In 1943, four boys searching for bird nests in Hagley Wood stumbled upon something far more disturbing, a human skull, wedged inside the hollow of an old Wych Elm. The remains were of an unknown woman, her mouth forced open with a piece of cloth and her severed hand buried separately nearby…
Months later, chilling graffiti began to appear around town. On it was written: ‘Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?’ A question that, even after 80 years, has never been answered.
Was she a murder victim, a wartime spy or something even more sinister…? And more disturbingly, why did someone want her name to be remembered even after her death?
This is the ‘Bizarre But True!’ story of The Woman In The Elm Tree…
The discovery in Hagley Wood on the 18th of April 1943, set off one of Britain’s most chilling mysteries. A skeleton, hidden deep inside the tree, had been there long enough for her flesh to decompose, leaving only clinging patches of skin and hair. Whoever put her there must’ve done so while her body was still warm and pliable, otherwise rigor mortis would’ve made it completely impossible with the angles in which she was found.
Forensic experts concluded that she was a woman, in her mid-30s, around 4 foot 10 inches tall, with mousy brown hair and irregular front teeth. Her death was estimated to have happened about 18 months earlier than the discovery. A piece of fabric was found lodged inside her mouth, suggesting she had been gagged, possibly strangled or even suffocated. Stranger still, her right hand had been severed and buried separately nearby, a macabre detail that some later linked to occult practices…
Despite her highly distinctive dental features, the police could find no match of her in any missing persons records. They even reached out to local dentists, hoping for a lead, but no one had treated her. With no identity and no clear suspect, the case quickly stalled.
Then, six months later, a new mystery surfaced…
Across nearby Birmingham, graffiti messages began appearing, scrawled in white chalk on walls and buildings. They read: ‘Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?’ The name ‘Bella’ had never been mentioned in police reports, yet quickly associations were being made between the writing and the body found several months before.
Had the writer known her personally? Was this a taunt from her killer? Or was it a cryptic message from someone desperate to keep the case in the public eye? If so, what was their reason?
The speculation ran wild and theories about Bella’s identity ranged from the plausible to the outright bizarre. One of the most interesting theories suggested that Bella might have been a German spy. At the time, Britain was deep in the turmoil of World War II and espionage was a very real threat with the population on constant guard for German agents in their communities. Some believed she’d parachuted into the Midlands on a covert mission, only to be betrayed and murdered.
Whilst this seems outlandish at first, supporting the theory was an MI5 file detailing the capture of German spy ‘Josef Jakobs’ in 1941. Among his possessions was a photograph of a woman named Clara Bauerle, a cabaret singer rumoured to have been a secret agent. Clara bore a significant resemblance to ‘Bella’, leading to speculation that they were, in fact, the same person. However, official records later confirmed that Bauerle had died in Berlin in 1942, a full year before Bella’s estimated time of death.
Then, there was the theory of ritual sacrifice. Anthropologist Margaret Murray suggested that Bella had been killed as part of an occult ritual. The missing hand, she argued, was the hallmark of an old magical practice, the creation of a “Hand of Glory,” a talisman believed to grant supernatural abilities to thieves. The fact that the tree was a Wych Elm, historically associated with protection from evil, only fuelled the speculation even further.
Adding to the mysteriousness of the case was also a local folklore connection. Some historians pointed out that the location of Bella’s body was only a short distance from a site associated with ancient witchcraft practices. Even in the 20th century, belief in such rituals hadn’t completely faded away in the more rural parts of England and the idea that Bella was the victim of an old-world execution lingered in local whispers.
But was there a more straightforward answer?
In 1953, a letter arrived at a local newspaper, signed by a woman calling herself “Anna.” She claimed that Bella had been killed by a man named Jack Mossop and his associate, a Dutchman named Van Ralt. According to Anna, Bella had been drinking with the two men when she lost consciousness. Fearing she would wake up and expose them, though for what crime, she didn’t say, they panicked and stuffed her into the hollow tree, assuming she would never be found.
This account aligned with a statement given years earlier by Mossop’s ex-wife, Una Hainsworth. She recalled that Mossop had come home one night, shaken and disturbed, claiming that he was haunted by visions of a woman staring at him from inside an old tree. Shortly after, he suffered a breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he died in 1942.
If true, Anna’s story meant that Bella’s murder had simply been one of drunken misadventure rather than espionage or ritual killing. But like everything else in the case, no evidence was ever found to prove it.
But then, in the 1960s, another twist emerged. Bella’s remains had vanished…
According to forensic biologist Dr. John Lund, the skeleton had been sent to a university for further study, but when investigators later tried to locate it, they found that all records of it’s whereabouts had completely disappeared. Without the body, modern forensic techniques, DNA analysis, isotope testing, all became impossible.
Bella’s last physical connection to the world had been completely erased..
But despite the missing evidence, the case has refused to fade into obscurity. Every few years, new graffiti still appears somewhere around the local area, repeating the same chilling message ‘Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?’ In 2018, researchers at Queen Mary University in London attempted to use probability models to narrow down her origins, concluding that Bella was likely not British. Some historians theorised that she might’ve been an immigrant, possibly displaced by the war and that her unknown status made it easier for her killer to escape detection.
Another lead suggested that Bella might have been involved in the black market. Wartime Britain had a thriving underground economy and criminals often settled disputes violently. If she had knowledge of something dangerous, she might’ve been silenced permanently, her body hidden where few would think to look…
So, who was Bella? A spy? A victim of the occult? A casualty of wartime crime? Or simply an unlucky woman who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time? Decades later and we’re still no closer to an answer.
Yet someone, all those years ago, wanted us to remember her name. And after 80 years, we still remember The Woman In The Elm Tree…
