Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. It is October one, the start of the
Speaker 1: best month of the year. So today's Saturday Classic Pulse
Speaker 1: from our previous October episodes, it is the Hagley Woods Murder,
Speaker 1: which we covered on Halloween. Of this murder inspired graffiti
Speaker 1: that continues to appear today with variations on the question
Speaker 1: who put Bella in the witch Ell? An update that
Speaker 1: I don't actually think has made it into an installment
Speaker 1: of Unearthed in Professor Caroline Wilkinson and Sarah Shrimpton from
Speaker 1: Face Lab Liverpool, John Warris University used photos of the
Speaker 1: skeletal remains of this person who has become known as
Speaker 1: Bella to create a reconstruction of what she may have
Speaker 1: looked like. That reconstruction has appeared in various books and
Speaker 1: TV shows, but the mystery of what happened to this
Speaker 1: person remains unsolved. So enjoy this story. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Speaker 1: Tray Wilson. And it's Halloween, Tracy Paray. It's the best
Speaker 1: day of the year. Uh And today to celebrate Halloween,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a history mystery. It's got everything.
Speaker 1: It's got a mystery, a mystery body, it's got witches,
Speaker 1: it's got espionage, it's got everything, and it's never been solved.
Speaker 1: Though as we get to the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into some interesting math that tries to
Speaker 1: sort out the situation. But I don't want to spoil
Speaker 1: any of that, so let's just hop right in. So
Speaker 1: in the nineteen four Days, a grizzly discovery was made
Speaker 1: in a tree in Worcestershire, England, on April eighteenth of
Speaker 1: ninety four teenage boys were looking for birds nests and
Speaker 1: they sent the best climber up an elm tree. In
Speaker 1: the hollow of the tree, he did not find a
Speaker 1: bird's nest. He found a skull. Initially he thought it
Speaker 1: might be an animal skull, but when he pulled it
Speaker 1: from its place in the tree, he realized no, it
Speaker 1: was a human skull. And there was also a little
Speaker 1: bit of decomposing flesh still attached to the skull, as
Speaker 1: well as a patch of hair, and this skull had
Speaker 1: distinctive teeth, they were crooked, and there was sort of
Speaker 1: what looked what looks a pictures like almost a pronounced overbite,
Speaker 1: but also some lower jaw um deformation. The boys, whose
Speaker 1: names were Robert Hart, Thomas Willett's, Bob Farmer, and Fred Payne,
Speaker 1: were terrified. They were also really worried that they were
Speaker 1: going to get in trouble because they had been trespassing
Speaker 1: in Hagley Woods. This estate, which was near Birmingham, was private.
Speaker 1: They had no permission to be in there looking for nests.
Speaker 1: They had also been hunting rabbits, so they'd basically been poaching,
Speaker 1: and they had been doing all of that that day
Speaker 1: with no permission. So the boys promised each other that
Speaker 1: they would keep it a secret. They put the skull
Speaker 1: back in its spot in the tree and then they left.
Speaker 1: But the youngest boy of that group, Tommy Willitts, did
Speaker 1: not in fact keep their secret. He was really deeply
Speaker 1: upset by the discovery, and he eventually confessed his troubles
Speaker 1: to his father, and his father immediately contacted police, and
Speaker 1: of course an investigation began. When the police examined this
Speaker 1: elm tree, they found not only the skull, but also
Speaker 1: additional remains, including the majority of the skeleton. There were
Speaker 1: also pieces of clothing, a wedding band and a single
Speaker 1: shoe with a crape sole. The skeletal remains of one
Speaker 1: of the body's hands were also found buried near the tree.
Speaker 1: Examination of the remains by a pathologist concluded that the
Speaker 1: skeleton was a woman who had been between thirty five
Speaker 1: and forty when she died. She was five ft or
Speaker 1: one point five meters tall, brunette, and had probably given
Speaker 1: birth at some point. Another man involved in the investigation
Speaker 1: was forensic biologist Dr John Lund, who, at the age
Speaker 1: of one hundred and one, told the BBC radio show
Speaker 1: Punt p I about his examination of the remains. That
Speaker 1: interview happened in twenty fifteen, so he had been working
Speaker 1: under James Webster at the West Midlands Forensic Science Laboratory
Speaker 1: and he kept notes on the case. The body arrived
Speaker 1: at his lab on April, two days after it had
Speaker 1: been discovered. The bones had absolutely no remaining flesh. The
Speaker 1: hair that was attached to the skull was quite fragile,
Speaker 1: but he determined that it had not been chemically treated
Speaker 1: with color or any kind of curling solution, and the woman,
Speaker 1: Webster in Land concluded had been asphyxiated by a piece
Speaker 1: of tafoda that had been shoved in her throat. Additionally,
Speaker 1: it was believed that the body had been hidden in
Speaker 1: the tree while it was still warm, feet first, and
Speaker 1: that it had been there for about a year and
Speaker 1: a half, placing her death somewhere around October of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one. Efforts started immediately to try to identify what
Speaker 1: appeared to be the victim of a murder. Missing persons
Speaker 1: reports were called through for anybody who might line up
Speaker 1: with this mystery discovery. There were detailed descriptions of what
Speaker 1: she had probably been wearing based on what Webster had
Speaker 1: been able to extrapolate from this shoe and the clothing
Speaker 1: remains that had been collected. That there was a whole
Speaker 1: reference through the dental records with dentists from all around
Speaker 1: Great Britain, but because of the war, missing persons records
Speaker 1: were something of a mess at this point, but even so,
Speaker 1: all known listings were reviewed for a possible connection, literally
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of records, but nothing matched. No results
Speaker 1: with dental dental records either. Despite the fact that she
Speaker 1: had some unique features, including that jaw deformity and a
Speaker 1: recently pulled tooth that had been pulled shortly before she
Speaker 1: had died, and they really cast a wide net by
Speaker 1: placing this information in dental journals, hoping that they would
Speaker 1: find a dentist that recognize any of this information. But
Speaker 1: the case went cold. A small clue finally came from
Speaker 1: a man who had been working in management in one
Speaker 1: of the area's industrial companies. He had reported to police
Speaker 1: in July ninety one he was walking to his home
Speaker 1: near Hagleywood and he heard a scream. Another person, a teacher,
Speaker 1: who was also on a path but coming in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, had confirmed that he too had heard this screaming,
Speaker 1: and police were called to the scene at the time
Speaker 1: that these two men heard the scream, which would have
Speaker 1: been close enough to the October death estimate to have
Speaker 1: been a possible connection to the murder. But police in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one found nothing where the two men had
Speaker 1: heard the woman screaming, and they found nothing when they
Speaker 1: revisited the scene in nineteen forty three after reviewing that
Speaker 1: ninety one report. Just as the case seemed to be
Speaker 1: running entirely cold, in December of nineteen forty three, odd
Speaker 1: graffiti started popping up in the area. Scrawled in various
Speaker 1: places were the words who put Bella down the witch elm?
Speaker 1: There were actually a lot of variant variations on the phrase,
Speaker 1: including who put Luebella down the witch elm? And who
Speaker 1: put Bella in the witch elm? There were also some
Speaker 1: more instances of graffiti that's strayed from this question format
Speaker 1: and said things more like hagleywood Bella. And as a
Speaker 1: point of note, as we say this, we're not saying
Speaker 1: which here, uh in the sense you might be thinking,
Speaker 1: what with this being Halloween, when we say witch elm,
Speaker 1: the spelling is w y c H. That's a tree
Speaker 1: also known as a Scotts elm. However, uh, In several
Speaker 1: things that I read, there were people that were adamant
Speaker 1: that this was in fact not a witch elm, but
Speaker 1: another type of elm that's often mistaken for one. Just
Speaker 1: wanted to include that in the interest of horticultural history
Speaker 1: and to clarify that it is not which is in
Speaker 1: the halloween e sense at this point it is creepy though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: even without that spelling difference, still creepy. These graffiti messages
Speaker 1: appeared to be the work of a single person. They
Speaker 1: were all written in the same type of chalk and
Speaker 1: block letters, uh, And it was considered that they maybe
Speaker 1: were just somebody trying to play a prank, But there
Speaker 1: had been no leads in the case that had actually
Speaker 1: panned out up to that point. So these bizarre missives
Speaker 1: opened up two new lines of investigation. Number one, was
Speaker 1: there really someone named Bella who might be involved in
Speaker 1: this body that had been found in Hagley Woods? And
Speaker 1: number two, who was the artist behind the graffiti? And
Speaker 1: did they actually know something about the murder? But nothing,
Speaker 1: not the name Bella, not the dental records, not the
Speaker 1: hunt for the graffiti artists, seemed to lead to any
Speaker 1: actual information. This woman seemed to be entirely untraceable, and
Speaker 1: as the months dragged into years, all kinds of other
Speaker 1: theories started to pop up about the identity of this
Speaker 1: woman in the tree. And before we get to those
Speaker 1: theories that started popping up in an effort to explain
Speaker 1: the skeleton in Hagley Woods, let's take a brief break
Speaker 1: and we'll how of a word from one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1: So we promised you a little witchiness at the beginning,
Speaker 1: in the actual which sense, not in the W Y
Speaker 1: C H three sense. So we're getting there, Professor Margaret
Speaker 1: Murray of University College London, who was an anthropologist, egyptologist,
Speaker 1: archaeologist and folklorist, put forth the theory that Bella, as
Speaker 1: she had at that point become known thanks to that graffiti,
Speaker 1: had been the victim of a ritualistic occult murder. Murray's
Speaker 1: evidence to support this theory was the fact that the
Speaker 1: handbones had been found away from the body, and she
Speaker 1: believed that the ceremony that had claimed Bella's life, which
Speaker 1: is one which is called the hand of glory in
Speaker 1: which the hand cut from the victim could be used
Speaker 1: for divining or protection as part of the practice of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: And the sensational nature of this idea really took hold
Speaker 1: in both the press and the public imagination surminds me
Speaker 1: of the satanic ritual abuse panic. It is absolutely the
Speaker 1: same thing that that was not really founded in reality.
Speaker 1: So when another murder victim was discovered in a neighboring village,
Speaker 1: this when a man who was pinned to the ground
Speaker 1: with a pitchfork, people started linking the two deaths, even
Speaker 1: though it had been two years between the two. Scotland Yard,
Speaker 1: who was spurred on by Margaret Murray, started investigating this
Speaker 1: witchcraft angle because there had been no other new leads
Speaker 1: in the case, and as with all the other leads
Speaker 1: got them nowhere had no real information that was gathered
Speaker 1: as a result of Murray's theories. And as a side note,
Speaker 1: While Margaret Murray was famous for a time in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century as an expert and I should put
Speaker 1: that in the air quotes on witchcraft, most of her
Speaker 1: writings on the subject were controversial at the time, and
Speaker 1: they were eventually debunked and she was largely discredited. She's
Speaker 1: actually on my short list for an episode all her own.
Speaker 1: But she was basically kind of making stuff up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first time I read through this outline, I got
Speaker 1: to this description of her purported satanic not satanic, but
Speaker 1: like her purported ritualistic occult murderer, and I was like, really, yeah, really,
Speaker 1: actual anthropologist for real? Did you did you just make
Speaker 1: this up? Like? What? Really? You know? She used logic
Speaker 1: that made sense to her, but I don't know that
Speaker 1: she was kind of fabricating these in an effort to
Speaker 1: be um, to be misleading or sensationalist. I think she
Speaker 1: might have believed them, but I will do more research
Speaker 1: on her. Perhaps in the future. Maybe that will be
Speaker 1: in October episode next year. I maybe can't wait till then,
Speaker 1: But what's that's cool too then? So ten years after
Speaker 1: that initial grizzly discovery in the tree, there was another
Speaker 1: possibility that came to light. This time, a woman going
Speaker 1: by the named Anna from Cleverley contacted the Press a letter.
Speaker 1: She was responding to a series of articles that had
Speaker 1: been written in nineteen fifty three about the murder, saying
Speaker 1: she knew who had killed Bella. Anna's claim was that
Speaker 1: Bella had in fact been part of an espionage play
Speaker 1: gone wrong, and the letter read, finish your articles regarding
Speaker 1: the witch Elm crime. By all means, they are interesting
Speaker 1: to your readers, but you will never solve the mystery.
Speaker 1: The one person who could give the answer is now
Speaker 1: beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. Much as I hate
Speaker 1: having to use a nomba plume, I think you would
Speaker 1: appreciate it if you know me. The only clues I
Speaker 1: can give you are that the person responsible for the
Speaker 1: crime died insane in nineteen forty two, and that the
Speaker 1: victim was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one. I have no wish to recall anymore. Anna's
Speaker 1: story cast Bella as a Dutch woman who was passing
Speaker 1: information from a British officer to a trapeze artist who
Speaker 1: appeared in local theatrical product. That trapeze artist would then
Speaker 1: pass that intel onto the Germans. Bella in the story
Speaker 1: had become too knowledgeable about this chain of of information,
Speaker 1: and she was killed because of that knowledge, and then
Speaker 1: her body was taken to Hagleywood's where it was hidden
Speaker 1: in the tree. Of course, this fleshing out of the
Speaker 1: story passed. That initial letter came because uh, the police
Speaker 1: got involved. Of course, once the press got this letter
Speaker 1: h and they questioned her because the area around Worcestershire
Speaker 1: was home to a number of munitions factories during World
Speaker 1: War Two. It had been scrutinized by the Nazis for
Speaker 1: information during the war. It had also been a target,
Speaker 1: so authorities did pursue this new German spy ring angle
Speaker 1: with some level of vigor. Some aspects of Anna's story
Speaker 1: checked out. There had been a British man connected to
Speaker 1: a German spy ring in the area, but he had
Speaker 1: died in Stafford Mental Hospital in ninety two, and as
Speaker 1: it turned out, that man was related to Anna. Anna's
Speaker 1: real name was Una massip Una had, she told police,
Speaker 1: been married to Jack Mossa and he had confessed the
Speaker 1: murder to her before his death. It was her understanding
Speaker 1: that he, along with a dutch Man named Van Raalt
Speaker 1: who was also involved, meant to scare this woman by
Speaker 1: leaving her in the tree when she was passed out
Speaker 1: because she was inebriated. They did not actually intend to
Speaker 1: kill her. Yeah. The idea was that she would wake
Speaker 1: up stuck in this tree and see the error of
Speaker 1: her ways and being foolish, uh, and would straighten up
Speaker 1: an act right. The police were unable to locate this
Speaker 1: Venrault character, and it appears that they sort of abandoned
Speaker 1: the trail there. Years later, however, another woman named Judith
Speaker 1: O'Donovan told police and investigators that she was Jack mossa
Speaker 1: sort of distant cousin. I think her he might have
Speaker 1: been her husband's cousin, and that their entire family basically
Speaker 1: knew that Jack had been a trader and that he
Speaker 1: had been connected to a woman's death. So it sort
Speaker 1: of supported this spirring idea. Uh. And the fact that
Speaker 1: he may have been connected to the woman in the
Speaker 1: witch Holm. Another decade passed before another theory emerged, and
Speaker 1: this one kind of combined the previous two notions. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, a book called Murder by Witchcraft was published,
Speaker 1: written by David McCormick, and McCormick penned an explanatory narrative
Speaker 1: in which the woman from the Tree had been a
Speaker 1: Nazi spy named Clara Bella, who was also an occultists.
Speaker 1: According to McCormick, who said that he had been able
Speaker 1: to look at German intelligence reports that listed the woman
Speaker 1: by her code name, she was called Clara. His assertion
Speaker 1: was that the Bella and the graffiti was referencing Clara Bella.
Speaker 1: McCormick's book indicated that Clara had been sent into the
Speaker 1: County of West Midlands by parachute in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: but that she was never heard from again. Of course,
Speaker 1: these roads all proved to be fruitless, just like all
Speaker 1: the others had in terms of churning up any real
Speaker 1: information on the case at the time. Three full decades
Speaker 1: after McCormick's book was least, the case of Bella's identity
Speaker 1: once again gained attention, and at this time pieces the
Speaker 1: puzzle started to come together in the minds of interested parties.
Speaker 1: For one, when the case closed, which was actually in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, h the case file was published and
Speaker 1: in it there was a mention of a search for
Speaker 1: Bella's body to be exhumed so that DNA evidence could
Speaker 1: be gathered, because that would certainly be helpful. But that
Speaker 1: search was for her body was unsuccessful. It turns out
Speaker 1: that this failure to find her body was in part
Speaker 1: because they had been looking in completely the wrong location.
Speaker 1: It had been presumed that Bella had been buried locally,
Speaker 1: but in fact her remains had gone to the University
Speaker 1: of Birmingham, to a colleague of the original pathologist in
Speaker 1: the case, for additional testing, and that was a detail
Speaker 1: that had sort of been lost in the sixties, some
Speaker 1: years since the case had been active before it was
Speaker 1: closed in two thousand five, and unfortunately, the skeletal remains
Speaker 1: disappeared from the university's records and their lab lost forever
Speaker 1: to time. Any records from the University of Birmingham about
Speaker 1: any testing that was done on those remains have also vanished.
Speaker 1: This has led to some speculation of a cover up,
Speaker 1: but it could also just be really terrible bookkeeping. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hold out hope that one day it will
Speaker 1: be one of those. Look what we found in our
Speaker 1: own collection of human remains that nobody correctly. And the
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind too, um, and I know
Speaker 1: this from my years working in the library, is that
Speaker 1: there were things that happened during more time that really
Speaker 1: messed up record keeping. You know. It wasn't necessarily that
Speaker 1: people were lazy or trying to cover anything up. There
Speaker 1: was just there were times when an air raid would
Speaker 1: happen and everything would be shuffled around and stuff got lost. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and even if you are really careful, human beings still
Speaker 1: make errors. And if you have a gigantic and are
Speaker 1: still accurate, that's a bunch of errors. Anyway, coming up,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about an m I five file
Speaker 1: that might actually give some weight to the narrative is
Speaker 1: that McCormick had had reconstructed. But first we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break for a word from one of
Speaker 1: our awesome sponsors. So another bit of information that also
Speaker 1: shed light on this possibility that McCormick's theory had some
Speaker 1: truth to it a declassified file in the British National
Speaker 1: Archives on Gestapo agent Joseph Jacobs, who was an inexperienced,
Speaker 1: undertrained agent that was sent to gather information on weather
Speaker 1: patterns in the London area. Jacobs had parachuted into Cambridgeshire
Speaker 1: in broken his ankle in the drop and was arrested
Speaker 1: by the Home Guard, which was a World War two
Speaker 1: defense organization that was part of the British Army. One
Speaker 1: of the items that Jacobs was carrying when the Home
Speaker 1: Guard apprehended him was a photograph. That photo was a
Speaker 1: picture of a woman named Clara Bowerley, a singer and
Speaker 1: film actress that Jacob said was also his paramore. He
Speaker 1: also told his caw apters that Clara Bowerley was a
Speaker 1: Nazi secret agent and was supposed to parachute into West Midlands,
Speaker 1: that the two of them were supposed to have made contact.
Speaker 1: Jacobs was executed by firing squad in the late summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty one, and this turned out to be
Speaker 1: the last execution at the Tower of London. UH He
Speaker 1: could also easily be an episode subject on his own.
Speaker 1: These m I five records on Jacobs included an investigation
Speaker 1: of Bauerley. She was born in nineteen o six, meaning
Speaker 1: that in nineteen forty one she would have been thirty five,
Speaker 1: which was the right age to pit the pathology report
Speaker 1: of the witch Elm victim. And she did work in
Speaker 1: music halls in the West Midland area for two years
Speaker 1: before World War two began, and she learned to speak
Speaker 1: English with no trace of a German accent. When the
Speaker 1: woman who had been calling herself Anna contacted the police
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties claiming to have knowledge of the crime,
Speaker 1: she had mentioned a music hall in the information that
Speaker 1: she gave to the police. And while this might seem
Speaker 1: to tidily wrap up the identity of Bella quite nicely,
Speaker 1: because the pieces do seem to fit together, uh, Joseph
Speaker 1: Jacobs's granddaughter, who has long examined the details of her
Speaker 1: grandfather's life, actually obtained a death certificate for Clara Bauerley,
Speaker 1: indicating that in fact, she died in Berlin in December
Speaker 1: ninety two of aronal poisoning. I eat not stuffed into
Speaker 1: a tree in England. Of course, gossip turned up a
Speaker 1: huge variety of other possibilities about Bella's identity. She might
Speaker 1: have taken shelter in the tree during an air raid
Speaker 1: and gotten stuck. She might have been murdered by a
Speaker 1: lover and clumsily hidden in the tree. She may have
Speaker 1: been a traveler or a romani who was killed out
Speaker 1: of mere suspicion. And there was even a lead that,
Speaker 1: at least in terms of plausibility, seems fairly valid. So
Speaker 1: on April seven of nineteen forty four, a sex worker
Speaker 1: from Birmingham told police that a woman that she knew
Speaker 1: had gone missing on Hagley Road or in that area
Speaker 1: three years earlier, and that woman's name was Bella. If
Speaker 1: this information garnered follow up from the police, it does
Speaker 1: not appear to have gotten much traction. Incidentally, this whole
Speaker 1: graffiti of who put Bella in the witch Elm has
Speaker 1: continued in the seven decades since the murder was discovered.
Speaker 1: There's an obelisk in Hagley Park called the Witchbury Obelisk,
Speaker 1: and it's been the most frequently tagged location since the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. Presumably at this point it's kids trying to
Speaker 1: be spooky, and the spelling has changed from w y
Speaker 1: c H to w i t c H. It's definitely
Speaker 1: not somebody trying to communicate a kind of clue about
Speaker 1: the unsolved murder case. At this point, it is like
Speaker 1: was here but exactly, And it's very possible that it
Speaker 1: never was anything that people pulling pranks, but we just
Speaker 1: don't know, uh In. A statistical analysis of all of
Speaker 1: the known data in the Hagleywood's murder was done by
Speaker 1: researchers Norman Fenton and Martin Neil using Bayesian analysis, and
Speaker 1: they determined umber of things. They they're actually in that
Speaker 1: BBC radio piece that we mentioned earlier, but then they
Speaker 1: also wrote a paper separately where they explained it all
Speaker 1: and that thing is fabulous. Um, so it'll be in
Speaker 1: the show notes. But the first thing that they determined
Speaker 1: is that there is a probability that the cause of
Speaker 1: death was criminal. That one is the completely unsurprising correct.
Speaker 1: There's a nine seven percent probability that Bella was not British,
Speaker 1: less than two percent chance that she was Dutch, and
Speaker 1: an eighteen percent chance that she was German. There is
Speaker 1: a nine percent probability that Bella was still alive when
Speaker 1: she was put in the tree. That's awful. That kind
Speaker 1: of holds with that whole story that the men had
Speaker 1: put her there to scare her, and that she had
Speaker 1: somehow become stuck. There's a thirty three percent possibility that
Speaker 1: Jack Mossup was involved in her death and seven percent
Speaker 1: that was some kind of intelligence service. In order to
Speaker 1: increase that probability to a nine pcent chance that Massif
Speaker 1: was involved, the researchers model would have required four additional
Speaker 1: witnesses in addition to Una mass Up and his cousin Judith,
Speaker 1: And there is a twenty five percent probability that Bella
Speaker 1: was a spy and a six probability that she was
Speaker 1: a prostitute. In their paper on this study, the researchers
Speaker 1: were very clear that there are lots of variables that
Speaker 1: could quit really quickly change the whole statistical picture. For example,
Speaker 1: they're working under the assumption that police involved in the
Speaker 1: investigation really did exhaust all the leads in each instance
Speaker 1: where they felt like there was a dead end. If
Speaker 1: they left a stone unturned here there, then the models
Speaker 1: shifts significantly. Additionally, there's the credibility of various witnesses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you um increase or decrease the credibility rating of
Speaker 1: various witnesses, that model changes really quickly. As well. But
Speaker 1: of course, all of those numbers do not settle this
Speaker 1: crime conclusively, and Bella story remains a mystery, and considering
Speaker 1: the age of the case, it is unlikely that this
Speaker 1: murder will ever be solved unless, as Tracy mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the remains UH or the University lab files suddenly turn up.
Speaker 1: So that is our spooky unsolved mystery for Halloween. UH.
Speaker 1: And we hope yours is safe and that you do
Speaker 1: not end up in a tree stuff. Please don't mean
Speaker 1: you can climb a tree safely if you want to
Speaker 1: do that. I have never climbed a tree. Really. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're They're dirty and I'm scared. That's the bottom line.
Speaker 1: My mother had very clear rules about how large the
Speaker 1: branch could be for us to safely climb the tree,
Speaker 1: and if we climbed up into branches that were narrower
Speaker 1: than that, I think it had to be at least
Speaker 1: as uh as big as our arm I can't remember
Speaker 1: it was our armor leg there was a body part
Speaker 1: that we had to compare before we put our weight
Speaker 1: on any tree limb. Yeah, my mother, My mother is
Speaker 1: very concerned with safety. I've had many friends through the
Speaker 1: years who are big into tree climbing, and they always
Speaker 1: look at me like I'm some sort of mutan when
Speaker 1: I'm like, I've never climbed a tree and I feel
Speaker 1: no urge to change that. That's fine. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is
Speaker 1: out of the archive, if you heard an email address
Speaker 1: or a Facebook U r L or something similar over
Speaker 1: the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address
Speaker 1: no longer works, and you can find us all over
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