Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?

Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? was a 1943 graffito that commented on a murder that, as of 2007, remains unsolved.

On 18 April, 1943, four boys (Robert Hart, Thomas Willetts, Bob Farmer and Fred Payne) from Stourbridge were poaching in woods on the nearby Wychbury Hill when they come across a large Wych Hazel, a tree often confused by local residents with a Wych Elm.

Believing this a good place to hunt birds' nests, Farmer attempted to climb the tree to investigate. As he was climbing he glanced down into the hollow trunk and discovered a skull, believing it to be animal. However, he quickly realised, after seeing human hair and teeth, that he was holding a human skull. As they were on the land illegally, Farmer put the skull back and all four boys returned home without mentioning their discovery to anybody.

On returning home the youngest of the boys, Tommy Willetts, felt uneasy about what he had witnessed and decided to report the find to his parents. When police checked the trunk of the tree they found an almost complete human skeleton, a shoe and some fragments of clothing. After further investigation, a severed hand was found buried in the ground near to the tree.

The body was sent for forensic examination by Prof. James Webster. He quickly established that the skeleton was female and had been dead for at least 18 months, placing her time of death around October 1941. He found taffeta in her mouth, suggesting that she had died from asphyxiation. From the measurement of the trunk he also deduced that she must have been placed there "still warm" after the killing as she could not have fitted in once rigor mortis had taken hold.

Since the woman's killing was so soon after the start of World War II, identification was seriously hampered. Police could tell from items found with the body what the woman had looked like but with so many people being reported missing from the war, and people regularly moving house, the records were too vast for a proper identification to take place.

Cultural references

• Composer Simon Holt wrote a 2002 musical theatre piece about the mystery.

External link

• Bella in the Wych-Elm: A Midlands Murder Mystery
• Discussion of the mystery and Holt's work from the Express and Star