April 25, 2025 • 22 mins
Today, Nancy Grace and Sheryl McCollum discuss the tragic death of Ellen Greenberg, a first-grade teacher whose death was ruled a suicide despite evidence pointing to murder.
Grace breaks down major red flags, including troubling forensic details and mistakes made by Philadelphia police. The duo also discuss the Bryan Kohberger case, where the defense plans to use autism as part of its legal strategy and what that could mean for the trial.
Nancy’s book: What Happened to Ellen?: An American Miscarriage of Justice is available now. All proceeds will go to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children - NCMC
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome! Nancy and Sheryl introduce this week’s crime roundup
- (1:00) The autism defense in court - The Bryan Kohberger
- (5:30) The Ellen Greenberg case
- (9:30) Ellen’s final day
- (15:00) The closed-door meeting
- (17:30) Politics, immunity, and the missing video
- (22:00) Closing thoughts
---
Nancy Grace is an outspoken, tireless advocate for victims’ rights and one of television's most respected legal analysts. Nancy Grace had a perfect conviction record during her decade as a prosecutor. She is the founder and publisher of CrimeOnline.com, a crime- fighting digital platform that investigates breaking crime news, spreads awareness of missing people and shines a light on cold cases.
In addition, Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, a daily show hosted by Grace, airs on SIRIUS XM’s Triumph Channel 111 and is downloadable as a podcast on all audio platforms - https://www.crimeonline.com/
Connect with Nancy:
X: @nancygrace
Instagram: @thenancygrace
Facebook: @nancygrace
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice.
Connect with Sheryl:
Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Crime Roundup.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Cheryl McCollum and as always, we have Miss Nancy Grace.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Morning, honey, that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Your usual grand entrance. What's up with you?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
You want me to redo it? Because I can. Y'all,
Welcome to the Crime Roundup.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Cheryl McCollum and we are joined by the incredible,
fantastic and beautiful Nancy Grace.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Okay, I'm so fake now, I'm never going to believe
in another word you say it's not fake. I've got
so much to tell you. Okay. First of all, the
book is out this week about Ellen Greenberg. All proceeds
going to National Center Missing Exploited Children. And here's my
big question. She was planning the wedding. How did that
(00:58):
wedding turn into a funeral? I just but before that,
can I tell you about Brian Coburger, the band of
my existence? Okay? So the judge, this judge Hippler is
so great. He's just so down to earth. He's like, Okay,
(01:19):
you know what, I've been watching him for about a
year now and I don't see any oddities or quirks
in his behavior. So if you want to claim autism,
feel free with him on the stand and up until then, no,
I thought about that for a long time. And this
is why it's the defense has got an unusual argument,
(01:41):
and let me just say, a unique and creative argument,
a niche argument that I never heard before. She the defense,
Anne Taylor, is claiming a because of his alleged autism.
No one has actually come out and given the diagnosis yet,
(02:02):
but she has diagnosed him, okay, and apparently they've got
doctors lined up that would do that. That because of
his autism, he looks quirky, and he stares blank stares,
and he can look quote creepy end quote. The judges, no,
I haven't noticed any of that. So what she's saying is,
(02:24):
here's the next tier of that. The next level, she's
saying that he has OCD and autism to the point
that he could not have pulled off precision timing necessary
to perform the four murders. He does not have the manual,
dexterity or the wherewithal to do that. That's why she's
(02:45):
trying to get autism in in the case in chief,
the judge is saying, no, unless he takes a stand. Now,
the next layer is if there is a guilty conviction,
then she will bring it in to mediate or a
lesson mitigate sentencing to try to get him off the
(03:07):
death penalty. Right now, under the US Supreme Court, autism
is not deemed a mental incapacity that relieves you from
the possibility of the death penalty. So she's got a
double argument, one in the gyilt innocence face and one
in the sentencing phase for autism. So we'll see where
that all ends.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, it's interesting to me because he can pull off
a PhD. He can pull off defending that PhD. Now
I never got a PhD, but I had to defend
my master's thesis. And I'm going to tell you, those
questions come flying at you. You've got to be quick
on your feet. There are deadlines. I mean, that's gonna
be a hard sale. That's going to be a hard
(03:46):
sale for me.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
In fact, it may backfire if they try to bring
that in and then the state responds. See, they're trying
to keep out his PhD thesis papers where he did
all that research on the perfect crime and how not
to leave behind traces see, and so I don't think
they thought this part through yet. I would hate to
(04:10):
put it out there. But if they bring in the autism.
Right now, they have filed emotion to keep out all
of his dissertation and his studies. But once they bring
in autism, that will open the door under the law
for the state to bring in all of that that
(04:31):
the fence is trying to keep out. And more important,
they lose the ground on appeal because here's an easy way.
The state cannot bring in your bad character or your
prior convictions unless they're similar transactions. Let's just say you're
being tried for murdered. I can't bring in your armed
(04:51):
robbery or your vehgular homicide if it's not similar. That
doesn't prove anything. It brings in your character. But if
you get up on the stairs and say I've never
been convicted, well, then the steve opened the door. It's
like a vampire. You open the door, the steak and
then walk through the door and tear apart everything you
(05:12):
just put up is packed. So they put up autism,
that's opening the door for the state to bring even
more evidence in that he is perfectly coherent and in
fact really really smart. So that's a double edged sword
what they're doing. I don't think they've thought that through
all the way.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah that's going to blow up, Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
And I'm just waiting.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, that's gonna be a good day.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Good day.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I want to get back to something you said about
Ellen Greenberg, and you mentioned the planning of the wedding.
I know you and your sister when y'all were little
probably played, you know, throwing a wedding.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Now I know that never, never, I never even thought
about it, except that I never thought about it. I
never dreamed about it. I never dreamed about a wedding dress,
being a princess. I liked to go in the backyard.
Out there, my backyard just melted into a bunch of
woods and pine trees and bill Fords. I basically took
great joy in building the fort and hiding in the fort.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
We know, with the five of us, I mean, obviously,
weddings were a big thing in our house, and my
sister's being so much older than me. I mean, they
got married when I was still fairly young. But I
can remember Sharon making all of us get up to
watch the royal wedding, like weddings were just like this
fun event.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Well, I agree with that. I grew up in a
lot of weddings because my mom was a church organist,
I might add for free. I don't know what these
people were thinking. They never one of them gave them
her a candle. I'll never forget that. Of course, she
was too sweet to ever say anything. But we went
to every wedding that was held in her church, and
(06:55):
it was always a big deal on my mom. We're
always throwing wedding showers. We're always having big parties at
the church in our house for wedding showers. I've made
too much punch with Let's see what do we put
in there? We would put of course, no, I'm going
to leave that till the very end. We would put
in grape jeese, white grape juice, and ginger all and
(07:20):
or sprite, but typically ginger grape juice. Mix it up
in ice, and then the qudi gras a big hook
the whole square of lime sherbet. And I thought that
was the best. Well, it is the best thing I've
ever tasted them. Yeah, yes, yes, we can throw a
(07:42):
part of a party with the punch and the cheese
jaws and the petaphores and the mixed nuts. Of course
you have to have those and we'd have a big
old time. The Clampus were really have fun.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Honey, I don't think you're legally married if there't a
cheese straw in there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Oh, I'll never forget. I'll never forget the party that
you and your sisters and your family through for the twins.
When I's going to have a baby, the babies absolutely,
as we like to say, put on the dog. But yes,
Now back to Ellen Greenberg. I don't know how I got
into my own baby shower doing.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Well, because you're planning, and you're planning something that is
so happy and you know. To me, not only was
she planning a wedding, which just consumes something every day, right,
you're thinking about flowers and stamps and where you're going
to have it, well, she also loved her job and
loved her students.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
She to me, was in that just most.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Perfect spot of your life where everything is coming together.
It's what you want, the way you've carved it out,
and everything is perfect.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I just think about that time and real life. Because
she was all of those friends rallying around her. She
spent a lot of time working on these save the
dates that she sent out, you know, for the wedding.
Everything was going along perfectly for Ellen. She was the
only child, the apple of her parents' eyes. And this
(09:22):
is what went down. So she had been working on
the save of the dates, just sent out waste of them.
And there was a blizzard. She was the first grade
school teacher, and she and all the children went home early.
She stopped for gas, which you know what that means,
not planning suicide, and got home to the kind of
(09:45):
a luxe apartment she shared with her fiance. There were
all these calls on her phone and at first Ellie
was like, she's going crazy. She's calling all these people
with her you know, derangement. The family Pia called every
single number. They were the parents of every single student,
(10:07):
to make sure the student got home. And we followed
up and the families all said she was fine. She's
bubbling and happy, let me say it. So then she's
in the kitchen making an till I have frit salad.
The fiance comes home. I don't know that he needs
she was coming home earlier, not He leaves to go downstairs,
leaves her making a big fruit salad, goes downstairs to
(10:28):
work out. He works out forty five minutes. I've confirmed
that by watching the videotape. If I'm coming out, going
in and coming out and finds her stab he says,
he finds her stabbed twenty times. She is stabbed ten
times in the back, the back of the neck, the
back of the head, including one stab that slices her
(10:50):
spinal dera d u r a dera, the projective sheet
around her spine. And yet, according to them, after even
doing that ten stabs to the back, she continues to
stab herself until she's dead, including the knife ten inch
knife plunged into her chest at her heart.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
It is such crap, And isn't there more than one
stab wound that could have would have been fatal?
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yes, and not only that there are two, but definitely
one stab wolves that occurred post mortem. They didn't bleed.
In other words, someone kept stabbing her after her heart
hit quit beating.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, well, you can't stab yourself fatally more than one time.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well here's the other thing. Think about this A lot
of women, as I write in my book What Happened
to Ellen? Online now and Amazon, that is a big favor.
They reduced it twenty five percent in the you know
to boost the sales. Every penny going like it deal
with Dancing with the Stars to National Center for Missing
(11:57):
Exploited Children. I have no pecuniary or money enters in
the book. I did it because I have grown to
love her parents and I want to help this case
get reopened very quickly. One stab wound post mortem. Okay,
she was making the fruit salad, and I keep saying
that because number one doesn't make sense. You're right in
(12:18):
the middle of making lunch, you know, Oh, you know what?
Screw that, I'm gonna kill myself. But when she was found,
she was still holding in her left hand a pristine
white dish towel. So what she held onto that while
she stabbed herself in the back with her right hand.
Not only that very disturbing. She has bruising to the
(12:39):
neck and strap muscles listen, unrelated to the stab. Wounds
not around a stab classic textbook signs of strangulation. Strangulation
not the cod cause of death. But she was strangled
and subdued and then stabbed dead. There was blood on
the bottom of her ug boots. Clumps of hair had
(13:02):
been torn out, bloody clumps of hair and were between
her legs. She was found sitting up on the kitchen floor,
her back propped against the cabinets, important the wrong way.
Blood she's sitting up, Sheryl. But blood had trickled, dried
and coagulated, going horizontally from her nose to her ear
(13:23):
as she's sitting up vertically. Translation, she died laying supine
on her side, the blood trickle from nose to ear,
and somebody propped her up.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Correct, no other explanation.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And let me tell you one of my most vivid
memories of you is when we are talking about having
to testify, and I remember saying something like, oh.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I just wish I could testify almost in private.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Like you know, like all these people not looking at me,
because there could be people that are friends of yours.
And you know how that is, like, you know, you,
it makes you more nervous, I guess in some ways.
And then of course the defense family or whoever. But
you were like, no, it should be such an honor
for you to, you know, swear to tell the truth,
nothing but the truth, so help you God, and then
(14:14):
do it in public. And you said those courthouse doors
should stay open, they should never even be locked. And
this thing hit me right in the head when they
said they had a secret meeting with the police and the.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
DA Okay, this is what happened. So the police are
told that the door was locked from the inside and
that the fiance had to break it down. And again
there are many explanations for this. I'm not point of
the finger at anybody because there's been no investigation. There's
(14:49):
not enough evidence for me to even speculate as to
who did this. So the fiance comes in and finds her,
he's down there. Forty five minutes he comes back, she's dead.
And this is what the police see. They see there's
no sex attack, nothing is stolen, the apartment hasn't been ransacked,
and so they're like, okay, yes, suicide. To their credit,
(15:11):
which I rarely say when it comes to this particular case,
they didn't know. They couldn't see the stablings to her back.
She was fully closed. Okay, So they call it on
the scene, Oh yeh, to suicide. The body gets to
the me the MB takes a look at it and
says homicide. Then within seventy two hours there is a
(15:33):
closed door meeting with the police. Phillip d another medical
examiner REP. And an assistant district attorney, who I would
like to add as a female that got immunity on this.
You know what that stinks to Hi Heaven, she got
immenity about whatever happened in that meeting. Why does she
(15:54):
need immunity anyway? He says that medical examiner Marmon Osborne
in a sworn up position that's waited me to change
my ruling to suicide since it's been old to suicide.
There's no criminal investigation. This has been fourteen years. Her
parents has spent every penny. They just had to sell
(16:15):
their house to fight this thing. And the mom, Sandy
told me, we've got a whole episode on it on YouTube.
By the way, the mom told me she thinks that
they've been waiting for her to die and stopped the fight. Awful, brutal, brutal, excruciating,
As I just said, what they've gone through their only child.
(16:40):
This just it's so wrong. It's so wrong and literally painful.
But who pressures a medical examiner to change his ruling
from homicide to suicide to cover up a bad job
that the police did on the scene. I don't think
it's anything nefarious. I don't think anybody was paid off.
(17:01):
I don't think there's a big, big plot here. I
think they screwed it up. They did nothing. And listen
to this. The apartment manager called police and said, look,
the fiance's family wants to come get his suit for
the funeral. And they took some other things out of
(17:22):
the house that they should have had apartment they shouldn't
have taken, but I understand why they did it. They
took Ellen's laptop and some other valuables. They gave them
back to Ellen's family, but they took valuables out for
safe keeping, and I understand that. I don't think there's
anything nefarious about that. But still they should not have
allowed anybody into the scene right without police, police escort anyway.
(17:47):
That said, it could have been taken just for safe keeping. Okay,
they got all their stuff back, it's not like a
theft or anything. But what I'm saying is that should
not have happened on a crime scene. That could tamny
of the crime scene, even if there were good intentions
on the part of the family. Police let that happen.
And the apartment manager called police and said, hey, can
(18:10):
I clean the apartment? And they go sure, and even
give the manager a crime scene cleanup crew. They sanitize
the scene, bleach cleaner the works. There goes all the
(18:30):
forensic cabinets, the DNA, the fiber, the hair, that everything,
the fingerprints gone, thanks PHILLYPD. Next, the manager, in her wisdom,
took a video before and after, right, you know, essentially
to prove the cleaning crew didn't steal anything and everything
(18:50):
was up and up, thank goodness. She took the video
of the scene. Well, she sent it to PHILLYPD and
they quote lost it. So that's where we are today.
And you know how I hate politics. I hate politicians.
I'd rather try serial murder than deal with politicians. But
(19:10):
Josh Shapiro, who was one foot away from the oval office,
you know, on the Democratic ticket, was the age at
that time, and he refused to look at the case.
He refused to reopen it. The parents begged him, he
would do nothing. So it's just been one disaster after
(19:33):
the next for the Greenbergs. In the last months, the family,
Allen's family sued the city. They were striking a jury
eleventh hour. It's time for them to take the stand.
He will have to tell everybody under oath what happened
in that closed door meeting. Just as Chab commenced, the
(19:56):
city settled, so nobody ever took stand. We still don't
know what happened in the meeting, but they settled, and
I'm waiting for the District Attorney's office to open the case.
The medical examiner now says, Okay, now I'm convinced it's
not suicide. So now what's happening? Nothing, It never endens.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Cheryl, your book is such a gift to her family,
And again, I want everybody to understand every dime goes
to the National Center of Missing Exploited Children. By buying
that book, not only are you going to understand what
went wrong in this case and become a champion for
(20:40):
Ellen Greenberg, but you're also going to help a lot
of children. It's not lost on me that the last
thing that Ellen did in her life was making sure
her children that she loved were safe made it home safely.
So for you to donate these proceeds to make sure
(21:03):
that children make it home safe, that's huge to me.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
You know what, Cheryl, you really did me as solid today.
I really appreciate that. I really really do, and not
on my own behalf, but for them. I feel like,
I don't know what else I can do besides publicize
the case, beg the FEDS to take the investigation over.
You know, the state can't do it now because there's
a conflict. You got Shapiro is the governor. And you know,
(21:32):
I don't think you had any mal intent, didn't care
one way or the other, but it became a disastrous result.
Go online a by the book.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Go online and buy the book.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Let's save some children, and let's get the word out
about Ellen.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
We're not going to turn the same loose.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I'm super grateful, Cheryl, super grateful. I see you in court. Yeah,
we're going to Coburger.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Right, we are going to coburger.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Sadly there won't be a salad, will but we'll make
do do.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
All right, honey, I'll do you so bye. I love you,
Love you too.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
M
Welcome to the Crime Roundup.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Cheryl McCollum and as always, we have Miss Nancy Grace.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Morning, honey, that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Your usual grand entrance. What's up with you?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
You want me to redo it? Because I can. Y'all,
Welcome to the Crime Roundup.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Cheryl McCollum and we are joined by the incredible,
fantastic and beautiful Nancy Grace.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Okay, I'm so fake now, I'm never going to believe
in another word you say it's not fake. I've got
so much to tell you. Okay. First of all, the
book is out this week about Ellen Greenberg. All proceeds
going to National Center Missing Exploited Children. And here's my
big question. She was planning the wedding. How did that
(00:58):
wedding turn into a funeral? I just but before that,
can I tell you about Brian Coburger, the band of
my existence? Okay? So the judge, this judge Hippler is
so great. He's just so down to earth. He's like, Okay,
(01:19):
you know what, I've been watching him for about a
year now and I don't see any oddities or quirks
in his behavior. So if you want to claim autism,
feel free with him on the stand and up until then, no,
I thought about that for a long time. And this
is why it's the defense has got an unusual argument,
(01:41):
and let me just say, a unique and creative argument,
a niche argument that I never heard before. She the defense,
Anne Taylor, is claiming a because of his alleged autism.
No one has actually come out and given the diagnosis yet,
(02:02):
but she has diagnosed him, okay, and apparently they've got
doctors lined up that would do that. That because of
his autism, he looks quirky, and he stares blank stares,
and he can look quote creepy end quote. The judges, no,
I haven't noticed any of that. So what she's saying is,
(02:24):
here's the next tier of that. The next level, she's
saying that he has OCD and autism to the point
that he could not have pulled off precision timing necessary
to perform the four murders. He does not have the manual,
dexterity or the wherewithal to do that. That's why she's
(02:45):
trying to get autism in in the case in chief,
the judge is saying, no, unless he takes a stand. Now,
the next layer is if there is a guilty conviction,
then she will bring it in to mediate or a
lesson mitigate sentencing to try to get him off the
(03:07):
death penalty. Right now, under the US Supreme Court, autism
is not deemed a mental incapacity that relieves you from
the possibility of the death penalty. So she's got a
double argument, one in the gyilt innocence face and one
in the sentencing phase for autism. So we'll see where
that all ends.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, it's interesting to me because he can pull off
a PhD. He can pull off defending that PhD. Now
I never got a PhD, but I had to defend
my master's thesis. And I'm going to tell you, those
questions come flying at you. You've got to be quick
on your feet. There are deadlines. I mean, that's gonna
be a hard sale. That's going to be a hard
(03:46):
sale for me.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
In fact, it may backfire if they try to bring
that in and then the state responds. See, they're trying
to keep out his PhD thesis papers where he did
all that research on the perfect crime and how not
to leave behind traces see, and so I don't think
they thought this part through yet. I would hate to
(04:10):
put it out there. But if they bring in the autism.
Right now, they have filed emotion to keep out all
of his dissertation and his studies. But once they bring
in autism, that will open the door under the law
for the state to bring in all of that that
(04:31):
the fence is trying to keep out. And more important,
they lose the ground on appeal because here's an easy way.
The state cannot bring in your bad character or your
prior convictions unless they're similar transactions. Let's just say you're
being tried for murdered. I can't bring in your armed
(04:51):
robbery or your vehgular homicide if it's not similar. That
doesn't prove anything. It brings in your character. But if
you get up on the stairs and say I've never
been convicted, well, then the steve opened the door. It's
like a vampire. You open the door, the steak and
then walk through the door and tear apart everything you
(05:12):
just put up is packed. So they put up autism,
that's opening the door for the state to bring even
more evidence in that he is perfectly coherent and in
fact really really smart. So that's a double edged sword
what they're doing. I don't think they've thought that through
all the way.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah that's going to blow up, Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
And I'm just waiting.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, that's gonna be a good day.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Good day.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I want to get back to something you said about
Ellen Greenberg, and you mentioned the planning of the wedding.
I know you and your sister when y'all were little
probably played, you know, throwing a wedding.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Now I know that never, never, I never even thought
about it, except that I never thought about it. I
never dreamed about it. I never dreamed about a wedding dress,
being a princess. I liked to go in the backyard.
Out there, my backyard just melted into a bunch of
woods and pine trees and bill Fords. I basically took
great joy in building the fort and hiding in the fort.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
We know, with the five of us, I mean, obviously,
weddings were a big thing in our house, and my
sister's being so much older than me. I mean, they
got married when I was still fairly young. But I
can remember Sharon making all of us get up to
watch the royal wedding, like weddings were just like this
fun event.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Well, I agree with that. I grew up in a
lot of weddings because my mom was a church organist,
I might add for free. I don't know what these
people were thinking. They never one of them gave them
her a candle. I'll never forget that. Of course, she
was too sweet to ever say anything. But we went
to every wedding that was held in her church, and
(06:55):
it was always a big deal on my mom. We're
always throwing wedding showers. We're always having big parties at
the church in our house for wedding showers. I've made
too much punch with Let's see what do we put
in there? We would put of course, no, I'm going
to leave that till the very end. We would put
in grape jeese, white grape juice, and ginger all and
(07:20):
or sprite, but typically ginger grape juice. Mix it up
in ice, and then the qudi gras a big hook
the whole square of lime sherbet. And I thought that
was the best. Well, it is the best thing I've
ever tasted them. Yeah, yes, yes, we can throw a
(07:42):
part of a party with the punch and the cheese
jaws and the petaphores and the mixed nuts. Of course
you have to have those and we'd have a big
old time. The Clampus were really have fun.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Honey, I don't think you're legally married if there't a
cheese straw in there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Oh, I'll never forget. I'll never forget the party that
you and your sisters and your family through for the twins.
When I's going to have a baby, the babies absolutely,
as we like to say, put on the dog. But yes,
Now back to Ellen Greenberg. I don't know how I got
into my own baby shower doing.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Well, because you're planning, and you're planning something that is
so happy and you know. To me, not only was
she planning a wedding, which just consumes something every day, right,
you're thinking about flowers and stamps and where you're going
to have it, well, she also loved her job and
loved her students.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
She to me, was in that just most.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Perfect spot of your life where everything is coming together.
It's what you want, the way you've carved it out,
and everything is perfect.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I just think about that time and real life. Because
she was all of those friends rallying around her. She
spent a lot of time working on these save the
dates that she sent out, you know, for the wedding.
Everything was going along perfectly for Ellen. She was the
only child, the apple of her parents' eyes. And this
(09:22):
is what went down. So she had been working on
the save of the dates, just sent out waste of them.
And there was a blizzard. She was the first grade
school teacher, and she and all the children went home early.
She stopped for gas, which you know what that means,
not planning suicide, and got home to the kind of
(09:45):
a luxe apartment she shared with her fiance. There were
all these calls on her phone and at first Ellie
was like, she's going crazy. She's calling all these people
with her you know, derangement. The family Pia called every
single number. They were the parents of every single student,
(10:07):
to make sure the student got home. And we followed
up and the families all said she was fine. She's
bubbling and happy, let me say it. So then she's
in the kitchen making an till I have frit salad.
The fiance comes home. I don't know that he needs
she was coming home earlier, not He leaves to go downstairs,
leaves her making a big fruit salad, goes downstairs to
(10:28):
work out. He works out forty five minutes. I've confirmed
that by watching the videotape. If I'm coming out, going
in and coming out and finds her stab he says,
he finds her stabbed twenty times. She is stabbed ten
times in the back, the back of the neck, the
back of the head, including one stab that slices her
(10:50):
spinal dera d u r a dera, the projective sheet
around her spine. And yet, according to them, after even
doing that ten stabs to the back, she continues to
stab herself until she's dead, including the knife ten inch
knife plunged into her chest at her heart.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
It is such crap, And isn't there more than one
stab wound that could have would have been fatal?
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yes, and not only that there are two, but definitely
one stab wolves that occurred post mortem. They didn't bleed.
In other words, someone kept stabbing her after her heart
hit quit beating.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, well, you can't stab yourself fatally more than one time.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well here's the other thing. Think about this A lot
of women, as I write in my book What Happened
to Ellen? Online now and Amazon, that is a big favor.
They reduced it twenty five percent in the you know
to boost the sales. Every penny going like it deal
with Dancing with the Stars to National Center for Missing
(11:57):
Exploited Children. I have no pecuniary or money enters in
the book. I did it because I have grown to
love her parents and I want to help this case
get reopened very quickly. One stab wound post mortem. Okay,
she was making the fruit salad, and I keep saying
that because number one doesn't make sense. You're right in
(12:18):
the middle of making lunch, you know, Oh, you know what?
Screw that, I'm gonna kill myself. But when she was found,
she was still holding in her left hand a pristine
white dish towel. So what she held onto that while
she stabbed herself in the back with her right hand.
Not only that very disturbing. She has bruising to the
(12:39):
neck and strap muscles listen, unrelated to the stab. Wounds
not around a stab classic textbook signs of strangulation. Strangulation
not the cod cause of death. But she was strangled
and subdued and then stabbed dead. There was blood on
the bottom of her ug boots. Clumps of hair had
(13:02):
been torn out, bloody clumps of hair and were between
her legs. She was found sitting up on the kitchen floor,
her back propped against the cabinets, important the wrong way.
Blood she's sitting up, Sheryl. But blood had trickled, dried
and coagulated, going horizontally from her nose to her ear
(13:23):
as she's sitting up vertically. Translation, she died laying supine
on her side, the blood trickle from nose to ear,
and somebody propped her up.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Correct, no other explanation.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And let me tell you one of my most vivid
memories of you is when we are talking about having
to testify, and I remember saying something like, oh.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I just wish I could testify almost in private.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Like you know, like all these people not looking at me,
because there could be people that are friends of yours.
And you know how that is, like, you know, you,
it makes you more nervous, I guess in some ways.
And then of course the defense family or whoever. But
you were like, no, it should be such an honor
for you to, you know, swear to tell the truth,
nothing but the truth, so help you God, and then
(14:14):
do it in public. And you said those courthouse doors
should stay open, they should never even be locked. And
this thing hit me right in the head when they
said they had a secret meeting with the police and the.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
DA Okay, this is what happened. So the police are
told that the door was locked from the inside and
that the fiance had to break it down. And again
there are many explanations for this. I'm not point of
the finger at anybody because there's been no investigation. There's
(14:49):
not enough evidence for me to even speculate as to
who did this. So the fiance comes in and finds her,
he's down there. Forty five minutes he comes back, she's dead.
And this is what the police see. They see there's
no sex attack, nothing is stolen, the apartment hasn't been ransacked,
and so they're like, okay, yes, suicide. To their credit,
(15:11):
which I rarely say when it comes to this particular case,
they didn't know. They couldn't see the stablings to her back.
She was fully closed. Okay, So they call it on
the scene, Oh yeh, to suicide. The body gets to
the me the MB takes a look at it and
says homicide. Then within seventy two hours there is a
(15:33):
closed door meeting with the police. Phillip d another medical
examiner REP. And an assistant district attorney, who I would
like to add as a female that got immunity on this.
You know what that stinks to Hi Heaven, she got
immenity about whatever happened in that meeting. Why does she
(15:54):
need immunity anyway? He says that medical examiner Marmon Osborne
in a sworn up position that's waited me to change
my ruling to suicide since it's been old to suicide.
There's no criminal investigation. This has been fourteen years. Her
parents has spent every penny. They just had to sell
(16:15):
their house to fight this thing. And the mom, Sandy
told me, we've got a whole episode on it on YouTube.
By the way, the mom told me she thinks that
they've been waiting for her to die and stopped the fight. Awful, brutal, brutal, excruciating,
As I just said, what they've gone through their only child.
(16:40):
This just it's so wrong. It's so wrong and literally painful.
But who pressures a medical examiner to change his ruling
from homicide to suicide to cover up a bad job
that the police did on the scene. I don't think
it's anything nefarious. I don't think anybody was paid off.
(17:01):
I don't think there's a big, big plot here. I
think they screwed it up. They did nothing. And listen
to this. The apartment manager called police and said, look,
the fiance's family wants to come get his suit for
the funeral. And they took some other things out of
(17:22):
the house that they should have had apartment they shouldn't
have taken, but I understand why they did it. They
took Ellen's laptop and some other valuables. They gave them
back to Ellen's family, but they took valuables out for
safe keeping, and I understand that. I don't think there's
anything nefarious about that. But still they should not have
allowed anybody into the scene right without police, police escort anyway.
(17:47):
That said, it could have been taken just for safe keeping. Okay,
they got all their stuff back, it's not like a
theft or anything. But what I'm saying is that should
not have happened on a crime scene. That could tamny
of the crime scene, even if there were good intentions
on the part of the family. Police let that happen.
And the apartment manager called police and said, hey, can
(18:10):
I clean the apartment? And they go sure, and even
give the manager a crime scene cleanup crew. They sanitize
the scene, bleach cleaner the works. There goes all the
(18:30):
forensic cabinets, the DNA, the fiber, the hair, that everything,
the fingerprints gone, thanks PHILLYPD. Next, the manager, in her wisdom,
took a video before and after, right, you know, essentially
to prove the cleaning crew didn't steal anything and everything
(18:50):
was up and up, thank goodness. She took the video
of the scene. Well, she sent it to PHILLYPD and
they quote lost it. So that's where we are today.
And you know how I hate politics. I hate politicians.
I'd rather try serial murder than deal with politicians. But
(19:10):
Josh Shapiro, who was one foot away from the oval office,
you know, on the Democratic ticket, was the age at
that time, and he refused to look at the case.
He refused to reopen it. The parents begged him, he
would do nothing. So it's just been one disaster after
(19:33):
the next for the Greenbergs. In the last months, the family,
Allen's family sued the city. They were striking a jury
eleventh hour. It's time for them to take the stand.
He will have to tell everybody under oath what happened
in that closed door meeting. Just as Chab commenced, the
(19:56):
city settled, so nobody ever took stand. We still don't
know what happened in the meeting, but they settled, and
I'm waiting for the District Attorney's office to open the case.
The medical examiner now says, Okay, now I'm convinced it's
not suicide. So now what's happening? Nothing, It never endens.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Cheryl, your book is such a gift to her family,
And again, I want everybody to understand every dime goes
to the National Center of Missing Exploited Children. By buying
that book, not only are you going to understand what
went wrong in this case and become a champion for
(20:40):
Ellen Greenberg, but you're also going to help a lot
of children. It's not lost on me that the last
thing that Ellen did in her life was making sure
her children that she loved were safe made it home safely.
So for you to donate these proceeds to make sure
(21:03):
that children make it home safe, that's huge to me.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
You know what, Cheryl, you really did me as solid today.
I really appreciate that. I really really do, and not
on my own behalf, but for them. I feel like,
I don't know what else I can do besides publicize
the case, beg the FEDS to take the investigation over.
You know, the state can't do it now because there's
a conflict. You got Shapiro is the governor. And you know,
(21:32):
I don't think you had any mal intent, didn't care
one way or the other, but it became a disastrous result.
Go online a by the book.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Go online and buy the book.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Let's save some children, and let's get the word out
about Ellen.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
We're not going to turn the same loose.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I'm super grateful, Cheryl, super grateful. I see you in court. Yeah,
we're going to Coburger.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Right, we are going to coburger.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Sadly there won't be a salad, will but we'll make
do do.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
All right, honey, I'll do you so bye. I love you,
Love you too.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
M
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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