Woman's decomposing body found in tree - Sydney

Dr Strange

This:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087748/Police-baffled-mystery-womans-decomposing-body-high-tree-suburban-Sydney.html

Police baffled in mystery of woman's decomposing body found high in a tree in suburban Sydney

By Richard Shears
Last updated at 10:24 AM on 17th January 2012


The discovery of a woman's decomposing body 30ft up a tree in suburban Sydney, Australia, has both police and local residents baffled.

The woman, whose body was discovered last week, may have died on or around New Year's Day.

Police are convinced there was no way she could have fallen into the tree from any nearby building, and that it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to place her dead body that high up.

It is more likely that she climbed up the tree - in Prince Lane, Randwick - and died in its branches.


The only clue to the length of time the woman had been in the tree is the comment of a five-year-old boy, who told his father that he thought he had seen someone in the branches a few months ago.


The father, who did not wish to be identified, said: 'It's weird to have someone in such close proximity. It's got us all wondering who this lady is.'

Police have not ruled out the possibility that the woman might have been living in the tree for some time.

But residents who use the laneway to put out their garbage bins say they had not seen anyone in or near the tree recently.

Early in the new year, around January 4 by one resident's calculations, a foul smell began to fill the lane. Many residents thought a cat or wild animal like a possum had died in the area.


'My assumption is it started to smell on Wednesday [January 4] ... I'm no expert on decomposing bodies in summer time, but when I went out around the start of the New Year I remember thinking that something smelled dead'
Because the tree and a fence under it have been contaminated by the woman's decaying body, both have now been removed.


Miss Danyane Bowing, who lives next to the tree, said she believed the mystery woman may have walked through her garden around New Year's Eve and climbed her fence into the tree.


She told the Sydney Morning Herald: 'My assumption is it started to smell on Wednesday [January 4]... I'm no expert on decomposing bodies in summer time, but when I went out around the start of the New Year I remember thinking that something smelled dead.'


She said that most people thought it was a dead animal, or decaying food that had been left out as rubbish in the summer heat.

Police said they had not been able to identify the woman, despite extensive inquiries.


Chief Inspector Dave McBeath said: 'We're matching the body against the missing persons list, but as you can appreciate the ID's not a good one. The body has decomposed to such an extent that I'm not sure the fingerprints are useable.'


A post-mortem has revealed that the woman was 5ft 8in tall, with long brown hair - held back with a black hair clip with a plastic flower on it - and with no visible tattoos.

She was wearing a green hooded jumper, a green singlet top, and three-quarter-length black leggings.

Was she living in the tree? Building a tree house maybe? Would beat getting a mortgage.

Temptamperu

The koalas strike again... damn their furry tails.

W.Shakes-Beer

That "Occupy" movement isn't all fun and games by the looks of it.

Dr Strange

Temptamperu wrote: »

The koalas strike again... damn their furry tails.

And everyone thinks they are just cute cuddly little teddybears with an amazingly fresh breath.

starbelgrade

Sounds like a storyline from 'Dexter'.

Sunnyisland

I also remember a story a while back about An Indian man who eight months ago decided to spend his life in a tree and died.






He fell out of it.







Sorry think i am barking up the wrong tree here.

W.Shakes-Beer

realies wrote: »

I also remember a story a while back about An Indian man who eight months ago decided to spend his life in a tree and died.






He fell out of it.







Sorry think i am barking up the wrong tree here.

aaah leaf it out will ya!

Sunnyisland

W.Shakes-Beer wrote: »

aaah leaf it out will ya!

Very good :D Think i will branch out to another thread now

hardCopy

W.Shakes-Beer wrote: »

aaah leaf it out will ya!

He's just trying to get to the root of the matter

starbelgrade

hardCopy wrote: »

He's just trying to get to the root of the matter

Why wood you make a joke out of this? I'm getting sycamore puns like these. I know it's poplar to try & be funny, but there's no need to be such a birch.

antodeco

"Can you tell what it is yet"?

Sunnyisland

Preusse wrote: »

This:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087748/Police-baffled-mystery-womans-decomposing-body-high-tree-suburban-Sydney.html



Was she living in the tree? Building a tree house maybe? Would beat getting a mortgage.

Probaly a 3 3 year mortgage :rolleyes::rolleyes: bye for definite

Stiffler2

Sounds likes they have a predator in the area. Best to send in Arni

Teyla Emmagan

Randwick, I used to live there.

That's very sad, poor woman. Awful how people can slip through the cracks and nobody notices.

Duggy747

Stiffler2 wrote: »

Sounds likes they have a predator in the area. Best to send in Arni

I'm guessing if she was hanging upside down with her entire skin removed then that would be a good indicator of a Predator.

They leave such a mess around the place.

Stiffler2

Duggy747 wrote: »

I'm guessing if she was hanging upside down with her entire skin removed then that would be a good indicator of a Predator.

They leave such a mess around the place.

I just have to add - Predator - Best movie of all time !!
( The orignal one )

BigDuffman

CSI Sydney

Doc Ruby

Who put Bella in the Wytch Elm?

Black magic was blamed when four teenagers found a woman's skeleton in a tree in wartime Worcestershire. More than 50 years on, her story still haunts this corner of the Midlands. But who did put Bella in the Witch Elm? And why can't they let her rest.

The crowd of eclipse–seekers who watched Wednesday's wonder from the top of Wychbury Hill in northern Worcestershire were frustrated – like many Britons – by a haze of cloud that passed over the sun at the crucial moment. A mixture of passing New Agers, local youth and a few more sedate residents of the prosperous village of Hagley, they were too excited to let this set–back ruin their morning. But there was also another shadow hanging over the occasion, whose chill was, for many, harder to ignore.

Behind them, fenced off with barbed wire, the crumbling stone obelisk of the Hagley Hall estate teetered heavenwards, as it has done for 200 years. On it, a sinister piece of fresh graffito gleamed in the half–light: "Who put Bella in the Witch Elm?"

For Hagley–dwellers – and especially for those who remember the village before the post–war expansion of Birmingham forcibly connected it to the modern world – those words have a dark significance. They refer to a story which retains an unsettling force in these parts.

It begins on a sunny April Sunday in 1943, when four teenage boys from nearby Stourbridge went birds'–nesting in Hagley Wood. Their quest took them to an old, hollow wych–hazel – also known as a wych–elm, on account of its size and age. For a minute or two they climbed and searched. Then one of them, Bob Farmer, gave a cry: from out of the tree, a white skull was grinning at him. "There was a small patch of rotting flesh on the forehead with lank hair attaching to it, and the two front teeth were crooked," he later stated.

The frightened boys ran away and – unsure if the skull was human or animal but certain that they should not have been in the woods in the first place – at first told no one about their find. Then Tommy Willetts, the youngest, told his father, who told the police. Their investigation uncovered the more–or–less entire skeleton of a young woman within the tree. Her mouth was stuffed with taffeta, and a gold wedding ring and some crepe shoes were found nearby – but perhaps most chillingly of all, one of her hands was missing. This, it was suggested, was a classic sign of a black–magic execution.

Subsequent examination – by the well–known forensic scientist Professor James Webster – suggested that the dead woman had been 35, was the mother of one child, and had been dead for about 18 months before she was found. The coroner declared it murder, with asphyxiation the probable cause. Exhaustive trawls through dental records and missing–person files proved unexpectedly fruitless, and the press were briefly enthralled. But, before long, the horrors of war distracted attention from the "Tree Murder Riddle".

But then, that Christmas, the graffiti began to appear. "Who put Luebella down the wych–elm?" said the first one, in nearby Old Hill. "Hagley Wood Bella", said another, in Birmingham. Gradually, the messages – which seemed to be written by the same hand – took what was to be their settled form: "Who put Bella in the wych–elm?" they asked.

The implication was that somebody knew, but appeals to the unknown graffitist to contact the police proved fruitless. Instead, the slogans continued, and, at some point in the late Forties, other hands took up the cry as well.

Like "Kilroy was here", it soon became a slogan for those who could not think of a slogan of their own, an expression of solidarity with fellow graffitists, with a hint of contempt for urban sophisticates who weren't in on it. "It's just a joke," says Carl Baldacchino of West Mercia police. "It doesn't mean anything."

In this case, though, there was a difference. Whether or not the graffitist knew the answer, an answer was still required: who did put Bella in the wych–elm?

The general use of the name Bella, a common Black Country name, to describe the unknown victim gained currency when Professor Margaret Murray, of University College, London, made the suggestion that the severed hand was a sign of a black–magic execution. Belladonna is associated with witchcraft, as is wych–hazel, and as was, according to local legend, Hagley Wood. The "witch" theory – that Bella had been executed for unspecified crimes against a coven – quickly became popular.

The remains of Bella's wych–elm are still there, rotted by age and buried deep among brambles and thrusting sycamores that have grown tall since her day. Is black magic performed around this wrinkled crone of a tree, whose shock of suckers has been compared to a witch's spiky hair? If so, I hope that those who perform it are wearing some good thornproof clothing.

But no one I asked in Hagley – from a self–professed paranormalist to a respected local historian – could tell me anything of a current occult tradition involving Hagley Wood. "If it was witchcraft, it's the only incident of its kind that I've heard of round here," says Geoff Pardoe, Hagley representative of the Worcestershire Local History Forum. "I've never come across any of it," says Harry Tromans, a former Daily Mirror journalist who wrote about the Bella case as a cub–reporter in 1943.

Later, in the archives of the Black Country Bugle, I found old letters suggesting that, before the war, witches' sabbaths were regularly held in Hagley Wood, while the pub opposite, The Gypsies' Tent, was associated with hauntings and other occult goings on. But The Gypsies' Tent has long since made way for a Travel Inn, and the authors of those letters are dead, as, indeed, are all who were directly associated with the mystery.

"It's a thorny old chestnut," says Tromans, stirring the arboreal metaphor with the conscious panache of an old hack. "There are all these theories, but no one actually knows anything. We'll probably never know. Anyone who might have known anything is dead, anyone who might have done it is dead. It's lost – we should let it go."

But whether Bella will be let go is a different matter. Lord Cobham, who owns Hagley Hall, has no plans to remove the graffito from his obelisk, for fear that "a power–wash might knock it down". As far as he's concerned, it's just one more example of a seemingly unstoppable vandalism problem that plagues his entire 1,200–acre estate, resulting from its easy accessibility to every urban delinquent in the West Midlands.

Yet visiting vandals from nearby Birmingham are unlikely to have been responsible for a message whose full resonance is appreciated only by that dwindling number of elderly Hagley–dwellers who have lived there since the Second World War. And, as long as the message remains for all to see, people will wonder what dark thoughts animated the elderly hand that wrote it.