‘Aye, she was proper lovely, was Lizzie: dead pretty. She wasn’t ever nasty to no one, just dead … nice. I don’t know no one that had a bad word to say about her. She was smart as well. Always top of the class; A’s in everything at school. She was on the teams as well: debating, netball, football. She was just good at everything. She had thousands of followers, you know. On Instagram. Even more on YouTube. She was doing charity work wasn’t she? Giving something back? That’s why those lads picked on her, I reckon. It’s cos she had a good heart, lads like them don’t like that.’
‘It’s that blooming vampire story. Folk were saying they’d seen it all over. That’s what got that poor lass killed; just gossip on Facebook about the Ergarth Vampire. Them lads? Proper bunch of freaks. I swear down, something should have been done about them. They all thought they were vampires and that – devil-worshippers, drinking blood. Cutting off her head: I ask you. I heard that the leader one, that Solomon Meer, was caught killing pigeons and cats and using them for sacrifices to the devil. What got done about that? Nothing. Then they go and do that to some poor lass who never did no one any harm. It’s a disgrace. And where were the parents? That’s what I want to know.’
‘I just think there’s more to it than everyone says. I just think it’s not so straightforward. Do I think they did it? It got proved they did in a court of law, so what does my opinion matter? I just believe there’s two sides to every story is all.’
‘I don’t know if they’re innocent. Maybe it was a prank gone wrong? I don’t know. Maybe that’s what the graffiti is about?’
‘I just think there’s more to it than everyone thinks.’
—So, as you can see, this is a sad and tragic time for the people of Ergarth.
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
Over the next six weeks we are going to look back at the brutal murder of Elizabeth Barton in 2018. We’re going to examine the events that led up to her death from six different perspectives, through six pairs of eyes. What I want to know in this series is what turns someone from a town like Ergarth into a killer; what brought three young men together to commit such a terrible crime? This is something that has never, in my opinion, been satisfactorily explained. Was this just a prank that got out of hand, or was there more to it?
For my newer listeners, welcome. For those of you who’ve been following Six Stories, welcome back.
Before we go on, I suppose I should take a moment to address the elephant in the room. Me.
I’ve only ever wanted to be a vessel for this podcast – a mouthpiece for six perspectives on a crime. I was never supposed to become the story. I used to try my hardest to be anonymous. I used to hide myself away behind a computer, wear a mask when conducting interviews, do everything I could to be nobody.
Yet it seemed the more I hid – crawled beneath my rock – the more the spotlight searched me out.
It’s been a while since the last season of Six Stories, a year since my own story was told; since what happened to me played out in the public eye. I wondered for a while, in the aftermath of all that, whether I should hide away, vanish. But I didn’t. I made myself more obvious; more accessible. I shed a lot of the myth that I had hidden behind. I’ve had my fair share of criticism for doing that. But I’m back. And I refuse to hide anymore.
So now I’m facing everything head-on. I’m placing myself in the spotlight, conducting every interview face to face. Without Six Stories I wouldn’t be where I am now. We owe it to each other to go on.
For all the messages and the support you’ve offered me after last season, I want to say thank you. There are too many people to name, but rest assured, I read every single message and every one of you made a difference to me. Those of you who are still fighting monsters, keep going.
In this series we look back at crimes: cold cases, missing people, the motivations for murder. We rake up old graves. Some of them don’t want to be unearthed, though. Sometimes I hit a rock, find an impasse. Sometimes cold cases are called that for a reason. The following is one of those.
I actually began the research for this one a while back, but I’d only delved just below the surface when I realised there was no real mystery here. This case was simple. For, as you’ll see, on the surface, the case of Elizabeth Barton appears not to be about who, or even why. It is open and shut. Maybe that’s what attracted me to it. Maybe this time I just wanted to report what had happened. I didn’t want to be drawn in. I asked myself what I could possibly say about this that hasn’t already been said? Why open a raw wound?
Then, two years after Elizabeth was killed, the graffiti on the Barton’s house appeared, as you’ve just heard at the top of the episode. Someone wants this case reopened.
Dead in Six Days. The challenge that lurks around every bend in this case. Six days … six stories. I don’t know; it felt like it fitted. But there was something else, something that’s important to me now: this is not a case that I would become part of. I needed one that isn’t personal.
I packed a suitcase and I travelled to Ergarth.
Because I’m not hiding from monsters anymore.
Ergarth is an oddly named and oddly placed town on the North-East coast. Unlike the quaint tourist hubs of Whitby or Scarborough further south, Ergarth is not your typical seaside town. Its coastline boasts no fossil banks, wildlife watching or boat trips out to the headlands … In fact, there’s very little of anything, just a grey, rain-flecked cluster of buildings that ends abruptly in a cliff edge where the ruined Tankerville Tower stands; an austere and crumbling monolith square-edged, five storeys high, made from thick, dark-coloured basalt and limestone. Unlike other pele towers – the fortified keeps and defensive structures built on the borders between England and Scotland – Tankerville has no arrow slits in its walls nor a proud weathercock on its roof, pointing above the crenellations. It is instead, a Brutalist, black rectangle.
Talk to anyone in Ergarth and they’ll tell you they want it torn down. Even in the summer, it looks no better; a benighted blight that everyone can see from their window and wishes they couldn’t.
And now, two years after Elizabeth Barton’s death, the tower stands as an unpleasant reminder of what happened here in 2018.
Despite its grim outlook, the town has a charm that does bring in a few tourists. There’s a caravan park up on the cliffs, a couple of miles from Tankerville Tower. It’s small but neat. The town itself has a couple of bed and breakfasts and guest houses, which would probably be considered ‘retro’. The town itself isn’t terrible; there’s even a small parade of amusement arcades before a short pier where the cliff drops to sea level. It’s hardly Brighton Palace, but it’s well kept and affable; the flash of the lights, the jangly music and the smell of fried doughnuts during the summer. There’s also an array of coastal walks along the cliffs, where kittiwakes nest and seals can occasionally be spotted, bobbing up out of the water with their blunt, oily-looking heads. On an unpleasant winter’s day, though, with few visitors, the steel shutters closed over the amusements and wind warnings keeping people off the pier, Ergarth is slightly forlorn.
Perhaps, then, the one feature that makes Ergarth stand out from the other small towns that huddle along England’s northern coasts is the great, black ruin that is Tankerville Tower.
Occasionally there’ll be a ripple of interest in the place: a scheme, a crowdfunder, a local entrepreneur who has big ideas for Tankerville Tower. But then it’ll all fall through. People say that’s because it’s cursed.
The people of Ergarth don’t refer to the tower by its real name. They call it ‘The Vampire Tower’.
We’ll get to that in due course.
It’s autumn, and the sky is blue and clear. It’s cold, though, and our breath steams. We’re inland, my first interviewee and me, on the edge of Ergarth Dene – a wooded public park that dates back to the Victorian era, and sits close to the remains of the Fellman’s pasty factory, which burned down a number of years ag
o. Originally created for genteel perambulation; the park sits in a small valley and has a multitude of trees, paths and ornamental pools. Almost directly opposite, on the other side of the town, Tankerville Tower looms. It’s easy to believe you have been sucked into a time warp down here and that around the corner you’ll see women wearing crinolines and men carrying canes. The air is thick with the earthy scent of the season: damp leaves and a faint tang of stagnant water. The trees that rise up all around us are turning, preparing for the coming frost. It’s a stark contrast to the site of the tower or the centre of Ergarth itself. The wind bites through your clothes along a desolate high street where betting shops have lit up like luminescent fungi. In nearly every doorway there are people huddled together to keep warm.
The cold is more intense here than I’ve ever felt before, and despite my gloves, the tips of my fingers and toes are like blocks of ice. I imagine how it was for Ergarth two years ago, during the cold snap of 2018. The roads were blocked both in and out, the cold permeating through walls and roofs that were totally unprepared for this onslaught.
—We were proper busy during that cold snap. What did they call it – the Beast from the East? It was proper harsh; there wasn’t enough grit to go round, ice all over the roads; people falling over, old people freezing. Half the roads round here were closed; no one could drive into or out of the town. It was like we were suddenly in Siberia.
Pipes froze, leaving some wrapped in bedclothes on their sofas at night, praying that headlights would round the corners of the coiling roads, black with ice, bringing supplies. But the old and infirm of Ergarth were more isolated than ever. My interviewee wants to tell me that people pulled together, helped each other out, checked on neighbours, but that wasn’t the case. Ergarth is not affluent; there was little money and little hope. This bred a deadly apathy.
—It was a dog-walker what found her. Isn’t it always? She didn’t find her though, that’s not strictly true. We was proper busy and I was on the night shift; I’d just arrived at work, and there was already lads getting ready to go out. They said someone was stuck in the tower. I remember thinking, what on earth someone was doing there in this? It’s bad enough in the peak of summer. I knew that this wasn’t going to end well. Not at all.
Tankerville Tower dates back to the thirteenth century. A five-storey structure that stands on the edge of the cliff and stares over the green rage of the North Sea. Nothing else, just the wind and the cliffs and the ghostly cries of the kittiwakes. Unless you’re walking a dog, or specifically visiting the place, there’s absolutely no reason to go there. It’s windy there all year round: swirling, freezing Siberian winds and sea fret most of the year. The inside provides little shelter either; the tower is crumbling into the sea.
The tower’s origins are somewhat murky; some say it was the beginning of a castle or the leftovers of an attempt at a pele tower, should the ‘Border Reivers’ move their raids further south. Some say it was a purpose-built prison. With its windowless walls and cell-like interior, this seems the most plausible idea. What we know for sure is that the tower was purchased and given its name by the earls of Tankerville in the early 1700s. They had grand plans to turn it into a residence with an adjoining mansion house, but these never came to fruition. The tower remained unmodernised and was eventually forgotten.
During the twentieth century, the Tankervilles sold the tower to the local authority but not a single use could be found for the place.
The inside of Tankerville Tower is worse than its outside – black, sea-scarred stone; a winding staircase that’s crumbling and treacherous, impossible to climb, leading to a bare, windowless room at the very top. Birds roost in the places where the topmost rocks have crumbled, and in the 1990s a colony of bats was discovered roosting in that cell at the very top, prompting a small ripple of interest in the place. The Bat Conservation Trust, along with Ergarth Council, worked together to board up the lower doors and windows and to add a perimeter fence – thus preventing entrance or exit from the tower.
Now the tower is a stark monolith, standing almost as a symbol of the town over which it looms.
The fence around it still stands. More or less.
—It’s a bloody disgrace how they’ve just let it go like that. So much history, and what a sorry state it’s in. Just sat on the edge of the cliff covered in birds’ and bats’ doings.
The voice you’ve been listening to is that of Rob Karl. He’s a local volunteer fireman and was one of the first on the scene when Elizabeth Barton’s body was found in Tankerville Tower.
—No wonder no one wants to do owt with it. It’s a death trap, that place. The council just let it rot. It’ll be good riddance when it does fall down; the sea can have it. You get all sorts of people hanging about in there. They say there’s bats in the roof, don’t they? That’s the reason they can’t do nowt with the place. You can’t disturb the bats.
—You said you get people in the tower. Why?
—Aye, druggies mainly; smack-heads and the crazies. We often used to get calls from folk saying that kids were going in and out of the Vampire Tower and that they’re worried for them – scared that one of them’s going to hurt themselves, fall into the sea. And you only need to get close to it to see they’ve been in there: graffiti, them tags all over the walls.
You’d get calls saying people had heard stuff, too. Screaming and that coming from inside. It used to be easy to get in there; the boards across the doors were all rotted away with the damp and the rain and the sea. We used to have to go there regular.
Don’t get me wrong, now. I’m not saying that any of those other sightings were real. It was all rubbish, all of it.
—Sightings? Of what?
—Let’s just not talk nonsense, eh? Let’s talk reality. I think sometimes people round here get carried away.
Rob becomes cagey and defensive at the mere hint of anything other-worldly associated with Tankerville Tower. You see, there’s a story that surrounds the ‘Vampire Tower’ and its strange nickname. While the ruin is now synonymous with the grisly murder of a young woman, before Elizabeth Barton, there was another female associated with it. I know Rob doesn’t want to tell me the story but he knows as well as I do that it’s going to have to come out.
—Folk think we’re all stupid round here because of that silly old tale. It’s like the folk from Hartlepool getting called ‘monkey-hangers’ cos of some daft old story. You know it, don’t you? Back in some war or other, olden times, them up there hanged a monkey cos they thought it was a French soldier.
But our bloody vampire story, it’s a hell of a lot worse. It’s all a load of rubbish, though, just like the monkey.
—Can you tell it to me?
—I’ll tell it once. I’ll tell you the official version.
—Fair enough.
—So it goes like this; see back in the Victorian times, 1860s, I believe, there was a problem in Ergarth. There was a freak cold snap like the one in 2018. It was serious. Folk up here were dying. They were finding bodies frozen in their beds, washed up on the coast, see; all mangled, white, drained of blood. It was the weather; it cut the whole town off. No one could get in or out, and people were ill, starving, throwing themselves into the sea. Horrible times. Back then of course, they knew nowt about polar vortexes and diseases, so they blamed a vampire instead.
—It seems like an odd conclusion to come to, even in that era.
—Aye but there was a reason. You see, back then, some soldiers had this prisoner from the Crimean war – a hostage. They say the British and French captured her at the Battle of the Alma when the Russian scarpered. They said she was found in a prince’s carriage with a load of money. They brought her here cos no one would ever find her.
—Who was she?
—They reckon she was a Russian sorceress or some rubbish like that. Brought down from the Tundra in Siberia; her witchcraft to be used as a weapon. At least that’s what the soldiers thought. They brought her back to England as
a hostage, kept her prisoner in Tankerville Tower, hoping for a ransom, but no one ever paid up. It’s said they didn’t want her back. So she was a Trojan Horse type of thing, you see? Then the cold snap came; the place was all snow and freezing temperatures. They say it was the sorceress what done it, like. So they killed her.
Thing is, after that, people round here believed she came back from the dead. As a vampire, like.
Rob’s story matches up with some old ideas about vampires. The British and French troops that sailed to fight in the Crimean War landed at the Bulgarian port of Varna, the very same Varna from which Bram Stoker’s Dracula launches his ship, the Demeter. North of Varna are Wallachia, Moldavia and of course, Transylvania. You don’t need me to tell you what that particular region is famous for.
Another piece of lore that’s significant here comes from the north of Russia, where vampires were often believed to be powerful sorcerers. If they were killed, it was thought they could return as the undead, and were able to command the winds and tides, the birds and beasts. These creatures could only be finally killed by staking them through the heart, by burning or by decapitation.
Could it be that these folk stories, which were so entrenched in those far-off lands, were brought back to Ergarth by the troops, along with their prisoner?
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