Speaker 1: At nineteen hundred hours. On Wednesday, January nineteenth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, NASA's New Horizons Probe, propelled by the majestic
Speaker 1: Atlas FEE rocket, is launched into space, having begun its
Speaker 1: journey at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The probe,
Speaker 1: which is part of the New Frontiers program, is the
Speaker 1: focal point of nassa's first ever mission to Pluto. With
Speaker 1: the spacecraft being hurled towards its target at over thirty
Speaker 1: six thousand miles per hour, it will be another ten
Speaker 1: years before it begins to uncover the secrets lying in
Speaker 1: wait at the outer regions of our solar system back home,
Speaker 1: a week after the launch, in a small bedsit in London,
Speaker 1: a far more earthly discovery is about to be made.
Speaker 1: On the afternoon of Wednesday, January the twenty sixth, a
Speaker 1: team of housing officials are making their way towards a
Speaker 1: flat in wood Green, North London. The apartment is part
Speaker 1: of a complex known locally as Sky City, which forms
Speaker 1: an estate perched on top of a vast shopping mall.
Speaker 1: When the team arrive at the front door, noises from
Speaker 1: the TV can be heard emanating from inside the flat,
Speaker 1: an indication perhaps that the occupier is home. The officer's
Speaker 1: subsequent knocks, however, go unanswered, and after a few minutes
Speaker 1: they decide to break down the door. Stepping into the
Speaker 1: gloom of the flat beyond, the officers are first struck
Speaker 1: by a clawing smell that hangs thickly in the air.
Speaker 1: Pushing the front door wider reveals a stack of unopened
Speaker 1: mail on the floor or the while the voices from
Speaker 1: the TV continue uninterrupted. A moment later, the officers step
Speaker 1: into the living room and make a gruesome discovery. Lying
Speaker 1: there on the sofa, illuminated by the incessant flickering of
Speaker 1: the TV screen, of the skeletal remains of the tenant.
Speaker 1: A pile of Christmas presents lie unopened on the floor.
Speaker 1: The tenant was thirty eight year old Joyce Carol Vincent,
Speaker 1: and her body had lain undiscovered and unreported for over
Speaker 1: two years. Filmmaker Carol Morley was so moved by this
Speaker 1: revelation that she began an investigation to uncover who this
Speaker 1: tragically forgotten woman had been. Morley's beautiful and hypnotic film
Speaker 1: Dreams of a Life, released in two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 1: pieces together the story of Joyce's life in an attempt
Speaker 1: to rescue her existence from obscurity. It is surely a
Speaker 1: fate that haunts us all the sadness of a life forgotten,
Speaker 1: an affirmation of a degree of meaninglessness, to profound, to comprehend.
Speaker 1: We see it in the propensity for social media to
Speaker 1: so often operate not as a tool with which to
Speaker 1: explore each other, but rather a means with which to
Speaker 1: validate ourselves, our way of saying not only that this
Speaker 1: is who we are, but in the way of old
Speaker 1: school room graffiti. Perhaps it is more fundamentally a way
Speaker 1: of merely saying that we were here, that we exist.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClean smith. The
Speaker 1: British Industrial Revolution was a time of extraordinary physical and
Speaker 1: philosophical upheaval, a time, as the inimitable Humphrey Jennings once observed,
Speaker 1: that was borne from a sudden synchronicity of vision and
Speaker 1: the means of production. But its fuel was, of course
Speaker 1: the land, the raw materials that men and women ripped
Speaker 1: from the ground and smelt it in the factories throughout
Speaker 1: the country, colossal cauldrons of industry sprouted up around the
Speaker 1: places where such fuel was most in abundance. One such center,
Speaker 1: perhaps the most intense of the mall, was the Black Country,
Speaker 1: a region in the west Midlands of England whose very
Speaker 1: name proudly bears the scars of its past. As the
Speaker 1: Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle once wrote of the place at
Speaker 1: the time, a dense cloud of pestilential smoke hangs over
Speaker 1: it forever, blackening even the grain that grows upon it,
Speaker 1: And at night the whole region burns like a volcano,
Speaker 1: spitting fire from a thousand tubes of brick. At the
Speaker 1: height of the Revolution, the region was a city of
Speaker 1: chimney stacks, of iron foundries and steel mills, but its
Speaker 1: blood was coal. In fact, traditionalists consider the real Black
Speaker 1: Country to only include the region just west of Birmingham,
Speaker 1: where the thirty foot coal seam comes to the surface,
Speaker 1: a product of once living trees compressed and buried for
Speaker 1: millions of years, returning to the surface like an irrepressible secret.
Speaker 1: There are some who say the trees can talk, and
Speaker 1: if they could, what secrets might they hold. On the
Speaker 1: edge of the Black Country, there is an area of
Speaker 1: forest just outside of Birmingham that today is struck through
Speaker 1: by the busy A four five six road, But in
Speaker 1: years gone by it was a far more wild and
Speaker 1: darkly place. It is thought by some to be imbued
Speaker 1: with the sort of magic, a place where witches may
Speaker 1: have gathered and perhaps still do. Or perhaps it is
Speaker 1: merely a place that echoes with the footsteps of ancient
Speaker 1: people who once walked and eventually settled on the land. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it is possible that settlers may have frequented the area
Speaker 1: as far back as Neolithic times. Certainly, the nearby Witchbury
Speaker 1: Ring Fort is evidence of a local community having existed
Speaker 1: here as far back as the second or first century BC.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty three, although signs of the fort can
Speaker 1: still be found, they have faded well into the land.
Speaker 1: Half the world is in the grip of war, and
Speaker 1: for anyone who has found themselves mercilessly drawn into the
Speaker 1: horrors abroad, home is a distant and aching memory. For
Speaker 1: those left behind, home is a familiar but forever changed landscape,
Speaker 1: with or without the bombs. For Birmingham and the immediate surrounds,
Speaker 1: those bombs would come thick and fast, being as it
Speaker 1: was the second most populous city in the UK and
Speaker 1: a major center of industry. It is hard to imagine
Speaker 1: that in the midst of such turmoil, something hidden, a
Speaker 1: secret closer to home might somehow penetrate the sound of
Speaker 1: those bombs. But in April of nineteen forty three it did.
Speaker 1: What happened exactly one evening, under the cover of darkness,
Speaker 1: while explosives reigned down only a few miles away, has
Speaker 1: never been fully accounted for. It is a mystery that
Speaker 1: remains to this day unexplained. Barely ten miles to the
Speaker 1: west of Birmingham, in the shadow of the Glent Hills
Speaker 1: lies the village of Hagley. On a warm spring evening
Speaker 1: in the magic hour, as dusk begins to fall, four
Speaker 1: young boys are roaming through the Hagley Woods. The date
Speaker 1: is Sunday, April eighteenth, and the youngsters are Robert Hart,
Speaker 1: Thomas Willits, Bob Farmer and Fred Payne. With rationing starting
Speaker 1: to bite, the boys, although they wouldn't tell you, are
Speaker 1: searching for food, birds, eggs, or rabbits. If they're lucky.
Speaker 1: As their fathers fight in foreign fields to protect the
Speaker 1: green and pleasant lands of home, the boys might be
Speaker 1: forgiven for thinking such wide open country to be as
Speaker 1: much theirs as any other Englishman, but such as the
Speaker 1: way of things. The land has been privately owned by
Speaker 1: the Littleton family since fifteen fifty six, and the boys
Speaker 1: are trespassing. The area is known as Hagley Park, taking
Speaker 1: its name from Eagley Hall, which in nineteen forty three
Speaker 1: is home to Charles John Littleton, the tenth Viscount Cobham.
Speaker 1: The boys are about to make their way back home
Speaker 1: when something catches their eye. A tree, unlike any of
Speaker 1: the others around. The trunk appears strangely squat, having at
Speaker 1: some point been heavily coppiced. As a result, a shocking
Speaker 1: mesh of spiny branches has grown out at the top
Speaker 1: of it, forming the perfect sanctuary for nesting animals. Fifteen
Speaker 1: year old Bob Farmer volunteers to take a closer look
Speaker 1: and swiftly scrambles up through the branches. Having soon reached
Speaker 1: the top, he looks down into the gaping hollow of
Speaker 1: the tree. In the fading light, he can just make
Speaker 1: out the familiar dusty white hue of a bird's egg.
Speaker 1: Reaching down. He stretches his arm deep into the trunk,
Speaker 1: but the egg remains tantalizingly out of reach. With the
Speaker 1: aid of a stick, he manages to move it, but
Speaker 1: it's bigger than he expected and seems to be wedged inside.
Speaker 1: With great care, Bob manages to dislodge the egg, but
Speaker 1: as it starts to move free, something dawns on him.
Speaker 1: Not only would this be the largest egg he had
Speaker 1: ever seen, but that familiar dusty white hue is a
Speaker 1: little darker and more yellow than it had at first appeared.
Speaker 1: It looks more like bone. When finally he lifts it
Speaker 1: from the hollow, it is clear that it is not
Speaker 1: an egg at all. It is, in fact a skull,
Speaker 1: a human skull. Bob holds it aloft as the other
Speaker 1: boys look on with a mix of fear and wonder.
Speaker 1: A quick discussion ensues. Is it really what they think
Speaker 1: it is? How old is it? Should they tell someone?
Speaker 1: Fred is keen to show it to his older brother Donald,
Speaker 1: but in the end they decide to keep it between them,
Speaker 1: better that than risk punishment for poaching on private land.
Speaker 1: With night fast approaching, one of the boys notices some
Speaker 1: material protruding from the tree. Farmer pushes it into the skull,
Speaker 1: and taking the stick climbs back up the trunk and
Speaker 1: carefully lowers the mistaken treasure back into the hollow, and
Speaker 1: there it might possibly have remained if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: the fact that, unsurprisingly, something of the event had followed
Speaker 1: the boy's home. The youngest, Tommy Willits, was finding it
Speaker 1: particularly difficult to erase the ghoulish image from his mind,
Speaker 1: an image that had found its way into his dreams.
Speaker 1: The next morning, unable to ignore it any longer, Tommy
Speaker 1: told his parents, who in turn wasted little time in
Speaker 1: telling the police. Are you always taking care of your family?
Speaker 1: Do you often take care of others and not yourself?
Speaker 1: Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make
Speaker 1: time for you. You deserve it. Teledoc gives you access
Speaker 1: to a licensed therapist to help you get back to
Speaker 1: feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again. With teledoc,
Speaker 1: you can speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video.
Speaker 1: Therapy appointments are available seven days a week from seven
Speaker 1: am to nine pm local time. If you feel overwhelmed
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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com
Speaker 1: slash Explained podcast. The next day, Sergeant Charles Lambourne is
Speaker 1: dispatched to investigate. En route to the forest, Lambourne calls
Speaker 1: in on Robert Hart, the oldest of the boys, to
Speaker 1: help lead him to the strange and haunting tree. A
Speaker 1: short time later, having pointed out the location, the young
Speaker 1: heart watches on as Lambourne, along with Sergeants Richard Skerrat
Speaker 1: and Jack Wheeler, and Constable Jack Pound take it in
Speaker 1: turns to peer into the cavernous trunk. The boys had
Speaker 1: indeed found a human skull, but what they didn't know
Speaker 1: was that the peculiar tree was also hiding the rest
Speaker 1: of the body. One of the men remarks that the
Speaker 1: tree is an old and rotted witch hazel, also known
Speaker 1: as witch elm, a tree long associated with the underworld,
Speaker 1: the name which derives from the Old English word meaning
Speaker 1: pliant and durable. This feature of which elm wood, is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it was traditionally used to build coffins.
Speaker 1: The policeman request a forensic team to come and inspect
Speaker 1: the body, but they are unable to attend until the
Speaker 1: following morning. As a result, a volunteer is sought to
Speaker 1: guard the skeleton through the night. The task falls to
Speaker 1: Squadron Leader William Douglas Osborne, a former Special Constable home
Speaker 1: on leave for a few days. That night, Monday April
Speaker 1: the nineteenth, Osborne kept watch over the remains of the unknown,
Speaker 1: encased like a missive from the underworld itself inside the
Speaker 1: natural coffin of the old which elm The following morning,
Speaker 1: on Tuesday April the twentieth, Douglas Osborne was relieved of
Speaker 1: his duty by Superintendent Sydney Night, Deputy Inspector Thomas Williams
Speaker 1: and Constable Jack Pound. Later that evening, at approximately six
Speaker 1: forty the police were joined by Professor James Webster, head
Speaker 1: of the newly established Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory at
Speaker 1: nearby Birmingham University. Webster was a foreboding figure described by
Speaker 1: writer John Mervyn Pew in his book Execution as a
Speaker 1: large balding Scot with a glass eye and a monocle
Speaker 1: to enhance the vision of the other He would often
Speaker 1: arrive on the scene scruffly dressed in baggy trousers and
Speaker 1: an old brown Harris tweed jacket, with his tie hanging
Speaker 1: loose halfway around his neck. With the ladder safely secured
Speaker 1: by the tree, the imposing Webster clambered up to take
Speaker 1: a look inside. It was clear immediately the greater access
Speaker 1: would be needed. An axe was called for and handed
Speaker 1: over to Constable Pound. As the other men stood back
Speaker 1: and watched, Pounds swung the axe and cut into the
Speaker 1: bowl of the tree. One blow was followed by another
Speaker 1: until a clear break had been made large enough to
Speaker 1: pull the skeleton out. With great care, The men worked
Speaker 1: together to free the bones before laying them out gently
Speaker 1: on the forest floor. On the ground, the skeleton appears
Speaker 1: at first to be fairly intact, but Webster is quick
Speaker 1: to notice a number of missing fragments. After a quick
Speaker 1: search of the immediate vicinity, Webster stumbles upon the slightly
Speaker 1: chewed tibia of the left leg, one small midnight blue
Speaker 1: shoe with a crept sole is also pulled from the
Speaker 1: splintered trunk. With the pieces now laid out from the
Speaker 1: size and frame, as well as the few bits of
Speaker 1: material that remained, Webster could see instantly that the boys
Speaker 1: had stumbled upon the skeleton of a young woman. Later
Speaker 1: that evening, the first of the bones are delivered to
Speaker 1: the West Midlands Forensic Science Laboratory to be formally assessed
Speaker 1: by Webster and his assistant, doctor John lund Over the
Speaker 1: course of the next few days. The various sections are
Speaker 1: deafly laid out by the two pathologists. Any external fabric
Speaker 1: is delicately removed, and slowly a body begins to take shape.
Speaker 1: Professor Webster proceeds while doctor Lunde records its findings. He
Speaker 1: begins at the skull, noting that it is undoubtedly that
Speaker 1: of a female and there are no obvious marks of
Speaker 1: a fatal injury. On the side of the skull, it's
Speaker 1: a small clump of mousey brown hair. An examination of
Speaker 1: the jaw reveals a clean and healthy set of teeth,
Speaker 1: with one peculiarity, a noticeable irregularity of the front two
Speaker 1: incisors which overlap slightly. A piece of material part of
Speaker 1: a khrke or mustard colored dress that the deceased would
Speaker 1: have worn is found lodged into the cavity of the mouth,
Speaker 1: suggesting a possible cause of death, perhaps placed in the
Speaker 1: victim's mouth to hasten asphyxiation. Moving down the skeleton, Professor
Speaker 1: Webster notes no signs of disease or ill health, with
Speaker 1: the fine condition of both the hyoid bone and the
Speaker 1: sternum suggesting that the victim was a woman below the
Speaker 1: age of forty. The pelvis reaffirms the victim as being
Speaker 1: indisputably female, with a particular feature in two of the
Speaker 1: hip bones suggesting a childbirth at some point, though this
Speaker 1: is deemed inconclusive. All in all, Webster finds little unusual,
Speaker 1: with the major exception of one thing. The entirety of
Speaker 1: her right hand was missing. Professor Webster concludes the victim
Speaker 1: to have been female, of approximately thirty five years of age,
Speaker 1: of lower than average height, placing her at roughly five
Speaker 1: feet tall. The time of death is given as approximately
Speaker 1: eighteen months previously, due to the state of decomposition and
Speaker 1: the age of the tree roots which had weaved their
Speaker 1: way through what remained of the clothes. Since the victim
Speaker 1: had to have been placed in the hollow before rigor mortis. If,
Speaker 1: as Webster suspected, she had been murdered, it is likely
Speaker 1: that she would have been placed in the tree while
Speaker 1: she was still warm, possibly even alive. As such, she
Speaker 1: would likely have been murdered nearby, or at least driven
Speaker 1: to the spot in a significant hurry. An assessment of
Speaker 1: the rotted fragments of clothing revealed the remains of a
Speaker 1: mustard colored cloth skirt, as well as a dark blue
Speaker 1: and yellow striped knitted cartigan. An inexpensive wedding ring is
Speaker 1: also found, which may have been worn for as long
Speaker 1: as four years. Back in the forest, members of the
Speaker 1: Home Guard, with the assistance of a local scout group,
Speaker 1: continue to comb the area. A second shoe is found
Speaker 1: not far from the tree, as well as a green
Speaker 1: glass bottle. A short time later, one of the volunteers
Speaker 1: notices something protruding from the soil. As he digs into
Speaker 1: the earth, he recoils in horror as there, buried just
Speaker 1: below the surface is the missing right hand. Taking Webster's
Speaker 1: bone and material analysis, the Worcestershire Constabulary put together a
Speaker 1: poster campaign in the hope of encouraging any witnesses to
Speaker 1: come forward, but as the days turn to weeks and
Speaker 1: then to months, despite evidence that the victim had possibly
Speaker 1: been married at the time of death and may also
Speaker 1: have borne a child, remarkably nobody comes forward. Then an
Speaker 1: identity card is found in the woods, but when the
Speaker 1: police visit the owner's address, they are somewhat disappointed to
Speaker 1: find her alive and well, if a little bemused as
Speaker 1: to how her ID card was found so close to
Speaker 1: a possible murder scene. All in awe. The police trawl
Speaker 1: threw over three thousand open reports of missing women, but
Speaker 1: are unable to find a significant match. The irregularity of
Speaker 1: the teeth offered a glimmer of hope, but a subsequent
Speaker 1: check of all UKA dental records again yields nothing. The
Speaker 1: green glass bottle is also analyzed but reveals little of interest,
Speaker 1: but the police enjoys some luck when the crept sold
Speaker 1: shoes are traced to one specific manufacturer by the name
Speaker 1: of Silsby's, located in nearby Northampton. Almost six thousand pairs
Speaker 1: of the shoes have been made, but remarkably all of
Speaker 1: the owners are traced, except for those of six pairs
Speaker 1: that are eventually tracked to a market stall in nearby Dudley,
Speaker 1: where the trail goes cold. A similar process is attempted
Speaker 1: with the clothes, but curiously, all of the labels have
Speaker 1: been cut or removed entirely, a strange state of affairs, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but also one that was in keeping with the notion
Speaker 1: that the shoes might have been market bought, since stall
Speaker 1: owners would often remove the labels of the clothes they sold.
Speaker 1: In spite of the distraction and devastation of war, the
Speaker 1: mystery of the skeleton found in Hagley Wood, now being
Speaker 1: referred to in the press as the tree murder riddle,
Speaker 1: had continued to hold a firm grip on the local community,
Speaker 1: but as the months wore on, the tale of yet
Speaker 1: one more wartime death had begun to fizzle from the
Speaker 1: public consciousness. After six months, the police had drawn a
Speaker 1: complete blank, with no leads and not even as much
Speaker 1: as a name for the tragic forgotten victim. But all
Speaker 1: that was about to change. It was on one morning
Speaker 1: sometime towards Christmas of nineteen forty three, that the rising
Speaker 1: sun revealed a cryptic message hastily scrawled across a wall
Speaker 1: in the nearby village of Old Hill. Written in chalk
Speaker 1: in three inch high capital letters were the words who
Speaker 1: put Lubella down the witch Elm. Not long after, another
Speaker 1: message appeared scrawled on a wall in Birmingham, declaring Hagley
Speaker 1: Wood Bella. Again and again, The messages continued to appear,
Speaker 1: evolving each time, until eventually settling on what has perhaps
Speaker 1: become the most well known phrase, who put Bella in
Speaker 1: the witch Elm? But who had authored these teasing questions?
Speaker 1: Do they really know who the dead woman was or
Speaker 1: what may have happened to her? And why are they
Speaker 1: not talking to the police? As if from nowhere it
Speaker 1: would seem the authorities now had a name to work with,
Speaker 1: but the mystery was only just beginning. You can find
Speaker 1: out more in Part two, which will be released in
Speaker 1: a fortnight's time. All elements of Unexplained are produced by
Speaker 1: me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show
Speaker 1: on iTunes. Feel free to get in touch with any
Speaker 1: thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
Speaker 1: to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast
Speaker 1: dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained pod Now. It's
Speaker 1: time to take care of yourself. To make time for you.
Speaker 1: Tell a doc gives you access to a licensed therapist
Speaker 1: to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak
Speaker 1: to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between
Speaker 1: seven am to nine pm local time, seven and days
Speaker 1: a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers.
Speaker 1: Download the app, or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com
Speaker 1: slash Unexplained Podcast