Bella Wright and the Green Bicycle Case
1919, Leicestershire, England. Bella Write was seen cycling in the company of a man near the village of Little Stretton before she turned up dead with a bullet wound through her face. Her murder is considered one of the U.K.’s most celebrated, controversial, and fascinating murder cases of the 20th century.
A Chance Encounter
Annie Bella Wright was born in 1897, the eldest of seven children born to an illiterate farming couple, in Stoughton, Leicestershire. She’d attended school until age 12, when she started working as a domestic servant, and subsequently, as a rubber hand at Bates & Co.’s St. Mary mills, about 5 miles from her home. She often traveled to and fro on her bicycle, and was known to run errands and visit acquaintances in the afternoons. She was described as both internally and externally beautiful, and at age 21, was engaged to marry Archie Ward, a Royal Navy Stoker serving aboard the HMS Diadem. There were reportedly two other suitors, including the man who was suspected in her murder, though he denied the supposition.
Ronald Light, the primary suspect in Wright’s murder, was born in 1885 to a wealthy civil engineer who managed a colliery in Coalville. Light graduated from the University of Birmingham as a civil engineer before finding employment as a draftsman for the Midland Railway in 1906. He was later fired for setting fire to a cabinet and drawing obscene graffiti in a restroom. In 1910, he purchased a green BSA folding bicycle with a coaster brake. He also became a member of a Buxton-based company of the Royal Engineers, a part of the British military. In WWI, he was commissioned as a lieutenant and shipped out for the western front. He relinquished the commission in 1916 on the suggestion of his commanding officer and returned to the ranks as a gunner in the Honourable Artillery Company. During the same year, his father died, reportedly a suicide. He was court-martialled in 1917 for forging moving orders and was classified as suffering from shell shock and partial deafness, whereupon he was sent back to England for treatment.
Wright and Light met on July 5, 1919, around 6:45 pm near the village of Gaulby where her uncle, George Measures lived. She was stopped at a crossroads, where she was bent over her bicycle. When Light approached, she asked if he had a spanner to tighten a loose freewheel. He didn’t but helped as best he could. He then accompanied her to her uncle’s house. Wright’s uncle reportedly remarked that he didn’t like the look of light, and when questioned about him, Write said she’d only met him that afternoon, and that she would try and give him the slip. Light waited outside the house for her, and the two continued toward Wright’s home at around 8:50. According to Light’s testimony, they reached a junction where the two parted ways, and he rode back to Leicester.
A Rather Short Trip:
Wright was found about thirty minutes after departing Measures’ cottage. Her body was found on Gartree Road by a farmer named Joseph Cowell. She was found with her bicycle, her face very bloody, and had gouge marks on her cheeks and jaw. Cowell thought at first that she had been run off the road by a motorist, where she fell and fatally injured herself. He reported his discovery to a policeman at nearby Great Glen, Constable Alfred Hall. He in turn phoned a doctor at the village of Billesdon. Dr. Williams arrived at Hall’s residence, and all three rode a cart toward Little Stretton, where Williams gave instructions to take the body to a nearby unoccupied house. Hall examined the scene and found little but blood smears on the field gate but noted the presence of a carrion crow at the place. Williams also made a cursory examination of the scene and initially agreed with Cowell’s assessment, believing that the girl had died from a combination of blood loss and head injury.
Hall was not satisfied with this explanation and returned to the scene at 6:00 the next morning to look for signs of foul play. After a careful investigation, he found a .455 caliber bullet about 17 feet from the scene. He went to the house to look at the body and washed the blood from her face. He found a bullet entry wound under her left eye, and an exit wound at the back of her skull. He informed Dr. Williams, who along with another doctor, performed a full post-mortem on the body, determining that she was shot from 6-7 feet under her left eye and that the bullet had exited the back of her skull. Her family later identified her as Bella Wright.
Looking for the Killer:
The police launched a number of inquiries into the happenings of the area and determined that there could only be one person at the place where Wright was shot at the time; her riding partner. Several people had witnessed Wright riding with her companion, and so obtaining a description of the individual was easy: between 35 and 40 years old, with a broad, full face, and anywhere from 5’7” and 5’9”; wearing a gray suit with a gray cap, collar, and tie, as well as black boots. Getting him to step forward, however, was anything but easy. Searches of any stores selling bicycles for leads on the distinctive green bike have also failed to turn up results. On the 10th, however, Leicestershire bicycle repairman Harry Cox told police that he repaired a bike matching the description and that the man riding the bike remarked that he fancied taking a ride through the countryside that day.
Light insisted on not knowing about the incident until he’d read an article about it in the Leicester Mercury on the 8th. Scared of the evidence he had, he’d removed the bike from the attic, filed off the serial number, and rode it to the Upperton Road bridge, where he’d dismantled it and thrown all the pieces but the back wheel into the River Soar; an act witnessed by Samuel Holland, a laborer who’d been walking to his night shift at a nearby mill.
The bike’s remnants were discovered on Feb. 23, 1920, by Enoch Whitehouse, who was guiding a horse-drawn barge transporting coal down the river. The barge’s tow rope snagged on the frame and raised it from the bottom of the river. Whitehouse informed the police, who came and dragged the canal. Despite the filed serial numbers and brand names, investigators were able to find a small, hidden serial number. Another investigation with Bike shops and repairmen revealed that Ronald Light had purchased the bike some 9 years prior.
On March 4, Light was arrested at Dean Close School in Cheltenham, where he’d taken a position as a math teacher two months before. He denied being near Gaulby at the time of the crime, nor ever meeting Wright, and later claimed that he sold the bike to another individual some years prior. Unfortunately for him, he was identified by eyewitnesses as the person riding alongside Wright, and by Cox, who told his story about repairing the bike. Light’s mother supplied that he hadn't returned home until late that night, claiming his bike broke and he had to repair it. She also noted that he destroyed or sold any of the clothes he wore that night. On March 19, more evidence was found in the river, including a military pistol holster that was identified as having been issued to Light, as well as a number of .455 caliber bullets that perfectly matched the one found by Hall, and which had pierced Wright’s skull.
The Trial and Aftermath:
Ronald Light was brought to trial on June 8th, where he pleaded “not guilty”. The prosecution contended that about a mile from Gaulby, Wright had for unknown reasons fled Light, southward along a smaller road leading home, and that Light used an alternate route with the intention of ambushing her. He lay in wait by the gate, where he shot her and fled the scene. They supported this theory with the physical evidence of the tampered bicycle, holster, and unspent bullets, as well as eyewitness testimony of his presence and ownership of the bike, claiming that Light’s disposal of the evidence was a sign of obvious guilt.
Light, in response, testified for himself, admitting to all of the evidence and witness testimonies, as well as lying to the police in initial reports, but denied killing Wright, and maintained that he and Wright parted ways close to a junction at King’s Norton. He admitted on cross-examination to owning the holster and bullets, and that he disposed of them in a panic, after reading the press coverage of the murder. He admitted to owning a revolver for the bullets as a military officer, but that he had taken it to Europe without the holster and when he became a casualty, all of his belongings were left at a casualty clearing station in France in 1918.
Despite 5 additional cross-examinations, his story could not be disproved, nor did he contradict himself once. His attorney also supplied that while there was a lot of circumstantial evidence for Light being in Wright’s presence, he also pointed out that the two did not know each other prior to their meeting, the lack of motive, as well as signs of theft, a fight, or sexual assault. He also based his own examination strictly on technicalities, like that the bullet could have been shot by a rifle and accidentally killed Wright, and that a much closer shot to the face would have resulted in greater damage.
By the end, enough reasonable doubt in the prosecution’s case had been garnered, that after a number of hours of deliberation, the jury returned with a verdict of not guilty. Wright was buried in the Churchyard of St. Mary in Stoughton on July 11, 1919. Light went on to live with his mother in Leicester, and lived as a relative recluse for some time, before moving to Leysdown-on-Sea and marrying widow Lilian Lester. He passed away at age 89 in 1975. To date, the case is one of the most divisive, with many believing Light is innocent, and many believing he was guilty. What do you think? Did Light kill Wright, or was her death a freak accident?