Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Jerry.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, there's Chuck. Sorry Chuck, and this is
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know. And we're off to a weird, weird.
Speaker 3: Start on that's right, I forgot I was here.
Speaker 2: I just I don't know what happened. My reference copies
Speaker 2: on the fritz.
Speaker 1: Hey, real quick before we get started, And this just
Speaker 1: hit me. I went to a work function yesterday wherein
Speaker 1: we celebrated Jonathan Strickland. Are still our colleague, but our
Speaker 1: old buddy from the old House Stuff Works Early Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast days, who was the long long, long, long long
Speaker 1: time host of Tech Stuff Yep, and he has hung
Speaker 1: up his tech boots to as far as hosting that show.
Speaker 1: He's still around and executive producing a slate of shows,
Speaker 1: but he decided not to host Tech Stuff any long younger,
Speaker 1: and we just it was great seeing him. It's been
Speaker 1: quite a while and he's doing great. And just hats
Speaker 1: off to Jonathan and what a great body of work
Speaker 1: he's he's given the world over all those years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has been. Hats off to you, John, like
Speaker 2: that's you should be very proud. We're all proud of you, for.
Speaker 1: Sure, but keep that your head on strickling because you
Speaker 1: got that bald head. We don't want to get sunburned.
Speaker 2: Wow, that was really cool. If you bring up, I'm
Speaker 2: glad you did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1: I saw some of the old crew, and it's just
Speaker 1: it's been too long because you know, we don't go
Speaker 1: to the office much anymore, and nobody does, so it's
Speaker 1: not like if I went there, I would see all
Speaker 1: the old gang.
Speaker 3: But it was good. It was nice to catch up
Speaker 3: with some people.
Speaker 2: That's cool, man. Yeah, you sent me and Jerry some
Speaker 2: good pictures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, onto the murder of a woman right?
Speaker 3: Awful.
Speaker 2: So this is a pretty true, pretty famous true crime case,
Speaker 2: like really really famous. I'm not sure if you'd heard
Speaker 2: of it before, have you?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, I'm not sure why or where it first got me,
Speaker 2: but I'm pretty sure. So I think Dave helped us
Speaker 2: with this. And he linked to a pair of pictures
Speaker 2: of a tree and then a diagram of the woman,
Speaker 2: the murdered woman in this case, and like, you know,
Speaker 2: like almost an anatomical diagram of what was found where
Speaker 2: and what she was wearing and all that, and it
Speaker 2: has like a real Ripley's believe it or not look
Speaker 2: to it. The drawing does, and those things are as
Speaker 2: etched in my brain as pictures from like the Time
Speaker 2: Life paranormal series Wow, from when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: So at some point I was exposed to this. So
Speaker 2: it's one of those things that I've always just kind
Speaker 2: of known about, but I didn't know any of the
Speaker 2: details really, and it's a truly fascinating case that I
Speaker 2: think one of the things that makes it appealing too
Speaker 2: is there's this level of this sense of like witchcraft
Speaker 2: or some sort of like Pegan Colts involved or something
Speaker 2: like that. And it turns out that that's not true,
Speaker 2: that's not the case. That a lot of it is
Speaker 2: just associated with the tree, that she was found in
Speaker 2: a witch elm, which has nothing to do with witches,
Speaker 2: and that she might not have even been found in
Speaker 2: that kind of tree. So let's get into it, Chuck,
Speaker 2: because I like confusing everybody from the outset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this definitely smacked of like Tales from the Crypt
Speaker 1: or a Weird Stories entree or something like that. This
Speaker 1: goes back to World War Two in April of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three, specifically Robert Hart, Bob Farmer, Tommy Willets, and
Speaker 1: Fred Payne, four teenage boys went to what was called
Speaker 1: the or what is called I guess Hagley Wood. This
Speaker 1: was a time in World War two where they were
Speaker 1: rationing things like food in Britain. So they were looking
Speaker 1: for food. They were looking to catch some rabbits or
Speaker 1: maybe get some eggs from bird's nest and fifteen year
Speaker 1: old Bob Farmer saw an opening in a tree, went
Speaker 1: up to check it out and it looked like an eggshell.
Speaker 1: It turned out it was a skull, and so he
Speaker 1: got a stick, wrapped it with some cloth and lifted
Speaker 1: the skull up out of there, and they were like,
Speaker 1: what kind of animal is this? Turns out it was
Speaker 1: a human animal. It had a clump of hair, a
Speaker 1: couple of crooked teeth had clearly been munched on by
Speaker 1: some animals, and so they were like, weird trespassing, and
Speaker 1: we don't want to get like most kids would do, like, uh,
Speaker 1: we don't want to get in trouble, so we're just
Speaker 1: going to put it back and never talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think their quote was home and a home
Speaker 2: and a home plus X. So yeah, they could have
Speaker 2: gotten in decent amount of trouble. I couldn't find exactly what,
Speaker 2: but they were poaching, and poaching was a big deal
Speaker 2: still then. I think it still is now, but it's
Speaker 2: probably lost a little bit of its you know, punishment.
Speaker 2: Sure regardless the I guess the oldest boy, Tommy Willitts,
Speaker 2: he was seventeen despite this vow, went right home and
Speaker 2: told his parents. Yeah, and I say, good boy, Tommy Willitts,
Speaker 2: because he it was clear to him like we just
Speaker 2: found a human skull in a tree and that's something
Speaker 2: that we need to talk about. So very quickly the
Speaker 2: police were called in and they started to investigate, and
Speaker 2: they brought in a guy named James Webster who was
Speaker 2: a pathologist with the Birmingham Forensic Laboratory, and he essentially
Speaker 2: led the initial investigation and came to some pretty good
Speaker 2: basic conclusions. Because there's one thing to know about this case.
Speaker 2: It has been hijacked and molded in all sorts of
Speaker 2: different ways, and you really have to be careful that
Speaker 2: you're aware of what source you're getting your information from
Speaker 2: because it's just one of those cases that people have
Speaker 2: loved to talk about and add to and lie about
Speaker 2: and do all sorts of stuff with. But the stuff
Speaker 2: that comes from James Webster is definitely Legit was he
Speaker 2: first hand examined the body.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So he cut this tree open. He found most of
Speaker 1: the skeleton in. There was missing, some small bones and
Speaker 1: I think they got a tibia nearby.
Speaker 3: There was pieces of clothing, There was a shoe, there
Speaker 3: was a.
Speaker 1: Wedding ring, and they you know, when you get a
Speaker 1: skeleton like that, you're going to reconstruct it and try
Speaker 1: and figure out who this person was or what they
Speaker 1: may have been, you know, shaped like right, And they said, well,
Speaker 1: this is a woman probably about thirty five five feet tall,
Speaker 1: so you know, quite quite short, with brown hair because
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned those little bit of hair very
Speaker 1: gruesomely still on the skull.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you see the picture of that.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she's probably been gone about eighteen months, maybe longer.
Speaker 1: And like I mentioned, animals had gotten into these bones
Speaker 1: and you know, munched on them some, right.
Speaker 2: So Webster was like, I'm pretty sure this is a murder.
Speaker 2: There's a few things that stand out to me. One
Speaker 2: stuffed into the jaw pretty deeply into the jaw was
Speaker 2: a piece of the taffeta from the woman's dress. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and enough that it was enough of the piece of
Speaker 2: the dress that he was like, this could have asphyxiated
Speaker 2: somebody if it was stuffed into their mouth while they
Speaker 2: were still alive.
Speaker 3: Yeh.
Speaker 2: Probably wasn't a dress eater, so maybe this is murder.
Speaker 2: He also said that there's no way that this person
Speaker 2: was placed into this tiny opening. So it was about
Speaker 2: twelve inches by twenty four inches, like say a third
Speaker 2: of a meter by two thirds of a meter, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is a very tiny place, even for a five
Speaker 2: foot woman. Like that's a I get claustrophobic just thinking
Speaker 2: about that. And that if they were dead already, then
Speaker 2: like rigor mortis would have prevented them from being pushed
Speaker 2: into there even And then also, this is not the
Speaker 2: kind of place that a person's just going to crawl
Speaker 2: into on their own accord, Like they were placed in there,
Speaker 2: possibly while alive still, which is one of the ghastlier
Speaker 2: aspects of this case. And so Webster said, you know,
Speaker 2: you put all this together, I'm pretty sure this is
Speaker 2: a murder that we're looking at.
Speaker 1: The Other thing they had to go on was as
Speaker 1: far as clues go was they had most of the
Speaker 1: jaw intact, and so they thought, hey, maybe we can find.
Speaker 3: A dental match. They were not able to.
Speaker 1: Now that they had this kind of rough physical description,
Speaker 1: they thought, well, let's come through missing persons reports. Did
Speaker 1: not find anything matching that, and so the case went
Speaker 1: cold for a while. They just kind of put it
Speaker 1: on the shelf. Hagleywood itself, we should describe it a
Speaker 1: little bit. It is on a private estate, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't like gated and walled up such that you couldn't
Speaker 1: access it, because people would use it. People would have
Speaker 1: picnics there while the blitz was going on and cities
Speaker 1: were being bombed. People would leave Birmingham sometimes and even
Speaker 1: sleep out there around Hagleywood where it was a little quieter.
Speaker 3: And then a weird thing.
Speaker 1: Happened in March of nineteen forty four, so this is
Speaker 1: about almost a year afterward. Their graffiti started popping up
Speaker 1: around town around Birmingham and we'll see elsewhere with white
Speaker 1: chalk letters and all caps on these brick walls. Two
Speaker 1: messages at first, one said Hagley would Bella and another
Speaker 1: said who put Bella down? The witch elm wyh dash
Speaker 1: Hagley Wood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is where we get the name of
Speaker 2: the victim that everybody knows, and the type of tree
Speaker 2: that the victim was found in that everybody knows from
Speaker 2: graffiti from an anonymous person. But it was enough that
Speaker 2: the police were like, Okay, this seems a little weird.
Speaker 2: There were other people who started to kind of copycat
Speaker 2: the whole thing once the paper started writing about it,
Speaker 2: but there was at least a third one a couple
Speaker 2: days later that was clearly written by this the first
Speaker 2: person who wrote the first two. And they were like,
Speaker 2: maybe this person knows who it was and they want
Speaker 2: to find justice for the woman. And they looked they
Speaker 2: they reopen the case and this is I mean, they'd
Speaker 2: already really extensively investigated, having like both both jaws. They're like, great,
Speaker 2: we'll do dental records and we'll find who it is.
Speaker 2: Nothing matched. They tried to comb through all of the
Speaker 2: missing persons reports, no one matched. They get this, chuck,
Speaker 2: did you see that? They investigated the shoe and got
Speaker 2: really far with it. They traced the shoe that they
Speaker 2: found with her back to the Waterfoot Company in Lancashire, Okay,
Speaker 2: and they traced down all but six of the owners
Speaker 2: of all but six of the pears. They were sold
Speaker 2: in a market stall, So this wasn't like looking through
Speaker 2: the market's credit card receipts cards. No, like they really
Speaker 2: were doing some light work here, and you know, hats
Speaker 2: off to him because let's not forget England was getting
Speaker 2: bombed almost nightly by the LUFTWAFFA. There was food rationing,
Speaker 2: there was a war on and they investigated this random,
Speaker 2: you know, dead person that hard and then they reopened
Speaker 2: the case. I'm just saying I think they did a
Speaker 2: good job with what they were working with totally.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I don't know when credit cards
Speaker 1: came about to Maybe that's a good shorty So if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, I imagine they sprung from credit accounts like
Speaker 1: with a store or something. But yeah, maybe we should
Speaker 1: do it on that. I bet it's Diner's Club.
Speaker 2: I think it was Diner's Club, Impact with Telly Savalis. No,
Speaker 2: that was Players Club.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, was it okay because he was a player?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: You noted some other graffiti's one of the ones that
Speaker 1: seemed to be from the same hand. This was in
Speaker 1: hales Owen, and another town nearby. This is different just
Speaker 1: because a had a different name, and this one said,
Speaker 1: who put Lubella l u e b e l l
Speaker 1: A Lubella in the witch Elm? And we mentioned that
Speaker 1: even though it seems like a copycat had done it
Speaker 1: because it was in different script, it just gave them
Speaker 1: another name to look for. And so they looked for
Speaker 1: Loubella as well and came up cold as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, they looked for everybody, Bella Lubella, Isabella, lou Bega, everybody,
Speaker 2: and nothing came up.
Speaker 3: Right knowing he's going to pop up on this show.
Speaker 2: That was one of the best pranks ever played on us.
Speaker 1: Pretty good as you don't know what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: it's just an Easter egg, and listen to every episode
Speaker 1: and you'll learn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so the witch Elm thing. For those of
Speaker 2: us who aren't familiar with with British trees, sure, the
Speaker 2: name witch Elm does not mean witch w i t
Speaker 2: c h. It's you spelled it before, it's w y
Speaker 2: c h And it comes from an old English word
Speaker 2: maybe vice vis w i c and that means smooth
Speaker 2: or supple, and that that describes the bark of a
Speaker 2: witch elm has nothing to do with witches. Witches are
Speaker 2: not associated with the witch elm. It's not even spelled
Speaker 2: the same. And yet there's been an association with witchcraft
Speaker 2: and this case at least in part because of that,
Speaker 2: even among Brits, Like there was a folklorist an archaeologist
Speaker 2: named Margaret Murray who loved to spin a good yarn
Speaker 2: and she was one of the first people to associate
Speaker 2: this case with witches and basically said, witches killed this lady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she wrote a book, a prominent folklorist and archaeologist,
Speaker 1: she wrote a book, you know, many books, but one
Speaker 1: of them was called the Witch Cult in Western Europe.
Speaker 1: So she was really into this thing and this kind
Speaker 1: of idea, and she had a theory that she had
Speaker 1: been promoting that European witches were in part of this
Speaker 1: ancient fertility cult where they had you know, sacrifices and
Speaker 1: things like that made. And she was there in Birmingham
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty five investigating a different occult murder where
Speaker 1: a farmer had been killed through the chest and pinned
Speaker 1: down with a pitchfork. While she was there, she hears
Speaker 1: about Bella and the witch elm and she's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's right up my alley, and very quickly was like,
Speaker 1: oh well, this was clearly some kind of witchy, witchcraft
Speaker 1: occult sacrifice that happened, because putting corpses in a tree
Speaker 1: is a form of ancient tree worship, and so that's
Speaker 1: obviously what happened here. Also that you know this severed
Speaker 1: hand that we found near the tree with the bones,
Speaker 1: I guess that the handbones that's part of an ancient
Speaker 1: thing called the hand of glory, which you dug up
Speaker 1: some stuff on which I thought was super interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's nothing like what it sounds like with
Speaker 2: rind of glory. Instead, it's an old burglar's superstition that
Speaker 2: you would take a severed hand and put a candle
Speaker 2: in it, like make it hold a candle, or you
Speaker 2: would basically attach candles to all five fingers that tips
Speaker 2: of them, and then you'd light it, and if it
Speaker 2: stayed lit, then that meant that everybody in the house
Speaker 2: you were about to rob was asleep. If any of
Speaker 2: them went out, that meant that there was somebody still awake,
Speaker 2: and you shouldn't rob that house. It had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with witchcraft and then even more so, there was
Speaker 2: no hand found severed from the body. That doesn't appear
Speaker 2: in any of the initial police reports. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: a great example of the lies that came up so
Speaker 2: to legitimize this idea that it was the hand of glory.
Speaker 2: Somebody just said along the way, maybe even Margaret Murray,
Speaker 2: that the hand was severed and found at the trunk
Speaker 2: of the tree. And you will see that everywhere, yea,
Speaker 2: even in ones that don't mention witchcraft. It's just that's
Speaker 2: how cases like this just get you know, that's how
Speaker 2: they become unsolvable over time. But I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: it doesn't really matter, but for some reason, it's just
Speaker 2: always ticked me off.
Speaker 3: No I get it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have your phone, but I
Speaker 1: just took said you a picture of and I just
Speaker 1: want to shout it out because it looks so darn
Speaker 1: good on Etsy, a hand of glory candle. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the company is wailing dip candles and it is a
Speaker 1: frighteningly realistic old hand with candlewicks coming out of each
Speaker 1: of the fingers in the thump.
Speaker 2: I got to check this out. Let me go grab
Speaker 2: my phone. Oh my gosh, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: So Josh really did go get his one, Like, it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't even look old. It looks like they just severed
Speaker 2: a hand and planted some wicks on it.
Speaker 3: Like, well it doesn't look young.
Speaker 2: Well okay, so it looks like an aged person's hand,
Speaker 2: but it's not like a mummifi.
Speaker 1: No, no, no no, it looks like a real hand. And
Speaker 1: I'm hoping we move these things. It's for this company.
Speaker 1: It's kind of pricey. It's eighty five bucks, but I
Speaker 1: reckon if you amortize that over like ten Halloween's that's
Speaker 1: not too bad.
Speaker 3: It's like eight to fifty a year to have a
Speaker 3: good spook.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do feel like we need to change the
Speaker 2: name Hand of Glory though, first of all, it doesn't
Speaker 2: make sense, and secondly, sure it really does sound dirty.
Speaker 2: Let's just be honest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, attaching the word glory to other objects, it's just.
Speaker 3: That's not so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. Blaze of Glory could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just ask Jerry Jones. So the idea that it's
Speaker 1: witchcraft was, like we said, really just sort of invented
Speaker 1: by Margaret Murray who happened to be there investigating in
Speaker 1: another case altogether.
Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, that was Charles Walton, who was
Speaker 2: murdered almost certainly by his employer in a raid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So that wasn't witchy either. It was
Speaker 1: just like I'm pitchforking your hay and I get mad
Speaker 1: at you, and so I'm going to kill you with
Speaker 1: the thing in my hand, right and you know what,
Speaker 1: Actually should probably take a break here, oh, because we've
Speaker 1: been going for nineteen minutes now and it's almost.
Speaker 3: Kind of a good little little cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll be right back, all right. So I mentioned
Speaker 1: a cliffhanger. It wasn't really a cliffhanger. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: why I said that. But let's jump forward a little
Speaker 1: bit to nineteen fifty three, where the story takes a turn.
Speaker 1: There was a journalist there named Wilfrid. Wilfrid Byford Jones
Speaker 1: apparently had a.
Speaker 3: Pen name that was Quay star M.
Speaker 2: Basically q U A E S T O R. And
Speaker 2: you can see the A and the E joined to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1: But old Wilfrid wrote a bunch of very speculative articles
Speaker 1: about Bella's murder, which only led to confusion and falsehoods.
Speaker 1: A lot of it had to do with witches, of course,
Speaker 1: and blaming stuff on the Roman people, you know what
Speaker 1: they called gypsies at the time, like coming through town
Speaker 1: doing something like that, and all this to say. One
Speaker 1: of these stories was caught by a reader who wrote
Speaker 1: in to Buy for Jones under the name of Anna
Speaker 1: of Claverly and basically was like, I know the deal.
Speaker 1: I'll just read it real quick. Finish your finish. Your
Speaker 1: articles are e the witch elm crimes. By all means,
Speaker 1: they are interesting to your readers, but you will never
Speaker 1: solve the mystery. The one person who could give you
Speaker 1: the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts,
Speaker 1: in other words, dead. The affair is closed and involves
Speaker 1: no witches, black magic or moonlight rites. The only clues
Speaker 1: that can give you are that the person responsible for
Speaker 1: the crime died insane in nineteen forty two, and the
Speaker 1: victim was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about nineteen
Speaker 1: for one, I have no wish to recall anymore.
Speaker 2: Right, And the police said, well, tes, because you're going
Speaker 2: to have a secret meeting with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: They found Anna and brought her in for an interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Anna's name was Una moss Up and she
Speaker 2: eventually became Una Hainsworth. But during the time of the
Speaker 2: murder she was married to a guy named Jack moss Up.
Speaker 2: And I saw alternative alternatively that he worked in a
Speaker 2: local munitions factory, or that he was a RAF instructor,
Speaker 2: or that he worked in a factory building plane engines.
Speaker 2: Regardless he existed. He was married to Una, and he
Speaker 2: Una told the story to the cops that one night
Speaker 2: Jack brought home a friend named Van Raalt, a Dutchman,
Speaker 2: and that apparently at some point Jack admitted to Una
Speaker 2: that he was on Van Raalt's payroll and Van Ralt
Speaker 2: was a spy for the Nazis, and apparently Jack was
Speaker 2: feeding him information about local factories stuff to help the
Speaker 2: Luftwaffe plan their bombings. So Jack was a real grade
Speaker 2: A bastard as far as things went, because he traded
Speaker 2: his country in for some spending money. And Una said,
Speaker 2: one day Jack came home in March or April of
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, came home late. He was drunk, but
Speaker 2: he was super agitated.
Speaker 1: Right said, you know, pale as a ghost. He said
Speaker 1: he'd been at a pub with Van Ralt and what
Speaker 1: he called a Dutch piece. Who was this Dutch woman.
Speaker 1: I didn't know they use as that kind of language
Speaker 1: back then, or maybe it meant something else. I have
Speaker 1: no idea, but those were the words that he used,
Speaker 1: and then he said things got awkward. You can just
Speaker 1: chalk that up to understatement of the year. She I guess,
Speaker 1: was also drunk, passed out in Van Ralt's car, and
Speaker 1: Van Ralt supposedly, as this story goes, had a very
Speaker 1: strange idea was Hey, let's go stick this woman in
Speaker 1: that tree and she'll sober up in the more and
Speaker 1: come to her senses. And Jack, apparently, Una said, was
Speaker 1: never the same. He started drinking more and more, quit working,
Speaker 1: still had this money. But eventually Una said, I'm out
Speaker 1: of here and I'm leaving you. I'm taking our kid.
Speaker 1: She saw him again about a year later, in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, when he was really coming apart at the seam,
Speaker 1: saying that he keeps seeing this woman in his mind
Speaker 1: in the tree. She was leering at him, and he
Speaker 1: was eventually committed to a mental hospital, where he died
Speaker 1: about eight months before Bella's body was discovered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he died of as far as his death certificate
Speaker 2: is concerned, a combination of cerebral softening, myocardial degeneration, chronic nephritis,
Speaker 2: and acute acute something insanity. I can't even remember my
Speaker 2: own appreciation. But you put those together and that guys
Speaker 2: like dead dead dead. So UNA's story sound like this
Speaker 2: actually all makes sense from what I can tell. She
Speaker 2: provided information that you wouldn't have just been able to
Speaker 2: glean from the papers. And what's more, she didn't really
Speaker 2: have much to gain. She wrote in anonymously and resisted
Speaker 2: coming forward, so it wasn't like she was a publicity having.
Speaker 3: It'd be a weird thing to make up.
Speaker 2: She would be like a mastermind attention getter to really like, yes,
Speaker 2: it would be a weird thing to say, to make.
Speaker 1: Up, right, Yeah, I mean it's a weird thing to do,
Speaker 1: to have that idea, like, hey, let's go stuff that
Speaker 1: woman in a tree.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's oh, God, beyond the no, that's weird.
Speaker 1: And then it's a weird thing for that not to
Speaker 1: have happened, and for this woman to sort of invent it.
Speaker 3: It's all just beyond the pale.
Speaker 2: Exactly. One of the things is though, is so like
Speaker 2: if this was a joke, what you know, what tree?
Speaker 2: How did van Raalt know that that tree right was
Speaker 2: there in the first plason that it had this twelve
Speaker 2: x twenty four you know space in it. The thing is,
Speaker 2: this is far and away the most legitimate explanation for
Speaker 2: what happened. This is an unsolved case. It's an unsolved mystery.
Speaker 2: But for my money, like, this is as close as
Speaker 2: where we're going to get. No.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: You know, cops obviously searched for Van Rault. They searched for,
Speaker 1: you know, records wise, a Dutch national who may have.
Speaker 3: Fit the description that Una gave.
Speaker 1: But it went cold yet again, and then we flashed
Speaker 1: forward to nineteen sixty eight. There's a writer named Donald
Speaker 1: McCormick who picked up the case for a book he
Speaker 1: was writing called Murder by Witchcraft. And this is when
Speaker 1: he I mean, this guy doesn't have a very good
Speaker 1: reputation as a writer because it seems like he would
Speaker 1: just they called him a fantasy historian, like he would
Speaker 1: just make stuff up, make a lot of weird claims
Speaker 1: and theories. He would say things like, you know, I
Speaker 1: was able to interview someone exclusively who was anonymous and
Speaker 1: that no one else could talk to, and here is
Speaker 1: that interview. And in this case, he said, you know
Speaker 1: this interview that I got with this guy that no
Speaker 1: one else knows about, or we'll talk to and who
Speaker 1: shall remain anonymous was a former Nazi spy recruiter hiding
Speaker 1: in Paraguay. And Bella was a Dutch born German spy
Speaker 1: named Clara or Clara Bella. And I've even got Nazi
Speaker 1: intelligence files on this. I'm not going to show you,
Speaker 1: but it says that she parachuted into Birmingham in March
Speaker 1: of April nineteen forty one, So the timeline fits, and
Speaker 1: she happened to look just exactly like who was described
Speaker 1: by Una.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Dave points out that this guy had a
Speaker 2: habit of making his puzzle pieces fit together a little
Speaker 2: too neatly. So essentially he found out about Una moss
Speaker 2: Up story and decided to make it real by corroborating
Speaker 2: it with his imagination. His book, though, is the book
Speaker 2: that we get the very famous pictures that I was
Speaker 2: familiar that caught my attention as a kid. But it's
Speaker 2: really important to point out here tree that he shows
Speaker 2: is not the tree that she was found in. You
Speaker 2: said toward the beginning of the episode that the cops
Speaker 2: chopped that tree down to look for more evidence to it,
Speaker 2: so that tree doesn't exist anymore. And yet that's that
Speaker 2: picture that Donald McCormick put forth as the tree is
Speaker 2: what you see on the internet still today is the
Speaker 2: tree she was found in, and that that's possibly not
Speaker 2: even the kind of tree that she might not have
Speaker 2: been found in a witch elm. The cops mentioned that
Speaker 2: she was found in an elm, but that's it. And
Speaker 2: then apparently some people have been able to examine the
Speaker 2: photos of the original tree and said it's not a
Speaker 2: witch elm because you don't cut witch elms down that way.
Speaker 3: That story about you seeing that picture, when did that happen?
Speaker 2: I was probably like ten to eleven. I think, probably
Speaker 2: in like a school library.
Speaker 3: Book or something I thought you saw recently.
Speaker 2: Okay, no, no, no, that's that's how I was walking around
Speaker 2: with this case for that many years, Like I saw
Speaker 2: it in some book when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: I gotcha, I can tell I can.
Speaker 2: I can even remember like the cellphone covering of the
Speaker 2: book cover, even feel it my fingers right now. I
Speaker 2: can smell it. That's it smells awesome.
Speaker 1: It makes much more sense because you were talking in
Speaker 1: those sort of ways about it, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was recent, and I was like, that's a weird nostalgia
Speaker 1: for something that happened a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: It makes me nostalgic for yesterday.
Speaker 3: I can still remember that moment in December.
Speaker 2: Right, No, not like that.
Speaker 3: I got little kid stuff, all right.
Speaker 1: So that's that book aside. Another twist came in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: The Independent ran a story about Bella, connecting it to
Speaker 1: a spy named Joseph Jacobs, who's a German spy who
Speaker 1: evidently parachuted into a field near Cambridge in February nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, got hurt really badly, could not walk firer's
Speaker 1: pistol in the air to attract some help ideally, and.
Speaker 2: Then said, hey fuss.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the cops come and he's in police custody. He
Speaker 1: has a wireless transmitter, a fake ID, almost five hundred
Speaker 1: pounds in cash, but also a headshot a photograph of
Speaker 1: a woman, but like a professional headshot of this attractive,
Speaker 1: smiling woman, and on the back of it in English
Speaker 1: it said, my dear, I love you Forever your Clara
Speaker 1: Landau July nineteen forty.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so there's a lot that's weird about this.
Speaker 2: So Clara Landau, this picture of Clara Landau was actually
Speaker 2: a picture of Clara Bowery, who was a well known
Speaker 2: I saw her described as a movie star, but at
Speaker 2: least a movie actress and a cabaret singer, a German
Speaker 2: Lily bunchdu and so yeah, exactly, I think that's almost
Speaker 2: exactly who this could have been based on. She was.
Speaker 2: Apparently as far as Joseph Jakobs has has said to
Speaker 2: m I five in multiple interviews that this was his
Speaker 2: mistress that they met in Berlin, Bowerley singing with a
Speaker 2: group called the Bernard Eda Orchestra. That just goes to
Speaker 2: show you Dave's dedication to research, and that Jakobs and
Speaker 2: Bowerley were both crypto Nazis, meaning that they were not
Speaker 2: actual Nazis, they were pretending to be Nazis, and they
Speaker 2: had fooled the Germans, or at least Yakob had, into
Speaker 2: taking him on as a spy and sending him to England.
Speaker 2: He planned to get to England, defect and make his
Speaker 2: way to America, but first he wanted to set up
Speaker 2: a fake operation enough to convince the Germans to send
Speaker 2: Bowery after him. And this this is it, that's it
Speaker 2: like that, That's what Joseph Jakob said. But The Independent
Speaker 2: was like, Oho, let's fill in some blanks and come
Speaker 2: up with our own theory Donald McCormick style.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did some research. They looked for obviously, for
Speaker 1: records for Clara Bowery, and they did find information and confirm, yes,
Speaker 1: she was a cabaret singer in Germany. She would have
Speaker 1: been thirty five years old at the time of the murder,
Speaker 1: just like the skeleton, you know, seemingly confirmed. But had
Speaker 1: she come to England was the big question. All they
Speaker 1: found was a Clara with a K, Clara Sophie Bowerley,
Speaker 1: who was thirty five, who did go to Germany, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: from Germany to England and stayed from nineteen thirty to
Speaker 1: thirty two.
Speaker 3: But that was kind of it.
Speaker 1: No information at all about what she did in England,
Speaker 1: but they ran with it anyway.
Speaker 2: They did, I mean think about it, so like she
Speaker 2: left a full eight nine years before Bella and the
Speaker 2: which Elm happened was killed. Yeah, and yet yeah. The
Speaker 2: Independent's like, so what so based on all this with
Speaker 2: a bunch of pie filling that they mashed in with it,
Speaker 2: the Independent came up with a new theory and I say,
Speaker 2: we take a little break and come back and talk
Speaker 2: about it after this.
Speaker 3: Ooh.
Speaker 2: So, like I was saying, that Independent came up with
Speaker 2: their own pet theory for the Bella and the Witch
Speaker 2: Elm case. And what they said was okay. So Clara
Speaker 2: Clara Bowerley had come to England in the thirties and
Speaker 2: was a performer, a cabaret singer here as well as
Speaker 2: in Germany, and that she became known as Clara Bella,
Speaker 2: like maybe there is a stage name she adopted or
Speaker 2: something like that, but it was a mashup of her
Speaker 2: name Clara Bowerley, and that was the foundation that they
Speaker 2: based everything else on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they said, here's what she did. She parachuted into
Speaker 1: England in nineteen forty one. She was, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to catch up with her parachuting boyfriend, Joseph Yakups. And
Speaker 1: they thought that was the only way to get it
Speaker 1: to a country, I guess, to drop into the middle
Speaker 1: of a field. And they said, hey, what if this
Speaker 1: Clara was who was in that tree who was killed
Speaker 1: by Van Rault, Like we think that that's who was
Speaker 1: in the witch elm, and that graffiti artist had to
Speaker 1: have known that Clarabella Orbella was her name and tried
Speaker 1: to get justice for this murder.
Speaker 2: Right, and they walked away like this. Yeah, could you
Speaker 2: hear that? Did that come through?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so?
Speaker 2: So. Yeah, So there's some problems with this theory. Number one,
Speaker 2: she was not Clara Bowerley was not five feet tall.
Speaker 2: She was approaching six feet tall.
Speaker 1: That's the biggest problem with this, Right, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: big problem.
Speaker 2: I would I would say that there's an even bigger
Speaker 2: problem than this, and that is that she died a
Speaker 2: full year after Bella did in a German hospital of
Speaker 2: a barbituate overdose.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Those two very large problems with this story. That didn't
Speaker 1: not keep them from running the story.
Speaker 2: No, and this is twenty thirteen. This isn't the Independent,
Speaker 2: you know decades ago. This was well, I guess a
Speaker 2: decade ago, but still it was recent enough that they
Speaker 2: should know better than making up basically new theories and
Speaker 2: printing them as if they're basically fact. So one of
Speaker 2: the good things that came out of this was of
Speaker 2: Yoseph Jakobs being brought into this case, although just totally
Speaker 2: like that was the independent that did that. That was like,
Speaker 2: he was not mentioned that he was not tangential the case.
Speaker 2: He had nothing to do with it, basically, but his granddaughter,
Speaker 2: Giselle K Jakobs or Jacobs, I'm not sure which one
Speaker 2: she goes by. She has a PhD In ancient history,
Speaker 2: so she knows about being a historian, and she's applied
Speaker 2: some of that to the Bella and the witch Elm
Speaker 2: case on a website called Yosef Jakobs dot info and
Speaker 2: it is very well researched and well written information about
Speaker 2: this case. So if you're interested in it at all,
Speaker 2: go check that out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, finally, which is great if you were wondering about DNA,
Speaker 1: you know sometimes they can you know, find DNA on
Speaker 1: old stuff. But everything has been lost. Apparently all everything
Speaker 1: was being passed around and moved around in different boxes
Speaker 1: and different labs. And this is in the nineteen forties
Speaker 1: and fifties, and no one knows if it even exists
Speaker 1: at all anymore, if it's you know, hidden away besides
Speaker 1: the arc of the Covenant in some warehouse or something,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I mean it's possible that someone will find it at
Speaker 2: some point, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might still be out there, or it could
Speaker 1: have been lost, or a building could have burned down
Speaker 1: like who knows. Like our lost episode, Jerry has no idea.
Speaker 2: No idea. That's gone for good. It's not in any warehouse.
Speaker 3: Anywhere, which is probably a good thing.
Speaker 2: And now we'll wrap up this episode with five minutes
Speaker 2: on the ancient woodland management technique of coppacing.
Speaker 3: Very funny.
Speaker 2: You got anything else?
Speaker 3: I have nothing else?
Speaker 2: Well, go forth if this floated your boat and read
Speaker 2: more about Bella and the Witch elm the case. Just
Speaker 2: be wary of where your information's from. And there's a
Speaker 2: lot more to it. There's a lot, well, there's a
Speaker 2: lot more out there to read. How about that? And
Speaker 2: in the meantime, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this and preface it with we
Speaker 1: got quite a few emails. Remember when you tied John Williams.
Speaker 1: I guess Star Wars people are going to be so mad.
Speaker 1: Is it Darth Vader's theme or the Imperial Death March?
Speaker 2: One of those Imperial something or other.
Speaker 3: Something like that. You tied that to who was it bach, I.
Speaker 2: Don't remember Chopin's funeral march n.
Speaker 3: That's that's right.
Speaker 1: And we got quite a few music people that wrote
Speaker 1: in and were you know, gave us the older hey,
Speaker 1: will actually these differences here and there and here and
Speaker 1: there fair enough. Not knocking those people for knowing much
Speaker 1: more about that kind of thing than us.
Speaker 3: You just know what your ears told you.
Speaker 2: Well. Also, I n Williams and she was like, yep,
Speaker 2: I love that funeral march.
Speaker 3: I keep up the good work boys.
Speaker 1: He wrote our theme song too, by the way, sure
Speaker 1: no one knows that, no, but this is from lad
Speaker 1: who gets your back. Hey, guys, hope all is well.
Speaker 1: Finally somebody said it. Josh John Williams likes to borrow
Speaker 1: heavily from classic works.
Speaker 3: Please listen to Lesaca.
Speaker 1: Doon the Right of Spring by Stravinsky, and you will
Speaker 1: hear the theme from Jaws, as well as many other
Speaker 1: hits that mister Williams has taken on loan. Not saying
Speaker 1: he doesn't done a lot for the genre, but if
Speaker 1: this is a sampling issue, he'd be paying a lot
Speaker 1: of money to those composers. Keep up the work and
Speaker 1: stay sexy and that is from Ladd.
Speaker 2: Thanks Lad, appreciate that. Loved your turn as the little
Speaker 2: Kid and Lost Boys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I oh, by the way, we watched The
Speaker 1: Lost Boys with Ruby the other night. Would she think
Speaker 1: that's her second and sort of adult movie in a
Speaker 1: row after a Terminator two?
Speaker 3: She loved it.
Speaker 1: I looked it up beforehand and I was like, surely Lost
Speaker 1: Boys has some gratuitous nudity or.
Speaker 3: Some awful like sexy stuff, and it really doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's some kind of gruesome stuff. But she's totally good
Speaker 1: with that and a little bit of language, and she
Speaker 1: knows all that stuff. And she really dug the Lost
Speaker 1: Boys because she likes all that spooky, witchy stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good movie.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was pretty fun. It holds up
Speaker 1: in the way that eighties movies like that hold up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely did. I saw it not too long ago,
Speaker 2: and I was like, this is like I said it before,
Speaker 2: I'll say it again. It's a good movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks a lot, Lad. Again, I appreciate being backed up.
Speaker 2: That was very refreshing. And if you want to be
Speaker 2: like Lad and back me up about some stand I
Speaker 2: took that everybody tried to shout me down on and
Speaker 2: I said no, I'm not going to be shouted down.
Speaker 2: They're like, yes you are, and I said no, I'm not,
Speaker 2: and then it just kind of hung out there until
Speaker 2: you email in. We love that kind of thing. You
Speaker 2: can send us that email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.