There are so very many podcast, videos, blog posts and articles about Bella in the Wych Elm. Including this one! Every time one pops up, I take a look at it and usually, I am disappointed. Most of them just seem to be a regurgitation or rehashing of other, often erroneous, articles/posts/videos. They just add more mud to an already muddy pond. Here’s a few that I’ve encountered over the last few years. A couple are actually decent and helpful!
The History Press – 2018 April 18
This post was written by storyteller David Phelps. I had some mild hope when this article first came out that it presaged a book about Bella via The History Press, but it would appear that is not the case. This post gives an overview of the Bella case and contains several errors. The following paragraph, in particular, seems to be based largely on the 2013 Alison Vale article which had its own share of assumptions and incomplete research.
In the fifties another line of enquiry opened up. A letter to a local paper claimed that the victim was a German spy, killed by her confederates. [If I recall, the woman was simply the girlfriend of a Dutchman named Van Ralt who “may” have been a spy.] The police dismissed this as fanciful but, just in the last few years, as MI5 files have been opened to public scrutiny, evidence of a German spy ring operating in the area has come to light. [I am not aware of a German spy ring operating in the Birmingham area. Certainly Josef Jakobs was never destined for Birmingham.] One of them had a photograph of a well-known actress, Clara Bauerle, whom he claimed had also been trained as a spy because she had worked the music halls of Birmingham in the thirties and spoke English with a pronounced Brummie accent. [Josef Jakobs never said Clara had worked the music halls of Birmingham nor that she spoke English with a Brummie accent.] She was due to have been parachuted into the area at about the time the body in the wych elm had met her fate but there was no official trace of her. [Josef gave no timeline for her arrival.]
Admittedly, this article is six years old and much has been uncovered since then. Although, Alex Merrill’s excellent first volume on the Bella mystery had been published in February 2018. It, and Alex’s second volume are both first-rate resources for anyone interested in the facts of the Bella mystery.
Express & Star – 2024 March 15
Yes, we’re back with the Express & Star, the local paper where Anna of Claverley (ex-wife of Jack Mossop) mailed her revealing letter in the 1950s. This time, the newspaper is highlighting the research of Sarah Haywood. Sarah is apparently a keen historian and self-professed ‘history influencer’ who works as a teaching assistant at Brierley Hill Primary School. She has has been researching the Bella story via the British Newspaper Archives and wanted to share some of her finds.
The story has several images of newspaper clippings from the 1940s (50s) but the only captions accompanying the photos are: “Extracts from the British Newspaper Archives”. Not at all helpful as we have no idea of the provenance, or even the date, of the clippings. This article adds nothing new to the Bella case and simply rehashes old news of questionable accuracy.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News – 2023 April 6
This article, by Lucia Stein and Rebecca Armitage, is actually very thorough and surprisingly accurate. It presents many of the theories around Bella but doesn’t laud any of them as the “truth”. It does quote Peter Osborne at various points, suggesting that the authors reached out to him for some first-hand information.
The article has several outbound links which generally lead to helpful posts or articles. Punt PI’s 2014 audio episode on Bella features heavily in the links. On the whole, this is a relatively good article. It covers most of the bases and avoids adding mud to the waters.
Birmingham Mail – 2024 April 17
This article is noteworthy in that it references a new podcast by the BBC called “The Body in the Tree“. Living in the hinterlands of Western Canada as I do, I don’t always get the latest news. So this was a very helpful article, if only for pointing me towards this series. The Mail article gives a brief summary of the case and quotes a couple of the experts who appear on the podcast series. The podcast is now high on my “must listen” list and I’m hoping it’s actually factual and helpful!
The US Sun – 2024 April 13
This site has all the hallmarks of a tabloid (rampant ads and click-bait headlines) and so I’m a bit leery of the article. The article summarizes the case but when it gets to Josef Jakobs and Clara Bauerle, it is clear that it is relying heavily on the Alison Vale story.
This article claims that Josef was Czech-born (false) and that Clara had spent two years in the music halls of the West Midlands (false, as we saw earlier in this post). According to the article, Clara was well connected with “senior Nazis”. I’m not sure who those would be and Josef made no mention of those connections. The Sun then takes things a bit farther and says “Jakobs claimed she too had been recruited by the Gestapo with the aim of creating a spy network in the UK.” That’s a new one on me. Nowhere did Josef ever claim that Clara was going to be sent over to create a spy network in the US. Oh, and Josef apparently “told his captors she was the woman in the tree”. Clearly impossible given the body was found in 1943 and Josef was executed in 1941. But these sorts of logical errors are easy to make when facts are secondary to a good story. The article does at least mention that Clara died in Berlin in 1942.
On the whole, a rather tawdry article that embellishes the facts in order to gain views and ad-clicks. The six photographs included in the article have no source citations.
Junk Sites
I’ve come across snippets about the Bella article on BuzzFeed… not even going to deign to link to them. There was another article on US Times Post (another tabloidy style digital rag). I had trouble loading the site and the rampant pop-ups ended it for me.