Death of an Unidentified Woman in the Wych Elm (Hagley Wood, 1943)

Discovery

On 18 April 1943, four local boys — Robert Hart, Thomas Willetts, Bob Farmer and Fred Payne — were poaching or bird-nesting in Hagley Wood, part of an estate belonging to Lord Cobham near Wychbury Hill, Worcestershire. While climbing a large wych elm to search for birds' nests, Farmer looked into the hollow trunk and discovered a human skull, at first mistaking it for an animal's. The boys initially told no one, fearing consequences for trespassing, but the eldest, Willetts, later reported the find to his parents.

Investigation

Police who examined the tree found an almost complete skeleton along with a shoe, a gold wedding ring, and fragments of clothing. Some distance from the tree, the remains of a hand were also recovered. The remains were examined by Birmingham-based Home Office pathologist James Webster, who determined the remains were female and that she had been dead for at least 18 months, placing her death in or before October 1941. Webster found a section of taffeta in her mouth, indicating she had died from suffocation, and concluded from measurements of the trunk that the body must have been placed there while "still warm," before rigor mortis set in. Despite cross-referencing missing-persons reports and contacting area dentists about her distinctive dental pattern, police were unable to identify her, in part due to the high volume of wartime missing-persons records.

In the twenty-first century, a case review by West Mercia Police was closed in 2014. A 2018 television programme featured a forensic facial reconstruction from photographs of the skull, produced by Liverpool John Moores University's "Face Lab" and commissioned by author Andrew Sparke. In May 2023, the BBC launched an appeal to museums to help locate the victim's remains — which had been held in Birmingham City Police's "black museum" until the late 1960s or early 1970s — with a view to DNA analysis, in conjunction with a BBC podcast on the case.

Graffiti and public interest

Starting in 1944, graffiti referencing the case began appearing on walls near Hagley, including "Who put Luebella down the wych elm?" in Old Hill and "Who put Bella down the wych elm, Hagley Wood?" in Birmingham. Because the writing was too high to have been done by children, investigators took it seriously as a possible lead. Similar graffiti has periodically reappeared on the Hagley Obelisk since at least the 1970s, including a 1999 variant referencing "witch elm" and a 2020 alteration.

Theories

Several theories about the victim's identity have circulated without resolution, including reports of a missing sex worker known as "Bella," a 1953 police statement from Una Mossop describing an alleged confession by her ex-husband, a theory linking the case to a German espionage agent's associate, and a 1945 proposal by anthropologist Margaret Murray connecting the case to occult ritual. None of these theories have been substantiated with confirmed evidence, and the woman's identity remains unknown.

Cultural legacy

The case has inspired numerous artistic works, including a 2003 chamber opera, stage plays, a 2017 film, a 2018 novel, and various podcasts and documentaries referencing the unsolved mystery.