So Supernatural - CONSPIRACY: Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

This World War II era mystery began in England in 1943, when four boys discovered the skeleton of a woman buried inside a hollow tree. With every step, the investigation spawned only more questions: Was she a traveling performer? A Nazi spy? Or, as some experts suggested—a victim of witchcraft?  

Right in the heart of England, there's an area where the county of Worcestershire borders the West Midlands. That's basically a postcard of British countryside. Green fields, thatched cottages, quaint little market towns. And at the center is Witchbury Hill. An 84-foot-tall stone pillar rises from the summit. If you get close enough, there's a message painted on its base in big white letters. This single phrase has appeared and reappeared all over the surrounding area for decades. It's a question that has haunted West Midlands for over 75 years.

Who put Bella in the Witch Elm. This is Supernatural, and I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're exploring the unsolved murder of a woman whose remains were found buried in a tree in Hagley Wood. With most murder investigations, you start with the victim. Establish the facts of their life, what they did, and where they went in the days before their death. From there, you can start to narrow down the people who might have had motive or opportunity to harm them. But what if you don't know who the victim is in the first place? That was the problem with the case of the Somerton Man that we covered a few weeks ago. But the Hagley Wood mystery, better known as who put Bella in the witch elm, is even older and in

some ways weirder. The theories about Bella's true identity are all over the map, and if you're willing to open up your mind, the strangest possibilities might offer the closest thing we have to an answer. It all began on April 18th, 1943, when four teenage boys were traipsing around the countryside. Their names were Tommy Willits, Bob Farmer, Robert Hart, and Fred Payne, and they'd spent most of the day hunting rabbits and enjoying their Sunday afternoon. England had been at war with Germany for the past three years, and the nearby city of Birmingham had been on the receiving end of some of the worst attacks by Nazi bombers so far. On clear nights, the boys would have been able to watch the explosions from the summit of Witchbury Hill.

But there were no bombs on the evening of April 18th as the boys made their way home. They were taking a shortcut through Hagley Wood when they came across a wild, almost evil-looking tree. It was about six feet tall and nearly as thick around, with long, bare branches jutting out in every direction. Imagine, like, an exploded broom head coming out of a massive stump. Newspapers would later peg the tree as a witch elm, but it was probably a common hazel. Now, the boys knew that these trees often had hollow spots inside where birds like to make their nests, so Robert clambered up to check for eggs,

and when he looked down into the center, a human skull was staring up at him. The boys passed him up a stick, and with some effort, Robert managed to hook the skull and fish it out. Most of the flesh had rotted away, but a few strands of brittle brown hair were still attached to a patch of dried skin on the scalp. It was like a scene out of a horror movie. A human skull buried inside a tree. And when I say inside a tree, I mean deep inside the trunk. Someone would have had to have climbed up, fighting their way through the massive sharp branches in order to force the skull into that narrow gap. Now, the boys were excited by their

discovery, but they didn't know what to do with the skull. If they told anyone about it, they'd all be in a world of trouble for trespassing. So they decided to put it back in the tree, and they agreed that they wouldn't say anything about it. But their pact of secrecy didn't last long. Tommy broke down and told his parents when he got home, and the next morning, he was leading half a dozen policemen to the tree. When they climbed up, they could see that there was something inside, but quickly realized that they would have a hard time getting it out through the narrow gap. So they ended up having to split the trunk with an axe. Once they got it open, they found not just a skull, but an almost complete human skeleton wedged inside. Like with the skull,

the flesh was long gone. The bones had been stripped clean by insects and animals, and because of how narrow this hollow was, the skeleton was still mostly vertical, almost as if it was just standing up. Whoever this person was, they had been forced feet first through the narrow hole in the top of the tree. As the corpse decayed, it had slid deeper and deeper into the hollow until it had almost become part of the tree itself. Now here's the thing, getting a body into this tree would be really difficult. If you look up pictures of this, there are all these tiny branches jutting out in literally every direction. I can't even imagine how someone would go up there on their own without getting stabbed in the eye, much less putting someone else in there.

The body must have been lowered into the tree from above, but the way it's shaped, you can't exactly just like climb up. And the hole itself is so small that whoever this was down there couldn't have been just dropped in from the top of a nearby tree or something. It would have taken effort to get this person in that position. So whoever did this, they must have had a reason. And based on how difficult it would be to bury a person like this, it seemed possible that there was more than one person involved. But who was it and why? The remains were taken to Birmingham University Forensic Science Laboratory, where they were examined by Dr. James Webster. He determined that the skeleton belonged to a five-foot-tall brunette

woman who was around 35 years old when she died. Now, precisely when that happened is difficult to say. The skeleton was in an advanced state of decay, but due to the unique environment of the tree hollow, they couldn't determine how much of that was due to time versus the elements or wildlife. While the flesh was long gone, the investigators had managed to gather several pieces of rotted clothing from the tree.

And though all the fabric was severely decayed, there was enough left intact for Dr. Webster to piece together an idea of the woman's outfit. At the time of death, she was wearing some kind of cloth skirt, a taffeta underskirt, and a thin wool cardigan, all of which were consistent with what women in that area would have worn during the summer. Taking this and the state of decomposition into account, he decided that she had most likely died in the summer of 1941, meaning that she had been in the tree for at least a year and a half. Webster wasn't able to determine the precise cause of death other than the fact that the woman had definitely been murdered. Webster decided that

she couldn't have climbed into the tree on her own, which ruled out suicide or the possibility that she had gotten stuck. She had been wedged in the hollow feet first, either before rigor mortis had set in or after it had worn off. And this is important because it means whoever killed this woman either put her in the tree right after killing her, or they kept her somewhere else for several days after the killing and then moved her to the tree right after killing her, or they kept her somewhere else for several days after the killing and then moved her to the tree. Dr. Webster thought that the first option was much more likely, which would suggest that she was killed in the woods close to the tree. There was one other promising discovery from Dr. Webster's examination. The victim's front incisor teeth

overlapped in a way that would have made them an obvious distinguishing feature in life. She was also missing a lower molar that looked like it had been professionally removed a long time before her death. So all in all, investigators knew that this woman was around 35 years old, she had brown hair, she was 5 feet tall, and she had crooked teeth. And most importantly, they knew that she had been to a dentist at some point in the past. They started checking all of the dentist's office in the West Midlands and then central England, and then all of England, but none of them had records of a patient who matched the skeleton. Now, the woman had definitely visited some dentist before she died, so if it wasn't a dentist in England, maybe this victim was a foreigner.

Of course, there was also the possibility that whichever dentist she visited just hadn't kept reliable records. It makes sense that some dentists might not remember every set of teeth they've ever worked on, especially considering that the country was in the midst of World War II and regularly being bombed. So the police turned their attention to missing persons reports from the past three years. If this woman knew anyone at all, I mean, if she had a job or relatives or friends, someone should have reported her missing. But once again, the investigators were unable to identify anyone who matched their victim's description. This baffled the detectives. The case, which had started out strange, was only becoming more perplexing the more they looked.

The newspapers were following the story closely, so you would have thought that the victim's family would have come forward to claim her, but no one did. It was almost like she had never existed at all. When the remains were first removed from the tree, there were a few other items found in the vicinity that are worth mentioning. The first was a cheap gold wedding ring, so the woman might have been married, but if so, she probably wasn't well off. It was later alleged that the bones of the woman's right hand were found a ways from the body. We don't know exactly where this was first reported's right hand were found a ways from the body. We don't know exactly where this was first reported, but it seems like it was from the police file that has since disappeared.

And unfortunately, it isn't mentioned anywhere in Dr. Webster's forensics report. It's possible that he didn't know that the bones weren't all found together, or he might have thought it wasn't important. The most reasonable explanation for the hand being separated from the body would be that it was moved possibly by an animal or something like that. Of course, the other possibility is that the hand was put in a different spot intentionally. And what that reason might be is kind of hard to imagine. Now, the next item found at the crime scene was a size five and a half women's blue crepe-soled shoe. Its partner was found in the hollow with the skeleton, so it was definitely the woman's. Exactly why it wasn't with the rest of the body probably isn't important.

Like the hand, it could have been moved by animals or maybe it could have been dropped by the killer. But the shoes did give the investigators another clue to follow up on. They managed to trace them back to a manufacturer and they figured out that this pair was most likely sold at a market in Dudley in early 1940. And that's where the trail goes cold. But we do know that while the shoes were very worn, they were actually fairly expensive. And if you think about it, that's sort of a telling detail. You wouldn't expect a poor woman to have shoes like this, but you also wouldn't expect a wealthy woman to keep wearing shoes that were in this condition. So maybe she received them as a gift, or maybe she had money at some point, but not when she died.

The final item is one that initially seemed the most promising. After scouring the area around the tree, police found a woman's ID card. At first, they assumed that it belonged to their victim. But when they visited the address on the card, they found its owner was still alive. She claimed to have had no knowledge of how her ID had wound up in Hadleywood and said that she had never been there before in her life. For me, this is one of the most frustrating pieces of this whole case because we don't have any other information about this woman, not even her name or did she live with anyone else at that address who maybe could have had her ID.

So I really can't say if this ID card is even relevant to the murder or not. But the fact that she denied ever going to the woods where her ID was found, I mean, to me is kind of suspicious on its own. Like, how did it get there? And was this woman hiding something? These kinds of lingering questions and dead ends would just keep cropping up with this case. The fact that police were struggling so much to identify the body would have been notable even without all of the other strange facts of the case. But believe it or not, the mystery was about to get even stranger. By the time Christmas of 1943 rolled around, the locals had mostly lost interest in the case. England was still caught up in World War II, and the identity of a skeleton couldn't hold the public's attention when the Nazis were still bombing the country on the regular.

But that winter, strange messages started appearing everywhere around the West Midlands. The first one said, Who put Lubella down the Witch Elm? It was scrawled in large capital letters on a wall in Old Hill. Then another one showed up. Annabella died in Hagley Wood. Then another. Hagley Wood Lubella was no Pross.

Finally, the messages solidified into their final form. Who put Bella in the Witch Elm? By spring of 1944, the chalk messages could be found on fences and the sides of buildings all over the West Midlands. To many, they seemed like a mocking rebuke of the police. A reminder that almost a year had passed and they'd failed to find the culprit, identify the victim, or provide any answers at all. The police had the handwriting analyzed and found that these messages had all been written by the same person. Exactly what that person wanted was a mystery. If they were a prankster, they were going to a surprising amount of effort to spread the messages all over a pretty wide area. And if not If they were a prankster, they were going to a surprising amount of effort to

spread the messages all over a pretty wide area. And if not, they were the first person to offer up an identity for the woman in the tree. The police published ads asking the writer of the message to come forward, but no one ever did. They also went back through old missing person files to see if there was a Bella or an Annabella or Lubella. Maybe they had overlooked it, but there wasn't. However, police did find something else interesting when they were looking over their files. Way back in July of 1941, a few officers had responded to a report of a woman's screams near Hagley Wood. Now, at the time, they searched the area and found nothing and had forgotten all about it until right now.

Those screams coincided perfectly with the window that Dr. Webster had suggested for the murder. Looking back, the officers couldn't help but wonder if they had narrowly missed crossing paths with Bella on the night of her murder. If Bella was even her real name. I mean, the mysterious graffiti had ensured that it would forever be associated with the skeleton found in Hagley Wood, and that neither would be forgotten anytime soon. By summer, the words

Bella and Witch Elm were on the tongue of every beer hall gossip and amateur sleuth in the West Midlands. And this opened up new avenues of investigation, ones that police weren't likely to undertake, because while a skeleton in a tree was one thing, a skeleton in a tree in Hagley Wood was something else entirely. For as long as anyone could remember, those woods had been associated with black magic, pagan sacrifices, and witchcraft. After the break, we'll consider the theory that maybe Bella was a witch. Let's get back to the story.

When graffiti bearing the words Bella and Witch Elm started showing up on walls around the West Midlands, it sent the case into the limelight, ensuring that the next stage of the investigation would take place in the realm of public opinion. Now, before I go any further, I should tell you there are a lot of wild theories around this case. Like take this for example. For a while, a lot of people were convinced that Bella was a Nazi spy who parachuted in one night, landed in the tree, got stuck, and died. Now this should have been pretty easily dismissed based not just on the size of the hole that she was found in, but the fact that, hello, like she wasn't wearing a parachute and there was no parachute found

anywhere near the tree. Now I'm not going to take you down every explanation that's been offered for Bella's identity, but the strangest thing about this case is some of the theories that seem the most outlandish at first actually end up becoming the most plausible. And even the blatantly false ones offer a glimmer of insight. Take that paratrooper theory. Whoever had thought it up was probably trying to answer the same questions that had vexed the police. Why hadn't anyone reported Bella missing? If Bella was a foreign spy, it would make sense that no one would have come forward to claim her. And it would also make sense why no dentist's office in Britain had any record of her. It's this same kind of line of thinking that led to another popular theory.

The plots around Hagley Wood were frequented by caravans of Romani travelers. Some locals speculated that Bella was a Romani who had committed some crime against the others, so they buried her in the tree as a part of some, like, ritual execution. Now, to be clear, this theory was almost certainly driven by racial prejudice and stereotypes about the Romani people. There's no evidence to suggest that Bella was Romani.

I mean, her clothes didn't match the Romani style, and there's absolutely no historical record of Romani burying people in trees. But I bring it up because the police actually did investigate these rumors, and they found that two Romani families had camped in the area around Christmas of 1942, after Bella was killed, but before her remains were found. They spent a lot of time tracking down members of the two families, but ultimately, this didn't lead to anything except wasting a lot of police resources. Despite the lack of any evidence, the Romani theory was the most enduring. Some people in the area are still convinced that it's true to this day.

And it also marked a shift in focus to the strange manner and location where Bella was buried. This would lead to one of the most troubling theories in the entire case, that Bella could have been a witch. It's hard to say when exactly this theory was first introduced. It seemed to have been percolating in the background for a while, maybe inspired by the strangeness of the skeleton's burial and the fact that the Hagley Wood had long been associated with witchcraft. The area's connection to the occult started with

a nearby pub called the Gypsy's Tent, which had a history of hauntings going back to the 17th century. As time went on, the ghost stories spread to include the woods. By 1943, there were rampant rumors that witches used the site to conduct their rituals. Those rumors got a new spark of life in 1945 when Bella's case caught the attention of one professor, Margaret Murray. This woman has one of the most amazing resumes I've ever seen. In 1945, she was 82 years old and one of the world's most respected archaeologists and historians. She was actually the first woman who publicly unwrapped a mummy and was known to her peers as the Grand Old Woman of Egyptology. She was also known for studying witchcraft and the history of the occult in England. She believed that followers of an ancient pagan religion,

a coven of witches, had survived to the modern era and were secretly operating in England. Now, to be clear, Professor Murray didn't necessarily claim that these witches were practicing actual magic. She thought that they were conducting pagan rituals that were intended to cause supernatural results and that were both dangerous and illegal. Rituals that might involve sacrificing young women and burying them inside of trees. Several elements of the Hagleywood mystery caught Professor Murray's eye. First, she pointed to the medieval belief that burying a witch in a tree would trap their spirit inside. She was also intrigued by the name that

had become associated with the skeleton. Bella, she suggested, was short for Belladonna, a poisonous plant that has special significance in witchcraft. But the most important clue for Professor Murray was the skeleton's right hand, which supposedly had been found a short distance from Bella's tree. She saw this as evidence that the killer had been trying to make a magical object known as the Hand of Glory. In the occult arts, the Hand of Glory is a kind of black magic torch made from a human hand. Now, supposedly, the light of this torch was invisible to anyone but the holder. Other descriptions say that it could unlock doors

or even ensure that anyone who looked upon its light fell unconscious. Instructions for making a hand of glory can be found in Wiccan spell books, commonly known as books of shadows. The hand was supposed to be taken from the body of a criminal after they were executed. Sometimes the torch was finished by rendering fat from the victim to make candle wax and taking their hair for wicks. Professor Murray's conclusion sparked a rash of new speculation about the case. The graffitied messages were still showing up all over the area over two years later, now in more than one handwriting. So was this a copycat at work or evidence that an entire coven of witches was taunting the community? The witchcraft hysteria might truly have gotten out of hand if another event hadn't seized the country's attention.

Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, bringing an end to the war in Europe. After nearly six years, Britain's soldiers were finally coming home. Amongst them was a young man from Briarley named Warwick Plant. Upon arriving home, Warwick was intrigued by the cryptic messages about Bella and the Witch Elm scattered around town. When his sister finally told him about the woman found in the tree, it jogged a memory from before Warwick left for war. According to Warwick, he had been working at his parents' pub several years earlier when a short young woman named Bella came in asking if she could play the piano and sing for tips. Warwick's mother agreed and the

two women became friends. At some point, Warwick thought his mother might even have given Bella a pair of blue crepes old shoes. One day, though, Bella had shown up with bruises and a black eye, saying that her landlord had beaten her. Then she stopped showing up altogether. Warwick's mother had sent him to Stawbridge to see if he could find her, but she'd vanished. Now, Warwick told his sister this story, and she headed straight to the police. But while they made note of this in the police report, it's a little unclear if they ever actually interviewed Warwick or the plants directly. This is surprising and, I mean, honestly a bit frustrating. The timing and location of this Bella's supposed disappearance

fits Dr. Webster's timeline perfectly, and the detail of the shoe fits exactly as well. But, I mean, if you look at this critically, there is a simple answer as to why the police might not have thought much of this lead. The details of the case had already been circulating in the press for months at that point, so Warwick and his sister would know all about the skeleton, the name Bella, even the shoes. They could have easily made up the story for attention, or they might have unintentionally added the name Bella and the detail about the shoes to a foggy memory about some other woman. And even if Warwick did know the real Bella, his story doesn't explain the biggest lingering question in the case.

Most importantly, why was she buried inside of a tree? If this was the right person, it meant that her name actually was Bella, which also means that whoever started writing the messages wasn't just pulling a prank. And if they knew her name, they must have known more about how she died. Now, exactly what this person hoped to accomplish with the messages is another mystery in its own. If it was Bella's killer, it might have been because they wanted attention. I mean, when Bella was found, all the press around it could have been intoxicating to this person. And then when the case went cold, all of that stopped with it. By that point, the killer would have known that they were probably safe

because the police were at a dead end with the investigation. So they had nothing to lose by drumming up attention again. Or maybe it was someone else who knew Bella and wanted her killer to be found, but going to police would have implicated them in some way. So they found an alternative means of getting her name out. In any case, the graffiti didn't lead to any new suspects or developments. The case would stay cold for almost a decade until a new line of investigation broughtford Jones began looking into the Hagley Wood mystery for his column in the Wolverhampton Express and Star. He was captivated by the details of the tree burial and the cryptic messages, neither of which had ever been explained.

Wilford started by questioning the residents of the Hagley area and even tracked down Tommy Willits and the other boys who had found Bella. But unfortunately, none of them were interested in talking. Finally, the journalist published an ad promising 100 pounds sterling to anyone with information about Bella. And the responses poured in. But there was one message that stood out from the rest. It came from someone who seemed to have firsthand knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Bella's death. We'll look at what the letter said right after this. Let's get back to the story. When Wilfred put up his ad for information on Bella's case,

he received a flood of responses. Most were obvious false leads from opportunists who wanted to claim the reward money, but one message caught the reporter's attention. It read, quote, finish your articles regarding the Witch Elm crime by all means. They are interesting to the readers, but you'll never solve the mystery. One person who could give the answers is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. The only clues that I can give you are that the person responsible for the crime died insane in 1942,

and the victim was Dutch and alive illegally in England about 1941. I have no wish to recall any more. End quote. The letter was signed Anna and postmarked from Claverley, a village about 10 miles north of Hagley Wood. The journalist knew that this could be another fraud, but the fact that Anna hadn't provided a last name or an address

suggested that she wasn't after the money. So Wilfred used his column to beg Anna to come forward. And to his surprise, she actually did. Her real name wasn't Anna. It was Una Hainsworth. And the story she had to tell was stranger than anyone expected. Until recently, Una had been married to a man named Jack Mossop. During the war, Jack was a worker at a Royal Air Force munitions factory in Birmingham. The job

didn't pay well, so Una was suspicious when Jack started wearing a lot of really expensive clothing, including a Royal Air Force officer's uniform. Around this same time, Jack was coming home later and later after long nights at the pub with his friends. He had one new friend in particular, a Dutchman known to Una only as Van Rolt. As time went on, Una became increasingly suspicious that her husband and Van Rolt were involved in something illegal. Putting together her husband's fancy clothes, his job at the munitions factory, and the fact that Van Rolt was a foreigner, she concluded that von Rolt was actually a Nazi spy and that Jack was selling him military secrets. And now we've found our way back to the Nazi spy theory.

The first time this angle came up, I mean, we kind of dismissed it, right? Because of the implausibility that Bella had parachuted into the tree herself. But the concept of Nazi spies being involved in general isn't as paranoid as it sounds. Remember, Birmingham was a center for military production, which is why it was bombed so heavily during the war.

It's completely plausible that German agents would be sent to the munitions factory there to steal British secrets. But this theory still doesn't explain the mysterious graffiti messages or the tree burial. Assuming she didn't parachute right into it, what could explain a Nazi spy winding up inside of a tree in Hadley Wood? Well, as it turned out, Una had an answer to that question too. Late one night in the spring of 1941, Jack came home particularly late, drunk and raving about a murder. By the next morning, he had clammed up again, but Una kept badgering him until he told her what had happened. Jack and Van Rool had been out drinking one night with Van Rool's Dutch girlfriend, who Una presumed was also involved with their espionage operation.

They had gone for a drive when the foreigners exploded into an argument in Dutch that Jack couldn't follow. Van Rolt attacked his girlfriend, either killing her or knocking her unconscious. Then he ordered Jack to help him carry the body into the woods, where they deposited her inside of a hollow tree. Una claimed that she hadn't believed Jack's story until 1943, when reports began to circulate about the skeleton in Hadley Wood. And by that point, it was far too late to get any more details out of Jack.

His health had steadily declined after that strange night. He told Una that he was haunted by visions of the woman Von Ralt had killed leering at him from the tree hollow. In 1942, Jack Mossop checked himself into a mental hospital and died a few months later. When police finally heard Una's story in 1953, I mean, they weren't quite sure how much of it to believe. I mean, they couldn't find any evidence of a man called Von Ralt or his girlfriend, although if they were spies, Von Ralt probably wasn't his real name. What they did find was another old police report that had so far been overlooked. Way back in the summer of 1941, when Bella was most likely killed, an officer was patrolling near Hadleywood when he

found a car pulled over on the side of the road. When he approached, an officer was patrolling near Hadley Wood when he found a car pulled over on the side of the road. When he approached, the officer saw that the driver was wearing a Royal Air Force uniform, and a woman was lying down across the backseat covered in the driver's coat. Now, the officer assumed that he interrupted some kind of romantic moment, so he let them go pretty quickly. When investigators found this report years later, that officer wasn't available for moment, so he let them go pretty quickly. When investigators found this report years later, that officer wasn't available for questioning, so that's kind of all they had to go off of. But that could have been Von Ralt's girlfriend, either dead or unconscious. And given the timing, if she was still alive when they took her into the woods, that could account for the

screams that were reported that night. Without being able to speak to any of the people involved, it's hard to know whether any of these pieces really fit together. Una's confession was the last real advancement in the case though, so it's all we have to go off of. And while some of the details may seem wild, it explains several things. No one reported Bella missing because maybe she was a foreigner with few contacts outside of her ring of Nazi spies. She could have been buried in the tree by one of her compatriots who didn't want her body to be found and their activities to be uncovered. I mean, as for why she was killed, there are endless possibilities. Maybe Bella had learned something that she wasn't

supposed to know, or perhaps her loyalty to the cause was wavering, or maybe she'd just gotten a spat with a lover. What the story fails to explain is the strange messages around town. Jack was already dead by the time the graffiti started cropping up, and according to Una, he's the only one who knew about the murder other than Von Ralt.

I suppose it's possible that Una could have left them herself, considering that she clearly wanted to avoid attention, but also maybe wanted to get the story off her chest. But keep in mind that nowhere in her story does Una claim that the victim was named Bella. So if Jack and Von Ralt were the culprits, whoever left those messages probably was just a prankster. Maybe creeping out all of the West Midlands and creating a local legend was a good enough reason to spend months leaving the cryptic messages all across the country. There have been a few other theories suggested over the years, mostly variations of the Nazi spy theme, but these were all eventually shown to be false. The West Mercia Police Precinct kept a cold case file on the Hagley Wood mystery up until 2005, when it was determined that any witnesses and culprits were almost certainly dead at that point. In their review of the file, investigators noted that the victim could hypothetically be identified through modern DNA profiling,

but there was one major problem with this plan. Between 1943 when the body was examined and 2005 when the case file was officially closed, Bella's skeleton disappeared. Here's what we know. The remains were in the care of Dr. Webster at Birmingham University until he retired in 1955, at which point they got passed to his successor, Dr. Griffiths. It's possible that the remains were buried in a pauper's grave, but if that's the case, there should be some record of it. Stranger still, most of the original police notes, witness statements, and crime scene photos have also disappeared.

Now, all of this could be a result of just poor organization or the fact that, I mean, we're talking about a case that's over 75 years old. But the one breadcrumb that might suggest otherwise is the fact that Stella Remington, the future director general of MI5, was working as an archivist at that records office around the same time that the files disappeared. Now, that's probably just a coincidence, but if Bella was somehow involved with a Nazi spy ring, it's possible that the British government would want to keep it under wraps. The truth might still be buried in some classified file in the MI5 archives. And based on what we already know, the full details of the story

must be crazy if they weren't this kind of cover-up. In the end, the search for answers has led to a spider web of incredible theories. Was Bella a Nazi spy? Was she a poor tavern singer gifted a pair of precious shoes fitting of a woman above her station? Was she the victim of an occult ritual or even a witch herself? We might never know for certain. Bella is gone. The tree is gone, having died soon after it was cut open. And all that's left is the message on the obelisk on Witchberry Hill and others like it scattered throughout the West Midlands. Maybe they'll always be there to remind us that some mysteries will always remain unsolved. Thanks for listening.

I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all Audiochuck originals.