Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't just stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Well, Hello there, and welcome
Speaker 1: to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe your host host.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess we're all co hosts. Well I'm
Speaker 1: Devin your host. Okay, all right, so we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: just getting together one more time to solve another unsolved mystery.
Speaker 1: This week, we're going to talk about the Hagley Wood mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a creepy one. A little intro here. There's an
Speaker 1: area in the West Midlands of England. The West Midlands
Speaker 1: is like the western part of the middle part of England,
Speaker 1: which is like kind of abuts Wales for all of
Speaker 1: those who who really care, the western part of the
Speaker 1: Middle of exactly. Yeah, So anyway, it's it's a part
Speaker 1: that's kind of just east of Wales. Anyway. In this
Speaker 1: there's an area there known as the Black Country, which
Speaker 1: earned his name with his dark mysterious mccab passed and
Speaker 1: well it's not really true. It was at the heart
Speaker 1: of the coal industry and a good part of the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution took place there and it was still smoking
Speaker 1: and sooity that it was said to be black by
Speaker 1: day and read by night. So that's why I'm assuming
Speaker 1: from fires. Yeah, you have from coal fires and furnaces
Speaker 1: and you know, foundries and all kinds of good stuff.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I'm sure there's a Mountain of death somewhere there.
Speaker 1: Creek of Doom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Actually, um, so there's
Speaker 1: the Mountain of the Dead in Egypt, Um Mountain of
Speaker 1: Death in Costa Rica, of Death in Poland, Death Valley California,
Speaker 1: UM Highway of Death. I think in Bolivia Valley of
Speaker 1: Doom is a video game. Do you want me to
Speaker 1: keep going? No? No, no, no, you're right of deaths yeah,
Speaker 1: right in the neighborhood too. So yeah, so I right there.
Speaker 1: Think we can say without equivocation that the Black Country
Speaker 1: has earned this dark, creepy reputation. Okay, case solve, uh alright,
Speaker 1: So anyway, are our saga begins? In April nineteen three,
Speaker 1: four young lads were out poaching on the estate of
Speaker 1: somebody named Lord cobbum In, And so there was a
Speaker 1: patch of woods on his estate. He had a fairly
Speaker 1: large estate, but there's a patch of woods called Hagleywood,
Speaker 1: and they were they were looking for birds nests so
Speaker 1: they could steal some bird's extra food because this is
Speaker 1: wartime and rations were a little short, so you know,
Speaker 1: they can get a little extra food here. They were
Speaker 1: looking for anything that they could do. They were tired
Speaker 1: of potatoes. Yeah, they wanted to kill some small, helpless
Speaker 1: animals or steal some birds eggs, whatever they could protein
Speaker 1: of some kind of yeah. Yeah. So anyway, they're looking
Speaker 1: for birds nests in the trees of Hagley Wood and
Speaker 1: they find this one. I don't I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys saw the picture of it, well, certainly certain
Speaker 1: posted on the website. It's it's a weird looks like, um,
Speaker 1: what is that? It looks like something out of the
Speaker 1: last Headless Horseman movie with Johnny depth that was in
Speaker 1: that Ye, Johnny Depp played about Crane. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: had that really really was it a Tim Burton film? Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. Yeah, it was a crazy tree at
Speaker 1: the end, and that's what I thought of, as he
Speaker 1: doesn't think for weird everything. It was casting with Christopher
Speaker 1: Walkers a Headless Horseman. Yeah, he made made a credible one.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's creepy no matter what, right exactly. Ok
Speaker 1: So anyway, back to this tree. So they spot a
Speaker 1: tree that looks like it's got some nests and it's
Speaker 1: one of them climbs up the tree and finds a
Speaker 1: large hole in the side of the tree. Looking into
Speaker 1: the hole, he spots a skull. Yeah, like a bird skull.
Speaker 1: He's sticking. It's an animal skull. So he grabs a
Speaker 1: stick and he pokes a stick in and kind of
Speaker 1: hooks it and brings it out. And surprise, surprise, how
Speaker 1: old is this kid? You know? Actually I never never
Speaker 1: got their ages and all the places I was looking,
Speaker 1: and I'm guessing, I'm guessing they're probably you know, what
Speaker 1: does every three team boy do? He grabs his stick
Speaker 1: and he pokes it. Let's let's poke it with a stick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it must have been turned down
Speaker 1: in such a way that you couldn't see the face
Speaker 1: of the skull, and you know, otherwise, you know, you're
Speaker 1: looking at the face of a human skull. I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: pretty its pretty obvious. So it's a human skull. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so they decided to put it back in
Speaker 1: the tree, and they and they and they headed back
Speaker 1: to town. And since they had been trespassing, they thought
Speaker 1: they would just keep it a secret. This seems to
Speaker 1: be kind of like a recurring theme in all of
Speaker 1: our kind of mysterious dead things, right, Like, somebody discovers
Speaker 1: the body and it's like, well, I don't really want
Speaker 1: to report it, So they wait a couple of days,
Speaker 1: and then they decided to report it. Yeah. We've talked
Speaker 1: about this in a number of kids. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's I don't want to tell anybody I found
Speaker 1: a body. Yeah, you know exactly, it's gonna be awkward.
Speaker 1: That was one time I woke up from a black
Speaker 1: houn on the body in my bedroom. So I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't report that one right away. In fact, I
Speaker 1: never did. Yeah, it does. Yeah, So one of the
Speaker 1: boys had second thoughts, and so he told his dad
Speaker 1: about what they found. And if the little rat had
Speaker 1: just kept his piehole shut, then we wouldn't be sitting
Speaker 1: here wasting our time, wouldn't if it wasn't for those
Speaker 1: darn kids. Kids. Yeah, so any way, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's history now, it's something there's nothing you can
Speaker 1: do about it. So we're stuck here in the studio
Speaker 1: solving this mystery. Yeah, naturally, dad tells the police and
Speaker 1: so the police and the kids come back to the
Speaker 1: place the next day with the posse of the po
Speaker 1: PO who look into the tree and discover yeah, and
Speaker 1: the kids aren't lying. There's a human skull in there
Speaker 1: and some bones, and so I'd tell yeah. They they
Speaker 1: called in some of some heavy lifter investigators from from
Speaker 1: the bigger the big city, like Birmingham is the largest
Speaker 1: town nearby. One of the people they called in was
Speaker 1: a forensic scientist named Professor jam Webster who he was
Speaker 1: the one who actually lifted the skull out of the tree,
Speaker 1: and he found cloth wedged in the mouth of the skull,
Speaker 1: so that led him to believe that there was murder
Speaker 1: involved in this person had been had been smothered by
Speaker 1: having cloth stuff in her mouth apparently, and so he
Speaker 1: declared that, he said it was probably murdered, and they
Speaker 1: declared the crime scene, which meant they had this time
Speaker 1: to get serious now and so and so they started
Speaker 1: start started searching the area. And there's this is one
Speaker 1: place where there's a little bit of diversions in the stories.
Speaker 1: As always, there's diversions and all these different versions of it.
Speaker 1: One of the one is that the skull and a
Speaker 1: complete skeleton were all in the tree, and another in
Speaker 1: another version, they found bones scattered all over the place. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I should say in the in the first version, the
Speaker 1: complete skeleton except for the right hand, which had severed
Speaker 1: and was found near remember specifically people saying they were
Speaker 1: the hand was buried outside. The hand was buried outside
Speaker 1: the tree, and everything else was in there. But other
Speaker 1: other accounts say that there were other bones also found
Speaker 1: outside the tree, which is entirely possible. I mean, because
Speaker 1: if the body was there for any any length of time,
Speaker 1: animals would have gotten in there, you know, and probably
Speaker 1: like you know, pulled out a thigh here, an armbone
Speaker 1: there and chew. Yeah, I mean, think of a Raccoons
Speaker 1: are not small creatures. I know, Devil loves raccoons, man,
Speaker 1: but I mean, do you think about a raccoon getting
Speaker 1: in there and it's it's it's bonus time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: most likely some of the bones were scattered about by animals. Well,
Speaker 1: unless she was like wedged so tightly in there. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll cover this, yeah, you know, and it
Speaker 1: might be that she was killed by a Terraine serial
Speaker 1: killer who chopped her into pieces and then and then
Speaker 1: scattered all over the place that the hand was found nearby.
Speaker 1: That was significant to some people, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that a little later. They also found in the hole
Speaker 1: they found some fragments of clothing, gold ring, apparently a
Speaker 1: wedding ring. Also one shoe, and also some accounts say
Speaker 1: that there was a green bottle in the tree as well,
Speaker 1: like glass glass, green bottle. Yeah, not all the new
Speaker 1: like a wine bottle sized wine bottle. I got the
Speaker 1: impression there was a smaller bottle, yeah, like a type bottle. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So the one when they were pretty pretty well shared
Speaker 1: they've gotten all the bones. They they bagged him up
Speaker 1: and took him back to the professor's lab and he
Speaker 1: reassembled the skeleton, and he drew some conclusions from his reassembly.
Speaker 1: He concluded the body was a woman, that she was
Speaker 1: about five feet tall and roughly thirty forty years old.
Speaker 1: She had had a child at some point. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that was something I didn't realize you could
Speaker 1: find out from bones. But some of it was a
Speaker 1: woman or not, No, if they had had a child
Speaker 1: or not. I think that when the hip bones don't
Speaker 1: they don't they change. They change when you have what
Speaker 1: I never want to do now. Yeah, yeah, so hard
Speaker 1: that your bones change? Yeah, okay. Next up she had
Speaker 1: as she had a deformation in her lower jaw and
Speaker 1: a mueller had recently been pulled, which gave them hope
Speaker 1: that they could they could find a dentist somewhere who
Speaker 1: could identify the person who they found. Again, I got
Speaker 1: I gotta stop and ask, so how do they How
Speaker 1: would you know that the moller had recently been pulled?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't really know that. I'm guessing that.
Speaker 1: You know, when you pull a moler out, it kind
Speaker 1: of I think it kind of breaks up in scars.
Speaker 1: But have you ever had a mola removed like like
Speaker 1: wisdom teeth whatever? You know that you know, like when
Speaker 1: they stick the augur when and the aug and they
Speaker 1: start they start reefing on that thing and you can
Speaker 1: hear things break, crunching and breaking in there, you know.
Speaker 1: So are you thinking that like the bone is damaged
Speaker 1: in the bone where, Yeah, it still hasn't entirely, that's
Speaker 1: my guess. Yeah. I think Also the jaw bone is
Speaker 1: pretty good at healing itself. So if there's a hole
Speaker 1: where the mueller's like roots were, I don't know this,
Speaker 1: This is just speculation. But doesn't that hole kind of
Speaker 1: like get some tissue, Like doesn't it kind of steal
Speaker 1: up a little bit? Talking about the gums over there
Speaker 1: over the top, are you talking about just the hole
Speaker 1: they left in the Yeah, yeah, I would think it
Speaker 1: would see, it would seal up, there'd be some recognition
Speaker 1: of kind of time. Yeah, so that's my best guess. Uh,
Speaker 1: So let's see what else. There were no visible signs
Speaker 1: of injury or violence on the bones. Of course, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean she wasn't done in violently. It just means
Speaker 1: they didn't leave a mark on the bone, so she
Speaker 1: could have been Yeah, no fractures, so she wasn't being
Speaker 1: to death, you knowing like that, you know, but she's
Speaker 1: still okay. So it could have been stabbed at death,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as he didn't hit a bone
Speaker 1: with a knife, you know. But he surmised that the
Speaker 1: cause of death was suffocation due to the cloth in
Speaker 1: her mouth, So good enough, I guess. Uh. He surmised
Speaker 1: also the body been stuck in the hole before rigor
Speaker 1: mortis has set in, because the hole was small, so
Speaker 1: small that they had to have a little bit of
Speaker 1: flexibility to work with, you know, that sort of squeeze
Speaker 1: her in there, and so yeah, with rigor mortis, she
Speaker 1: probably probably would have been hard to get her in
Speaker 1: the hole. And he also lastly surmised that death had
Speaker 1: occurred in eighteen months more or less prior to discovery
Speaker 1: of the body. And I'm guessing that's based on the
Speaker 1: fact that there there was some flesh and hair still. Ye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, and I'm not sure again how you
Speaker 1: do this. Originally I think he u he concluded that
Speaker 1: it was it could have been up to four years prior,
Speaker 1: and then he revised it based on I'm not sure what,
Speaker 1: probably weather patterns and stuff, or maybe it was tree growth.
Speaker 1: Maybe you would say, well, this tree couldn't have grown,
Speaker 1: it would have grown more over her bodies, her bones
Speaker 1: would have been more incorporated into the tree. They would
Speaker 1: have taken a long time, the bones, that would take
Speaker 1: a long time. Sure, But no, I mean, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, if four years is a reasonable a lot
Speaker 1: of time for the for you to see some a
Speaker 1: little bit of that, like the whole being smaller than
Speaker 1: she would have fit into or something. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: or maybe not. Maybe he was just totally making things up.
Speaker 1: It's I believe the term is educated guests. Yeah, yeahs
Speaker 1: very educated. Guess yeah, I think you know, and you
Speaker 1: never know it might he might have made that judgment
Speaker 1: from the extent of deterioration of the cloth because she
Speaker 1: was wearing clothing. Maybe maybe that was a better or
Speaker 1: maybe the amount of corrosion or tarnishing on the gold ring,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you could make that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of ways to find clues how buried the
Speaker 1: bones were, like how you know, especially if they found
Speaker 1: any of them in the dirt, you know, those deteriorates
Speaker 1: how much or anything like that. Yeah, that's a tough one,
Speaker 1: but okay. So he also there were fragments of clothing
Speaker 1: and as I said earlier, there was a shoe found
Speaker 1: in the hole with her um. So he was able
Speaker 1: to put together a description of her outfit that she
Speaker 1: was wearing. It's the time of death. And so at
Speaker 1: this point they tried to figure out who she was,
Speaker 1: and they figured that probably she was somewhere in the
Speaker 1: area they wouldn't have too much trouble finding here. Well,
Speaker 1: guess again, first off, they've got the most obvious thing
Speaker 1: to do is the dental records, because she had a
Speaker 1: tooth pulled, and she had a she had a messed
Speaker 1: up lower jaw. So they took that information to every
Speaker 1: dentist in the region and it was all a dead end. Nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody had any records to identify and by yeah, so
Speaker 1: they checked her clothes, the clothing that she wore was
Speaker 1: and of course, again it's some versions of this story
Speaker 1: which I don't find believable, but some versions say that
Speaker 1: all the labels have been removed from the close yeah
Speaker 1: the woman, Hey, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, um. But now,
Speaker 1: actually they they were able to find labels in your clothes,
Speaker 1: and they were from fairly common brands and and then
Speaker 1: really didn't provide any real good leads to her shoe.
Speaker 1: That they found was that was a somewhat unique shoe,
Speaker 1: and that gave them hope. And they actually went to
Speaker 1: the time and trouble to track down every all but
Speaker 1: four of the pairs of these shoes that have been sold.
Speaker 1: They tracked down all of them. Don't ask me how
Speaker 1: they managed to do this. Nonetheless, they didn't find out
Speaker 1: who this person was through the shoes. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, so frustrating frustrating investigation for our po PO.
Speaker 1: I mean, I forgot to finding the murder. They can't
Speaker 1: even figure out who she was. So anyway, in December three,
Speaker 1: somebody put graffiti on a wall in Birmingham. Birmingham is
Speaker 1: a nearby city, the nearest industrial city. Um, somebody wrote,
Speaker 1: who put Luebella in the witch elm Hagley Wood on
Speaker 1: a wall in the city and so this, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably the oddest part of this whole thing to
Speaker 1: somebody searched graffitiing and like a couple of months later
Speaker 1: to right about over six months. Yeah no, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean to continue for decades. But anyway, they gave
Speaker 1: a name to the corpse. Anyway, so I did that
Speaker 1: yield any results? Did they start like searching for every
Speaker 1: Luebella in the area. I think they were looking at
Speaker 1: missing person's reports persons called Luebella or bella or whatever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again, you know, dead end. I wonder if
Speaker 1: lubella was slang for something in the local local innacular.
Speaker 1: It seems like that would have been recorded though, don't
Speaker 1: you think. Well, but if it's if it's something that
Speaker 1: in the town somebody has randomly started using this name
Speaker 1: to assign to some kind of person, and it just
Speaker 1: it kind of dies out. You know, there's there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of fads with words. Sure, but as a as
Speaker 1: a diligent police officer, you're writing your police report and
Speaker 1: somebody writes this thing on there, and you say, you know,
Speaker 1: this graffiti pertains to the case. And by the way,
Speaker 1: lubella is slang for loose woman. Yeah, you don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe you would think, I just I just wonder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I think I've heard that Luebella
Speaker 1: was not an uncommon name in the Midlands, so somebody
Speaker 1: probably said that somebody. It might have been somebody who
Speaker 1: actually knew who she was. That phrase a local term
Speaker 1: for what we would now say Jane Doe. Yeah it
Speaker 1: might be. But but anyway, so now now Bella had
Speaker 1: a name, which is Bella, and that's that the police
Speaker 1: were interested, you know, because this guy called her out
Speaker 1: but called her by name, and so the police thought
Speaker 1: that perhaps the graffiti artist knew something about the case,
Speaker 1: and so they put the word out that they wanted
Speaker 1: to have a word with him. Surprisingly enough, he never
Speaker 1: came forward. Shocking. Yeah, oh hey, whoever did the graffiti.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, we'd like to talk to you. We want
Speaker 1: to talk to you. Um, it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the graffiti. This case, we probably won't arrest you.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, well we'll arrest you for the graffiti. Yeah, yeah, alright.
Speaker 1: So a lot of theories, a lot and rumors were
Speaker 1: flying around the area. Obviously, this is a very very
Speaker 1: creepy murder abound a good people that Willie's. So the
Speaker 1: first one was it was witchcraft. It was a professor
Speaker 1: named Margaret Murray wrote a book about this murder and
Speaker 1: another murder that happened about five miles away, not too
Speaker 1: much after this, and she she claimed that she had
Speaker 1: been done in a sort of black magic execution. Um.
Speaker 1: She said that an inner book that you can trap
Speaker 1: a witch's spirit and stop her from continue to do
Speaker 1: evil bad deeds with her spirit beyond the dead, and
Speaker 1: you can trap it by stuffing her into a witch
Speaker 1: elm tree. And also you can you can sever the
Speaker 1: right hand of a dead criminal and the hand becomes
Speaker 1: a very powerful talisman, the hand of power, the hand
Speaker 1: of power, which is in all kinds of fantasy books
Speaker 1: and stuff. It's always the hand of power, which and
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've found this near research. But
Speaker 1: the hand of power you always heard about, it's a candle.
Speaker 1: So it's basically from about the midfoe arm up or
Speaker 1: maybe the wrist up and they you basically burned the
Speaker 1: fingers like candles, and they're supposed to have some kind
Speaker 1: of mystical power and you can do things. It's a
Speaker 1: that's a very common trope sting. Yeah. The problem I
Speaker 1: have with that theory as well. If you've just acquired
Speaker 1: this powerful talisman, why don't you just drop it at
Speaker 1: the base of the tree and walk away? It was
Speaker 1: too powerful? Maybe maybe that was it there was Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe after they realized what they've done, they were
Speaker 1: kind of grossed out. Or maybe it's just another way
Speaker 1: to like strip that which of the power. Right you
Speaker 1: cut off the right hand, so you strip her over
Speaker 1: power even more and then you don't really need it,
Speaker 1: you don't want it. Maybe you're not a witch covenant.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're just trying to get rid of her which
Speaker 1: that lives in your area. Yeah, that's a good point,
Speaker 1: but but again, you know, I would I would take
Speaker 1: that hand and I would bury it at least three
Speaker 1: ft deep. Yeah, Well, the other funny thing about it is, uh,
Speaker 1: I think you had mentioned this in there, Joe, Is
Speaker 1: that the the whole hand of a thief for murder,
Speaker 1: which is one of the two, wasn't it. I've I've
Speaker 1: seen accounts where he'll say it's the left hand, it's
Speaker 1: or it's the right hand, or it's both. So it's
Speaker 1: funny that she says it's scifically that hand because it
Speaker 1: just meets up with the evidence. Maybe it depends on
Speaker 1: whether the witch is right handed or left handed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, and a lot of Middle Eastern cultures they
Speaker 1: tend to cut off a hand. That's like the punishment
Speaker 1: for a thief. And I think usually they cut off
Speaker 1: the left hand, the non dominant hand first, and then
Speaker 1: they cut off the that's reasonable, yeah, if you keep stealing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't keep stealing after that from guests on. People
Speaker 1: probably do after you get the second hand taken. Oh,
Speaker 1: with their teeth maybe on the other hand. Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: A problem with that when you think about it, is
Speaker 1: that like, after you've had your left hand chopped off,
Speaker 1: then it's it's probably gonna be harder to find work
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to resort to steal. Yeah, yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and she also tied tied to her murder. And I
Speaker 1: said previously, there was another murder of a man not
Speaker 1: too long after this, about twenty five miles southeast in
Speaker 1: a village called Lower Quentin. A guy was sound pinned
Speaker 1: to the ground by a pitchfork, which is kind of
Speaker 1: kind of creepy, but again that's not exactly evidence of
Speaker 1: witchcraft though. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, she she eventually uh
Speaker 1: sort of used up her credibility and was found to
Speaker 1: be a hack. So it was nonetheless that that theory
Speaker 1: was very popular with the public and the press for
Speaker 1: a long time. That's sensational. It was pretty sensational. Hell yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: This next theory is one more credible. She was a
Speaker 1: German spy. Yeah. Yeah. So the first ten years after
Speaker 1: the body was found, a letter was sent to the
Speaker 1: Wolverhampton Expressing Star by somebody who called herself Anna Comma Cleverly.
Speaker 1: Cleverly is a village about ten miles northwest of Hagley Woods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so she was not too far far away. She
Speaker 1: claimed that she knew people involved, that they had had
Speaker 1: formed essentially a spy ring operating in the West Midlands,
Speaker 1: and they were right. What they were doing was mostly
Speaker 1: identifying munitions factories for the LOOFTWAFFA so they could come
Speaker 1: in and bomb them and stuff. Yeah, goog war time, Yeah, objective. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this little spire ring was composed of a British officer,
Speaker 1: some Dutch guy, and a foreign trapeze artist and other
Speaker 1: accounts he was a music hall artist. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with music hall artist actually, because that's a little more believable.
Speaker 1: Trapeze artist. Yeah. So, anyway, the British officer, Dutch guy
Speaker 1: and and the other guy were in this little spy ring, uh,
Speaker 1: and they were Bella happened to fall in with these
Speaker 1: guys somehow. She was supposedly a Dutch woman who had
Speaker 1: gotten involved and had learned to MutS and so she
Speaker 1: had to be murdered, so was Yeah, so she was
Speaker 1: murdered by the Dutch guy and the music hall artist
Speaker 1: in Hagleywood and stuffed in the tree. This is a
Speaker 1: little vague because you know, it's like, seriously, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly why what she found out why
Speaker 1: she had to be murdered, but you know, it's the
Speaker 1: only four and if you're a spy, nobody's gonna know. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: so anyway, but it doesn't really say the particularly doesn't
Speaker 1: really say that she's a spy, but it seems like
Speaker 1: she's she's a Dutch woman from overseas, who which means
Speaker 1: she's a spy could have been a spy. A Dutch
Speaker 1: woman from overseas, that means sy. Alright, So this person
Speaker 1: add out only I did one person by name, who
Speaker 1: was the British officer who had conveniently died in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, supposedly insane. Uh so she couldn't did not
Speaker 1: name any any of the other two. So even though
Speaker 1: the police tracked her down and questioned her that she
Speaker 1: didn't really provide any good leads as far as the
Speaker 1: British officer that she named. But the guy died insane
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two, Well, you don't usually go from
Speaker 1: sane to insane in like a year's time. Well, and
Speaker 1: and here's the issue. If this guy died in nineteen
Speaker 1: well he died nineteen forty two. Yeah, she supposedly had
Speaker 1: been dead for eighteen months, is the approximation. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: means that she would have been murdered in nine Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: the timeline works, Yeah, it does. And we don't know
Speaker 1: how long he was if he was insane. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: he was locked up in a sanitarium, and we of
Speaker 1: course probably don't know how long that was. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how long it took him from going
Speaker 1: from being rational and lucid to be coming insane, having
Speaker 1: having to go to liney Ben. Yeah, I know. Maybe
Speaker 1: if he had to watch her die or killed, that
Speaker 1: could have been pushed him over the edge. Yeah, anything,
Speaker 1: maybe he was somehow involved in her dad, but he wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was a Dutch dude and the musical artist. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, in actually following with his spy theme, a
Speaker 1: writer named Donald McCormick published a book called Murder by Witchcraft.
Speaker 1: It said that she was a Nazi spy and occultist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's just marry both these things right together. I know, no, so,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting from what I haven't actually gone and
Speaker 1: read his book, but from what I've read about some
Speaker 1: reason of it, he doesn't really claim any occult element
Speaker 1: in the whole thing, other though she was an accultist,
Speaker 1: so I don't really get that. But her name was
Speaker 1: Clara Bella McCormick. The author claimed that he had seen
Speaker 1: records on her and that she had indeed parachuted into
Speaker 1: the West Midlands and she was never hurt from again,
Speaker 1: she just got stuck in the tree. I could have
Speaker 1: actually just wanted right into the tree, like like one
Speaker 1: of those cartoons, right, just like, Oh I got stuck
Speaker 1: in a whole some really bad luck, I guess. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where Beatie Cooper is too, right, Beatie Cooper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just got stuck in a tree. Yeah. There there
Speaker 1: is theories the dB Cooper did get stuck in a tree.
Speaker 1: He just got stuck in a tree. I think he
Speaker 1: got impaled on a big doug for yeah, man telling
Speaker 1: you it happens all the time, sense Yeah, so yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: so yeah, maybe she parachuted directly into the tree and
Speaker 1: you know, don't tastco don't collect the two other bucks. Yeah, Ok,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm just gonna put the kibosh on that
Speaker 1: one right now, because if she parachuted directly into the tree,
Speaker 1: the parachute would have been on her. Where's your parachute,
Speaker 1: where's your gear? Yeah? Exactly exactly, So she was parachuting
Speaker 1: with magic. Yeah. Well, one author actually said that it's
Speaker 1: it's possible that if if she parachutes directly industry and
Speaker 1: I'm not supporting this idea. So somebody who found the
Speaker 1: parachute would have just because there are a shortage of
Speaker 1: things like cloth in those days, two people would have
Speaker 1: actually taken it and just you know, cut it up
Speaker 1: and made it in made it into stuff, made her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he would have had some stuff on her too. And
Speaker 1: so because maybe somebody stole that too, or you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't I don't buy this sery
Speaker 1: at all, because I mean, number one, the professors I
Speaker 1: said earlier, he reconstructed the outfit that she was wearing.
Speaker 1: She wasn't exactly wearing a parachute, and the enemy territory
Speaker 1: clothing she was wearing, she was wearing a dress. I
Speaker 1: feel I should make it very clear to our listeners
Speaker 1: that I am not, in seriousness suggesting actually parsuted directly
Speaker 1: into a small hole. I kind of like the idea
Speaker 1: that kind I kind of like the idea. You know,
Speaker 1: it says it's a big dramatic spy movie and she's
Speaker 1: and then and then there's just rolling credit. Uh, take
Speaker 1: that Nazi spy okay. So anyway, an article appeared in
Speaker 1: The Independent, a UK paper in March two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: with the headline is this the Bella in the Witch
Speaker 1: unraveling the mystery of the skull found in a tree
Speaker 1: trunk and they've got a picture of a woman. What
Speaker 1: happened is that German spy did come into England in
Speaker 1: he was captured by the Home Guard after right aft
Speaker 1: to be parachuted into the country. When he was taken
Speaker 1: to m I five who interrogated him and they found
Speaker 1: a photo of a woman on him. This this woman
Speaker 1: right here, and it was kind of kind of actually
Speaker 1: a postcard kind of format. She'd written something in English
Speaker 1: on the back. By the way, she's she's a German.
Speaker 1: This person, the man, the spy, was named Joseph Jacobs.
Speaker 1: And so the woman, he said, was Clara. I'm probably
Speaker 1: gonna mangle this here goes Bourel Clara. So anyway, according
Speaker 1: to according to Jacobs, she was a German singer and actress,
Speaker 1: and apparently they had met in Germany and hung out
Speaker 1: and been lovers and everything, and supposedly she was had
Speaker 1: been recruited also spy for the Germans, and she was
Speaker 1: going to parachute into Britain and joined him after he
Speaker 1: got established in radio back home and said that that
Speaker 1: he'd made it okay. He said that he didn't really
Speaker 1: think she'd becoming since he had been captured and hadn't
Speaker 1: made radio contact, Especially when you think about it, I mean,
Speaker 1: sending her in after he's obviously been captured. She's already
Speaker 1: been blown, her cover is already already shot. Yeah, yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, in some respects, she would have been a
Speaker 1: good Nazi spike. According to some account she had She
Speaker 1: had actually spent two years in Britain in the West Midlands,
Speaker 1: so she knew the area. She spent that time singing
Speaker 1: in halls and stuff like that, which is good back
Speaker 1: in those days before they had things like CDs and
Speaker 1: you know, so she was the music hall singer. Well
Speaker 1: that was That was something that made me wonder, is
Speaker 1: that that does kind of fit in with Anna's letter
Speaker 1: and his and his revelations. So instead of her this
Speaker 1: clear up person becoming involved with the spy ring, maybe
Speaker 1: she was just the third person to the spy ring
Speaker 1: and instead of I could see that, Yeah, that it's
Speaker 1: just like a bunch of different kind of family stories right, say,
Speaker 1: you know, crazy Grandpa says, oh no, yeah, there was
Speaker 1: the spy ring that was here, and you know he's
Speaker 1: got his back a little muddel. Yeah, yeah, maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. So anyway, Yeah, she spent two years working
Speaker 1: in that in that area. She spoke English very well,
Speaker 1: she was familiar with the area, so she would have
Speaker 1: been a good spy in that and that in those respects,
Speaker 1: although there was actually In another website from Joseph Jacob's granddaughter,
Speaker 1: she says that she founded the National Archives when their
Speaker 1: interrogations of Jacobs that he believed that she had never
Speaker 1: been to England before, So again a little bit of
Speaker 1: a contradiction there. So on the downside of her utility
Speaker 1: as as a Nazi agent, she would if she had
Speaker 1: actually spent that time in England two years singing, she
Speaker 1: would have performed in front of a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and who would know her to be a German singer.
Speaker 1: And the odds of being spotted on the street just
Speaker 1: by some random dude, we're fairly good. Did they release
Speaker 1: that photo though of her? Now? Yeah? So what what? Well?
Speaker 1: I think I think what just getting at is prior
Speaker 1: to the war having broken out, people would have seen
Speaker 1: her and said, oh that's that's, that's that German ship.
Speaker 1: What is I remember? And oh yeah, and she was.
Speaker 1: She was a traveling German and wait, what is a
Speaker 1: German doing in this country at this time where Jacobs
Speaker 1: was mistaken or misled and believed that she had never
Speaker 1: been to England, but in fact he was. She was
Speaker 1: a fluent English speaker and maybe could pass for an
Speaker 1: English woman, except again if if she acquired her English
Speaker 1: skills by hanging out as a as a German in England,
Speaker 1: then she would be known too many people as a
Speaker 1: German in England. Well, again, it depends on where she
Speaker 1: was at. She burned in London and then went to
Speaker 1: West Elm or whatever, or not West Elm, whatever this
Speaker 1: place they were talking about is. You know, she could
Speaker 1: have been anywhere else. It's a very small community, so
Speaker 1: would be easy just to go to a town that's
Speaker 1: fifty miles away and never see yet people aren't quite
Speaker 1: as mobile in those days. Yeah, And additionally, you know
Speaker 1: she could say, oh, yeah, you know, I'm moving on
Speaker 1: to my next place soon and go and get murdered
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, somebody has figured her out, so
Speaker 1: she says all, I'm leaving town. Nobody thinks anything of it,
Speaker 1: you know. And then a year and a half later,
Speaker 1: I don't know that, you know, anybody would think of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know it. It's hard to say what kind
Speaker 1: of counterintelligence was happening, right, So anyway, back to the
Speaker 1: luckless Joseph Jacobs. He uh, he was actually cooperative with
Speaker 1: the with m I five, but they felt that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have any value. Apparently the Home Guard wasn't too
Speaker 1: secretive and the fact that they had nabbed him and
Speaker 1: so um, the word of his capture had gotten out,
Speaker 1: so they couldn't really successfully turn him. So they did
Speaker 1: what they did back in those days. They executed him. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they executed him by firing squad in the tower. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's the way they did it with the You
Speaker 1: canna either cooperate or we're gonna shoot you. And in
Speaker 1: his case, sadly, he was willing to co operate apparently,
Speaker 1: but they shot him anyway at the Tower of London,
Speaker 1: in the Tower of London that he wasn't he was
Speaker 1: actually the last person to be executed in the Tower
Speaker 1: of London was Yeah, I remember that. I do remember
Speaker 1: seeing his parachuting gear in the Tower of London. It's
Speaker 1: actually on display. But I thank you for I never
Speaker 1: made the connection when I was doing the research. I
Speaker 1: never saw that he was the last person. But did
Speaker 1: they have this picture? They didn't have that picture, but
Speaker 1: they have all of his gear. Uh. And yeah, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, I think all of his gear was
Speaker 1: painted white like he was going to drop into a
Speaker 1: snowy landscape. But it wasn't. He just stood out like
Speaker 1: a sword thumb and I think he got hurt. Way
Speaker 1: he landed. Bad luck, yeah, very bad intin this time
Speaker 1: of the year. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah yeah, So anyway,
Speaker 1: poor guy got his But anyway his He has a
Speaker 1: granddaughter whose name is Giselle Jacobs. So she has a
Speaker 1: website devoted to the history his history. The same photo
Speaker 1: of Clara about bau Earle that he saw in the
Speaker 1: Telegraph article, uh is also on her site, but it's uncropped,
Speaker 1: and it tells it a little bit different story because Bella,
Speaker 1: as as we know, was five feet tall from the
Speaker 1: very small But when you look at at this photograph
Speaker 1: with the young cropped where you can see her legs
Speaker 1: and everything, does she looked like she's five feet five eights.
Speaker 1: She looks like a very tall and she may not
Speaker 1: actually be because oftentimes with like the weight to height
Speaker 1: ratio of the olden days, but she's definitely not five
Speaker 1: feet She's at least five five I would say. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the proportion of her head
Speaker 1: to her shoulders, for example, I mean she was five
Speaker 1: feet tall, that means well, no, even even taking an
Speaker 1: account shoulder pads, I mean, if she was five feet
Speaker 1: tall or had to be the size of a cantalope.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so it's this person, this Clara Burrow, cannot
Speaker 1: be Bella in my opinion, so we solve that mystery anyway,
Speaker 1: take that Independent UK. Yeah, yeah, she u. Giselle Jacobs
Speaker 1: also had She apparently delved into the National Archives to
Speaker 1: get a lot of this information. So she got information
Speaker 1: about not only Joseph Jacobs and Clara, but she also
Speaker 1: got some information on another German advers by named Carol Richter,
Speaker 1: who had known them both back in Germany, and according
Speaker 1: to his reminiscence of Clara, he remembered her being very
Speaker 1: tall for a while, so supporting what you've seen in
Speaker 1: the photo. Okay, yeah, yeah. Conclusion. Uh this Clara Barrel
Speaker 1: and sorry I keep mangling your name and Bella were
Speaker 1: not the same person. Yeah, and I would say I
Speaker 1: would say also Bella could have been a spibe. This
Speaker 1: kind of shoots the hell out of the spy theory
Speaker 1: in my opinion, I don't think there's any reason to
Speaker 1: believe that she was a spy. I think that they're
Speaker 1: probably more mundane. Reason is somebody, for some reason murderer
Speaker 1: and stuffed her in that tree. It's a weird way
Speaker 1: to get rid of a body. Yeah. No, one also
Speaker 1: dat another layer of fund of this whole thing. Her
Speaker 1: skeleton wasn't missing, So Professor J. M. Webster skeleton, Bella
Speaker 1: skeletons is gone. I took it. So he took it
Speaker 1: back to his lab. Professor Webster took it to his
Speaker 1: lab and game, and then he later gave it to
Speaker 1: a friend. Yeah, yeah, you hold this for me. You
Speaker 1: had a friend that was really into D and D
Speaker 1: and he wanted some props. Now actually, now he had
Speaker 1: a friend at Birmington or excuse me, Birmingham University Medical School. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so he gave the skeleton to him for further testing.
Speaker 1: But somehow they managed to misplace the skeleton. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the kind of thing that feels conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories and stuff like that, don't you think skeletons? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that just lit a fire right under this.
Speaker 1: She must have been a spy and they got rid
Speaker 1: of her bones too, so that nobody could prove that
Speaker 1: she was a spy or Yeah, I mean that's just
Speaker 1: the way. That's that's that's that kind of silly logic.
Speaker 1: I mean, they don't really need to get rid of
Speaker 1: her bones to do that. In fact, you know, if
Speaker 1: she had been a spy, I mean, I you know,
Speaker 1: she if she jumped into the control parachuted in. There's
Speaker 1: no dental records, there's no idea, there's no way to
Speaker 1: identify this person. Why would you even go to the
Speaker 1: bother of hiding the body, you know, if she had
Speaker 1: been a spy, because if you know she's a spy
Speaker 1: and you say I found a spy, now you can
Speaker 1: say that, but you can just basically stabbord of death,
Speaker 1: leave everybody to be found anywhere, and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: no trail of guilt leading back to you because nobody
Speaker 1: knows who she is. And if they can't identify her,
Speaker 1: how are they going to identify any any of her associates.
Speaker 1: Stuffing her in the tree is kind of indicative of
Speaker 1: somebody fearing being caught. It does say, you know, that's
Speaker 1: the behavior of someone who knows that they can get
Speaker 1: in big trouble for doing this. Is let's hide the evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that's I think the thing, right, we've
Speaker 1: talked about this a little bit, is like it's that's
Speaker 1: the big thing, that's the big question mark on this
Speaker 1: is that she That's that all leads to her being
Speaker 1: a local woman, or at least being not far from home,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe within fifty miles or something. It's
Speaker 1: not like she was thousands of miles from home. It's
Speaker 1: just so weird that nobody, you know, she has a deformity,
Speaker 1: she's small, she's often we've got a child old, which
Speaker 1: means and she had a wedding ring, which means she
Speaker 1: had a husband. All of these things totally point to
Speaker 1: somebody knowing who she is. Well. The other thing about
Speaker 1: Britain at that time is during the war, it wasn't
Speaker 1: uncommon for people in London, say, to send their wife
Speaker 1: to the country because it was safer because the loof
Speaker 1: offa we're targeting London proper. So honey, go stay in
Speaker 1: the country at you know, aunt Edna's house and you'll
Speaker 1: be safe there. You're less likely to get bombed. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay here and do whatever he's got to
Speaker 1: do here. It could be that she had just gotten
Speaker 1: there and something happened. Could be she was traveling to
Speaker 1: that location and somebody found her and didn't know her
Speaker 1: but just said, you know, I probably shouldn't leave this
Speaker 1: body hanging around. Yeah, sort of like you know, a
Speaker 1: killer rapist kind of person. It's not like Sariah Killer's
Speaker 1: had never existed until the Yeah, and I was going
Speaker 1: to say, is I know the rape theory is one
Speaker 1: that's out there, that somebody raped her and then realized
Speaker 1: they were in trouble and then followed up by murdering.
Speaker 1: But then what about the right hand? Yeah, that's the well,
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I don't want to buy into
Speaker 1: that it was necessarily cut off. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: I I will go with that it came off of
Speaker 1: her body, But I don't know that that happened pre
Speaker 1: mortem and not post mortem. Was something and some you
Speaker 1: know critter got in there and was snacking at it.
Speaker 1: And it's like we talked about with uh with the
Speaker 1: sailors sea feet. You know, there's what's where a joint is,
Speaker 1: where things are weakest and come apart the easiest. True. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so okay, okay, that's what I think. It is probably
Speaker 1: more of a probably more of a random crime like that.
Speaker 1: Hagleywood is actually right next to a road. Um, so
Speaker 1: if you were going to stop somewhere and you know,
Speaker 1: murder somebody and get rid of the body, you know,
Speaker 1: it would be a convenient place to do it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the graffiti. Um, the this mysterious graffiti in
Speaker 1: various forms kept a peering for many decades. On in
Speaker 1: August on the estate of Lord Cobham, the hapless Lord
Speaker 1: Cobham whose people won't stay the hell office property. So, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a two two hundred year old Stowe obelisk on
Speaker 1: the Hagley Hall of State and it had been tagged
Speaker 1: with graffiti. And the same thing who put Bella in
Speaker 1: the Witch. I couldn't tell from the done in chalk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from this one it could have. It didn't look spray painted.
Speaker 1: It looks It looked to me like it was brush
Speaker 1: painted or perhaps yeah, it looked at me like I
Speaker 1: know it here old monument. Anyway, Yeah, Lord Cobham is
Speaker 1: probably like contemplating some sort of like barbed wire electrified fish.
Speaker 1: That trouble. Let's trouble and you have enormous estates like that.
Speaker 1: It is keeping people off of it hard. Anyway. That
Speaker 1: was the last known instance of graffiti until yesterday, when
Speaker 1: the same mysterious message was found spray painted on a
Speaker 1: wall in downtown Portland's Okay, okay, I'm lying about that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, there you go. Another another unsolved mystery solved,
Speaker 1: well not quite, but at least we've cleared up that
Speaker 1: that little bit of muck that the Independent UK put
Speaker 1: in there about this this clab from the photo. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now that wasn't her. I wonder if that was convenient
Speaker 1: cropping on their part. It must have been, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't look at the full size photo and take
Speaker 1: this is a five ft tall woman. You really can't. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: so anyway, that's it. I hope you europe you guys
Speaker 1: are happy that we sold another mystery, so you can
Speaker 1: sleep well tonight. So Anyway, if you want to see
Speaker 1: any of the links that are involved that it related
Speaker 1: to this story, you can find them on our website,
Speaker 1: which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook. Find us also on iTunes, and
Speaker 1: if you find us on iTunes, you can down it
Speaker 1: all you want, but please stop, leave us a rating,
Speaker 1: maybe leave a remark or to a little a little comment.
Speaker 1: We like that stuff, Yeah we do, it's true. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on stitcher. Oh and by
Speaker 1: the way, if you if you're like say the graffiti
Speaker 1: artist or maybe the murderer, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Please set us an email at Thinking Sideways podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Okay, well, so we do want a
Speaker 1: little bit of listener feedback here. We did get some comments, Devin,
Speaker 1: would you like to reause the comments? Well, sure, it's
Speaker 1: from Jenna. Jenna, who has been a listener for a while.
Speaker 1: She's left us a couple of comments, but she just
Speaker 1: said that she I was on the sailorsh See Feet episode.
Speaker 1: She said that she really liked the topic, but she
Speaker 1: hoped that if we had short topics that we would
Speaker 1: do like a couple of stories to make a full
Speaker 1: hour because we were really good at helping her through
Speaker 1: her boring work days. So take that into consideration. We'll
Speaker 1: see what we can you. Yeah, I don't know how
Speaker 1: we would manage that. We talked about how much we
Speaker 1: hate people who like, you know, put together three of
Speaker 1: the episodes and the best of yeah that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we would have to figure out how to do that.
Speaker 1: We never know exactly how long these things are gonna come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sometimes we think it's going to be a short one
Speaker 1: and end up being we just drone on endlessly. God, well,
Speaker 1: we'll actually probably start throwing some filler into some of
Speaker 1: the shorter ones and maybe some commercials to Alright, Jenna,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for the comment, and thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening to us. We love the fact that we're
Speaker 1: being appreciated by somebody at least. Okay, let's get back
Speaker 1: to what we were talking about. And one last thing
Speaker 1: before we go, I want to give a shout out
Speaker 1: the big thanks to Stephanie, our listener who suggested the
Speaker 1: Hagleywood's story to us. Thank you very much, Stephanie, and
Speaker 1: please feel free to send us more suggestions in the future.
Speaker 1: Love those suggestions. Alright, that's it. Another mystery solved a
Speaker 1: good night everybody but guys. Who did put bella in
Speaker 1: which Elm