Here, we are going to explain the strange unsolved murder mystery of a woman, popularly known as Bella, who was found inside a wych elm tree.
Have you ever come across something that you couldn’t explain? Have you ever heard stories about people disappearing in the woods, never to be found?
History is full of examples of nameless victims and of killers who have never been caught. One such story from the West Midlands of England has baffled people for decades.
In 1943 the body of a woman was found inside the trunk of an old wych elm tree. Some people believe that she was the victim of an occult murder, others believe that it was an accidental death and some even think there were political motives involved.
Throughout the years, information has emerged that offers small clues about her possible identity, but the question still remains: Who put Bella in the wych elm?
The Discovery
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The mystery starts on April 18th, 1943 in the West Midlands of England. Four boys: Robert Hart, Tommy Willetts, Bob Farmer, and Fred Payne were exploring Hagley Woods and looking for eggs inside of birds’ nests when they stumbled across an old elm tree.
One of the boys climbed it and noticed that the trunk was hollow. Inside, he could vaguely make out what appeared to be an animal skull. The boys pulled out the skull and were shocked to learn that it belonged to a human. It still had hair attached to it, but no flesh.
Since Hagley Woods is private property, the boys were afraid that there would be repercussions for being there illegally, so Bob Farmer, who was the oldest of the boys, stuffed the skull back in the tree and the boys fled.
However, Tommy Willetts was the youngest of the group and too traumatized to keep the secret. He confessed to his parents about the discovery and the police returned to the tree to investigate.
The police discovered that a human skeleton had been lodged into the elm. It was so deeply embedded into the trunk that the tree had to be cut down to extract the bones.
They also found a single shoe, rotted pieces of clothing, and a gold wedding ring. Curiously, the skeleton wasn’t complete. It was missing its hand and when the police combed the area, they found it buried near the tree.
Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
The remains were examined by Professor James Webster, a forensic scientist at the University of Birmingham, and he concluded that the bones belonged to a woman between 30 and 45 years old who was five feet tall and had given birth to one child.
She had been dead for 18 months, placing the time of her death before October 1941. He deduced that she had to have been placed inside the tree soon after she was killed because she would have never fit if rigor mortis had set in.
The police tried to identify the woman but had no luck, and nobody came forward with any information. Her murder had happened during World War II and the records of missing people were too vast to comb through.
In December 1943, a few months after the body had been found, graffiti appeared on walls all around the West Midlands. It read, “Who put Bella in the wych elm?”
Every piece of graffiti had been written by the same hand. Authorities searched the records for anyone named Bella or Lubella but found nothing. It wasn’t long before the case went cold.
Hand of Glory
It wasn’t long before rumors about Bella’s death started. Archeologist Margaret Murray put forth the theory that Bella had been executed by witches during an occult ceremony.
They had cut off her hand to be used as a talisman called a “Hand of Glory”, a candle made out of a dismembered hand that could lead people to bury treasure or help burglars when stealing from someone’s home.
The theory doesn’t hold up, as the hand had to come from the body of a felon who had been hanged for the spell to work. But still, stories of witchcraft lingered around the case.
A drunk mishap
In 1953 a woman named Una Mossop wrote a letter to the newspaper claiming that her cousin Jack and his friend van Ralt had put Bella in the tree.
Her cousin said that they had been out drinking with a Dutch woman at a pub called the Lyttelton Arms. She had had too much to drink and passed out while they were driving away from the pub.
They placed her in the hollow elm tree in the hopes that she would wake up in the morning and be so frightened that she’d never think to get blackout drunk again. They didn’t think that she would die.
As improbable as the story sounds, Jack Mossop was confined to a mental hospital shortly after this incident. He was haunted by nightmares of a woman in a tree leering at him. He died in the asylum before the body in the elm was found.
The fact that Una didn’t come forward until 10 years after Jack’s death makes her story suspicious and many people question the validity of her claims. Some people came forward and claimed that Bella was a spy.
A Spy
In 1941, a Gestapo agent named Josef Jakobs was captured in Cambridgeshire. He carried a photo with him of a woman he claimed was a cabaret singer named Clara.
She had been recruited by the Nazis because she could speak English, and she was to parachute into the West Midlands to act as a spy.
He said he didn’t know if she had made the journey since he was captured before he could make contact with her. Josef Jakobs was held in the Tower of London and eventually executed by firing squad.
While many people believe the woman in the tree may be Clara, there are holes in this theory as well, the most glaring of which is that the woman in the photo is much taller than 5 feet.
There was also no parachute found or any other clue that the woman had come from Germany. If she had been discovered, she would have likely been imprisoned or executed, not stuffed in a tree.
Bella’s remains mysteriously disappeared from Birmingham University Medical School in the late 40s, and they remain lost to this day.
Near Hagley Woods, people still speak of the mystery, and everyone has their own theory as to what happened. But no one will ever know who Bella was, and why she was left to rot in the wych elm.