Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
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Size: 
(small)
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Situated just off the Kidderminster to Birmingham Road, in the English Midlands, Round Hill Wood is part of the Hagley Hall estate belonging to Lord Cobham. By day it is a beautiful if lonely spot, at night, however, engulfed in the ghostly shadows of the Clent Hills, the atmosphere is somewhat eerie. The place supposedly has a reputation for strange events, and perhaps none were stranger than what transpired there one sunny April day more than 60 years ago.
On 18 April, 1943, four boys (Robert Hart, Thomas Willetts, Bob Farmer and Fred Payne) from Stourbridge were poaching in Round Hill Woods on the nearby Wychbury Hill when they came across a large Wych Hazel, a tree often confused by local residents with a Wych Elm.
Believing this was a good place to hunt birds' nests, Farmer attempted to climb the tree to investigate. As he was climbing, he glanced down into the hollow trunk and discovered a skull, believing it to be animal. However, he quickly realised, after seeing human hair and teeth, that he was holding a human skull. As they were on the land illegally, Farmer put the skull back and all four boys returned home without mentioning their discovery to anybody.
On returning home the youngest of the boys, Tommy Willetts, felt uneasy about what he had witnessed and decided to report the find to his parents. When police checked the trunk of the tree they found an almost complete human skeleton, a shoe and some fragments of clothing. After further investigation, a severed hand was found buried in the ground near to the tree.
The body was sent for forensic examination by Prof. James Webster. He quickly established that the skeleton was female and had been dead for at least 18 months, placing her time of death around October 1941. He found taffeta in her mouth, suggesting that she had died from asphyxiation. From the measurement of the trunk he also deduced that she must have been placed there "still warm" after the killing as she could not have fitted in once rigor mortis had taken hold.
Murder by Witchcraft?
There were and are many theories as to the identity of 'Bella' and the mystery of her murder. But perhaps the most controversial was put forward at the time by Professor Margaret Murray, of University College, London. She was a respected anthropologist, archaeologist and Egyptologist, but her theories on the origins and organization of witchcraft, with her suggestion that it pre-dated Christianity, were controversial, and not taken seriously by many of her colleagues. Today some of her books have become cult titles including The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), The God of the Witches (1933) and the Divine King in England (1954).
Professor Murray drew attention to the fact that the hand was missing from the skeleton when found, and suggested it was the sign of a black magic execution. She linked it with 'The Hand of Glory', traditionally obtained at the dead of night when it would be cut from the body of an executed criminal hanging from the gibbet or gallows. The hand was supposed to possess powerful magic, and was used to protect its owner from evil spirits, to reveal where treasure was buried or even to put people to sleep. She also drew attention to the 'ancient tradition' that the spirit of a dead witch could be prevented from causing any more harm by being imprisoned in the hollow of a tree.
Since the woman's killing was so soon after the start of World War II, identification was seriously hampered. Police could tell from items found with the body what the woman had looked like but with so many people being reported missing from the war, and people regularly moving house, the records were too vast for a proper identification to take place.
The only clue was in the form of a report from the executive of an industrial company. In July, 1941, he had been walking to his lodgings in Hagley Green, when he heard a woman's screams coming from Hagley Wood. A couple of minutes later he met a schoolteacher walking in the opposite direction who had also heard the screams. The men phoned the police who arrived and searched Hagley Wood, but found nothing. This incident was exactly 20 months before the body was discovered, and, considering the pathologist's estimate that the woman had been dead for at least 18 months before she was found, seemed extremely promising. However, as with many clues in what the press were now calling the "Tree Murder Riddle, it was to lead nowhere.
Mysterious Graffiti
If no real identity was found for the murdered woman then at least a nickname surfaced. Around Christmas 1943, graffiti began to appear on the walls of empty buildings in various parts of the West Midlands area.
The first - "Who put Luebella down the wych–elm?" was followed by many other slight variations, such as 'Hagley Wood Bella' found on a wall in Birmingham. As time passed the messages took on what was to be their settled form for years to come: 'Who put Bella in the wych–elm?' they asked. (it's also painted on the nearby Obelisk). It was thought that the original messages, carefully written in chalk in three-inch-deep capital letters, were probably written by the same hand, working at night.
Though the graffiti seemed to be the work of a hoaxer with a sick sense of humour, there was the slim possibility suggested by the slogans that somebody knew something about the crime. But appeals for the mysterious graffitist to contact the police proved futile, though the messages continued to appear, and have so, intermittently up until the present. However, the immediate result at the beginning of 1944 was that the unknown woman was given a nickname that even the police adopted.
The explanation given most credence by the authorities at the time was also the most prosaic.They thought it most probable that the victim had been in the woods sheltering from an air raid on Birmingham, as many people fled from the city during the German bombings. Perhaps the murderer had been there for the same reason and the killing had been spur of the moment, probably during an attempted rape.
However, if Bella was a local woman sheltering from the blitz, then some clues should have turned up to her identity by now, either from relatives attempting to locate her or from relevant dental records, but nothing has ever been found, and it seems no-one knew anything about her.
The case is still open and the police would be happy to hear from anyone with any new leads on this old case !
At the time of placeing the cache contains:
Log book and pencil.
Various trinkets like keyrings, toys, ballons, badges.
A Pokemon that flashes red when you move him.
An Electronic Tamagotchi, (I took out the batteries to stop the thing from bleeping !)
The container has room for small TBs
The wood has many small tracks running through it, and if
you're lucky in the one you choose, you will not have to leave it to find the cache.
All I ask of my fellow Cachers is, please completly cover the cache in leaf litter to stop ramblers and muggle folk from spotting it, and please do not upload any pictures of the cache or anywhere near it's location, as I feel it will be more fun for people to go there armed only with this info. Thanks :)
*** PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU GO FOR THIS CACHE ***
IN THE ATTRIBUTES YOU WILL SEE THAT I'VE MARKED THIS AS NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN. ALL YOUNG CACHERS ARE WELCOME TO GO AND FIND THIS CACHE. I'VE PUT IT AS NOT SUITABLE INCASE YOUR KIDS GET UPSET OR SPOOKED AND END UP HAVING NIGHTMARES!!!!.......Now you can't complain in the logs as I've given you fair warning that this cache is a spooky one for some youngsters and some adults too!
*** YOU WILL NEED TO TAKE YOUR OWN PEN OR PENCIL TO SIGN THE LOGBOOK ***
When I next go up there I will be adding a couple of new pencils and a new logbook. Until then I'm sure you guys can find a bit of space to sign the old one and will have a pen or pencil in your caching bag :-)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Uvqqra va gur onfr bs n znal yvzorq gerr.