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 witch 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. Information has emerged
throughout the years that offers small clues about her possible identity, but the question
still remains, who put Bella in the wych elm?
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 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 are 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 in
order 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.
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.
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 buried treasure or help burglars
when stealing from someones' home. The theory doesn't hold up, as the hand had to come from
the body of a felon who had been hanged in order for the spell to work. But still, stories
of witchcraft lingered around the case.
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 told her 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 and 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 to 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.
There was also people who came forward and claimed that Bella was a spy. In 1941, a Gestapo
agent names 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 actually 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 it's possible that the woman in the tree is 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. In the area near Hagley Woods, people still
speak of the mystery, and everyone has their own theory as to what happened. But no one
will ever really know who Bella was, and why she was left to rot in the tree.
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