August 7, 2025 • 45 mins
Welcome back, Spooky Squad, to another episode of Scream and Sugar, your true crime coffee hour.
Today's case was suggested to us, and it's a wild one. In April 1943, four boys trespassing in Hagley Wood stumbled upon something horrifying inside a hollow wych elm tree: the skeletal remains of a woman stuffed tightly into its trunk. What followed was a bizarre investigation tangled with witchcraft, wartime espionage, coded graffiti, and occult rumors. In this episode of Scream and Sugar, we unravel the enduring mystery of "Bella"—a woman with no official identity but whose ghost still lingers in chalked messages on brick walls: Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? Was she a Nazi spy? A victim of dark rituals? Or someone forgotten by history, hidden in plain sight? Grab your coffee and your curiosity—this one is a trip into the eerie unknown.
Stay spooky, babies!
Case Notes:
https://topbeercrew.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/a-brief-history-in-time-halesowen-pubs/#:~:text=The%202nd%20half%20of,High%20St%20and%20Whitehall%2C%20Halesowenhttps://calgarycitizen.com/p/rose-and-crown-historyhttps://crimereads.com/who-put-bella-in-the-wych-elm/#:~:text=fate%20as%20he%20was%20executed,Berlin%20hospital%20in%20December%201942https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2023/05/bbc-investigator-asks-museums-for-help-tracing-remains-of-murder-victim/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%E2%80%99re%20hoping%20to%20be%20able,%E2%80%9Dhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-07/mystery-over-who-put-bella-down-the-wych-elm-/102171844https://crimereads.com/who-put-bella-in-the-wych-elm/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/is-this-the-bella-in-the-wych-elm-unravelling-the-mystery-of-the-skull-found-in-a-tree-trunk-8546497.htmlhttps://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/features/mystery-murder-and-half-a-century-of-suspense-745330.htmlhttps://www.thefreelibrary.com/%27Bella%27+murder+mystery+returns+to+haunt+village.-a060491738#:~:text=The%20unidentified%20woman%20was%20dubbed,of%20a%20black%20magic%20executionhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-07/mystery-over-who-put-bella-down-the-wych-elm-/102171844
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/scream-and-sugar-true-crime-coffee-hour--6015946/support.
Today's case was suggested to us, and it's a wild one. In April 1943, four boys trespassing in Hagley Wood stumbled upon something horrifying inside a hollow wych elm tree: the skeletal remains of a woman stuffed tightly into its trunk. What followed was a bizarre investigation tangled with witchcraft, wartime espionage, coded graffiti, and occult rumors. In this episode of Scream and Sugar, we unravel the enduring mystery of "Bella"—a woman with no official identity but whose ghost still lingers in chalked messages on brick walls: Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? Was she a Nazi spy? A victim of dark rituals? Or someone forgotten by history, hidden in plain sight? Grab your coffee and your curiosity—this one is a trip into the eerie unknown.
Stay spooky, babies!
Case Notes:
https://topbeercrew.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/a-brief-history-in-time-halesowen-pubs/#:~:text=The%202nd%20half%20of,High%20St%20and%20Whitehall%2C%20Halesowenhttps://calgarycitizen.com/p/rose-and-crown-historyhttps://crimereads.com/who-put-bella-in-the-wych-elm/#:~:text=fate%20as%20he%20was%20executed,Berlin%20hospital%20in%20December%201942https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2023/05/bbc-investigator-asks-museums-for-help-tracing-remains-of-murder-victim/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%E2%80%99re%20hoping%20to%20be%20able,%E2%80%9Dhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-07/mystery-over-who-put-bella-down-the-wych-elm-/102171844https://crimereads.com/who-put-bella-in-the-wych-elm/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/is-this-the-bella-in-the-wych-elm-unravelling-the-mystery-of-the-skull-found-in-a-tree-trunk-8546497.htmlhttps://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/features/mystery-murder-and-half-a-century-of-suspense-745330.htmlhttps://www.thefreelibrary.com/%27Bella%27+murder+mystery+returns+to+haunt+village.-a060491738#:~:text=The%20unidentified%20woman%20was%20dubbed,of%20a%20black%20magic%20executionhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-07/mystery-over-who-put-bella-down-the-wych-elm-/102171844
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/scream-and-sugar-true-crime-coffee-hour--6015946/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Scream and Sugar,
your true crime coffee hour, where we dive into the
darker side of humanity while enjoying a little sweetness on
the side. I am your host, Sahara, I'm Candice, and
today we are going to be talking about the case
of the Hagley Wood, better known as We'll put Bella
in the witch ump.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Indeed in.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So, Hi, everybody, welcome bya we miss y'all. Hey, yeah,
he's only been a week, but it feels like years
right today. So today's case, I'm actually doing it. It
was requested by our friend Nikki Knuckle.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Is that Nikki.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Best bottend in the West, coolest chick ever, knows all
the hiking spots to go, has the best dogs.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We love her, yes, indeed.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And so this case is a pretty famous one and
it got a lot of that infamy by some graffiti
that was posted in like the nineties, And there will
be a picture of that that will post up. But
it's basically this obelisk, and we'll talk about it a
little bit later. But on the obelisk in white paint,
(01:43):
somebody wrote, who put Bella in the witch? Elm? This
was in reference to a case that had gone cold
nearly fifty years before.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That's crazy acquiring mine. Mine's want to know.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I inquire, Mine's about to get the fucking tree, never.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
My throw trying not to cast this episode.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Oh yeah, So we're gonna do our best. We're gonna
do our best not to cost anymore so that we
can get a clean rating and potentially get more spooky
squad on our team.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I don't know, bro, after like sixty six episodes of
me saying dropping the F bomb every other word.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Here where I'm in, so wish us luck. That's gonna
crash your fingers for us. We've got this.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We'll get into the habit of not a cussing. Should
we have a spare jar? We should have. I'll let
you guys know when we actually get to a clean
read episode, because I don't know if it's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Today, It may not be, it may not be tomorrow,
But one day, have.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We get a swear jar in here, squear jar tip,
and then all that money goes towards equipment for us
to record on our own, to record it this podcast.
It seems reasonable. What's the amount that we have to
put in the swere jar a dollar. Oh god, fifty cents. Okay,
let's split the different Okay, okay, I can do this,
(03:13):
We can do this. I will be editing.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I edit every single one of these. So I'm gonna
have a callie counter.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Okay, it starts.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Now, Okay, Okay, I'll jump into the case.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Okay, sorry, derailed, derailed.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
On Sunday, April eighteenth, nineteen forty three, four boys were
poaching and bird nesting, which is basically when you steal
eggs from bird nests, like you go out and like
steal eggs toat in Hagley Wood in Worcestershire in England.
The boys were named Bob Farmer, Fred Payne, Thomas Willetts,
(03:47):
he went by Tommy and Robert, Bob Hart and they
were looking to help find extra food during wartime rationing
from the Second War. This was that the you know,
the time the Second War was going on. I mean,
these kids could see bombs at night and all that crap.
So they were out there actually just looking for food foraging.
They were on private property, so they were trespassing. This
(04:08):
was like an aristocrats land, so that credible play into things.
In a couple of minutes. But as they were wandering
around in the wood, they came across a type of
tree which is called a witch elm wytch witch elm,
which is a rather large tree. It has a hefty
base and a lot of small branches that stick out
(04:29):
at the top, kind of like an upside down broom almost,
but like thicker, right, And there are pictures of it.
I'm gonna show canvas and then you guys can obviously.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Oh yeah, follow along barely at the bottom of the
spindley up top.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, it's kind of a spooky looking tree, which bede
thinking there would most likely be birds nests in there.
One of the boys started walking closer and he noticed
a blackbird take off from a hole in the tree.
When he looked down inside the hole, thinking he was
going to find, you know, some eggs, what he saw
was what he believed to be an animal skull. He
(05:07):
grabbed a stick and kind of started to pull the
skull out, and that's when he realized that he was
looking at a human skull. So the hole itself was
around three to four feet deep, it was four feet
off the from the ground. It was only twenty four
inches by twelve inches wide.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Okay, so not two feet wide.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, somewhere in there. And as he looked at the
human skull a little bit closely, he noticed it had
a small patch of rotting flesh on the forehead with
lank hair attached to it. And he noticed also that
the two front teeth were crooked. And at first I thought,
that's kind of fucking rude. Oh damn, that's a dollar already.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Equipment guys, Oh shit, dollar fitty. Oh, this is fun.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I didn't think I was going to be the worst one.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And you're talking more. I don't know you're talking more,
but like per case, we're going to be.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Oh, you're so screwed.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Okay, cool for you, fifty cents from me. I may
be telling this in your notebook.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We should just bring the jar and then that way
everybody can just hear it going. So I thought that
was pretty rude, regular rude.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, okay, I had crooked teeth until I had in
his line.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
But I will say these teeth were real cook, rural crooked.
It's like they over they kind of like overlapped each other.
So it was it was a pretty distinctive dental characteristic.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Okay, yes, so that would be something that you would
be able to identify the body with, you.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Think, right, yeah, yes. So the boys obviously they're on,
they're they're on, they're trespassing on this land. But it
freaked them out that this was a clearly human skull,
so they ran back into town and they grabbed the
older brother of one of the boys and he followed
them back to look at the tree. The older brother
looked down in the hole, he saw more bones, a
(07:12):
green bottle, and a shoe. He told the boys, you
know what, let's just put the skull back. We're going
to pretend like we didn't see this. And everybody went home.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Oh no, no, no, that's not how you deal with that. Well,
I understand, not my problem, not my property.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, they're all the Second World War.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Let's let's find something else to look at. However, Tommy
Willitts started thinking about it when he got home, of course,
and he just didn't feel right. So he did tell
his parents, and that night his parents took him to
the police to relay what the boys had found. The
police made a note, and I guess they all went
(07:53):
to bed because they went and looked at it.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The next morning, look, it's dark, it's spooky out and
let's not go trapsing through someone's pride property.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, they're like, well there's likely to get shot. This
is fuck kind of that's kind of crazy to me.
I feel like, what if the body gets moved, you know,
in between, right, because like now it's been discovered, you
think they would want to get out there.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
But whatever, this is Worcestershire and the second world or forties. Yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So the next morning, multiple detectives went out following Tommy
Willitts and went to this tree, including a really famous
pathologist in England. His name was Professor James Webster. He
also was known for his work in the Lickety End
murder in October of nineteen forty four, so we'll probably
(08:44):
cover that a different time, but the double.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Upcase follow up cares.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The police cordoned off the Hogley Wood and began looking
into what they called the tree Murder.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Riddle, Tree murder Riddle.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
The tree murder riddle, the tree met we.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Three weres can we use to describe this case.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
It's a tree.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And there was a riddle.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
It's a whittle.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Okay, tree the tree murder riddle.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So they checked in the tree even further and they
found more than just a skull, So they were able
to find almost the entire skeleton, with the feet closest
to the ground and the head closest to the top. Okay,
the skeleton had likely been placed in their feet first.
Alongside some personal artifacts, they found crepe sold size five
(09:35):
shoe tiny, a gold plated wedding ring that was considered
pretty cheap. That's what people talk about the cheapness of
this four wedding ring all the time. And then it
was the.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
World War two.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
That's like, damn, dude, even in death, we crooking his teeth.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Oh man, what two dollars?
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And then they also found like clothing fragments that clearly
belonged to snubbodies.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Ells, a cheap wedding ring. You said, a bottle, Was
it like a glass?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, it was like a green glass bottle. That doesn't
really come up again, but the shoe, the size five
crape sold shoe does, Okay. So the shoe's match was
laying under some rubble nearby. Okay, So there's definitely been
some theories about whether or not that shoe was actually
belong to the body.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Or not.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I believe it did, right, But we'll kind of get
into that.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
How many shoes are out there lying would next to
where you find the remains.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And the match.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Another size five? It's the shoe and right.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Shoes, like, oh, maybe that's not calm down. Interestingly, at
least at the time, they found that the right hand
was missing from the body, but they later discovered it
a small distance away under some like leaves and crap,
alongside a right femur and a scapula.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Okay, so underneath some leaves they find her scapula he said, femur.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, and like the hand buns were kind of like
all over the place over there.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Why is there fur?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
They think potentially animals.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Okay, scavengers, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Had kind of found hold it off, Yeah, after it
was decomposing.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So Webster, that pathologist analyzed the body in Birmingham and
he was able to determine that it belonged to an
adult woman somewhere between thirty five to forty years old,
and that she had been dead in the tree between
eighteen months and three years. Oh wow, yeah, so kind
of crazy. He was able to determine that her time
(11:35):
of death was in or before October of nineteen forty one,
but noted that the tree itself created sort of a
micro environment that helped to prevent an easily distinguishable timeline
of death. Okay, so that's why.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Like she's not exposed to the elements as much because
she's covered by this tree.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, exactly. So he was able to show that she
was around five feet tall, she had light brown or
gin colored hair, so apparently I didn't know this decomposition
can change hair color, so that was kind of interesting,
and that she likely had at least one child during
her lifetime based on pelvic Even better, he also mentioned
(12:14):
she had distinctive irregular teeth, specifically that her top two
incisors completely overlapped and she was missing a few of
her teeth. They were able to determine that at least
one tooth in the mandible was removed through a dental
procedure around a year before her death.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Oh wow, how I do not know the healing process,
how far long the jaw was healed or something exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I'm assuming maybe they could see like it was the jaw,
Maybe they could see like tool marks or something. He
also noted that two of her teeth, which were confirmed
to be there before death or removed after death, and
were found near her corpse. Okay, well, that could be
just from like scavengers or like decomb or something. He
(13:01):
also noted that a fragment of taffata cloth was jammed
deep down in her mouth and throat, likely causing her
to suffocate. Another source speculated that the boys maybe had
used cloth at the time when they were trying to
like pull the skull in and out, and that's how
it got jammed down into her throat. But I feel
like if that was the case, this pretty famous pathologist
(13:23):
probably would have been able to note that.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Right, it would have been postmartem. And if it's lodged
in her airway, like.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Is it like yeah, it's it was in her mouth
like down into the throat area.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah. I don't think that that's gonna happen post mortem. Yeah,
I don't think it would cause more destraction. I feel
like I agree, Yeah, so, uh. Found in the hole
with her was a decomposed piece of corset, a dark
blue and khaki wool cardigan, a light blue belt, a
khaki or mustard color cloth shirt, and a peach colored
(13:56):
slip the cloth found in her throat was from that
mustard khaki colored skirt that she was wearing some.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Time of her death and torn off. Okay, So though
it was not impossible, Webster was pretty convinced that this
cloth was placed in her throat prior to her death,
and due to the location depth that that was in,
he I know, obviously believed that this was a homicide
through asphyxiation, and that's what he wrote on his corner's report. Additionally,
(14:25):
based on like her size, like the size that she was,
so she was a pretty small chick, like five four, right,
But based on her size and what it would have
taken to put somebody into a tree like this, he
made a judgment pretty early on. He's like, she either
was not in Rigamortis yet, so it was like right
after she was killed, yeah, or somebody kept her for
(14:47):
a few days and then moved her and put her
in here. There was no real way, at least in
the forties to tell which one it was going to be.
So he said that he believed that she was placed
in there very quickly after death, before Rigger Mortis said
in Okay. He also said that the tree's unique and
isolated location suggested that the perpetrator probably knew the area
(15:09):
pretty well.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
And probably knew that there was a hole in this tree.
Yeah exactly. Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I do think there's a chance that, you know, somebody
just panic found it, but I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Panic found the tree, yeah, and was like, oh shit,
this is looking around, like where am I going to
hide this by?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
They were like, I don't know, maybe hooking up or something,
and then he was like, oh she did, Oh, oh
she did. I don't know. This is a my head canon,
so don't listen to me. Nobody knows what happened, so
as additional evidence, detectives also noticed that the tree's roots
had grown over her decomposing clothes and body.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I thought that that was important because some sources suggest
that maybe if she was placed there a long time after,
like like recently before the boys found her, but the
fact that she had kind of grown with the tree
to indicate she was there first.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
For a while passage of time obviously.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Another suggestion that he made was that the killer may
have stolen those two teeth to prevent identification.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
But I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I don't think that's Larne Seizers Bear that's kind of
what I was thinking, the way that they are unlikely.
He also mentioned that one of her teeth had a
cavity that was likely really painful. Yeah, and so he
went on to add insult to injury by suggesting that
she didn't take care of her hygiene. Real nineteen forties gentlemen, huh.
(16:32):
So investigators started to focus on her teeth, obviously as
an identifying mark. So they reached out to dentists across
the Midlands and across England and started posting images of
her mandible. And I don't know why it was the
mandible and not the freaking front teeth they posted because
that's where I think the work was done. Sure, so
they were like, hey, does anybody recognize these teeth? And
they received no leads at all.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I will also say, I feel like I've said it
eight times, but this is also during World War Two.
Maybe people weren't even taking really good notes.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Or maybe she was of the lower class so she
was going to a clinic or something that didn't Yeah,
exactly didn't keep track of their stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
No leads, no leads on the teeth, which was surprising.
So they started looking at her worn out blue shoes
which weirdly I read were a size too big for
her feet.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Oh, she had tiny, tiny feet, size four or the
UK sizes are different.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The UK size five, so it's a US women's seven.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
That was my size feet tiny feet, tiny.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Feet, little baby, tiny feet. So they said that the
shoes were likely a size too big for her, which
was interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Probably from the wear pattern on the shoes, they could
tell that her toes didn't might reach, so she had
size six feet still small.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Still small. But they estimated there was probably about six
months of good use on the shoes, so she had
been wearing them really consistently for like six months, and
they were nice shoes. They were hoping to trace use
of those shoes and the time that she died where
she purchased them exactly on May first. They were able
to trace her shoes back to the manufacturer and then
(18:09):
to the stores in the area that sold the size
shoe that she had pie five. They found three stores
that sold those shoes.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Wow, they narrowed it down yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, big time, and actually determined that records only couldn't
identify like I think it was like six or eleven
purchasers the sharing cash They again hit another dead end,
but I was blown away. I was like six people. Yeah,
only people you can find were six people. It's crazy.
(18:38):
But because they were too big, it did make people
start wondering if those were even her shoes. And that's
where that whole theory came from.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Sometimes you find shoes and they're a little bit too
big or small, and you buy them anyway because they're cute.
There's not your size and stock.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, you know, I feel like I can stretch and
I can drink. You can drink half.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Of dollars las six. Their snug, they a little tight,
they cute, They're really cute.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Well, and that's the thing is, because of all of
these clues about what was on her body, these investigators
were like, well, we think she was lower class, but
these shoes, you know, were kind of higher class shoes.
So they may have been like a gift. And that's
why she was wearing them really consistently for so long,
and maybe why they're the wrong size.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
So, with the wartime chaos and many folks being displaced, missing,
or in hiding, it was daunting for investigators to try
to identify this woman.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Right there.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
A lot of people at this time, you.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Know, were missing in action.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah, running and hiding. And though the press briefly sensationalized
the case they called it the hagley Wood Murder, the
attention of the press was heavily focused on the war,
and her case went officially cold by the end of
nineteen forty three. However, March twenty eighth, nineteen forty four,
a man in the West Midlands saw writing near his house.
(20:01):
Upon further investigation, he noticed that the message read simply
Hagley Wood Bella. Another message was found in Hayden Hill,
(20:26):
and that one read who put Lubella down? The witch
elm Over the months of nineteen forty four, more messages
were written around town, all with the name Bella, suggesting
that someone knew the truth, or at the very least
her name right. Oh my god, the chalk was the
same and the handwriting was the same.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Okay, so there's just some person tagging up asking questions
about what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
To Loubella, Ubella and Bella they were switched off. Yeah,
and it was the same person every time, this one said.
A subway wall showed the same thing. Wood Lubella address
opposite the Rosen Crown Hadsbury. That's all the message said,
which is a fucking weird message. Oh no, two dollas,
(21:12):
I gotta go.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Interesting. That's interesting. So someone's going around town putting up
these messages. Yeah, ominous message is almost like do they
know something right?
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Well, and investigators were like, well, maybe Bella is her name,
because there's no real proof now or then that that
is her name, I will say. Another message that was
found was Hagley Wood Lubella was no pross, indicating that
she wasn't a sex worker.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Also I did a little digging on the rosen Crown
because I was like, opposite rosen Crown, doesn't that sound
like a street name or something? And it's uh the estate.
Well it freaked me out because at first I found
that there's a rosen Crown pub on Hagley.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Oh cool by the woods.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Oh yeah, but I found it only opened as a
pub in the nineteen eighties. Before that it was a
funeral home, which I thought was nice and creepy. Oh cool,
I know, just keep creepycident.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
They opened the pub up and the old.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
March Mary Yeah, I think so, bro really Yeah, it's
based on the size of the building I mean, I
can't say for sure, but time we should go there.
We should go there. But yeah, creepy coincidence. So far
as I can tell, Rosen Pub is just a really
a Rosen Crown is a really common name for like
a pub. Okay, so there may be was a pub
after all. I don't think that's a't even the funeral
(22:34):
home crowd. No, but that would have been crazy. Oh.
A missing person's report was filed with the police in
nineteen forty four for a woman named Bella Okay, and
the report the person reported her as missing for three years,
making her disappearance in nineteen forty one. She was a
sex worker that had been reportedly working on Hagley Road.
(22:58):
The police, so far as we know, never looked into this,
of course, but officers also noted that Bella is a
common backcountry diminutive for women, and they really weren't looking into.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Everyone's just.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I guess, so I guess it was just pretty common. Hey, Bela,
what that ass smell? Man?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Too fiddy? You know what it smell like? We're throwing
out the swergear.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I'm gonna pay for it by myself.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
I think.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
It's good. No is this has to be done.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Okay, so it's a commutative or like not derogatory, but
just kind of they sum up sex workers as Bella. Yeah,
so you'd be like, oh, I saw Bella down at
the Old Rolls and Crown.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah. But then that also the message all said she
was no Pross, right, so who knows? Who knows. One
of my thoughts was maybe because this missing report was
done in nineteen forty four and those messages started showing
up in nineteen forty four, Okay, I was like, maybe
somebody wanted.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
To like throw them off the trails.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, throw them off the trail with chalk, with chalk,
chalk art, chalk art. It was banksy. So additionally, it
was suggested that Bella might be short for Bella Donna,
the deadly night shade plant, which is commonly linked to witches.
We'll kind of get into that theory because it's one
of the big ones. But it did lead Slews to
(24:41):
suggest that maybe there was some kind of a cult
based ritual killing involved.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Ooh and the witch elm.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Okay, like, it's not like she was shoved into like.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
A I want to know what was in the fucking
green bottle.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Cherry tree too. Again, her case went cold, this time
for almost forty years. In nineteen eighty four, in a
parking garage, someone wrote who put Bella in the witch Elm?
All of a sudden. In nineteen ninety three, again someone
wrote the phrase on the famous witchbery obelisk in Hagley.
So that is that picture that I mentioned in the beginning,
(25:17):
M This picture is really famous. So like, if you
look up this case you'll see it eerily. The aged
obelisk is actually within sight of where the body was found.
I will say that they spelled it wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Wi.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yes, they spelled it like witch witch instead of wit
or w. Additionally, the obelisk is actually too old and
delicate to have the paint removed, so it's still there.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Oh wow yeah, oh myam.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So again this case was kind of thrust back into
the limelight, and because the message is still there. In
November of twenty twenty, someone actually crossed out who and
wrote hers hr like hers put Belle in the witch elm,
which oh, doesn't make that much sense.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Not unless hers is referring to like a covin or
something I.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Guess, and it's hers put bell in the witch elm?
Apparently there was a graffiti artist who went by the
name hers Oh that They were like, maybe that was
what it was, but I don't know. There's no proof
for evidence or anything like that. But if it was
that graffiti artist, you're stupid and I hate you. Done.
(26:31):
So that question who put bell in the witch elm
ended up being like a local catchphrase, a piece of
Midland's folklore that like outlived the official investigation. Like the
graffiti I don't know if you've heard of this, like
Kilroy was here, was spread around during the war. The
Bella graffiti movement also kind of changed into this mythical
(26:51):
legend where whoever likely was doing that early on was
no longer doing it and now they were just copycats
right putting up that name. So pretty much that's where
we stand with her case. But we're going to get
into some theories.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Okay, okay, because they are wild.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
So we briefly mentioned the occult earlier. So this theory
really was put into place by a respected archaeologist in
Folklorus named doctor Margaret Murray. She was a known Egyptologist.
She worked with ancient religions and knew a good, like
a really good amount about the occults.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
So she was a baddie.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I think she was the first woman to ever or
the first person to ever unwrap a mummy or something
like that. She's pretty famous. So she suggested she's the
one who kind of like really pushed this that the
death could have been a ritualistic death because it was
related to something called the Hand of Glory ritual. So
(27:50):
this ritual requires that a hand usually the left, though
not the right, but it's removed from either a witch
or a hanged criminal, depending on this, and then the
bones are scattered thirteen paces from the body.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Is that how far away the hand was?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I don't know. Allegedly, according to Margaret Murray, the Hand
of Glory was known to aid witches and thieves by
granting them certain boons. These included the ability to immobilize people,
unlocked doors, help one move around unnoticed, or show light
only to the user. Okay, my understanding was they would
make candles from the fat of the corpse in order
(28:27):
to kind.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Of use that.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
That's pretty sack, very metal. So Murray theorized in nineteen
forty five that Bella had been killed by coven members
her uncoven members in an occult execution, perhaps as retribution
for betraying the group or for some crime against her coven.
Even Haglewood itself had a reputation in local legend as
a place where witches sabbaths were once held before the war,
(28:51):
like long before the war. So it was like whispered
around town, really want to go, and that helped the
theory gain a lot of traction. Though the occult hypothesis
is pretty much fallen out of favor, it's still really
popular with the public because it sounds metal as hell.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, that sounds tight.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
There is really no evidence showing that this is the
case at all.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I mean, they wouldn't leave any evidence behind.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Th that's yeah, that's what she said, and that's why
nobody would ever come forward and like talk.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
About it whatever, right it sworn to secrecy.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
There were also tales of the Romani people coming out
and like staying in the woods around this time, suggesting
that Bella may have been a Romani person who was
murdered and hidden or she was killed by the Romanis. However,
that theory is more than likely due to prejudice against
the Romani people and there is no evidence for it,
like at all.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, I was gonna say, even the clothing that she
was wearing. I don't know if it's necessarily an indicator.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Literally, yeah, that's yeah, just prejudice.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Around the Cold War era times. So nineteen fifty three,
a new surfaced, which is freaking bonkers, okay. A journalist
named Wilfrid Byford Jones, writing under the pen name Oyster
(30:17):
Yeah you put de Cuister, published a series of articles
revisiting the case and what he called the light of
a newly emerging wartime secrets. His articles attacked previous suggestions
that she was killed by the traveling Romani's. After his
letters were published, he received a letter from a woman
named Anna quote unquote, who said that he should finish
(30:38):
his letters about the case because they were really entertaining,
but that he would never solve what happened. Oh. She
suggested that the one person who could answer questions about
what happened were an I quote, beyond the jurisdiction of
earthly courts. There were witches. They were dead.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
They were dead witches witches.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
She went on to say that the perpetrator died insane
in nineteen forty two, and that the woman deemed Bella
was an illegal Dutch immigrant who arrived in England in
early nineteen forty one. Oh so this guy, Wilfred goes
to the police with us because he's like, this is
kind of freaky. He goes to the police and the
police are like, yo, this could be a lead. And
(31:20):
so they begged this woman Anna to come out. In
the letters she had told him that she was using
a non de plume or a pen name. So they
were like, please come forward, come talk to us, and
she did and they found her real name was Una Hainsworth.
She told police that she was formerly married to a
man named Jack moss Up. He was a Royal Air
Force pilot turn factory worker and he was the one
(31:41):
who died in the mental asylum in nineteen forty two.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Okay her.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Allegedly Jack was entangled in a pro German spy ring
operation in the Midlands alongside a dutch Man named Van Ralt.
One night, while drinking in the Littleton Arms Pubs in
Hagley with Van Ralt and a Dutch woman, presumably Bella,
Van Ralt decided to dispose of the woman, who he
deemed was a liability and who he said.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
New too much oh, okay, so she probably knew his
identity or something something like that, that's true identity.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
So he strangled the woman in his car to silence her,
either revealing her role as a spy, or in some
cases say simply because he wanted to, because he was
a jerk. Yeah. Another version of the story states that
Jack and Van Ralt dragged Bella into the woods because
she had been drinking and was super drunk, and they
shoved her into a tree to teach her a lesson,
(32:34):
where she then suffocated with.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Some of the cloth from her skirt stuck down her throat.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I don't know either way. Una said that it drove
Jack mad, and he told his wife that he was
having a nightmare every night of a woman staring at
him from a hole in a tree. He was eventually
confined to an asylum and he died there a year
before the skeleton was found. And there's evidence showing that
he was having these dreams. That's what he was complaining of.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
From beyond the grave.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
From beyond the was like you, yeah, bitch, I was
straining so hard. Yeah, I'm gonna get better. Just today,
it's just the first day.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
It's baby steps. Yeah, you sound like a spooky dead
horse ghost.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
He's a horse ghost in skyroom. So for evidence police
were able to determine that Jack did diet in the
(33:51):
Dane Asylum in nineteen forty two. He was complaining of
these specific dreams.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
However, it's a very specific nightmare.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yes, Van Ralt was never identified found because he was
a spot. He was a sneaky spy. That being said,
the theory was so sensational that it refused to die,
of course, especially in the broader context of World War Two.
So there were local rumors that two German parachutists had
mysteriously landed in the area in nineteen forty one before vanishing.
(34:17):
Based on declassified M fifteen files, it showed that German
agents were active in Britain in nineteen forty one, where
one agent, Joseph Jacobs, was captured after parachuting into Cambridgeshire
in January of nineteen forty one. He told M fifteen
that a spy named Clara Berrelle Beryl Clara Barrel, Clara
(34:38):
Barrel Clara Barrell was also supposed to land there at
the same time. Oh Okay detectives suggested that this Clara
Burrell was Clara Bella and thus Lubella with Una, suggesting
that there were ties to espionage. Detectives had to track
them down. They were able to determine, however, that the
(34:59):
two women were not the same. Clara, for instance, was
five feet ten inches.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Tall, tall with probably larger feet. Yeah, probably five feet
in five and that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah, so she was tall. And she was found to
have died in a Berlin hospital in nineteen forty two.
Allegedly they found these records. I will say, so she
was a beautiful some kind of like actress and burlesque dancer.
Cool Clara was, and she was not seen in any
public things after nineteen forty one, Okay, and then they
found these documents.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Allegedly interesting, she was probably she maybe was.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Again, there's very little evidence pointing to this theory of
Clara being Bella as a fact. Other theories exist, including
that she was simply a local sex worker based on
that missing report. I think that's there's a good chance
of that. There's also theories about her having a run
in with an American serviceman who panicked after her murder
(36:00):
and hid her in the first spot he came across.
Like all other theories. These are all speculative. There is
no hard evidence, right, so any local updates now really
are on the struggle bus. In twenty fourteen, the West
America Police tried to review the case again with fresh
eyes in a comprehensive review. They officially closed the case
(36:21):
in twenty fourteen and relegated the files to public archives.
In twenty eighteen, Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moore's University
face lab, which you may recall the face lab. She
also did like King George, right, King George, King.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Richard, one of the two kings.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, she did something some king, some king made her
like super famous, so they like rebuild it with clay.
So she rebuilt her face from photos of the school.
Interesting because guess what what the police lost her school. Stop, No,
they completely lost they lost her.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
How do you lose Nope, I can't say that because
that happened all over the United States all the time.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, so it's wild to me, but yeah, she can.
She reconstructed her face with clay, allowing us to see
what she most likely looked like. Still, no new leads
or clusive and sent in since then. Okay, the most
promising lead occurred in twenty twenty three, on the eightieth anniversary,
so BBC did a podcast series titled The Body in
the Tree and launched a campaign to find Bella's remains.
(37:25):
So they want to do genetic testing. Yeah cool, she
likely had a child, right, they're hoping to try to
run those new forensic tests on the bones. But they
are still missing.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Oh my god. They're probably just not labeled correctly. They're
sitting in storage somewhere. Ien't bet you anything.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
They're on like some like yeah, wrong name or something, or.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Just it's Jane Doe something or I don't know what
they do in the UK, but I'm sure it's unidentified female.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, exactly. Well, and that's that's part of the problem.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
No serial number, nothing, nothing, just sitting in a box.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So during this series, this docu series, they found that
Professor Webster actually had used her skeleton and artifacts as
teaching specimens for the police trainees. And then they were
moved to the university. Uh huh, and then they were
lost gun.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Oof, probably in a closet somewhere.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Probably do what it's like. Have you have you heard
about that case where he was like a he was
a wild West like guy and they accidentally ended up
finding him in a haunted house, yes, because people thought
he was a we'll have to do that case for
you guys, because bonkers.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
There's actually here At un R they found storage that
had ancestor remains just stuck back in a closet somewhere
that no one knew where they came from. So the
anthropology department has been digging through these boxes and figuring
(38:49):
all this out and trying to repatriate them because like,
you don't realize how often people either die while they're
working in a space like a univer or you know,
and they take all that knowledge with they take all
the knowledge with them, or it's just not catalog right,
and it's just a mess. So what a tragedy. I know,
(39:10):
So that's happened here.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
How do they lose? Never mind, I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Get how you can lose something like that, because I
feel like I would, you'd be a lot more, would
be a lot more on the I don't know, but
I don't know. Back in the forties fifties, well, during
the war, like.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
You said, when things were very manual, there wasn't a
lot of.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Tech cataloging it. And yeah, it all has to be
there's this.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I was listening to an episode the other day and.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Then if there's a fire, then all that shi gets lost.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah, oh got him, got him. I was gonna say
there was an episode the other day where a secretary
was calling for a stay of execution and she mistiled
the number and the guy got killed.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Oh my god. And I was like, wow, how awful.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You didn't have it on speed dial?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Bro? Yeah did she?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Hey, young viewers, do you even know what speedarll is anymore?
I know, I know, I'm sure she lived with our
guilt forever. But what a like one little mistake? Man,
Sometimes you can have huge ripples.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
To see, like a smudge even, or like a number
that looks.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Some people write their fours and nine is almost the same.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
My seven's and ones. People get confused about I always
put like a little the notch. Now, well I've always
done that. That's very weird. Yeah is that a one
or seven? It's clearly a seven. Don't notch my ones anyway.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
I hear you, though, one little, one little bad like
one little mistake, that's all it takes. So to this day,
they are begging the public to return the bones so
that they can run you know, new age tech and
attempt to determine who she was, where she came from,
does she have family, and provide her with a proper burial.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Absolutely either way eight Deca Dawn Houpa, Bella and the
Witch Elm remains a compelling enigma and true crime puzzle
entwined with folklore and history. Absolutely so, rest in peace,
Bella and thank you Nikki for sending this case over.
This was so interesting to dig through.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Nicky suggested a couple of cases, and thank you guys
for keeping those coming. I really appreciate y'all support.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Hell yeah, we love doing cases. I love finding about,
like finding out about new things that I've never even
heard of or would have considered doing. It so interesting.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I've heard of that. I've heard of this case, but
not all of the different theories surrounding it. So thank
you for doing a little deep dive on it. And uh,
who put Bella in the Witch Elm? I hope in
our lifetime you figure that out.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah, it would be nice, especially if we can find
you know, the evidence from Hey, if you have a
random skull in your house.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
You have interns working and digging through closets. Hopefully, they're
smart and I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Just look for those crooked teeth.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Maybe. Yeah, if those schools don't intact they're using that,
I mean, allegedly supposedly.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
I'm just gonna throw that in there cover my bases. Okay, Well,
we really appreciate hanging out with you guys again this week.
We can't wait to see you and hear from you
next week.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
You get in there.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
If you have any case corrections, if you have any
suggestions coffee shops, all that crap. You know how to
reach us. You can hit us up on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Scream dot and do Sugar dot podcast.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Hit us up on Facebook, scream and sugar True Cram,
Coffee hour on TikTok, scream dot and dot sugar, hit
us up on Gmail, Scream and Sugar.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Email at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
And also, you know, please like share, send us in
your group.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Chats, send us in chat. I'm just like we should.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Get slowly becoming a grandma.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I'm already the grandmother.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Make share mean the group chats.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
We should get like an anonymous number and like po
box or something set up like a lot of posy
that but people can call in and like do little
voicemails and stuff, so well that fun. Yeah, we'll look
in at doing that because we'd love to hear from y'all.
So keep you posted, maybe next episode, after next seth.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
We appreciate you all so much more than you even know.
You guys, ave the crap the besneys jammis cast.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Can I give you the telly? Yeah, after we made
our agreement thirteen times, it's only thirteen between both of us.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, but how many were me?
Speaker 2 (43:49):
You? You were seven? Six. I'm gonna have to do
a different tellier. Okay, so it was eleven times, you
did six excited five.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I did almost all the talking. So this does not
bode well for you.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh no, anytime I open my mouth, so there's I'm
a sailor, there's a little there's a little guy in
the back of my throat that she's like, we're gonna
do ndle this down maybe next episode.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, I'm just gonna keep track per episode and listen.
Wish us luck you guys, Oh my God.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Send your thoughts and in your prayers. Anyway, on that note,
until next time, stay spooky, y'all. Why are you steering
(45:17):
with me? Because I'm like, what are we remembering, just
remember very spooky,
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Scream and Sugar,
your true crime coffee hour, where we dive into the
darker side of humanity while enjoying a little sweetness on
the side. I am your host, Sahara, I'm Candice, and
today we are going to be talking about the case
of the Hagley Wood, better known as We'll put Bella
in the witch ump.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Indeed in.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
So, Hi, everybody, welcome bya we miss y'all. Hey, yeah,
he's only been a week, but it feels like years
right today. So today's case, I'm actually doing it. It
was requested by our friend Nikki Knuckle.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Is that Nikki.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Best bottend in the West, coolest chick ever, knows all
the hiking spots to go, has the best dogs.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We love her, yes, indeed.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
And so this case is a pretty famous one and
it got a lot of that infamy by some graffiti
that was posted in like the nineties, And there will
be a picture of that that will post up. But
it's basically this obelisk, and we'll talk about it a
little bit later. But on the obelisk in white paint,
(01:43):
somebody wrote, who put Bella in the witch? Elm? This
was in reference to a case that had gone cold
nearly fifty years before.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
That's crazy acquiring mine. Mine's want to know.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I inquire, Mine's about to get the fucking tree, never.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
My throw trying not to cast this episode.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Oh yeah, So we're gonna do our best. We're gonna
do our best not to cost anymore so that we
can get a clean rating and potentially get more spooky
squad on our team.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I don't know, bro, after like sixty six episodes of
me saying dropping the F bomb every other word.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Here where I'm in, so wish us luck. That's gonna
crash your fingers for us. We've got this.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We'll get into the habit of not a cussing. Should
we have a spare jar? We should have. I'll let
you guys know when we actually get to a clean
read episode, because I don't know if it's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Today, It may not be, it may not be tomorrow,
But one day, have.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We get a swear jar in here, squear jar tip,
and then all that money goes towards equipment for us
to record on our own, to record it this podcast.
It seems reasonable. What's the amount that we have to
put in the swere jar a dollar. Oh god, fifty cents. Okay,
let's split the different Okay, okay, I can do this,
(03:13):
We can do this. I will be editing.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I edit every single one of these. So I'm gonna
have a callie counter.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Okay, it starts.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Now, Okay, Okay, I'll jump into the case.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Okay, sorry, derailed, derailed.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
On Sunday, April eighteenth, nineteen forty three, four boys were
poaching and bird nesting, which is basically when you steal
eggs from bird nests, like you go out and like
steal eggs toat in Hagley Wood in Worcestershire in England.
The boys were named Bob Farmer, Fred Payne, Thomas Willetts,
(03:47):
he went by Tommy and Robert, Bob Hart and they
were looking to help find extra food during wartime rationing
from the Second War. This was that the you know,
the time the Second War was going on. I mean,
these kids could see bombs at night and all that crap.
So they were out there actually just looking for food foraging.
They were on private property, so they were trespassing. This
(04:08):
was like an aristocrats land, so that credible play into things.
In a couple of minutes. But as they were wandering
around in the wood, they came across a type of
tree which is called a witch elm wytch witch elm,
which is a rather large tree. It has a hefty
base and a lot of small branches that stick out
(04:29):
at the top, kind of like an upside down broom almost,
but like thicker, right, And there are pictures of it.
I'm gonna show canvas and then you guys can obviously.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Oh yeah, follow along barely at the bottom of the
spindley up top.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, it's kind of a spooky looking tree, which bede
thinking there would most likely be birds nests in there.
One of the boys started walking closer and he noticed
a blackbird take off from a hole in the tree.
When he looked down inside the hole, thinking he was
going to find, you know, some eggs, what he saw
was what he believed to be an animal skull. He
(05:07):
grabbed a stick and kind of started to pull the
skull out, and that's when he realized that he was
looking at a human skull. So the hole itself was
around three to four feet deep, it was four feet
off the from the ground. It was only twenty four
inches by twelve inches wide.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Okay, so not two feet wide.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, somewhere in there. And as he looked at the
human skull a little bit closely, he noticed it had
a small patch of rotting flesh on the forehead with
lank hair attached to it. And he noticed also that
the two front teeth were crooked. And at first I thought,
that's kind of fucking rude. Oh damn, that's a dollar already.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Equipment guys, Oh shit, dollar fitty. Oh, this is fun.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I didn't think I was going to be the worst one.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And you're talking more. I don't know you're talking more,
but like per case, we're going to be.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Oh, you're so screwed.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Okay, cool for you, fifty cents from me. I may
be telling this in your notebook.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
We should just bring the jar and then that way
everybody can just hear it going. So I thought that
was pretty rude, regular rude.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, okay, I had crooked teeth until I had in
his line.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
But I will say these teeth were real cook, rural crooked.
It's like they over they kind of like overlapped each other.
So it was it was a pretty distinctive dental characteristic.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Okay, yes, so that would be something that you would
be able to identify the body with, you.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Think, right, yeah, yes. So the boys obviously they're on,
they're they're on, they're trespassing on this land. But it
freaked them out that this was a clearly human skull,
so they ran back into town and they grabbed the
older brother of one of the boys and he followed
them back to look at the tree. The older brother
looked down in the hole, he saw more bones, a
(07:12):
green bottle, and a shoe. He told the boys, you
know what, let's just put the skull back. We're going
to pretend like we didn't see this. And everybody went home.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Oh no, no, no, that's not how you deal with that. Well,
I understand, not my problem, not my property.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, they're all the Second World War.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Let's let's find something else to look at. However, Tommy
Willitts started thinking about it when he got home, of course,
and he just didn't feel right. So he did tell
his parents, and that night his parents took him to
the police to relay what the boys had found. The
police made a note, and I guess they all went
(07:53):
to bed because they went and looked at it.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The next morning, look, it's dark, it's spooky out and
let's not go trapsing through someone's pride property.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, they're like, well there's likely to get shot. This
is fuck kind of that's kind of crazy to me.
I feel like, what if the body gets moved, you know,
in between, right, because like now it's been discovered, you
think they would want to get out there.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
But whatever, this is Worcestershire and the second world or forties. Yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So the next morning, multiple detectives went out following Tommy
Willitts and went to this tree, including a really famous
pathologist in England. His name was Professor James Webster. He
also was known for his work in the Lickety End
murder in October of nineteen forty four, so we'll probably
(08:44):
cover that a different time, but the double.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Upcase follow up cares.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The police cordoned off the Hogley Wood and began looking
into what they called the tree Murder.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Riddle, Tree murder Riddle.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
The tree murder riddle, the tree met we.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Three weres can we use to describe this case.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
It's a tree.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
And there was a riddle.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
It's a whittle.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Okay, tree the tree murder riddle.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
So they checked in the tree even further and they
found more than just a skull, So they were able
to find almost the entire skeleton, with the feet closest
to the ground and the head closest to the top. Okay,
the skeleton had likely been placed in their feet first.
Alongside some personal artifacts, they found crepe sold size five
(09:35):
shoe tiny, a gold plated wedding ring that was considered
pretty cheap. That's what people talk about the cheapness of
this four wedding ring all the time. And then it
was the.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
World War two.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
That's like, damn, dude, even in death, we crooking his teeth.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Oh man, what two dollars?
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And then they also found like clothing fragments that clearly
belonged to snubbodies.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Ells, a cheap wedding ring. You said, a bottle, Was
it like a glass?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, it was like a green glass bottle. That doesn't
really come up again, but the shoe, the size five
crape sold shoe does, Okay. So the shoe's match was
laying under some rubble nearby. Okay, So there's definitely been
some theories about whether or not that shoe was actually
belong to the body.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Or not.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I believe it did, right, But we'll kind of get
into that.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
How many shoes are out there lying would next to
where you find the remains.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And the match.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Another size five? It's the shoe and right.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Shoes, like, oh, maybe that's not calm down. Interestingly, at
least at the time, they found that the right hand
was missing from the body, but they later discovered it
a small distance away under some like leaves and crap,
alongside a right femur and a scapula.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Okay, so underneath some leaves they find her scapula he said, femur.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, and like the hand buns were kind of like
all over the place over there.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Why is there fur?
Speaker 1 (11:06):
They think potentially animals.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Okay, scavengers, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Had kind of found hold it off, Yeah, after it
was decomposing.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So Webster, that pathologist analyzed the body in Birmingham and
he was able to determine that it belonged to an
adult woman somewhere between thirty five to forty years old,
and that she had been dead in the tree between
eighteen months and three years. Oh wow, yeah, so kind
of crazy. He was able to determine that her time
(11:35):
of death was in or before October of nineteen forty one,
but noted that the tree itself created sort of a
micro environment that helped to prevent an easily distinguishable timeline
of death. Okay, so that's why.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Like she's not exposed to the elements as much because
she's covered by this tree.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, exactly. So he was able to show that she
was around five feet tall, she had light brown or
gin colored hair, so apparently I didn't know this decomposition
can change hair color, so that was kind of interesting,
and that she likely had at least one child during
her lifetime based on pelvic Even better, he also mentioned
(12:14):
she had distinctive irregular teeth, specifically that her top two
incisors completely overlapped and she was missing a few of
her teeth. They were able to determine that at least
one tooth in the mandible was removed through a dental
procedure around a year before her death.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Oh wow, how I do not know the healing process,
how far long the jaw was healed or something exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I'm assuming maybe they could see like it was the jaw,
Maybe they could see like tool marks or something. He
also noted that two of her teeth, which were confirmed
to be there before death or removed after death, and
were found near her corpse. Okay, well, that could be
just from like scavengers or like decomb or something. He
(13:01):
also noted that a fragment of taffata cloth was jammed
deep down in her mouth and throat, likely causing her
to suffocate. Another source speculated that the boys maybe had
used cloth at the time when they were trying to
like pull the skull in and out, and that's how
it got jammed down into her throat. But I feel
like if that was the case, this pretty famous pathologist
(13:23):
probably would have been able to note that.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Right, it would have been postmartem. And if it's lodged
in her airway, like.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Is it like yeah, it's it was in her mouth
like down into the throat area.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah. I don't think that that's gonna happen post mortem. Yeah,
I don't think it would cause more destraction. I feel
like I agree, Yeah, so, uh. Found in the hole
with her was a decomposed piece of corset, a dark
blue and khaki wool cardigan, a light blue belt, a
khaki or mustard color cloth shirt, and a peach colored
(13:56):
slip the cloth found in her throat was from that
mustard khaki colored skirt that she was wearing some.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Time of her death and torn off. Okay, So though
it was not impossible, Webster was pretty convinced that this
cloth was placed in her throat prior to her death,
and due to the location depth that that was in,
he I know, obviously believed that this was a homicide
through asphyxiation, and that's what he wrote on his corner's report. Additionally,
(14:25):
based on like her size, like the size that she was,
so she was a pretty small chick, like five four, right,
But based on her size and what it would have
taken to put somebody into a tree like this, he
made a judgment pretty early on. He's like, she either
was not in Rigamortis yet, so it was like right
after she was killed, yeah, or somebody kept her for
(14:47):
a few days and then moved her and put her
in here. There was no real way, at least in
the forties to tell which one it was going to be.
So he said that he believed that she was placed
in there very quickly after death, before Rigger Mortis said
in Okay. He also said that the tree's unique and
isolated location suggested that the perpetrator probably knew the area
(15:09):
pretty well.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
And probably knew that there was a hole in this tree.
Yeah exactly. Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I do think there's a chance that, you know, somebody
just panic found it, but I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Panic found the tree, yeah, and was like, oh shit,
this is looking around, like where am I going to
hide this by?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
They were like, I don't know, maybe hooking up or something,
and then he was like, oh she did, Oh, oh
she did. I don't know. This is a my head canon,
so don't listen to me. Nobody knows what happened, so
as additional evidence, detectives also noticed that the tree's roots
had grown over her decomposing clothes and body.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I thought that that was important because some sources suggest
that maybe if she was placed there a long time after,
like like recently before the boys found her, but the
fact that she had kind of grown with the tree
to indicate she was there first.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
For a while passage of time obviously.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Another suggestion that he made was that the killer may
have stolen those two teeth to prevent identification.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
But I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I don't think that's Larne Seizers Bear that's kind of
what I was thinking, the way that they are unlikely.
He also mentioned that one of her teeth had a
cavity that was likely really painful. Yeah, and so he
went on to add insult to injury by suggesting that
she didn't take care of her hygiene. Real nineteen forties gentlemen, huh.
(16:32):
So investigators started to focus on her teeth, obviously as
an identifying mark. So they reached out to dentists across
the Midlands and across England and started posting images of
her mandible. And I don't know why it was the
mandible and not the freaking front teeth they posted because
that's where I think the work was done. Sure, so
they were like, hey, does anybody recognize these teeth? And
they received no leads at all.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I will also say, I feel like I've said it
eight times, but this is also during World War Two.
Maybe people weren't even taking really good notes.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Or maybe she was of the lower class so she
was going to a clinic or something that didn't Yeah,
exactly didn't keep track of their stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
No leads, no leads on the teeth, which was surprising.
So they started looking at her worn out blue shoes
which weirdly I read were a size too big for
her feet.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Oh, she had tiny, tiny feet, size four or the
UK sizes are different.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The UK size five, so it's a US women's seven.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
That was my size feet tiny feet, tiny.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Feet, little baby, tiny feet. So they said that the
shoes were likely a size too big for her, which
was interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Probably from the wear pattern on the shoes, they could
tell that her toes didn't might reach, so she had
size six feet still small.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Still small. But they estimated there was probably about six
months of good use on the shoes, so she had
been wearing them really consistently for like six months, and
they were nice shoes. They were hoping to trace use
of those shoes and the time that she died where
she purchased them exactly on May first. They were able
to trace her shoes back to the manufacturer and then
(18:09):
to the stores in the area that sold the size
shoe that she had pie five. They found three stores
that sold those shoes.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Wow, they narrowed it down yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, big time, and actually determined that records only couldn't
identify like I think it was like six or eleven
purchasers the sharing cash They again hit another dead end,
but I was blown away. I was like six people. Yeah,
only people you can find were six people. It's crazy.
(18:38):
But because they were too big, it did make people
start wondering if those were even her shoes. And that's
where that whole theory came from.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Sometimes you find shoes and they're a little bit too
big or small, and you buy them anyway because they're cute.
There's not your size and stock.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, you know, I feel like I can stretch and
I can drink. You can drink half.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Of dollars las six. Their snug, they a little tight,
they cute, They're really cute.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Well, and that's the thing is, because of all of
these clues about what was on her body, these investigators
were like, well, we think she was lower class, but
these shoes, you know, were kind of higher class shoes.
So they may have been like a gift. And that's
why she was wearing them really consistently for so long,
and maybe why they're the wrong size.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
So, with the wartime chaos and many folks being displaced, missing,
or in hiding, it was daunting for investigators to try
to identify this woman.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Right there.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
A lot of people at this time, you.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Know, were missing in action.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah, running and hiding. And though the press briefly sensationalized
the case they called it the hagley Wood Murder, the
attention of the press was heavily focused on the war,
and her case went officially cold by the end of
nineteen forty three. However, March twenty eighth, nineteen forty four,
a man in the West Midlands saw writing near his house.
(20:01):
Upon further investigation, he noticed that the message read simply
Hagley Wood Bella. Another message was found in Hayden Hill,
(20:26):
and that one read who put Lubella down? The witch
elm Over the months of nineteen forty four, more messages
were written around town, all with the name Bella, suggesting
that someone knew the truth, or at the very least
her name right. Oh my god, the chalk was the
same and the handwriting was the same.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Okay, so there's just some person tagging up asking questions
about what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
To Loubella, Ubella and Bella they were switched off. Yeah,
and it was the same person every time, this one said.
A subway wall showed the same thing. Wood Lubella address
opposite the Rosen Crown Hadsbury. That's all the message said,
which is a fucking weird message. Oh no, two dollas,
(21:12):
I gotta go.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Interesting. That's interesting. So someone's going around town putting up
these messages. Yeah, ominous message is almost like do they
know something right?
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Well, and investigators were like, well, maybe Bella is her name,
because there's no real proof now or then that that
is her name, I will say. Another message that was
found was Hagley Wood Lubella was no pross, indicating that
she wasn't a sex worker.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Also I did a little digging on the rosen Crown
because I was like, opposite rosen Crown, doesn't that sound
like a street name or something? And it's uh the estate.
Well it freaked me out because at first I found
that there's a rosen Crown pub on Hagley.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Oh cool by the woods.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Oh yeah, but I found it only opened as a
pub in the nineteen eighties. Before that it was a
funeral home, which I thought was nice and creepy. Oh cool,
I know, just keep creepycident.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
They opened the pub up and the old.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
March Mary Yeah, I think so, bro really Yeah, it's
based on the size of the building I mean, I
can't say for sure, but time we should go there.
We should go there. But yeah, creepy coincidence. So far
as I can tell, Rosen Pub is just a really
a Rosen Crown is a really common name for like
a pub. Okay, so there may be was a pub
after all. I don't think that's a't even the funeral
(22:34):
home crowd. No, but that would have been crazy. Oh.
A missing person's report was filed with the police in
nineteen forty four for a woman named Bella Okay, and
the report the person reported her as missing for three years,
making her disappearance in nineteen forty one. She was a
sex worker that had been reportedly working on Hagley Road.
(22:58):
The police, so far as we know, never looked into this,
of course, but officers also noted that Bella is a
common backcountry diminutive for women, and they really weren't looking into.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Everyone's just.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I guess, so I guess it was just pretty common. Hey, Bela,
what that ass smell? Man?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Too fiddy? You know what it smell like? We're throwing
out the swergear.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I'm gonna pay for it by myself.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
I think.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
It's good. No is this has to be done.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Okay, so it's a commutative or like not derogatory, but
just kind of they sum up sex workers as Bella. Yeah,
so you'd be like, oh, I saw Bella down at
the Old Rolls and Crown.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah. But then that also the message all said she
was no Pross, right, so who knows? Who knows. One
of my thoughts was maybe because this missing report was
done in nineteen forty four and those messages started showing
up in nineteen forty four, Okay, I was like, maybe
somebody wanted.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
To like throw them off the trails.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, throw them off the trail with chalk, with chalk,
chalk art, chalk art. It was banksy. So additionally, it
was suggested that Bella might be short for Bella Donna,
the deadly night shade plant, which is commonly linked to witches.
We'll kind of get into that theory because it's one
of the big ones. But it did lead Slews to
(24:41):
suggest that maybe there was some kind of a cult
based ritual killing involved.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Ooh and the witch elm.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Okay, like, it's not like she was shoved into like.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
A I want to know what was in the fucking
green bottle.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Cherry tree too. Again, her case went cold, this time
for almost forty years. In nineteen eighty four, in a
parking garage, someone wrote who put Bella in the witch Elm?
All of a sudden. In nineteen ninety three, again someone
wrote the phrase on the famous witchbery obelisk in Hagley.
So that is that picture that I mentioned in the beginning,
(25:17):
M This picture is really famous. So like, if you
look up this case you'll see it eerily. The aged
obelisk is actually within sight of where the body was found.
I will say that they spelled it wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Wi.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yes, they spelled it like witch witch instead of wit
or w. Additionally, the obelisk is actually too old and
delicate to have the paint removed, so it's still there.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Oh wow yeah, oh myam.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So again this case was kind of thrust back into
the limelight, and because the message is still there. In
November of twenty twenty, someone actually crossed out who and
wrote hers hr like hers put Belle in the witch elm,
which oh, doesn't make that much sense.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Not unless hers is referring to like a covin or
something I.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Guess, and it's hers put bell in the witch elm?
Apparently there was a graffiti artist who went by the
name hers Oh that They were like, maybe that was
what it was, but I don't know. There's no proof
for evidence or anything like that. But if it was
that graffiti artist, you're stupid and I hate you. Done.
(26:31):
So that question who put bell in the witch elm
ended up being like a local catchphrase, a piece of
Midland's folklore that like outlived the official investigation. Like the
graffiti I don't know if you've heard of this, like
Kilroy was here, was spread around during the war. The
Bella graffiti movement also kind of changed into this mythical
(26:51):
legend where whoever likely was doing that early on was
no longer doing it and now they were just copycats
right putting up that name. So pretty much that's where
we stand with her case. But we're going to get
into some theories.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Okay, okay, because they are wild.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
So we briefly mentioned the occult earlier. So this theory
really was put into place by a respected archaeologist in
Folklorus named doctor Margaret Murray. She was a known Egyptologist.
She worked with ancient religions and knew a good, like
a really good amount about the occults.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
So she was a baddie.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
I think she was the first woman to ever or
the first person to ever unwrap a mummy or something
like that. She's pretty famous. So she suggested she's the
one who kind of like really pushed this that the
death could have been a ritualistic death because it was
related to something called the Hand of Glory ritual. So
(27:50):
this ritual requires that a hand usually the left, though
not the right, but it's removed from either a witch
or a hanged criminal, depending on this, and then the
bones are scattered thirteen paces from the body.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Is that how far away the hand was?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I don't know. Allegedly, according to Margaret Murray, the Hand
of Glory was known to aid witches and thieves by
granting them certain boons. These included the ability to immobilize people,
unlocked doors, help one move around unnoticed, or show light
only to the user. Okay, my understanding was they would
make candles from the fat of the corpse in order
(28:27):
to kind.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Of use that.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
That's pretty sack, very metal. So Murray theorized in nineteen
forty five that Bella had been killed by coven members
her uncoven members in an occult execution, perhaps as retribution
for betraying the group or for some crime against her coven.
Even Haglewood itself had a reputation in local legend as
a place where witches sabbaths were once held before the war,
(28:51):
like long before the war. So it was like whispered
around town, really want to go, and that helped the
theory gain a lot of traction. Though the occult hypothesis
is pretty much fallen out of favor, it's still really
popular with the public because it sounds metal as hell.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, that sounds tight.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
There is really no evidence showing that this is the
case at all.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I mean, they wouldn't leave any evidence behind.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Th that's yeah, that's what she said, and that's why
nobody would ever come forward and like talk.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
About it whatever, right it sworn to secrecy.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
There were also tales of the Romani people coming out
and like staying in the woods around this time, suggesting
that Bella may have been a Romani person who was
murdered and hidden or she was killed by the Romanis. However,
that theory is more than likely due to prejudice against
the Romani people and there is no evidence for it,
like at all.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, I was gonna say, even the clothing that she
was wearing. I don't know if it's necessarily an indicator.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Literally, yeah, that's yeah, just prejudice.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Around the Cold War era times. So nineteen fifty three,
a new surfaced, which is freaking bonkers, okay. A journalist
named Wilfrid Byford Jones, writing under the pen name Oyster
(30:17):
Yeah you put de Cuister, published a series of articles
revisiting the case and what he called the light of
a newly emerging wartime secrets. His articles attacked previous suggestions
that she was killed by the traveling Romani's. After his
letters were published, he received a letter from a woman
named Anna quote unquote, who said that he should finish
(30:38):
his letters about the case because they were really entertaining,
but that he would never solve what happened. Oh. She
suggested that the one person who could answer questions about
what happened were an I quote, beyond the jurisdiction of
earthly courts. There were witches. They were dead.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
They were dead witches witches.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
She went on to say that the perpetrator died insane
in nineteen forty two, and that the woman deemed Bella
was an illegal Dutch immigrant who arrived in England in
early nineteen forty one. Oh so this guy, Wilfred goes
to the police with us because he's like, this is
kind of freaky. He goes to the police and the
police are like, yo, this could be a lead. And
(31:20):
so they begged this woman Anna to come out. In
the letters she had told him that she was using
a non de plume or a pen name. So they
were like, please come forward, come talk to us, and
she did and they found her real name was Una Hainsworth.
She told police that she was formerly married to a
man named Jack moss Up. He was a Royal Air
Force pilot turn factory worker and he was the one
(31:41):
who died in the mental asylum in nineteen forty two.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Okay her.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Allegedly Jack was entangled in a pro German spy ring
operation in the Midlands alongside a dutch Man named Van Ralt.
One night, while drinking in the Littleton Arms Pubs in
Hagley with Van Ralt and a Dutch woman, presumably Bella,
Van Ralt decided to dispose of the woman, who he
deemed was a liability and who he said.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
New too much oh, okay, so she probably knew his
identity or something something like that, that's true identity.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
So he strangled the woman in his car to silence her,
either revealing her role as a spy, or in some
cases say simply because he wanted to, because he was
a jerk. Yeah. Another version of the story states that
Jack and Van Ralt dragged Bella into the woods because
she had been drinking and was super drunk, and they
shoved her into a tree to teach her a lesson,
(32:34):
where she then suffocated with.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Some of the cloth from her skirt stuck down her throat.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I don't know either way. Una said that it drove
Jack mad, and he told his wife that he was
having a nightmare every night of a woman staring at
him from a hole in a tree. He was eventually
confined to an asylum and he died there a year
before the skeleton was found. And there's evidence showing that
he was having these dreams. That's what he was complaining of.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
From beyond the grave.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
From beyond the was like you, yeah, bitch, I was
straining so hard. Yeah, I'm gonna get better. Just today,
it's just the first day.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
It's baby steps. Yeah, you sound like a spooky dead
horse ghost.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
He's a horse ghost in skyroom. So for evidence police
were able to determine that Jack did diet in the
(33:51):
Dane Asylum in nineteen forty two. He was complaining of
these specific dreams.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
However, it's a very specific nightmare.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yes, Van Ralt was never identified found because he was
a spot. He was a sneaky spy. That being said,
the theory was so sensational that it refused to die,
of course, especially in the broader context of World War Two.
So there were local rumors that two German parachutists had
mysteriously landed in the area in nineteen forty one before vanishing.
(34:17):
Based on declassified M fifteen files, it showed that German
agents were active in Britain in nineteen forty one, where
one agent, Joseph Jacobs, was captured after parachuting into Cambridgeshire
in January of nineteen forty one. He told M fifteen
that a spy named Clara Berrelle Beryl Clara Barrel, Clara
(34:38):
Barrel Clara Barrell was also supposed to land there at
the same time. Oh Okay detectives suggested that this Clara
Burrell was Clara Bella and thus Lubella with Una, suggesting
that there were ties to espionage. Detectives had to track
them down. They were able to determine, however, that the
(34:59):
two women were not the same. Clara, for instance, was
five feet ten inches.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Tall, tall with probably larger feet. Yeah, probably five feet
in five and that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah, so she was tall. And she was found to
have died in a Berlin hospital in nineteen forty two.
Allegedly they found these records. I will say, so she
was a beautiful some kind of like actress and burlesque dancer.
Cool Clara was, and she was not seen in any
public things after nineteen forty one, Okay, and then they
found these documents.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Allegedly interesting, she was probably she maybe was.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Again, there's very little evidence pointing to this theory of
Clara being Bella as a fact. Other theories exist, including
that she was simply a local sex worker based on
that missing report. I think that's there's a good chance
of that. There's also theories about her having a run
in with an American serviceman who panicked after her murder
(36:00):
and hid her in the first spot he came across.
Like all other theories. These are all speculative. There is
no hard evidence, right, so any local updates now really
are on the struggle bus. In twenty fourteen, the West
America Police tried to review the case again with fresh
eyes in a comprehensive review. They officially closed the case
(36:21):
in twenty fourteen and relegated the files to public archives.
In twenty eighteen, Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moore's University
face lab, which you may recall the face lab. She
also did like King George, right, King George, King.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Richard, one of the two kings.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, she did something some king, some king made her
like super famous, so they like rebuild it with clay.
So she rebuilt her face from photos of the school.
Interesting because guess what what the police lost her school. Stop, No,
they completely lost they lost her.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
How do you lose Nope, I can't say that because
that happened all over the United States all the time.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, so it's wild to me, but yeah, she can.
She reconstructed her face with clay, allowing us to see
what she most likely looked like. Still, no new leads
or clusive and sent in since then. Okay, the most
promising lead occurred in twenty twenty three, on the eightieth anniversary,
so BBC did a podcast series titled The Body in
the Tree and launched a campaign to find Bella's remains.
(37:25):
So they want to do genetic testing. Yeah cool, she
likely had a child, right, they're hoping to try to
run those new forensic tests on the bones. But they
are still missing.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Oh my god. They're probably just not labeled correctly. They're
sitting in storage somewhere. Ien't bet you anything.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
They're on like some like yeah, wrong name or something, or.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Just it's Jane Doe something or I don't know what
they do in the UK, but I'm sure it's unidentified female.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, exactly. Well, and that's that's part of the problem.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
No serial number, nothing, nothing, just sitting in a box.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So during this series, this docu series, they found that
Professor Webster actually had used her skeleton and artifacts as
teaching specimens for the police trainees. And then they were
moved to the university. Uh huh, and then they were
lost gun.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Oof, probably in a closet somewhere.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Probably do what it's like. Have you have you heard
about that case where he was like a he was
a wild West like guy and they accidentally ended up
finding him in a haunted house, yes, because people thought
he was a we'll have to do that case for
you guys, because bonkers.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
There's actually here At un R they found storage that
had ancestor remains just stuck back in a closet somewhere
that no one knew where they came from. So the
anthropology department has been digging through these boxes and figuring
(38:49):
all this out and trying to repatriate them because like,
you don't realize how often people either die while they're
working in a space like a univer or you know,
and they take all that knowledge with they take all
the knowledge with them, or it's just not catalog right,
and it's just a mess. So what a tragedy. I know,
(39:10):
So that's happened here.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
How do they lose? Never mind, I don't.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Get how you can lose something like that, because I
feel like I would, you'd be a lot more, would
be a lot more on the I don't know, but
I don't know. Back in the forties fifties, well, during
the war, like.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
You said, when things were very manual, there wasn't a
lot of.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Tech cataloging it. And yeah, it all has to be
there's this.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I was listening to an episode the other day and.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Then if there's a fire, then all that shi gets lost.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah, oh got him, got him. I was gonna say
there was an episode the other day where a secretary
was calling for a stay of execution and she mistiled
the number and the guy got killed.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Oh my god. And I was like, wow, how awful.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
You didn't have it on speed dial?
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Bro? Yeah did she?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Hey, young viewers, do you even know what speedarll is anymore?
I know, I know, I'm sure she lived with our
guilt forever. But what a like one little mistake? Man,
Sometimes you can have huge ripples.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
To see, like a smudge even, or like a number
that looks.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Some people write their fours and nine is almost the same.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
My seven's and ones. People get confused about I always
put like a little the notch. Now, well I've always
done that. That's very weird. Yeah is that a one
or seven? It's clearly a seven. Don't notch my ones anyway.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
I hear you, though, one little, one little bad like
one little mistake, that's all it takes. So to this day,
they are begging the public to return the bones so
that they can run you know, new age tech and
attempt to determine who she was, where she came from,
does she have family, and provide her with a proper burial.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Absolutely either way eight Deca Dawn Houpa, Bella and the
Witch Elm remains a compelling enigma and true crime puzzle
entwined with folklore and history. Absolutely so, rest in peace,
Bella and thank you Nikki for sending this case over.
This was so interesting to dig through.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Nicky suggested a couple of cases, and thank you guys
for keeping those coming. I really appreciate y'all support.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Hell yeah, we love doing cases. I love finding about,
like finding out about new things that I've never even
heard of or would have considered doing. It so interesting.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I've heard of that. I've heard of this case, but
not all of the different theories surrounding it. So thank
you for doing a little deep dive on it. And uh,
who put Bella in the Witch Elm? I hope in
our lifetime you figure that out.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah, it would be nice, especially if we can find
you know, the evidence from Hey, if you have a
random skull in your house.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
You have interns working and digging through closets. Hopefully, they're
smart and I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Just look for those crooked teeth.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Maybe. Yeah, if those schools don't intact they're using that,
I mean, allegedly supposedly.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
I'm just gonna throw that in there cover my bases. Okay, Well,
we really appreciate hanging out with you guys again this week.
We can't wait to see you and hear from you
next week.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
You get in there.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
If you have any case corrections, if you have any
suggestions coffee shops, all that crap. You know how to
reach us. You can hit us up on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Scream dot and do Sugar dot podcast.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Hit us up on Facebook, scream and sugar True Cram,
Coffee hour on TikTok, scream dot and dot sugar, hit
us up on Gmail, Scream and Sugar.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Email at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
And also, you know, please like share, send us in
your group.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Chats, send us in chat. I'm just like we should.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Get slowly becoming a grandma.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I'm already the grandmother.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Make share mean the group chats.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
We should get like an anonymous number and like po
box or something set up like a lot of posy
that but people can call in and like do little
voicemails and stuff, so well that fun. Yeah, we'll look
in at doing that because we'd love to hear from y'all.
So keep you posted, maybe next episode, after next seth.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
We appreciate you all so much more than you even know.
You guys, ave the crap the besneys jammis cast.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Can I give you the telly? Yeah, after we made
our agreement thirteen times, it's only thirteen between both of us.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, but how many were me?
Speaker 2 (43:49):
You? You were seven? Six. I'm gonna have to do
a different tellier. Okay, so it was eleven times, you
did six excited five.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I did almost all the talking. So this does not
bode well for you.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh no, anytime I open my mouth, so there's I'm
a sailor, there's a little there's a little guy in
the back of my throat that she's like, we're gonna
do ndle this down maybe next episode.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, I'm just gonna keep track per episode and listen.
Wish us luck you guys, Oh my God.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Send your thoughts and in your prayers. Anyway, on that note,
until next time, stay spooky, y'all. Why are you steering
(45:17):
with me? Because I'm like, what are we remembering, just
remember very spooky,
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