The Creepy Quandary of Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm

**"The Creepy Quandary of Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm"** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto m mm/YouTube on April 3, 2020. It was the fourth episode of the sixth season of *BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime*, and the one hundredth and second episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

A skeleton is found in a tree in rural England during WWII- was she a victim of circumstance or something more nefarious?

## Background

On April 18th 1943, four teenage boys from Birmingham, England, were marching through Hagley Wood searching for food. World War II was raging across Europe, and due to rationing, Bob Farmer, Robert Hart, Fred Payne, and Thomas Willetts were on the lookout for bird nests that night have some free eggs. One of the boys split off to look in the stump of an old witch elm tree. When he peered through the tangled branches, a round, white object caught his eye. The young man had not discovered an egg, however, but a human skull. One of the boys used a stick to remove the skull from the tree. Before leaving the scene, the skull was replaced, and it's said the boys vowed never to speak of it again. By the next day, one of the boys squealed to his father, who in turn alerted police.

One of the boys, Thomas Willetts, accompanied police back to the stump, located just 35 yards from Hagley Wood Lane. Authorities found a tree approximately five to six feet tall with an opening that tapered down, getting as narrow as 17 inches in diameter at one point. Investigators gathered the skull and other bones from the tree, as well as some bones found in the surrounding area, believed to have been scattered by foxes and squirrels.

Forensic scientist Professor J.M. Webster was then able to partially reconstruct the skeleton of a woman between 25 and 40 years old, most likely closer to 35. The bones showed no signs of disease or violence, though a large piece of taffeta had been stuffed into the mouth, leading to a suspicion of asphyxiation as a possible cause of death. A probable description of the woman was released to the public, describing a woman just five feet tall with light brown hair, dressed in a striped blue and mustard colored cardigan and a mustard colored skirt. One blue shoe, size five and a half, was found outside of the tree. Inside the trunk was its matching partner, as well as a cheap, rolled gold wedding ring. It was believed the woman had been dead for at least 18 months. Suicide as a possible cause of death was ruled out due to the particular shape of the tree. Webster said, "I cannot imagine a person getting into the tree voluntarily. Even a small person like this could not have got in without doing herself a considerable amount of tearing."

Police rooted the records of missing women, but turned up nothing. After releasing the probable description of the woman, calls came in from around the area but none of the leads produced a match. An inquest jury found a verdict of, quote, murder by some person or persons unknown, end quote. On May fourth a report was published in the Birmingham Daily Gazette calling for dentists to come forward, who may recognize some distinctive features in the woman's teeth. In the lower jaw, her front teeth overlapped, and a tooth was missing from the right side, likely pulled by a dentist within a year of the woman's death. Still, not identity could be given to the remains.

In March of 1944, an empty building in Birmingham was graffitis in chalk. "Who put Bella down the Wych Elm, Hagley Wood?" It has been almost a year since the body was found, though this was the first time she was given a name. The words appeared too high up on the wall to be attributed to boys pulling a prank, and police were intrigued. After discovering this graffiti, another report came in to authorities about a house on Hayden Hill Road that had similarly been vandalized months prior with the words, "who put Luebella down the Wych Elm." Because the graffiti was all in the same handwriting and because the tags all spelled Wych correctly, police believed a lone countryman was responsible. Anyone who knew of a Bella who had gone missing were asked to alert police.

In August of 1944, the writings began to appear again. "Hagley Wood Luebella was opposite Rose and Crown, Hasbury" was found written both in nearby Halesowen and Wolverhampton. Again, the handwriting appeared to match the previous vandalism. Still, no one could turn up records of any Luebella or Bella that matched the body found. In 1953, nine years after the last graffiti of note appeared, police finally found their Wych Elm Banksy, though it turned out that authorities had been barking up the wrong tree. The county's detective superintendent remarked, "it was the work of a crank who we are satisfied knew nothing, and had nothing to do with the case. So it seems that Bella wasn't even Bella after all."

## Theories

* **The mystery woman's death occurred during one the war's air raids.** Upon hearing air raid sirens, the woman may have sought safety in the woods. Police suppose the woman may have been attacked and ganged, perhaps dying accidentally as a result and then stuffed into the elm. Her family would have assumed she'd died in the raids and not alerted any authorities.
	+ However, this theory fails to explain how the woman got in the tree, and who was responsible. One thing about the air raid could be, the actual sirens going off would then cover any screaming.
* **The woman may have been a human sacrifice.** Egyptologist Dr. Margaret Murray stated that there were, "still remnants of witchcraft in isolated parts of Great Britain."
	+ According to Murray, "the sacrifices are carried out by people who still believe in a religion practiced in Britain before Christianity, whom we call devil-worshipers. They still practice black magic. The belief is that if life is taken out of the ground through farming, it must be replaced by a blood sacrifice." Murray believed not just the woman found in the Wych Elm, but also another person later found murdered in the area, could be attributed to these devil-worshipers.
	+ According to author Donald McCormick, there had always been talk of Hagley Wood being the home of some covens of witches. He even pointed to an ancient tradition of trapping a witch's spirit inside a hollow tree, using it as a sort of prison to prevent her from causing any further trouble in the world. There were indications that the tree in which the body was found, before the body was placed inside, had occasionally been trimmed, which stunted its growth.
* **She was a foreigner, and possibly even a Nazi spy.** In November 1953, a Wolverhampton newspaper received a letter claiming the sender knew the identities of the woman in the tree and her murderer.
	+ The letter, signed simply Anna, explained, "you will never solve the mystery. The one person who could give the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. The affair is closed and involves no witches, black magic, or moonlight rites. The person responsible died insane in 1942, and the victim was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about 1941."
	+ The Anna who wrote the letter was eventually found and questioned by police. Reports say that this Anna's identity was one Una Mossop. Una claimed that her husband, a Royal Air Force pilot named Jack Mossop, got caught up in a branch of a spy ring that the woman in the tree was involved in. Una claimed the woman was a spy, looking for intel on where future air raids should strike in England.
	+ There are different accounts of Jack's possible involvement with the woman in the tree. One claims Jack and a Dutch man named Van Ralt who was also part of the spy ring were out drinking in a pub with the woman. She allegedly got too drunk, passed out, and the two men stuffed the poor woman into a tree as a joke. When she awoke, she was unable to free herself and ended up dying there.
	+ Another version of the story states that Van Ralt and the woman were in a car when they picked up Jack. A little while later, Van Ralt strangled the woman, presumably due to a disagreement within their spy ring, and then put her in the tree.
	+ After hearing of the Anna signed letter which claimed Bella was Dutch, author Donald McCormick traveled to Holland to see if he could find anything to substantiate the claim. There he found remarkable evidence that confirmed at least some of what Una had written. McCormick learned that within the Nazi espionage system, a man named Lehrer worked on recruiting accomplices who could work in Britain as spies. Lehrer allegedly had a Dutch girlfriend who lived in Birmingham in the 30s, giving her great knowledge of Britain, and allowing her to speak with no detectable Dutch accent. McCormick states that in March and April of 1941, records show five German spies were sent into England from Holland during Operation Sea Lion. One of these spies, a woman with the codename Clara, was reportedly dropped by plane over an area that happened to encompass Hagley Wood. Clara never made contact and was presumed MIA. Digging deeper, McCormick spoke with the former Nazi, Franz Rathgeb, who was living in Paraguay under an alias. Rathgeb gave McCormick a description of Clara that largely matched that of the woman found in the tree.
		- Declassified MI5 files revealed the existence of a German spy captured while parachuting into England in 1941, by the name of Josef Jakobs. Once apprehended, one of his possessions in particular sticks out. A photograph of a German singer-actress, Clara Bauerle. Jakobs claims Clara was both his girlfriend and a German spy. Jakobs claimed that Clara parachuted into the midlands, where Hagley Wood is located, in 1941, but was never heard from again.
		- While this story does seem to have a lot of different and corroborating angles, Bella in the Wych Elm is likely not Clara Bauerle. Clara stood 5'10, a good 10 inches taller than the skeleton found in the tree. Even more damning, there is a log of Clara dying in a Berlin hospital in 1942.