Studying Bella in the Wych Elm: The Black Country's Greatest Mystery
The Discovery
In
April 1943, four boys were poaching eggs on the lands of Lord Cobham, known
as Hagley Wood. Genuinely, chicken eggs were limited because of the war, so
imagine that—wood pigeon egg with chips for tea? Sparrow egg omelette? These
boys climbed a chunky wych elm and then noticed something inside its hollow
trunk. A human skull stared back.
Police
removed a near-complete skeleton from inside the tree. According to the
expert, Professor James Webster, the skeleton belonged to a woman, 35-40 years
old. It seems she wore modestly priced clothes, given how investigators traced her shoe manufacturer to
Northampton, but they retailed on the Dudley market. This is 7.5 miles away from Hagley
Wood.
She was approximately 5 feet tall, with irregular teeth and wavy brown hair. She'd given birth at least once and was wearing one of those gold wartime utility scheme wedding rings—the government limited wedding rings to be no more than 9 carats.
The bones that belonged to her severed left hand were discovered in
the soil near the base of the wych elm. Somehow, taffeta fabric, like that of her
skirt, was deeply lodged into her mouth! The case has as much appeal for me
as Jack the Ripper, but unlike that
Whitechapel case, we see two compelling characters in the dark; the murderer and
the victim!
The
forensic time of death was called as late 1941. As you might imagine, people
extensively searched for records of the missing, but not one match of her
description had ever been reported. Not one woman. Bella's remains were sent to
the University of Birmingham and they mysteriously disappeared; DNA analysis
will never solve this case! Oddly enough, she lacked pants, money, no purse, handbag or ration book was found—no identity.
Then
the messages started appearing across the harsh Black Country.
The Graffiti That Wouldn't Die
The words began materializing on walls throughout Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and the surrounding industrial landscape, not to mention Lord Cobham's obelisk on Wychbury Hill opposite the Hagley Wood in question. It always asked the same thing, with similar handwriting and locations, police were convinced it was either the same person or group! Initially on a wall in Haden Hill Road, Halesowen, 3.8 miles away from the wych elm, reading: 'Who put Luebella down the wych elm?' and later in Birmingham, 'Who put Bella down the wych elm, Hagley Wood?'
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| He Found Bella in The Wych Elm |
Someone out there was using a name—either because they knew her, or because they'd invented one for her. The question kept popping up for decades. 1944. 1953. 1968. 1987. Each new sighting sent a ripple through the community, because each one implied the same thing: someone alive had knowledge of her death. It seemed rhetorical, accusatory overtoning the nation because it was originally private.
The Screams That Preceded the Silence
What
correlates with the graffiti: witness accounts from 1941. Two individuals
separately reported hearing a woman screaming uncontrollably in Hagley Wood.
One was a businessman, the other was a school teacher. Both of them called the
police. Respectively, they described the same terrifying sounds echoing through
the trees near where Bella's body would be found eighteen months later. Police dismissed it as foxes.
The
screams stopped, and the woods fell silent. Time passed. The police searched
the area but found nothing.
The Hand That Doesn't Add Up
The
severed left hand is the most frustrating and perplexing part of the occult mystery. I don't buy into the 'chop it off to fit the body into the tree'
theory: before rigor mortis, a body is malleable enough to force into a relatively small space.
Even chopping off one hand to prevent fingerprint identification doesn't work either. We used a 10-finger system, but what if the murderer was disturbed before he or she could remove the second hand? Yes, great, but I can't see a hand being chopped off.
Fingerprint
files in 1941 weren't like today. Usually limited to criminals and certain
professionals—not housewives. If Bella was an evacuee, an immigrant who was
never reported missing, or a runaway from domestic abuse, what prints would
they match against? There would be no missing person to report for a comparison.
Through an occult lens, the act of severing a hand was not necessarily just about hiding a body.
Sources claimed her hand was buried near the wych elm, which makes anyone ask
why? Why remove the hand completely? Why the left hand—both hands have fingerprints that can identify her, right? Why leave the jewellery, dental
features, and other identifying characteristics intact? The killer could have
set the tree and the remains on fire. Realistically, were such questions really helpful?
Birmingham's Lost Daughter? The Statistical Reality
Here's
the uncomfortable mathematical reality that might bring us closer to Bella's
true identity.
In
the years 1941-42, 4,000 mothers were evacuated away from Birmingham to the
surrounding countryside areas. German bombs tore the city to pieces. Hagley
sits just 14 miles from Birmingham—close enough to reach by bus, easily far
enough to feel safe from the Luftwaffe.
Bella
could easily be an evacuee: adult woman, had given birth, possibly caring for a
child. The timeline places her death in late 1941. Would you like to guess when
the Birmingham bombings triggered waves of evacuation?
Not
all evacuees returned home when the bombs subsided. Birmingham's record-keeping
was in chaos. Bombs destroyed key municipal buildings, medical facilities,
commercial properties—a great deal was hit! Families were scattered across
Britain. Informal housing arrangements meant many evacuees lived off official
records entirely, falling through cracks in the system.
Bayesian Network analysis:
Academic
minds at Queen Mary University, London, used probability modelling to analyse
all the evidence and theories. Their computerised approach calculated multiple
possibilities in hope of identifying the most reliable outcomes. Sources
generally reveal:
-
99% chance it was murder
-
97% chance Bella wasn't British
- 33% chance Jack Mossop (from the 'Anna' letters) killed her and we will get to that later!
-
25% chance she was a spy
-
16% chance she was a sex worker
-
7% chance intelligence services were involved
Simply put, it's a probability calculation dependent upon the quality of data
inputted, rubbish in, rubbish out. The model suggested it was a murder of a
non-British citizen, possibly tied to Mossop, rather than anyone linked to
espionage, sex work or witchcraft. Be that as it may, a grain of salt may be
advised here.
The Occult Theory: When Magic Ritual Turns Deadly
There's
always an occult explanation, and this one is dark. Bella was killed as a
ritualistic sacrifice or through sinister practice driven by superstition and
folklore.
Her
killer may have interpreted 'Hagley' as we do today, through our common
association of 'hag' with 'witch'. This semantic connection associates the
woodland with an old worldview, bringing folklore to mind. It's not a far
stretch to imagine a superstitious murder in Hagley Wood.
An Unusual Worldview
In
Celtic folklore, a wych elm tree is a threshold space, a gateway between the
world of the living and the dead. Following that logic, it would make a
Schrödinger's cat of the woman. In the magically thinking mind of her hypothetical murderer,
the elm may also have held an aspect of imprisonment—trapping her spirit
'between worlds,' preventing her from passing on or returning to haunt them.
Occult Expertise
The
stuffing of her mouth resonates with folk traditions for silencing the dead,
particularly the malevolent, the witch—a bit like vampires in Eastern Europe!
The severed right hand carries occult significance according to Professor
Margaret Murray.
The
Hand of Glory traces back to Germanic folk magic, 'Diebeshand' meaning thief's
hand. This isn't your Aleister Crowley, Dee or Kelley type of esotericism—it's
possibly rooted in Anglo-Saxon culture and laws about taking a wrongdoers'
hand.
Themes
of burial, with and without pickling the hand, do exist. Different grimoires
specify burial at a crossroads, or in the criminal's grave. Hagley, like the
rest of the West Midlands, was once part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia
and culturally appropriate for folklore of this kind.
Quite
strangely, the wych tree stood at the woodland's edge. It met more open areas
where key roads converged from Kidderminster, Birmingham, and Stourbridge. If
this dramatic scene wasn't originally meant to be a punitive magical sentence,
it still managed to hit some of the themes pretty well. Just remember, it was her left hand!
The Dutch Connection
Here's
a more colourful Bella theory—our mysterious lady was, in fact, Clarabella
Dronkers! Clara Dronkers was supposedly the wife of Johannes Marinus Dronkers,
a real Dutch spy. He met his end thanks to British justice in 1942.
So,
Johannes the spy got himself caught, tried, and executed. Someone somehow
decided he must have had a wife named 'Clarabella' packed in our Worcestershire
wych tree.
Apparently,
poor Clarabella knew too much about German spy operations! Her own side
eliminated her, because 'loose lips sink ships.' It's got all the elements:
betrayal, espionage, a woman who knew too much.
There's
just one tiny problem: there's totally zero proof to support the claim that
Johannes Dronkers ever had a wife named Clarabella. I mean, we don't know if he
even had a wife who ended up missing! The connection appears to be more Ian
Fleming than historical fact. Yet again, was he married?
Mossop's Pal, Van Ralt
Another
Dutch angle came in the controlled disclosure of Una Mossop. She reached
out to the Express and Star and the police in 1953. Her story implicating her
dead husband, Jack Mossop (engineer) and a Dutch man, Van Ralt, creatively portrayed as an agent of some kind. They loaded Bella into the wych elm and it all caused her husband to mentally deteriorate. He was haunted by flashbacks of Bella 'leering' at him, guilt is brutal. He died in 1942 in his mental
health care facility. Dutch Van Ralt was never found, the police were sceptical
of the wife's account.
Still,
I decided to have a little investigation of my own.
My Own Little Investigation: Respecting The Detective Work
The
Birmingham evacuee theory rests on verifiable facts: massive population
displacement, destroyed administrative records, breakdown of communication
systems, and informal housing arrangements.
I
indulged my curiosity and searched records. Why not? People miss things. I
scoured a couple of huge databases, sifting through marriage searches for 1915
-1935. Keyword: Bella. I wanted to establish age correlations with James
Webster's data. Where? Hagley! Results: none! I focused on Warwickshire, with
bombings in mind.
Lobelia
M Verhoeven appears. Same age as Bella. Married in Rugby 1929. Dutch. Has
relations in and around Aston, Birmingham, and Rugby. An incredibly rare name.
Easily shortened to Lubella, or Bella. No death record for this woman, no birth
record for her. The entry is confirmed in BMD.
Bella's
profile, timeline, and location all align perfectly with this historical
context. Was she one of the 4,000? She married George R Grant, and his extended
family worked on the railways.
The graffiti represents a person who knew a Bella, Lubella or Lobelia. My suspicions were of a man with the past eating away at him. What did he know? Why couldn't or wouldn't he come forward himself? If Lobelia M Verhoeven was a spy, like with other spy theories there could be deliberate inaccuracy to throw off investigators!
Realisations Can Sting!
I even started to re-examine the severed hand spy theory! Imagine the enemy
spy wanted to take both hands, but panicked about being caught because she was
vocally kicking and screaming. They knew Bella's fingerprints might be traced
back to the special services. However, the closer I looked carrion
beasts stood out as being the cause for taking the hand; finger bones were scattered near the tree. This casts doubt on esoteric hand burials.
Then I noticed something, 'hold on—she was a transcription error!' The archivists gave her the wrong surname; she never existed! The marriage entry was a mistake. So, disheartening. Even if a team of ten searched for her on LDS, Free BMD, and Ancestry, they might not find her or even know if they saw her real name! Besides, there are a tremendous amount of women called Bella who got married in the West Midlands then. However, it is uncommon to find a Lubella or a Lobelia.
Then I Thought of Another Question...
'Why
was Lord Cobham not interrogated?'
This was a man of nobility with a clean public record, honoured, privileged, and he got married in 30th April 1942 to Elizabeth Alison Makeig-Jones, but a skeleton was packed away on his land. On the fifteenth of the same month, Jack Mossop died in the County Mental Hospital Stafford. He came from a tight-knit family. His father and uncles were locally known as the 'Seven Sods' for their drinking and good-time lifestyle.
His wife, Una claimed to have heard his confession story. Apparently, poor Jack was being influenced by a non-traceable person to help dispose of a non-traceable victim. Una Mossop claimed to have told no one for ten years!
Practical Considerations
Ignorant of contemporary reports, I could not see the body inserted into the elm any other way but head-first, from the ground-level opening. The skull was spotted from a top-down perspective (where the boy reached with a stick) proving she wasn't dropped head first.
A head-first descent would
have obscured her skull from the boys higher viewing angle in 1943. The concealing foliage plus the heels up/head down orientation would lead to the skirt and cardigan covering the skull at the bottom of the hollow. Legs-first is quite impractical, given
the tree branches.
Head-first, bottom up work makes sense if you are hoping to avoid snagging and resistance. Whoever the
guilty party was, they chose that method for practical reasons. After searching
on-line primary source material and publicly accessible archives; I couldn't
identify any women with a 'Bell-like' name, such as Annabel, Isabel, Lubella or
Lobelia working or even staying as live-in staff at Hagley Hall between 1935
and 1943.
Geneology Records Again
The
closest I came to an idealistic Bella was someone called Maria Lubella a 17 year old German student
residing in a Greenwich education facility in the 1911 census. An older entry of further interest was a 'grandmother aged' Maria Lubella, who lived in Prussia married to
a German named husband, Nösal: It isn't proof of Bella in the wych elm, only a
slight possibility, something to appreciate. We cannot identify Bella without teams.
Who I Think Put Bella in The Wych Elm: A Family Affair!
In the police reports Una Mossop reads like a self-absorbed drama queen who thought she was the star of her own detective story; a con artist who skipped town because she owed everyone money. More of an opportunist than a credible witness. Narcissistic. I feel that dark triad with her. She kept aliases.
On top of all this, Jack's affairs are blamed as creating a tense marriage! In 1953, Una's indirect confession was perfectly timed, not because her son (a possible liability) moved to, or was sent to America, but also it was long after her husband died. The case had reopened and the local tabloids were reporting on the mystery.
The Mastermind
Who waits over ten years to come forward about a murder, then behaves as if they're doing everyone a favour? It was a convenient and defensive story, but the reporter might've paid her for it; his sensational witchcraft story triggered Una to react.
We know how the persistent graffiti had confused the investigation; the name 'Bella' stuck to this unknown victim, and police had to follow it up! If matching reports of missing women called Bella or Lubella were matched, the case would've been solved years ago! I feel that guilty hands started writing on walls not too long after her murder to keep the family in check, a statement.
'I
put sufficient clues in the letter which should have helped to have identified
me' - Una wrote to authorities clearly believing herself to hold exceptional intelligence.
Protecting Your Own
Did the Mossop's experience a murderous domestic upheaval in 1941? The police had a file on the nine year old, Julian. Police knew the boy couldn't have murdered and stuffed an adult into a wych elm hollow by himself. They thought young Julian knew something vital about his family!
His mother, Una, must have read the line of police enquiry after sharing her
spy story in 1953. She dismissed police interests by saying Julian was 'somewhere
in America'. His convictions included theft of women’s
underwear! His crimes were consistent with childhood trauma, but did the underwear theft symbolise anything? No pants were found in the wych elm either!
There's Truth in Our Folly
Una Mossop made use of her writings and meetings with police and the Express and Star: indirectly, she blamed her husband, Jack, for his part in the Hagley Wood murder, mentioned previously. Van Ralt the verminous villain in Una's fact-based fiction left police side glancing, all tongues in cheek.
She never referred to
the victim as 'Bella or Lubella' just 'the Dutch-piece'. In fact, we don't know if Jack's breakdown
was really guilt fuelled. Una chose to abandon him during his actual mental crisis, and
hospital staff have no recollection of any confession: Una Mossop had motive
and creative writing skills.
Theoretical Timeline:
1941-42 - Unknown woman is killed in an affair gone wrong. The Mossop family run damage control and put her in the tree. Una ends relationship with Jack Mossop, her husband.
Circa
March-May 1942 - Jack is mentally unwell.
August
15th, 1942 - Jack Mossop died in Staffordshire in County Mental Hospital.
April
18, 1943 - Body discovered by four boys
April
24th, 1943 - First newspaper report about a skeletal remains of a woman in a
tree.
Dec 1944 - Mrs Mossop or kin, chalks the narrative. 'Who Put Luebella in the Wych Elm?' on Haden Hill Road. It was a private message to instill silence into her boy, and those of the seven sods. It was a 47 minute drive from her home in Shrewley, Warwickshire.
Dec 1944 - She writes again. This time: 'Who put Bella down the wych elm — Hagley Wood?' on Upper Dean Street, Birmingham. Compounding the urgency. Her later letters show an equal level of control. The graffiti was a 49 minute drive from her house.
1949
- Police reopened the case to examine a new lead about gypsies in the area.
1950s
- Witchcraft theory published in newspapers. The press coverage grew over
following years. Occult themes did not sit well with her.
1953
- Living in Claverley, Salop. Una spells out the narrative with 'Jack's confession' as her son is being prepared to
leave the country.
1954
- Una, started to use another name, Odette. She moved to New York near her son
Julian!
Julian
died in 1998 and 'Odette' died in 2008. Did domestic aggression escalate
into murder and a family cover-up in 1941?
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| The Original Reconstruction |
