"I felt that I was in hell itself. All around me were great squat wych elm trees ... like round-bellied devils with beards and shaggy hair. Was it such a night as this that death visited the woods, turning, for the first time in criminal history, a tree trunk into a coffin? What happened that night? Was the wood in fact the scene of ghoulish rites ... was the body brought ... from some other place of execution and carried through that very undergrowth now clinging and clawing at my ankles, to it's secret resting place?"
The myths kick in almost at once.
***
Astonishingly, The Hagley Wood Murder is the first book solely on the subject (other than a selection of privately printed/self published offerings) ever written on this murder, which took place eighty years ago.
In April 1943, four teenaged boys discovered a corpse stuffed into the bole of a wych elm in a wood in the industrial Midlands. The body was merely bones and had been in the tree for up to two years. The pathologist determined that she was female, probably in her thirties, had given birth and was just under five feet tall. The cause of death was probably suffocation.
Six months after the discovery, mysterious messages began to appear on walls in the area, variants of ‘Who Put Bella Down the Wych Elm – Hagley Wood’. And the name Bella has stuck ever since.
Local newspapers, then the national press, took up the story and ran with it, but not until 1968 was there a book on the case – Donald McCormick’s Murder by Witchcraft – and that, like others that followed, tied Bella in with another supposedly occult murder, that of Charles Walton on Meon Hill in 1945.
Any unsolved murder brings out the oddballs – the police files, only recently released, are full of them – and the nonsense still continues. The online versions are woeful – inaccuracy piled on supposition, laced with fiction. It did not help that a professional occultist, Dr Margaret Murray, expressed her belief, as early as 1953, that witchcraft was involved in Bella’s murder. And ill-informed nonsense has been cobbled together to ‘prove’ that Dr Murray was right.
McCormick’s own involvement was in espionage and his book, slavishly copied by later privately printed efforts, have followed this tack too. It was wartime, so the anonymous woman in the wych elm had to be a spy, parachuted in by the Abwehr, the Nazi secret service.
The Hagley Wood Murder is the first book to unravel the fiction of McCormick and others. It names Bella and her probable murderer. And if the conclusion is less over-the-top than the fabrications referred to above, it is still an intriguing tale of the world’s oldest profession and the world’s oldest crime!
***
I first came across this case on a podcast. It was a sensationalised view of 'Who Put Bella Down the Wych Elm' but made for an interesting listen.
In this book, the author sets out to look in detail at the various stories, myths and speculative theories which have revolved around the case, since the discovery of her body by four boys in 1943. Everything from witchcraft to espionage as well as many other suggestions have been purported as theories of Bella's demise. Bella's identity was never discovered, let alone how or why she ended up dead inside of a tree.
This is the first book which pulls together all of these theories and examines them individually. It has been extensively researched and well written. It was easy to read and did not get too bogged down in any particular theory. Instead, the author presents us with a comprehensive guide to the case and the various opinions that have surfaced in the last eighty or so years.
The case was officially closed in 2005 as it was decided that there was no possibility of it being solved.
Whilst, the author has debunked the majority of the theories around this case, he does venture to impart his own, plausible theory of who Bella was and who murdered her.
ISBN: 978 1399066457
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Formats: e-book and hardback
No. of Pages: 224 (hardback)
About the Author:
M J Trow (the 'M' as most people know by now stands for Meirion, a Welsh name few can manage, so he writes as M J, is known by all and sundry as Mei, rhyming with 'my') has been writing for many years, with his first book - The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade - being published in 1984 by Macmillan. More Lestrades followed and then some true crime and somehow it all snowballed so now he has many historical biographies and three other crime series (Maxwell, Marlowe and Grand and Batchelor, the latter two written with his wife, writing as Maryanne Coleman, though her name is Carol, actually!) to his credit. He claims to be retired, but that's just from teaching. In fact he has never been busier and is a sought after 'ghost' these days as well as historian and novelist, with many different subjects' stories having been told through him. He has recently started collaborating on fiction projects (with someone other than his wife, that is) and finds it a really exciting and pleasurable experience.
To relax he ... actually, that's a bit tricky, as he doesn't really ever relax. He has been known to garden, he is a keen cook and artist and likes to travel. This is rather easier these days as he is a popular speaker on cruise ships - in fact his profile picture was taken on a very gusty day in Cape Town, setting off on a long voyage home to Southampton through some of the scariest seas he and his wife have had the pleasure to meet! It really was the calm before the storm, despite being a Force 9 just leaving the Bay.
Family is important and he is very proud of his wife, Carol (aka Maryanne Coleman) for her own books and also the ones they write together, the Kit Marlowe series. His son, Taliesin, known as Tali, is a writer who has written a biography of the Tudor explorer Martin Frobisher as well as collaborating with Mei on several biographies. An exciting series is in the melting pot at the moment and will hopefully be appearing soon; remember where you heard it first. Tali is also a musician, playing various instruments with some acclaimed bands; Gemma Hayes, the Coal Porters, Circulus and currently acid-folk ensemble The Lords of Thyme. He also records and tour-manages. His crystal vocals enhance everything he does and it's just as well someone in the family can sing, as it is the first thing anyone asks a Welshman!
(ARC courtesy of NetGalley)
(Author photo and bio info courtesy of Amazon)
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