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Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?
77 Plays1 year ago
Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm? This is a question that has been asked for nearly eighty years, and one that may never be answered. This week, Kayley presents a case surrounding an unknown woman whose bones were found inside a hollow wych elm tree in April 1942. While this case is unsolved, there are several prevalent theories that remain. Who is “Bella”? How did she come to be in an old hollow tree? While we may never know the answer to these question, perhaps somewhere out there, someone does.
Sources:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-07/mystery-over-who-put-bella-down-the-wych-elm-/102171844
https://crimereads.com/who-put-bella-in-the-wych-elm/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/31-days-of-halloween-who-put-bella-down-the-wych-elm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04c9dfn
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/who-put-bella-in-the-wych-elm/
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 4
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey, I'm Kaylee. And I'm Sierra. And this is True Crime and Punishment. Episode 4.
Case Introduction: Bella in the Witch Elm
00:00:08
Speaker
Today, Kaylee will be telling us about a woman who was found in a tree. All right.
Case Structure: Facts and Conspiracies
00:00:14
Speaker
This week we're going to be talking about the case of who put Bella in the witch elm. This is an old case in England from the 1940s. And it is unsolved.
00:00:28
Speaker
This case is going to be split up today into basically two parts. We'll have
Podcast Setup and Technical Challenges
00:00:32
Speaker
the facts, and then we'll have some conspiracies that we can go over. Because like I said, it's not solved. But we do have an idea of what could have potentially happened. Why? It's just funny. There's the pillow in front of the mic.
00:00:54
Speaker
If you ever want to hear about how professional our setup is, I'm sitting on my couch with two pillows blocking my mic so we don't get like double audio. You might think that we don't care about double audio because a lot of our episodes feature prominent double audio, but we do and we do try.
00:01:11
Speaker
We just like hearing our voices so much. We want to hear them twice. We have English degrees. We're not tech savvy.
Discovery of the Skull in Hagley Woods
00:01:18
Speaker
Without further ado, we're going to start during World War II. Our story starts in April during the height of the Second World War. So I don't have the date there. I'm going to do it. Okay. No. You didn't live back then. How would you know?
00:01:34
Speaker
All right, our story starts in April of 1943 when four boys went into Haggly Woods looking for birds' eggs. This was something that was common to do back then. People would kind of look for food out in nature that they could bring home and share because food was kind of hard to come by. Poachers. Essentially.
00:01:56
Speaker
uh essentially yeah these are four young boys they were in a village just outside of haggly and england so where they were exactly was haggly woods based on some of the information i was able to find it kind of seems like this could have potentially been private property and they weren't really supposed to be poaching birds eggs from there um but nevertheless these four boys went looking for these birds eggs to bring home and have a little bit more to put on the table
00:02:22
Speaker
So while they were looking for these nests, one of the boys found a hollow elm tree. It was in particular a witch elm. And when I say witch, I mean W-I-C-H. It's not like W-I-T-C-H. It's not like, you know, Halloween kind of witch. It's the type of tree.
00:02:38
Speaker
So one of the boys found a hollow witch elm and thinking that the hollow inside would have been a perfect place for a bird to lay a nest, lay a nest, would have been a perfect place for a bird to make their nest and lay eggs, he decided to kind of look into the tree and see if he could find anything.
00:02:56
Speaker
Inside, he saw something that was white and roundish and thought, score, found some eggs. So he grabbed a stick. I don't know how a stick was going to help him pull eggs out of a tree, but that's what he did. So the boys decided they were going to try and pull out whatever white thing they had found. So they grabbed that tree branch and they stuck it down and tried to kind of maneuver their way and get that thing out of the tree. Instead of a bird's egg, the boy found himself holding a skull.
00:03:24
Speaker
Oh, it looked to be a human skull. There was some flesh that had decay that was still stuck to the side of the skull with hair. And the human teeth were very prominent. The teeth were crooked, and there were still small bits of decomposing skin. And so it looked very much to be a human skull. So
Boys' Dilemma and Police Involvement
00:03:46
Speaker
naturally, the boys were terrified. That's what they get for poaching.
00:03:52
Speaker
animal rights activists here. So they were terrified. So they decided they took a stick, they wrapped a bit of cloth around it, they said, and then they lowered the skull back into the tree and they made it packed. They would never speak about what they found or what they saw in Hagley Woods that day. What about the cops? They should tell them. They didn't trust no cops. They were all scared.
00:04:16
Speaker
It sounds like they weren't supposed to be there and then they found what looked to be human remains. They were young teenage
Police Findings and Initial Speculations
00:04:22
Speaker
boys from what I saw and they decided, nope, not doing this. I'm out.
00:04:28
Speaker
However, one of the boys that was said to have been the youngest boy, but that was only a couple of articles I found, he was so terrified that he would end up telling his dad that they'd found something in that elm tree and that it looked like it was a human skull. And so the father would contact the police and the police would go and investigate the woods.
00:04:47
Speaker
It was reported that one of the boys would lead the police back to the elm tree, and inside that elm tree they would find the skull, but they would also find the skeletal remains of a woman.
00:05:01
Speaker
Oddly enough, they were able to pull most of the skeleton out. It was very, very badly decomposed, like it was composed down to bone and that takes some time to happen. But inside the tree, they found the skull, most of the skeleton, but one of the hands was found, I saw buried beside the tree and not inside the tree with the rest of the body. And I believe also it might have been a shin bone was also found outside of the tree.
00:05:28
Speaker
buried as well or just outside the tree. Unclear. It was widely reported that at least the hand was outside of the tree.
00:05:37
Speaker
So that was strange. Inside the tree as well, there was the remains of her clothing. It was said that it looked like she had been wearing, she had been wearing either like a mustard or peach colored skirt. They found a pair of shoes at the bottom of the tree. I believe they were like a size five. They were smaller shoes. And they also said they found what was widely reported as a cheap wedding ring. So I don't know exactly what they meant by that, but it was definitely described in multiple sources as cheap.
00:06:07
Speaker
Was it her left hand that was buried outside the tree? I'm not sure. I didn't see that specifically just that one of the hands was removed from the skeleton and buried outside of the tree. Why would it be specifically the left hand? Well, I was just wondering like the significance of the wedding ring and
00:06:27
Speaker
But I guess that would be if it were her left hand, the ring would be buried with the hand. So never mind.
Investigation Challenges and Theories
00:06:33
Speaker
Well, from what I saw, it sounded like the shoes were underneath her body and potentially so were her clothes. And so I'm not sure that meant, I mean, the body was decomposed so badly that there's no way that we could be able to tell what exactly had happened if the shoes had been thrown in first and then she was put in the tree or what. Yeah, it was a little, a little odd.
00:06:55
Speaker
I mean, it was very odd. It's not every day you find skeletal remains in a tree. Yeah. Could they determine a time of death or an estimate of a time of death? They could determine how long they believed she'd been there. I couldn't figure out a method of death or if it had been a murder or if it had been natural causes because there was no skin. They couldn't say, oh, look, she's been strangled because she was disarticulated, dearticulated already.
00:07:22
Speaker
Because I know when you think of a skeleton, it's very easy to think of them being still together, but that's not how the body works. You're held together by ligaments and musculature. You're not going to totally fall apart, but you're not going to stay fully skeletonized without some outside assistance. So no, they couldn't tell what had happened to her. It was widely spread that she was
00:07:47
Speaker
potentially suffocated because they found a bit of taffeta in the mouth of the skull. But like I said before, one of the boys said that they wrapped cloth around the stick and then put it in there. So it's not sure if that was from what they did to the skull to put it back or why they would have done that. Either way, it was odd. There wasn't really any information to go on. Police were able to determine that the remains belonged to a woman and that she'd been put into the tree feet first.
00:08:17
Speaker
whether she was alive or very recently dead could not be determined. They knew that she couldn't have been in rigor mortis because the tree was small. It was very difficult for them to remove her from the tree. So it was unlikely that a body that was stiff could have been put in the tree. So she would have either had to be still warm
00:08:36
Speaker
were still alive, but they couldn't tell. I hope for her sake that she was dead when they put her in. Yeah, that's, that's, I wouldn't, yeah, no, I would, I would really, really hope that she was no longer on this, in this world. If that's what happened, that sounds like a horrible way to go. So they couldn't tell if she was alive or very recently dead when she'd been placed in the tree. They couldn't determine a cause of death because as I said, the body had decomposed to just be skeletal remains.
00:09:04
Speaker
has conducted said that she was a woman of middle age. They said from around like 25 to 40, but the most likely age I saw positive was 35. She was said to be five feet tall. She had brown hair and had likely given birth at least once." Isn't that cool that they can tell that? Yeah. Was it like her pelvis that gave it away? I assume it's the shape of her pelvis because when you have a kid, your pelvis somewhat separates and comes back together or as far as I understand, I'm not a scientist.
00:09:32
Speaker
but there is like some changes that happen to your pelvic girdle. Girdle, is that the right term? I don't know. If it's not, I'll cut it out. One thing that police were hopeful about is that they thought it'd be fairly easy to identify who this woman was based on her dental work. This was during World War II and people were going missing a lot. People would lose people during air raids or just it was a hard time to keep track of people. And so they had a lot of boom of missing persons cases.
00:10:02
Speaker
So police were hopeful
Public Interest and Graffiti Mystery
00:10:03
Speaker
that she'd be easily identified because she had some very distinctive teeth. Like I said, two of her teeth were kind of like crossed over. And beyond that, she had extensive dental work done. They also said that she had had a tooth in the front of her mouth that looked like it had been removed within a year of her death or like a year before her death. So interesting. I think sometimes when I think of dental records being used to identify someone, I don't think back to the 1940s. But isn't that neat? That's a way to identify someone from that long ago.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah. Although from what I was seeing nowadays, we look at dental x-rays, but then it was like they expected a dentist to be able to claim their work or say, oh yeah, I worked on someone who had teeth like that or I have records of their teeth being that extensively worked on. However, British dental records showed no result for who this woman could be. No one came forward to report a woman with similar dental work missing and authorities were stumped in the case of the woman in the witch arm would go cold.
00:11:00
Speaker
Not sure if I said this before, but I'll repeat it in case I didn't. They were able to determine that she had most likely been dead for at least 18 months just based on decomposition and the elements and things like that. However, about 18 months after the body had been found, the woman in the Elm was given a name. Like I said, this case is widely known as Bella in the Witch Elm or who put Bella in the Witch Elm.
00:11:31
Speaker
The reason she was given this name is 18 months after the case had gone cold, the sensation had kind of died down a bit, graffiti would start showing up in different parts of England. It started, they said, in the black country with graffiti popping up saying, who put Bella in the witch elm? Or who put Bella in the witch elm in Hagley Wood? And it would slowly make its way back to Hagley and other parts of England.
00:11:55
Speaker
It was believed not to have been the work of a prankster because one thing is that the witch, the word witch, which W-I-C-H, was spelled correctly and the handwriting appeared similar.
00:12:07
Speaker
So whether or not this is believed to be the work of someone who knew who the woman was or couldn't say that they knew who she was or if it was the murderer with a guilty conscience or with some sort of, you know how sometimes murderers or serial killers, they'll try and claim recognition. They want the infamy. Whether it was somebody sinking infamy or someone who wanted answers, the woman in the witch home was given the name, Bella. And so people were saying, who put Bella
Exploration of Conspiracy Theories
00:12:33
Speaker
in the witch home? And it kind of lit a fire under the public and they wanted to know
00:12:36
Speaker
What happened to this woman? How did she end up in a hollow tree in the middle of the woods? It was a very odd story. I saw some reports that the graffiti would call her Lou Bella instead of just Bella. So it's not like Isabella or Arabella or something like that. I saw Lou Bella as well. But the name Bella would stick.
00:12:55
Speaker
However, just because she had a name doesn't mean we were able to figure out who she was. It's now been 80 years since they found Bella in the Witch Elm and it's still a mystery as to who she is. In fact, it will probably always remain a mystery because her remains were lost. How were they lost? 80 is unclear. They passed hands a couple of times and then they disappeared. Interesting. Yeah, so it's not like she was buried somewhere.
00:13:24
Speaker
We don't know who took ownership of these bones. So even now with modern DNA testing, genealogy testing, in theory, if we had some of her DNA, we would be able to kind of suss out her family tree.
00:13:40
Speaker
and kind of trace back and see, oh, woman of this age went missing around this time. But we can't even do that now. So DNA testing is out. So now all that there really is to do is we can theorize and we can conspirize. So we're going to talk about some of the conspiracies of who Bella could be. Hmm. Okay. So I have, there's several theories, but I've broken them down into about five. We'll go over a couple of them pretty quickly. I think we went through that really fast anyway, but
00:14:11
Speaker
So the conspiracies, I have five that we're going to go over. The first one is a suicide theory. It's posited that potentially the woman could have been suicidal and put herself in the witch elm to die.
00:14:24
Speaker
It seems like a very painful and convoluted way to commit suicide. That's what a lot of people say. I personally don't think this is a credible theory because I think it would be insane for someone to crawl into a tree to pass away when it just seems crazy to me. And then that doesn't explain how her hand ended up buried outside of the tree. Yeah. When you say buried, does it look like a scavenger, like an animal buried it or like a human buried it?
00:14:54
Speaker
That was a theory that it had been animals. The bones did show some animal activity. So it could have been like a squirrel or a fox took it and ran off of it. But this ties into another theory where people think that it was intentionally buried. But I would think that it most likely was an animal. But then some people say, well, how could it have been an animal? Why would they have left it that close to the tree? But at the same time, it was bone. Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, so it's difficult for me to imagine someone choosing to end their life that way. And from what police said, when they had to remove her remains from the tree, it was very difficult to get Bella. I'm going to refer to her as Bella throughout this, even though that may not be her name. I feel better than this feels better to me than calling her the woman in the tree. Yeah, that's so I feel like it would have been very difficult if it was difficult to get Bella out of the witch elm, it would have been difficult for Bella to get in the witch elm.
00:15:51
Speaker
And remember that we were getting remains out versus a person who was fully alive and covered in flesh to kind of wiggle their way down an old elm tree and then get stuck there. So she would have had to climb up, go down. It just seems very, very convoluted to me. Yeah. So I don't put too much merit on that.
00:16:11
Speaker
Another theory, theory number two, is the accident theory. That this woman died accidentally. This theory supposes that there had been potentially an air strike and in a panic the woman hid herself in the witch elm and then could not get out of the witch elm.
00:16:31
Speaker
Okay, that makes more sense to me. Yeah, then that she would and yeah cuz and Then oh why didn't anyone hear her afterwards? Well, there would been air sirens going off if she was screaming, you know It's and then also I think it's unlike that. She would have been screaming during the attack as she was trying to hide And then she was like in the middle of the woods. So yeah, that does make some sense to me but then we do have the whole the wives her hand buried outside while I was I
00:17:00
Speaker
Why would you choose to climb a tree and hide inside of it? That one makes more sense than suicide, that you would accidentally get stuck. That's an unfortunate cause of death in many things. But that's another theory that she just simply got stuck in the witch elm. The next theory that we have is the spy theory.
00:17:23
Speaker
oh remember this was during world war ii and i said we could not find any british dental work to show that she was a british citizen they will come up several times well maybe the reason we couldn't find any slick dental work for this woman in this country is because she wasn't from england
00:17:39
Speaker
And that makes sense to me. Europe is, I mean, we're from the States, so it kind of seems weird to think, oh well, so many people from so many different countries be in so many different spots, but it wasn't, it's not hard to travel throughout a small, smaller countries like that. It's like a thing, you know, like you drive 11 hours in Europe and you're in like, you've crossed in different countries in America, you're probably still not out of Texas. So she might've been,
00:18:04
Speaker
not a British citizen, so I think that makes sense. So it's prevalent theory that Bella was not British. There is no clear and obvious connection between the woman in the tree and any German spies. MI6 does say that during World War II, all German spies were accounted for, and so it doesn't seem like she could potentially have been a German citizen working for the German side. They were confident that she wasn't one, however,
00:18:32
Speaker
also said it would be unlikely that a spy would be disposed of in such a way that they would hide her body in a witch elm. Yeah. This theory is kind of ludicrous to me but there's like the spy theories that she was at some German spy and she was parachuting in during an airstrike and somehow fell into
00:18:51
Speaker
I'm sorry. I'm just like landing, but somehow still sliding into the tree. I don't know. That doesn't seem very logical to me. No, it doesn't to me either. I think it's a little bit. I think it's very unlikely. Yeah, I feel like spies have way more efficient ways to hide evidence. Yeah, so they said that it was unlikely that they would be disposed of, even if spies were trying to hide a body.
00:19:18
Speaker
dumping a woman in a tree in the middle of Hagleywood seems counterproductive. This was during like airstrikes and damage and things like that were common and prevalent so why would you hide her in a witch helm and I don't know that one doesn't hold much weight to me like why would you remove the hand and bury it beside it that doesn't make any sense widely a body where it could be so easily discovered.
00:19:47
Speaker
There's some stories that you'll find where people will say that their parents heard of a German spy who was disposed of in such a way, but it is believed that she could have been a spy because former Birmingham counselor, Peter Douglas Osborne, he would say that his father was a squadron leader. His name was William Douglas Osborne. His father had been tasked with, he had to guard the murder scene when Bella was first found.
00:20:13
Speaker
And so he said, this is a direct quote, he took me up to show me the site and pointed to this big tree trunk with a hollow in the middle and said, that's where the spies body was found.
00:20:24
Speaker
Oh, so that was where part of the idea that a woman could have been this woman could have been a spy. And the theory is that she was linked to like a German spy ring that was operating in Birmingham at the time. And this article that I found it referred to it as a vague mission of cross country espionage. And I think that's very funny because clearly there's not a clear story of what she could have been doing.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like also not to throw cold water on this theory, but I think during this time, especially be very easy for people to be like, oh, well, that person's a spy just because of the paranoia of the era. And even earlier, I was wondering about how her remains could be lost. This was wartime. So I feel like it would be pretty easy for something like that to happen. Now, she could be a spy still, but she was never claimed by anyone.
00:21:15
Speaker
Well, yeah, you don't claim spies that failed in their mission. Well, one of the things they said they could have been doing on this big mission of cross country espionage, these other like munitions factories scattered around the Midlands, knowing where these were could have been very, very valuable to England's enemies.
00:21:35
Speaker
So it was kind of like a local rumor because there's a woman who eventually writes a letter into a newspaper and she goes by the name of Anna and she claims to know what has happened. We'll get to that in the letter theory, which is our last theory.
00:21:49
Speaker
someone had an interview with this woman allegedly where she said that her husband was working with this group of spies and he wanted to maintain this information about the munitions and weapons and stuff like that. And then that's where we also get the parachute theory because there was a spy who allegedly parachuted into Cambridge in 1941 which that was when they believed Bella would have been
00:22:10
Speaker
put in the witch elm. But the guy who did, brief side note, the guy who did parachute, that parachute in, his name was Joseph Yacobs, and he was caught by farm workers and turned over to police. Oh man, you had to run, Joseph. I'm glad you were caught. He parachuted in, but he wasn't there for very long. It was said that in Joseph's pocket, he had a picture of a young woman who was later identified. Her name was Clara Bauerly. Clara Bauerly.
00:22:41
Speaker
Did Joseph look like he could only afford a cheap wedding ring? That is not something that I found in my notes. Clara Bauerly was a cabaret singer and she was also like an actress and she was connected to high-level Nazis and might have been recruited as a secret service agent.
00:23:03
Speaker
So there are people who say that Clara Bauerly is Bella and that she parachuted in with Joseph and hit the witch elm and died there or she was caught and put in the witch elm. So now let's lay this theory to rest. Clara Bauerly, well first of all, I believe she's much taller than the woman's remains who were found in the witch elm. I believe she was, I want to say 5'7".
00:23:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's a bit taller than five foot. I think I saw somewhere that she was much taller. I don't have an exact height, but I did see that she was much taller. There was no parachute found near the witch elm. It was the taffeta. The taffeta of her skirt was her parachute. There was no parachute found. There was nothing found in the area before then to say someone could have parachuted in and we didn't catch them.
00:23:57
Speaker
It looks like she might have been working for the Nazis, unclear, and agents were sent all over the place. But there was a couple of different agents that were sent to Birmingham and they were caught. It's a tangled web of old, old theories. But I don't think
00:24:14
Speaker
I don't think that Clara Bauerly is the same person. I believe
Dismissal of Witchcraft Theory
00:24:18
Speaker
it was the Buzzfeed Unsolved video that I watched in this case. There was documentation of her death in a German hospital years after. Well, you had to cover up. Well, it doesn't sound like Miss Clara Bauerly disappeared. I don't think Bella in the Witch Elm was a spy who shot into it.
00:24:43
Speaker
who landed in a witch elm, because once again, it was difficult to get her out of the witch elm. It would have been difficult to get in the witch elm. So for her to like... Also, when you parachute in, you don't kind of like rock it down to earth. You float gently. So if Clara couldn't kind of... Her parachute didn't open.
00:25:02
Speaker
I guess she would have been dead by the time she hit the tree. Interesting. And now Yosuf is putting her name up all over the country. Oh wait, no, he was arrested. Her other German spy partner, who could only afford a cheap wedding ring, was writing who killed her. I love your conspiracy theory.
00:25:20
Speaker
Thank you. Mine is the best one. It's about as credible as the others. Another theory, our fourth theory is witchcraft.
00:25:34
Speaker
that Bella was put in the witch elm as some sort of satanic ritualistic sacrifice. It would make sense because it is a witch elm. Yes, and then another thing I've seen is like the name Bella, Bella Donna, that was like deadly nightshade that's been linked to witchcraft for ages. The theory of witchcraft is partially because her hand was found buried outside of the tree.
00:25:58
Speaker
Oh, okay. And I saw cited that there was another murder in the area. There wasn't much information about that murder, but they believe that both, they're both women and they were murdered in some sort of ritualistic sacrifice.
00:26:11
Speaker
Now, I don't tend to believe the witchcraft theory. There was nothing in the tree with her that looked like a talisman or something like that, or something that was meant to be ritualistic. There was nothing hanging from the tree, but again, maybe she'd been in there for so long that any satanic sacrifice stuff had disappeared.
00:26:30
Speaker
There was something called as I mentioned called the hand of glory, which is an old very old ritual where people would have a sacrifice and then they would use the hand as part of the sacrifice and it would you know, it would give them answers or lead them to treasure or give them power. Oh, that's weird. But wouldn't they take the hand with them then instead of burying it? I'm not sure. I think they might have had to bury it.
00:27:01
Speaker
But anyway, so since the bones were kind of scattered, the hands, some reports say it was severed. Although this has been disputed, some people believe that it was done by animals and it wasn't severed off. It was just decomposed and fell away from her body and a scavenger animal got to it.
00:27:20
Speaker
Now there are some things we can't ignore. There are things in witchcraft and old witchcraft where they say placing a body in a hollow tree, that is an act of witchcraft. In the occult you see a lot of worship around trees. It's kind of like a life-giving part of their mythology. Now I don't know a ton about witchcraft. I think I made that evidently clear in the West Memphis Three Case. But just based on the surface level kind of information that I've been able to look up
00:27:47
Speaker
You do see that with with cult sacrifices a blood sacrifice from being put in a tree You can kind of almost see it. It's enough to kind of make visions of a cultist dancing around a tree in the dark and
00:28:00
Speaker
kind of trying to you know make some sort of blood sacrifice there either some people said it was to end the war and that maybe this woman was part of the occult and willingly sacrifice yourself but again this is all conjecture it doesn't seem like
00:28:19
Speaker
Um, it doesn't seem likely. There wasn't much satanic activity in the forest. There wasn't something that could be linked back specifically to witchcraft. It was all very, very circumstantial and it was all very, it just seems like it was a bit of a rumor that got out of hand. I did see something about how there was apparently, I have to look into it some more, a, a coven of witches that were said to like focus essentially their witchy powers on stopping the war and stopping Germany from invading England, which if they did, they were successful.
00:28:52
Speaker
But yeah, so since, you know, they found a dead woman in a hollow tree, there were thoughts that it could have been witchcraft. But there's also a lot of arguments against it, mostly because as far as often as you hear witchcraft come up in murder cases, it's very, very rarely witchcraft. I don't think I can think of I can think of one or two cases where there was like it was satanic or witchcraft. And even then it's usually like
00:29:17
Speaker
almost seems like an afterthought or it was a manic episode. So another thing, this is kind of, I think it's stupid, but an argument against that is that since they thought that she'd had a child, it was unlikely that they would have selected her for a sacrifice because virginity apparently is important to the occult. I don't know. So I don't think it was witchcraft. What do you think, Sierra?
00:29:41
Speaker
I don't know, like I could see the tree being, because I actually did kind of think of that, like when you said witchcraft, I was like, oh yeah, like the ancient druids and like trees, like that kind of stuff is important. Not that I know much about that, but again, yeah, I think there are so many different reasons where that's probably not the best explanation. I don't know. It seems very random to me. And I feel like if it were part of a concentrated occultish effort, there would be more than one sacrifice. Like the police would be dealing with more than one of these kinds of things happening.
00:30:09
Speaker
Right. And I think there would have been more evidence of witchcraft. Like, I think there would have been
Una Hainsworth's Testimony
00:30:15
Speaker
something on her body. Some people pointed that piece of taffeta in her mouth. Like, again, the boys said they had it on the stick. I just don't think it's it's incredible. I don't think. I don't think she would have been the only one. I think there would have been more. And I feel like when you mess with like darker powers, like there's kind of a I don't want to residue probably isn't the right word, but usually there's a sense of that in the place.
00:30:38
Speaker
And if nobody was picking up on that, then that probably is a sign there wasn't a witchy ceremony that went down. And I saw a couple of different sources where they spoke directly to people who knew about not only the occult but ancient occult and stuff like that. And they're like, there's not enough that marks this as evidence of a ritualistic killing. So I don't think it was witchcraft. Yeah. There's a quote here from a book
00:31:08
Speaker
the case that foiled Fabian murder and witchcraft in rural England where Simon Reed, who's the author, says that he's spoken to a professor and she had said the very act of placing a body in the hollow tree is associated with witchcraft. The cult of tree worshiping is an ancient one and is linked with sacrifice. But the author says he believes that something of a red herring and he doesn't think it is actually witchcraft. There's not enough.
00:31:33
Speaker
So he says that Bella died at the hands of a sadistic killer who knew nothing of witchcraft or black magic. I was just about to say maybe somebody killed her and wanted it to look like a witchcraft ceremony. And so they stuffed her body in the tree. So yeah, you have some of the elements of just the fact that she was in a tree and that is prevalent. The tree of life is kind of something you think of. And there's also like blood sacrifices where I saw something about like blood sacrifices had to be made in order for like
00:32:03
Speaker
for lands to be purified. I don't think there's enough here for us to think of. Plus, it was private property. I feel like potentially private property. And it sounds like people were in there. So it's not like a cult could just be stomping around during World War II doing whatever they wanted. Anyway, so that is our penultimate theory. But our final theory is, I call it simply, the letter. Like an alphabet letter or a paper letter?
00:32:33
Speaker
paper letter, written letter. So 10 years after Bella's body was discovered, a series of fantastical kind of sensationalized articles were published in a local paper. So after several of these articles had been published, like who put Bella in the witch album? Who could have done this? A letter from a woman who called herself Anna was sent to the Wolverhampton Express in Star, which was a local paper.
00:33:04
Speaker
And in the letter, Anna, quote unquote, said the one person who could give the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. 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.
00:33:30
Speaker
Oh, which would explain why they couldn't find her dental records. I was going to point that out. Remember, they couldn't find her dental records in England. It wasn't British dental work, but if she was Dutch. Now, the newspaper would pass that letter on to local police and they would plead with Anna to come forward and clean the letter and explain herself. Like, where is she getting her information? Because she literally said,
00:33:58
Speaker
The one person who could give the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. He's dead. So according to police reports, eventually a woman by the name of Una Hainsworth came forward and claimed the letter as her own. Una, what origin is that name from? I'm not sure where she came from. It sounded like she was a British citizen. Interesting. But Una said that her husband,
00:34:27
Speaker
who was a man by the name of Jack Mossop, came home in either March or April of 1941. Remember, we believe Bellatope had been placed in the witch-home around March or April of 1941. Mossop told his wife that he'd been with someone named Von Raalt and a Dutch piece, meaning a woman.
00:34:50
Speaker
At Littleton Arms, when I googled Littleton Arms, a pub came up in Hagley. So it looks like he was at a pub with a man named Van Ralt and a woman. So Mossop came home, he was very agitated. That's one of the reasons Una remembers this. And he told Una that on the way back home from Littleton Arms, the Dutch woman passed out in the car. They didn't know what to do with her because, you know, she was drunk, she passed out, she was still alive, but she passed out in their car.
00:35:20
Speaker
Mothup said then Ralte instructed him to drive to Hagley Wood and the two of them then put the unconscious but still alive woman in a tree. What? They said they left her in the hollow tree assuming she would come to her senses and would have to get out of the tree the next morning. Um, that makes no sense. Yeah, I'm assuming alcohol was involved or that he's not telling his wife the truth about what they did to this woman.
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's more likely, I think. Masip would reportedly go insane and he would have visions of a woman staring at him from within a hollow tree. Masip would go on to pass away in a mental hospital in 1942, a year before Bella was even found. So he and his wife never thought it would be a good idea to let the police know there might be a woman in a tree.
00:36:15
Speaker
I guess not. Another thing is, it sounds like there's, it's, police believe the story to be, it's unlikely to be fully accurate because Una took like 12 years to come forward. Yeah. And say anything. However, Jack Mossup was real. His necessity does put him as dying of insanity in a mental hospital in 1942.
00:36:40
Speaker
So it could be that she knew that her husband had killed somebody and went insane from the guilt and just didn't feel the need to talk about it because the story did kind of like lose interest and then came back 10 years later. So maybe she was living with quiet regret or quiet kind of shame and just didn't want to put her husband's name out there or something. I can't speak for Una. She had to be cajoled, is a threat word.
00:37:08
Speaker
Cokes? Cokes. They're like, yeah, into into coming forward anyway. She originally wrote this under the name Anna or Anna. She didn't want to be identified. Oh, cajoled would also have worked, sustained coping or flattery. So I guess not quite cajoled. Sorry. So another thing that I think was worth noting, this kind of goes back to the spy theory.
00:37:35
Speaker
A woman named Irene Oliver came forward recently, but then our lifetime, and said that her father was a home guard during the war. And one night in 1941, her father and his partner were patrolling and coming back home from near Hagleywood when a car pulled into Hagleywood. They went to ask the man in the driver's seat for his ID. And his ID said he was in the forces, specifically he had an RAF or like Royal Air Force uniform on.
00:38:05
Speaker
It was kind of unusual to see a man in a car because there was a petrol shortage at the time. And so for someone to have a car...
00:38:13
Speaker
It is just a fancy use of petrol. Well, they are in England. Also in the car, there was another individual laying under her coat. The two officers were kind of awkward, and I didn't see if they had actually asked this person for ID. It doesn't sound like they did, but they didn't want to ask the other individual for ID because it was presumed that this individual who was hiding under her coat was naked. It was presumed that they were unclothed.
00:38:40
Speaker
Oh, I got you. Yeah. Oliver said her father thought it was odd because the man in the car was not local, but he knew about Hadley Wood. This could have been moments before the murder, or it could have been a hookup that was interrupted by two home guards who asked for ID. So, could be something, could be nothing. Could they tell how tall the person was under the coat? Probably not. Not
Sex Worker Theory and Remaining Mysteries
00:39:01
Speaker
that I saw reported. I remember that report comes from not the man himself, but from his daughter. True.
00:39:07
Speaker
This kind of does seem like a perfect explanation, however we are unable to substantiate this account. Mossop died in 1942, and again that was a year before Bella was even found, and police were unable, though they tried, to track down this Van Ralgeman. So either he didn't exist, or they could not find him.
00:39:25
Speaker
based on his last name or what have you. However, I do feel it's prudent to include that I listened to one, it was a BBC podcast, kind of like, it was like a radio coverage where the broadcaster said he was able to get access to the police file, like police gave him the police file. There was a note from 1944 in the case file. A woman came forward and she was a prostitute and she said there was another prostitute named Bella.
00:39:54
Speaker
and Bella was a sex worker who had disappeared in 1941 and had not been seen since.
00:39:59
Speaker
Oh. So, again, we are in conspiracy, this is no longer fact, but it does make some sense to me that a man, potentially a man and his friend, or just a man acting alone, would pick up a sex worker from a pub, bring her to the woods, and then if she passed out and they were drunk, or if they were just remarkably cruel and did not want to be caught, or if they killed her or whatever, if something happened, and they dump her in a witch elm,
00:40:30
Speaker
And then one man goes crazy because of his actions. That makes sense to me. Yeah. But then there's also some conspiracy theories that tie Jack Moss up to a spy ring, because he wasn't in the RAF, but he had an RAF uniform. And then you have the car and just all that, all that stuff. So kind of all, all these conspiracy theories can kind of conglomerate into one conspiracy theory. But I think that potentially Una, if she is telling the truth,
00:40:59
Speaker
That makes sense to me that her husband might have hurt somebody and lost his mind after. But that is the story of Bella in the Witch Elm. It is unsolved and it isn't unlikely to ever be solved unless we can find her remains. And even if we were able to figure out who she is and lay her to rest, we would probably never know what happened to her. Yeah.
Reflections on the Unsolved Case
00:41:25
Speaker
But that is the end of our tragic tale, and we may never get the answer to the question of who put Bella in the witch helm. Comments, questions, queries? No, I'm just gonna avoid the woods from now on.
00:41:39
Speaker
Good plan. I'm very claustrophobic. So the thought, if she was alive in that tree. Yeah. I hope she wasn't. That would be so sad. That's a horrible way to go. Yeah. And there was no discussion. I couldn't see anyone saying, well, maybe her bones were put in the tree. Maybe even then, that just seems like the clothing was found in there as well that she decomposed there. I don't think she parachuted into the hollow elm.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna rule out that spy theory. So yeah, that was my kind of deep dive into who put Bella in the witch elm if. Yeah, that's that's an old mystery. And we don't even know if it was murder or an accidental death or what. So good to avoid some wood to the next little bit.
00:42:38
Speaker
Now to avoid saying that it's sad or tragic or whatever, let's go on to positive thoughts for the week. In our time, we record these in advance. It's recently been Thanksgiving. So we're fast approaching holiday season. Yep. What is
Discussion on Grammar and Communication (Q&A)
00:42:59
Speaker
your interesting thing this week, Sierra?
00:43:01
Speaker
Well, my students had to turn in these paragraphs talking about why grammar is important. These are freshmen in college. And they talked about how it's the foundation of our language, gives us structure and order. And then I had a couple who were just very honest in their paragraphs. So one of mine wrote, although it's discouraging, it is the foundation of our language. And another student wrote that it's good because it helps us communicate.
00:43:29
Speaker
And then he added that it's good for more than just communication. He said, it can help many people across the globe learn to work on their character. The many hours of suffering spent on practicing grammar builds on many people's mental toughness. Wow. So I'm like, well, at least he's being honest. I guess so.
00:43:54
Speaker
I love grammar. I love grammar too, but it was nice because they were still giving good answers. They can see the purpose behind it, although they don't always enjoy it. It always frustrates me because I work in some capacity with
00:44:09
Speaker
Not college students, but high school students, specifically with my English tutor. Oops. Or I work as an English tutor part-time. And I can respect disliking grammar because I dislike math. Yeah. I'm a perfect cliche in that regard. But I also know that it is important to study math. So I just don't like when people go off and they're like, it's not important to study grammar. It's pointless. It's stupid. I'll never have to use this again.
00:44:36
Speaker
But everyone who ever has to read anything you've ever written will wish you would pay better attention, buddy. Like, I don't care if you can tell me what a nominative absolute is, and you don't know what a retained object is, and you don't know how to diagram a sentence. But if you know how to use a comma, and how to use the correct words, we will be good to go. Yes, a lot of them use the, what if my girls put, it saves lives.
00:45:01
Speaker
For example, there's a difference between saying, let's eat, grandma, and let's eat grandma. Oh my goodness. Yep, yep, that good comma. Don't get me started on the Oxford comma.
00:45:14
Speaker
It's so useful. It's so necessary.
Personal Anecdotes and Gratitude
00:45:17
Speaker
It provides clarity. Don't get rid of the Oxford comma. I feel positive about the Oxford comma. That is my ray of sunshine on this cloudy day outside. I love a good night. Oxford comma, England, also known as a series comma. Gotta love it. Oh, shoot. I don't know why positive thing is. Oh, have I learned anything interesting this week?
00:45:40
Speaker
I went to a friend's family's Thanksgiving dinner. It's very, very sweet of them to have us over because, you know, I have friends that feel like family's here. You are one of those people. But one of our mutual friends lives in the area. And so I went to their Thanksgiving bash. We ended up playing this round of Uno. I've never played spicy Uno. I love spicy Uno. I learned. And so that was that was a good time.
00:46:09
Speaker
So I guess that was my positive the week I about broke my wrist having to like one of the rules was when someone played a six you had to like slap that slap the deck or something and so I slapped the floor although at one point our mutual friend who is
00:46:23
Speaker
It was pretty, pretty pregnant at this point. Like, it's unavoidable. She's officially, I told her the other day, like, you're officially, like, when you turn around, it's a surprise month pregnant. Like, but... She's so cute. I love her dearly. She, like...
00:46:40
Speaker
she went to go put a card down and she like rolled forward because we were like sitting on the ground and she's like oh my goodness and her mother-in-law was like don't squish my grandbaby like and she's like she's fine your grandbaby's already squished there's that much room in there like your daughter-in-law can't breathe man like she like her lungs don't got room for nothing in there like but yeah i know i'm thankful this week for my friends and for spicy or not i'm thankful for my friends too
00:47:12
Speaker
No, I'm not thankful for crimes, but I'm thankful for people that solve them. Amen. But yeah, that has been this week's case and this week's... I don't feel like mine was a positive thought. Whenever I edit these, I'm like, Sierra always has something interesting to share. I'm like, I'll play Spicy Uno. Friends. You're thankful for your friends. That's a positive thing. There you go. I'm thankful for my friends and my family. And Spicy Uno is a positive thing for people to look into because it's a fun game. Play Spicy Uno.
00:47:39
Speaker
The best rule is
Teaser for Next Episode
00:47:40
Speaker
the sevens rule where you can't talk until someone plays another seven and every word you speak accidentally is a card you have to pick up. Pretty dope. Especially when people don't realize we played a seven. And it's just tense silence the entire time. But yeah, so.
00:47:57
Speaker
Next week, Sierra will be walking us through the murder of Tim McLean. Yep. If you are at all squeamish, maybe skip next week. So next week, it'll just be Kaylee. I'm just kidding. We're going to power through. I was looking at our next several cases, and I was like, man, I was mean to her.
00:48:18
Speaker
No, it'll be okay. But yeah, next week, the tragic and senseless death of Tim McLean. And that one is interesting because Tim McLean's murderer is walking free. I didn't know that part of the story yet. Yeah, it'll be fun. All right. Well, I'll be thinking of something interesting to talk about at the end of next week's episode. But until then, be aware. Take care. And we'll see you next week. Goodbye.