October 31, 2016 • 32 mins
In 1943, a skeleton was found in a tree near Birmingham, England. More than 70 years later, it's still unknown who the deceased was and how the body ended up in an elm tree.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode of Stuff You Missed in History Classes brought
to you by Tracker. Tracker is finding more than a
million misplaced items each day. Order yours and never lose
anything again. Listeners to this show get a free Tracker
Bravo with any order. Go to the Tracker dot Com
and inner promo code history. The hardest thing you'll ever
(00:20):
have to find is their website. Go to the Tracker
dot com right now and in a promo code history
for your free Tracker Bravo with any order. Again, that's
the Tracker dot Com promo code history. Deep in the
back of your mind, you've always had the feeling that
there's something strange about reality. There is in life, death,
(00:41):
nanopart of MECHANICALSI punch evolution. On our award winning science
podcast Stuff to Abow your Mind, we examine neurological quandaries,
cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and our trans human future. New
episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify,
and anywhere you get your podcast. Welcome to Steph you
(01:01):
Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Collie fry and I'm
Tracy P. Wilson and it's Halloween, Tracy hers the best
day of the year. Uh. And today to celebrate Halloween,
(01:22):
we're going to talk about a history mystery. It's got everything.
It's got a mystery, a mystery body, it's got witches,
it's got espionage, it's got everything, and it's never been solved.
Though as we get to the end of the episode,
we're gonna get into some interesting math that tries to
sort out the situation. But I don't want to spoil
(01:43):
any of that, so let's just hop right in. So
in the nineteen four Days, a grizzly discovery was made
in a tree in Worcestershire, England. On April eighteenth of
nineteen forty three, four teenage boys were looking for birds
nests and they sent the best cli timer up an
elm tree. In the hollow of the tree, he did
(02:04):
not find a bird's nest. He found a skull. Initially
he thought it might be an animal skull, but when
he pulled it from its place in the tree, he
realized no, it was a human skull, and there was
also a little bit of decomposing flesh still attached. To
the skull as well as a patch of hair, and
the skull had distinctive teeth, they were crooked, and there
(02:26):
was sort of what looked what looks at pictures like
almost a pronounced overbite, but also some lower jaw um deformation.
The boys, whose names were Robert Hart, Thomas Willett's, Bob Farmer,
and Fred Payne, were terrified. They were also really worried
that they were going to get in trouble because they
had been trespassing in Hagley Woods. This estate, which was
(02:50):
near Birmingham, was private. They had no permission to be
in there looking for nests. They had also been hunting rabbits,
so they'd basically been poaching, and they had been doing
all of that that day with no permission. So the
boys promised each other that they would keep it a secret.
They put the skull back in its spot in the
tree and then they left. But the youngest boy of
(03:11):
that group, Tommy Willitts, did not in fact keep their secret.
He was really deeply upset by the discovery, and he
eventually confessed his troubles to his father, and his father
immediately contacted police, and of course an investigation began. When
the police examined this elm tree, they found not only
the skull, but also additional remains, including the majority of
(03:33):
the skeleton. There were also pieces of clothing, a wedding
band and a single shoe with a crepe sol. The
skeletal remains of one of the body's hands were also
found buried near the tree. Examination of the remains by
a pathologist concluded that the skeleton was a woman who
had been between thirty five and forty when she died.
(03:54):
She was five ft or one point five meters tall,
brunette and had probably given birth this one point. Another
man involved in the investigation was forensic biologist Dr John Lund, who,
at the age of one hundred and one, told the
BBC radio show Punt p I about his examination of
the remains. That interview happened in twenty fifteen, so he
(04:17):
had been working under James Webster at the West Midlands
Forensic Science Laboratory and he kept notes on the case.
The body arrived at his lab on April two days
after it had been discovered. The bones had absolutely no
remaining flesh. The hair that was attached to the skull
was quite fragile, but he determined that it had not
(04:37):
been chemically treated with color or any kind of curling solution,
and the woman Webster in Land concluded had been asphyxiated
by a piece of cafoda that had been shoved in
her throat. Additionally, it was believed that the body had
been hidden in the tree while it was still warm,
feet first, and that it had been there for about
(04:58):
a year and a half, placing her death somewhere around
October of nineteen forty one. Efforts started immediately to try
to identify what appeared to be the victim of a murder.
Missing persons reports were calmed through for anybody who might
line up with this mystery discovery. There were detailed descriptions
of what she had probably been wearing based on what
(05:18):
Webster had been able to extrapolate from this shoe and
the clothing remains that had been collected. That there was
a whole reference through the dental records with dentists from
all around Great Britain, but because of the war, missing
persons records were something of a mess at this point,
but even so, all known listings were reviewed for a
possible connection, literally thousands and thousands of records, but nothing matched.
(05:42):
No results with dental dental records either, despite the fact
that she had some unique features, including that jaw deformity
and a recently pulled tooth that had had been pulled
shortly before she had died, and they really cast a
wide net by placing this information in dental journals, hoping
that they would find a dentist it recognize any of
this information, but the case went cold. A small clue
(06:06):
finally came from a man who had been working in
management in one of the area's industrial companies. He had
reported to police in July nine he was walking to
his home near Hagleywood and he heard a scream. Another person,
a teacher, who was also on a path but coming
in the opposite direction, had confirmed that he too had
heard this screaming, and police were called to the scene
(06:30):
at the time that these two men heard this scream,
which would have been close enough to the October death
estimate to have been a possible connection to the murder,
But police in nineteen forty one found nothing where the
two men had heard the woman screaming, and they found
nothing when they revisited the scene in nineteen forty three.
After reviewing that ninety one report, just as the case
(06:51):
seemed to be running entirely cold, in December of nineteen
forty three, odd graffiti started popping up in the area.
Scrawled in various play says were the words who put
Bella down the witch elm? There were actually a lot
of variant variations on the phrase, including who put Luebella
down the witch elm? And who put Bella in the
witch elm? There were also some more instances of graffiti
(07:14):
that's strayed from this question format and said things more
like hagleywood Bella. And as a point of note, as
we say this, we're not saying which here, uh, in
the sense you might be thinking, what with this being Halloween,
when we say witch elm, the spelling is w y
c H. That's a tree also known as a Scott's elm. However, uh,
(07:35):
In several things that I read, there were people that
were adamant that this was in fact not a witch elm,
but another type of elm that's often mistaken for one.
Just wanted to include that in the interest of horticultural
history and to clarify that it is not which is
in the halloween e sense. At this point, it is
creepy though Yeah, even without that spelling difference, still creepy.
(07:59):
These graffiti messages appeared to be the work of a
single person. They were all written in the same type
of chalk and block letters uh, and it was considered
that they maybe were just somebody trying to play a prank.
But there had been no leads in the case that
had actually panned out up to that point, So these
bizarre missives opened up two new lines of investigation. Number one,
(08:19):
was there really someone named Bella who might be involved
in this body that had been found in Hagleywoods? And
number two, who was the artist behind the graffiti and
did they actually know something about the murder? But nothing,
not the name Bella, not the dental records, not the
hunt for the graffiti artists, seemed to lead to any
actual information. This woman seemed to be entirely untraceable, and
(08:43):
as the months dragged into years, all kinds of other
theories started to pop up about the identity of this
woman in the tree. And before we get to those
theories that started popping up in an effort to explain
the skeleton in Hagleywoods, let's take a brief break and
we'll have a word from one of our sponsors. You
(09:03):
know that awesome feeling you get when you can just
get stuff done with a click of your mouse and
it's fast and convenient. It's a good feeling. It's a
good feeling. And now you can do the same thing
with your shipping and mailing. You can do it without
even leaving your desk thanks to stamps dot Com. Stamps
dot com turns your PC or your Mac into your
own personal post office which never closes. You can buy
in print official US postage for any letter or package
(09:26):
using your computer and printer, and then you just hand
that off to your fabulous mail carrier or you drop
it in a box and you're done. You'll never have
to go to the post office again. It is super convenient.
Right now, you can sign up for stamps dot com
and use our promo code which is Stuff to get
a special offer that will entitle you to a four
week trial plus a one dollar bonus offer including both
(09:48):
postage and a digital scale. So don't wait. Go to
stamps dot com and before you do anything else, click
on that microphone at the top of the homepage and
type in stuff that's stamps dot com and enter stuff.
So we promised you a little witchiness at the beginning
in the actual which sense, not in the W Y
(10:12):
C H three sense, So we're getting there. Professor Margaret
Murray of University College London, who was an anthropologist, egyptologist,
archaeologist and folklorist, put forth the theory that Bella, as
she had at that point become known thanks to that graffiti,
had been the victim of a ritualistic occult murder. Murray's
(10:33):
evidence to support this theory was the fact that the
handbones had been found away from the body, and she
believed that the ceremony that had claimed Bella's life, which
is one which is called the hand of glory in
which the hand cut from the victim could be used
for divining or protection as part of the practice of witchcraft.
And the sensational nature of this idea really took hold
(10:55):
in both the press and the public imagination surminds me
of the satanic rich will abuse panic. It is absolutely
the same thing that that was not really founded in reality.
So when another murder victim was discovered in a neighboring village,
this when a man who was pinned to the ground
with a pitchfork, people started linking the two deaths even
(11:17):
though it had been two years between the two. Scotland Yard,
who was spurred on by Margaret Murray, started investigating this
witchcraft angle because there had been no other new leads
in the case and asked with all the other leads
got them nowhere? Had no real information that was gathered
as a result of Murray's theories. And as a side note,
(11:37):
While Margaret Murray was famous for a time in the
early twentieth century as an expert and I should put
that in the air quotes on witchcraft, most of her
writings on the subject were controversial at the time and
they were eventually debunked and she was largely discredited. She's
actually on my short list for an episode all her own.
But she was basically kind of making stuff up. Yeah,
(11:59):
the first time I read through this outline, I got
to this description of her purported satanic not satanic, but
like her purported ritualistic occult murderer, and I was like, really, really,
actual anthropologist, for real, did you did you just make
this up? Like? What? Really? You know? She used logic
that made sense to her, but I don't know that
(12:23):
she was kind of fabricating these in an effort to
be um to be misleading or sensationalist. I think she
might have believed them, but I will do more research
on her perhaps in the future. Maybe that will be
in October episode next year. I maybe can't wait till then.
But what's that's cool too? Then? So ten years after
(12:46):
that initial grizzly discovery in the tree, there was another
possibility that came to light. This time a woman going
by the name Anna from Claverley contacted the press in
a letter. She was responding to a series of articles
that had been written in nineteen fifty three about the murder,
saying she knew who had killed Bella. Anna's claim was
(13:07):
that Bella had in fact been part of an espionage
play gone wrong, and the letter read, finish your articles
regarding the witch Elm crime. By all means, they are
interesting to your readers, but you will never solve the mystery.
The one person who could give the answer is now
beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. Much as I hate
(13:28):
having to use a Nomeda plume, I think you would
appreciate it if you know me. The only clues I
can give you are that the person responsible for the crime,
died insane in nineteen forty two, and that the victim
was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about ninety one.
I have no wish to recall anymore. Anna's story cast
(13:49):
Bella as a Dutch woman who was passing information from
a British officer to a trapeze artist who appeared in
local theatrical productions. That trapeze artist would then pass that
mfl onto the Germans. Bella, in the story had become
too knowledgeable about this chain of of information, and she
was killed because of that knowledge, and then her body
(14:10):
was taken to Hagleywood's where it was hidden in the tree.
Of course, this fleshing out of the story passed. That
initial letter came because uh, the police got involved. Of course,
once the press got this letter h and they questioned
her because the area around Worcestershire was home to a
number of munitions factories during World War Two. It had
been scrutinized by the Nazis for information during the war.
(14:32):
It had also been a target, so authorities did pursue
this new German spy ring angle with some level of vigor.
Some aspects of Anna's story checked out. There had been
a British man connected to a German spy ring in
the area, but he had died in Stafford Mental Hospital
in ninety two, and as it turned out, that man
(14:52):
was related to Anna. Anna's real name was Una Massup.
Una had, she told police, been married to j Massip
and he had confessed the murder to her before his death.
It was her understanding that he, along with a dutch
Man named Van Raalt who was also involved, meant to
scare this woman by leaving her in the tree when
(15:13):
she was passed out because she was inebriated. They did
not actually intend to kill her. Yeah. The idea was
that she would wake up stuck in this tree and
see the error of her ways and being foolish, uh,
and would straighten up an act right. The police were
unable to locate this ven Rault character, and it appears
that they sort of abandoned the trail there. Years later, however,
(15:36):
another woman named Judith O'Donovan told police and investigators that
she was Jack mossa sort of distant cousin. I think
her he might have been her husband's cousin, and that
their entire family basically knew that Jack had been a
trader and that he had been connected to a woman's death,
so it sort of supported this spirring idea, uh and
the fact that he may have been connected to the
(15:58):
woman in the witch Holme. Another decade passed before another
theory emerged, and this one kind of combined the previous
two notions. In nineteen sixty eight, a book called Murder
by Witchcraft was published, written by David McCormick, and McCormick
penned an explanatory narrative in which the woman from the
Tree had been a Nazi spy named Clara Bella, who
(16:20):
was also an occultist. According to McCormick, who said that
he had been able to look at German intelligence reports
that listed the woman by her code name, she was
called Clara. His assertion was that the Bella and the
graffiti was referencing Clara Bella. McCormick's book indicated that Clara
had been sent into the County of West Midlands by
parachute in nineteen forty one, but that she was never
(16:43):
heard from again. Of course, these roads all proved to
be fruit list, just like all the others had in
terms of churning up any real information on the case
at the time. Three full decades after McCormick's book was released,
the case of Bella's identity once again gained a ten
chin and at this time pieces the puzzle started to
come together in the minds of interested parties. For one,
(17:06):
when the case closed, which was actually in two thousand five,
UH the case file was published and in it there
was a mention of a search for Bella's body to
be exhumed so that DNA evidence could be gathered, because
that would certainly be helpful, But that search was for
her body was unsuccessful. It turns out that this failure
to find her body was in part because they had
been looking in completely the wrong location. It had been
(17:29):
presumed that Bella had been buried locally, but in fact
her remains had gone to the University of Birmingham, to
a colleague of the original pathologist in the case, for
additional testing, and that was a detail that had sort
of been lost in the sixties, some years since the
case had been active before it was closed in two
thousand five, and unfortunately, the skeletal remains disappeared from the
(17:52):
university's records and their lab lost forever to time. And
any records from the University of Birmingham about any testing
that was done on those remains have also vanished. This
has led to some speculation of a cover up, but
it could also just be really terrible bookkeeping. Yeah, I'm
gonna hold out hope that one day it will be
one of those. Look what we found in our own
(18:13):
collection of human remains correctly. And the thing to keep
in mind too, um, and I know this from my
years working in the library, is that there were things
that happened during more time that really messed up record keeping.
You know. It wasn't necessarily that people were lazy or
trying to cover anything up. There was just there were
(18:34):
times when an air raid would happen and everything would
be shuffled around and stuff got lost. Yeah. Well, and
even if you are really careful, human beings still make errors.
And if you have a gigantic collection and are still accurate,
that's a bunch of errors. Anyway, coming up, we're going
to talk about an m I five file that might
(18:55):
actually give some weight to the narrative is that McCormick
had had reconstructed. But first we're going to take a
quick break for a word from one of our awesome sponsors.
A sponsor is me Andy's dot com. And you know,
whether you're wearing a suit or sweats, you're probably spending
a lot of time in your underwear. And often, instead
of making a statements that underwear is kind of boring,
(19:17):
means is here to change that. I would just like
to say, they're October pattern is adorable. Best thing ever. Yes, uh,
it's it's super it's I was so excited when I
got mine. I texted Holly immediately about underwear. Every pair
of me Andes is made from sustainably sourced modal. It's
a fabric that is twice as soft as cotton. Nothing
(19:39):
can describe the fit and feel of me ands and
once you try them on, you will understand why they
are called the world's most comfortable underwear. If you don't
love your first pair, they are free, no questions asked,
and there are dozens of styles and limited edition prints,
so it's always something new. Shipping is free in the
US and Canada, and you can save up to eight
dollars a pair with the Mean Subscription plan. Get the
(20:00):
subscription or a single pair and get off your first
order when you go to meandis dot com slash history.
That's meandis dot com slash history for off your first
order one more time? Meandis dot com slash history. So
another bit of information that also shed light on this
(20:21):
possibility that McCormick's theory had some truth to it a
declassified file in the British National Archives on Gestapo agent
Joseph Jacobs, who was an inexperienced, undertrained agent that was
sent to gather information on weather patterns in the London area.
Jacobs had parachuted into Cambridgeshire in broken his ankle in
(20:44):
the drop and was arrested by the Home Guard, which
was a World War two defense organization that was part
of the British Army. One of the items that Jacobs
was carrying when the Home Guard apprehended him was a photograph.
That photo was a picture of a woman named Clara Bowerley,
a singer and film actress that Jacob said was also
his paramore. He also told his captors that Clara Bowerley
(21:07):
was a Nazi secret agent and was supposed to parachute
into West Midlands that the two of them were supposed
to have made contact. Jacobs was executed by firing squad
in the late summer of nineteen forty one, and this
turned out to be the last execution at the Tower
of London. Uh. He could also easily be an episode
subject on his own. These m I five records on
(21:29):
Jacobs included an investigation of Bauerley. She was born in
nineteen o six, meaning that in nineteen forty one she
would have been thirty five, which was the right age
to put the pathology report of the witch Elm victim.
And she did work in music halls in the West
Midland area for two years before World War two began,
and she learned to speak English with no trace of
a German accent. When the woman who had been calling
(21:51):
herself Anna contacted the police in the nineteen fifties claiming
to have knowledge of the crime, she had mentioned a
music hall in the information that she gave to the police.
And while this might seem to tidily wrap up the
identity of Bella quite nicely, because the pieces do seem
to fit together, uh, Joseph Jacobs's granddaughter, who has long
examined the details of her grandfather's life, actually obtained a
(22:14):
death certificate for Clara Bauerley, indicating that in fact, She
died in Berlin in December ninety two of aronal poisoning.
I eat not stuffed into a tree in England. Of course,
gossip turned up a huge variety of other possibilities about
Bella's identity. She might have taken shelter in the tree
during an air raid and gotten stuck. She might have
(22:37):
been murdered by a lover and clumsily hidden in the tree.
She may have been a traveler or a Romani who
was killed out of mere suspicion. And there was even
a lead that, at least in terms of plausibility, seems
fairly valid. So on April seven of nineteen forty four,
a sex worker from Birmingham told police that a woman
that she knew had gone missing on Hagley Road or
(22:59):
in that area three years earlier, and that woman's name
was Bella. If this information garnered follow up from the police,
it does not appear to have gotten much traction. Incidentally,
this whole graffiti of who put Bella in the witch
Elm has continued in the seven decades since the murder
was discovered. There's an obelisk in Hagley Park called the
(23:21):
Witchbury Obelisk, and it's been the most frequently tagged location
since the nineteen seventies. Presumably at this point it's kids
trying to be spooky, and the spelling has changed from
w y c H to w I t c H.
It's definitely not somebody trying to communicate a kind of
clue about the unsolved murder case. At this point, it
(23:41):
is like, was here but exactly, And it's very possible
that it never was anything but people pulling pranks, but
we just don't know, uh. In A statistical analysis of
all of the known data in the Hagleywood's murder was
done by researchers Norm and Fenton and Martin Neil using
(24:02):
Bayesian analysis, and they determined a number of things. They
they're actually in that BBC radio uh piece that we
mentioned earlier, but then they also wrote a paper separately
where they explained it all and that thing is fabulous.
Um so it'll be in the show notes. But the
first thing that they determined is that there is a
(24:24):
probability that the cause of death was criminal. That one
is the completely unsurprising correct. There's a ninety seven percent
probability that Bella was not British. Less than two percent
chance that she was Dutch and an eighteen percent chance
that she was German. There is a nine percent probability
(24:46):
that Bella was still alive when she was put in
the tree. That's awful. That kind of holds with that
whole story that the men had put her there to
scare her and that she had somehow become stuck. There's
a thirty three percent possibility that Jack Massa was involved
in her death and seven percent that it was some
kind of intelligence service. In order to increase that probability
(25:10):
to a nine percent chance that Massa was involved, the
researchers model would have required four additional witnesses in addition
to Youn Massup and his cousin Judith, And there is
a twenty five percent probability that Bella was a spy
and a six percent probability that she was a prostitute.
In their paper on this study, the researchers were very
(25:32):
clear that there are lots of variables that could quit
really quickly change the whole statistical picture. For example, they're
working under the assumption that police involved in the investigation
really did exhaust all the leads in each instance where
they felt like there was a dead end. If they
left a stone unturned here there, then the models shifts significantly. Additionally,
(25:54):
there's the credibility of various witnesses. Yeah, if you um
increase or dec secredibility rating of various witnesses, that model
changes really quickly as well. But of course, all of
those numbers do not settle this crime conclusively, and Bella
story remains a mystery, and considering the age of the case,
it is unlikely that this murder will ever be solved unless,
(26:16):
as Tracy mentioned earlier, the remains uh or the university
lab files suddenly turn up. So that is our spooky
unsolved mystery for Halloween. Uh. And we hope yours is
safe and that you do not end up in a
tree stuff. Don't you can climb a tree safely if
you want to do that. I have never climbed a
(26:39):
tree really Yeah. Uh dirty, They're dirty, and I'm scared.
That's the bottom line. Uh. My mother had very clear
rules about how large the branch could be for us
to safely climb the tree, and if we climbed up
into branches that were narrower than that, I think it
(26:59):
had to be at least as uh as big as
our arm I can't remember it was our armor, like
there was a body part that we had to compare
before we put our weight on any tree limb. Yeah,
my mother. My mother is very concerned with safety. I've
had many friends through the years who were big into
tree climbing, and they always look at me like I'm
(27:21):
some sort of mutant when I'm like, I've never climbed
a tree and I feel no urge to change that.
That's fine if you have some listener mail, though I do.
I have three pieces of listener mail, but they're brief.
The first one comes from our listener Kaylee. She sent
us a lovely parcel. She says, Hi, ladies, I've been
a longtime listener to the podcast and I finally decided
to write in after the John Brown Rate episode. I
(27:43):
am a museum curator for the National Park Service and
currently work in Harper's Ferry. Yeah, how great is that?
I read all our email, but I forgot this one. Well,
this was an email. It's a parcel. That's why you
haven't seen it. Uh. I moved here earlier this year
from Georgia. I was so decited to listen to the
episode because it gave me more insight than I had
(28:03):
already gathered. Keep doing what you do. I enjoy every
episode as it gets me through the mundane tasks at work.
Stay fabulous, Kaylee and Kaylee also sent us cool um
magnets and UH State Quarters just send us a lovely
little partial thank you, Kayley. That's the coolest. That's awesome,
That's really cool. And then I have two emails from
our very recent podcast on Vincent Price. First one says, hi, ladies,
(28:27):
I listened to your recent Victoria Price interview and I
was delighted to hear her mention that someone had emailed
her about their Vincent Price cooking blog, because that someone
was me. My partner and I have been huge fans
of Vincent Price. It's childhood and we love to cook,
so we decided to do thirty one days of Vincent
Price Cooking for the month of October. It seemed fitting.
Check out the blog if you would like, and let
(28:47):
me know if you've tried any of the recipes we've
tried or any we haven't that you recommend. That blog
can be found at thirty one days of Vincent Recipes
dot tumbler dot com. Uh. I love the interview with Victoria.
Isn't she just incredible? The answer to that is yes, Um,
she's amazing. So I did look at their blog and
they're Oh, they're doing such lovely little things. They're making
yummy stuff. It makes me want to bake all the
(29:09):
tarts because he has a lot of tarts in that book.
My favorite is still the Lobster brisk It's very heavy
and rich, but it's so delicious. My next one is
a fun story about Vincent Price from someone. We've had
a couple of people mentioned that they've seen him lecture
or that they ran into him at some point in
their lives, and this one was very sweet. So it
comes from our listener by Bette. She says, your interview
(29:29):
with Victoria Price was wonderful and it reminded me of
my Vincent Price story in ninety eight. I was on
an eighth grade trip into New York City and we
were allowed to scatter once. We were at the Whitney
Museum of Modern Art, and I was with a friend
near a very modern piece of art, a boulder surrounded
by a series of concentric circles of different types types
of stone granite. I noticed a very tall and distinguished
(29:51):
man in the room who looked oh so familiar, but
I wasn't sure who he was. My friend, who probably
recognized him, goaded me to get his autograph, but I
still wasn't sure who he was, so I did what
any brave but confused team would do. I walked up
to him and I said, who are you? He smiled
and bent at the waist until he was closer to
(30:11):
my height of five four, and in his remarkable deep voice,
he practically saying why. And as soon as I heard
that voice, I knew exactly who he was, and I
asked for his autograph, which he gave me written in
very beautiful script, Vincent Price was my first celebrities signing
slash autograph and a thrill that I will never forget.
That's the sweetest story. Yeah, we I mean. On on
(30:34):
social media, we've gotten so many cute, like sort of
brief stories. One person had tweeted at me and said
that a friend that she knows uh lived not far
from him when she was a girl, and he would
sometimes bring cookies out to the kids at the bus
stop while they waited. Like there are just so many
cute little stories that have come up that it just
(30:54):
is delightful. Uh. If you would like to write to us,
you could do so at History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You can also find us across social
media as missed in History. That's at Twitter at misston History,
Facebook dot com, slash mist in History, Instagram at misst
in history, uh, mist in history dot tumbler dot com,
and on pinterest dot com slash mist in history. If
(31:16):
you would like to come to our parents site, how
stuff Works, you can type almost anything that you can
think of in the search bar and you will get
a load of content to delight and entertain yourself. You
can also visit Tracy and me at misston History dot com,
where we have all of our old episodes, the entire
archive of the show, as well as show notes from
the last several years that Tracy and I have been
(31:37):
on the show in the occasional other goody So come
and visit us at misst in history dot com and
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Today's episode of Stuff You Missed in History Classes brought
to you by Tracker. Tracker is finding more than a
million misplaced items each day. Order yours and never lose
anything again. Listeners to this show get a free Tracker
Bravo with any order. Go to the Tracker dot Com
and inner promo code history. The hardest thing you'll ever
(00:20):
have to find is their website. Go to the Tracker
dot com right now and in a promo code history
for your free Tracker Bravo with any order. Again, that's
the Tracker dot Com promo code history. Deep in the
back of your mind, you've always had the feeling that
there's something strange about reality. There is in life, death,
(00:41):
nanopart of MECHANICALSI punch evolution. On our award winning science
podcast Stuff to Abow your Mind, we examine neurological quandaries,
cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and our trans human future. New
episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify,
and anywhere you get your podcast. Welcome to Steph you
(01:01):
Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Collie fry and I'm
Tracy P. Wilson and it's Halloween, Tracy hers the best
day of the year. Uh. And today to celebrate Halloween,
(01:22):
we're going to talk about a history mystery. It's got everything.
It's got a mystery, a mystery body, it's got witches,
it's got espionage, it's got everything, and it's never been solved.
Though as we get to the end of the episode,
we're gonna get into some interesting math that tries to
sort out the situation. But I don't want to spoil
(01:43):
any of that, so let's just hop right in. So
in the nineteen four Days, a grizzly discovery was made
in a tree in Worcestershire, England. On April eighteenth of
nineteen forty three, four teenage boys were looking for birds
nests and they sent the best cli timer up an
elm tree. In the hollow of the tree, he did
(02:04):
not find a bird's nest. He found a skull. Initially
he thought it might be an animal skull, but when
he pulled it from its place in the tree, he
realized no, it was a human skull, and there was
also a little bit of decomposing flesh still attached. To
the skull as well as a patch of hair, and
the skull had distinctive teeth, they were crooked, and there
(02:26):
was sort of what looked what looks at pictures like
almost a pronounced overbite, but also some lower jaw um deformation.
The boys, whose names were Robert Hart, Thomas Willett's, Bob Farmer,
and Fred Payne, were terrified. They were also really worried
that they were going to get in trouble because they
had been trespassing in Hagley Woods. This estate, which was
(02:50):
near Birmingham, was private. They had no permission to be
in there looking for nests. They had also been hunting rabbits,
so they'd basically been poaching, and they had been doing
all of that that day with no permission. So the
boys promised each other that they would keep it a secret.
They put the skull back in its spot in the
tree and then they left. But the youngest boy of
(03:11):
that group, Tommy Willitts, did not in fact keep their secret.
He was really deeply upset by the discovery, and he
eventually confessed his troubles to his father, and his father
immediately contacted police, and of course an investigation began. When
the police examined this elm tree, they found not only
the skull, but also additional remains, including the majority of
(03:33):
the skeleton. There were also pieces of clothing, a wedding
band and a single shoe with a crepe sol. The
skeletal remains of one of the body's hands were also
found buried near the tree. Examination of the remains by
a pathologist concluded that the skeleton was a woman who
had been between thirty five and forty when she died.
(03:54):
She was five ft or one point five meters tall,
brunette and had probably given birth this one point. Another
man involved in the investigation was forensic biologist Dr John Lund, who,
at the age of one hundred and one, told the
BBC radio show Punt p I about his examination of
the remains. That interview happened in twenty fifteen, so he
(04:17):
had been working under James Webster at the West Midlands
Forensic Science Laboratory and he kept notes on the case.
The body arrived at his lab on April two days
after it had been discovered. The bones had absolutely no
remaining flesh. The hair that was attached to the skull
was quite fragile, but he determined that it had not
(04:37):
been chemically treated with color or any kind of curling solution,
and the woman Webster in Land concluded had been asphyxiated
by a piece of cafoda that had been shoved in
her throat. Additionally, it was believed that the body had
been hidden in the tree while it was still warm,
feet first, and that it had been there for about
(04:58):
a year and a half, placing her death somewhere around
October of nineteen forty one. Efforts started immediately to try
to identify what appeared to be the victim of a murder.
Missing persons reports were calmed through for anybody who might
line up with this mystery discovery. There were detailed descriptions
of what she had probably been wearing based on what
(05:18):
Webster had been able to extrapolate from this shoe and
the clothing remains that had been collected. That there was
a whole reference through the dental records with dentists from
all around Great Britain, but because of the war, missing
persons records were something of a mess at this point,
but even so, all known listings were reviewed for a
possible connection, literally thousands and thousands of records, but nothing matched.
(05:42):
No results with dental dental records either, despite the fact
that she had some unique features, including that jaw deformity
and a recently pulled tooth that had had been pulled
shortly before she had died, and they really cast a
wide net by placing this information in dental journals, hoping
that they would find a dentist it recognize any of
this information, but the case went cold. A small clue
(06:06):
finally came from a man who had been working in
management in one of the area's industrial companies. He had
reported to police in July nine he was walking to
his home near Hagleywood and he heard a scream. Another person,
a teacher, who was also on a path but coming
in the opposite direction, had confirmed that he too had
heard this screaming, and police were called to the scene
(06:30):
at the time that these two men heard this scream,
which would have been close enough to the October death
estimate to have been a possible connection to the murder,
But police in nineteen forty one found nothing where the
two men had heard the woman screaming, and they found
nothing when they revisited the scene in nineteen forty three.
After reviewing that ninety one report, just as the case
(06:51):
seemed to be running entirely cold, in December of nineteen
forty three, odd graffiti started popping up in the area.
Scrawled in various play says were the words who put
Bella down the witch elm? There were actually a lot
of variant variations on the phrase, including who put Luebella
down the witch elm? And who put Bella in the
witch elm? There were also some more instances of graffiti
(07:14):
that's strayed from this question format and said things more
like hagleywood Bella. And as a point of note, as
we say this, we're not saying which here, uh, in
the sense you might be thinking, what with this being Halloween,
when we say witch elm, the spelling is w y
c H. That's a tree also known as a Scott's elm. However, uh,
(07:35):
In several things that I read, there were people that
were adamant that this was in fact not a witch elm,
but another type of elm that's often mistaken for one.
Just wanted to include that in the interest of horticultural
history and to clarify that it is not which is
in the halloween e sense. At this point, it is
creepy though Yeah, even without that spelling difference, still creepy.
(07:59):
These graffiti messages appeared to be the work of a
single person. They were all written in the same type
of chalk and block letters uh, and it was considered
that they maybe were just somebody trying to play a prank.
But there had been no leads in the case that
had actually panned out up to that point, So these
bizarre missives opened up two new lines of investigation. Number one,
(08:19):
was there really someone named Bella who might be involved
in this body that had been found in Hagleywoods? And
number two, who was the artist behind the graffiti and
did they actually know something about the murder? But nothing,
not the name Bella, not the dental records, not the
hunt for the graffiti artists, seemed to lead to any
actual information. This woman seemed to be entirely untraceable, and
(08:43):
as the months dragged into years, all kinds of other
theories started to pop up about the identity of this
woman in the tree. And before we get to those
theories that started popping up in an effort to explain
the skeleton in Hagleywoods, let's take a brief break and
we'll have a word from one of our sponsors. You
(09:03):
know that awesome feeling you get when you can just
get stuff done with a click of your mouse and
it's fast and convenient. It's a good feeling. It's a
good feeling. And now you can do the same thing
with your shipping and mailing. You can do it without
even leaving your desk thanks to stamps dot Com. Stamps
dot com turns your PC or your Mac into your
own personal post office which never closes. You can buy
in print official US postage for any letter or package
(09:26):
using your computer and printer, and then you just hand
that off to your fabulous mail carrier or you drop
it in a box and you're done. You'll never have
to go to the post office again. It is super convenient.
Right now, you can sign up for stamps dot com
and use our promo code which is Stuff to get
a special offer that will entitle you to a four
week trial plus a one dollar bonus offer including both
(09:48):
postage and a digital scale. So don't wait. Go to
stamps dot com and before you do anything else, click
on that microphone at the top of the homepage and
type in stuff that's stamps dot com and enter stuff.
So we promised you a little witchiness at the beginning
in the actual which sense, not in the W Y
(10:12):
C H three sense, So we're getting there. Professor Margaret
Murray of University College London, who was an anthropologist, egyptologist,
archaeologist and folklorist, put forth the theory that Bella, as
she had at that point become known thanks to that graffiti,
had been the victim of a ritualistic occult murder. Murray's
(10:33):
evidence to support this theory was the fact that the
handbones had been found away from the body, and she
believed that the ceremony that had claimed Bella's life, which
is one which is called the hand of glory in
which the hand cut from the victim could be used
for divining or protection as part of the practice of witchcraft.
And the sensational nature of this idea really took hold
(10:55):
in both the press and the public imagination surminds me
of the satanic rich will abuse panic. It is absolutely
the same thing that that was not really founded in reality.
So when another murder victim was discovered in a neighboring village,
this when a man who was pinned to the ground
with a pitchfork, people started linking the two deaths even
(11:17):
though it had been two years between the two. Scotland Yard,
who was spurred on by Margaret Murray, started investigating this
witchcraft angle because there had been no other new leads
in the case and asked with all the other leads
got them nowhere? Had no real information that was gathered
as a result of Murray's theories. And as a side note,
(11:37):
While Margaret Murray was famous for a time in the
early twentieth century as an expert and I should put
that in the air quotes on witchcraft, most of her
writings on the subject were controversial at the time and
they were eventually debunked and she was largely discredited. She's
actually on my short list for an episode all her own.
But she was basically kind of making stuff up. Yeah,
(11:59):
the first time I read through this outline, I got
to this description of her purported satanic not satanic, but
like her purported ritualistic occult murderer, and I was like, really, really,
actual anthropologist, for real, did you did you just make
this up? Like? What? Really? You know? She used logic
that made sense to her, but I don't know that
(12:23):
she was kind of fabricating these in an effort to
be um to be misleading or sensationalist. I think she
might have believed them, but I will do more research
on her perhaps in the future. Maybe that will be
in October episode next year. I maybe can't wait till then.
But what's that's cool too? Then? So ten years after
(12:46):
that initial grizzly discovery in the tree, there was another
possibility that came to light. This time a woman going
by the name Anna from Claverley contacted the press in
a letter. She was responding to a series of articles
that had been written in nineteen fifty three about the murder,
saying she knew who had killed Bella. Anna's claim was
(13:07):
that Bella had in fact been part of an espionage
play gone wrong, and the letter read, finish your articles
regarding the witch Elm crime. By all means, they are
interesting to your readers, but you will never solve the mystery.
The one person who could give the answer is now
beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts. Much as I hate
(13:28):
having to use a Nomeda plume, I think you would
appreciate it if you know me. The only clues I
can give you are that the person responsible for the crime,
died insane in nineteen forty two, and that the victim
was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about ninety one.
I have no wish to recall anymore. Anna's story cast
(13:49):
Bella as a Dutch woman who was passing information from
a British officer to a trapeze artist who appeared in
local theatrical productions. That trapeze artist would then pass that
mfl onto the Germans. Bella, in the story had become
too knowledgeable about this chain of of information, and she
was killed because of that knowledge, and then her body
(14:10):
was taken to Hagleywood's where it was hidden in the tree.
Of course, this fleshing out of the story passed. That
initial letter came because uh, the police got involved. Of course,
once the press got this letter h and they questioned
her because the area around Worcestershire was home to a
number of munitions factories during World War Two. It had
been scrutinized by the Nazis for information during the war.
(14:32):
It had also been a target, so authorities did pursue
this new German spy ring angle with some level of vigor.
Some aspects of Anna's story checked out. There had been
a British man connected to a German spy ring in
the area, but he had died in Stafford Mental Hospital
in ninety two, and as it turned out, that man
(14:52):
was related to Anna. Anna's real name was Una Massup.
Una had, she told police, been married to j Massip
and he had confessed the murder to her before his death.
It was her understanding that he, along with a dutch
Man named Van Raalt who was also involved, meant to
scare this woman by leaving her in the tree when
(15:13):
she was passed out because she was inebriated. They did
not actually intend to kill her. Yeah. The idea was
that she would wake up stuck in this tree and
see the error of her ways and being foolish, uh,
and would straighten up an act right. The police were
unable to locate this ven Rault character, and it appears
that they sort of abandoned the trail there. Years later, however,
(15:36):
another woman named Judith O'Donovan told police and investigators that
she was Jack mossa sort of distant cousin. I think
her he might have been her husband's cousin, and that
their entire family basically knew that Jack had been a
trader and that he had been connected to a woman's death,
so it sort of supported this spirring idea, uh and
the fact that he may have been connected to the
(15:58):
woman in the witch Holme. Another decade passed before another
theory emerged, and this one kind of combined the previous
two notions. In nineteen sixty eight, a book called Murder
by Witchcraft was published, written by David McCormick, and McCormick
penned an explanatory narrative in which the woman from the
Tree had been a Nazi spy named Clara Bella, who
(16:20):
was also an occultist. According to McCormick, who said that
he had been able to look at German intelligence reports
that listed the woman by her code name, she was
called Clara. His assertion was that the Bella and the
graffiti was referencing Clara Bella. McCormick's book indicated that Clara
had been sent into the County of West Midlands by
parachute in nineteen forty one, but that she was never
(16:43):
heard from again. Of course, these roads all proved to
be fruit list, just like all the others had in
terms of churning up any real information on the case
at the time. Three full decades after McCormick's book was released,
the case of Bella's identity once again gained a ten
chin and at this time pieces the puzzle started to
come together in the minds of interested parties. For one,
(17:06):
when the case closed, which was actually in two thousand five,
UH the case file was published and in it there
was a mention of a search for Bella's body to
be exhumed so that DNA evidence could be gathered, because
that would certainly be helpful, But that search was for
her body was unsuccessful. It turns out that this failure
to find her body was in part because they had
been looking in completely the wrong location. It had been
(17:29):
presumed that Bella had been buried locally, but in fact
her remains had gone to the University of Birmingham, to
a colleague of the original pathologist in the case, for
additional testing, and that was a detail that had sort
of been lost in the sixties, some years since the
case had been active before it was closed in two
thousand five, and unfortunately, the skeletal remains disappeared from the
(17:52):
university's records and their lab lost forever to time. And
any records from the University of Birmingham about any testing
that was done on those remains have also vanished. This
has led to some speculation of a cover up, but
it could also just be really terrible bookkeeping. Yeah, I'm
gonna hold out hope that one day it will be
one of those. Look what we found in our own
(18:13):
collection of human remains correctly. And the thing to keep
in mind too, um, and I know this from my
years working in the library, is that there were things
that happened during more time that really messed up record keeping.
You know. It wasn't necessarily that people were lazy or
trying to cover anything up. There was just there were
(18:34):
times when an air raid would happen and everything would
be shuffled around and stuff got lost. Yeah. Well, and
even if you are really careful, human beings still make errors.
And if you have a gigantic collection and are still accurate,
that's a bunch of errors. Anyway, coming up, we're going
to talk about an m I five file that might
(18:55):
actually give some weight to the narrative is that McCormick
had had reconstructed. But first we're going to take a
quick break for a word from one of our awesome sponsors.
A sponsor is me Andy's dot com. And you know,
whether you're wearing a suit or sweats, you're probably spending
a lot of time in your underwear. And often, instead
of making a statements that underwear is kind of boring,
(19:17):
means is here to change that. I would just like
to say, they're October pattern is adorable. Best thing ever. Yes, uh,
it's it's super it's I was so excited when I
got mine. I texted Holly immediately about underwear. Every pair
of me Andes is made from sustainably sourced modal. It's
a fabric that is twice as soft as cotton. Nothing
(19:39):
can describe the fit and feel of me ands and
once you try them on, you will understand why they
are called the world's most comfortable underwear. If you don't
love your first pair, they are free, no questions asked,
and there are dozens of styles and limited edition prints,
so it's always something new. Shipping is free in the
US and Canada, and you can save up to eight
dollars a pair with the Mean Subscription plan. Get the
(20:00):
subscription or a single pair and get off your first
order when you go to meandis dot com slash history.
That's meandis dot com slash history for off your first
order one more time? Meandis dot com slash history. So
another bit of information that also shed light on this
(20:21):
possibility that McCormick's theory had some truth to it a
declassified file in the British National Archives on Gestapo agent
Joseph Jacobs, who was an inexperienced, undertrained agent that was
sent to gather information on weather patterns in the London area.
Jacobs had parachuted into Cambridgeshire in broken his ankle in
(20:44):
the drop and was arrested by the Home Guard, which
was a World War two defense organization that was part
of the British Army. One of the items that Jacobs
was carrying when the Home Guard apprehended him was a photograph.
That photo was a picture of a woman named Clara Bowerley,
a singer and film actress that Jacob said was also
his paramore. He also told his captors that Clara Bowerley
(21:07):
was a Nazi secret agent and was supposed to parachute
into West Midlands that the two of them were supposed
to have made contact. Jacobs was executed by firing squad
in the late summer of nineteen forty one, and this
turned out to be the last execution at the Tower
of London. Uh. He could also easily be an episode
subject on his own. These m I five records on
(21:29):
Jacobs included an investigation of Bauerley. She was born in
nineteen o six, meaning that in nineteen forty one she
would have been thirty five, which was the right age
to put the pathology report of the witch Elm victim.
And she did work in music halls in the West
Midland area for two years before World War two began,
and she learned to speak English with no trace of
a German accent. When the woman who had been calling
(21:51):
herself Anna contacted the police in the nineteen fifties claiming
to have knowledge of the crime, she had mentioned a
music hall in the information that she gave to the police.
And while this might seem to tidily wrap up the
identity of Bella quite nicely, because the pieces do seem
to fit together, uh, Joseph Jacobs's granddaughter, who has long
examined the details of her grandfather's life, actually obtained a
(22:14):
death certificate for Clara Bauerley, indicating that in fact, She
died in Berlin in December ninety two of aronal poisoning.
I eat not stuffed into a tree in England. Of course,
gossip turned up a huge variety of other possibilities about
Bella's identity. She might have taken shelter in the tree
during an air raid and gotten stuck. She might have
(22:37):
been murdered by a lover and clumsily hidden in the tree.
She may have been a traveler or a Romani who
was killed out of mere suspicion. And there was even
a lead that, at least in terms of plausibility, seems
fairly valid. So on April seven of nineteen forty four,
a sex worker from Birmingham told police that a woman
that she knew had gone missing on Hagley Road or
(22:59):
in that area three years earlier, and that woman's name
was Bella. If this information garnered follow up from the police,
it does not appear to have gotten much traction. Incidentally,
this whole graffiti of who put Bella in the witch
Elm has continued in the seven decades since the murder
was discovered. There's an obelisk in Hagley Park called the
(23:21):
Witchbury Obelisk, and it's been the most frequently tagged location
since the nineteen seventies. Presumably at this point it's kids
trying to be spooky, and the spelling has changed from
w y c H to w I t c H.
It's definitely not somebody trying to communicate a kind of
clue about the unsolved murder case. At this point, it
(23:41):
is like, was here but exactly, And it's very possible
that it never was anything but people pulling pranks, but
we just don't know, uh. In A statistical analysis of
all of the known data in the Hagleywood's murder was
done by researchers Norm and Fenton and Martin Neil using
(24:02):
Bayesian analysis, and they determined a number of things. They
they're actually in that BBC radio uh piece that we
mentioned earlier, but then they also wrote a paper separately
where they explained it all and that thing is fabulous.
Um so it'll be in the show notes. But the
first thing that they determined is that there is a
(24:24):
probability that the cause of death was criminal. That one
is the completely unsurprising correct. There's a ninety seven percent
probability that Bella was not British. Less than two percent
chance that she was Dutch and an eighteen percent chance
that she was German. There is a nine percent probability
(24:46):
that Bella was still alive when she was put in
the tree. That's awful. That kind of holds with that
whole story that the men had put her there to
scare her and that she had somehow become stuck. There's
a thirty three percent possibility that Jack Massa was involved
in her death and seven percent that it was some
kind of intelligence service. In order to increase that probability
(25:10):
to a nine percent chance that Massa was involved, the
researchers model would have required four additional witnesses in addition
to Youn Massup and his cousin Judith, And there is
a twenty five percent probability that Bella was a spy
and a six percent probability that she was a prostitute.
In their paper on this study, the researchers were very
(25:32):
clear that there are lots of variables that could quit
really quickly change the whole statistical picture. For example, they're
working under the assumption that police involved in the investigation
really did exhaust all the leads in each instance where
they felt like there was a dead end. If they
left a stone unturned here there, then the models shifts significantly. Additionally,
(25:54):
there's the credibility of various witnesses. Yeah, if you um
increase or dec secredibility rating of various witnesses, that model
changes really quickly as well. But of course, all of
those numbers do not settle this crime conclusively, and Bella
story remains a mystery, and considering the age of the case,
it is unlikely that this murder will ever be solved unless,
(26:16):
as Tracy mentioned earlier, the remains uh or the university
lab files suddenly turn up. So that is our spooky
unsolved mystery for Halloween. Uh. And we hope yours is
safe and that you do not end up in a
tree stuff. Don't you can climb a tree safely if
you want to do that. I have never climbed a
(26:39):
tree really Yeah. Uh dirty, They're dirty, and I'm scared.
That's the bottom line. Uh. My mother had very clear
rules about how large the branch could be for us
to safely climb the tree, and if we climbed up
into branches that were narrower than that, I think it
(26:59):
had to be at least as uh as big as
our arm I can't remember it was our armor, like
there was a body part that we had to compare
before we put our weight on any tree limb. Yeah,
my mother. My mother is very concerned with safety. I've
had many friends through the years who were big into
tree climbing, and they always look at me like I'm
(27:21):
some sort of mutant when I'm like, I've never climbed
a tree and I feel no urge to change that.
That's fine if you have some listener mail, though I do.
I have three pieces of listener mail, but they're brief.
The first one comes from our listener Kaylee. She sent
us a lovely parcel. She says, Hi, ladies, I've been
a longtime listener to the podcast and I finally decided
to write in after the John Brown Rate episode. I
(27:43):
am a museum curator for the National Park Service and
currently work in Harper's Ferry. Yeah, how great is that?
I read all our email, but I forgot this one. Well,
this was an email. It's a parcel. That's why you
haven't seen it. Uh. I moved here earlier this year
from Georgia. I was so decited to listen to the
episode because it gave me more insight than I had
(28:03):
already gathered. Keep doing what you do. I enjoy every
episode as it gets me through the mundane tasks at work.
Stay fabulous, Kaylee and Kaylee also sent us cool um
magnets and UH State Quarters just send us a lovely
little partial thank you, Kayley. That's the coolest. That's awesome,
That's really cool. And then I have two emails from
our very recent podcast on Vincent Price. First one says, hi, ladies,
(28:27):
I listened to your recent Victoria Price interview and I
was delighted to hear her mention that someone had emailed
her about their Vincent Price cooking blog, because that someone
was me. My partner and I have been huge fans
of Vincent Price. It's childhood and we love to cook,
so we decided to do thirty one days of Vincent
Price Cooking for the month of October. It seemed fitting.
Check out the blog if you would like, and let
(28:47):
me know if you've tried any of the recipes we've
tried or any we haven't that you recommend. That blog
can be found at thirty one days of Vincent Recipes
dot tumbler dot com. Uh. I love the interview with Victoria.
Isn't she just incredible? The answer to that is yes, Um,
she's amazing. So I did look at their blog and
they're Oh, they're doing such lovely little things. They're making
yummy stuff. It makes me want to bake all the
(29:09):
tarts because he has a lot of tarts in that book.
My favorite is still the Lobster brisk It's very heavy
and rich, but it's so delicious. My next one is
a fun story about Vincent Price from someone. We've had
a couple of people mentioned that they've seen him lecture
or that they ran into him at some point in
their lives, and this one was very sweet. So it
comes from our listener by Bette. She says, your interview
(29:29):
with Victoria Price was wonderful and it reminded me of
my Vincent Price story in ninety eight. I was on
an eighth grade trip into New York City and we
were allowed to scatter once. We were at the Whitney
Museum of Modern Art, and I was with a friend
near a very modern piece of art, a boulder surrounded
by a series of concentric circles of different types types
of stone granite. I noticed a very tall and distinguished
(29:51):
man in the room who looked oh so familiar, but
I wasn't sure who he was. My friend, who probably
recognized him, goaded me to get his autograph, but I
still wasn't sure who he was, so I did what
any brave but confused team would do. I walked up
to him and I said, who are you? He smiled
and bent at the waist until he was closer to
(30:11):
my height of five four, and in his remarkable deep voice,
he practically saying why. And as soon as I heard
that voice, I knew exactly who he was, and I
asked for his autograph, which he gave me written in
very beautiful script, Vincent Price was my first celebrities signing
slash autograph and a thrill that I will never forget.
That's the sweetest story. Yeah, we I mean. On on
(30:34):
social media, we've gotten so many cute, like sort of
brief stories. One person had tweeted at me and said
that a friend that she knows uh lived not far
from him when she was a girl, and he would
sometimes bring cookies out to the kids at the bus
stop while they waited. Like there are just so many
cute little stories that have come up that it just
(30:54):
is delightful. Uh. If you would like to write to us,
you could do so at History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You can also find us across social
media as missed in History. That's at Twitter at misston History,
Facebook dot com, slash mist in History, Instagram at misst
in history, uh, mist in history dot tumbler dot com,
and on pinterest dot com slash mist in history. If
(31:16):
you would like to come to our parents site, how
stuff Works, you can type almost anything that you can
think of in the search bar and you will get
a load of content to delight and entertain yourself. You
can also visit Tracy and me at misston History dot com,
where we have all of our old episodes, the entire
archive of the show, as well as show notes from
the last several years that Tracy and I have been
(31:37):
on the show in the occasional other goody So come
and visit us at misst in history dot com and
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!