved around this
particular finding but we’ll get to that as well as the other theories a bit
later
 |
| The skull of "Witch Elm Bella" as retrieved 18 April 1943 Source:The History Press |
On forensic examination professor James Webster concludes
that the remains found were nearly 18 months old since the time of the death ,
the victim was a female who was 35 years of age and had mousy brown hair and
irregular teeth pattern.
The medical examiner also states that the victim was 5
feet tall and that the likely cause of her death was the piece of taffeta
stuffed in her mouth causing her to suffocate. Measuring the trunk of the tree
where she was found, the examiner believes that she was placed in it while she
was warm and before rigor mortis had set in. The alternative is much more
horrible to believe as it would mean that she was placed in there alive.
According to him “It was an excellent place for the
concealment of a murder and I think it indicates local knowledge.”- Medical
Examiner Prof. James Webster.
The investigation:
The police continued searching for the identification of
the victim and after going through 3000 missing person reports they came up
with nothing.
As they continued the investigation the forensic reports
also said that she had irregular teeth and that she had work done on her teeth
within a year before her death which would be easy to detect for an expert.
Very surprisingly this too leads to nowhere as they didn’t find her dental
records anywhere in the country. It seems really odd doesn’t it that she didn’t
exist anywhere like she appeared out of thin air and mind you that the police
didn’t even know her name.
As they continued the investigation and came up with no
leads the case was sort of stalling.
In 1944 though a new lead appeared which turned out to be a mysterious graffiti message which appeared on an abandoned building in upper Midland stating that “who put LueBella in the witch elm” and similar messages started appearing later in the same area which changed to “who put Bella in the witch elm” and the graffiti was thought to be done by the same hand. The police searched for the person who did this as well as the Bella or Luebella and still came up empty. This continued for a while and the graffiti kept popping up even in the 1970s near the area where she was found. The artist was never caught but they gave a name to the victim “Bella”.
 |
| Graffiti on Wychbury Obelisk,Hagley ,Source:The History Press |
A long list of leads leading up to nothing forced them to try out new methods like facial reconstruction with the help of photos from the crime scene.
Theories:
There’s a crazy theory out there when a television show
about Nazi murder mysteries showed the pictures of the facial reconstruction of
Bella which led people to believe that she was a spy and spun out crazy stories
about her.
A person by the name of Steven punt did some serious investigation
in this case and came up with some new leads and he proposed some theories
about who Bella might be. The first being that Bella was a prostitute because
of the fact that a woman reported to the police about another missing woman who
was a prostitute like her going by the name of Bella and that she disappeared
near Hagley street.
The second theory being that a woman named Una Mossop in
1953 had given a statement to the police saying that her ex husband Jack Mossop
had confessed to family members that he had put the woman named Bella in the
witch elm. He said that one night he met his friend who was a Dutchman named
Van Ralt in a pub nearby and there they
met this Dutchwoman named ‘Bella’ and they had quite a bit to drink. Jack said
that he and his friend wanted her to “know the error in her ways” and therefore
took her to the witch elm and stuffed her in the trunk thinking she would learn
her lesson in the morning. If this turned out to be true that would mean that
she suffocated to death and she was placed in the tree when she was still
alive. Jack was believed to have been admitted in a hospital due to mental
illness and had died before the body was found. This can’t be confirmed as the
wife Una Massop didn’t come forward with this information for a very long time.
Another theory comes from the declassified M15 files and
it says that there was a man named Josef Jakobs who was a German spy entering
UK during the world war and he seemed to have entered via a parachute and in
the process of landing had hurt himself and was caught by the British
officials. With him was a picture of his lover known by the name ClaraBella who was a cabaret
singer. The spy Josef was the last one who was put to death in the tower of
London. This theory however proved false as a few years later his lover was
found dead.
Now comes the weird
theory that she was murdered to cover up something. A journalist by the name
Wilfred Byford Jones came across a letter which was a good lead when the
interest in Bella’s case had been waning. The letter signed by ‘Anna’ and
according to “Anna”, “Bella” was a member of a spy ring seeking information
about the location of local mutinous factories that could then be targeted by
the Luftwatte. Weirdly enough there’s evidence which supports this theory.
Many years passed and there were no new leads in the case and in February 2018 a woman named Caroline Wilkinson a professor of craniofacial identification tried reconstructing the face of Bella for a display after she was tasked with rebuilding Richard III’s face after the royal remains were found under a Leicester car park and she recreated the face of Bella with the help of photographs from the crime scene. You ask why the skeleton wasn’t used and there’s a very good explanation for that which is that the Worcestershire police lost the crucial piece of evidence. Well we are all wondering how the police end up losing a skull.
This is how much we believe to know about the case. For
more updates yet to come stay tuned.
We’re sorry this week’s blog was delayed due to exams but here it is a mystery yet to be solved.
Sources:
Let us know what you guys think about this case. Until next time
Stay snoopy, stay spooky…….
From the offbeat….
Comments
Post a Comment