—A common theory is that Elizabeth wanted a piece of Solomon’s sudden Internet fame; his ‘Shopping Trolley Sledge’ video had done considerably better than all of hers.
—Yes. I did ask him once or twice about that – whether the two of them were doing some sort of collaboration. Sol kept saying everyone had to wait. ‘Just wait,’ he would say over and over. Now I realise what he meant. I understand now what that final challenge was. It was Sol, wasn’t it, who told her to come to the vampire tower that night?
Jo trails off a bit, dabs her eyes.
—I had no idea – no idea at all that he was going to do what he did to Elizabeth Barton. That level of violence, I never saw it in him. The other two as well; it was so … I don’t know. Maybe it was one of those ridiculous challenges that went wrong – like they said in court. Sol lost track of reality? I don’t know.
—Who was setting the challenges, do you think? Who was behind it all?
Jo gives me a rather severe look.
—I very much doubt there was a nefarious online vampire, if that’s what you mean. That silly challenge wasn’t about vampires at all. It was about one-upmanship and popularity; getting the most likes, the most views – to be the most famous for five minutes. Was anyone being controlled by some dark figure? I’m dubious about that. As you already know, Sol’s video started it all off. Then Elizabeth Barton got a hold of it. That’s when it became more than a silly challenge.
Jo proceeds to give a long and heartfelt explanation of the pressures on young people online. She tells me it’s easier for people who didn’t grow up with every move, every bad-hair day being scrutinised and rated by an endless jury of your peers. She says people like us used to play outside. But I know if I had the access to the Internet that young people today have, I would have spent my entire life staring into that abyss. Jo says it’s easy for us to dismiss the young as vapid and vain – preening into their phones, posting endless selfies; it’s easy for us to dismiss their eternal quest for validation. But for many of the young people she has worked with this is the only validation they have.
—A lot of youngsters nowadays grow up being parented by devices. Parents try and fix all their children’s problems by giving them things. A lot of the older generations, the baby-boomers, grew up with very tight rules, very dictatorial parents, and they wanted to change that. So it swings the other way, those parents don’t want to see their children disappointed. Ever. That’s not healthy either, not allowing your child to feel disappointment, to want something and not get it.
I think of Harold and Mildred Barton. I think of Elizabeth in her bedroom, Jason with his consoles and big television. Their desperate need for attention.
—The young people I work with – young men and women, adults for God’s sake – this idea of being liked online is the only validation they’ve ever had. We call them ‘emotionally impoverished’. If you’ve grown up when Mam and Dad aren’t available, you have to get validation somewhere else, don’t you?
Jo tells me that for the young people she works with, everything about everyone’s lives goes online. People post Instagram stories at memorials of their dead relatives, read poems at funerals that they’d found on Facebook. Jo tells me that she sees this every day, it’s certainly not limited to Ergarth.
—I’d say it’s even worse now. I was working with a woman just the other day who found out her beloved grandfather had passed because a cousin had posted about it on Facebook. That’s how she found out. Honestly, it’s true. The cousin was totally unrepentant. She had no idea what she’d done wrong.
Maybe it’s our age? I don’t know. I think we have to look at why there’s this need to curate your life, to overshare. Where does this need for attention come from? That’s why this Dead in Six Days thing was so important to everyone. To do well at it was to be someone. In the week before Elizabeth Barton was killed, it was all anyone ever talked about. Elizabeth Barton had made that challenge her own.
In the days running up to her death, Elizabeth was posing videos of herself participating in the Dead in Six Days challenge – defiantly refusing to pass any of the tasks on – in order to meet her ‘death’ at the end. Jo shares the idea that Solomon Meer resented the fact that she’d effectively taken the one thing he’d had positive attention for and made it her own.
I ponder Jo’s term ‘emotionally impoverished’, and it makes me think of what Jason told me – about the things he and his sister were given, about the various babysitters and nannies, their absent parents. Did he contact me – summon me by painting graffiti on his parents’ house – to be validated. Was the fact that I responded as validating for him as the likes on his sister’s YouTube channel were to her?
At this moment it feels like there were three, rather than one case of emotional impoverishment: two siblings vying for validation, and the lost boy in all of this – Solomon Meer.
—Whatever happened between Sol and Elizabeth seemed to have cooled off by March. He wasn’t saying we had to ‘wait’ anymore. I have a feeling she used him for something and then dropped him. But I don’t know for sure. Whatever happened, I think it finally broke him, if I’m honest. I think everything became distorted in Sol’s mind. I have no idea what on earth happened at Tankerville Tower that night, but we all know the result, don’t we? I’ll never be able to get my head around it. I just hope that Solomon Meer gets the help he so desperately needs.
—The narrative is that Sol resented Elizabeth’s popularity online.
—Is that what we’ve come to? Someone can die over who gets the most likes online?
—There are still things that don’t add up for me in this story. What on earth was going on between Solomon Meer and Elizabeth Barton?
—I don’t know for sure. He never said. I will say that George and Martin were really on his case around this time, they simply did not let up.
—I’ve spoken to Elizabeth Barton’s family and they told me that Solomon Meer was in their house the night before Elizabeth was killed.
Jo flinches, as if she’s been hit.
—Yeah. Yeah … I was wondering if you were going to mention that. It was one of those – was it true or not? I’d heard about it too – Ergarth’s such a small town. Maybe there was something between them? I don’t know.
—Maybe it had something to do with the Dead in Six Days thing? Or … and I really don’t like saying this but it’s out there … could she have been exploiting him? The way Sol was back then, it might have been possible. Maybe she wanted to video him and he lost it? It goes around and around in my head sometimes, like the dreams about that tower. Maybe we’ll never know exactly.
There is something else that has been bothering me throughout this interview, something I feel Jo can help me address.
—George and Martin were Elizabeth Barton’s self-appointed ‘protectors’ weren’t they? What do you think turned them against her that night?
—I’m not saying anything conclusive. I’m not an authority, an expert, anything. All I do is try and help young people with little hope try and make something of themselves. I’m giving you my opinion, that’s all. I just want to make that clear before I answer you, OK?
—Understood.
—And my opinion is that I don’t believe that Sol or the other two killed Elizabeth Barton of their own volition. There. I’ve said it.
—Are you saying that it wasn’t their idea?
—I’m not talking from a place of expertise. I’m giving you an opinion. I may be completely wrong. But I say what I saw, and this idea that Sol was some sort of leader just isn’t true. He wasn’t. Sol was well read, intelligent, but ultimately very ill. If anything he would have been a follower. Just like George and just like Martin. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to convince those other two to do something like that.
—So what happened at Tankerville Tower? What brought these four together on a freezing night in 2018?
—I don’t know. They all said it was a ‘prank gone wrong’ in court
didn’t they? Maybe in the end that was true?
Jo sighs and looks down at her feet. Leighburn Educational Unit never recovered from the association with Meer, Meldby and Flynn, and I understand now why Jo wanted her identity kept a secret.
—There’s not a day goes by that I don’t allocate some blame to myself for what happened to Elizabeth Barton. But how was I to know? Was it my fault? I have to tell myself it wasn’t. I did all I could to try and get Solomon Meer the help he needed, but there was only so much I could do. If I’d had any inkling of what they were going to do, I would have told someone. I would have done. I know it.
—It must be hard to have to carry that burden.
—I just … I never saw it coming, I never did. I’ve been working with bad ’uns for so many years. Sometimes you can see it in them, that lack of empathy, that deadness behind the eyes. By God, I’ve taught a few of them. I’ve been in rooms with lads and girls who I would never like to meet again; lads and lasses who put me in fear of my life. Sol just … wasn’t like that at all. Whatever it was he was putting out there, it was bravado – it was battle armour. The whole devil-worship thing, he said to try and make himself sound dangerous, to make people leave him alone. But in the end it probably helped convict him.
It’s all so confusing – so hard, so awful.
—If it wasn’t a prank, could it have been an act of anger? Or an act of distorted love? Solomon Meer was caught burning flowers in Ergarth Dene only a few days before he killed Elizabeth.
—Was he? Well, that’s actually rather interesting. Burning flowers was one of Sol’s motifs, you see. He used to write a lot about it.
—Really? Why do you think that was?
—I’m probably reading too much into it – that’s the English teacher in me – but Sol wrote about a character burning flowers on his father’s grave. Maybe it signified an end to something? Flowers symbolising love, perhaps? I don’t know.
—There was another lad with him apparently.
—Well … that doesn’t sound right.
—Why not?
—A couple of reasons: one; you don’t do something like that with company do you? Unrequited love is a very solitary thing, don’t you think? Also, I don’t remember Sol having any friends, not really. Who was he?
—I don’t know, the person who caught them didn’t either. The boy was younger than him apparently.
—I suppose that makes sense doesn’t it? Everyone around Ergarth saying that Sol was a manipulative cult leader. I imagine this lad was some other lost soul like him.
—I’ve been told that he burned them where the Ergarth Vampire, the Beast from the East, is supposed to be buried.
—Interesting. There’s a lot you could read into that, I suppose. Or it could be a coincidence.
I feel that this sums up the case of Elizabeth Barton rather well – reading a lot into something that could just be a coincidence. Were Solomon and an acolyte deliberately burning flowers over the ancient vampire’s grave, plotting to kill? Or was a damaged and lovelorn young man acting out in a town where there was little hope? Is there anything we can read into this? Every time I feel I’ve found a thread that takes me to the heart of what happened that night, it splits. Jason Barton’s sentiment about forcing the story comes back to me. But it’s a mess. Jason’s story still lingers – the abusive and tyrannical side to his sister. Was it this that Solomon Meer saw, and in his distorted mind, made a connection with an old story?
I think there’s another story that emerges from this interview, one shaped by the new information we have discovered. Most significant is the relationship between Meer, Meldby and Flynn. If what Jo is saying is correct, and I have no reason to doubt her, the three were not some sort of coven, but enemies. I also think that the mental-health issues that Solomon Meer was experiencing are significant. They can’t explain his actions but may have distorted his thinking. We’re left then with two huge questions – what was Solomon Meer doing in the Bartons’ house, and what were Meer, Meldby and Flynn doing together on the night Elizabeth died?
In this episode we’ve seen another side to Elizabeth’s killers. However, I am still struggling to understand the real motive behind what the three young men did. Maybe they finally found something in common that day – a shared resentment towards Elizabeth Barton – someone none of the three would ever have a chance of really getting to know.
I admit to Jo that I’m still conflicted and ask if there’s anything else she can tell me that might help with where to go next. I tell her my repeated requests to interview the three have been ignored. I’m starting to feel at a loss and wonder if perhaps there actually isn’t anything more to the case of Elizabeth Barton.
Jo’s theory that none of the three convicted were acting of their own volition is one that I’ve not entertained and neither, it seems, has anyone else – perhaps because it doesn’t seem to have much behind it either, save for a hunch. In court, Solomon, Martin and George made out that what they did to Elizabeth Barton was an accident, though I suspect that was prompted by their legal counsel, in an attempt to reduce their sentences.
Then there’s the removal of Elizabeth Barton’s head. This is the one thing, I think, that truly ties the idea of vampires to the murder. A deluded Solomon Meer, obsessed with the Ergarth Vampire, may have been convinced Elizabeth was one. But the question remains: how on earth did Solomon Meer manage to coerce the other two into helping him do this to someone they both adored?
If, however, Solomon Meer, George Meldby and Martin Flynn were indeed following orders, who was giving them?
Maybe that’s what we need to ask when we conclude this series. Until then, this has been our fifth, and I have been Scott King.
Until next time.
DISD CHALLENGE: Day 6 | Lizzie B
988,987 views. March 3, 2018
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Lizzie B
3,689 subscribers
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Today has been my last day on earth
Tonight I’m [......................] vampire,
[......................] I’m doing something no one has ever done before
Tonight is the night of my death
[......................] dead [......................]
Oh my GOD, guys! What is this SNOW? Look, look at it! It’s like a … blizzard or something. Like, there’s no way I’m going to be able to livestream. My internet is absolutely terrible up here. Guys, I don’t even want to go out there!
It’s stopped. Sort of. Look. Look at my windows! If I open them, there’ll be like a snowdrift in the house. I cannot imagine what it must be like for homeless people out there tonight. I feel so bad.
OK, feeling a bit better now, and as you can see, I’ve got this brand-new coat on and my lucky penguin hat! I’m even wearing thermal underwear! Bringing sexy back, right here guys!
Two pairs of socks and I’m … gonna … make … that … three. There we go.
I [......................] them! I can’t even get my boots on!
So I got a message from the lovely Vladlena. She says I’ve got to go and meet her in Tankerville Tower, and we all know what that place is all about.
So, like, someone told me that [......................] of the Ergarth Vampire story, the proper version. You know, like the Grimm Fairy tales aren’t the proper versions. Like, the proper versions are much more grim. See what I did there? [......................] funny bunny!
So tonight I suppose I’d better say my goodbyes. You know, just in case! Sooo, thanks to Vainglorious of course for all your lovely make-up; thanks to Chirrup for your clothes – oodles of unboxing videos on my page if [......................] a parcel from Vainglorious waiting at the post office cos of the snow!
[......................] lovely things [......................]
Happy girl [......................]
Chocs and treats and stuff and as soon as the vampire’s gone and the snow melts, I’ll unbox all your delights.
I wonder if, like, Vladlena’s doing her own channel – like vampires do unboxing on people’s throats?
Yeah, I’m [......................] I? Delaying the inevitable. Tick, tock. Oh my God, I’d better get going.
You guys, I’m pretty scared; I wonder how many of you [......................] me? Just in case … it’s dark out there!
OK, here I am, at the front door. Gonna say bye-bye to Mam and Dad.
Mam? Dad? Bye!
Oh what a surprise, [......................] leave them a note shall I? Some flowers? What shall I write? Dear Mam and Dad gtg, vampire to meet.
Hopefully […] some of you […] Tower!
I mean [......................] if I don’t come [......................] them! Ha-ha!
OK. This is it. This is the last day of the Dead in Six Days challenge – this is as far as anyone’s ever got. I’m off to meet Vladlena at Tankerville Tower. I’ll do another video while I’m there and upload it as soon as I get back. For those of you who can’t make it!
Promise!
OK, so smash that like, hit that subscribe if you want to know what happened on the final day of the Dead in Six Days challenge. I promise you it’s going to be good. Let’s see if we can make this the most views ever!
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