Jan Czezowski posted about a tree with a massive hole in it big enough to hide in … or put a body in?



Jan Czezowski posted about a tree with a massive hole in it big enough to hide in … or put a body in?

In April 1943 four local boys were poaching in Hagley Wood, on Lord Cobham’s estate, Woucestershire when they found a huge Wych Elm. Thinking the location to be a particularly good place to search for birds' nests, a boy attempted to climb the tree to investigate. As he climbed, he glanced down into the hollow trunk and discovered 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 … but eventually one of them told theeir parents.

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 clothing. The skull was valuable evidence, in that it still had some tufts of hair and had a clear dental pattern, despite some missing teeth. A pathologist 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 1941; it was also discovered the measurement of the trunk in which the body had been discovered, he also deduced that it must have been placed there "still warm" after the killing, as it could not have have been placed their once rigor had set in. 

Police could tell from items found with the body what the woman had looked like, but with so many people reported missing during the Second World War, records were too numerous for a proper identification to take place. They cross-referenced the details they had with reports of missing persons throughout the region against dental records, even a facial reconstruction published in papers, each failed to identify the remains.

From 1945 until recently graffiti has appeared around the local area … even as far as Birmingham … ‘Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?’
Many people have been put forward as the missing person and who the murderer could possibly be (even the Nazi spy Josef Jacobs, the last man to executed at the Tower of London) who was captured in the area around the time that the murder may have happened.

A cold case investigation in 2018 still failed to establish who ‘Bella’ was.
So … Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?

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