Page 177 of Girl Between

DA: Is that what all your scars are from?

Elizabeth: Yes.

DA: Let the record show that Elizabeth Barton has two hundred and eleven sets of suture marks covering her body. Miss Barton, can you tell us how long you were at the farmhouse?

Elizabeth: Don’t know. Time was hard to keep track of.

DA: Let the record show that Elizabeth Barton was held captive for nineteen years and eight months. Miss Barton, did Monroe ever take you anywhere else?

Elizabeth: Yes. At the end. After the others died.

DA: The others?

Elizabeth: Amber and Cara.

DA: How did they die?

Elizabeth: They kept trying to escape. So, Levi killed them.

DA: How do you know he killed them?

Elizabeth: I watched him do it.

DA: What happened to their bodies?

Elizabeth: He buried them on the farm with the others.

DA: How do you know that?

Elizabeth: He told me. Told me that’s what would happen to me too if I tried to escape.

DA: Did you try to escape?

Elizabeth: No. Not after that first time.

DA: Why not?

Elizabeth: I just knew I was going to die there. I could feel it. It’s why I gave my necklace to Rebecca. I wanted someone to find it someday. To know that I’d been there.

DA: Why did Monroe move you from the attic?

Elizabeth: I was sick. I’d been sick for a while. Levi kept saying he was going to fix me. That he wouldn’t let me die because I was Rebecca’s best friend, and he could save me. He was going to find me new organs so I could live forever like the Casquette Girls. I begged him not to. I told him I wanted to die, to just let me die. But he refused. And that’s when he took me to the hospital.

DA: What hospital?

Elizabeth: The dark one. Where the police found me and the other women.

DA: Let the record show that Elizabeth Barton was rescued from the Plaza Tower.

Elizabeth: I wasn’t in a hospital?

DA: No, Miss Barton. You were in a condemned building in the Central Business District of New Orleans, where Levi Monroe was holding multiple other women illegally and harvesting their organs to sell on the black market.

Elizabeth: What?

DA: We believe Levi Monroe suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder generated in his formative years working at the slaughterhouse where you were held. When he lost his sister, Rebecca, to organ failure, it triggered a psychotic break. He’s been killing ever since. When your health started to decline, we think it retriggered Monroe. Based on the interviews we conducted with him we suspect he began to lose his grip on reality and began to identify you as Rebecca. That’s why he moved you to the Plaza Tower and began trying to save you. The organs he was collecting were for you. He believed an organ transplant would save your life, like it should’ve saved Rebecca’s. But that’s not why your body was shutting down. It was due to prolonged captivity and insufficient sustenance. You’re very lucky to be alive.

Elizabeth: I don’t feel lucky.