UK UK - Worcestershire, Fem Skeletal 'Bella in the Wych Elm', Hagley Hall, Apr'43

On 18 April, 1943, four boys (Robert Hart, Thomas Willetts, Bob Farmer and Fred Payne) from Stourbridge were poaching in Hagley Woods on the nearby Wychbury Hill when they came across a large Wych Hazel, a tree often confused by local residents with a Wych Elm. Hagley Wood is part of the Hagley Hall estate belonging to Lord Cobham.
Believing this a good place to hunt birds' nests, Farmer attempted to climb the tree to investigate. As he was climbing, he glanced down into the hollow trunk and discovered a skull, believing it to be animal. However, he quickly realised, after seeing human hair and teeth, that he was holding a human skull. As they were on the land illegally, Farmer put the skull back and all four boys returned home without mentioning their discovery to anybody.
On returning home the youngest of the boys, Tommy Willetts, felt uneasy about what he had witnessed and decided to report the find to his parents. When police checked the trunk of the tree they found an almost complete human skeleton, a shoe, a gold wedding ring, and some fragments of clothing. After further investigation, a severed hand was found buried in the ground near to the tree.
The body was sent for forensic examination by Prof. James Webster. He quickly established that the skeleton was female and had been dead for at least 18 months, placing her time of death around October 1941. He found taffeta in her mouth, suggesting that she had died from asphyxiation. From the measurement of the trunk he also deduced that she must have been placed there "still warm" after the killing as she could not have fitted in once rigor mortis had taken hold.
Since the woman's killing was so soon after the start of World War II, identification was seriously hampered. Police could tell from items found with the body what the woman had looked like but with so many people being reported missing from the war, and people regularly moving house, the records were too vast for a proper identification to take place.

Source: Wikipedia

Click to expand...

Stella said:

There was speculation that she had landed in the tree hollow as a result of a misguided parachute jump and either the fall had killed her or she suffocated in the parachute material.

Click to expand...

During WWII in the Midlands of Great Britain in an area called Hagley Woods, some teenage boys were looking for bird’s eggs and rabbits to poach when one found a skull stuck down inside a Witch Hazel tree, along with a green bottle and some blue women’s shoes.
---
Only one parent phoned the police to report the corpse stuffed in a tree in the back forty of Lord Cobham’s country estate.

The nearly full skeleton was exhumed from the tight space, all but a hand (or part of a hand), and through forensics it was found to be a middle aged woman wearing a worn gold colored wedding band, who had given birth at some point, and had been dead for at least 18 months.

Her missing hand was subsequently found buried near the tree.
---
In the many years since, locals have not let the case go. Ever since 1943, messages in white chalk, often times written in the same distinctive hand, have been appearing around Hagley Woods, first saying “Who put Luebella down the wych–elm”, then evolving into “Who put Bella in the witch elm – Hagley Woods”.
---
The missing hand has led some to believe that she was a victim of a “black magic execution”.
---
Many past cultures have cut the hand from executed people, sometimes making a candle using the fat from the same corpse, and used the dried or pickled hand and candle as a charm for finding lost treasure or putting a sleeping spell on people.
---
Locals from Black Country seem to agree that, if she was murdered at all, “Bella” was likely put in the tree by someone with an extensive knowledge of the woods, likely a local person.
---

Click to expand...