‘Who put Bella in the witch elm’: A woman’s skeleton is found stuffed inside a tree, then terrifying graffiti appears

In April 1943, four young British kids were searching for birds’ nests in Hagley Wood, part of Lord Cobham’s estate in Wychbury Hill, located right in the middle of England. One of them, Bob Farmer, clambered up a large elm tree and, upon reaching the top, peered inside.

He’d never forget what he saw. At first, he assumed it was an animal’s skull, but as he lifted it, he spotted human hair. And teeth. The four boys promptly freaked out and ran home, staying quiet as they weren’t supposed to be on Lord Cobham’s land. But the eldest, Thomas Willetts, felt uneasy and reported it to his parents.

The cops soon arrived and, on fully investigating the tree, discovered a practically complete woman’s skeleton roughly stuffed inside. Further investigations turned up her hand, some distance from the tree.

Even at this stage, a forensic examination established much. The body had been there for at least 18 months, was still warm when placed inside the trunk, and taffeta stuffed into the mouth indicated death by suffocation. So, who was she? Unfortunately, the whole “World War 2” thing going on at the time meant there were a lot of people moving around the country and a lot of missing people, and so the case went cold.

“Who put Bella down the wych elm, Hagley Wood”

Who put Bella in the wych elm? https://t.co/L1cX8OzTwF #Halloween #witches pic.twitter.com/ILdu5wg6sf

— History Press Local (@THP_Local) October 11, 2023

Then the graffiti started appearing. The first, scrawled across a wall two years after the discovery, after the case had vanished from people’s minds, read, “Who put Luebella down the wych elm?”. The second, “Who put Bella down the wych elm, Hagley Wood?“. The writing was neat and placed on high walls in unusual places, leading cops to discount kids screwing around and conclude whoever was doing this knew what had happened

Theories flowered and withered, with one notable potential identification being a sex worker named Bella who’d mysteriously disappeared around the time the body would have been placed in three. This link was made after the graffiti appeared, further underlining that whoever was painting this message knew things the cops didn’t.

A decade later, a woman reported that her husband had confessed to the crime, saying he and a friend had put a passed-out drunk woman inside the tree to scare her away from alcohol. After discovering she’d died, he’d been sent to an asylum after being driven mad by endless dreams of a woman staring accusingly at him from inside a tree. By this point, her husband had died, so nothing could be verified.

There were other leads over the years, but they led to nothing. Decades passed, and a mysterious person or persons ensured that the graffiti remained fresh, with the “Hagley Obelisk” near the place the body was discovered being updated with a fresh “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm”. The case remains open, and cops are trying to track down her remains to conduct a DNA analysis. But that graffiti is still there to this day – and the question of who put Bella in the wych elm remains unanswered.