Todays throwback article is actually less throwback and more rewrite. It’s a story that you can find on pretty much any true mystery or cold case website or podcast. And though whilst I heartily approve of preserving old stories and cases, these are very rarely anything less than a rehash of the same tale. But old stories deserve an update now and again. Especially when the story being told starts as a true crime.

Pull up a chair…

There are mysteries that begin with a scream. Others begin with a gunshot, a disappearing train, or a cryptic letter left on a kitchen table. The mystery of Bella in the Wych Elm began with four boys looking for birds’ nests.

On 18 April 1943, Britain was still at war. The blackout remained in force, rationing shaped everyday life, and thousands of American servicemen had arrived in the Midlands ahead of the Allied invasion of Europe. Against that backdrop, four local boys slipped into Hagley Wood on the Hagley Hall estate near Stourbridge. They knew perfectly well that they were trespassing, but boys have always been drawn to woods, and wartime restrictions did little to discourage adventure.

As they wandered beneath the spring canopy, one of them noticed a large wych elm. Trees like this often attracted nesting birds, and climbing them was part of the day’s entertainment. Reaching into a hollow in the trunk, expecting perhaps to find eggs or a startled owl, he instead grasped something smooth and cold.

It was a human skull.

Startled, the boys peered inside the hollow trunk. More bones were visible in the darkness below. Frightened that admitting what they had found would also reveal they had been trespassing, they swore one another to secrecy and hurried home.

It was the sort of promise children often make and thankfully, it lasted less than a day. One of the boys eventually told his parents, who immediately informed the police.

Within hours, officers were searching the tree. Inside the hollow trunk they found the almost complete skeleton of a young woman. Nearby lay a shoe, fragments of clothing and a gold wedding ring. And, buried beneath leaves some distance from the tree, one severed hand.

The newspapers would eventually call her Bella. The trouble was…

Nobody knew whether that had ever been her name.

The hollow trunk of the wych elm had preserved more than just bones, it had frozen a mystery. Pathologist Professor James Webster examined the remains and concluded that the woman had probably died around eighteen months earlier, placing her death sometime in late 1941. She was estimated to have been around thirty-five years old, approximately five feet tall, with brown hair. Dental work suggested she had received professional treatment at some point in her life, offering hope that she might eventually be identified.

There was one particularly important detail. The body had almost certainly been placed inside the tree shortly after death. The hollow opening was too narrow for a body already stiffened by rigor mortis – whoever concealed her there had acted quickly.

Dr Webster also concluded that the cause of death was most likely asphyxiation. This was not an accident. It was murder. Yet despite wartime missing persons enquiries, dental records, local investigations and appeals through the press, no one came forward to identify her. It was as though she had simply vanished before she died. Or perhaps she had come from somewhere no one thought to look.

If Bella herself refused to reveal her identity, someone else refused to let the case disappear. In March 1944, almost a year after the body was discovered, strange graffiti appeared on the wall of an old building in Upper Dean Street, Birmingham.

‘WHO PUT LUBELLA DOWN THE WYCH ELM?’

The wording varied over the years. Sometimes “Lubella.”Sometimes simply “Bella.” Sometimes “down the Wych Elm. “Sometimes “in the Wych Elm.” The spelling shifted but the message never really changed.

More examples appeared across Birmingham and the Black Country over the following decades. Someone wanted people to remember. Whether the graffiti writer knew the victim personally, knew her killer, or was simply fascinated by the mystery has never been established.

Ironically, those anonymous messages achieved exactly what they intended because without them, Bella’s case might easily have disappeared into wartime police archives. Instead, it became one of Britain’s most enduring unsolved murders.

When detectives from Worcestershire Constabulary began searching Hagley Wood, they quickly realised they were dealing with something far more complicated than a straightforward murder. Britain was in the middle of the Second World War. Millions of people were on the move. Evacuees had been relocated across the country. American and Canadian servicemen filled local villages and market towns. Refugees from occupied Europe had found temporary homes in Britain, while countless women had entered wartime industries far from where they had grown up. Identities were difficult to verify, records were incomplete and many missing persons simply disappeared into the administrative chaos of wartime Britain.

The police nevertheless began a painstaking investigation.The woman’s clothing was carefully examined. Her shoes were traced. Dentists were contacted in the hope that her distinctive dental work might identify her. Missing person reports from across Britain were reviewed. Nothing matched. No family came forward. No employer recognised the description. No friend reported her disappearance. It was as though she had slipped through history unnoticed before someone slipped her into the hollow trunk of a tree.

It is impossible to tell the story of Bella without talking about the tree itself. To modern readers, the word ‘wych’ often causes confusion. Despite countless newspaper headlines and paranormal television programmes, the name has nothing whatsoever to do with witches. A wych elm (Ulmus glabra) is simply a native species of elm, its name deriving from the Old English ‘wice’, meaning pliant or flexible. Long before anyone imagined occult ceremonies in Hagley Wood, the tree already carried that name. Yet the coincidence proved irresistible.

“Wych.”

“Witch.”

One letter. An entire mythology.

Once that connection had been made, it became almost impossible to separate folklore from fact. The tree itself was ancient, hollow and hidden within dense woodland. To many people it looked exactly like the sort of place where old magic might linger. Perhaps that says more about us than it does about the tree.

Professor James Webster’s examination revealed another crucial detail. The victim had not simply been left beside the tree. She had been placed inside it deliberately. The opening into the hollow trunk measured only around fifteen inches across. For an adult body to pass through such a narrow space, it would almost certainly have had to be inserted before rigor mortis set in. Once the body’s muscles stiffened, such concealment would have been virtually impossible.

Whoever killed her had acted quickly and that immediately raises uncomfortable questions. Was the tree chosen in advance? Did the killer know the woods well? Or had the hollow trunk simply presented an opportunity too convenient to ignore?

Even today, standing among the trees of Hagley Wood, it is easy to see how someone unfamiliar with the area could lose their bearings. The woodland has an uncanny habit of swallowing sound. Footpaths twist unexpectedly. The canopy muffles the outside world. In daylight it is peaceful. At night…? I imagine it would have been something altogether different.

The timing of Bella’s death has fuelled speculation for more than eighty years. If Professor Webster’s estimate was correct, she probably died during the autumn of 1941. Britain was enduring some of the darkest months of the war. German bombing raids continued. Military intelligence operated throughout the country. Troop movements were increasingly secretive. Factories worked around the clock. Against that backdrop, rumours flourished.

People whispered about spies. Black market gangs. Escaped prisoners. Secret operations. It is hardly surprising that Bella’s murder soon attracted theories every bit as extraordinary as the times themselves. Some of those theories would become almost as famous as the crime itself. Most remain frustratingly short of evidence.

Theory One: Was Bella a German Spy?

Perhaps the most popular theory suggests Bella was involved in wartime espionage. The idea largely stems from testimony given years later by Professor Margaret Murray, the controversial Egyptologist whose writings on witchcraft influenced an entire generation of occult enthusiasts.

Around the same time, journalist Wilfrid Byford-Jones claimed to have heard stories linking the murder to German intelligence networks operating in the Midlands. Later writers expanded upon these suggestions. One version centres on Josef Jakobs, the last German spy executed in the Tower of London after parachuting into England in 1941.

Another proposes that Bella herself acted as an intelligence courier before being murdered by fellow agents when she became a liability.

It’s an intriguing story. It also has significant problems.

No surviving MI5 files identify Bella.

No intelligence records link an unidentified female operative to Hagley Wood.

Jakobs himself never mentioned such a murder during interrogation.

The chronology is uncertain.

Like many espionage stories, it survives largely because wartime Britain feels like the perfect setting for hidden agents and deadly secrets. The evidence, however, remains circumstantial at best.

What supports the theory?

Wartime context naturally encouraged espionage.

Intelligence operations were active across Britain.

Later testimony hinted at possible spy connections.

What argues against it?

No documentary evidence has ever emerged.

MI5 records do not support the claim.

The theory relies heavily on recollections made many years after the event.

Theory Two: An Occult Killing?

This is perhaps the theory most often repeated – and the one most in need of careful handling. When Bella’s severed hand was discovered buried separately from the body, some commentators immediately drew comparisons with old folk beliefs. Across Britain and Europe, severed hands occasionally appear in folklore – The ‘Hand of Glory’, supposedly fashioned from the hand of an executed criminal, was believed to possess magical powers in later folklore, though the traditions surrounding it vary considerably and are often exaggerated in popular retellings.

Margaret Murray went further. She suggested Bella may have been the victim of a ritual killing connected to witchcraft. The claim attracted enormous media attention. It also attracted considerable criticism.

Modern historians regard Murray’s broader theories about an organised pre-Christian witch cult as deeply flawed. While her work was enormously influential during the twentieth century, much of it has since been rejected by archaeologists and historians.

Could Bella’s hand have been removed deliberately? Certainly.

Does that automatically imply ritual murder? Not at all.

There are numerous possible explanations, including attempts to conceal evidence, animal disturbance after burial or circumstances that can no longer be reconstructed from the surviving evidence.

What supports the theory?

The separate hand remains unusual.

Folklore provides precedents for symbolic use of severed hands.

What argues against it?

No physical evidence indicates a ritual site.

Margaret Murray’s conclusions are no longer widely accepted.

The theory depends more upon folklore than forensic evidence.

Theory Three: Was Bella Clara Bauerle?

One of the more frequently named candidates is a Dutch woman called Clara Bauerle. The theory emerged years after the murder through a journalist named Wilfred Byford-Jones, who claimed to have spoken to a former police officer involved in the investigation.

According to his account, a Dutchman living in Birmingham had allegedly confessed to his wife that Bella had been a woman named Clara, a German cabaret singer who was said to have become involved with Abwehr agent Josef Jakobs.

The story, if it was true was dramatic. Clara was supposedly recruited by German intelligence, arrived in Britain under false identity and became part of a network gathering military information. When she threatened the security of the operation – or perhaps she knew too much – she was murdered by fellow agents and concealed inside the wych elm.

It’s a compelling tale but it also suffers from a similar problem. Almost none of it can be independently verified. No immigration records have conclusively identified a Clara Bauerle matching the story. No wartime intelligence files confirm her existence in connection to the case, nor has any evidence emerged placing such a woman in Hagley Woods during the period in question.

The theory only survives because it fits the atmosphere of wartime Britain so well. Sadly, atmosphere is not evidence.

What Supports The Theory?

The account originated from someone claiming knowledge of the original investigation.

Wartime espionage was a genuine concern throughout Britain.

It offers an explanation why Bella was never reported missing. Kinda.

What Argues Against It?

No documentary evidence confirms Clara Bauerle existed in this context.

No surviving police or intelligence files support the story.

Much of the account relies on hearsay recorded years afted the events.

Research shows that Clara Bauerle died in Berlin in December 1942, making it extremely unlikely she was Bella.

Theory Four: A Local Woman Lost To History.

Sometimes the simplest explanation receives the least attention. What if Bella wasn’t a spy? What if she wasn’t involved in witchcraft? What if she was simply a woman whose disappearance passed unnoticed amid the chaos of war?

Britain in 1941 was a very different country from today. Millions of people had left their hometowns for wartime work.Women travelled alone in unprecedented numbers, taking factory jobs, joining the armed forces or working on farms through the Women’s Land Army. Others found themselves displaced through bombing and separated from their families for years. Records were incomplete. Communication was difficult. Not every missing person generated a national search.

Bella’s clothing suggested she was of modest means rather than wealthy. Her dental care indicated she had had access to professional care at some stage of her life, but beyond that, almost nothing could be inferred. She could have been local. She could just as easily have travelled from another county or even country altogether. If she had few close relatives, or if those relatives themselves became casualties of the war, her disappearance may never have prompted the sort of investigation we would expect today. There is something profoundly sad about that possibility – not mysterious, Just sad.

What Supports The Theory?

It fits the realities of wartime Britain.

Explains why no one immediately identified her.

Requires the fewest assumptions.

What Argues Against It?

Extensive police enquiries failed to find a match.

Her distinctive dental work still produced no identification.

It leaves many questions about the circumstances of the murder unanswered.

There are way too many theories to list here, but these seem to be the most popular.

One mystery often overshadowed by Bella herself is the identity of the person who repeatedly wrote about her.

The first known message appeared roughly a year after the discovery of her body. The others which followed had different handwriting, were in different locations and had slightly different wording, but always had the same question:

Who put Bella in the wych elm?

Some researchers believe that there ay have been more than one writer. Others believe that one individual kept the mystery alive over the years, but if that is the case, why? Did they know Bella personally? Did they know her killer? Had they merely become obsessed with the case? Or were they trying to ensure the police never stopped asking questions?

It’s impossible to know. Yet, without these anonymous messages, Bella’s murder might have slipped quietly into obscurity. The graffiti transformed a local murder into national folklore.

One of the strangest twists in the entire story concerns Bella herself – not the woman. Her remains.

After the investigation concluded, Bella’s skeleton was retained for further examination and study. At some point afterwards. It disappeared. Researchers attempting to revisit the case decades later discovered that the remains could no longer be located. Whether Bella was misplaced during museum transfers, administrative reorganisation or simple human error remains unclear, but the result is devastating.

Modern forensic science has transformed countless historic cases. DNA profiling, isotope analysis, advanced facial reconstruction and improved forensic anthropology have identified victims who remained anonymous for generations.

Bella might have benefited from those advances. Instead, the most important piece of evidence appears to have been lost. Unless the remains are rediscovered in some overlooked archive or museum collection, many of those scientific opportunities may now be gone forever. And for a woman whose identity was already stolen once, that feels like a second tragedy.

But could modern science still solve the case? Maybe. Although the disappearance of the skeleton poses a major obstacle, not everything is necessarily missing. The police file, photographs and pathology survives. Personal notebooks remain in archives. If Bella’s remains were ever rediscovered, modern forensic techniques could reveal astonishing new information. Scientists might determine where she spent her childhood through isotope analysis of her teeth. DNA could, potentially, identify surviving relatives. Digital facial reconstruction could produce the most accurate likeness ever created.

The mystery would not automatically be solved but Bella herself might finally begin to emerge from the shadows and that possibility alone is reason enough to never stop looking.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after years writing about the paranormal and mysteries and folklore, it’s that stories have a habit of attaching themselves to unanswered questions. We don’t like mysteries. Humans are very good at filling gaps. Give us an ancient tree and we’ll imagine outlaws hiding beneath it’s branches. Wrap iron chains around an oak and we’ll invent a curse. Find an unidentified woman inside the hollow trunk of a wych elm and sooner or later spies, witches and secret societies will arrive.

Bella’s story has attracted almost every kind of explanation imaginable. She’s been described as a German spy, a Dutch resistance fighter, a victim of occult sacrifice, a black market courier, a local woman caught in an abusive relationship, a traveller and even an unfortunate stranger who simply crossed paths with the wrong person.

Some theories are more plausible than others but none has ever been proved. That is what keeps the mystery alive. Every generation examining the evidence through the lens of it’s own fears. During the 40’s it was espionage. The occult obsessed 60’s and 70’s made her a sacrifice.

Today, we ask different questions altogether – Could some forgotten archive still hold the missing piece of this puzzle? Could modern forensic science identify her? Could DNA finally give Bella her name back? The mystery evolves because we evolve.

When I started writing this piece I was unsure of how to frame it. It’s tempting to go the way of so many narrators before me and think of ‘Bella in the Wych Elm’ as little more than an intriguing historical curiosity, a good ghost story, an unusual murder, the inspiration for books, documentaries and late night podcasts.

But that’s not my style. More to the point, I don’t think that is why the case has endured. I think it survives because, when you strip away all the folklore and speculation, it is profoundly human. Profoundly real.

Somewhere, sometime around the autumn of 1941, a woman lost her life.

She was a daughter, maybe even a sister, wife or mother. Somebody knew her. They may even have loved her. She most certainly laughed. She had favorite foods and songs. People who she trusted. She probably had hopes for a future that vanished the moment that someone decided she should disappear. And then she did.

Her identity gone. Her family and friends – if they survived the war – never found answers. Her body left, alone in the trunk of an old tree. Even her remains have since vanished. History has been very unkind to Bella. But someone, somewhere refused to let her be forgotten entirely.

I often find myself thinking less about Bella’s killer than the nameless person carrying a tin of paint around Birmingham. I imagine them standing in the darkness, brush in hand, carefully writing those now famous words onto brickwork. They risked being caught and gained nothing. Perhaps they genuinely knew something. Maybe they suspected someone. Or maybe they believed an unnamed woman deserved better than being forgotten in a police file. I find this last particularly moving. Because I believe that too. The graffiti may have been vandalism but it was also remembrance. Without it I probably wouldn’t be writing about Bella today.

More than eighty years have passed since four boys climbed a tree looking for birds eggs. The wych elm is long gone, claimed by Dutch Elm disease in the second half of the twentieth century. The graffiti has faded from most walls. Many of the detectives are gone. Bella’s remains are gone.

Every few years someone produces a new suspect. A new identity. A new documentary or book. But the question still remains:

‘Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?’

Perhaps we should be asking :

‘Who was she?’

In 2023 the BBC launched a public appeal to museums after discovering Bella’s remains had once been kept in Birmingham Police’s Black Museum. They aren’t there now, but there is active interest in trying to locate them for DNA testing.

I like to think that one day a forgotten box in some archive will be opened and Bella will be rediscovered. I like to think that advances in forensic genealogy will succeed where wartime policing failed. It isn’t impossible.

History has surprised us before.