June 12, 2024 • 18 mins
Bella in the Wych Elm mystery remains unsolved since 1943 when a woman’s skeleton was found in Worcestershire, England. Despite media attention, including articles, films, and even an opera, her identity and death circumstances are unknown, with her skeleton and autopsy report lost. The case, estimated from 1941, continues to intrigue and puzzle.
Get ad-free episodes and support the show at ScaryMysteryClub.com
Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
Get ad-free episodes and support the show at ScaryMysteryClub.com
Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm so thankful for that Netflix autoshut off or whatever, like it's just
are you still watching? Really?I find it very shaming because it's like,
yes, how dare you? Ofcourse I'm still watching? And you
know how like they say that,you know, dads when they're watching TV
and you try to turn it offbecause they're asleep, They're like, I
was watching that. No, sorry, you were definitely asleep during that episode
(00:21):
of burn. Notice. Welcome toScary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about
scary things that surprised us around theInternet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle Edwin.
You're a fourteen year old boy.Yay. We are in England nineteen
(00:44):
forty three. So the war ison and rations are low bored. You
and your three friends decide to gofor a bit of poaching or bird nesting,
as this specific type of coaching waswhat you were going to go do.
Stealing eggs? Yeah wow, Andyou're gonna go to the Hagley estate
owned by Lord Cobham. Yes thisis trespassing. Yes this is illegal,
(01:11):
but also it's something to do.You and your friends are strolling through the
ancient English woods, laughing at oldCobham what a silly old lord he is.
It's a lovely day, the birdsare chirping, and you spot an
old witch elm tree, a spookyname for a European elm species. It
(01:34):
has a long, single trunk thatlooks like it might be hollow, and
a tall, narrow crown. Also, I just want to clarify it's spelled
wyh. They grow in Northern Britainin the Northern British Isles and could be
found in Sweden and Norway. Thinkingthis would be a particularly good place to
find birds nests, you climb upto investigate. As you climb, you
(01:59):
glance down in the hole of thetrunk. Since it's hollow, you catch
a glimpse of something that's white,like an eggshell. You reach in the
tree. This is bigger and harderthan an egg. You pull it out.
It's a human skull. And thisis a quote from the real boy
that found it. By the way, there was a small patch of rotting
(02:20):
flesh on the floorhead with lank hairattached to it, and the two front
teeth were crooked. The reality ofthe situation sinks in. You and your
friends are on the Hagley estate illegallytrespassing. Ah, you guys are freaked
out, so you carefully place theskull back where you found it, in
(02:42):
the hollow of the tree of thewitch Bell, and you shimme down the
tree. All four of you sprinthome, bowing, never to mention a
word to your parents. What arethe odds of that? Like? Right?
Like, I don't know, Likeit just some random kids on a
big ass property that just randomly fineand a skull a skull, It's pretty
(03:02):
weird. But obviously because your edwin, your conscious slowly gets the better of
you and you tell your parents andthe police are finally called. Oh no.
When the police checked the trunk ofthe tree, they find an almost
complete skeleton with a shoe, afake gold wedding ring, some fragments of
(03:23):
clothing. The skull was valuable evidencein that it still had tufts of hair
and a clear dental pattern, despitesome teeth that were missing. After further
investigation, the remains of the handwere found some distance from the tree.
What ok. Yeah. The bodywas sent for forensic investigation and it was
(03:45):
established that it was a female aroundthirty five years old who'd been dead for
at least eighteen months, so herdeath probably would have occurred in October nineteen
forty one. Also, they foundtaffida in her mouth, suggesting that she
had been suffocated. Why are youfake wedding ring? Like, how do
you know it's fake? First ofall, probably because it's not real gold,
(04:05):
That's what they said on multiple Whatif you didn't want to wear your
real gold ring because you were outand about doing something, or you needed
to look married because you knowed youwere going to die, who knows.
From the measurement of the trunk ofthe tree, it was pretty clear that
her body had been stuffed in theirwhile it was still warm, because if
(04:25):
rigor mortis had set in and shewouldn't have been able to fit, So
someone had stuffed her in their whileshe was still warm. So she was
stuffed in a tree. Yeah,she was stuffed in a tree. This
woman was stuffed in a tree.Even with the distinctive dental impression she had
those two crooked front teeth and beingable to tell what she was wearing when
she disappeared because her clothes were prettywell intact. They checked all the reports
(04:49):
of missing people in the region,couldn't find any that matched her, and
the case eventually went cold and basicallycold for a year. I mean,
the war was on. Lots ofpeople were of missing during the war too,
which is you know, there waslike England, it was being bombed.
It was just a lot going on. So this case just slipped through
(05:09):
the cracks. That's when it happenedabout a year later, sprawled on the
wall in the middle of town writtenin chalk, who put Bella down?
The witch up. Since the nineteenseventies, similar graffiti has sporadically appeared around
(05:30):
the Hagley Obelisk near where the woman'sbody was discovered. It was her name,
Bella. Rumors swirled in town thatit had been scrawled by like the
murderer or an ex lover, oreven like the boys aka you who had
discovered her. Or was it theghost of the woman Bella herself keeping the
(05:51):
murder from being forgotten. So manyquestions, so many questions. Oh yeah,
oh hey, this is great becauseover the last eighty years people have
come back to this case periodically andjust they come up with new theories all
the time, and so it's like, yeah, like there's always some new
speculation on what happened to her andwho she was because they've never found out.
(06:15):
If nobody knows who she is,that's that's what gets me. So
she's probably not from there, notfrom the area. She's probably taken there
and just dumped, or maybe someonethat was kept captive. And I don't
know about the name Bella. Ithink I might have named a few things
that I don't know who they are. I do that all the time.
Sometimes it's people I'm just like,I just make up their name and then
(06:39):
hope they correct me. I knowit's a weird habit and really bad and
disrespectful, but I've done it andintentionally. He just calls me Suzanne for
some reason, you know, correcthim on it. Yeah, I think
that might have been a made upthing. Bella might be just but it
sounds cool. Or the goos wroteit herself. I like that. So
(07:08):
one of the first theories is thatit had to do with MI I five
Nazi spies. There's an MI fiveto classified file about Joseph Jacobs, the
last man put to death at theTower of London. A German spy parachuted
into Cambridgeshire in nineteen forty one butbroke his ankle when landing, which is
unfortunate's that's spy one oh one.I think you strengthen your ankles. And
(07:32):
obviously he was soon arrested. Soanyway, this guy in his pocket was
found a photo of his lover,a German cabaret singer an actress named Clara
Bowery. Jacob said that she wasbeing trained as a spy and that when
he made contact, she might havebeen sent over to England after him.
However, there is no evidence thatClara Bowery parachuted into England at all,
(07:57):
and several witnesses described that Clara Bowerywas actually six feet tall, while Bella
in the witch Elm was about fivefeet tall. Also, it was determined
that Clara Bowerley had died in Berlinin nineteen forty two. In nineteen fifty
three, another theory surfaced that thevictim was actually a Dutch woman named Clara
(08:18):
Bella Dronkers another Clara Yeah weird right, and she had been killed by a
German spiring consisting of a British officer, a Dutchman and a music hall artist
for knowing too much quote unquote,although there's no available records or evidence to
support this whatsoever. Just one ofthose theories where it's like, oh,
(08:43):
another theory. One possible victim wasreported to the police in nineteen forty four
by a Birmingham sex worker. Inthe report, she stated that another sex
worker called Bella who'd worked on HagleyRoad, had disappeared about three years previous.
The name Bella or Louibella suggested thatthe graffiti writer was probably aware of
(09:05):
the identity of the victim, sopossibly this missing woman. Then we started
to get real weird. In nineteenfifty three, this woman named Una Mosap
basically was interviewed and she said herex husband Jack Mussop, had confessed to
family members that he and a Dutchmancalled Van Ralt had put the woman in
(09:28):
the tree. Mossap and Van Raltmet for a drink at the Littleton Arms
of pug and Hagley. Later thatnight, Musap and the woman who became
Bella became drunk and passed out whilethey were driving. Why were they driving
with her in the car? Wherewere they going? What was going on?
(09:50):
And then the men decided when shepassed out, to put her in
the hollow of the tree in thewoods in hopes that in the morning she
would wake up and be frightened seeingthe error of her ways. That's trying
to teach her a lesson. Yeah, for passing out drug which sounds so
(10:11):
made up. Listeners. Don't putanyone in a tree if they pass out,
do that, Listeners, scary mysterysurprise cares about you and I And
I'm also just telling you don't putanyone in a tree. That's all.
It's not cool. Jack moss Upwas confined to the Stanford Medical Hospital because
he kept having reoccurring dreams of awoman staring out at him from a tree.
(10:35):
God so cepy I know. Andthen he died in the hospital before
the body was even found in thewitch Elm. Yeah, so who knows
if it was him. But thelikelihood of this being the correct explanation is
questioned because like, why did Unamoss Up decide to come forward with this
information like ten years after Jack's death? You know, people just thought that
(10:58):
was weird, trying to get someattention. I don't never understand. I
don't even understand confessions honestly, Likewhen people say, yeah, I did
it, is it your conscience?Yeah, I don't know. And then
we get to your favorite aliens justno good old witchcraft. So in nineteen
forty five, this woman named MargaretMurray, she was an anthropologist and an
(11:22):
archaeologist at the University of London,proposed the more radical theory witchcraft because she
believed that the severing of one handwas consistent with a ritual called the hand
of glory after the victim had beenkilled by the Romani people during an occult
ritual. And so I had tolook up what the hand of glory was
(11:45):
because I was like, what thefuck is that? Which is funny because
they make candles like this now.So the hand of glory is a dried,
pickled hand of a hanged man,often specified as the left. It's
supposed to be the Latin for sinisterleftists, and then uh, the person
(12:05):
that's hanged for the murderer, it'sthe hand that did the deed. That's
what it's like looked as. Soyou take the hand that did the murdering
the dominant hand. I'm assuming whateverthe left or whatever these are, this
is a spell. You're doing whateveryou feel like. So anyway, you're
basically you use the hand to makea candle, and this candle if you
(12:28):
presented to someone would render them motionless, so they wouldn't be able to move.
The hand of glory could also unlockany door it came across. So
that's what the hand of glory issupposed to do. Isn't that really weird?
Isn't that weird? So that's thehand of glory. You'd have to
(12:50):
take it from a hanged man anduse his evil and like sometimes you would
use like their hair or whatever,and you'd the wick of the candle would
be the hangman's hair. Have youever burned hair? No? But also
i'm assuming just burning anything made oflike human any smile. Also, it's
(13:13):
unclear if they used the hand tomake a mold to make a candle,
or if they somehow shape the handto burn like a candle. I'm not
clear on that. You guys aregonna have to google it. The name
is, it doesn't fit it.Hand of glory doesn't fit it. Sounds
like it would be a better spellthan what it is. Honestly, it's
(13:33):
like, oh, this will bringyou all this prosperous whatever. Also,
the police kind of suspect that itwas animals that scattered the bones, because
she'd been there for like eighteen months. But this idea of witchcraft really excited
the local press and led investigators toconsider another seemingly ritualistic, gruesome murder.
(13:54):
There was another killing kind of inthe area of this guy named Charles Walton
in this village called Lower Quentin.And this murder's kind of famous because it
was like bizarrely gruesome at the timebecause he had had his throat cut and
like also he was pinned to theground through the neck with a pitchfork.
(14:15):
The weird thing is is people werelike, oh, he was killed ritualistically
because he's a witch. Also Bellashort for Bella Donna a really important planted
witchcraft. So you know, there'slike there's a lot of witchcraft ties here.
It could go a lot of ways. I like it. Like it.
A case review by the West MerciaPolice was closed in twenty fourteen.
(14:39):
I think it was just ruled unsolved, And in twenty eighteen, a television
program called Nazi Murder Mysteries, youknow, our favorite show, Nazi Murder
Mysteries, basically had a forensic facialreconstruction created of her skull from the photographs
of the call. And it wascommissioned by Andrew Spark or Sparky for his
(15:03):
book and hopes that like some personwould have a photo in their attic and
like recognize a family member. Butthis didn't happen, so this ended in
a dead end. And the weirdthing is is that her body has disappeared
and so has her case file.Granted, it is like an eighty year
old case. I sign a museum, I'm pretty sure. In May two
(15:26):
thousand and three, the BBC launchwould appeal to museums to track down the
victim's remains to try and carry outDNA analysis, and they still haven't found
them. Some collector. Man,those guys are creepy. I'm telling you,
Yeah, someone's got it somewhere.I would want something like that,
honestly, Well, let's get theWitch on boat. It would be so
cool to have something just a reallyhaunted thing, or like something that's just
(15:50):
very out there. Anyway, thecase has become one of Britain's greatest unsolved
mysteries and at this point it's probablynever gonna be solved because it's like anybody
who's actually involved in it is dead. The only hope they really have is
DNA. So who put Bella inthe Witch Elm graffiti still occasionally appears in
(16:11):
Birmingham, you know, and it'sprobably written by pranksters or kids, but
it could be Bella never letting usforget. I like that. I like
that second option. I think Bellanever letting us forget is solid. All
right, we're starting a new segment. We're going to read your reviews and
comments, and we love for youto call in Edwin. How are we
(16:33):
going to do that? On thewebsite, There's going to be a little
button that says send an audio ScaryMystery Surprise dot com and you can do
it on Instagram too. Yeah,you can send us an audio like damn
us, nothing creepy please. Michelle'susually the first one, the first line
of defense here, and I wouldprefer to not deal with creepy things,
please, Amanda K fifteen. Myfamily loves Scary Mystery Surprise. Edwin and
(16:59):
Michelle are absolutely hilarious together and welook forward to listening each week. My
eleven year old daughter actually discovered Edwinon her own, and we have listened
to every episode of his other podcast, Thanks Wow, Oh that's nice.
When we listen to SMS, weinstantly found a favorite. Thank you Edwin
and Michelle for working so hard onall your podcasts and keeping us entertained.
We truly feel like you are ourbesties. Hope you read this and we
(17:22):
did. We read it owl loud. Send in your comments, you guys,
reviews dms uh, we're gonna startreading them here. Yeah, and
we're gonna you know, and ifyou leave a message on our website,
we're on our Instagram, we'll playit on the air and then we'll answer
your questions Scarymisterysurprise dot com or onour Instagram at Scary Mystery Surprise. I
think on that note, you guysshould join the club at Scarymistery Club dot
(17:45):
com. Cool. What are wegonna talk about next week? Edwin,
I don't know. I think it'llbe a surprise. Scary Mystery Surprise is
hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Komarubias. This podcast GAS was edited and sound
designed by Sarah Borhez Wendel, aVW Sound
I'm so thankful for that Netflix autoshut off or whatever, like it's just
are you still watching? Really?I find it very shaming because it's like,
yes, how dare you? Ofcourse I'm still watching? And you
know how like they say that,you know, dads when they're watching TV
and you try to turn it offbecause they're asleep, They're like, I
was watching that. No, sorry, you were definitely asleep during that episode
(00:21):
of burn. Notice. Welcome toScary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about
scary things that surprised us around theInternet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle Edwin.
You're a fourteen year old boy.Yay. We are in England nineteen
(00:44):
forty three. So the war ison and rations are low bored. You
and your three friends decide to gofor a bit of poaching or bird nesting,
as this specific type of coaching waswhat you were going to go do.
Stealing eggs? Yeah wow, Andyou're gonna go to the Hagley estate
owned by Lord Cobham. Yes thisis trespassing. Yes this is illegal,
(01:11):
but also it's something to do.You and your friends are strolling through the
ancient English woods, laughing at oldCobham what a silly old lord he is.
It's a lovely day, the birdsare chirping, and you spot an
old witch elm tree, a spookyname for a European elm species. It
(01:34):
has a long, single trunk thatlooks like it might be hollow, and
a tall, narrow crown. Also, I just want to clarify it's spelled
wyh. They grow in Northern Britainin the Northern British Isles and could be
found in Sweden and Norway. Thinkingthis would be a particularly good place to
find birds nests, you climb upto investigate. As you climb, you
(01:59):
glance down in the hole of thetrunk. Since it's hollow, you catch
a glimpse of something that's white,like an eggshell. You reach in the
tree. This is bigger and harderthan an egg. You pull it out.
It's a human skull. And thisis a quote from the real boy
that found it. By the way, there was a small patch of rotting
(02:20):
flesh on the floorhead with lank hairattached to it, and the two front
teeth were crooked. The reality ofthe situation sinks in. You and your
friends are on the Hagley estate illegallytrespassing. Ah, you guys are freaked
out, so you carefully place theskull back where you found it, in
(02:42):
the hollow of the tree of thewitch Bell, and you shimme down the
tree. All four of you sprinthome, bowing, never to mention a
word to your parents. What arethe odds of that? Like? Right?
Like, I don't know, Likeit just some random kids on a
big ass property that just randomly fineand a skull a skull, It's pretty
(03:02):
weird. But obviously because your edwin, your conscious slowly gets the better of
you and you tell your parents andthe police are finally called. Oh no.
When the police checked the trunk ofthe tree, they find an almost
complete skeleton with a shoe, afake gold wedding ring, some fragments of
(03:23):
clothing. The skull was valuable evidencein that it still had tufts of hair
and a clear dental pattern, despitesome teeth that were missing. After further
investigation, the remains of the handwere found some distance from the tree.
What ok. Yeah. The bodywas sent for forensic investigation and it was
(03:45):
established that it was a female aroundthirty five years old who'd been dead for
at least eighteen months, so herdeath probably would have occurred in October nineteen
forty one. Also, they foundtaffida in her mouth, suggesting that she
had been suffocated. Why are youfake wedding ring? Like, how do
you know it's fake? First ofall, probably because it's not real gold,
(04:05):
That's what they said on multiple Whatif you didn't want to wear your
real gold ring because you were outand about doing something, or you needed
to look married because you knowed youwere going to die, who knows.
From the measurement of the trunk ofthe tree, it was pretty clear that
her body had been stuffed in theirwhile it was still warm, because if
(04:25):
rigor mortis had set in and shewouldn't have been able to fit, So
someone had stuffed her in their whileshe was still warm. So she was
stuffed in a tree. Yeah,she was stuffed in a tree. This
woman was stuffed in a tree.Even with the distinctive dental impression she had
those two crooked front teeth and beingable to tell what she was wearing when
she disappeared because her clothes were prettywell intact. They checked all the reports
(04:49):
of missing people in the region,couldn't find any that matched her, and
the case eventually went cold and basicallycold for a year. I mean,
the war was on. Lots ofpeople were of missing during the war too,
which is you know, there waslike England, it was being bombed.
It was just a lot going on. So this case just slipped through
(05:09):
the cracks. That's when it happenedabout a year later, sprawled on the
wall in the middle of town writtenin chalk, who put Bella down?
The witch up. Since the nineteenseventies, similar graffiti has sporadically appeared around
(05:30):
the Hagley Obelisk near where the woman'sbody was discovered. It was her name,
Bella. Rumors swirled in town thatit had been scrawled by like the
murderer or an ex lover, oreven like the boys aka you who had
discovered her. Or was it theghost of the woman Bella herself keeping the
(05:51):
murder from being forgotten. So manyquestions, so many questions. Oh yeah,
oh hey, this is great becauseover the last eighty years people have
come back to this case periodically andjust they come up with new theories all
the time, and so it's like, yeah, like there's always some new
speculation on what happened to her andwho she was because they've never found out.
(06:15):
If nobody knows who she is,that's that's what gets me. So
she's probably not from there, notfrom the area. She's probably taken there
and just dumped, or maybe someonethat was kept captive. And I don't
know about the name Bella. Ithink I might have named a few things
that I don't know who they are. I do that all the time.
Sometimes it's people I'm just like,I just make up their name and then
(06:39):
hope they correct me. I knowit's a weird habit and really bad and
disrespectful, but I've done it andintentionally. He just calls me Suzanne for
some reason, you know, correcthim on it. Yeah, I think
that might have been a made upthing. Bella might be just but it
sounds cool. Or the goos wroteit herself. I like that. So
(07:08):
one of the first theories is thatit had to do with MI I five
Nazi spies. There's an MI fiveto classified file about Joseph Jacobs, the
last man put to death at theTower of London. A German spy parachuted
into Cambridgeshire in nineteen forty one butbroke his ankle when landing, which is
unfortunate's that's spy one oh one.I think you strengthen your ankles. And
(07:32):
obviously he was soon arrested. Soanyway, this guy in his pocket was
found a photo of his lover,a German cabaret singer an actress named Clara
Bowery. Jacob said that she wasbeing trained as a spy and that when
he made contact, she might havebeen sent over to England after him.
However, there is no evidence thatClara Bowery parachuted into England at all,
(07:57):
and several witnesses described that Clara Bowerywas actually six feet tall, while Bella
in the witch Elm was about fivefeet tall. Also, it was determined
that Clara Bowerley had died in Berlinin nineteen forty two. In nineteen fifty
three, another theory surfaced that thevictim was actually a Dutch woman named Clara
(08:18):
Bella Dronkers another Clara Yeah weird right, and she had been killed by a
German spiring consisting of a British officer, a Dutchman and a music hall artist
for knowing too much quote unquote,although there's no available records or evidence to
support this whatsoever. Just one ofthose theories where it's like, oh,
(08:43):
another theory. One possible victim wasreported to the police in nineteen forty four
by a Birmingham sex worker. Inthe report, she stated that another sex
worker called Bella who'd worked on HagleyRoad, had disappeared about three years previous.
The name Bella or Louibella suggested thatthe graffiti writer was probably aware of
(09:05):
the identity of the victim, sopossibly this missing woman. Then we started
to get real weird. In nineteenfifty three, this woman named Una Mosap
basically was interviewed and she said herex husband Jack Mussop, had confessed to
family members that he and a Dutchmancalled Van Ralt had put the woman in
(09:28):
the tree. Mossap and Van Raltmet for a drink at the Littleton Arms
of pug and Hagley. Later thatnight, Musap and the woman who became
Bella became drunk and passed out whilethey were driving. Why were they driving
with her in the car? Wherewere they going? What was going on?
(09:50):
And then the men decided when shepassed out, to put her in
the hollow of the tree in thewoods in hopes that in the morning she
would wake up and be frightened seeingthe error of her ways. That's trying
to teach her a lesson. Yeah, for passing out drug which sounds so
(10:11):
made up. Listeners. Don't putanyone in a tree if they pass out,
do that, Listeners, scary mysterysurprise cares about you and I And
I'm also just telling you don't putanyone in a tree. That's all.
It's not cool. Jack moss Upwas confined to the Stanford Medical Hospital because
he kept having reoccurring dreams of awoman staring out at him from a tree.
(10:35):
God so cepy I know. Andthen he died in the hospital before
the body was even found in thewitch Elm. Yeah, so who knows
if it was him. But thelikelihood of this being the correct explanation is
questioned because like, why did Unamoss Up decide to come forward with this
information like ten years after Jack's death? You know, people just thought that
(10:58):
was weird, trying to get someattention. I don't never understand. I
don't even understand confessions honestly, Likewhen people say, yeah, I did
it, is it your conscience?Yeah, I don't know. And then
we get to your favorite aliens justno good old witchcraft. So in nineteen
forty five, this woman named MargaretMurray, she was an anthropologist and an
(11:22):
archaeologist at the University of London,proposed the more radical theory witchcraft because she
believed that the severing of one handwas consistent with a ritual called the hand
of glory after the victim had beenkilled by the Romani people during an occult
ritual. And so I had tolook up what the hand of glory was
(11:45):
because I was like, what thefuck is that? Which is funny because
they make candles like this now.So the hand of glory is a dried,
pickled hand of a hanged man,often specified as the left. It's
supposed to be the Latin for sinisterleftists, and then uh, the person
(12:05):
that's hanged for the murderer, it'sthe hand that did the deed. That's
what it's like looked as. Soyou take the hand that did the murdering
the dominant hand. I'm assuming whateverthe left or whatever these are, this
is a spell. You're doing whateveryou feel like. So anyway, you're
basically you use the hand to makea candle, and this candle if you
(12:28):
presented to someone would render them motionless, so they wouldn't be able to move.
The hand of glory could also unlockany door it came across. So
that's what the hand of glory issupposed to do. Isn't that really weird?
Isn't that weird? So that's thehand of glory. You'd have to
(12:50):
take it from a hanged man anduse his evil and like sometimes you would
use like their hair or whatever,and you'd the wick of the candle would
be the hangman's hair. Have youever burned hair? No? But also
i'm assuming just burning anything made oflike human any smile. Also, it's
(13:13):
unclear if they used the hand tomake a mold to make a candle,
or if they somehow shape the handto burn like a candle. I'm not
clear on that. You guys aregonna have to google it. The name
is, it doesn't fit it.Hand of glory doesn't fit it. Sounds
like it would be a better spellthan what it is. Honestly, it's
(13:33):
like, oh, this will bringyou all this prosperous whatever. Also,
the police kind of suspect that itwas animals that scattered the bones, because
she'd been there for like eighteen months. But this idea of witchcraft really excited
the local press and led investigators toconsider another seemingly ritualistic, gruesome murder.
(13:54):
There was another killing kind of inthe area of this guy named Charles Walton
in this village called Lower Quentin.And this murder's kind of famous because it
was like bizarrely gruesome at the timebecause he had had his throat cut and
like also he was pinned to theground through the neck with a pitchfork.
(14:15):
The weird thing is is people werelike, oh, he was killed ritualistically
because he's a witch. Also Bellashort for Bella Donna a really important planted
witchcraft. So you know, there'slike there's a lot of witchcraft ties here.
It could go a lot of ways. I like it. Like it.
A case review by the West MerciaPolice was closed in twenty fourteen.
(14:39):
I think it was just ruled unsolved, And in twenty eighteen, a television
program called Nazi Murder Mysteries, youknow, our favorite show, Nazi Murder
Mysteries, basically had a forensic facialreconstruction created of her skull from the photographs
of the call. And it wascommissioned by Andrew Spark or Sparky for his
(15:03):
book and hopes that like some personwould have a photo in their attic and
like recognize a family member. Butthis didn't happen, so this ended in
a dead end. And the weirdthing is is that her body has disappeared
and so has her case file.Granted, it is like an eighty year
old case. I sign a museum, I'm pretty sure. In May two
(15:26):
thousand and three, the BBC launchwould appeal to museums to track down the
victim's remains to try and carry outDNA analysis, and they still haven't found
them. Some collector. Man,those guys are creepy. I'm telling you,
Yeah, someone's got it somewhere.I would want something like that,
honestly, Well, let's get theWitch on boat. It would be so
cool to have something just a reallyhaunted thing, or like something that's just
(15:50):
very out there. Anyway, thecase has become one of Britain's greatest unsolved
mysteries and at this point it's probablynever gonna be solved because it's like anybody
who's actually involved in it is dead. The only hope they really have is
DNA. So who put Bella inthe Witch Elm graffiti still occasionally appears in
(16:11):
Birmingham, you know, and it'sprobably written by pranksters or kids, but
it could be Bella never letting usforget. I like that. I like
that second option. I think Bellanever letting us forget is solid. All
right, we're starting a new segment. We're going to read your reviews and
comments, and we love for youto call in Edwin. How are we
(16:33):
going to do that? On thewebsite, There's going to be a little
button that says send an audio ScaryMystery Surprise dot com and you can do
it on Instagram too. Yeah,you can send us an audio like damn
us, nothing creepy please. Michelle'susually the first one, the first line
of defense here, and I wouldprefer to not deal with creepy things,
please, Amanda K fifteen. Myfamily loves Scary Mystery Surprise. Edwin and
(16:59):
Michelle are absolutely hilarious together and welook forward to listening each week. My
eleven year old daughter actually discovered Edwinon her own, and we have listened
to every episode of his other podcast, Thanks Wow, Oh that's nice.
When we listen to SMS, weinstantly found a favorite. Thank you Edwin
and Michelle for working so hard onall your podcasts and keeping us entertained.
We truly feel like you are ourbesties. Hope you read this and we
(17:22):
did. We read it owl loud. Send in your comments, you guys,
reviews dms uh, we're gonna startreading them here. Yeah, and
we're gonna you know, and ifyou leave a message on our website,
we're on our Instagram, we'll playit on the air and then we'll answer
your questions Scarymisterysurprise dot com or onour Instagram at Scary Mystery Surprise. I
think on that note, you guysshould join the club at Scarymistery Club dot
(17:45):
com. Cool. What are wegonna talk about next week? Edwin,
I don't know. I think it'llbe a surprise. Scary Mystery Surprise is
hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Komarubias. This podcast GAS was edited and sound
designed by Sarah Borhez Wendel, aVW Sound
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