Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

“Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?” is a graffito that appeared in 1944 following the 1943 discovery by four teenagers of the skeletonised remains of a woman inside a wych elm in Worcestershire, England¹. The phrase is also used to refer to the unsolved case of the circumstances of her death¹.

On 18 April 1943, four local boys (Robert Hart, Thomas Willetts, Bob Farmer and Fred Payne) were in Hagley Wood, part of the Hagley estate belonging to Lord Cobham¹. They came across a large wych elm¹. Farmer attempted to climb the tree to investigate and discovered a skull¹. At first, he believed it to be that of an animal, but after seeing human hair and teeth, he realised that he had found a human skull¹. The boys returned home without mentioning their discovery to anybody¹. However, the eldest of the boys, Willetts, decided to report the find to his parents¹.

When police checked the trunk of the tree they found an almost complete skeleton, with a shoe, a gold wedding ring, and some fragments of clothing¹. The skull still had some tufts of hair and had a clear dental pattern, despite some missing teeth¹. After further investigation, the remains of a hand were found some distance from the tree¹. The body was sent for forensic examination by the Birmingham-based Home Office pathologist James Webster¹. He quickly established that it was that of a female who had been dead for at least 18 months, placing time of death in or before October 1941¹. Webster also discovered a section of taffeta in her mouth, suggesting that she had died from suffocation¹.

The case became one of Britain’s greatest unsolved mysteries². Some locals believe the killing was ritualistic and points to witchcraft, while others insist the woman was a German spy who was murdered when her mission behind enemy lines went wrong². The theories as to what may have happened are as bizarre as the local legend is enduring².

¹: “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? - Wikipedia”
²: “Unravelling the 80-year-old mystery of the woman found in a wych elm in Hagley Wood - ABC News”