Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?

Released on February 25, 2025 by iHeartPodcasts

In the gripping episode titled "Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?" from the popular podcast Stuff You Should Know, hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into one of Britain’s most enduring and mysterious true crime cases. This comprehensive summary encapsulates their in-depth exploration, providing listeners with a detailed account of the key events, investigations, and theories surrounding the enigmatic disappearance and death of Bella in the Wych Elm.

---

1. Introduction to the Case

Josh Clark opens the episode by introducing the mysterious case of Bella found in a wych elm tree during World War II, a story that has fascinated true crime enthusiasts for decades. He remarks on the eerie nature of the case and its early imprint on his memory, comparing it to unforgettable images from paranormal series like Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark (03:38): "It's one of those things that I've always just kind of known about, but I didn't know any of the details really."

2. Discovery of the Body

The narrative begins in April 1943, amidst wartime rationing in Britain, where four teenage boys—Robert Hart, Bob Farmer, Tommy Willits, and Fred Payne—stumble upon a human skull in Hagley Wood while searching for food sources like eggs and rabbits. The initial horror and confusion lead them to place the skull back, hoping to avoid trouble.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant (05:27): "They were trespassing and they don't want to get in trouble, so they're just going to put it back and never talk about it."

However, the eldest, Tommy Willits, breaks the pact and informs his parents, prompting a police investigation.

3. Initial Investigation

James Webster, a pathologist from the Birmingham Forensic Laboratory, takes charge of the case. His examination reveals that the remains belong to a woman approximately 35 years old, standing about 5 feet tall with brown hair. The scene suggests the possibility of murder, given the constricted space of the wych elm and evidence of potential asphyxiation using dress taffeta stuffed into her mouth.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark (07:27): "This could have asphyxiated somebody if it was stuffed into their mouth while they were still alive."

Despite thorough efforts, including tracing the victim’s shoe to the Waterfoot Company in Lancashire, no matching missing persons reports surface, and the case grows cold.

4. The Graffiti Phenomenon

In March 1944, nearly a year after Bella's remains were discovered, cryptic graffiti begins to appear around Birmingham and nearby towns. Messages like "hagley Wood Bella" and "who put Bella in the wych Elm" emerge, sparking public intrigue and prompting the police to reopen the case.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant (10:32): "It's enough that the police were like, okay, this seems a little weird."

5. The Wych Elm Misconception

The episode clarifies a common misconception about the term "wych elm." Contrary to popular belief, it has no association with witches or witchcraft. The name derives from an old English word meaning "smooth" or "supple," referring to the tree's bark.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark (13:37): "The name wych elm does not mean witch, W Y C H. And it comes from an old English word..."

6. The Margaret Murray Connection

Folklorist and archaeologist Margaret Murray, known for her controversial theories, connects the case to witchcraft. She posits that Bella's death was part of an ancient fertility cult practice, reinforcing the eerie narrative around the case.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant (14:31): "She was really into this thing and this kind of idea, and she had a theory that she had been promoting..."

7. Debunking the Hand of Glory Myth

Murray's involvement leads to myths such as the "Hand of Glory," an artifact unrelated to the actual findings. The hosts emphasize that no severed hand was found, clarifying that the mythological elements were later fabrications that muddled the case.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark (15:44): "Nothing like what it sounds like with Hand of Glory. Instead, it's an old burglar's superstition..."

8. Reopening the Case and New Theories

In 1953, journalist Wilfred Byford Jones, under the pen name Quaestar, attempts to revive the case with speculative theories involving Nazi spies and occult practices. His contributions introduce new layers of complexity, though they largely remain unsubstantiated.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant (22:01): "He wrote a bunch of very speculative articles about Bella's murder."

9. The 2013 Independent Theory

Decades later, The Independent newspaper proposes a theory linking Bella's death to Josef Jakobs, a German spy. They suggest Bella (Clara Bowerly) was a spy parachuted into England, involved romantically with Jakobs. However, this theory faces significant inconsistencies, such as discrepancies in Bella’s physical description and timelines.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark (33:48): "This picture of Clara Landau was actually a picture of Clara Bowerly... she would have been 35 at the time of the murder, just like the skeleton."

10. Current Status and Ongoing Mysteries

Despite extensive investigations and numerous theories, the Bella in the Wych Elm case remains unsolved. The absence of definitive evidence and the passage of time continue to shroud the case in mystery. The hosts highlight the possibility of lost or destroyed evidence, leaving room for future discoveries that might shed light on the enduring enigma.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Bryant (39:28): "If you're interested in it at all, go check that out."

11. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Josh and Chuck conclude by emphasizing the importance of scrutinizing sources, as the Bella and Wych Elm case has been subject to embellishments and fictional additions over the years. They encourage listeners to approach the case with a critical eye, appreciating the genuine efforts of investigators like James Webster while recognizing the allure such mysteries hold for the public imagination.

Notable Quote:

Josh Clark (40:29): "Be wary of where your information's from. And there's a lot more to it."

---

Stuff You Should Know masterfully unpacks the layers of the Bella in the Wych Elm case, presenting a balanced view between established facts and speculative theories. By weaving together historical context, investigative details, and the evolution of public perception, Josh and Chuck offer listeners a thorough understanding of why this case continues to fascinate and perplex.

For those intrigued by unsolved mysteries and true crime, this episode serves as an essential listen, shedding light on a story where reality and myth intertwine in the shadow of wartime Britain.

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

With T Mobile. No trendspotter has to deal with Trendspotty service because T Mobile helps keep you connected from big cities to your hometown on America's largest 5G network. Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Last 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service port in 90 days device knowledgeable carrier and timely redemption required card is no cash access. It expires in six months. Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here and Eating While Broke is back for Season four every Thursday.

[Josh Clark]

On the Black Effect Podcast Network.

[Chuck Bryant]

This season we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories on the menu.

[Josh Clark]

We have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howey.

[Josh Clark]

Turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect podcast network. IHeartRadio app Apple podcast. Wherever you get your favorite shows, come.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hungry for season four. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Jerry. Oh my gosh, there's Chuck. Sorry, Chuck. And this is Stuff you should Know. And we're off to a weird, weird start already.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, you forgot I was here.

[Josh Clark]

I just don't know what happened. My efference copies on the fritz.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, real quick, before we get started, and this just hit me, I went to a work function yesterday wherein we celebrated Jonathan Strickland, still our colleague, but our old buddy from the old house. Stuff Works Early Stuff podcast days, who was the long, long, long, long, long time host of Tech Stuff. And he has hung up his tech boots as far as hosting that show. He's still around and executive producing a slate of shows, but he decided not to host Tech Stuff any longer and we just. It was great seeing him. It's been quite a while and he's doing great and just hats off to Jonathan and what a great body of work he's given the world over all those years.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he has, man. Hats off to you, Jon. Like, that's. You should be very proud. We're all proud of you for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But keep your hat on Strickland, because you got that bald head. We don't want it to get sunburned.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, that was really cool of you to bring up. I'm glad you did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was good. I saw some of the old Crew and it's just, it's been too long because, you know, we don't go to the office much anymore and nobody does. So it's not like if I went there, I would see all the old gang. But it was good. It was nice to catch up with some people.

[Josh Clark]

That's cool, man. Yeah. You sent me and Jerry some good pictures.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was fun.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, onto the murder of a woman, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Awful.

[Josh Clark]

So this is a pretty true, pretty famous true crime case. Like really, really famous. I'm not sure if you'd heard of it before, have you?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not sure why or where it first got me, but I'm pretty sure. So I think Dave helped us with this and he linked to a pair of pictures of a tree and then a diagram of the woman, the murdered woman in this case. And like, you know, like almost an anatomical diagram of like what was found where and what she was wearing and all that. And it has like a real Ripley's Believe it or not look to it. The drawing does. And those things are as etched in my brain as pictures from like the Time Life paranormal series.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

From when I was a kid. So at some point I was exposed to this. So it's one of those things that I've always just kind of known about, but I didn't know any of the details really. And it's a truly fascinating case that I think one of the things that makes it appealing too is there's this level of this sense of like witchcraft or some sort of like pagan cults involved or something like that. And it turns out that that's not true, that's not the case, that a lot of it is just associated with the tree that she was found in, a witch elm, which has nothing to do with witches, and that she might not have even been found in that kind of tree. So let's get into it, Chuck, because I like confusing everybody from the outset.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this definitely smacked of like Tales from the Crypt or a Weird Stories entry or something like that. This goes back to World War II in April of 1943, specifically Robert Hart, Bob Farmer, Tommy Willits and Fred Payne. Four teenage boys went to what was called the, or what is called, I guess, Hagley Wood. This was a time in World War II where they were rationing things like food in Britain. So they were looking for food. They were looking to catch some rabbits or maybe get some eggs from bird's nest. And 15 year old Bob Farmer saw an opening in a tree, went up to check it out and it looked like an eggshell. It turned out it was a skull. And so he got a stick, wrapped it with some cloth, and lifted the skull up out of there. And they were like, what kind of animal is this? Turns out it was a human animal. It had a clump of hair, a couple of crooked teeth, had clearly been munched on by some animals. And so they were like, we're trespassing and we don't want to get. Like most kids would do. Like, we don't want to get in trouble, so we're just going to put it back and never talk about it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think their quote was hum and.

[Chuck Bryant]

A hum and a hum and a plus text.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, they could have gotten in decent amount of trouble. I couldn't find exactly what. But they were poaching. And poaching was a big deal still then. I think it still is now, but it's probably lost a little bit of its, you know, punishment.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Regardless, the. The. I guess the oldest boy, Tommy Willits, he was 17, despite this vow, went right home and told his parents. And I say, good boy, Tommy Willits, because he. It was clear to him, like, we just found a human skull in a tree. And that's something that we need to talk about. So very quickly, the police were called in and they started to investigate, and they brought in a guy named James Webster, who was a pathologist with the Birmingham Forensic Laboratory. And he essentially led the initial investigation and came to some pretty good basic conclusions. Because there's one thing to know about this case. It has been hijacked and molded in all sorts of different ways. And you really have to be careful that you're aware of what source you're getting your information from, because it's just one of those cases that people have loved to talk about and add to and lie about and do all sorts of stuff with. But the stuff that comes from James Webster is definitely legit. He was. He firsthand examined the body.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So he cut this tree open. He found most of the skeleton in there. It was missing some small bones, and I think they got a tibia nearby. There was pieces of clothing. There was a shoe, There was a wedding ring. And they, you know, when you get a skeleton like that, you're gonna reconstruct it and try and figure out who this person was or what they may have been, you know, shaped like. And they said, well, this is a woman, probably about 35, 5ft tall, so, you know, quite short with brown hair. Cause I think I mentioned there Was a little bit of hair very gruesomely still on the skull.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Did you see the picture of that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I did, yeah. And she's probably been gone about 18 months, maybe longer. And like I mentioned, animals had gotten into these bones and, you know, munched on them some.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So Webster is like, I'm pretty sure this is a murder. There's a few things that stand out to me. One, stuffed into the jaw, pretty deeply into the jaw was a piece of the taffeta from the woman's dress.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And enough that it was enough of the piece of the dress that he was like, this could have asphyxiated somebody if it was stuffed into their mouth while they were still alive. Probably wasn't a dress eater. So maybe this is murder. He also said that there's no way that this, this person was placed into this tiny opening. So it was about 12 inches by 24 inches, like say a third of a meter by 2 thirds of a meter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which is a very tiny place, even for a five foot woman. I get claustrophobic just thinking about that and that if they were dead already, then like rigor mortis would have prevented them from being pushed into there even. And then also this is not the kind of place that a person's just going to crawl into on their own accord. Like they were placed in there possibly while alive still, which is one of the ghastlier aspects of this case. And so Webster said, you know, you put all this together, I'm pretty sure this is a murder that we're looking at.

[Chuck Bryant]

The other thing they had to go on was, as far as clues go, was they had, you know, most of the jaw intact. And so they thought, hey, maybe we can find a dental match. They were not able to. Now that they had this kind of rough physical description, they thought, well, let's come through missing persons reports. Did not find anything matching that. And so the case went cold for a while. They just kind of put it on the shelf. Hagley Wood itself, we should describe it a little bit. It is on a private estate, but it wasn't like gated and walled up such that you couldn't access it because people would use it. People would have picnics there while the blitz was going on and cities were being bombed. People would leave Birmingham sometimes and even sleep out there around Hagley Wood where it was a little quieter. And then a weird thing happened in March of 1944. So this is about almost a year afterward, graffiti started popping up around town, around Birmingham. And we'll see elsewhere. With white chalk letters in all caps on these brick walls, two messages at first. One said, hagley Wood Bella. And another said, who put Bella down the wych. Elm W, Y, C, H. Hagley Wood.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So this is where we get the name of the victim that everybody knows and the type of tree that the victim was found in that everybody knows from graffiti from an anonymous person.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But it was enough that the police were like, okay, this seems a little weird. There were other people who started to kind of copycat the whole thing once the paper started writing about it. But there was at least a third one a couple days later that was clearly written by the first person who wrote the first two. And they were like, maybe this person knows who it was and they want to find justice for the woman. And they looked. They. They reopened the case. And this is. I mean, they'd already really extensively investigated having, like, both. Both jaws. They're like, great, we'll do dental records, and we'll find who it is. Nothing matched. They tried to comb through all of the missing persons reports. No one matched. They get this. Chuck, did you see that? They investigated the shoe and got really far with it. They traced the shoe that they found with her back to the Waterfoot Company in Lancashire, and they traced down all but six of the. The owners of all but six of the pairs. They were sold in a market stall. So this wasn't like looking through the market's credit card receipts.

[Chuck Bryant]

They didn't have credit cards.

[Josh Clark]

No. Like, they really were doing some legwork here. And, you know, hats off to them because let's not forget, England was getting bombed almost nightly by the Luftwaffe. There was food rationing. There was a war on. And they investigated this random, you know, dead person that hard, and then they reopened the case. I'm just saying I think they did a good job with what they were working with.

[Chuck Bryant]

Totally. And by the way, I don't know, when credit cards came about, maybe that's a good shorty. So if I'm wrong, I imagine they sprung from credit accounts, like with a store or something. But. Yeah, maybe we should do one on that. I bet it's Diners Club.

[Josh Clark]

I think it was Diners Club, in fact, with Telly Savalas. No, that was players club.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Was it okay because he was a player?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, he was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You noted some other graffitis. One of the ones that seem to be from the same hand. This was in Halezowen in another town nearby. This is different just because at a different name and this one said, who put Lubella L U E B E L L A Lubella in the Witch Elm? And we mentioned that even though it seems like a copycat had done it, because it was in different script, it just gave them another name to look for. And so they looked for Lubella as well and came up cold as well.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Yeah. They looked for everybody. Bella, Lubella, Isabella Lou, Bega, everybody. And nothing came up. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You never know when he's going to pop up on the show.

[Josh Clark]

That was one of the best pranks ever played on us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty good. If you don't know what we're talking about, it's just an Easter egg. And listen to every episode and you'll learn.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. So the wych elm thing, for those of us who aren't familiar with British trees.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

The name wych elm does not mean witch, W I, T C H. You spelled it before, it's W Y C H. And it comes from an old English word, maybe vice vis W I C e. And that means smooth or supple. And that. That describes the bark of a wych elm has nothing to do with witches. Witches are not associated with the wych elm. It's not even spelled the same. And yet there's been an association with witchcraft and this case, at least in part because of that, even among Brits. Like, there was a folklorist, an archaeologist, named Margaret Murray, who loved to spin a good yarn, and she was one of the first people to associate this case with witches and basically said, witches killed this lady.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So she wrote a book. A prominent folklorist and archaeologist. She wrote a book, you know, many books, but one of them was called the Witch Cult in Western Europe. So she was really into this thing and this kind of idea, and she had a theory that she had been promoting that European witches were in part of this ancient fertility cult where they had, you know, sacrifices and things like that made. And she was there in Birmingham in 1945 investigating a different occult murder where a farmer had been killed through the chest and pinned down with a pitchfork. While she was there, she hears about Bella in the Witch elm and she's like, well, that's right up my alley. And very quickly was like, oh, well, this was clearly some kind of witchy witchcraft, occult sacrifice that happened because putting corpses in a tree is a form of ancient tree worship. And so that's obviously what happened here. Also, this severed hand that we found near the tree with the bones, I guess the hand bones, that's part of an ancient thing called A Hand of Glory, which you dug up some stuff on, which I thought was super interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's nothing like what it sounds like with Hand of Glory. Instead, it's an old burglar's superstition that you would take a severed hand and put a candle in it, like, make it hold a candle. Or you would basically attach candles to all five fingers, the tips of them, and then you'd light it. And if it stayed lit, then that meant that everybody in the house you were about to rob was asleep. If any of them went out, that meant that there was somebody still awake, and you shouldn't rob that house. It had nothing to do with witchcraft. And then even more. So, there was no hand found severed from the body. That doesn't appear in any of the initial police reports. Yeah, it's just an. It's a great example of the lies that came up. So to legitimize this idea that it was the Hand of Glory, somebody just said along the way, maybe even Margaret Murray, that the hand was severed and found at the trunk of the tree. And you will see that everywhere, even in ones that don't mention witchcraft. It's just. That's how cases like this just get, you know, that's how they become unsolvable over time. But, I mean, I guess it doesn't really matter, but for some reason, it's just always ticked me off.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I get it. I don't know if you have your phone, but I just texted you a picture of. And I just want to shout it out because it looks so darn good on Etsy. A Hand of Glory Candle. Oh, yeah. The company is Wailing Dip Candles, and it is a frighteningly realistic old hand with candle wicks coming out of each of the fingers and the thumb.

[Josh Clark]

I gotta check this out. Let me go grab my phone. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Josh really did go get his phone.

[Josh Clark]

Like, it doesn't even look old. It looks like they just severed a hand and planted some wicks on it. Like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it doesn't look young.

[Josh Clark]

Well, okay, so it looks like an aged person's hand, but it's not like a mummified person's hand?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no, no. It looks like a real hand. And I'm hoping we move these things for this company. It's kind of pricey. It's 85 bucks, but I reckon if you amortize that over, like, 10 Halloweens, that's not too bad. It's like $8.50 a year to have a good Spook.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I do feel like we need to change the name Hand of Glory, though. First of all, it doesn't make sense, and secondly, it really does sound dirty. Let's just be honest about it. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Unfortunately, attaching the word glory to other objects is just not so good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's true. Blaze of Glory.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Just ask Jerry Jones. So the idea that it's witchcraft was, like we said, really just sort of invented by Margaret Murray, who happened to be there investigating another case altogether.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. By the way, that was Charles Walton, who was murdered, almost certainly by his employer in a raid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's right. So that wasn't witchy either. It was just like, I'm pitchforking your hay and I get mad at you and so I'm gonna kill you with the thing in my hand.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know what, actually we should probably take a break here.

[Josh Clark]

Oh.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because we've been going for 19 minutes now and it's kind of a good little cliffhanger.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll be right back. The more you listen to your kids.

[Josh Clark]

The closer you'll be. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well [e-mail] that's sounditouttogether.org brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal. Everyone's forgotten who runs this valley.

[Chuck Bryant]

Time to remind them. Yellowstone fans step into the Yellowstone universe.

[Josh Clark]

Dark family legacy news this ranch and I protect it of my life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hosted by Bobby Bones, the official Yellowstone podcast takes you deeper into the franchise.

[Josh Clark]

That'S captivated millions worldwide.

[Chuck Bryant]

Action Explore untold behind the scenes stories, Exclusive cast interviews and in depth discussions about the themes and legacy of Yellowstone. You know, the first stunts to settle this valley fighting was all they knew. Whether you're a longtime fan or new to the ranch, welcome to the Yellowstone. Bobby Bones has everything you need to stay connected to the Yellowstone phenomenon.

[Josh Clark]

I look forward to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

Let's go to work.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm Dr. Laurie Santos and to welcome the new year, my podcast, the Happiness Lab is releasing a series of happiness how to guides to help you in 2025. I'll distill the wisdom of world class experts into easy to digest actionable tips. It's about never feeling good enough. I feel like I'm always failing. You'll learn how to handle relationships, how to be inspiring and how to find your purpose.

[Josh Clark]

We make it this big pie in the sky thing and then of Course, we're all frustrated because no one knows how to get there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Struggling with tough emotions. We have a how to guide. Worried that you're not enough. We got you self obsessed and want to get over yourself. There's a guide for that, too. The ability to approach somebody and make them experience desire for you in minutes or even hours is a rare and rather unnecessary skill, historically speaking.

[Josh Clark]

The Happiness Lab's how to season starts January 1st.

[Chuck Bryant]

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

Or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so I mentioned a cliffhanger. It wasn't really a cliffhanger. I'm not sure why I said that. But let's jump forward a little bit to 1953, where the story takes a turn. There was a journalist there named Wilfred Byford Jones. Apparently had a pen name that was Quaestar.

[Josh Clark]

Basically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Q, U, A, E, S, T, O.

[Josh Clark]

R. You can see the A and the E join too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I could see that. But old Wilfred wrote a bunch of very speculative articles about Bella's murder. Murder which only led to confusion and falsehoods. A lot of it had to do with witches, of course, and blaming stuff on the Romany people, you know, what they called gypsies at the time, like coming through town, doing something like that. And all this to say one of these stories was caught by a reader who wrote in to Byford Jones under the name of Anna of Claverly and basically was like, I know the deal. I'll just read it real quick. Finish your articles. Re the witch Elm Crimes. By all means. They are interesting to your readers, but you will never solve the mystery. The one person who could give you the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. In other words, dead. The affair is closed and involves no witches, black magic or moonlight rites. The only clues I can give you are that the person responsible for the crime died insane in 1942 and the victim was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about 1941. I have no wish to recall anymore.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And the police said, well, TS because you're going to have a secret meeting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I guess they found Anna and like, brought her in for an interview.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And Anna's name was Una Mossop, and she eventually became Una Haynesworth. But during the time of the murder, she was married to a guy named Jack Mossop. And I saw alternative, alternatively, that he worked in a local munitions factory, or that he was a RAF instructor, or that he worked in a factory building plane engines. Regardless, he existed. He was married to Una, and he. Una told the story to the cops that one night Jack brought home a friend named Van Ralt, a Dutchman. And that apparently, at some point, Jack admitted to Oona that he was on Van Ralt's payroll and Van Ralt was a spy for the Nazis. And apparently Jack was feeding him information about local factories and stuff to help the Luftwaffe plan their bombings. Right, so Jack was a real Grade A bastard as far as things went because he traded his country in for some spending money.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

And Oona said one day, Jack came home in March or April of 1941. Came home late. He was drunk, but he was super agitated, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Said, you know, pale as a ghost. He said he'd been at a pub with Van Ralt and what he called a Dutch piece. Who was this Dutch woman? I didn't know they used that kind of language back then. Or maybe it meant something else. I have no idea. But those were the words that he used. And then he said things got awkward. We can just chalk that up to understatement of the year. She, I guess, was also drunk, passed out in Van Ralt's car. And Van Ralt supposedly, as this story goes, had a very strange idea. Was, hey, let's go stick this woman in that tree, and she'll sober up in the morning and come to her senses. And Jack, apparently, Oona said, was never the same. He started drinking more and more, quit working, still had this money. But eventually Oona said, I'm out of here and I'm leaving you. I'm taking our kid. She saw him again about a year later in 1942, when he was really coming apart at the seam, saying that he keeps seeing this woman in his mind, in the tree. She was leering at him. And he was eventually committed to a mental hospital, where he died about eight months before Bella's body was discovered.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he died of, as far as his death certificate is concerned, a combination of cerebral softening, myocardial degeneration, chronic nephritis, and acute. Acute something. Insanity. I can't even remember my own abbreviation, but you put those together and that guy is, like, dead, dead, dead. So Una's story sounded like. This actually all makes sense. From what I can tell, she provided information that you wouldn't have just been able to glean from the papers. And what's more, she didn't really have much to gain. No, she wrote in anonymously and resisted coming forward. So it wasn't like she was a publicity hound.

[Chuck Bryant]

It'd be a weird thing to make up.

[Josh Clark]

She would be like A mastermind, attention getter. To really like. Yes, it would be a weird thing to say to make up, right? Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, it's a weird thing to do to have that idea like, hey, let's go stuff that woman in a tree. I mean, it's beyond the. No, that's weird. And then it's a weird thing for that not to have happened and for this woman to sort of invent it. It's all just beyond the pale.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. One of the things is though, is so like, if this was a joke, what, you know, what tree? How did Van Raalt know that that tree was there in the first place and that it had this 12 by 24 space in it? The thing is, this is far and away the most legitimate explanation for what happened. This is an unsolved case, it's an unsolved mystery. But for my money, like, this is as close as we're ever going to get.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I agree. You know, cops obviously searched for Van Ralt. They searched for records wise a Dutch national who may have fit the description that Oonagh gave, but it went cold yet again. And then we flash forward to 1968. There's a writer named Donald McCormick who picked up the case for a book he was writing called Murder by Witchcraft. And this is when he. I mean, this guy doesn't have a very good reputation as a writer because it seems like he would just, they called him a fantasy historian. Like he would just make stuff up, make a lot of weird claims and theories. He would say things like, you know, I was able to interview someone exclusively who was anonymous and that no one else could talk to. And here is that interview. And in this case he said, you know, this interview that I got with this guy that no one else knows about or will talk to and who shall remain anonymous was a former Nazi spy recruiter hiding in Paraguay. And Bella was a Dutch born German spy named Clara or Clarabella. And I've even got Nazi intelligence files on this. I'm not going to show you, but it says that she parachuted in Birmingham in March or April 1941. So the timeline fits. And she happened to look just exactly like who was described by Oona.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so Dave points out that this guy had a habit of making his puzzle pieces fit together a little too neatly. So essentially he found out about Una Mossop's story and decided to make it real by corroborating it with his imagination. His book, though, is the book that we get. The very famous pictures that I was familiar with that Caught my attention as a kid. But it's really important to point out here, the tree that he shows is not the tree that she was found in. You said toward the beginning of the episode that the cops chopped that tree down to look for more evidence so that tree doesn't exist anymore. And yet that's that picture that Donald McCormick put forth as the tree is. What you see on the Internet still today is the tree she was found in. And that. That's possibly not even the kind of tree that she might not have been found in. A witch elm. The cops mentioned that she was found in an elm, but that's it. And then apparently, some people have been able to examine the photos of the original tree and said, it's not a witch elm, because you don't cut witch elms down that way.

[Chuck Bryant]

That story about you seeing that picture, when did that happen?

[Josh Clark]

I was probably, like, 10, 11, I think, probably in, like, a school library book or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought you saw mysteries recently. Okay.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no. That's how I was walking around with this case for that many years. Like, I saw it in some book when I was a kid.

[Chuck Bryant]

I gotcha. That makes it so much better.

[Josh Clark]

I can even remember, like, the cellophane covering of the book cover, even. I feel it in my fingers right now. I can smell. Smells awful.

[Chuck Bryant]

It makes much more sense because you were talking in those sort of ways about it, and I thought it was recent, and I was like, that's a weird nostalgia for something that happened a few weeks ago.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It makes me nostalgic for yesterday.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can still remember that moment in December.

[Josh Clark]

Right? No, not like that little kid stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so that's. That book aside, another Twist came in 2013. The Independent ran a story about Bella, connecting it to a spy named Josef Jakobs, who's a German spy who evidently parachuted into a field near Cambridge in February 1941. Got hurt really badly, could not walk, fired his pistol in the air to attract some help. Ideally, he said, hey, fuzz. Yeah. So the cops come, and he's in police custody. He has a wireless transmitter, a fake ID, almost £500 in cash. But also a headshot, a photograph of a woman, but, like a professional headshot of this, you know, attractive, smiling woman. And on the back of it, in English, it said, my dear, I love you forever. You're Clara Landau. July 1940.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Yeah. So there's a lot that's weird about this. So Clara Landau. This picture of Clara Landau was actually a picture of Clara Bowerly, who was well known. I saw her described as a movie star, but at least a movie actress and a cabaret singer. A German, Lili von Stupp. And so, yeah, exactly. I think that's almost exactly who this could have been based on. She was apparently, as far as Josef Jakobs had said to MI5 in multiple interviews, that this was his mistress, that they met in Berlin. Bowerly was singing with a group called the Bernard Edda Orchestra. Just goes to show you Dave's dedication to research and that Jacobs and Bowerly were both crypto Nazis, meaning that they were not actual Nazis, they were pretending to be Nazis. And they had fooled the Germans, or at least Jakob had, into taking him on as a spy and sending him to England. He planned to get to England, defect, and make his way to America. But first he wanted to set up a fake operation, enough to convince the Germans to send Bowerly after him. And that's it. That's what Josef Jakob said. But the Independent was like, ho, ho, let's fill in some blanks and come up with our own theory, Donald McCormick style.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they did some research. They looked for, obviously for records for Clara Bowerly, and they did find information and confirm, yes, she was a cabaret singer in Germany. She would have been 35 years old at the time of the murder, just like the skeleton, seemingly confirmed. But had she come to England was the big question. All they found was Clara with a K. Clara Sophie Bowerly, who was 35, who did go to Germany. I'm sorry, from Germany to England and stayed from 1930-32. But that was kind of it. No information at all about what she did in England. But they ran with it anyway.

[Josh Clark]

They did. I mean, think about it. So, like, she left a full eight, nine years before Bella and the witch Elm happened was. Was killed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And yet, yeah, the Independent's like, so what? So based on all this, with a bunch of pie filling that they mashed in with it, the Independent came up with a new theory. And I say we take a little break and come back and talk about it after.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everyone. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24 7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. And that hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So when you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in LinkedIn, makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Those qualified candidates. You know, at the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is going to be the quality of those candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're going to be getting the best.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And actually, based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just post your job for [e-mail] sysk that's LinkedIn.com sysk and you can post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

[Josh Clark]

Everyone's forgotten who runs this valley.

[Chuck Bryant]

Time to remind them. Yellowstone fans step into the Yellowstone universe.

[Josh Clark]

Our family legacy is this ranch. And I protect. I live my life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hosted by Bobby Bones, the official Yellowstone Podcast takes you deeper into the franchise.

[Josh Clark]

That'S captivated millions worldwide.

[Chuck Bryant]

Action Explore untold behind the scenes stories, exclusive cast interviews and in depth discussions about the themes and legacy of Yellowstone.

[Josh Clark]

You know, the first students to settle.

[Chuck Bryant]

This valley fighting was all they knew. Whether you're a longtime fan or new to the ranch, welcome to the Yellowstone. Bobby Bones has everything you need to stay connected to the Yellowstone phenomenon.

[Josh Clark]

I look forward to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

Let's go to work.

[Chuck Bryant]

The more you listen to your kids.

[Josh Clark]

The closer you'll be. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well being. @sounditouttogether.org that's sounded out together.org brought to.

[Chuck Bryant]

You by the Ad Council and Pivotal.

[Josh Clark]

So like I was saying, the Independent came up with their own pet theory for the Bella and the Wych Elm case. And what it, what they said was, okay, so Clara, Clara Bower had come to England in the 30s and was a performer, a cabaret singer here as well in Germany. And that she became known as Clara Bella. Like maybe this is a stage name she adopted or something like that. But it was a mashup of her name, Clara Bowerley. And that was the foundation that they based everything else on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they said, here's what she did. She parachuted into England in 1941. She was trying to catch up with her parachuting boyfriend, Joseph Jakobs. And they thought that was the only way to get into a country, I guess to drop into the middle of a field. And they said, hey, what if this Clara who was in that tree, who was killed by Van Ralt, like we think that that's who was in the witch Elm. And that graffiti artist had to have known that Clarabella, or Bella was her name, and tried to get justice for this murder.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And they walked away like this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Could you hear that? Did that come through?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think so.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah. So there's some problems with this theory. Number one, she was not Clara Bowerly was not 5ft tall. She was approaching 6ft tall.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's the biggest problem with this, right?

[Josh Clark]

That's a pretty big problem. I would say that there's an even bigger problem than this, and that is that she died a full year after Bella did in a German hospital of a barbiturate overdose.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Those two very large problems with this story that did not keep them from running the story.

[Josh Clark]

No. And this is 2013. This isn't the Independent, you know, decades ago. This was, well, I guess a decade ago, but still it was recent enough that they should know better than making up basically new theories and printing them as if they're basically fact. So one of the good things that came out of this was of Yosef Jakobs being broad into this case, although just totally like that was the Independent that did that. He was not mentioned that he was not tangential the case. He had nothing to do with it, basically. But his granddaughter, Giselle K. Jakobs or Jacobs, I'm not sure which one she goes by. She has a PhD in ancient history, so she knows about being a historian. And she's applied some of that to the Bella and the Wych Elm case on a website called yosef jakobs.infox. and it is very well researched and well written information about this case. So if you're interested in it at all, go check that out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, finally. Which is great. If you were wondering about DNA, sometimes they can find DNA on old stuff, but everything has been lost. Apparently everything was being passed around and moved around in different boxes in different labs. And this is in the 1940s and 50s, and no one knows if it even exists at all anymore or if it's, you know, hidden away besides the Ark of the Covenant in some warehouse.

[Josh Clark]

Or something, you know, I mean, it's possible that someone will find it at some point, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It might still be out there. Or it could have been lost or a building could have burned down. Like, who knows? Like our Lost episode. Jerry has no idea.

[Josh Clark]

No idea. That's gone for good. That's not in any warehouse anywhere.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. Which is probably a good thing.

[Josh Clark]

And now we'll wrap up this episode with five minutes on the ancient woodland management technique of coppicing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very funny.

[Josh Clark]

You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I have Nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

Well, go forth if this floated your boat. And read more about Bella and the Wych elm the case. Just be wary of where your information's from. And there's a lot more to it. There's a lot. Well, there's a lot more out there to read, however. And in the meantime, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna read this and preface it with. We got quite a few emails. Remember when you tied John Williams? I guess. Star Wars. People are gonna be so mad. Is it Darth Vader's theme or the Imperial Death March? One of those.

[Josh Clark]

Imperial something or other? Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Something like that you tied that to. Who was it? Boq.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember Chopin's Funeral March, and I stand by it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And we got quite a few music people that wrote in and were, you know, gave us the old. And. Hey. Well, actually, these differences here and there and here and there. Fair enough. Not knocking those people for knowing much more about that kind of thing than us. You just know what your ears told you.

[Josh Clark]

Well, also, I called up John Williams and he was like, yep, I love that funeral march.

[Chuck Bryant]

Keep up the good work, boys. He wrote our theme song, too, by the way. Sure, no one knows that.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

But this is from Ladd, who gets your back. Hey, guys. Hope all is well. Finally. Somebody said it, Josh. John Williams likes to borrow heavily from classic works. Please listen to Le Sacre du Printemps, the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, and you will hear the theme from Jaws, as well as many other hits that Mr. Williams has taken on loan. Not saying he hasn't done a lot for the genre, but if this is a sampling issue, he'd be paying a lot of money to those composers. Keep up the work and stay sexy. And that is from Lad.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks, Ladd. Appreciate that. Loved your turn as the little kid in Lost Boys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I. Oh, by the way, we watched the Lost Boys with Ruby the other night.

[Josh Clark]

What'd she think?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's her second turn sort of adult movie in a row after Terminator 2. She loved it. I looked it up beforehand. I was like, surely Lost Boys has some gratuitous nudity or some awful, like, sexy stuff. And it really doesn't. It's some kind of gruesome stuff, but she's totally good with that and a little bit of language and she knows all that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And she really dug the Lost Boys because she likes all that spooky, witchy stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's a really good movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

And, you know, it was pretty fun. It holds up in the way that 80s movies, movies like that hold up.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it definitely did. I saw it not too long ago and I was like, this is like, I said it before, I'll say it again. It's a good movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

Well, thanks a lot, lad. Again, I appreciate being backed up. That was very refreshing. And if you want to be like lad and back me up about some stand I took that everybody tried to shout me down on and I said, no, I'm not going to be shouted down. They're like, yes, you are. And I said, no, I'm not. And then it just kind of hung out there until you. You email in. We love that kind of thing. You can send us that email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here and Eating While Broke is back for Season four every Thursday.

[Josh Clark]

On the Black Effect Podcast Network.

[Chuck Bryant]

This season we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories on the menu.

[Josh Clark]

We have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howey.

[Josh Clark]

Turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts Wherever you get your favorite shows, come hungry for Season four.

[Chuck Bryant]

What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast, and now Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe, and Cord Jefferson. Listen to many questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 7 Questions Limitless Answers hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the Thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers, and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd.

[Josh Clark]

I love writing more than anything. You're left alone.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, you do three hours in.

[Josh Clark]

The morning, you write three hours in the afternoon. Go pick up a kid from school and write at night.

[Chuck Bryant]

And after nine hours you come out.

[Josh Clark]

With seven pages and then you're moving on. Listen to here's the thing on the.

[Chuck Bryant]

Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.