Mystery at Jacob's Well by Marcia Allen Bennett

But… after much searching, I found no reference to the identity card. Perhaps I could even find the name and address of the woman. This little story seemed rather odd, and I decided to go back to the police files on the Bella case and try to trace the origins of the story. Perhaps she didn’t, because she had stolen it in the first place? Hmmm… Logically, the woman, upon noticing that her card was missing, should have gone and applied for a replacement. That would clearly be impossible since identification cards needed to be produced when requested by the police, when opening or withdrawing from a Post Office (bank) account and when accessing National Health Services. In the dramatization, the woman says she has been missing her card for months. Perhaps it was actually Bella who lived at that address, and this woman had had her knocked off and stepped into her life.īut… there were also several problems with this theory… the most obvious one being that no-one could survive for long in wartime Britain (1943) without a valid identification card and ration book. The obvious thought that came to me was… perhaps this woman had stolen Bella’s identity. This did not ring true to my ear and I decided to do a bit of digging. With no evidence to discount her story the police were forced to move on.Ī typical buff coloured Identity Card from the early years of WW2 in England Narrator: Mysteriously, the woman had no knowledge of how her ID card had ended up in Hagley Wood and claimed to have never been there in her life. Officer: Sure you can have it back, just as soon as we catch whoever put that lady in that tree. Woman: But that’s so strange, I’ve never been near Hagley Wood in my life. Officer: Well, yes, we actually thought this card might have been hers. Woman: Hagley Wood, you mean where they found that woman in the tree. Officer: That’s just it, this card was found in Hagley Wood. Woman: Yes, I’ve been missing it for months. Your address was listed on this identity card and we wondered if you knew the owner. Officer: Hello ma’am, sorry to bother you at home. The investigators were relieved and briefly hoped that the skeleton belonged to the woman named on the card, but when they visited the address on the card they found its owner was still alive. Narrator: The final and most promising item was a woman’s identification card.

The excerpt below comes from around the 16:30 mark of the podcast.

This extract is from the Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories podcast, Episode 165 (part 1 of their Bella trilogy). While listening to some podcasts on the Bella in the Wych Elm mystery, I was struck by one claim which didn’t sound right.

Mystery at Jacob's Well by Marcia Allen Bennett