Going West: True Crime - Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm? // 487

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

In April of 1943, a group of teenagers walking through the woods near Birmingham, England made a chilling discovery: a human skull hidden inside the hollow trunk of a wych elm tree. As whispers of witchcraft, espionage, and murder circled the town, investigators uncovered shocking theories that only deepened the mystery… As the woman’s body continued to go unidentified, it sparked speculation and fear, especially after cryptic graffiti began appearing, starting with the haunting question, “Who put Bella down the wych elm?”

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host Daphne. I know this sounds so weird. It feels so weird to say that. Heath is very sick right now. He is resting. He's super congested. I think he probably has a cold. So you've just got me today, but it's going to be okay because today we have such a fascinating case. This feels like such a meat case. I think a lot of you guys are going to be really interested in it. And I'm sure a lot of you guys have actually already heard of it. This is one that I myself have heard about for so long, but never fully looked into until recently. So I'm so glad that we did because it's just such a spooky one. It actually takes place in England and we very rarely, as you guys know,

cover international cases on going west. We usually save those for our bonus series, real crime, but I was just so fascinated by the story. I really wanted to make an exception kind of like how we did with Jack the Ripper. So without further ado, let's just dive right into this one. All right guys, this is episode 487 of Going West. So let's get into it. I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy

I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy

I'm gonna be a good boy I'm gonna be a good boy In April of 1943, the United States was forced to close the borders of the United States. The United States was forced to close the borders of the United States. The United States was forced to close the borders of the United States. The United States was forced to close the borders of the United States. The United States was forced to close the borders of the United States. In April of 1943, a group of teenagers walking through the woods near Birmingham, England made a chilling discovery. Human remains hidden inside the hollow trunk of a witch elm tree. As whispers of witchcraft, espionage, and murder circled the town, investigators uncovered shocking theories that only deepened the mystery.

As the woman's body continued to go unidentified, it sparked speculation and fear, especially after cryptic graffiti began appearing around the area. Starting with the haunting question, who put Bella down the Witch Elm? On Sunday, April 18th, 1943, a group of four teenage boys and three dogs were walking the countryside forest, checking bird's nests for eggs. Local publications describe what they were doing as poaching, but in reality, they were attempting to supplement their family's wartime rations. England was in the throes of World War II at the time, and both food and funds were scarce. The boys whose names were Robert Hart, Bob Farmer, Fred Payne, and Tommy Willetts hailed

from the surrounding villages of either Lye, Stourbridge, or Wallacecott, depending on the source. But either way, they were scouring the trees of Hagley Wood, a small wooded area just east of the village of Hagley, which is about 25 minutes southeast of Birmingham by car and they wound up on private grounds near Hagley Hall, which is a gorgeous large historic home that is now used as an event space and it really looks straight out of Pride and Prejudice. Surveying the branches of the trees for possible food in the spring gloom, one of the boys

stumbled upon something much more sinister than he could have expected. Scaling a tree about five and a half feet tall and thick with knotted branches and overgrowth, he spied something white that at first he assumed was an egg. Robert Hart, Bob Farmer, and Tommy Willett were all at times credited with climbing inside this tree and making the discovery. So it's hard to say definitively who it was, but one reputable two-part book on this case claims that it was Robert Hart.

So that seems to be the most likely conclusion. Now, while notifying the other boys of his discovery, Robert attempted to scoop the item out of the tree with a stick. I know this is kind of confusing, but basically there was something inside of a hollow tree trunk. It was a witch elm tree, and he's trying to figure out what it is. If it's an egg, you know, they can bring it back to the family for food. He's trying to get out what it is. If it's an egg, you know, they can bring it back to the family for food. He's trying to get it out of the hollow tree trunk. Now Bob Farmer assisted him with this task, pulling out the round

white object with a sharp stick, which they then stuck in the small hole of the object. This later turned out to be the hole at the base of the victim's skull. Plucking it from the tree and realizing in horror that it was a sun-bleached human skull and not at all an egg or some type of food with a small piece of scalp and hair still attached. The boys returned it to the opening of the tree.

It's also worth noting that while the witch elm tree has become a cornerstone of this case, it is possible that the tree was in fact a regular elm tree or perhaps a witch hazel tree, but her body was found inside the tree's hollow trunk. Now, there is also a picture of a knotted mess of branches protruding from a tree trunk that is commonly associated with the discovery of the woman's remains, but it's unknown if this is in fact the tree, the very tree from which the remains were pulled from.

Robert later explained, quote, "'There was a small patch of rotting flesh on the forehead with a length hair attached to it. The two front teeth were crooked. So obviously frightened, terrified, horrified, and knowing that they were breaking the law by having trespass on this property, the boys fled and vowed not to share what they had found. On their way home, they ran into Donald Payne, Fred's older brother, body, the boys fled and vowed not to share what they had found. On their way home, they ran into Donald Payne, Fred's older brother, and brought him back to show him what they had found as well.

So even though they wanted to report their findings, they were afraid of being punished for trespassing, so they agreed not to share their gruesome discovery. But upon their return home that evening, Tommy Willetts was wracked with guilt over keeping the body a secret, so he decided to tell his parents who reported it to the police. The next day, Monday, April 19th, 1943, Tommy led officers to the scene of the remains

and the investigation began. Inside the hollow tree's trunk and the investigation began. Inside the hollow tree's trunk was the skull that they had discovered as well as most of the bones of the rest of the small frame of a female body. One of the boys also recalls seeing a green bottle with or near the body, but we are not sure what exactly that was. Overshadowed by the consistent and grim wartime news at this time, the find garnered actually very little national attention,

despite later becoming a decades-old cold case with a cult-like following. At first, investigators stationed an officer there 24 hours a day to make sure that the scene remained undisturbed while they at least tried to figure out what the hell happened here. Now mixed in with the bones were the tattered remains of the deteriorating clothing that the woman had been murdered in.

And she's believed to have been wearing a khaki colored skirt with a zipper and a peach taffeta underlining. And some of this lining was actually found in her mouth, which led investigators to speculate that she had been strangled. However, it is also possible that this piece of cloth was shoved into the mouth of her skull when the boys were fishing it out of the tree, so this very much could have happened accidentally.

She had also been wearing a light blue belt and a navy and mustard striped woolen sweater. In addition to the clothing, there was a fake gold wedding ring found on her body that was worth only about two shillings or about a 10th of a pound at this time. And one publication speculated that it was a cheap ring, you know, maybe made to look like a wedding ring

that was likely worn by single women to ward off any judgment about not being married after having reached a certain age. So that's pretty interesting. A pair of shoes was also recovered from the scene, one which had been left near the tree and one which had been pulled from underneath the remains inside the tree. The shoes were dark blue with crepe soles and came in a woman size 5.5. Investigators managed to track down the manufacturer and discovered that they had been produced in 1940, so about 3 years earlier, and had been worn for at least six months by the time that this woman was found.

And get this, they actually traced all but six pairs back to their owners, but those six pairs had been purchased at a market and could not lead police back to the person who had purchased them, which is wild because six is obviously so few people, like they were so close. The victim is believed to have stood at around five feet tall and had brown hair based on the remains pulled from the tree, but... This next part is shocking. I wish Heath was here to make a comment on this. Because of the way that they described her, like we would never see these type of descriptions that I'm about to read in modern day publications, but... The newspapers did not portray this woman kindly. One publication described, quote, she was not pretty.

Crossed buck teeth do not lend themselves to beauty. And if that sounds cruel, it is nevertheless true. So we have a picture of an ugly, friendless, moneyless woman of 35. A pitiful figure maybe, but not the usual victim of a murderer. Yet more than one person must have known her by sight. Plainness is often more distinctive than prettiness. I mean, geez, can you believe that?

I'm gonna post a picture, like the actual newspaper clipping, where you guys can see this, like this is very much real. And it's absolutely insane. Now, the woman, the victim of murder here, was most likely between the ages of 35 and 40, and she may have birthed a child at some point, but the autopsy could not confirm this

with absolute certainty. Basically, the reason they think this is because her hips bore what are known as parterition scars, which are divots in the pelvic bones believed to be caused by childbirth. However, this method of deduction has been debunked because there are many women who have exhibited the same scars without having given birth. So she very well could have not given birth, which is something that is so difficult about this case, is they think that they know something, but then they don't really know it.

Like the concrete facts of this case are so, so limited. But based on the amount of growth around the remains, detectives believed that she had been inside this tree, deceased, for 18 months, but possibly even longer. So the very wealthy family that lived in Hagley Hall at this time had no idea that for over a year and a half, there was a woman's body on their property hidden inside of a tree.

And detectives did feel strongly that she had not crawled into the space herself because it would have been a very, very, very tight spot. Obviously, this is a freaking tree trunk, but also because if she had been alive when she was put inside of it, she could have gotten herself out. So it seems like she definitely was put there after she was already deceased. But I will also add that she couldn't have been placed inside the tree very long after her death because she wouldn't have been able to fold up as neatly as she did inside the tree trunk once rigor mortis had set in.

So it seems like she was murdered and then very, very quickly hidden inside of this tree trunk for whatever reason. Forensic scientists from nearby Birmingham University processed the scene alongside four local police officers, but those working on the scene kept the details very close to the vest and refused to discuss their findings with the public or the press. Professor James Webster, who was a forensic scientist for the university, and Dr. John Lund, who worked as a biologist for the West Midlands Forensic Science Laboratory, were tasked with performing this woman's autopsy. However,

even after recovering most of her remains, because obviously so much time has passed, it's in the early 1940s, they were not able to determine a cause of death. So we have no identity, no cause of death, and no suspects. However, Dr. Lund wrote in his notebook about his findings of the case, quote, This can hardly be anything other than homicide. On April 29th, 1943, police announced that they had ruled out the possibility of her death being an accident or a suicide based on the state of her remains. The tree was only about 35 yards, that's like seven cars length from the A456 corridor. That is the major local throughway that dissects the nearby town of Hagley.

So it was plausible that someone could have driven the body there specifically for disposal since it's so close to that major throughway. The area, though technically private property, having belonged to the prominent Littleton family for centuries, was also known to be a favorite for what the local news called hoarding couples.

There had even been a camp there for Romani people in the last two or three years, which would later lend itself to one of the story's most credible theories, and we will get into that later. But with nothing much to go on, investigators turned to her dental records because her teeth were very distinctive. Her front two teeth crossed over, giving her a very unique bite, and she had also had a tooth pulled in the last year before her death. So surely there would be dental records documenting this work.

But detectives spoke to over a thousand dentists in the country, and no one could claim her as a patient. Thus, the case stalled. Officially, the conclusion of her case was a quote, murder by some person or persons unknown. Then, nearly a year after the discovery of her body, an odd clue began popping up around town to keep the locals' focus on her story. I actually think this is probably what has made this case so popular because I'm sure

a lot of you guys who know about this case immediately your mind is going to what I'm about to say because on the brick wall of a vacant building on Upper Dean Street in Birmingham, about 25 minutes away from where the remains were found, written in chalk and crude block letters, someone had scribbled, Bella down the Witch Elm, Hagley Wood. That same day, March 27, 1944, in Halzowen, just about 4 miles or 6.4 kilometers up the road from Hagley Wood, more messages were found, this time reading, Who put Lou Beller in the Witch Elm? Three days later, on March 30, again this this is 1944 so the year after she was found, even

more was discovered on Purshore Street back in Birmingham. It simply read, Hagley Wood Beller. So detectives were dumbfounded at this development and they really were scrambling to make sense of the scribbles, just trying to deduce if it was related to the case, like, you know, maybe if it was written by the murderer himself in some sort of taunting fashion, or if it was simply the work of a local troublemaker desperate for attention. Police had reason to believe that at least one of the passages had been there since Christmas time, as the writer

usually chose vacant structures to write the messages. One officer remarked, quote, There are always stupid imitators to be found and after all, the silly season is here. Referencing April Fools, which was coming up the day after the third message was found. Now, the public seemed to initially believe that the messages could be attributed to the boys that found her, but this was quickly debunked. Because the writing was done early in the morning with no witnesses, investigators speculated that the messages were written by someone commuting from the farm country into the city for work.

It's unknown whether or not they were even being written by the same person because in some cases, the tree was spelled W-Y-C-H, which is the proper spelling for the specific type of elm tree, which doesn't mean which, actually, like W-I-T-C-H. W-Y-C-H is derived from the old English word for pliable wood. But in other cases, the tree was written out as W-I-T-C-H, which is incorrect. So it's not known if this was because the person just didn't know how to spell it or if they thought that it was related to witches or witchcraft because there is a lot of theories or there are a lot of theories going around about that that I will get into later as well. Also Bella could be referred to as Lou Bella, L-U-B-E-L-L-A, Lou Bella, L-U-E-B-E-L-L-A,

or even Lou Beller. So there's all these different spellings of this name and really different names popping up, which is why it wasn't clear if these were different people or the same because of all the different spellings. Like, it really didn't make sense why it was so inconsistent, especially because the identity of this woman is not known.

So why would one person write Lou Bella and another person write Bella and then another person write Lou Beller? Well, then in April, longer and more nonsensical messages began appearing around the area, including, who put Bella in the witch elm, Hagley Wood? Jack the Ripper?

Anna Bella died in Hagley Wood, Jack the Ripper, Annabella died in Hagley Wood. Which I'll say is very unlikely that it was Jack the Ripper because Jack the Ripper had been active 55 years earlier over a hundred miles or nearly 200 kilometers away. So now this person is obviously referencing this woman that was found in the Witch Elm, but this was spelled W-I-T-C-H, and then they also said Annabella, A-N-A, space Bella. So this is yet another name being thrown into the mix.

A few months later in August, two separate messages popped up, one in nearby Hells Owen, and another in nearby Wolverhampton, this time hinting at her address. The graffiti read, Hagley Wood Lou Bella address, opposite Rose and Crown, Hasbury, which is actually a pub in the Hasbury neighborhood of Hale-Zoan, so they're saying she lived at this pub. Well, police of course investigated this lead as usual, but no one named Lou Bella had even lived in this area. However, even if they weren't leading to Bella's murderer, these messages achieved the author's likely desired effect, sparking renewed interest in the case

and causing a ton of different rumors to swirl the countryside. Police scoured missing persons records for anyone whose name contained the name Bella in any fashion, like I said, Lou Bella, Lou Beller, Anna Bella, Bella, just plain, but they came up empty every single time. Then came the suspicions, born of distrust toward Germans at a time when the country

was being ravaged by war with the Nazis, that the victim had been a German spy. This accompanied the rumor that a German parachute had been discovered in the woods nearby and were bolstered by the fact that there was no record of Bella in England, leading some to think that she was foreign. In addition to the suspicions that maybe she could have been one of many people who trekked out to the countryside to camp,

you know, in order to spare themselves from the possibility of air raids in the inner cities, especially giving Birmingham's prominence as an epicenter for arms manufacturing. Birmingham, which is the second largest city in the country, was a major hub for industrial production, and thus, a lure for espionage, as the Nazi party desired to keep tabs on the production of weapons. So, it's very interesting and this is why all these theories are coming about. So, all this gave way to another fascinating theory about connections to Nazi Germany,

which was actually only recently debunked. So, I'm not going to go into the whole story because it was debunked. But this was the story of a German criminal World War II Lieutenant for the Nazi party and German spy named Joseph Jacobs, whose mistress, a German singer and actress named Clara Bella, Clara Bella was actually the mysterious victim. So in part because he had parachuted into England, because he has connections to Nazi Germany.

And then of course, because of her name, Clara Bella, for so many years, people thought that she could potentially be the woman in the witch elm, also because she went missing in 1941. But after extensive research for years, they found that this woman, Clara Bella, had died in Berlin in 1942, and therefore had not parachuted into England with Joseph or Josef, and therefore was not Bella from the Witch Elm Tree, a letter came in to the local news claiming that the writer knew both the murderer and the victim and that the investigators were wasting their time.

A woman who identified herself as Anna from Claverley, which is a village about 30 minutes away from Hagley, wrote that it had been her ex-husband who committed the murder. The letter was passed on to the police chief and gained significant attention by the press, and this is what Anna's letter said, quote, "...finish your articles, read the Witch Elm Crime by all means. They are interesting to your readers, but 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 rights. Much as I hate having to use a nom to plume, I think you would appreciate 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." The police department obviously appealed to the public, just hoping that Anna would come forward. You know, she's, why would she write this at all if she didn't want to try to help in

some small way? She gave a name, she gave some details, she's clearly not trying to stay completely under the radar, but maybe she doesn't want to tell all here. So police are just doing everything they can to track this woman down. Police Superintendent Tom Williams announced in the press, quote, the letter may be a hoax, but I cannot ignore the possibility that it is genuine. Then only a few weeks later, in December of 1953, police told the press that they found her and that they brought Anna in, whose real name was Una.

Una Hainsworth, formerly Una Mossop, stood by the story that she alleged in her letter to the newspaper. In her statement to the police, she explained, quote, It was in 1940 that a man named Von Rolte came to our house, number 39 Barrow Road, Kenilworth. I believe this man was Dutch, and as far as I know, he had no particular job, and I have suspicion that he was engaged on some work that he did not wish to talk about.

But in my opinion, it might have been that he was a spy, for he had plenty of money, and there were times that my husband appeared to have plenty of money after meeting him. It was either in March or April 1941 that my husband came home and was noticeably white and agitated. This was at about 1 am in the morning and he asked me for a drink. I made a comment that I thought he had had enough as he had been out all day, but I gave him a drink. He then said he had been to the Littleton Arms with Van Ralt and

the Dutch Peace and that he had got awkward. My husband was driving the car which belonged to Van Ralt. She got in beside him. Von Ralt was in the back. And then she fell over towards my husband. And he said to von Ralt that she had passed out. Von Ralt told him where to drive and they went to a wood, stuck her in a hollow tree. Von Ralt said she would come to her senses the following morning, and as far as I know, my husband came home.

He came home in Von Ralt's car, which was a rover. I lived at Kenilworth until December 1941, and between April and December, my husband appeared very jumpy, and it was noticeable that he had more drink than usual and appeared to have more money to spend. He was nearly always away from work and this led to my suspicion that in some way he was obtaining money and may have been meeting Von Rolt." Insane thing to say that she will come to in the morning so why the hell did you put her in a hollow tree trunk? But really amazing if this is even true, if this is true, that this woman, Una, is coming forward with it.

But she's also kind of proving, like she said, her husband died by insanity, which I'm gonna get into the following year. So kind of lending to the belief that he helped kill this woman. He helped this von Ralt kill this woman and received a large sum of money for doing so and it essentially made him insane. Well Una then explained that she had left her husband after this ordeal. They split up and that she saw him only three more times before his death.

She added, quote, I saw my first husband, Jack Mossop, at Kenilworth on three occasions after I was forced to leave him in December 1941 and tried to get my possessions, including furniture from the house. And on one of those occasions, it would be the last time I saw him. He told me what I thought at first, it was a further story to put me off, and as it follows, that he thought he was losing his mind as he kept seeing the woman in the tree and she was leering at him.

He held his head in his hands and said, It is getting on my nerves. I'm going crazy. It was about June 1942 when I heard that he was taken to the mental hospital at Stafford where he died in August 1942. I was not informed of his death at the time and I did not attend the funeral because of this. The first I knew was when my present husband told me that an application had been made at the works, claiming money that was due to him and sending a doctor's certificate. I had no knowledge whatever of the Hagley murder until an article appeared in the Express

and Star newspaper. Neither had I read anything before which could in any way be connected with the incident I have told you about. I have not discussed the matter with anyone, and it was not until I was reading the details and bearing in mind the possible date when the woman met her death that I, in any way, connected this with my husband's statement to me in March or April 1941. And because of the articles referring to witchcraft, etc., I decided in the first place to write a letter and sign it Anna.

I put sufficient clues in the letter which should have helped to have identified me, and it was only because of a subsequent appeal in the newspaper, and because I felt I ought to say what I know of this matter that I decided to arrange to meet you. I cannot add anything further and because I am now married again with three small children, I hope that what I have said to you will only be used to aid the course of justice and it is this which has prompted me to take the action I have. I was not treated too well by my husband and do not wish in any way to rake up the past. But if what I have told you will help you in this matter, then the foregoing statement has been made by me voluntarily.

And with that end in view, I of course have no proof that what I have told you now is the truth, but bearing in mind my husband's condition and what he said to me at the time, I have done my best to recall it to help in the inquiry." Well, Jack Mossop's death certificate states his cause of death as, quote, "...softening of the brain, chronic kidney disease, and finally, insanity." Unfortunately, although this obviously feels like such an interesting lead, without knowing exactly who Von Ralt is and the fact that her husband Jack was dead at this point, the detectives were not able to confirm or deny Una's account.

So really, it kind of just remains as likely as any of the other theories. But I do want to mention that her saying that this happened in early 1941, she said March, or April of 1941, could definitely make sense because remember, when they discovered the woman in the witch elm in April of 1943, two years later, they determined that she had been in the tree for at least a year and a half, if not longer.

Well, in 1968, a book came out about this murder called Murder by Witchcraft. It was written by a man named Donald McCormick. And in it, he posed a few different theories to try to make sense of what happened to Bella all those years ago, which of course, when this book came out was 25 years earlier.

And one of them actually was combined with Una's account. And it made Donald believe that the woman, the woman in the witch-helm, could have been an English-speaking Dutch girlfriend of a man, once again from the Nazi party. So really, disturbingly, a lot of theories connect this woman to someone in Nazi Germany but Donald's book also unpacks the rampant fear of witchcraft at the time the murder took place and The growing unrest of some locals who feared that Bella was the first of many casualties to the practice of witchcraft

the book connected Bella's murder to the of witchcraft. The book connected Bella's murder to the 1945 Cotswolds murder of an elderly farmer named Charles Walton who was slashed with his own pitchfork and this is another murder that locals say reeked of witchcraft and devil worship. The rumor of the involvement of witchcraft in Bella's murder was rampant in the area at the time and many were certain that she had been the victim of a ritualistic killing just basically due to rumors that her hand was found severed and that it was separated from her body.

Now while this was technically true because bones from her hand were found near the base of the tree, it's a little bit more likely that this was the result of animal activity after all her time there. You know, again, over a year and a half. And her being obviously at the base of the tree, in the woods. So, this was probably not witchcraft and it was actually just a hungry animal. But of course, this didn't stop the rumor mill from churning. In 1968, so the same year that this book came out, Dr. Margaret Murray, who was a renowned archeologist and former professor of Egyptology,

told author Donald McCormick in an interview about Bella's murder that she still fervently believed that witchcraft was involved, saying, quote, I think there are still remnants of witchcraft in isolated parts of Great Britain. I believe the dead woman here was another victim of the devil worshippers, which is fascinating because she was a professor and an archaeologist. So I feel like she

Was probably a very illogical woman and she very much believed in all of these kind of crazy rumors as well But a local man and a lot of other people contested this claim saying quote Some of the villagers might have been reluctant to talk but it was simply because they didn't want to get mixed up in the affair Nothing else Witchcraft don't make me laugh. But other theories have waged a bit of a more tempered approach to the background of Bella's tragic story. You know, because of this ongoing war, her family and loved ones may have just assumed that she was killed in an air raid and just declined to look for her. I mean, if she was from another country, she may not have been connected to her missing persons report,

which would make a ton of sense. It's not like they could have heard about this story on the internet somewhere where it would have spread worldwide. It took so long for the story to get across the world in the way it has by now. And if it was a domestic dispute, she may have been killed by the very person

who should have been spearheading the efforts to find her, which would result in a lack of public demand or outcry to solve her disappearance. So frustratingly, we may never know Bella's identity, who killed her, or what happened to her in the final moment of her life and why the hell she was stuffed into a hollow tree trunk. Because her remains, as well as the coroner's report, have disappeared. The bones were misplaced and many of the records, having only been maintained for 15 years, were destroyed. Can you

frickin believe that? Dr. John Lund worked on this case for the rest of his life and conducted interviews on the subject up until his death in 2015. By the way, at the age of a hundred too. He lived a very long life. He spent so much time looking into this story. He explained that because her bones had disappeared, renewed DNA testing was impossible in Bella's case, which could have obviously helped immensely to solving it. I mean, if they had not gone missing, right now we could potentially have her identity.

Dr. John Lund explained, quote, "'As far as I know, we gave the body to the university, and then the bones mysteriously disappeared. And that just adds a whole other creepy element to this story. In 2018, a spokesperson for the West Midlands Police confirmed that they possess, quote, no documentation that may relate to this case at either of the West Midlands police museums.

Some have speculated that Bella may have been a sex worker for whom no one was looking because she was working on the fringes of society, and that she was all but forgotten after being killed by the man who hired her for the evening. Gigi Jacobs, who is Joseph or Hosef Jacob's granddaughter, has actually taken it upon herself to become her family's unofficial historian, and a lead investigator of the Bella case, despite of course, Mistress Clarabella not being Bella's true identity.

But it makes sense, because really, for so many years, her family, or somebody in her family, was thought to be connected to the victim. Well in an interview about the murder she admitted quote, At this point it's very unlikely that it'll really ever be solved. The culprit is probably long dead, witnesses are long gone, the bones of Bella are lost or misplaced or something, the police files. There's at least two folders that were not released to the archives. So it makes me wonder what's in them.

Despite this, local facilities have tried to maintain the quest for justice. In 2018, the Facial Reconstruction Lab at Liverpool John Moore University even produced an impression of what Bella is likely to have looked like. Gigi has, however, called the account of Bella's teeth, which is largely her most identifiable feature, into question, wondering if this was greatly exaggerated, as her autopsy does not make a mention

of her supposed crooked, overlapping upper central incisors. Sadly, police were severely limited by the lack of resources available to them at the time of their initial investigation. Andrew Spark, author of one of many books about the case entitled Bella in the Witch Elm, alleged, quote, if that assessment that Bella must have been no more

than five feet was wrong, police eliminated a number of women reported missing between 1938 and 1942. And therefore, people who had family members go missing, it could actually be one of them. It could have been a domestic murder. The speculation that this was a case of domestic violence is believed by many, as whomever placed her inside the tree seemed to know that it was a well-concealed hiding place, and clearly it kept it secret for over a year. The Romania encampment that existed there at the time does also provide a likely possibility,

as I mentioned earlier, that perhaps none of the theories purporting Nazis, spies, and parachutes are even accurate, but that instead, it was a vengeful husband who killed his wife in a rage and stashed her body inside the tree before fleeing. Seems pretty likely, honestly.. Well the same year that Una Haynesworth sent her fateful letter the police announced that they did not believe that the graffiti was connected to either the victim or the killer and that it was presumed to be a hoax. In November of 1953 Superintendent Superintendent Tom Williams reported, quote,

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. So maybe the first person put Bella and they just decided to give her a name or a nickname of some sorts for whatever reason. And then it caught on. And all these years later were calling her Bella and that might not even be real. He added, quote, I am grateful for any information that can be given even after 10 years, but

so far none of the writers seem to have a clear idea of the woman's appearance, which I think would make a lot of sense considering the fact that there were so many misspellings, so many different names, people saying Bella, Annabella, Lou Bella, Lou Beller, etc. But despite all this, graffiti relating to Bella's case has continued to pop up around the region. Most famously in 1999 when scrawled on a giant obelisk called the Witchbury obelisk near Witchbury Hill in Hagley, which is very commonly pictured when you look up this case Again in 1999 was the phrase who put Bella in the witch elm Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. This is just such an interesting story to me, even though older cases can be so difficult

to cover because we don't have all the amazing resources we have today, as far as it goes with DNA testing and technology and surveillance footage and phone pings, etc. But this is one of those just historical mysterious stories, like we mentioned in this case, Jack the Ripper. It's one of those where it could be something as simple as a domestic dispute. Actually, personally, I think I leaned more towards that, but just the fact that her body was stuffed into a hollow tree trunk is so mysterious

and the way that it was folded up in there and it had to have been done before Rigor Mortis set in is so incredibly disturbing. So, and then of course, all of those weird messages that popped up over time in the area. So fascinating. And of course, how could I forget the fact that her body disappeared? So I wonder if that was just negligence or if somebody stole her remains for whatever reason, if it's nefarious, who the hell knows? But I'd love to know what you guys think.

I'm going to put photos on our socials. Obviously, there's no photos of the victim, but I will post that kind of creation of what they think she looked like, as well as, of course, the messages that I can find that are out there that were photographed. So thank you guys so much for tuning in today. I know Heath was sorely missed. It's so much nicer to be able to have a conversation and go back and forth with somebody instead of talking to myself,

but it was like I was talking to all of you, you know? So go comment on our socials and tell Heath how much you missed him. Check out the photos and we will see you back here next week for an all new episode of Going West. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thanks for watching!