Casefile True Crime - Case 04: Who Put Bella In The ‘Witch’ Elm

Episode Date: January 30, 2016

On the 18th of April 1943, four boys discovered a skeleton buried in the hollow of a wych-elm tree in Hagley Woods, England. Police immediately got to work on identifying the remains and trying to determine the cause of death, however, the investigation hit a wall… For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-04-who-put-bella-in-the-witch-elm

On the 18th of April 1943, four young boys discovered a skeleton buried in the hollow of a witch arm tree in Hagley Woods, in the Worcestershire County of England. Police immediately got to work on identifying the remains and trying to determine the cause of death. However, the investigation hit a wall pretty early on. There were no witnesses, no physical evidence, no suspects, no real leads at all. They couldn't even identify the remains. But about eight months later, the messages started to appear around town.

Scrawled in white chalk across walls and abandoned buildings. Who put Bella in the witch arm? Hagley Woods is part of Hagley Hall Estate, which is privately owned by Lord Cobham. It is located in the Worcestershire County in England, part of the West Midlands region. Hagley Hall Estate is about 350 acres in size, and as the name suggests, Hagley Woods are a secluded, quiet, wooded area. The village of Hagley lies at the foot of the Clint Hills and is bordered by Stourbridge and the Black Country. The nearest major city is Birmingham, which is about 27 kilometers away,

or 17 miles. We start this story by going back to April 18, 1943. World War II is still raging, and the nearby city of Birmingham is still suffering heavy bombing by the German Air Force, known as the Luftwaffe. The bombing raids came to be known as the Birmingham Blitz. Birmingham was an important industrial and manufacturing area for the war. Lots of weapons ammunition and supplies came from Birmingham. This made it a prime target for the Nazis.

During the time of the Birmingham Blitz, there were over 365 air raid alerts put out, with 77 actual air raid bombings going ahead. Thousands of people were killed, over 10,000 houses were destroyed, and hundreds of factories. Apart from there being wartime restrictions, such as rations, food and resource shortages, and despite the fact there were planes flying overhead, they weren't getting bombed. So, four school friends from Stourbridge, Fred Payne, Bob Farmer, Thomas Willits, and Robert Hart, were pretty much free to do what young boys do. Go outside, explore, play, and see what mischief they could find.

On the 18th of April 1943, the four friends ventured into the Hagley Hall estate to explore the Hagley Woods. They weren't supposed to be there. It is a private property, so they were technically trespassing. But boys will be boys. What the boys were doing will depend on what account of the case you read, but whether they were hunting rabbits, trying to pick up all those hunting birds, and reading birds' nests, or some combination of all of those things, it isn't really important. What is important is that they happen to stumble across an old hollow witchy-on tree, just begging to be climbed.

Bob takes the honours and climbs up the tree. He peeks down into the tree hollow and is in luck, finds what he thinks is some kind of animal. He reaches down to grab it, but he can't quite reach. Bob sings out to his mates for some help, and they end up passing him a long stick. With the help of the stick, Bob is able to reach in and pick up his find. Bob got the shock of his life when he found out his discovery wasn't an animal at all. He was staring back at a human skull. The boys gathered around in shock at the discovery, but also they were pretty curious. The skull still had some rotting flesh on the forehead, and there was still some hair attached.

They then started to chat amongst themselves about what they should do with the discovery. The idea to tell their parents who was quickly shot down, they were trespassing. They didn't want to get in trouble. So they make it packed. They put the skull back and forget about it. They'll never speak of it again. Well that secret pack didn't even last the day. Thomas Willis was very uneasy and was struggling to come to terms with the discovery. They didn't take long for his parents to work out something was up, and Thomas broke down in tears and spilled the beans to his father, who in turn quickly called the police. Sergeant Charles Lamborn of the Worcestershire County Police arrived soon after.

Together with the help of Thomas and the other boys, they managed to track down the tree in Hangley Woods. Other police arrived soon after, but it was getting dark. No portable lighting in those days. So they made a decision to guard the tree overnight until the next morning when detectives and forensic experts would arrive. The police didn't guard the tree themselves. They only said the help of local special constables and trusted volunteers. Keep in mind the police force was severely weakened due to the war. A lot of officers volunteered to go and fight. There were a number of officers who were reservists and they were called up to active duty. And there were the retired military men within the police ranks who were called

back to duty. To combat a loss of numbers, the police force was propped up with special constables and bought new recruiting. So maybe the standards weren't quite as high as what they would have been during non-war time. I'm not suggesting the police who handled this case were incompetent or inexperienced. There were still experienced police who remained and they very could well have been from the experienced side. But it just gives you some idea of what was happening with policing at the time. That next morning, the 19th of April 1943, Detective Superintendent Sidney Knight arrives and takes charge of the investigation. He is assisted by Deputy Inspector Thomas Williams and Professor James Webster who is from the Forensic Science Laboratory at Birmingham University.

Along with the skull, they quickly find that there is in fact an entire skeleton stuffed inside the hollow of the tree. But they're unable to conduct a proper examination of the remains as the gap in the tree is too small. So they find an axe and cut the tree to allow better examination. They ended up having to cut the whole tree down in order to get the remains here. At the scene, they find a green bottle, but it's later determined that it was unrelated to the case. They also find an identity card belonging to a woman. At first the police thought they had just identified the remains, but they later found the woman alive and well, although somewhat shocked as to how her identity card got to Haigley Woods, a place she has never

been before. Apart from those items, police also had the clothing that was worn by whoever's remains were found inside the tree. The clothing included a mustard-coloured cloth skirt, a peach silk underskirt, a dark blue and yellow striped cardigan with a light blue belt, and a pair of blue crepes sold shoes. The clothing was rotting away and was in poor condition, but there was enough to tell what was there. Along with the clothing, they also found a cheap wedding ring. The skeleton was found to be almost complete, but there was one obvious part missing, the right hand. A source of the surrounding area found the hand nearby, only about 10 metres away from the tree. Again, depending on what account of the story you want to go with, some say the hand was buried,

but other accounts say it wasn't. A post-mortem was conducted soon after and Professor Webster finds that the remains belonged to a woman aged between 35 and 40 years old. She was only short, about five feet tall. She had mid-brown coloured hair. There was someone she may have had a baby, although it was inconclusive. What was significant is that she had noticeably regularities in the front teeth of a lower jaw. She was also missing a tooth from the lower right side of a jaw and it was thought that this tooth had been extracted within one year of her death. It was determined the wedding ring had been worn for about four years prior to death, and the actual time of death itself was estimated to be 18 months to two years prior to her being

found, which would put it between April and October 1941. The remains showed no indications of disease and the bones themselves showed no physical signs of violence. There were no breaks, no fractures, but the fact she was stuffed into a tree hollow and a right hand had been cut off was enough to suggest she had met a violent end, but there was something else. A piece of taffeta was found stuffed into the mouth of the skull. Taffeta is a piece of silk or synthetic fabric. This would later lead the coroner to conclude that the woman had been murdered by way of asphyxiation. He also concluded the body would have been put inside the tree while it was still warm, either while still alive or just after death, as the gap would have been too narrow

to get the body in if it was affected by rigor mortis. There are two alternate theories as to how the piece of taffeta came to be stuffed inside the mouth. The first suggests that when police were conducting their examination, the skull fell out of the tree along with a piece of taffeta. The police assumed the taffeta was stuffed inside the mouth, but they didn't actually see if it was. Regardless, they put it back in. The second theory suggests that the boys who made the initial discovery actually put the piece of taffeta inside the mouth, and apparently they later admitted this in interviews. However, nothing has been officially released and the police file is still closed, so there's no way of telling for sure. The case is surrounded with

hearsay, folklore, and trunnies whispers that have been passed on over the years, so various parts of the case each have several different versions. Given the police file has remained closed, it's difficult to determine what information is fact and what information has been twisted over the years. But regardless, if the taffeta was or wasn't stuffed inside the mouth, I think it's pretty clear the unknown woman met a violent, unnatural death. The police immediately got to work on searching through missing person reports. They searched through over 3,000 across the entire country. It was clear the woman wasn't from the local area as somebody would have missed her by now. Despite an exhaustive search through the records,

they found no match. The police were certain they would be able to identify the woman through dental records, as she had tooth irregularities and the extracted tooth. They conducted checks with every dentist in England, but again they got no match. Police got to work on the items found at the scene. The grain bottle was a dead end, but they did track the woman's shoes to a North Hampton manufacturer. The manufacturer reported 6,000 pairs of the shoes were made, most being sold at retail outlets, but some sold at markets. The shoes were a dead end, there was no way they were going to be able to trace them to an owner. It was also discovered that all of the labels had been cut out from the unknown woman's clothing. But as the clothing was rotten,

it was difficult to tell if they were deliberately cut out to avoid identification, or if the clothing had been bought secondhand and so the labels were cut out as someone had written their name on it. So not only did the police have no witnesses, no suspects and no evidence, they also had no idea who the unknown woman was. So basically they had nothing. They had hit a brick wall in a dead end street. As the months went on, people started to lose interest in the unknown woman case. The case had gone cold and World War II was still in full swing. But about eight months after the unknown woman was found, the case would take a twist. In December of 1943, the first of many messages appeared. This first message was

scrolled across an abandoned building on Upper Dean Street in Birmingham. The message was written with chalk and capital letters about three inches in height, and it read, Who put Lubella down the witchel? Suddenly the police and the public were very interested again. Who wrote this message? Was it local teenagers playing a troll trick? Was it the killer taunting the police? Was it the killer throwing the police a false lead by writing the incorrect name? Was it somebody who knew something they shouldn't too scared to come forward instead deciding to leave a clue? It's anyone's guess who wrote the message, but it wasn't the only one written. It was the first of many. Soon after another message appeared, Hagley Wood Beller,

also written in chalk in the same writing as the first message. And not long after that, another message. Who put Beller in the witchel? Again in the same writing. The messages were appearing all around the local area. Birmingham, Old Country, Orsesta, Hagley. The writings have continued, albeit sporadically, to this day. Although it's since changed from chalk to paint, and it's believed the later messages are definitely copycats or locals trying to keep the tradition alive. But those first messages were a lead for police. Neither the police or anyone from the media or the public had ever referred to the unknown woman as Lou Beller or Beller. Police got back to work on the missing person reports trying to find a

match for Lou Beller, Beller or any name containing variants of Beller such as Isabella. But again, they came up short. Police appealed for the writer of the messages to come forward, but I don't think anyone was surprised when they didn't. Police were never able to identify who was responsible for writing the messages. They certainly added a great deal of mystery to the case, but what they also did was give the unknown woman a name. She would now be known as Beller. Police went back through their previous incident reports from around the time that was thought that Beller was killed. And they found something interesting. In July 1941, they responded to a report of a woman heard screaming in Haigley Woods. Police conducted a patrol, but they were

unable to locate anything or anyone of interest. July 1941 fits with Beller's estimated time of death, so these reports could very well be linked. They immediately re-interviewed the person who made the report, but they learnt nothing new. All the witness could offer was that they heard screams, and they saw nothing. Were these the screams of Beller? There were all sorts of theories, speculation and tip-offs that had come in. There was Warwick Plaint, the son of a local publican who reported a woman, gave her name as Beller, turned up to his parents' pub to play piano. In return, Warwick's mother gave her a pair of blue crepes old shoes. There was the theory that Beller was fleeing nearby Birmingham to escape with bombing and had crossed paths with a rapist

or serial killer on her journey. There was the local clergy members who came up with the theory that Beller was a gypsy who was killed due to some sort of punishment by her fellow gypsies, even though the gypsies weren't named to commit murders as punishment, and Beller's clothing did not match what a gypsy would wear. Then there was the spy theory, or because there are several different versions going around, spy theories. The first being that Beller was a German spy who parachuted into the country and somehow managed to land in the tree hollow. Some holes were that theory, but the clothing she was wearing doesn't lead one to think she had just parachuted, and the other obvious hole. Where was the parachute? Another spy theory was raised in 1968

when writer Donald McCormick claimed in his book Murder by Witchcraft that Beller was a Nazi spy. Her curd name, Clara. Her real name being Clara Beller. He claims to have been given access to German military intelligence papers detailing how Clara Beller was parachuted into the West Midlands area in 1941, but she never made radio contact and she was never heard from again. An ex-Nazi spy, Franz Rafgab, who was operating in the West Midlands area at the time, verified that he was aware of a fellow Nazi spy by the name of Clara Beller, drunkards, and she just so happened to have two to three realities. No aspects of Donald's story could be verified, and his book and research and the evidence that he used the basadon has been

described as somewhat loose and uneven. In 2013, the UK independent newspaper ran a story. They mentioned a declassified file about a Czech national spy named Joseph Jacobs. He was caught up to parachuting into England in 1941. When caught, it was discovered he had a photo of a woman. He gave her name as Clara Beller Lee. The back of the photo was inscribed, My dear, love you forever, your Clara, dated July 1940. It turns out Clara was a cabaret singer and German movie actress born in Stuttgart, 29th June, 1906. Her real name was Clara Sophie Beller Lee. In October 1930, she toured through England for two years, performing at various music halls

throughout the country. She left England to return to Germany in June 1932. Clara spoke fluent English with the proper accent. She was referred to by English audiences as Clara Beller. Upon returning to Germany, she became well connected within the Nazi Party when it rose to power, and she later met Jacobs in Hamburg where they became romantically connected. There were claims to parachute her into England as well, however Jacobs stated that these would have been aborted when he failed to make radio contact due to his capture. Not long after his interview, Jacobs was executed. It is thought that Clara may have parachuted in any way, and Clara was Beller. But there were problems. Clara was tall.

Beller was not. And would the Germans really send in a spy who was a known cabaret performer and actress who had previously toured through England? That didn't really make a lot of sense. What the independent report and other people who supported this theory were relying on is that it was said to have been a trace of Clara Beller Lee backing Germany from 1941 onwards. Her singing and acting career coming to a sudden unannounced end. This combined with Jacobs' story was enough to convince people Clara was Beller from the witch home. However, the information isn't quite correct. Records show Clara did continue her career through 1941, all the way through until the 16th of December 1942, where she was killed in Berlin. Proof that there is no way Clara

could have been Beller inside the witch home. So the first few spy theories aren't very credible, yet they're still often mentioned whenever the case is brought up. But there is one that has slightly more credit. In 1953, the Wolverhamdham Express and Star newspaper ran a series of articles on the Beller case to commemorate the 10-year anniversary. The articles were written under a pen name Q-Star. A woman who identified herself only as Anna wrote a letter into the newspaper in response to the articles. The letter read, Finish your articles regarding the witch home crime by Q-Star. They are interesting to your readers, but you will never solve their mystery. One person who could give the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts.

Much as I hate having to use a non-deplume, which is a pen name, I think you would appreciate it if you knew me. The only clues I can give you are that the person responsible for the crime died insane in 1942, and the victim was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about 1941. I have no wish to recall anymore. Signed Anna from Cleverley. Anna from Cleverley was later identified as Una Mossup from Warrichier. She was identified by police and interviewed. Una's story is as follows. She was married to a man named Jack Mossup, and he was employed in a munitions factory in Birmingham during the war. He wasn't in the military and he actually had that job to avoid being called up. It was a low paying menial job,

but suddenly in 1940 Jack started to flash some serious cash around. He didn't try and hire to do that, he was buying expensive clothes to show off and they were well above his pay grade. He also managed to purchase himself an Air Force officer's uniform that he liked to wear around to pretend he was in the military, even though he wasn't. It was around this time that Jack had become friends with a Dutchman by the name of Van Roelt. His real identity was never discovered, but Una starts to suspect that Van Roelt is working for the Nazis, and Jack is giving away secrets from them in the munitions factory in exchange for cash, which would explain his sudden new found wealth. Not long after Jack and Una separated. Jack was gone for a short period of

time before returning to Una in 1941. He was in pretty bad shape mentally when he returned. He was making no sense, rambling about eyes in a tree staring back at him and her hand reaching out from the tree trying to grab him. Una manages to eventually calm him down and then Jack tells her the following story. One night, not long before, he was drinking with his buddy Van Roelt and a Dutch woman. They were drinking at the Littleton Arms Pub in Klint, which isn't too far from Haley Woods. Van Roelt and his Dutch woman friends started to get into an argument and so Jack agreed to take him for a drive to calm down. The drive didn't have the desired effect, and Van Roelt and the Dutch woman continued to argue. The unknown Dutch woman was threatening

to expose the operation that Van Roelt and Jack were doing in selling secrets to the Nazis. Some point during the argument, Van Roelt killed the Dutch woman. Jack pulled over on the side of the road near Haley Woods and they dragged the body out and put it into the tree. Well, that's one version of the story anyway. The other version suggests they weren't arguing about that at all, and that while they were in the car, the Dutch woman just passed out. Van Roelt and Jack thought it would be funny to teach her a lesson, so they dragged her out of the car, put her inside the witch-hound tree, where they were going to leave her overnight. But when they returned the next morning, they realised that she was dead.

Regardless of what version it actually was, it was the same outcome. Van Roelt and Jack were responsible for Bella's death. Shortly after disclosing the story, Jack had a complete breakdown and he was admitted into a mental health ward where he died two and after, aged only 29. He died in 1942, the year before Bella was even discovered, so he was never able to be interviewed. There is a piece of information that gives some weight to this theory. A witness by the name of Varyn Oliver came forward to report that her father was in the home guard at the time of Bella's death and he and a colleague regularly patrolled the Haley Woods area. One evening around 1941, they saw something suspicious. They saw a car pulled over on the side of the road near Haley Woods.

It got their attention as it was a remote area and fuel was in seriously short supply, heavily rationed at the time. So people were in the habit of going for random drives for no reason. They approached the vehicle and saw who they thought was an Air Force officer in the driver's seat. There was a female lying in the back seat who they thought was naked, covered with a coat. Varyn's father assumed it was some sort of meeting between two lovers and he didn't think too much more of it. But thinking back now, it's quite possible that that Air Force officer was actually Jack Mossott, remembering that he liked to dress up in uniform and pretend he was in the military. Unfortunately, Ira and his father did not record details of the vehicle or the driver,

so it's impossible to know now. It's easy to see why the spy theory is such a popular one with this case as it's so close to Birmingham, an important industrial city for the war effort with weapons and ammunition and supplies. And because it was so important, it was heavily defended with any aircraft guns. So there was a lot of useful information there to be gathered, which makes it a prime target for spas. But whether or not bellow was a spy or in some way connected with a spy, we may never know. But there is another theory going around and it has nothing to do with spas. This theory involves the dark arts and witchcraft. The case got the attention of Professor Margaret Murray. She was an anthropologist, archaeologist and Egyptologist

who had an interest in the occult and witchcraft. There were even rumors circulating that she may be a dabbler in the dark arts herself. She wrote a couple of books on witchcraft which were widely slammed by her fellow academics. The case got her attention for three reasons. The first being that Bella was found inside a tree. When somebody is thought to be a witch, legend has it that by burying their body inside a tree, it's a way to trap the spirit so it could not roam and cause further harm. The second reason she was interested in the case was because Bella's right hand had been cut off. Severing a hand is a sign of black magic and its ritual name is the hand of glory. The problem with the hand of glory ritual is though, its ritual involved in cutting the

hand off from a murderer who has just been hanged. And the hand had to be cut off while they were still hanging from the gallows. The hand was then preserved and turned into a candle. Apparently it had the power to protect the inner from evil spirits, unlock doors and even find buried treasure. It was an interesting theory but there was no indication that Bella had been hanged door that she was a murderer and her hand was found nearby so it wasn't taken to be used in black magic ceremonies. The other thing that got Professor Murray's attention was the name Bella and its closer resemblance to the name Bella Donna which is significant in the world of witchcraft. Bella Donna is a plant used by witches, sorcerers and shamans to induce trans-like states. It's

actually lethal in high doses. So naturally when the name Bella started to appear in the writings around town, Professor Murray thought that this could be linked to Bella Donna. Not only that, there was a pub nearby named Egypt's tent and it had long been rumoured as being haunted. And of course conveniently there was also rumours of witches' covens operating in the Hadley Woods areas over the years but it was nothing more than rumour and innuendo. Professor Murray's theories are a bit of a stretch and there's a serious lack of any hard evidence. In 1945 there was another murder that got her attention and she urged police to treat both cases as related. She was convinced satanic forces were at work. On the 14th of February

1945 74-year-old Charles Walton of the Lullaby-Quinton area was found dead. He had been beaten, had his throat slashed with a hook and then pinned to the ground with a pitchfork. Some reports suggest he had a cross carved into his chest but this is inconclusive. There were rumours flowing around that Charles was somehow killed by a witch's ritual but these are largely unsubstantiated. It's much more likely Charles was killed by a known person in the area Alfred Potter and it had nothing to do at all with the Bella case. And if you're one who likes to sit around and ponder different theories and try and work out exactly what happened while you're in luck because there's yet another theory.

A report made by a police officer in 1944 states that he was speaking to a local prostitute in Birmingham. The prostitute mentioned that there was a co-worker by the name of Bella who used to take clients to the Hadley Woods area and she hadn't been seen for about three years. It seemed to be more believable than the witchcraft theory but again there were problems. Why come forward with this information now? Why wasn't Bella reported missing? If this is a true story wouldn't you have mentioned something when the writing started up here on the walls around town? It seemed to be a pretty convenient story and it was never confirmed if there ever was a prostitute by the name of Bella working in the area.

And there would be all sorts of reasons and benefits and favours to be gained as to why someone would want to feed false information to police. In 2014 a group of engineers got together and tried to make sense of all these different theories and information surrounding the case. Norman Fenton and Martin Neal of the Risk and Information Management Research Group from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at the Queen Mary University of London studied the case and came up with a statistical analysis of all the name facts and information. It's an interesting study but even they will be the first to admit that the results could be pretty rough and they would vary widely depending on what assumptions you rely on when

in putting all the data into the case. So for example these results are highly dependent on the assumption that police really did exhaust all avenues of inquiry in relation to the missing person record searches. But I mean how do we really know that for sure? So if you change that assumption to police didn't exhaust all avenues of inquiry then the results change dramatically. So whilst interesting these results probably prove nothing it's just another thing to ponder. But what they came up with was the following. There was a 99% chance the cause of death was criminal. A 97% chance Bella was not British. A 93% chance Bella was still alive when put into the tree. A 33% chance that Jack Mossott was involved in her death. A 25% chance Bella was a spy. And a 16%

chance that she was a prostitute. So I guess you can make her that what you will. So who was Bella and where did she come from? Who killed her and how did they kill her? Who wrote the messages around Tian? So many questions and so much mystery yet there's another twist to this story. Bella is missing. No one knows where she is. You see she wasn't buried instead her remains were taken by Professor Webster for further examination. Once he completed his examination he handed the bones over to a colleague in Birmingham University Medical School for further tests and research. And somehow over the years Bella disappeared from there without a trace. Not only that all the lab records and forensic files that

were with her remains disappeared too. Just vanished. Dropped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately it isn't unusual for important pieces of evidence to get missing over the years in cold cases as we've already heard in previous episodes of this podcast. But this was significantly different. They somehow managed to lose an entire skeleton. Somebody's whole remains. Was Bella deliberately taken? Maybe further evidence of some sort of spy involvement or some sort of conspiracy? Or was she deliberately lost as part of an elaborate cover-up involving a well-connected killer? Or was she just accidentally lost or maybe thrown away? We will probably never know and of course this eliminates the hope of ever being able to use

DNA testing in this case. In the meantime I guess all we can do is keep asking the question Who put Bella in a witch arm?