August 6, 2024 • 40 mins
The death of Ellen Greenberg has been in the news since the day her manner of death was changed from homicide to suicide. The question remains to this day; Ellen Greenberg is found dead in her kitchen with over 20 stab wounds to her head, back, neck, and chest. She has bruises all over her body in various stages of healing. Why was her case ruled a homicide and then changed to a suicide? On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will share his experiences with suicides and breakdown the wounds inflicted on Ellen Greenberg's body. Ellen Greenberg's are trying to have her manner of death changed from Suicide to Homicide or undetermined, either one will demand a new investigation into the death of their daughter. After years of hearing "no", they finally heard a "yes", the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is going to hear their case. Not about manner of death, but whether or not the parents of the victim have standing in court to argue on behalf of their deceased daughter.
Transcript Highlights
00:12.98 Introduction,Hope for the parents of Ellen Greenberg
03:14.72 Discussion of Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hear case
05:00.99 Discussion of changing manner of death from homicide to suicide I
09:04.99 Talk about 911 call
13:02.70 Discussion of giving family death notification
17:56.11 Discussion of recreation of scene
20:00.14 Talk about Ellen Greenberg body in kitchen
24:11.52 Discussion Phone Calls made before 911
28:34.29 Discussion of man who bled out from self inflicted knife wound
32:06.80 Discussion of stabbing yourself in the back
35:31.55 Talk about the effects of knife injuries
38:31.02 Discussion of suicide practice shot
40:06.80 Conclusion is it possible?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Doors with Joseph Scott more, Hope springs eternal. There's
a lot of examples of that. I think, you know
where you always have maybe a sliver, a glimmer, maybe
a sentilla of hope, and sometimes it comes to fruition.
(00:26):
I think many of us are surprised when that thing
that we quote unquote held out hope for materializes. Sometimes
I believe it's providential. Sometimes you're just in the right
place at the right time. But Tom is what we're
going to talk about today, because a lot of Tom
(00:51):
has elapsed since the death of Ellen Greenberg. But during
that time there have been to say that it's been
a roller coaster ride for Joshua and Sandy Greenberg as
(01:15):
an understatement, but hope does spring eternal, and we got
news of that this week, and that's why I'd like
to discuss it a bit today. We're going to talk
about a decision that has recently come down in Pennsylvania
(01:40):
just this past week, regarding the death of Ellen Greenberg.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs. Hope
has sprung forth in the Ellen Greenberg case that just
this past week, the Supreme Court of the State or
(02:04):
I'm sorry forgive me. The Commonwealth, which I still have
yet to figure out the difference between a commonwealth and
a state. I'm sure that'll come to fruition at some
point in time. But the Commonwealth, the Supring Court of
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has agreed to hear to hear
(02:24):
Ellen Greenberg's case, and I could not be I don't
know if the word happy is right. I'm I'm thrilled
for the Greenberg family though, because buddy, let me tell
you something. You talk about being drug through a keyhole.
(02:44):
These poor people just over all these years, their precious
daughter dead under just the super bizarre circumstances, and they're here.
They're going to have a hearing, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And it has. And it's not about guilt or innocence.
This hearing is about whether or not the parents have
standing in court to represent their daughter in how her
death is ruled. See when at first, when Ellen Greenberg
(03:20):
died and the investigation into her death was ruled a homicide,
it seemed like a foregone conclusion, you'll move forward with
an investigation as a homicide. But that's not what happened
at all. The police had their own idea of what happened,
(03:41):
and it was based on the fact that her fiance,
that Ellen Greenberg's fiance, Sam Goldberg, who was there when
this all took place. He made the nine to one
month phone call, he broke in the door. We'll get
into this in a minute, but he did all these things,
and he was there talking to police, and they police
(04:01):
believed he. They believed him because he was there, so
you say, and he they the medical examiner or coroner
ruled this death a homicide. The police said it was
a suicide, and for some reason unknown to me, the
(04:29):
death was changed from homicide to suicide. And that is
what this is about. All these years later. This happened
in twenty eleven, Joe, and here we are twenty twenty four,
and her parents, bless their hearts, what they've gone through.
They've spent a half million dollars, and they're doing it
(04:50):
because if it's a suicide, it's a suicide. If it's
a homicide, then there's a killer running loose. Somebody is
out of prison that should be in prison for the
death of their daughter, and they can't seem to get anyone. Well,
over the last several years, they've gotten plenty of people
(05:10):
to believe anyone that looks at this case. I have
yet to have anybody, Joe, tell me they believe it's
a suicide. I haven't had one person that I know
that has looked at this tell me they believe suicide.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Not one. Yeah, count me in that number. Yeah, and
you know, just and just so our friends know, we've actually,
you know, we've done a previous episode you know, on
Body back right about Ellen, and that goes back I
(05:41):
think August August of twenty twenty two, two years ago. Yeah,
two years ago when that dropped. I can't tell you
how many times I've been on television, but.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
You and Nancy did a huge reenactment.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah. We actually at Jacksonville State we re constructed or
did a fact simile of Ellen's kitchen.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Actually, Joe, let's see this very quickly for those of
you who are new and don't know this story. And
I found this out in dealing with some of our
coworkers on this case up in New York where they
just aren't familiar with it. They're not familiar with this case, right.
It boggles my mind how anybody could not. But you
know what, friends, we all miss things. There are stories
every day that I don't see, that you don't see.
(06:24):
So here it is. Ellen Greenberg's twenty seven years old.
She's a school teacher in Pennsylvania. She's engaged. Four days earlier.
She had sent out hold the Date cards to her
friends and family about their wedding date. She was excited
about this. A blizzard was coming in to Pennsylvania, to
Philadelphia at that time, and so they had sent everybody
(06:45):
home from work, go home, y'all get out of here. Yep,
they didn't say y'all, they get out, and so she does.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Ellen Greenberg leaves the school and on her way home
to the apartment she shares with Samberg, her Beyonce, she
stops and fills up her tank of gas in her car.
All right, So, and the reason I point that out
is because of what transpired after this. On our way
home she gets gashed. She goes to the apartment they're
(07:13):
hanging out, and Sam around four forty five says, I'm
gonna go work out. He goes down to the apartment
complex Jim to work out. When he returns sometime between
five fifteen and five thirty, he can't get in the
door front. The door is barred. Now it's locked, but
it also has a lock bar on the inside.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yep, being like a hotel, just like a hotel room.
So everybody knows it's it's one of those things that swings,
you know, it swings and then it latches onto the
you know, it's got the little slot in the gate
I think his house referred to, and it hooks onto
the other thing that's you know, that's anchored on the
door facing itself. So that's that's what he's faced with.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And so he can't get in right, and he sends
text messages to Ellen, and he spends at least twenty
two minutes. There are other reports that say longer texting, calling,
trying to get her dance to the door, even sends
her an email.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
She won't do it.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So he breaks the door down and gets in and
he finds her on the floor in the kitchen. She's
got her butt on the floor, leaned up against the
cabinets and she's bloody yep. And he calls nine to
one one. Sam calls nine to one one in what
(08:38):
to me seems a bit rehearsed, but he calls and says,
I've found my fiance. She's on the floor bleeding, and
they said, well, you know you need to do CPR,
you know, check see if she's live to CPR, and
he tries. He goes, oh, wait a minute, I can't.
There's a knife in her chest. Knife's still sticking in
her chest.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Joe yep.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
The nine to one one call from Goldberg starts at
six thirty three pm. By six forty pm, medics have
responded to the scene and have pronounced Ellie Dad. There's
no sign of an intruder, no sign of forced entry.
The only sign of forced entry, of course, is her
fiance breaking the door to get in. As they're looking
(09:23):
over the scene, police are saying, well, here's the fiance
who's giving us all the information. He's standing right here.
He's not leaving. And the police say, all this suicide.
Now they're looking at it. They haven't examined the body
other than a cursory look. And I have a question
for you about what police do on the scene, Joe.
But her body is then taken to the morgue and
(09:44):
the next morning an autopsy has performed. The police are
thinking suicide and the next morning, when the emmy starts
doing the autopsy, they realize there are a whole lot
of other things going on. One they get the blood
cleaned off and they're looking and they realize they being
the medical people. But the corner is saying, there are
(10:06):
over twenty. There are twenty stab wounds on this woman's body,
and at least ten of them are in her back
and neck.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, this is a suicide, Joe. And so the.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Corner actually says homicide. He rules it a homicide and
makes sense, doesn't it, based on the number of wounds. However,
the family is going through the grief process. It's a homicide.
Got to murderer out on the loose. Family says, you know,
(10:40):
Sam's been a good boyfriend. We don't see anything wrong
with him. At first, the corner does mention something, Joe.
There are at least ten other wounds on her body,
bruises that are in various stages of healing. Some are
older than others. But she's got bruises is on her legs,
(11:00):
on her abdomen. She got bruises, Buddy, And she doesn't
play any kind She's a girly girl, doesn't play any sports,
so there's no reason for her to have bruises on
her body. Maybe one or two. We can all have those,
but ten that are in various stages of healing. Rule
a homicide family grieving. Months go by and the corner,
(11:24):
unbeknownst to the family, decides it's not a homicide, it's
a suicide and changes their death ruling.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yep, changes it. And that's and they and here's the
other you know, here's the other piece to this, Dave,
is that the family, according to what we understand, was
not advised that this was going to happen. And so
you know, here it starts. I think you know when
(11:57):
you have when you have a a dead child, and
you know, looking at this from the perspective of a parent,
you've already got enough to kind of juggle, and you
you set your mind, you know, when you give when
we when we tell a family member, first off, we
(12:19):
notify them of death or we give them that initial finding.
They only hear about ten percent of what you say
in those critical early moments. And that's a proven fact.
They literally have to come back to you and get
more information because their brain can only take on so much.
So when they have been I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, yeah, well you're getting slapped around emotionally is and
you know, at the core of your being. And I
think that anybody and we we just have these fantastic
listeners that everybody has their different life experiences. For our
listeners that have experienced death in their life, you remember
(13:06):
where you were when you found out, You remember who
told you about a death of someone that was very
dear to you, and you remember those initial comments that
were made. And so when you're being told as a process,
during this process that this is a homicide, and that's
kind of emblazoned into your brain. Now all of a sudden,
(13:28):
you're going to put full stop and go in reverse
and you don't even have the damn common courtesy. Let
that just kind of sink in the common courtesy to
reach out to mom and daddy and say we're changing
this ruling and we're going to make it a serious
You're right, I'd be fit to be tied. I mean,
(13:49):
if you want to explain it to me, if you
want to explain this finding to me, man to man
as a daddy, that you're changing my baby girls cause
of death or manner of death rather, And that's the
important thing here, the manner from a from a homicide
(14:11):
to a suicide. Explain it to me, lay it out
to me, tell me what's going on. But that's that's
not done in this case. And so it's it's not
it's not only that Ellen has gone from them forever
and ever, Amen, it's it's the fact that it was
(14:31):
done in this manner. So you're you talk about throwing
gasoline on a fire, that's what That's what Greenberg's have
been dealing with for all these years, Dave, all these years,
you know, and we're talking about going back to twenty eleven. Okay.
This has been a long, long crooked road for them
(14:54):
along the way. But the one thing about it is this,
and this just encourages me and should encourage many of
you out there. They didn't sit down in a corner
somewhere wringing their hands weeping. They got busy and now
(15:23):
now maybe it's going to pay a dividend. You had mentioned,
David some time ago that Nancy and I had done
(15:45):
a recreation of Ellen's apartment at Jacksonville State and it
appeared on Fox at that time.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It was a special, phenomenal recreation of the scene.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Joe, Yeah, that goes to our staff at Jayshue, I
just showed up after you know, even our departmental secretary,
which is pretty amazing. She actually makes uh makes fake blood. Wow.
And so we were able to uh through crylics and
all these sorts of things, we were able to reconstruct
you know, the scene, and you know we had caventry
(16:21):
in there and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
You know, we know how many stab wounds there were, Joe, right,
and when the police showed up because of the nine
one one call, you got medics and police showing up.
There are something I want to point out. When Samuel
Goldberg was trying to get Ellen to open the door again,
(16:45):
the door was locked with the latch, as we mentioned earlier,
so he couldn't get in, and he was texting her
and trying to call her and what have you. And
here's what he was texting Joe. I pulled this up
because I wanted to give you an idea of this
couple who for earlier sent out save the date message,
you know, could notice all their friends and family. First
message to her, first text, Hello, Remember he's standing outside
(17:09):
the door. She's allegedly inside open the door. That's the
second one third one. What are you doing fourth. One,
I'm getting pissed. Five Hello, six you better have an excuse.
(17:34):
So the sixth text is a threat? Seven, what the f.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Eight?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Ah ahhh ah nine, you have no idea. Those are
the text messages he sent to Ellen Greenberg, his fiance.
He went down to the gym to work out, comes
(18:04):
back thirty minutes or so later, can't get in, and
that's what he's texting her. She could be taken a shower,
she could have fallen asleep. Any number of things could
have been going on that do not require a threat
by the sixth text message or a threat that I'm
(18:25):
getting mad. So just letting you know that's where Samuel
Goldberg's head was in terms of sending these text messages,
and now that we know that she's dead inside the apartment, Joe,
he thought these were perfectly acceptable for police to see.
He thought these messages were acceptable.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, And you know, it's always that piece of it
has always been interesting to me that he's there physically
texting these messages to her and there is no response whatsoever.
And it's you see this this kind of progressive escalation,
which I guess that's kind of repetitive. You see this
(19:10):
escalation and you know with these text messages, but when
he finally gains entry into the apartment, and if I'm
not mistaken, there was actually a a building worker that
had been there, right, And then you know that he
(19:32):
has to defeat that gate on the door, because it's
locked internally, you have to defeat it. And he was able,
according to the police, to defeat that through pressure and
being able to go in and then view.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
View.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
You know Ellen in the kitchen and she's in a seated,
seated position as you you know, her buttocks is kind
of contacting contacting the floor legs and they use the
term splade, which means they're extended and kind of often
these acute eagles. Yeah, and she's leaning listening to one side.
(20:16):
I think one of the big questions is here it
comes down to gravity. We've got blood that is issuing
from from her face and it is running so that
(20:36):
it would be parallel with her shoulders. Okay, this blood streak,
if you will, well, you can't be seated in a
vertical orientation, straight up and down, and blood is going
to flow to the back of your head. So one
of the suppositions has always been was that she had
been moved, moved from maybe a a position where she
(21:04):
is lying on the floor in a soupin position, which
means her shoulder blades are contacting, uh, contacting the floor,
and then moved and repositioned. And during that period of
time when she was moved, the blood ran essentially downward,
and then the orientation is is changed at that point
(21:27):
in time. I think that that's that's kind of an
interesting an interesting uh finding there, because.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
You're sitting up, the blood would drip down your face
into your neck and chest, not the one side in
your ear Joe.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah, and you would have it streaked down you know,
your shirt and this sort of thing. And look, there's
blood deposition on her. You can't get past that because
of the level of violence here. And when I say violence, Dave,
I'm talking about so many stab wounds these and they're
not And here here's another one that I don't think
that people really have have focused on. She's actually got
(22:03):
a pretty nasty incized wound on her scalp as well.
That's kind of elliptical in shape if you think.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
About, say, Joe, yeah, let me back up very quickly
here because I want you to be able to get
into all of the injuries. Yeah, but I'm curious as
to when police come in what they're seeing. I went
to the nine one one call, and you've got Sam
is Samuel is on the phone with nine one one.
(22:34):
By the way, he comes in allegedly and finds his
fiance on the floor like this. He doesn't call nine
one one right away, Joe. He actually makes two other
phone calls before calling nine one one, Sam Goldwyn, his
(22:58):
wife or his fiance say, bloodied on the floor in
the kitchen. He calls two lawyers. One is his uncle,
one is his cousin. He calls two lawyers, Joe, before
calling nine to one one. I know lawyers. I know you.
(23:22):
And if I come home and find a loved one
in the kitchen like this, I ain't calling you. No,
I'm calling nine to one one.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Right Yeah, I'll tell them I want them out there expeditiously. Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So that's what the setting that That is where my
head is in this that he calls his uncle a lawyer,
And all I can think of is he's going, hey, man,
you need a defense attorney. And you know your cousin
is a lot better at this than I am. Call
him and see what he thinks. That's all I'm thinking.
And by the way, I am making that up out
of my brain what I think happened in the conversations,
(23:57):
but the conversations took place. First called his uncle, the lawyer,
then called his cousin. The lawyer then calls nine to
one one, and in the nine to one one call,
he's acting very agitated and over the top, and the
operator tells him a couple of times, you got to
get yourself calmed down. Man, you have to calm That's
what she actually says, Sir, you have to calm yourself
(24:18):
down in order to get you some help. Now, the
operator says, you don't know where she's bleeding from, can't
tell where the blood's coming from. Sam Goldberg says, I
think her head. What it's all about? Everywhere? It's everywhere.
You think she might have fallen. Do you know what happened?
Goldberg says, she may have slipped. There's blood on the table.
(24:42):
Her face is a little purple. So she hit her head. Joe,
now the fact that she has twenty nine wounds, and
he comes up with, oh, she hit her head. I'm thinking,
is he looking at the same person or are all
of these wounds not bleeding.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
No, they they're not necessarily bleeding, and you have to
kind of measure that out relative to the amount of
hemorrhage that's there. And is there evidence that any of
this stuff is post mortem? And I think that there
have been some people that have concluded that it could
have been, you know, an absence of hemorrhage in particular
wound tracks. But I think probably the most glaring thing
(25:24):
to me, Dave, is that he's looking down and you
had mentioned this earlier when he's being told to render
aid CPR and he states that she's got a I
can't she's got a knife in her chest. You couple
that with what you just said about I can't understand.
(25:47):
I can't make sense of where the and this is
me paraphrasing where the blood is coming from. This is
what we call a clue if you have if you
have a knife, which the knife is, it is roughly.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Twelve point five centimeters, Yeah, and that's going to.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Convert to about four hang on, let me do the math.
Four point nine inches. So this thing is buried in
her chest, it's there, and this you have to you
have to know that this is going to be the
last location, the coup de gras, if you will, where
(26:27):
the knife is going to wind up, and it really
it's done tremendous amount of internal damage. We're talking about
a lung getting clipped. We're talking about damage to the order,
which even and I've used this analogy relative to other
cases that we've talked about anytime involving the order, even
(26:48):
if you have a let's just say she she was
rolling into an emergency room and you had a cardiothoracic
surgeon that was standing right there with a te that
is such a hill to climb for them to even
fix her at that point in time. That's a that's
(27:09):
a lethal that's a lethal event of Reflectively, you know,
I have people over the years now and it has
been years, you know, since we've been covering this case,
they've said, Morgan, have you ever had, you know, cases
of self inflicted you know, stab wounds. Yeah, I have,
(27:32):
And most of them are precipitated in cases where people
are in a they're they're in they're in psychological duress. Obviously,
I had one case in particularly where the guy was
he was literally psychotic, uh, highly paranoid. I think I
(27:53):
may have mentioned this in the first episode that we
did about Ellen's case. But he he thought that the
CIA had put a listening device in his in his forearm,
and he cut his forearm open. I think we found
let me get this straight. It seems like he had
sliced his arm. If you'll turn your palm up on
your left hand, he had sliced from the heel of
(28:16):
his hand to what's referred to as the anti cubital fossil,
which is the fancy term for the crook of your arm.
He had sliced that over twenty five times with a
filet knife, trying to find the microphone in his forearm,
and he bled out he was Yeah, he was a
(28:37):
young man that lived with his parents. He was pairing
wits kits. He had no other stab injuries, but he
thought he was being listened to, and so he's in
this kind of psychotic phase. I had trouble ruling that,
and it wasn't up to me to rule that that
was for the corner. This was in New Orleans at
the time. Ruling that actually as a suicide. But he
(28:57):
did die at his own hand, and one of the
things that you do with suicide is one of the
things that forensic pathologists want is they want to be
able to demonstrate intent when it comes to suicidal ideation
and then acting that out. You know, and you look
at him and he's in a psychotic phase, do you think, well,
(29:20):
could he form intent in order to do that? Was
it his intention to kill himself? Well, I don't know,
but he brought about his own death. In Ellen's case,
you know, this thing starts off as a homicide with
multiple stab wounds. And I got to tell you, Dave,
just so you know, if I see this, look, if
I've got if I've got five stab wounds on a case,
(29:43):
I'm calling that overkill. We're not talking about five. We've
got twenty. We've got twenty. Not to mention the other
little insults over the body, she's got a big kind
of crescent shaped in sized injury on her scalp.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
When he's saying size, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Well, it's it's it's real simple. It's like it's a
cut as opposed to stab. So stab uh and this
the stab ons range, some of them are very superficial,
and but yet you have these that have depth, particularly
the one that's where the knife is found buried in
her chest that has significant depth where it's impacting you know,
(30:27):
h her her her organs and the function of her
aora and her lung. If someone had did intend to
(30:48):
do great bodily harm to themselves, in other words, kill themselves,
why would you be layered up? You would want to
make sure that the blow that you struck was going
to be effective, that it was in fact going to
end your life. Well, is that the case here? Well, no,
we've got you know, you're going through multiple layers of
(31:08):
clothing here, you've got this knife that's buried in the chest.
And the one thing that none of us can get
past is this idea that you can stab yourself in
the back. You know, there's uh, you know, there's that.
(31:29):
That's one of the reasons that you know, you go
back to even we did it, We did the the
episode on Bodybags about the death of Julius Caesar, and
that's where the term backstabber comes from, because you know,
who's going to stab themselves in a back with a
knife at their own hand? How can you even tolerate
(31:50):
that kind of pain? That intense pain. Also, additionally, one
of these insults, there's two of them, actually that one
brushes the spinal cord, and you've got another one that
enters into the base of the of the skull, and
(32:11):
so you have in dwelling hemorrhage. There there are I
think neuropathologists out there that hold that she Ellen, that is,
this would have incapacitated her. But yet you look at
the autopsy report and there's a very specific mention in
the autopsy report where the pathologists is saying, no, that
(32:36):
that was not the case, that this could not have
incapacitated her. Well, how do you how do you measure
that relative to that? I've always had a problem with that,
and not to mention there was also this this thing
that had erupted early on. There's this lady that's well known,
(32:58):
I mean revered neuropathologist.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Doctor Lizzy Rourke Adams.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah. And when you talk about a pioneering lady that's
in the field, and it's a very specific field of neuropathology,
she is held as the gold standard. And the thing
about her is that the Emmy's office had claimed at
(33:26):
that particular time that they had sent Ellen samples perhaps
the brain to this physician, this renowned physician, for her
to examine and give an opinion. Guess what. She says
(33:48):
that she has no record of this day. It's out
of all the people in the world that you could
have chosen to do this. I think that she would
be like I said, she's the old standard. She's some
you would want to have eyes on this case. But
to say that you had actually sent a sample to her,
and she says, and she keeps meticulous notes because they
(34:11):
bill for everything, that.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
She's a contractor and this is not a first go round.
But here's what actually happened. She didn't say she never
saw it. She said that she has no recollect she
did not examine it. There's no record, she never sent
a bill, there's nothing. But here's what actually transpired. To
change this from homicide to suicide and back that up,
(34:38):
they had to make it so that this wound on
the spinal cord did not effect the spinal cord itself,
that it actually didn't impact it. Because if the spinal
cord is impacted, she cannot have inflicted the last stab wound,
which is the knife to the check level, right, And
if it doesn't touch, if it doesn't impact the spinal cord,
(35:02):
then she could This is what the entire homicide. Suicide
comes down to and this major issue. The doctor or
the coroner, the Emmy, in a pouring down snow in Philadelphia,
takes this section of spinal cord, the specimen to doctor
(35:24):
Lucy Rourke Adams, and outside of the hospital, standing next
to her car in a snow storm, she looks at it,
not under a microscope, not in a lab, in the
parking lot next to her car. That's the examination that
(35:45):
took place that led theme to state that this expert,
world renowned expert said there was no impact on the
spinal cord. A great she said, I might have looked
at it, you know, but I did not examine it.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, and this is not something you know when you
conduct when you conduct any kind of examination. And this
applies both in medicine and forensics. This stuff is so
highly and intensely documented, and it's step by step and
there are procedures that have to take place in order
for it to be validated. David, let me ask you
(36:25):
this question, just knowing what you know, if I were,
if I were of a mind to try to take
this this so called examination that you're referring to, and
try to submit that into court and have that be valid.
I can tell you, you know, our friend Nancy Grace would
(36:47):
rip that to shreds. I don't know. I don't know
of a judge that would allow.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
It, even when you have the doctor saying I don't
know what you're really talking about. You know, I did
not examine this. I have no record of it. I
have nothing, so no, I mean, but that's where this
hinge is, Joe, this entire case, for these parents, all
I can think of is, you know, Ellen Greenberg's dad
is a doctor. They spend a half million dollars trying
(37:13):
to get a changed from suicide to they're willing to
settle for undetermined undetermined. Yeah, it's just it's not a suicide.
That's it's not a suicide. Friends, somebody did this to her,
she didn't do it to herself. One quick thing, you
mentioned the number of stab wounds. I had read a
piece on this because I was curious talking about how
(37:35):
when people do use a knife to inflict this, sometimes
there are extra wounds, not just the kill strike or
what have you, and that sometimes it's the individual is
testing the water, see how bad it's gonna hurt, and
what have you. But those cuts are substantially different than
what we're talking about here in this particular case where
you have bounds to the back of the neck and
(37:57):
the chest.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, I can't imagine under any circumstances that they would
be in such a broad anatomical orientation where you would
have them both posterily and antirily. That doesn't make sense.
And I know what you're saying, and this happens. Actually,
this translates really well into other suicide investigations because you
(38:20):
know how you use the term testing the waters. There
is documented, many documented cases where people will literally test
fire weapons before they shoot themselves. It's part of what
is done. And you go to this idea just you know,
if they're using a handgun, say for instance, they'll test
fire the weapon, maybe up into the ceiling. I've had them. Actually,
(38:44):
people will have heard a gunshot wound out of a window.
Perhaps I actually saw I actually interviewed someone one time
where they saw a man who was going to who
did eventually take his lifestyle. I got involved in the case,
was in a second story window and extended the weapon
out of the window and this was actually witnessed, and
(39:07):
fired it into the street and sat back down and
shot himself. They just want to make sure that it's
a fail it's not really a fail safe, but to
make sure that it's functioning. That's a bit tougher to
do with a knife. But if you are going to
do a test run, you would think that it would
be concentrated in one specific area. Where are you're going
to do this? And there's any number of ways that
(39:28):
people do kill themselves with sharp instruments. We've heard for
years people you know, the old, cutting their own wrist.
I have had people that have cut their own throats.
I have colleagues that have worked a lot of those
over the years. Particularly used to get them a lot
with straight razors. But the idea that someone stabs themselves
(39:50):
multiple times, and the thing that you have to think
about physiologically, are these pain centers firing? And I think everybody,
all of our friends out there that are listening, if
you even think about sustaining a paper cut. And I
know I'm not trying to diminish Hellen, but it hurts
(40:12):
so incredibly bad. Can you imagine driving a metal object
into your body twenty times? You do it over and
over and over again. I'm sorry, folks, something just does
(40:34):
not add up. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags.
Body Doors with Joseph Scott more, Hope springs eternal. There's
a lot of examples of that. I think, you know
where you always have maybe a sliver, a glimmer, maybe
a sentilla of hope, and sometimes it comes to fruition.
(00:26):
I think many of us are surprised when that thing
that we quote unquote held out hope for materializes. Sometimes
I believe it's providential. Sometimes you're just in the right
place at the right time. But Tom is what we're
going to talk about today, because a lot of Tom
(00:51):
has elapsed since the death of Ellen Greenberg. But during
that time there have been to say that it's been
a roller coaster ride for Joshua and Sandy Greenberg as
(01:15):
an understatement, but hope does spring eternal, and we got
news of that this week, and that's why I'd like
to discuss it a bit today. We're going to talk
about a decision that has recently come down in Pennsylvania
(01:40):
just this past week, regarding the death of Ellen Greenberg.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs. Hope
has sprung forth in the Ellen Greenberg case that just
this past week, the Supreme Court of the State or
(02:04):
I'm sorry forgive me. The Commonwealth, which I still have
yet to figure out the difference between a commonwealth and
a state. I'm sure that'll come to fruition at some
point in time. But the Commonwealth, the Supring Court of
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has agreed to hear to hear
(02:24):
Ellen Greenberg's case, and I could not be I don't
know if the word happy is right. I'm I'm thrilled
for the Greenberg family though, because buddy, let me tell
you something. You talk about being drug through a keyhole.
(02:44):
These poor people just over all these years, their precious
daughter dead under just the super bizarre circumstances, and they're here.
They're going to have a hearing, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And it has. And it's not about guilt or innocence.
This hearing is about whether or not the parents have
standing in court to represent their daughter in how her
death is ruled. See when at first, when Ellen Greenberg
(03:20):
died and the investigation into her death was ruled a homicide,
it seemed like a foregone conclusion, you'll move forward with
an investigation as a homicide. But that's not what happened
at all. The police had their own idea of what happened,
(03:41):
and it was based on the fact that her fiance,
that Ellen Greenberg's fiance, Sam Goldberg, who was there when
this all took place. He made the nine to one
month phone call, he broke in the door. We'll get
into this in a minute, but he did all these things,
and he was there talking to police, and they police
(04:01):
believed he. They believed him because he was there, so
you say, and he they the medical examiner or coroner
ruled this death a homicide. The police said it was
a suicide, and for some reason unknown to me, the
(04:29):
death was changed from homicide to suicide. And that is
what this is about. All these years later. This happened
in twenty eleven, Joe, and here we are twenty twenty four,
and her parents, bless their hearts, what they've gone through.
They've spent a half million dollars, and they're doing it
(04:50):
because if it's a suicide, it's a suicide. If it's
a homicide, then there's a killer running loose. Somebody is
out of prison that should be in prison for the
death of their daughter, and they can't seem to get anyone. Well,
over the last several years, they've gotten plenty of people
(05:10):
to believe anyone that looks at this case. I have
yet to have anybody, Joe, tell me they believe it's
a suicide. I haven't had one person that I know
that has looked at this tell me they believe suicide.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Not one. Yeah, count me in that number. Yeah, and
you know, just and just so our friends know, we've actually,
you know, we've done a previous episode you know, on
Body back right about Ellen, and that goes back I
(05:41):
think August August of twenty twenty two, two years ago. Yeah,
two years ago when that dropped. I can't tell you
how many times I've been on television, but.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
You and Nancy did a huge reenactment.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah. We actually at Jacksonville State we re constructed or
did a fact simile of Ellen's kitchen.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Actually, Joe, let's see this very quickly for those of
you who are new and don't know this story. And
I found this out in dealing with some of our
coworkers on this case up in New York where they
just aren't familiar with it. They're not familiar with this case, right.
It boggles my mind how anybody could not. But you
know what, friends, we all miss things. There are stories
every day that I don't see, that you don't see.
(06:24):
So here it is. Ellen Greenberg's twenty seven years old.
She's a school teacher in Pennsylvania. She's engaged. Four days earlier.
She had sent out hold the Date cards to her
friends and family about their wedding date. She was excited
about this. A blizzard was coming in to Pennsylvania, to
Philadelphia at that time, and so they had sent everybody
(06:45):
home from work, go home, y'all get out of here. Yep,
they didn't say y'all, they get out, and so she does.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Ellen Greenberg leaves the school and on her way home
to the apartment she shares with Samberg, her Beyonce, she
stops and fills up her tank of gas in her car.
All right, So, and the reason I point that out
is because of what transpired after this. On our way
home she gets gashed. She goes to the apartment they're
(07:13):
hanging out, and Sam around four forty five says, I'm
gonna go work out. He goes down to the apartment
complex Jim to work out. When he returns sometime between
five fifteen and five thirty, he can't get in the
door front. The door is barred. Now it's locked, but
it also has a lock bar on the inside.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yep, being like a hotel, just like a hotel room.
So everybody knows it's it's one of those things that swings,
you know, it swings and then it latches onto the
you know, it's got the little slot in the gate
I think his house referred to, and it hooks onto
the other thing that's you know, that's anchored on the
door facing itself. So that's that's what he's faced with.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And so he can't get in right, and he sends
text messages to Ellen, and he spends at least twenty
two minutes. There are other reports that say longer texting, calling,
trying to get her dance to the door, even sends
her an email.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
She won't do it.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So he breaks the door down and gets in and
he finds her on the floor in the kitchen. She's
got her butt on the floor, leaned up against the
cabinets and she's bloody yep. And he calls nine to
one one. Sam calls nine to one one in what
(08:38):
to me seems a bit rehearsed, but he calls and says,
I've found my fiance. She's on the floor bleeding, and
they said, well, you know you need to do CPR,
you know, check see if she's live to CPR, and
he tries. He goes, oh, wait a minute, I can't.
There's a knife in her chest. Knife's still sticking in
her chest.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Joe yep.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
The nine to one one call from Goldberg starts at
six thirty three pm. By six forty pm, medics have
responded to the scene and have pronounced Ellie Dad. There's
no sign of an intruder, no sign of forced entry.
The only sign of forced entry, of course, is her
fiance breaking the door to get in. As they're looking
(09:23):
over the scene, police are saying, well, here's the fiance
who's giving us all the information. He's standing right here.
He's not leaving. And the police say, all this suicide.
Now they're looking at it. They haven't examined the body
other than a cursory look. And I have a question
for you about what police do on the scene, Joe.
But her body is then taken to the morgue and
(09:44):
the next morning an autopsy has performed. The police are
thinking suicide and the next morning, when the emmy starts
doing the autopsy, they realize there are a whole lot
of other things going on. One they get the blood
cleaned off and they're looking and they realize they being
the medical people. But the corner is saying, there are
(10:06):
over twenty. There are twenty stab wounds on this woman's body,
and at least ten of them are in her back
and neck.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, this is a suicide, Joe. And so the.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Corner actually says homicide. He rules it a homicide and
makes sense, doesn't it, based on the number of wounds. However,
the family is going through the grief process. It's a homicide.
Got to murderer out on the loose. Family says, you know,
(10:40):
Sam's been a good boyfriend. We don't see anything wrong
with him. At first, the corner does mention something, Joe.
There are at least ten other wounds on her body,
bruises that are in various stages of healing. Some are
older than others. But she's got bruises is on her legs,
(11:00):
on her abdomen. She got bruises, Buddy, And she doesn't
play any kind She's a girly girl, doesn't play any sports,
so there's no reason for her to have bruises on
her body. Maybe one or two. We can all have those,
but ten that are in various stages of healing. Rule
a homicide family grieving. Months go by and the corner,
(11:24):
unbeknownst to the family, decides it's not a homicide, it's
a suicide and changes their death ruling.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yep, changes it. And that's and they and here's the
other you know, here's the other piece to this, Dave,
is that the family, according to what we understand, was
not advised that this was going to happen. And so
you know, here it starts. I think you know when
(11:57):
you have when you have a a dead child, and
you know, looking at this from the perspective of a parent,
you've already got enough to kind of juggle, and you
you set your mind, you know, when you give when
we when we tell a family member, first off, we
(12:19):
notify them of death or we give them that initial finding.
They only hear about ten percent of what you say
in those critical early moments. And that's a proven fact.
They literally have to come back to you and get
more information because their brain can only take on so much.
So when they have been I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, yeah, well you're getting slapped around emotionally is and
you know, at the core of your being. And I
think that anybody and we we just have these fantastic
listeners that everybody has their different life experiences. For our
listeners that have experienced death in their life, you remember
(13:06):
where you were when you found out, You remember who
told you about a death of someone that was very
dear to you, and you remember those initial comments that
were made. And so when you're being told as a process,
during this process that this is a homicide, and that's
kind of emblazoned into your brain. Now all of a sudden,
(13:28):
you're going to put full stop and go in reverse
and you don't even have the damn common courtesy. Let
that just kind of sink in the common courtesy to
reach out to mom and daddy and say we're changing
this ruling and we're going to make it a serious
You're right, I'd be fit to be tied. I mean,
(13:49):
if you want to explain it to me, if you
want to explain this finding to me, man to man
as a daddy, that you're changing my baby girls cause
of death or manner of death rather, And that's the
important thing here, the manner from a from a homicide
(14:11):
to a suicide. Explain it to me, lay it out
to me, tell me what's going on. But that's that's
not done in this case. And so it's it's not
it's not only that Ellen has gone from them forever
and ever, Amen, it's it's the fact that it was
(14:31):
done in this manner. So you're you talk about throwing
gasoline on a fire, that's what That's what Greenberg's have
been dealing with for all these years, Dave, all these years,
you know, and we're talking about going back to twenty eleven. Okay.
This has been a long, long crooked road for them
(14:54):
along the way. But the one thing about it is this,
and this just encourages me and should encourage many of
you out there. They didn't sit down in a corner
somewhere wringing their hands weeping. They got busy and now
(15:23):
now maybe it's going to pay a dividend. You had mentioned,
David some time ago that Nancy and I had done
(15:45):
a recreation of Ellen's apartment at Jacksonville State and it
appeared on Fox at that time.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It was a special, phenomenal recreation of the scene.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Joe, Yeah, that goes to our staff at Jayshue, I
just showed up after you know, even our departmental secretary,
which is pretty amazing. She actually makes uh makes fake blood. Wow.
And so we were able to uh through crylics and
all these sorts of things, we were able to reconstruct
you know, the scene, and you know we had caventry
(16:21):
in there and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
You know, we know how many stab wounds there were, Joe, right,
and when the police showed up because of the nine
one one call, you got medics and police showing up.
There are something I want to point out. When Samuel
Goldberg was trying to get Ellen to open the door again,
(16:45):
the door was locked with the latch, as we mentioned earlier,
so he couldn't get in, and he was texting her
and trying to call her and what have you. And
here's what he was texting Joe. I pulled this up
because I wanted to give you an idea of this
couple who for earlier sent out save the date message,
you know, could notice all their friends and family. First
message to her, first text, Hello, Remember he's standing outside
(17:09):
the door. She's allegedly inside open the door. That's the
second one third one. What are you doing fourth. One,
I'm getting pissed. Five Hello, six you better have an excuse.
(17:34):
So the sixth text is a threat? Seven, what the f.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Eight?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Ah ahhh ah nine, you have no idea. Those are
the text messages he sent to Ellen Greenberg, his fiance.
He went down to the gym to work out, comes
(18:04):
back thirty minutes or so later, can't get in, and
that's what he's texting her. She could be taken a shower,
she could have fallen asleep. Any number of things could
have been going on that do not require a threat
by the sixth text message or a threat that I'm
(18:25):
getting mad. So just letting you know that's where Samuel
Goldberg's head was in terms of sending these text messages,
and now that we know that she's dead inside the apartment, Joe,
he thought these were perfectly acceptable for police to see.
He thought these messages were acceptable.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, And you know, it's always that piece of it
has always been interesting to me that he's there physically
texting these messages to her and there is no response whatsoever.
And it's you see this this kind of progressive escalation,
which I guess that's kind of repetitive. You see this
(19:10):
escalation and you know with these text messages, but when
he finally gains entry into the apartment, and if I'm
not mistaken, there was actually a a building worker that
had been there, right, And then you know that he
(19:32):
has to defeat that gate on the door, because it's
locked internally, you have to defeat it. And he was able,
according to the police, to defeat that through pressure and
being able to go in and then view.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
View.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
You know Ellen in the kitchen and she's in a seated,
seated position as you you know, her buttocks is kind
of contacting contacting the floor legs and they use the
term splade, which means they're extended and kind of often
these acute eagles. Yeah, and she's leaning listening to one side.
(20:16):
I think one of the big questions is here it
comes down to gravity. We've got blood that is issuing
from from her face and it is running so that
(20:36):
it would be parallel with her shoulders. Okay, this blood streak,
if you will, well, you can't be seated in a
vertical orientation, straight up and down, and blood is going
to flow to the back of your head. So one
of the suppositions has always been was that she had
been moved, moved from maybe a a position where she
(21:04):
is lying on the floor in a soupin position, which
means her shoulder blades are contacting, uh, contacting the floor,
and then moved and repositioned. And during that period of
time when she was moved, the blood ran essentially downward,
and then the orientation is is changed at that point
(21:27):
in time. I think that that's that's kind of an
interesting an interesting uh finding there, because.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
You're sitting up, the blood would drip down your face
into your neck and chest, not the one side in
your ear Joe.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah, and you would have it streaked down you know,
your shirt and this sort of thing. And look, there's
blood deposition on her. You can't get past that because
of the level of violence here. And when I say violence, Dave,
I'm talking about so many stab wounds these and they're
not And here here's another one that I don't think
that people really have have focused on. She's actually got
(22:03):
a pretty nasty incized wound on her scalp as well.
That's kind of elliptical in shape if you think.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
About, say, Joe, yeah, let me back up very quickly
here because I want you to be able to get
into all of the injuries. Yeah, but I'm curious as
to when police come in what they're seeing. I went
to the nine one one call, and you've got Sam
is Samuel is on the phone with nine one one.
(22:34):
By the way, he comes in allegedly and finds his
fiance on the floor like this. He doesn't call nine
one one right away, Joe. He actually makes two other
phone calls before calling nine one one, Sam Goldwyn, his
(22:58):
wife or his fiance say, bloodied on the floor in
the kitchen. He calls two lawyers. One is his uncle,
one is his cousin. He calls two lawyers, Joe, before
calling nine to one one. I know lawyers. I know you.
(23:22):
And if I come home and find a loved one
in the kitchen like this, I ain't calling you. No,
I'm calling nine to one one.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Right Yeah, I'll tell them I want them out there expeditiously. Yes.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So that's what the setting that That is where my
head is in this that he calls his uncle a lawyer,
And all I can think of is he's going, hey, man,
you need a defense attorney. And you know your cousin
is a lot better at this than I am. Call
him and see what he thinks. That's all I'm thinking.
And by the way, I am making that up out
of my brain what I think happened in the conversations,
(23:57):
but the conversations took place. First called his uncle, the lawyer,
then called his cousin. The lawyer then calls nine to
one one, and in the nine to one one call,
he's acting very agitated and over the top, and the
operator tells him a couple of times, you got to
get yourself calmed down. Man, you have to calm That's
what she actually says, Sir, you have to calm yourself
(24:18):
down in order to get you some help. Now, the
operator says, you don't know where she's bleeding from, can't
tell where the blood's coming from. Sam Goldberg says, I
think her head. What it's all about? Everywhere? It's everywhere.
You think she might have fallen. Do you know what happened?
Goldberg says, she may have slipped. There's blood on the table.
(24:42):
Her face is a little purple. So she hit her head. Joe,
now the fact that she has twenty nine wounds, and
he comes up with, oh, she hit her head. I'm thinking,
is he looking at the same person or are all
of these wounds not bleeding.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
No, they they're not necessarily bleeding, and you have to
kind of measure that out relative to the amount of
hemorrhage that's there. And is there evidence that any of
this stuff is post mortem? And I think that there
have been some people that have concluded that it could
have been, you know, an absence of hemorrhage in particular
wound tracks. But I think probably the most glaring thing
(25:24):
to me, Dave, is that he's looking down and you
had mentioned this earlier when he's being told to render
aid CPR and he states that she's got a I
can't she's got a knife in her chest. You couple
that with what you just said about I can't understand.
(25:47):
I can't make sense of where the and this is
me paraphrasing where the blood is coming from. This is
what we call a clue if you have if you
have a knife, which the knife is, it is roughly.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Twelve point five centimeters, Yeah, and that's going to.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Convert to about four hang on, let me do the math.
Four point nine inches. So this thing is buried in
her chest, it's there, and this you have to you
have to know that this is going to be the
last location, the coup de gras, if you will, where
(26:27):
the knife is going to wind up, and it really
it's done tremendous amount of internal damage. We're talking about
a lung getting clipped. We're talking about damage to the order,
which even and I've used this analogy relative to other
cases that we've talked about anytime involving the order, even
(26:48):
if you have a let's just say she she was
rolling into an emergency room and you had a cardiothoracic
surgeon that was standing right there with a te that
is such a hill to climb for them to even
fix her at that point in time. That's a that's
(27:09):
a lethal that's a lethal event of Reflectively, you know,
I have people over the years now and it has
been years, you know, since we've been covering this case,
they've said, Morgan, have you ever had, you know, cases
of self inflicted you know, stab wounds. Yeah, I have,
(27:32):
And most of them are precipitated in cases where people
are in a they're they're in they're in psychological duress. Obviously,
I had one case in particularly where the guy was
he was literally psychotic, uh, highly paranoid. I think I
(27:53):
may have mentioned this in the first episode that we
did about Ellen's case. But he he thought that the
CIA had put a listening device in his in his forearm,
and he cut his forearm open. I think we found
let me get this straight. It seems like he had
sliced his arm. If you'll turn your palm up on
your left hand, he had sliced from the heel of
(28:16):
his hand to what's referred to as the anti cubital fossil,
which is the fancy term for the crook of your arm.
He had sliced that over twenty five times with a
filet knife, trying to find the microphone in his forearm,
and he bled out he was Yeah, he was a
(28:37):
young man that lived with his parents. He was pairing
wits kits. He had no other stab injuries, but he
thought he was being listened to, and so he's in
this kind of psychotic phase. I had trouble ruling that,
and it wasn't up to me to rule that that
was for the corner. This was in New Orleans at
the time. Ruling that actually as a suicide. But he
(28:57):
did die at his own hand, and one of the
things that you do with suicide is one of the
things that forensic pathologists want is they want to be
able to demonstrate intent when it comes to suicidal ideation
and then acting that out. You know, and you look
at him and he's in a psychotic phase, do you think, well,
(29:20):
could he form intent in order to do that? Was
it his intention to kill himself? Well, I don't know,
but he brought about his own death. In Ellen's case,
you know, this thing starts off as a homicide with
multiple stab wounds. And I got to tell you, Dave,
just so you know, if I see this, look, if
I've got if I've got five stab wounds on a case,
(29:43):
I'm calling that overkill. We're not talking about five. We've
got twenty. We've got twenty. Not to mention the other
little insults over the body, she's got a big kind
of crescent shaped in sized injury on her scalp.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
When he's saying size, what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Well, it's it's it's real simple. It's like it's a
cut as opposed to stab. So stab uh and this
the stab ons range, some of them are very superficial,
and but yet you have these that have depth, particularly
the one that's where the knife is found buried in
her chest that has significant depth where it's impacting you know,
(30:27):
h her her her organs and the function of her
aora and her lung. If someone had did intend to
(30:48):
do great bodily harm to themselves, in other words, kill themselves,
why would you be layered up? You would want to
make sure that the blow that you struck was going
to be effective, that it was in fact going to
end your life. Well, is that the case here? Well, no,
we've got you know, you're going through multiple layers of
(31:08):
clothing here, you've got this knife that's buried in the chest.
And the one thing that none of us can get
past is this idea that you can stab yourself in
the back. You know, there's uh, you know, there's that.
(31:29):
That's one of the reasons that you know, you go
back to even we did it, We did the the
episode on Bodybags about the death of Julius Caesar, and
that's where the term backstabber comes from, because you know,
who's going to stab themselves in a back with a
knife at their own hand? How can you even tolerate
(31:50):
that kind of pain? That intense pain. Also, additionally, one
of these insults, there's two of them, actually that one
brushes the spinal cord, and you've got another one that
enters into the base of the of the skull, and
(32:11):
so you have in dwelling hemorrhage. There there are I
think neuropathologists out there that hold that she Ellen, that is,
this would have incapacitated her. But yet you look at
the autopsy report and there's a very specific mention in
the autopsy report where the pathologists is saying, no, that
(32:36):
that was not the case, that this could not have
incapacitated her. Well, how do you how do you measure
that relative to that? I've always had a problem with that,
and not to mention there was also this this thing
that had erupted early on. There's this lady that's well known,
(32:58):
I mean revered neuropathologist.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Doctor Lizzy Rourke Adams.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah. And when you talk about a pioneering lady that's
in the field, and it's a very specific field of neuropathology,
she is held as the gold standard. And the thing
about her is that the Emmy's office had claimed at
(33:26):
that particular time that they had sent Ellen samples perhaps
the brain to this physician, this renowned physician, for her
to examine and give an opinion. Guess what. She says
(33:48):
that she has no record of this day. It's out
of all the people in the world that you could
have chosen to do this. I think that she would
be like I said, she's the old standard. She's some
you would want to have eyes on this case. But
to say that you had actually sent a sample to her,
and she says, and she keeps meticulous notes because they
(34:11):
bill for everything, that.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
She's a contractor and this is not a first go round.
But here's what actually happened. She didn't say she never
saw it. She said that she has no recollect she
did not examine it. There's no record, she never sent
a bill, there's nothing. But here's what actually transpired. To
change this from homicide to suicide and back that up,
(34:38):
they had to make it so that this wound on
the spinal cord did not effect the spinal cord itself,
that it actually didn't impact it. Because if the spinal
cord is impacted, she cannot have inflicted the last stab wound,
which is the knife to the check level, right, And
if it doesn't touch, if it doesn't impact the spinal cord,
(35:02):
then she could This is what the entire homicide. Suicide
comes down to and this major issue. The doctor or
the coroner, the Emmy, in a pouring down snow in Philadelphia,
takes this section of spinal cord, the specimen to doctor
(35:24):
Lucy Rourke Adams, and outside of the hospital, standing next
to her car in a snow storm, she looks at it,
not under a microscope, not in a lab, in the
parking lot next to her car. That's the examination that
(35:45):
took place that led theme to state that this expert,
world renowned expert said there was no impact on the
spinal cord. A great she said, I might have looked
at it, you know, but I did not examine it.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, and this is not something you know when you
conduct when you conduct any kind of examination. And this
applies both in medicine and forensics. This stuff is so
highly and intensely documented, and it's step by step and
there are procedures that have to take place in order
for it to be validated. David, let me ask you
(36:25):
this question, just knowing what you know, if I were,
if I were of a mind to try to take
this this so called examination that you're referring to, and
try to submit that into court and have that be valid.
I can tell you, you know, our friend Nancy Grace would
(36:47):
rip that to shreds. I don't know. I don't know
of a judge that would allow.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
It, even when you have the doctor saying I don't
know what you're really talking about. You know, I did
not examine this. I have no record of it. I
have nothing, so no, I mean, but that's where this
hinge is, Joe, this entire case, for these parents, all
I can think of is, you know, Ellen Greenberg's dad
is a doctor. They spend a half million dollars trying
(37:13):
to get a changed from suicide to they're willing to
settle for undetermined undetermined. Yeah, it's just it's not a suicide.
That's it's not a suicide. Friends, somebody did this to her,
she didn't do it to herself. One quick thing, you
mentioned the number of stab wounds. I had read a
piece on this because I was curious talking about how
(37:35):
when people do use a knife to inflict this, sometimes
there are extra wounds, not just the kill strike or
what have you, and that sometimes it's the individual is
testing the water, see how bad it's gonna hurt, and
what have you. But those cuts are substantially different than
what we're talking about here in this particular case where
you have bounds to the back of the neck and
(37:57):
the chest.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah, I can't imagine under any circumstances that they would
be in such a broad anatomical orientation where you would
have them both posterily and antirily. That doesn't make sense.
And I know what you're saying, and this happens. Actually,
this translates really well into other suicide investigations because you
(38:20):
know how you use the term testing the waters. There
is documented, many documented cases where people will literally test
fire weapons before they shoot themselves. It's part of what
is done. And you go to this idea just you know,
if they're using a handgun, say for instance, they'll test
fire the weapon, maybe up into the ceiling. I've had them. Actually,
(38:44):
people will have heard a gunshot wound out of a window.
Perhaps I actually saw I actually interviewed someone one time
where they saw a man who was going to who
did eventually take his lifestyle. I got involved in the case,
was in a second story window and extended the weapon
out of the window and this was actually witnessed, and
(39:07):
fired it into the street and sat back down and
shot himself. They just want to make sure that it's
a fail it's not really a fail safe, but to
make sure that it's functioning. That's a bit tougher to
do with a knife. But if you are going to
do a test run, you would think that it would
be concentrated in one specific area. Where are you're going
to do this? And there's any number of ways that
(39:28):
people do kill themselves with sharp instruments. We've heard for
years people you know, the old, cutting their own wrist.
I have had people that have cut their own throats.
I have colleagues that have worked a lot of those
over the years. Particularly used to get them a lot
with straight razors. But the idea that someone stabs themselves
(39:50):
multiple times, and the thing that you have to think
about physiologically, are these pain centers firing? And I think everybody,
all of our friends out there that are listening, if
you even think about sustaining a paper cut. And I
know I'm not trying to diminish Hellen, but it hurts
(40:12):
so incredibly bad. Can you imagine driving a metal object
into your body twenty times? You do it over and
over and over again. I'm sorry, folks, something just does
(40:34):
not add up. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybags.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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