Okay, mystery night. I was mostly doing Chicago ones, but this one is British: the murder of Bella Wright, also known as the green bicycle mystery. Don't Google, and stay tuned. 1/

It's the evening of July 5th, 1919 in Leicestershire. Bella Wright rides her bicycle from her village of Stoughton to visit her cousin and uncle in Gaulby. She arrived alongside a young man riding a green bicycle. 2/

Her uncle didn't know this guy (Bella was 21 and was engaged to a naval officer) and he asked who the guy waiting outside was. Bella said, "I don't really know him at all. He's been riding alongside me for a few miles but he isn't bothering me at all... 3/

He's just chatting about the weather." She hung around longer than she'd planned, hoping to lose the guy. He seemed to have gone, but as she left Bella's uncle heard a man's voice say "You've been a long time. I thought you had gone the other way." 4/

This was around 8:50 pm. Wait, we're gonna back up a sec bc I already missed something. The uncle noticed the guy when he went to the door for a grocery delivery. He asked the grocers if they knew green bike dude, and they said no, but they'd seen him riding beside Bella. 5/

Okay. So she leaves, after her cousin fixes the wheel on her bike; she'd been having trouble with it. This is when they hear they guy's voice. The two seem to be chatting as they ride away. 6/

Around 9:20, a local farmer was herding his cattle down the road, as one does, and noticed a bike on its side with the rider facedown in a pool of blood. Here's a map that I don't understand in the slightest. 7/

He moved her off the road, called the constable, etc. Meanwhile a doctor drives up, and they move the body to a nearby chapel and examine it by candlelight because THAT'S NOT CREEPY. The doctor notices bruising on her cheek and tons of blood. He decides this means 8/

that she had a seizure or a hemorrhage and fell off her bike. They put the cause of death as hemorrhage, LOCK UP THE CHAPEL WITH HER INSIDE BECAUSE WHAT THE HELL and go home. 9/

The constable does sleep well (no shit) and gets up very early to go back and reexamine the scene. 10/

The thing is, an entire literal herd of cows has passed over the scene. If you're looking for ways to keep your crime scene clean, I emphatically do not recommend an entire literal herd of cows. 11/

The only new thing he notices is bloody bird tracks leading from the road to a wooden gate. I wouldn't mention this except that there are weird bird theories about the case, so log that away. 12/

Meanwhile Bella's mother had reported her missing that morning, and at some point they get her body out of the chapel which is very definitely now haunted forever and ever. 13/

Actually, no, I take that back, my bad: The body is still in the chapel. Just hanging out in the chapel. I very much hope that there were no, like, weddings planned for that day. 14/

At 6 pm the constable goes back to the scene again, and this time he finds a .455 bullet. This is a pretty big bullet, and most likely came from a service revolver. There were a huge number of these coming back to England just then with soldiers returning from the war. 15/

The bullet was wedged into a cow's hoof print in the road, because, again, you really don't want a large number of cows at your crime scene. 16/

The constable goes back to the chapel to inspect the body again, but first he waits for the doctor to finish house calls, so again it's late and dark and they're in the chapel by candlelight. 17/

And they find that indeed there's a bullet entry wound and on the back right side of her head, and an exit wound behind the other ear. 18/

In the next few days, the case goes public and it becomes clear that Annie Bella Wright is the deceased woman. This is where I'll note that she was poor, the oldest of 7 children born to illiterate farm laborers. She lived in a thatched cottage and worked as a domestic. 19/

On July 7th, the police distributed a handbill looking for information about a man who rode a distinctive pea-green BSA bike. 20/

They described him as "age 35-40 years, height 5’7” to 5’9”; apparently usually clean shaven, but had not shaved for a few days, hair turning grey, broad full face, broad build, said to have a squeaking voice and to speak in a low tone." 21/

If anyone can explain to me how to squeak in a low tone, I would be most grateful. 22/

Anyway, the rest of the description: "Dressed in light rainproof coat with green plaid lining, grey mixture jacket suit, grey cap, collar and tie, black boots and wearing cycling clips.”

The particularly reached out to bike shops to see if anyone remembered the bike. 23/

So, a bike repair shop owner says he remembers this bicycle, because he fixed it a week earlier. The owner matched the description, but never gave his name. He did know that the owner was from London, visiting friends in Leicester, and had just been demobilized. 24/

If the guy was from London, that explains why nobody who saw them riding together (quite a few people did) had recognized him. It also means he's going to be very hard to find. It ALSO means that they can get Scotland Yard involved. 25/

So a major London detective (Albert Hawkins) comes to town, and starts questioning everyone, including Bella's fiance. No one looks suspect. 26/

Weeks pass with no real leads. There are various inquests. The doctor testifies that the gun was fired from no more than five feet away, and she was either standing or riding when she was shot. There were no signs of struggle. 27/

Months pass. It's February now, and a man with the delightful name of Enoch Whitehouse was guiding a horse-drawn barge up the River Soar. The tow-rope snagged something, and he pulled up... a pea-green bicycle. 28/

He remembers reading about this in the papers, and that there's a reward. He brings it in. It's missing its back wheel and some other parts, but the police call in a BSA bike agent whose life was probably not usually this dramatic. 29/

It's a really distinctive bike. But the serial number has been filed off, and this had been their hope for tracing it to a certain owner. 30/

But! BSA guy notes that a pea-green bike was so unusual that it was probably a special order, and special order bikes had more than one serial number. He takes the whole thing apart and finds a second serial number inside the handlebar post. 31/

The bike had been special ordered back in 1910, in Derby. They guy in Derby goes back through his records and finds the man who ordered it. It's this guy, and his name is Ronald Light. 32/

They find him in Cheltenham, where he's working as an assistant schoolmaster. He's 34 and rom a wealthy family, the son of an engineer. He claims he's never owned a green bike. Then he remembers that he bough one way back and sold it after a year. 33/

He also says he's never visited Gaulby. They bring him to the station and they bring in the bike repairman from Gaulby, who easily points him out of a 10-man lineup. Oops. 34/

So now he's arrested for murder, and they start digging. He's been in a lot of trouble -- kicked out of various schools, fired from jobs, kicked out of the army, accused of arson, accused of improper conduct with girls... but, on the other hand, he's RICH. 35/

At this point the case is making major news, partly because the dredged-up bike is a great visual. 36/

Two teenage girls come forward and say Light had approached them while they were riding bikes and tried to separate them and they noped on out of there. They also identified him in a lineup. 37/

They keep dredging the river, but they still have no murder weapon and no back wheel. 38/

They keep pushing back the trial as they look for more evidence. Finally, on 3/12, they find the rear wheel and a rear braking mechanism with the same serial number as the green frame. A week later, they find a brown leather army revolver holster full of .455 cartridges. 39/

But no gun. But that's okay, because they have enough to proceed, and the trial starts. Light hires THIS GUY, Edward Marshall Hall, to defend him. He's fancy. 40/

The defense basically goes: Yes, Light was the man on the green bicycle. He was riding his bike at 6:45 when Bella approached him, asking if he had a spanner to tighten her wheel. He didn't, but he tried to help. 41/

He was worried about her riding alone with a bad wheel, so he offered to accompany her to her uncle's house. She told him she'd only be a minute, so he thought that was an invitation to wait for her. 42/

They rode back together part of the way, and said goodbye, and that was it. He got home very late that night, according to a servant, but that was because his tire kept deflating and he had to walk his bike. 43/

Then he saw in that "every paper was saying the man who had ridden the green bicycle had murdered this girl... I did not make up my mind deliberately not to go forward. I was astounded and frightened. I kept on hesitating and in the end I drifted into doing nothing at all.” 44/

Plus, he said, his mother had a heart condition and he didn't want to worry her. And coming forward would just keep the police from finding the real murderer. 45/

So at first he hid his bike in the attic, and later he scraped off the bike's serial number and tossed the bike and his bullets into the canal. 46/

Fancy Barrister kind of destroys the local prosecution. He gets the two girls to admit they'd been coached in their statements. He argues that a large bullet and close range should have caused a bigger wound. 47/

What if the bullet way down in the cow tracks in the road had nothing to do with Bella? What if someone was shooting crows and a bullet hit her by accident as she rode along? 48/

I mentioned bird theories. Apparently there was at least one dead crow nearby. And there was blood on the wooden gate nearby. The fields outside Leicester were a popular area for hunting crows. 49/

If kids were shooting at a crow on the nearby gate, that would explain the bloody bird tracks, the blood on the gate, the dead crow. An expert testified it would have been possible for a boy lying in the meadow to shoot up at a crow and hit Bella. 50/

I should mention that this trial was an utter circus. But it's England, so a circus with wigs. 51/

They haul England's Most Famous Bike in there and everything. 52/

Here is the 1920 equivalent of lawyers holding a coat over the defendant's head as everyone takes selfies. 53/

So, as you probably figured out the second I told you our dude was rich, he's found not guilty and he skulks off to go live under an assumed name. 54/

Bella's parents couldn't afford a headstone, so her grave was left unmarked until the 1980s. 55/

But we're not done. Okay... 56/

We're entering potential apocryphal territory here. Years later, this note surfaces. 57/

Apparently, three days after his acquittal, Light went down to the Leicester police department to collect his personal items, and started chatting with the superintendent, with whom he'd somehow become friendly (?)... 58/

And he just casually told him that he'd totally killed Bella, but by accident. She'd asked to see his service revolver, and he pulled it out, and it went off, and he freaked and ran. 59/

The superintendent for some reason typed this all up and then put it in a storage locker, and it wasn't found for decades. 60/

Honestly, I can see this being completely made up by one of the people who was later writing a book and wanted to make an exciting new discovery, OR I can see the cop being like "LOL, boys will be boys" and just doing nothing. 61/

But even in the latter case, there's still the question of whether Light is, perhaps, full of it. 62/

So, Light came back to live with his mother in Leicester (the reason he'd been in the area to begin with) and renamed himself Leonard Estelle, and he died in 1975 at the age of 89. He'd been married and had a stepdaughter. She didn't know anything about this... 63/

... until news of his death got out and suddenly she was filled in by reporters. 64/

Here I'll tell you a few, uh, prejudicing facts about Light before I tell you what happened to the bike, because let's be honest, the bike is the hero here. 65/

CW: abuse
He'd been expelled from school at 17, for "lifting a little girl's clothes over her head." In his 30s he tried to seduce a 15-year-old girl, and admitted to engaging in "improper conduct" with an 8-year-old girl. 66/

One of Fancy Barrister's big points during the trial was that there was no motive, and so the prosecution kept trying to suggest that they'd previously known each other. But maybe he was just, you know, awful? 67/

He would be fired as a railway draughtsman in 1914 for setting a fire in a cupboard and drawing indecent graffiti in a lavatory. Later he was fired from a farm for setting fire to haystacks. 68/

I didn't mention that in the confession notes, Light said he dumped his service revolver and another gun right after Bella died. Regardless of whether the letter is real, he probably did dump his gun in the canal at a different spot from the bike. It's never been found. 69/

There are still people trying to find the gun. 70/

If the recently discovered police notes are true, they do give a specific location for the gun, and it's one they never searched in 1920. 71/

Leicester City Council has an annual guided cycle ride that reenacts the case. People ride along the major locations and end at Leicester Castle, where segments of the trial are recreated. I mean... 72/

I like this lady's cosplay, but the dude could try a little harder. 73/

Okay, so for several decades the bike hung on the wall of a cycle chop in Evington, but it's since been lost. 74/

I like to imagine this went something like "When grandpa dies and we take over the shop, can we finally get rid of his creepy murder bike?" 75/

In 1987, Christie's auctioned off the bullets and holster recovered from the River Soar for $6,000 to an anonymous bidder. 76/

In 1980, someone who wrote one of the many books about the case donated the money to buying Bella a headstone, so that's your feel-good tweet right there. 77/

Oh wait, one more shot of the bike, plus some old-timey hats.

One thing pointed out in this article, which I'll leave you with, is how 1919 the murder was. "In 1919 there were lots of men coming back from the front line with guns, illegally in most cases, and cycling was a major forms of entertainment and transport." https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/still-unsolved-green-bicycle-murder-993665

"...This is a unique case – I don't think it could have happened in another time or country."

fin