Thinking Sideways: Hagley Woods Mystery

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't just stories of things we simply
don't know the answer too. Well, Hello there, and welcome
to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe your host host.

(00:28):
Oh yeah, I guess we're all co hosts. Well I'm
Devin your host. Okay, all right, so we're gonna we're
just getting together one more time to solve another unsolved mystery.
This week, we're going to talk about the Hagley Wood mystery. Yeah,
it's a creepy one. A little intro here. There's an
area in the West Midlands of England. The West Midlands

(00:49):
is like the western part of the middle part of England,
which is like kind of abuts Wales for all of
those who who really care, the western part of the
Middle of exactly. Yeah, So anyway, it's it's a part
that's kind of just east of Wales. Anyway. In this
there's an area there known as the Black Country, which

(01:10):
earned his name with his dark mysterious mccab passed and
well it's not really true. It was at the heart
of the coal industry and a good part of the
Industrial Revolution took place there and it was still smoking
and sooity that it was said to be black by
day and read by night. So that's why I'm assuming
from fires. Yeah, you have from coal fires and furnaces
and you know, foundries and all kinds of good stuff.

(01:32):
But anyway, I'm sure there's a Mountain of death somewhere there.
Creek of Doom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Actually, um, so there's
the Mountain of the Dead in Egypt, Um Mountain of
Death in Costa Rica, of Death in Poland, Death Valley California,
UM Highway of Death. I think in Bolivia Valley of
Doom is a video game. Do you want me to

(01:52):
keep going? No? No, no, no, you're right of deaths yeah,
right in the neighborhood too. So yeah, so I right there.
Think we can say without equivocation that the Black Country
has earned this dark, creepy reputation. Okay, case solve, uh alright,

(02:13):
So anyway, are our saga begins? In April nineteen three,
four young lads were out poaching on the estate of
somebody named Lord cobbum In, And so there was a
patch of woods on his estate. He had a fairly
large estate, but there's a patch of woods called Hagleywood,
and they were they were looking for birds nests so
they could steal some bird's extra food because this is

(02:35):
wartime and rations were a little short, so you know,
they can get a little extra food here. They were
looking for anything that they could do. They were tired
of potatoes. Yeah, they wanted to kill some small, helpless
animals or steal some birds eggs, whatever they could protein
of some kind of yeah. Yeah. So anyway, they're looking
for birds nests in the trees of Hagley Wood and

(02:56):
they find this one. I don't I don't know if
you guys saw the picture of it, well, certainly certain
posted on the website. It's it's a weird looks like, um,
what is that? It looks like something out of the
last Headless Horseman movie with Johnny depth that was in
that Ye, Johnny Depp played about Crane. Yeah, and they
had that really really was it a Tim Burton film? Yeah,

(03:18):
yeah it was. Yeah, it was a crazy tree at
the end, and that's what I thought of, as he
doesn't think for weird everything. It was casting with Christopher
Walkers a Headless Horseman. Yeah, he made made a credible one.
I mean, he's creepy no matter what, right exactly. Ok
So anyway, back to this tree. So they spot a

(03:39):
tree that looks like it's got some nests and it's
one of them climbs up the tree and finds a
large hole in the side of the tree. Looking into
the hole, he spots a skull. Yeah, like a bird skull.
He's sticking. It's an animal skull. So he grabs a
stick and he pokes a stick in and kind of
hooks it and brings it out. And surprise, surprise, how
old is this kid? You know? Actually I never never

(04:00):
got their ages and all the places I was looking,
and I'm guessing, I'm guessing they're probably you know, what
does every three team boy do? He grabs his stick
and he pokes it. Let's let's poke it with a stick. Yeah,
I mean, you know, it must have been turned down
in such a way that you couldn't see the face
of the skull, and you know, otherwise, you know, you're

(04:21):
looking at the face of a human skull. I mean, hey,
pretty its pretty obvious. So it's a human skull. Yeah.
But anyway, so they decided to put it back in
the tree, and they and they and they headed back
to town. And since they had been trespassing, they thought
they would just keep it a secret. This seems to
be kind of like a recurring theme in all of
our kind of mysterious dead things, right, Like, somebody discovers

(04:43):
the body and it's like, well, I don't really want
to report it, So they wait a couple of days,
and then they decided to report it. Yeah. We've talked
about this in a number of kids. Yeah, yeah, I
think it's I don't want to tell anybody I found
a body. Yeah, you know exactly, it's gonna be awkward.
That was one time I woke up from a black
houn on the body in my bedroom. So I didn't
I didn't report that one right away. In fact, I
never did. Yeah, it does. Yeah, So one of the

(05:07):
boys had second thoughts, and so he told his dad
about what they found. And if the little rat had
just kept his piehole shut, then we wouldn't be sitting
here wasting our time, wouldn't if it wasn't for those
darn kids. Kids. Yeah, so any way, but you know,
it's it's history now, it's something there's nothing you can
do about it. So we're stuck here in the studio
solving this mystery. Yeah, naturally, dad tells the police and

(05:32):
so the police and the kids come back to the
place the next day with the posse of the po
PO who look into the tree and discover yeah, and
the kids aren't lying. There's a human skull in there
and some bones, and so I'd tell yeah. They they
called in some of some heavy lifter investigators from from
the bigger the big city, like Birmingham is the largest
town nearby. One of the people they called in was

(05:54):
a forensic scientist named Professor jam Webster who he was
the one who actually lifted the skull out of the tree,
and he found cloth wedged in the mouth of the skull,
so that led him to believe that there was murder
involved in this person had been had been smothered by
having cloth stuff in her mouth apparently, and so he
declared that, he said it was probably murdered, and they

(06:15):
declared the crime scene, which meant they had this time
to get serious now and so and so they started
start started searching the area. And there's this is one
place where there's a little bit of diversions in the stories.
As always, there's diversions and all these different versions of it.
One of the one is that the skull and a
complete skeleton were all in the tree, and another in
another version, they found bones scattered all over the place. Yeah, well,

(06:39):
I should say in the in the first version, the
complete skeleton except for the right hand, which had severed
and was found near remember specifically people saying they were
the hand was buried outside. The hand was buried outside
the tree, and everything else was in there. But other
other accounts say that there were other bones also found
outside the tree, which is entirely possible. I mean, because

(06:59):
if the body was there for any any length of time,
animals would have gotten in there, you know, and probably
like you know, pulled out a thigh here, an armbone
there and chew. Yeah, I mean, think of a Raccoons
are not small creatures. I know, Devil loves raccoons, man,
but I mean, do you think about a raccoon getting
in there and it's it's it's bonus time. So yeah,

(07:22):
most likely some of the bones were scattered about by animals. Well,
unless she was like wedged so tightly in there. Well,
I'm sure we'll cover this, yeah, you know, and it
might be that she was killed by a Terraine serial
killer who chopped her into pieces and then and then
scattered all over the place that the hand was found nearby.
That was significant to some people, and we'll talk about

(07:45):
that a little later. They also found in the hole
they found some fragments of clothing, gold ring, apparently a
wedding ring. Also one shoe, and also some accounts say
that there was a green bottle in the tree as well,
like glass glass, green bottle. Yeah, not all the new
like a wine bottle sized wine bottle. I got the

(08:05):
impression there was a smaller bottle, yeah, like a type bottle. Yeah. Anyway,
So the one when they were pretty pretty well shared
they've gotten all the bones. They they bagged him up
and took him back to the professor's lab and he
reassembled the skeleton, and he drew some conclusions from his reassembly.
He concluded the body was a woman, that she was
about five feet tall and roughly thirty forty years old.

(08:28):
She had had a child at some point. Okay, yeah,
I guess that was something I didn't realize you could
find out from bones. But some of it was a
woman or not, No, if they had had a child
or not. I think that when the hip bones don't
they don't they change. They change when you have what
I never want to do now. Yeah, yeah, so hard

(08:50):
that your bones change? Yeah, okay. Next up she had
as she had a deformation in her lower jaw and
a mueller had recently been pulled, which gave them hope
that they could they could find a dentist somewhere who
could identify the person who they found. Again, I got
I gotta stop and ask, so how do they How
would you know that the moller had recently been pulled?

(09:12):
You know, I don't really know that. I'm guessing that.
You know, when you pull a moler out, it kind
of I think it kind of breaks up in scars.
But have you ever had a mola removed like like
wisdom teeth whatever? You know that you know, like when
they stick the augur when and the aug and they
start they start reefing on that thing and you can
hear things break, crunching and breaking in there, you know.

(09:34):
So are you thinking that like the bone is damaged
in the bone where, Yeah, it still hasn't entirely, that's
my guess. Yeah. I think Also the jaw bone is
pretty good at healing itself. So if there's a hole
where the mueller's like roots were, I don't know this,
This is just speculation. But doesn't that hole kind of

(09:55):
like get some tissue, Like doesn't it kind of steal
up a little bit? Talking about the gums over there
over the top, are you talking about just the hole
they left in the Yeah, yeah, I would think it
would see, it would seal up, there'd be some recognition
of kind of time. Yeah, so that's my best guess. Uh,
So let's see what else. There were no visible signs
of injury or violence on the bones. Of course, that

(10:16):
doesn't mean she wasn't done in violently. It just means
they didn't leave a mark on the bone, so she
could have been Yeah, no fractures, so she wasn't being
to death, you knowing like that, you know, but she's
still okay. So it could have been stabbed at death,
you know, as long as he didn't hit a bone
with a knife, you know. But he surmised that the
cause of death was suffocation due to the cloth in
her mouth, So good enough, I guess. Uh. He surmised

(10:40):
also the body been stuck in the hole before rigor
mortis has set in, because the hole was small, so
small that they had to have a little bit of
flexibility to work with, you know, that sort of squeeze
her in there, and so yeah, with rigor mortis, she
probably probably would have been hard to get her in
the hole. And he also lastly surmised that death had
occurred in eighteen months more or less prior to discovery
of the body. And I'm guessing that's based on the

(11:02):
fact that there there was some flesh and hair still. Ye. Yeah,
but you know, and I'm not sure again how you
do this. Originally I think he u he concluded that
it was it could have been up to four years prior,
and then he revised it based on I'm not sure what,
probably weather patterns and stuff, or maybe it was tree growth.

(11:24):
Maybe you would say, well, this tree couldn't have grown,
it would have grown more over her bodies, her bones
would have been more incorporated into the tree. They would
have taken a long time, the bones, that would take
a long time. Sure, But no, I mean, I guess,
you know, if four years is a reasonable a lot

(11:44):
of time for the for you to see some a
little bit of that, like the whole being smaller than
she would have fit into or something. Maybe I don't know,
or maybe not. Maybe he was just totally making things up.
It's I believe the term is educated guests. Yeah, yeahs
very educated. Guess yeah, I think you know, and you
never know it might he might have made that judgment

(12:07):
from the extent of deterioration of the cloth because she
was wearing clothing. Maybe maybe that was a better or
maybe the amount of corrosion or tarnishing on the gold ring,
you know, I mean, you could make that. Yeah, there's
all kinds of ways to find clues how buried the
bones were, like how you know, especially if they found
any of them in the dirt, you know, those deteriorates

(12:29):
how much or anything like that. Yeah, that's a tough one,
but okay. So he also there were fragments of clothing
and as I said earlier, there was a shoe found
in the hole with her um. So he was able
to put together a description of her outfit that she
was wearing. It's the time of death. And so at
this point they tried to figure out who she was,

(12:50):
and they figured that probably she was somewhere in the
area they wouldn't have too much trouble finding here. Well,
guess again, first off, they've got the most obvious thing
to do is the dental records, because she had a
tooth pulled, and she had a she had a messed
up lower jaw. So they took that information to every
dentist in the region and it was all a dead end. Nobody,

(13:12):
nobody had any records to identify and by yeah, so
they checked her clothes, the clothing that she wore was
and of course, again it's some versions of this story
which I don't find believable, but some versions say that
all the labels have been removed from the close yeah

(13:33):
the woman, Hey, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, um. But now,
actually they they were able to find labels in your clothes,
and they were from fairly common brands and and then
really didn't provide any real good leads to her shoe.
That they found was that was a somewhat unique shoe,
and that gave them hope. And they actually went to
the time and trouble to track down every all but

(13:55):
four of the pairs of these shoes that have been sold.
They tracked down all of them. Don't ask me how
they managed to do this. Nonetheless, they didn't find out
who this person was through the shoes. Yeah, I know,
I know, so frustrating frustrating investigation for our po PO.
I mean, I forgot to finding the murder. They can't
even figure out who she was. So anyway, in December three,
somebody put graffiti on a wall in Birmingham. Birmingham is

(14:18):
a nearby city, the nearest industrial city. Um, somebody wrote,
who put Luebella in the witch elm Hagley Wood on
a wall in the city and so this, uh yeah,
that's probably the oddest part of this whole thing to
somebody searched graffitiing and like a couple of months later
to right about over six months. Yeah no, I mean,

(14:42):
I mean to continue for decades. But anyway, they gave
a name to the corpse. Anyway, so I did that
yield any results? Did they start like searching for every
Luebella in the area. I think they were looking at
missing person's reports persons called Luebella or bella or whatever.
But yeah, again, you know, dead end. I wonder if

(15:02):
lubella was slang for something in the local local innacular.
It seems like that would have been recorded though, don't
you think. Well, but if it's if it's something that
in the town somebody has randomly started using this name
to assign to some kind of person, and it just
it kind of dies out. You know, there's there's all
kinds of fads with words. Sure, but as a as

(15:25):
a diligent police officer, you're writing your police report and
somebody writes this thing on there, and you say, you know,
this graffiti pertains to the case. And by the way,
lubella is slang for loose woman. Yeah, you don't know,
maybe you would think, I just I just wonder. Yeah,
I have no idea. I think I've heard that Luebella

(15:47):
was not an uncommon name in the Midlands, so somebody
probably said that somebody. It might have been somebody who
actually knew who she was. That phrase a local term
for what we would now say Jane Doe. Yeah it
might be. But but anyway, so now now Bella had
a name, which is Bella, and that's that the police

(16:08):
were interested, you know, because this guy called her out
but called her by name, and so the police thought
that perhaps the graffiti artist knew something about the case,
and so they put the word out that they wanted
to have a word with him. Surprisingly enough, he never
came forward. Shocking. Yeah, oh hey, whoever did the graffiti.
Uh yeah, we'd like to talk to you. We want

(16:29):
to talk to you. Um, it has nothing to do
with the graffiti. This case, we probably won't arrest you.
Yeah right, well we'll arrest you for the graffiti. Yeah, yeah, alright.
So a lot of theories, a lot and rumors were
flying around the area. Obviously, this is a very very
creepy murder abound a good people that Willie's. So the

(16:50):
first one was it was witchcraft. It was a professor
named Margaret Murray wrote a book about this murder and
another murder that happened about five miles away, not too
much after this, and she she claimed that she had
been done in a sort of black magic execution. Um.
She said that an inner book that you can trap

(17:13):
a witch's spirit and stop her from continue to do
evil bad deeds with her spirit beyond the dead, and
you can trap it by stuffing her into a witch
elm tree. And also you can you can sever the
right hand of a dead criminal and the hand becomes
a very powerful talisman, the hand of power, the hand
of power, which is in all kinds of fantasy books

(17:37):
and stuff. It's always the hand of power, which and
I don't know if you've found this near research. But
the hand of power you always heard about, it's a candle.
So it's basically from about the midfoe arm up or
maybe the wrist up and they you basically burned the
fingers like candles, and they're supposed to have some kind
of mystical power and you can do things. It's a

(17:58):
that's a very common trope sting. Yeah. The problem I
have with that theory as well. If you've just acquired
this powerful talisman, why don't you just drop it at
the base of the tree and walk away? It was
too powerful? Maybe maybe that was it there was Yeah,
maybe maybe after they realized what they've done, they were
kind of grossed out. Or maybe it's just another way

(18:18):
to like strip that which of the power. Right you
cut off the right hand, so you strip her over
power even more and then you don't really need it,
you don't want it. Maybe you're not a witch covenant.
Maybe you're just trying to get rid of her which
that lives in your area. Yeah, that's a good point,
but but again, you know, I would I would take
that hand and I would bury it at least three
ft deep. Yeah, Well, the other funny thing about it is, uh,

(18:42):
I think you had mentioned this in there, Joe, Is
that the the whole hand of a thief for murder,
which is one of the two, wasn't it. I've I've
seen accounts where he'll say it's the left hand, it's
or it's the right hand, or it's both. So it's
funny that she says it's scifically that hand because it
just meets up with the evidence. Maybe it depends on

(19:05):
whether the witch is right handed or left handed. Yeah,
so yeah, and a lot of Middle Eastern cultures they
tend to cut off a hand. That's like the punishment
for a thief. And I think usually they cut off
the left hand, the non dominant hand first, and then
they cut off the that's reasonable, yeah, if you keep stealing. Yeah,
you don't keep stealing after that from guests on. People

(19:26):
probably do after you get the second hand taken. Oh,
with their teeth maybe on the other hand. Yeah, Yeah.
A problem with that when you think about it, is
that like, after you've had your left hand chopped off,
then it's it's probably gonna be harder to find work
and you're gonna have to resort to steal. Yeah, yeah. So,
and she also tied tied to her murder. And I

(19:47):
said previously, there was another murder of a man not
too long after this, about twenty five miles southeast in
a village called Lower Quentin. A guy was sound pinned
to the ground by a pitchfork, which is kind of
kind of creepy, but again that's not exactly evidence of
witchcraft though. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, she she eventually uh
sort of used up her credibility and was found to

(20:08):
be a hack. So it was nonetheless that that theory
was very popular with the public and the press for
a long time. That's sensational. It was pretty sensational. Hell yeah, yeah.
This next theory is one more credible. She was a
German spy. Yeah. Yeah. So the first ten years after
the body was found, a letter was sent to the

(20:30):
Wolverhampton Expressing Star by somebody who called herself Anna Comma Cleverly.
Cleverly is a village about ten miles northwest of Hagley Woods. Yeah,
and so she was not too far far away. She
claimed that she knew people involved, that they had had
formed essentially a spy ring operating in the West Midlands,

(20:51):
and they were right. What they were doing was mostly
identifying munitions factories for the LOOFTWAFFA so they could come
in and bomb them and stuff. Yeah, goog war time, Yeah, objective. Uh.
So this little spire ring was composed of a British officer,
some Dutch guy, and a foreign trapeze artist and other
accounts he was a music hall artist. I'm gonna go

(21:14):
with music hall artist actually, because that's a little more believable.
Trapeze artist. Yeah. So, anyway, the British officer, Dutch guy
and and the other guy were in this little spy ring, uh,
and they were Bella happened to fall in with these
guys somehow. She was supposedly a Dutch woman who had
gotten involved and had learned to MutS and so she
had to be murdered, so was Yeah, so she was

(21:37):
murdered by the Dutch guy and the music hall artist
in Hagleywood and stuffed in the tree. This is a
little vague because you know, it's like, seriously, you know,
I'm not sure exactly why what she found out why
she had to be murdered, but you know, it's the
only four and if you're a spy, nobody's gonna know. Yeah, well, yeah,
so anyway, but it doesn't really say the particularly doesn't

(22:00):
really say that she's a spy, but it seems like
she's she's a Dutch woman from overseas, who which means
she's a spy could have been a spy. A Dutch
woman from overseas, that means sy. Alright, So this person
add out only I did one person by name, who
was the British officer who had conveniently died in nineteen
forty two, supposedly insane. Uh so she couldn't did not

(22:24):
name any any of the other two. So even though
the police tracked her down and questioned her that she
didn't really provide any good leads as far as the
British officer that she named. But the guy died insane
in nineteen forty two, Well, you don't usually go from
sane to insane in like a year's time. Well, and
and here's the issue. If this guy died in nineteen

(22:46):
well he died nineteen forty two. Yeah, she supposedly had
been dead for eighteen months, is the approximation. Yeah, it
means that she would have been murdered in nine Okay, alright,
the timeline works, Yeah, it does. And we don't know
how long he was if he was insane. I'm assuming
he was locked up in a sanitarium, and we of
course probably don't know how long that was. So yeah,

(23:08):
I don't know how long it took him from going
from being rational and lucid to be coming insane, having
having to go to liney Ben. Yeah, I know. Maybe
if he had to watch her die or killed, that
could have been pushed him over the edge. Yeah, anything,
maybe he was somehow involved in her dad, but he wasn't.
It was a Dutch dude and the musical artist. Yeah yeah, yeah.

(23:30):
So anyway, in actually following with his spy theme, a
writer named Donald McCormick published a book called Murder by Witchcraft.
It said that she was a Nazi spy and occultist. Yeah,
let's just marry both these things right together. I know, no, so,

(23:51):
but it's interesting from what I haven't actually gone and
read his book, but from what I've read about some
reason of it, he doesn't really claim any occult element
in the whole thing, other though she was an accultist,
so I don't really get that. But her name was
Clara Bella McCormick. The author claimed that he had seen
records on her and that she had indeed parachuted into
the West Midlands and she was never hurt from again,

(24:13):
she just got stuck in the tree. I could have
actually just wanted right into the tree, like like one
of those cartoons, right, just like, Oh I got stuck
in a whole some really bad luck, I guess. Yeah. Yeah,
that's where Beatie Cooper is too, right, Beatie Cooper. Yeah,
he just got stuck in a tree. Yeah. There there

(24:34):
is theories the dB Cooper did get stuck in a tree.
He just got stuck in a tree. I think he
got impaled on a big doug for yeah, man telling
you it happens all the time, sense Yeah, so yeah, anyway,
so yeah, maybe she parachuted directly into the tree and
you know, don't tastco don't collect the two other bucks. Yeah, Ok,

(24:54):
all right, I'm just gonna put the kibosh on that
one right now, because if she parachuted directly into the tree,
the parachute would have been on her. Where's your parachute,
where's your gear? Yeah? Exactly exactly, So she was parachuting
with magic. Yeah. Well, one author actually said that it's
it's possible that if if she parachutes directly industry and

(25:16):
I'm not supporting this idea. So somebody who found the
parachute would have just because there are a shortage of
things like cloth in those days, two people would have
actually taken it and just you know, cut it up
and made it in made it into stuff, made her. Yeah,
he would have had some stuff on her too. And
so because maybe somebody stole that too, or you know,
I don't know, I don't I don't buy this sery

(25:37):
at all, because I mean, number one, the professors I
said earlier, he reconstructed the outfit that she was wearing.
She wasn't exactly wearing a parachute, and the enemy territory
clothing she was wearing, she was wearing a dress. I
feel I should make it very clear to our listeners
that I am not, in seriousness suggesting actually parsuted directly
into a small hole. I kind of like the idea

(26:01):
that kind I kind of like the idea. You know,
it says it's a big dramatic spy movie and she's
and then and then there's just rolling credit. Uh, take
that Nazi spy okay. So anyway, an article appeared in

(26:23):
The Independent, a UK paper in March two thousand thirteen,
with the headline is this the Bella in the Witch
unraveling the mystery of the skull found in a tree
trunk and they've got a picture of a woman. What
happened is that German spy did come into England in
he was captured by the Home Guard after right aft
to be parachuted into the country. When he was taken

(26:43):
to m I five who interrogated him and they found
a photo of a woman on him. This this woman
right here, and it was kind of kind of actually
a postcard kind of format. She'd written something in English
on the back. By the way, she's she's a German.
This person, the man, the spy, was named Joseph Jacobs.
And so the woman, he said, was Clara. I'm probably

(27:04):
gonna mangle this here goes Bourel Clara. So anyway, according
to according to Jacobs, she was a German singer and actress,
and apparently they had met in Germany and hung out
and been lovers and everything, and supposedly she was had
been recruited also spy for the Germans, and she was

(27:24):
going to parachute into Britain and joined him after he
got established in radio back home and said that that
he'd made it okay. He said that he didn't really
think she'd becoming since he had been captured and hadn't
made radio contact, Especially when you think about it, I mean,
sending her in after he's obviously been captured. She's already

(27:45):
been blown, her cover is already already shot. Yeah, yeah, So,
I mean, in some respects, she would have been a
good Nazi spike. According to some account she had She
had actually spent two years in Britain in the West Midlands,
so she knew the area. She spent that time singing
in halls and stuff like that, which is good back
in those days before they had things like CDs and
you know, so she was the music hall singer. Well

(28:08):
that was That was something that made me wonder, is
that that does kind of fit in with Anna's letter
and his and his revelations. So instead of her this
clear up person becoming involved with the spy ring, maybe
she was just the third person to the spy ring
and instead of I could see that, Yeah, that it's

(28:29):
just like a bunch of different kind of family stories right, say,
you know, crazy Grandpa says, oh no, yeah, there was
the spy ring that was here, and you know he's
got his back a little muddel. Yeah, yeah, maybe I
don't know. So anyway, Yeah, she spent two years working
in that in that area. She spoke English very well,

(28:50):
she was familiar with the area, so she would have
been a good spy in that and that in those respects,
although there was actually In another website from Joseph Jacob's granddaughter,
she says that she founded the National Archives when their
interrogations of Jacobs that he believed that she had never
been to England before, So again a little bit of

(29:11):
a contradiction there. So on the downside of her utility
as as a Nazi agent, she would if she had
actually spent that time in England two years singing, she
would have performed in front of a lot of people,
and who would know her to be a German singer.
And the odds of being spotted on the street just
by some random dude, we're fairly good. Did they release

(29:31):
that photo though of her? Now? Yeah? So what what? Well?
I think I think what just getting at is prior
to the war having broken out, people would have seen
her and said, oh that's that's, that's that German ship.
What is I remember? And oh yeah, and she was.
She was a traveling German and wait, what is a

(29:53):
German doing in this country at this time where Jacobs
was mistaken or misled and believed that she had never
been to England, but in fact he was. She was
a fluent English speaker and maybe could pass for an
English woman, except again if if she acquired her English
skills by hanging out as a as a German in England,

(30:13):
then she would be known too many people as a
German in England. Well, again, it depends on where she
was at. She burned in London and then went to
West Elm or whatever, or not West Elm, whatever this
place they were talking about is. You know, she could
have been anywhere else. It's a very small community, so
would be easy just to go to a town that's

(30:34):
fifty miles away and never see yet people aren't quite
as mobile in those days. Yeah, And additionally, you know
she could say, oh, yeah, you know, I'm moving on
to my next place soon and go and get murdered
or whatever. You know, somebody has figured her out, so
she says all, I'm leaving town. Nobody thinks anything of it,
you know. And then a year and a half later,

(30:55):
I don't know that, you know, anybody would think of it.
I don't know it. It's hard to say what kind
of counterintelligence was happening, right, So anyway, back to the
luckless Joseph Jacobs. He uh, he was actually cooperative with
the with m I five, but they felt that he
wouldn't have any value. Apparently the Home Guard wasn't too

(31:16):
secretive and the fact that they had nabbed him and
so um, the word of his capture had gotten out,
so they couldn't really successfully turn him. So they did
what they did back in those days. They executed him. Yeah. Yeah,
they executed him by firing squad in the tower. Yeah. Well,
that's that's the way they did it with the You
canna either cooperate or we're gonna shoot you. And in

(31:37):
his case, sadly, he was willing to co operate apparently,
but they shot him anyway at the Tower of London,
in the Tower of London that he wasn't he was
actually the last person to be executed in the Tower
of London was Yeah, I remember that. I do remember
seeing his parachuting gear in the Tower of London. It's

(31:58):
actually on display. But I thank you for I never
made the connection when I was doing the research. I
never saw that he was the last person. But did
they have this picture? They didn't have that picture, but
they have all of his gear. Uh. And yeah, if
I'm not mistaken, I think all of his gear was
painted white like he was going to drop into a
snowy landscape. But it wasn't. He just stood out like

(32:22):
a sword thumb and I think he got hurt. Way
he landed. Bad luck, yeah, very bad intin this time
of the year. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah yeah, So anyway,
poor guy got his But anyway his He has a
granddaughter whose name is Giselle Jacobs. So she has a

(32:42):
website devoted to the history his history. The same photo
of Clara about bau Earle that he saw in the
Telegraph article, uh is also on her site, but it's uncropped,
and it tells it a little bit different story because Bella,
as as we know, was five feet tall from the
very small But when you look at at this photograph

(33:04):
with the young cropped where you can see her legs
and everything, does she looked like she's five feet five eights.
She looks like a very tall and she may not
actually be because oftentimes with like the weight to height
ratio of the olden days, but she's definitely not five
feet She's at least five five I would say. Yeah.
And if you look at the proportion of her head

(33:25):
to her shoulders, for example, I mean she was five
feet tall, that means well, no, even even taking an
account shoulder pads, I mean, if she was five feet
tall or had to be the size of a cantalope.
So yeah, so it's this person, this Clara Burrow, cannot
be Bella in my opinion, so we solve that mystery anyway,
take that Independent UK. Yeah, yeah, she u. Giselle Jacobs

(33:49):
also had She apparently delved into the National Archives to
get a lot of this information. So she got information
about not only Joseph Jacobs and Clara, but she also
got some information on another German advers by named Carol Richter,
who had known them both back in Germany, and according
to his reminiscence of Clara, he remembered her being very
tall for a while, so supporting what you've seen in

(34:11):
the photo. Okay, yeah, yeah. Conclusion. Uh this Clara Barrel
and sorry I keep mangling your name and Bella were
not the same person. Yeah, and I would say I
would say also Bella could have been a spibe. This
kind of shoots the hell out of the spy theory
in my opinion, I don't think there's any reason to
believe that she was a spy. I think that they're

(34:31):
probably more mundane. Reason is somebody, for some reason murderer
and stuffed her in that tree. It's a weird way
to get rid of a body. Yeah. No, one also
dat another layer of fund of this whole thing. Her
skeleton wasn't missing, So Professor J. M. Webster skeleton, Bella
skeletons is gone. I took it. So he took it

(34:52):
back to his lab. Professor Webster took it to his
lab and game, and then he later gave it to
a friend. Yeah, yeah, you hold this for me. You
had a friend that was really into D and D
and he wanted some props. Now actually, now he had
a friend at Birmington or excuse me, Birmingham University Medical School. Uh,

(35:16):
and so he gave the skeleton to him for further testing.
But somehow they managed to misplace the skeleton. Yeah, well,
and that's that's the kind of thing that feels conspiracy
theories and stuff like that, don't you think skeletons? Yeah,
I'm sure that that just lit a fire right under this.
She must have been a spy and they got rid

(35:36):
of her bones too, so that nobody could prove that
she was a spy or Yeah, I mean that's just
the way. That's that's that's that kind of silly logic.
I mean, they don't really need to get rid of
her bones to do that. In fact, you know, if
she had been a spy, I mean, I you know,
she if she jumped into the control parachuted in. There's
no dental records, there's no idea, there's no way to
identify this person. Why would you even go to the

(35:57):
bother of hiding the body, you know, if she had
been a spy, because if you know she's a spy
and you say I found a spy, now you can
say that, but you can just basically stabbord of death,
leave everybody to be found anywhere, and there's gonna be
no trail of guilt leading back to you because nobody
knows who she is. And if they can't identify her,
how are they going to identify any any of her associates.

(36:18):
Stuffing her in the tree is kind of indicative of
somebody fearing being caught. It does say, you know, that's
the behavior of someone who knows that they can get
in big trouble for doing this. Is let's hide the evidence. Yeah,
and you know that's I think the thing, right, we've
talked about this a little bit, is like it's that's
the big thing, that's the big question mark on this

(36:39):
is that she That's that all leads to her being
a local woman, or at least being not far from home,
and you know, maybe within fifty miles or something. It's
not like she was thousands of miles from home. It's
just so weird that nobody, you know, she has a deformity,
she's small, she's often we've got a child old, which

(37:00):
means and she had a wedding ring, which means she
had a husband. All of these things totally point to
somebody knowing who she is. Well. The other thing about
Britain at that time is during the war, it wasn't
uncommon for people in London, say, to send their wife

(37:22):
to the country because it was safer because the loof
offa we're targeting London proper. So honey, go stay in
the country at you know, aunt Edna's house and you'll
be safe there. You're less likely to get bombed. And
I'm gonna stay here and do whatever he's got to

(37:42):
do here. It could be that she had just gotten
there and something happened. Could be she was traveling to
that location and somebody found her and didn't know her
but just said, you know, I probably shouldn't leave this
body hanging around. Yeah, sort of like you know, a
killer rapist kind of person. It's not like Sariah Killer's
had never existed until the Yeah, and I was going

(38:05):
to say, is I know the rape theory is one
that's out there, that somebody raped her and then realized
they were in trouble and then followed up by murdering.
But then what about the right hand? Yeah, that's the well,
I don't know that. I don't want to buy into
that it was necessarily cut off. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily
I I will go with that it came off of

(38:28):
her body, But I don't know that that happened pre
mortem and not post mortem. Was something and some you
know critter got in there and was snacking at it.
And it's like we talked about with uh with the
sailors sea feet. You know, there's what's where a joint is,
where things are weakest and come apart the easiest. True. Yeah, yeah,

(38:49):
so okay, okay, that's what I think. It is probably
more of a probably more of a random crime like that.
Hagleywood is actually right next to a road. Um, so
if you were going to stop somewhere and you know,
murder somebody and get rid of the body, you know,
it would be a convenient place to do it. Anyway,
back to the graffiti. Um, the this mysterious graffiti in

(39:09):
various forms kept a peering for many decades. On in
August on the estate of Lord Cobham, the hapless Lord
Cobham whose people won't stay the hell office property. So, uh,
there's a two two hundred year old Stowe obelisk on
the Hagley Hall of State and it had been tagged
with graffiti. And the same thing who put Bella in

(39:31):
the Witch. I couldn't tell from the done in chalk. Yeah,
from this one it could have. It didn't look spray painted.
It looks It looked to me like it was brush
painted or perhaps yeah, it looked at me like I
know it here old monument. Anyway, Yeah, Lord Cobham is
probably like contemplating some sort of like barbed wire electrified fish.

(39:54):
That trouble. Let's trouble and you have enormous estates like that.
It is keeping people off of it hard. Anyway. That
was the last known instance of graffiti until yesterday, when
the same mysterious message was found spray painted on a
wall in downtown Portland's Okay, okay, I'm lying about that.
So anyway, there you go. Another another unsolved mystery solved,

(40:16):
well not quite, but at least we've cleared up that
that little bit of muck that the Independent UK put
in there about this this clab from the photo. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Now that wasn't her. I wonder if that was convenient
cropping on their part. It must have been, because yeah,
you can't look at the full size photo and take
this is a five ft tall woman. You really can't. Yeah, Okay,

(40:40):
so anyway, that's it. I hope you europe you guys
are happy that we sold another mystery, so you can
sleep well tonight. So Anyway, if you want to see
any of the links that are involved that it related
to this story, you can find them on our website,
which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can also
find us on Facebook. Find us also on iTunes, and
if you find us on iTunes, you can down it

(41:00):
all you want, but please stop, leave us a rating,
maybe leave a remark or to a little a little comment.
We like that stuff, Yeah we do, it's true. Yeah.
You can also find us on stitcher. Oh and by
the way, if you if you're like say the graffiti
artist or maybe the murderer, we'd love to hear from you.
Please set us an email at Thinking Sideways podcast at

(41:21):
gmail dot com. Okay, well, so we do want a
little bit of listener feedback here. We did get some comments, Devin,
would you like to reause the comments? Well, sure, it's
from Jenna. Jenna, who has been a listener for a while.
She's left us a couple of comments, but she just
said that she I was on the sailorsh See Feet episode.

(41:43):
She said that she really liked the topic, but she
hoped that if we had short topics that we would
do like a couple of stories to make a full
hour because we were really good at helping her through
her boring work days. So take that into consideration. We'll
see what we can you. Yeah, I don't know how
we would manage that. We talked about how much we

(42:04):
hate people who like, you know, put together three of
the episodes and the best of yeah that. Yeah, so
we would have to figure out how to do that.
We never know exactly how long these things are gonna come. Yeah,
Sometimes we think it's going to be a short one
and end up being we just drone on endlessly. God, well,
we'll actually probably start throwing some filler into some of

(42:26):
the shorter ones and maybe some commercials to Alright, Jenna,
thanks so much for the comment, and thanks so much
for listening to us. We love the fact that we're
being appreciated by somebody at least. Okay, let's get back
to what we were talking about. And one last thing
before we go, I want to give a shout out

(42:46):
the big thanks to Stephanie, our listener who suggested the
Hagleywood's story to us. Thank you very much, Stephanie, and
please feel free to send us more suggestions in the future.
Love those suggestions. Alright, that's it. Another mystery solved a
good night everybody but guys. Who did put bella in
which Elm