For people obsess with the very specific U-boat - family of grotesque murder mysteries in wartime England , there ’s no betterstorythan that of Bella in the Wych Elm . On April 18 , 1943 , four teenage boys playing association football decide to go for awalkin Hagley Woods , a forested area in Worcestershire . There , one of them wandered up to a witch hazel tree diagram , a loom , storybook - sinister growth that was sometimes referred to as awych elm . The boy , 15 - twelvemonth - old Bob Farmer , get sight of a white jutting from its hollow trunk that he thought was a skirt ’s nest . Peering nigher , he realized it was a human skull .
panicked , the boy backed away from their find , envision the unspoiled path of action was to say nothing . By nightfall , however , 13 - yr - old Tommy Willetts broke down , tell his parents what he and his friend had stumbled across . They duly alarm police , and the next morning , detectives from the Worcestershire County Police and the nearby Birmingham effect were on the scene , along with forensic expert James Webster . The squad retrieved the skull , most of the skeleton , some decomposing wear , a wedding ring , and a skid . A good hand was found 100 railyard away , with the other duplicate shoe nearby .
Webster quickly concluded the remains were the employment of smelly play , a scenario supported by eerie graffiti that start out to bound up near the Hagley site . The scrawl gave a name to the victim by asking , “ Who put Bella down the wych elm ? ”
For the next 75 years , no one could say how or why the cleaning woman was scratch down before being stuffed in the tree . That may soon exchange , if someone is capable to recognize the first reconstructed paradigm of what Bella in the Wych Elm may have looked like .
Before it became a cold case , the story of “ Bella ” tickle genuine - crime aficionados of the earned run average . Websterestimatedthe woman ’s age to be between 35 and 40 , and her height about 5 infantry . Her murder might have taken place between 18 and 36 month prior to being notice ; he considered it probable she had been deposited into the tree right away after death , since any delay would have provide for limb - stiffening cogency mortis that would have made the project impossible . A wadded piece of taffeta had been chance in her throat , leading Webster to suspect asphyxiation .
Attempts to identify the char proved sleeveless . Her magnanimous , protuberant teeth were circulated among dentists , but none could confirm ever seeing anyone with the same bit . Files of pretermit persons within 1000 square naut mi of Hagley Woods revealed no comparable profiles . One human race reported auditory sense screams fare from the Wood in July 1941 , but no further evidence was forthcoming . Only the graffito come along in and around the crime scene — subsequently dismissed as the result of a tricker — give her any semblance of an identity . Both police and newspaper readers reluctantly lodge it away as a morbid level with no apparent end .
In 2017 , forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson wasapproachedby father - son source Alex and Pete Merrill to see if she might be capable to reconstruct a digital portrayal of the victim ’s face using photographs of her skull . Wilkinson , who has do similar task on both recent condemnable vitrine as well as archival reconstructions like Richard III , agreed . With colleague at the Face Lab of Liverpool John Moores University , she was able to extrapolate facial features based on the available images . ( It was necessary to use photographs because the real skull , having been impress around in reposition over the decades , could not belocatedby dominance . )
“ When redo using a 2 - D photograph , rather than a 3 - D model of the skull , we may only be provided with one , or sometimes a few , view , ” Sarah Shrimpton , a research assistant and Ph.D. researcher at the Face Lab , tells Mental Floss . “ However , there is still a portion of information within a photograph that allows us to make an judgement of pattern , but as with all photographs , the airplane of the image are flattened , which results in some slight red ink of perspective . ”
The flattened shape can omit key details — like how deep the eye celestial orbit are , for exercise . Still , the picture of the cadaver provided valuable cue . “ We were lucky to also have a profile view of the skull , " Shrimpton say . " This proved utilitarian when seek to estimate the shape of her nose . ” A bony protrusion name the nasal spine argue how and where the nozzle pointed ; the alveolar bone , which supports the teeth , indicate the rima oris sizing and the thickness of the lip as well as the general shape of the jawline . Since part of the victim ’s scalp was still bind to the skull , her hair distance and possible style was usable for interpretation . Bella ’s unique feature — her protruding teeth — was also on light display .
“ usually we depict faces with their mouth closed and a neutral expression . However , if the teeth are interesting , as in Bella ’s case , then we depict the oral cavity candid . It is also potential that her jut upper tooth would have resulted in her backtalk being slightly open at rest . ”
Upon receiving the picture from the Face Lab , the Merrills used the reconstructive memory as part of their examination of the crime . Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm ? : loudness One : The Crime Scene Revisitedexaminesthe other attempt to lick the mystery story as well as some of the more sensational theory to go far long after the lawsuit had spring up stale .
The fact that Bella ’s hand was find some distance from the tree result one observer , folklorist Margaret Murray , tospeculatein 1945 that Bella had been the victim of a black magic ritual in which her bridge player was enjoin to have occult great power . put her in a tree diagram , Murray said , was one arcane way of put away a beldame . Webster , the more pragmatic forensic scientist , aver that it was far more probable that animals had run off with her hand .
Another story — that Bella was in fact a German night club vocaliser and secret broker named Clara Bauerle — seemed to lose steam when Bauerle was found to be around 6 feet tall , almost a foot taller than the skeleton find in the tree diagram .
It ’s possible that the depiction of Bella commission by the Merrills will open up unexampled leads . Until then , she remains delimit by the circumstances of her discovery — the char found , and still lost , in the hollow of a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree .
