August 13, 2022 • 32 mins
For more than ten years, the family of Ellen Greenberg has been looking for answers and justice. The 27-year-old first grade teacher and bride-to-be was found stabbed behind the locked door of her apartment. In fact, she was stabbed 20 times, including wounds to her back and head. The original finding by the medical examiner determined homicide. So, why does the final ruling say Ellen Greenberg committed suicide? Listen to former death scene investigator Joseph Scott Morgan's analysis, then join him as he and Nancy Grace recreate the crime scene and hear from Ellen Greenberg's parents in Teacher Death Mystery: A Nancy Grace Investigation, streaming now on Fox Nation.
Was it suicide, or did something more sinister happen to Ellen Greenberg?
Follow the push for justice with Teacher Death Mystery: A Nancy Grace Investigation, and Behind the Locked Door with Joseph Scott Morgan.
STREAMING NOW: Teacher Death Mystery: A Nancy Grace Investigation
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Body backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's a well worn
adage that talks about death by a thousand cuts. It
implies that it's slow, it's painful, something that no one
(00:30):
would ever want to endure. For years I handle cases
involved in sharp instruments. I have to say that, in
all of my years as a death investigator, I don't
believe I've ever encountered a case involving this many staff
wounds and so many unanswered questions. I'm talking about twenty,
(00:55):
not a thousand, but twenty cuts. The case of Ellen Greenberg.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this his body bags. Today.
I'm joined by my friend Jackie Howard, who's the executive
producer of Crime Stories. Would Nancy Grace Jackie, wan't you
(01:16):
tell us about this case? Joe Ellen Greenberg was a
bride to be. She had just sent out the safety
dates for her upcoming wedding. By all accounts, she was
excited about this wedding. Her fiance and living boyfriend went
to the gym in their apartment complex. He came back
up and found the door locked. At that time, he
(01:37):
began beating on the door, calling, texting, but Ellen did
not answer. He tried to get into the door. That
fiance finally manages to break the door down, And I'm
sure most people are thinking, why didn't you just use
a key? The door had a lock on it, like
you have at an hotel that has a bar that
swings across the opening of the door to make it
(01:57):
impossible to open the door from the outside even if
you have a key. So he's trying to get in.
Ellen does not answer. He finally manages to break the
door down. Once he gets inside, he finds Ellen Greenberg
on the floor. She has been stabbed multiple times twenty
as you said, and the knife is still embedded in
(02:18):
her chest. Nine one one was called service personnel come
and as the determination of what happened to Ellen Greenberg
has made and it's determined to be a suicide. You know, Jackie,
we're talking about a young woman, healthy, fit woman. She's
a school teacher, has got her entire life ahead of her.
(02:38):
Seemingly she's enjoying life like you had mentioned, she's excited
about her upcoming nupteals. You know, she's taking the time
to send out Save the date cars. She's been living
with this guy for a while, they're making plans, and
he goes the gym and comes back and after he
breaks the door down, he finds her on the floor
(02:59):
suffering from this many wounds. I gotta tell you, Jackie,
I in in over the course of my career, I
don't ever recall working a case where I had an
individual that had self inflicted sharp force injuries at at
this number. I mean, this is almost an unimaginable number
(03:21):
that we're talking about twenty because you know, you begin
to think, how can anyone endure that level of pain?
I mean, we all know what it's like to cut ourselves,
cut ourselves on a piece of paper even and it stings.
Can you imagine driving a knife blade in into your
body this many times? And this is this is a
curious thing. The knife wounds are not simply what you
(03:44):
might think, just like into the abdomen or maybe a
single time into the chest. We're talking about multiple injuries
on not just the chest but also on the back. Now,
how do how does that work? I'm trying to understand
this and in to her neck as well. And one
of the things that was discovered at autopsy was the
(04:04):
fact that the knife had actually penetrated the cervical spinal
column right at about the C one or C two
level and had actually actually penetrated and touched and brushed
up against the spinal cord. Now, this is almost an
unimaginable feat and I don't know that there's any way
(04:25):
that you can kind of do the arithmetic on here
to make it come out right. Let me jump in
here and get just a little explanation for folks described
for me where exactly the C one and C two
area is. If if folks will at home, just think
about the first cervical vertebra that you have is commonly
(04:45):
it's got an interesting name. A lot of people aren't
aware of it. The very first cervical vertebra that we
have is actually called the Atlas. And just imagine, you
know from mythology, that gigantic man that's that's holding up
the earth. I'm sure that many people have seen that
Atlas was his name, and that you know, I think
that early anatomous. They felt like, well, that's that's a
(05:06):
great representation. People can understand that I need it. I'm
kind of a simple minded fellow. So if I'm thinking
about something holding something up, I'm thinking about that C one.
That's that first cervical vertebra that's actually supporting the head,
all right, and everything that we do, all of our
actions are dictated by our head and our brain. So
(05:26):
it's a critical area. As a matter of fact. It's
so critical that when you look at that area C one,
C two, and C three, that's where our brain stem
kind of comes down it. It's it's the gateway to
our autonomic nervous system. And what folks don't understand that
that's that's what controls our respirations, that's what controls our heartbeat.
It's the hub of everything, kind of the primal brain,
(05:49):
those things that that occur without us thinking about it.
You're talking directly at the base of the skull, at
the back of the neck. Yeah, we're We're right at
the base of the skull in this particular case, Jackie.
And that's that's one of the things that's so troubling. Now,
I'll put it to you this way. If you were
let's just put in the context of say, if you
(06:09):
were a professional killer, uh, if you were looking to
take someone out, Okay, that is a primary area where
you're almost guaranteed, say, if you're firing a gun for
a kill shot, because you know that you're gonna you're
gonna take them out in that split second of time.
And the fact that she had this injury there is significant.
(06:30):
It's very significant because you you think about this and
you say, well, how in the world could anybody recover
from that type of injury to go on and continue
to stab himself. Remember, that's only one of twenty stab
wounds that she sustained one and in addition to that
(06:52):
stab wound that we've just reflected upon, she's also got
a real nasty gash on the back of her head.
It's kind of a if you'll think of a half
moon or a quarter moon, it's it's kind of elliptical
in shape, kind of an odd, an odd injury, and
it it appears, according to what the autopsy report was saying,
(07:14):
that the edges what we call the margins of that
injury are clean, which more than likely indicates that this
was generated by an edged weapon. So, you know, you
think about how can someone endure this kind of trauma?
And upon further examination of Ellen's body, when you begin
to look at her arms and her legs, there are other,
(07:37):
I don't know, contusions, little bruises that are on her body. Now,
the pathologist says that they're resolving in nature, so he
doesn't go into great detail relative to to how distant
they might be in the past or how recent they are.
But there's one major thing that is left out in
this autopsy report that I've discovered that in cases I've
(08:01):
been involved in, is essential relative to someone's ability to
handle a weapon or handle a knife in this particular case,
and that is arm lengths. You know, just think about it.
We all don't have the same length arms, do we.
You know, you think about the measurement from your shoulder
to your elbow, and from your elbow to your wrist,
and from your wrist to the tips of your fingers.
(08:22):
All of that equates into, uh, this thought of what
is your ability to wield a knife in order to
self inflict an injury? And you have to look at
the injuries that Ellen had on her body. How is
it that you can take a knife and literally drive
it into your own back And you have to think, well,
(08:44):
maybe you could do that once, maybe you could do
it twice, But then you think all of the pain
associated because once you've driven it into those areas once
you have made contact with your skin, You've you've cut
through nerves, you've cut through the muscle, and you have
literally gone to bone at that point. How much pain
is associated with You're gonna tell me, you're gonna do
that over and over and over again. I don't think so.
(09:08):
I mean, the individual that would be capable of self
inflicting this kind of injury would, in my estimation at least,
have to be a raving psychotic. And there is no indication,
no indication whatsoever that Ellen Greenberg suffered from any kind
of acute psychosis whatsoever. I mean, this poor young lady.
(09:32):
She had anxiety. Who in the world doesn't have anxiety?
She had trouble sleeping at night. Well, she she was
taking Clinais a PAM. Do you realize how many people
in our population take Clinaise apam? And there is no
association between clinais a PAM and psychotic behavior that I've
been able to find in the literature. Everybody has trouble
sleeping every now and then. She's got a lot on hers,
(09:53):
she teaching in public schools, she's you know, planning a
wedding and so in that since there's no evidence to
indicate that she's in it some kind of frenzied mental
state where she could inflict these kind of insults to
her body, and not just these kinds of insults, but
to continue to do it over and over and over
(10:15):
again until finally she takes this single edged serrated knife,
now that's that's a stake knife, just so that you
were clear, and buries it in her chest where they
find it at the scene. And just so people can
visualize this, if you, if you have access to a
dollar bill, take that dollar bill out. Okay, look at it.
(10:38):
I mean look at the face of it. From the
left side of it to just pass George Washington's head,
that's ten centimeters. That's how deep this knife was buried
in her. So you you think about that and think
about all of the pain associated with that. It really
is a head scratcher, Jackie. I want to take a
step back to something that you mentioned a minute ago.
(11:00):
I hadn't never thought of arm length in relation to
this case, although obviously it is it is a very
important part. But what I was thinking about was flexibility.
I mean, I'm very lucky to be able to scratch
the back of my neck when it you know, or
the back of my shoulder blades when I have an
itch let alone, to be able to hurt myself, to
(11:21):
stab myself in the back. Is it possible that, despite
your arm length, that your flexibility gives you the capability
to create these kinds of injuries? Jackie, I gotta say,
that's an excellent question. You begin to think about this,
and it's like, Okay, you know, if you are that flexible,
all right, Let's say she's in tip top physical shape.
(11:42):
Maybe she does yoga, she can stretch, she can be
in I mean, she probably do a lot better than
than my old body could do. Uh. And you think
about doing this maybe once to be able to manipulate
a knife in everybody at home kind of think about
how you would have to hold a knife and or
to inflict this injury. So you would have to turn
(12:03):
the knife so that the tip is facing your your face,
the tip of your looking down, the long axis of
the blade blade edge is probably up, and then you
would have to take it and and as as your
elbow binds, drive it into your shoulder blades, down your
back near your spinal column, into the back of your head.
(12:25):
Even if you try to do this into the back
of your head. That's that's hard to do. You would
have to be tremendously flexible. And the one thing that
that folks might not understand or grasp all the while
that you're doing this. Every time you make another little cut,
another little nick in your body, your pain center is screaming,
(12:50):
screaming over and over again. You know, don't do this.
Your body is trying to don't do it. Don't do it.
Is too much pain associated with don't do it. But
yet you can tinue to do it. And you you
are able to be this nimble and this flexible in
order to facilitate this over and over and over and
over again. It's absolutely mind blowing. That's why myself and
(13:16):
a lot of other colleagues of mine that have taken
a look at this case that are forensics folks, we
we don't understand how, how, how plausible this could be
that someone could actually do this and self inflict these
insults to their body. But you know, there's really no
clear answers to this case. One of the fascinating things
(13:40):
is this when the autopsy was completed, it was determined
that she had stabbed herself. According to the M E.
In several vital areas, I mean areas in her body
that would absolutely lead lead to death. She's got both
eyes of her chest cavity and her lungs are filled
(14:04):
with blood. Okay, So that means that somewhere along the
way her ability to respire has been compromised. So her
chest cavity is filling up with blood, and that's compromising
the lungs ability to inhalate and excellate. Also, interestingly enough,
in your in your heart, your heart actually sits in
(14:26):
a little sack that's called pericardium, percardial sack that's been nicked. Well,
not only has it been nicked, the aorta has been nicked. Uh,
And that's the major vessel that comes off of the
heart that supplies that supplies the rest of the the body
with oxygenated blood. That pericardial sack around the heart, it's
(14:47):
becoming engrossed with blood as well. So the heart's laboring
to beat all of this time. Not to mention, you've
got this spinal insult that has taken place with a knife,
and all the while you're only me that even though
she is this physically compromised, she's still capable of carrying
out the self inflicted insults to her body. I just
(15:10):
I can't see it happening. I don't understand how it's
even possible. Just supposed, for a second that you just
(15:38):
take your hand, an empty hand, and you move it
about your body twenty times. Think about that that requires
a certain amount of energy in order to facilitate this.
You begin to think about this poor young woman, Ellen Greenberg.
She's holding a knife in her hand, a serrated edge knife, nonetheless,
And what they're trying to tell us is that as
(15:59):
she's hold in this knife, she is inflicting all of
these injuries to her body, compromising her lungs, her heart,
and potentially her brain. And yet she's able to keep
up this pace with a lack of oxygen eated blood.
Remember what the pathologist is saying in the autopsy report
is that steadily her her chest cavity, her chest cavity
(16:22):
on both sides, is filling up with blood. Her pair cardium,
which actually encases the heart, is filling up with blood.
They even make note of a superficial sub arachnoid hemorrhage
in her brain, which is putting pressure on her brain
all the while. And they expect us to believe that
she could facilitate inflicting all of these injuries upon herself
(16:45):
while all the while just so slowly depriving herself of
much needed oxygenated blood. I gotta tell you, I'm just
not buying it. I don't see how it's physically possible
for her to have done this in her apartment. Are
all alone. How is this possible that she could have
done it? And you know what, it's not like she
(17:05):
wandered over the entire apartment while she's doing it. Everything
that occurred appears to have occurred in one spot, and
that's in her kitchen. Joe. Let's talk about the forensics itself.
We've talked about the body and the wounds that she had,
but let's talk about the forensics of the room itself.
We know that the door was broken, we know that
(17:25):
Ellen was found with the knife still in her body.
She was found in a seated position, which I think
most people find odd. What strikes you about this scene?
I think the fact that she is seated in an
upright position. It almost seems unnatural, doesn't it. Uh? And
(17:46):
and the fact that this boyfriend that discovered her, he
would have made note of that at that time that
she was in this position with a knife in her
chest and didn't lay her to the floor. You know,
they gave him a rective to start CPR on her,
but he's saying, she's got a knife in her chest.
Can you imagine this? And it should It was probably
(18:09):
a horror show in this environment. There's probably blood all
over the floor, it's all over her. Obviously it's gonna
be on her hands and this knife. I've actually seen
the pictures of the knife. The blood is just encrusted
around the handle of the knife as well as on
the surface of the blade as well. They had to
remove it at autopsy, so you begin to think about this,
(18:30):
it seems almost unnatural. But one of the really curious
things about this, Jackie, is that we know that gravity
is a constant force in the universe. It impacts our
bodies everywhere we go. One of the interesting things that
was noted about Ellen's body is that she actually had
(18:51):
a streak of blood that was coming out of her
ear that get this was traveling from front to back,
so that if if it's it would violate the laws
of nature. It's almost as if she had sustained an
injury while laying back, the blood came out of her
(19:14):
ear and dripped down to the floor, and then she
sat up and left this blood stained uh mark on
her ear. And that's that's just not possible. It almost
implies that some way, in some way, her body may
have been manipulated. And that's why it's so key that
when they arrived at the scene, what exactly did they
(19:36):
find relative to her body and the remainder of the scene.
You know, what, how long had she been down? Because
the timeline here is crucial. What to what degree had
postmortem changes begin to take place in Ellen's body? Well,
was the temperature of her body when the investigators first
got there, was she and riger mortis? Because that takes
(19:59):
a very specific amount of time to set in. Did
she have lybra morris where blood had settled? Remember she
was in a seated position, all right, So that would
indicate that if she had lybra mortis in her body,
that is the settling the blood where the the skin
actually changes color because of congestion, deepended congestion we call it,
(20:20):
it would have settled to the backs of her legs
and her buttocks would have been touching the floor, and
so you would, it would be really, really purple, livacious,
as they call it. So I'd be very interested to
know was there any lybra mortis on her shoulder blades
or on her lower back that would indicate that at
some point in time she had been laying on her back.
(20:40):
So all of this is key, it just doesn't necessarily
marry up. So let's have a little bit more about
the room itself. The door was locked, there was one
way in or out. Ellen did not live on the
ground floor, so there was a very small balcony, but
it was not like a balcony that you would go
out side and sit and you know, hang out with
(21:02):
friends and talk or have dinner. It's a very small balcony.
There's only one way in or out of this room,
and the door is locked. Jackie, that's a good point.
I've always imagined this, this uh, this apartment to look
somewhat like, uh, maybe an extended stay suite that you
would find out on the road in a hotel. And
(21:23):
the one thing it has in common is one of
these interior swing locks. And I'm sure that many people
that are listening have had access to these. You know
it it's got the one little bar that's attached to
the door itself, and then it's got this kind of
gate that swings over that one little bar, And if
you try to open the door, even after the dead
(21:44):
bolt is off and you kind of swing that, that
little bar catches on that handle on that on that
swing and it prevents it from opening any further. That
was physically in place, according to the boyfriend, when he
came to enter the apartment. As a matter of fact,
he reports getting rather upset. Whether he's texting her, you know,
he's saying, look, don't you know, don't be playing around
(22:05):
or whatever it was that he had stated, let me in,
let me in. I don't know what's going on, And
of course he eventually had to force his way into
the apartment. How is this possible with the swing lock, Uh,
that this would have been in place, he could not
have gotten in. And we've got a woman that is
essentially seated in the kitchen that has sustained twenty stab wounds.
(22:27):
But to my account, it would seem that it's not
possible for to for her to have self inflicted these wounds. Jackie,
I just don't see how that's plausible. There's only one
way into this place. You've got a single entrance in
an interior hallway. Uh. I don't see anybody leaping off
of that balcony uh down out of this multi story building.
(22:49):
I think that they probably wind up breaking their ankles
or bringing their leg How is it possible that someone
could have come and gone without them being seen, Jackie,
(23:17):
I don't know that there's necessarily any clear answers uh
in the in the case involving Ellen Greenberg's death, But
I can tell you this, I know that there's somebody
out there that does want want answers, and that's her
mom and dad, because for ten years now they've been
searching for someone to tell them definitively what happened on
(23:40):
that day that their daughter passed away. Joe, You're absolutely right.
The Greenbergs have been fighting for a very long time
now to get this ruling of suicide changed. They have
been to court, they have filed motions, they have done depositions,
and we know that in those depositions there were some
things brought up that that really raises questions about whether
(24:03):
this finding is accurate. What were those jokes? The most
significant thing, Jackie, is that upon further reflection, there was
a another pathologist who was working for the medical examiner,
the same medical examiner's office that did Ellen's exam. Let's
just go blow you away. Remember that that injury that
(24:26):
we talked about that was involving the C one, C two,
and C three cervical spawn. Well, when this mythologist looked
at this, she she saw something very interesting, the fact
that when this knife entered that area, that critical area
that literally dictates um the quality of life that we're
(24:47):
going to have. During the course of a deposition, she
revealed that it was her opinion that this insult this
injury that Ellen sustained to the back of neck, to
their spinal column. She stated that there was no hemorrhage.
There was no hemorrhage in that specific area. You have
(25:09):
to factor that with this. The head and the neck
are arguably the most vascular areas in our body, and
what that means is is that there is more blood
supply probably going to that area of the human body
because the brain requires so much oxygen. So you're gonna
tell me that you're going to insert a knife into
(25:29):
this area and there is no significant hemorrhage surrounding the
spinal column. Well, the thing that she came up with
this other pathologist that did this examination, was that yeah,
she got stabbed in that area, but because there was
no hemorrhage, she doesn't believe that this happened in life.
(25:52):
She thinks that it was post mortem. That means that
it occurred after death. Because, as we know, if you
sustain a bump, a contusion, a bruise, if you sustain
a laceration, an incized wound with an edged weapon or
a gunshot wound, and you're alive at the time that
you sustain those injuries to your body, you're gonna bleed.
(26:15):
Ellen Greenberg, according to this pathologist, didn't bleed in that
specific area, and that specific area is key to this Jackie.
It's key because in most people that would be an
area that would be so affected by this type of
injury that it would shut you down. We had talked
about already that that's that's where the autonomic nervous system
(26:38):
kind of roots out of. It comes up out of
that the base of the of the spinal cord right there.
It's critical to everything that we do. So any any
the slightest little insult in that area, the slightest little
injury can be very impactful. And the fact that there
was no hemorrhage in there, according to this pathologist, indicates
(26:58):
that this injury may very well have occurred after Ellen
had passed away. So that leaves us with a big question,
doesn't it. How can a young woman who has reportedly
been stabbing herself over and over and over again, according
to the medical examiner, how can she sustain an injury
(27:20):
like this to her neck after she's deceased? How is
that even physically possible. I've been around a lot of
dead bodies in my life, Jackie, over the course of
my career, thousands of them, and I have never seen
someone that is deceased to self inflicting injury. So that
that begs the question, how did this occur? And by
(27:40):
whose hand? And so that's that's the kind of question
that the family has asked, and that's the kind of
question that the family deserves an answer to. But you
know what's really sad about this, Jackie, is the fact
that this mythologist, she never filed a report. Here the
here the family is there asking for answers. I'd say
(28:01):
that this is a a pretty big answer. This is
a big piece of information from an investigative standpoint that
the family should have known immediately. It took a deposition
in order to pull this dat out. So Joe, I
am by no means I'm not even a forensics beginner.
(28:22):
I don't even have to go that far because all
I have to look at, and I think most lay
people all they have to look at, is the fact
that Ellen Greenberg had twenty stab wounds that were supposedly
self inflicted. And I'm standing here on the outside looking in,
(28:43):
going there is no way that you can stab yourself
twenty times and it be considered a suicide. So explain
it to me, Joe, how this could have been ruled
a suicide to begin with? Let me correct jump something there,
and Jackie, this this case was not originally ruled a suicide.
(29:04):
In the first iteration of this thing that the m
E had come out and said that they thought that
it was a homicide. So what what changed along the
continuum here to make them suddenly doing about face say oh, well,
it's it's not a homicide. This is this is obviously
a suicide. Obviously a suicide, Okay, obviously no equivocation. This
(29:26):
is a suicide. A suicide involving twenty self inflicted stab wounds.
That that's obvious that this is a suicide, and you know,
it defies I think on many levels logic that this
could in fact be be a suicide because we're talking
(29:46):
about a young woman who has not expressed any kind
of what psychiatrists refer to as suicidal ideation. And yeah,
I know that people do on occasion, uh take their lives,
and they haven't sent up any signals, but in this
particular case, she seems as though that she was rather
stable in the world that she was existing in. And yeah,
(30:08):
she has suffered from anxiety, but she wasn't stark, raving
mad where she would take as where she would take
a steak knife and plunge it into her body twenty times.
It just it doesn't it doesn't balance. This equation doesn't
balance at the end. What's of striking about this case
is that not only was she in a lock department
(30:31):
and the boyfriend had to make his way through this
gate lock on the door, and that she had blood
streaming out of her ear that's consistent with her laying
on her back, and that she has taken a steak
knife and plunged it into her body twenty times, and
then to boot leaves the knife embedded in her own chest.
(30:52):
It gets it gets a bit more murky because you know, initially,
as as I've stated, the the pathologist had actually originally
ruled this as in fact a homicide, but then they
did at about face and changed it to suicide. One
other odd thing is that out of all the people
(31:12):
in the world that the medical examiner could have referred
this case to UH, they referred this case for further
examination by one of the most renowned UH neuropathologist um
in American history, and that's Dr Lucy Rourke, who's up
(31:33):
in Philadelphia. The pathologist claims that Dr Lucy Rourke actually
examined ellen spinal cord. Well, guess what. Dr Rourke says
that she never was involved in this case, and this,
of all cases, is one that you would want to
have a neuropathology consult on because of the injury to
(31:56):
the spinal cord. She says she never saw the case.
So that adds an other layer. And I think that
now we can begin to see why the parents would
be so suspicious about this case, why they have so
many questions that have remained after a decade unanswered, or
at least the answers that they've been given are not satisfactory.
(32:18):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs
Body backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's a well worn
adage that talks about death by a thousand cuts. It
implies that it's slow, it's painful, something that no one
(00:30):
would ever want to endure. For years I handle cases
involved in sharp instruments. I have to say that, in
all of my years as a death investigator, I don't
believe I've ever encountered a case involving this many staff
wounds and so many unanswered questions. I'm talking about twenty,
(00:55):
not a thousand, but twenty cuts. The case of Ellen Greenberg.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this his body bags. Today.
I'm joined by my friend Jackie Howard, who's the executive
producer of Crime Stories. Would Nancy Grace Jackie, wan't you
(01:16):
tell us about this case? Joe Ellen Greenberg was a
bride to be. She had just sent out the safety
dates for her upcoming wedding. By all accounts, she was
excited about this wedding. Her fiance and living boyfriend went
to the gym in their apartment complex. He came back
up and found the door locked. At that time, he
(01:37):
began beating on the door, calling, texting, but Ellen did
not answer. He tried to get into the door. That
fiance finally manages to break the door down, And I'm
sure most people are thinking, why didn't you just use
a key? The door had a lock on it, like
you have at an hotel that has a bar that
swings across the opening of the door to make it
(01:57):
impossible to open the door from the outside even if
you have a key. So he's trying to get in.
Ellen does not answer. He finally manages to break the
door down. Once he gets inside, he finds Ellen Greenberg
on the floor. She has been stabbed multiple times twenty
as you said, and the knife is still embedded in
(02:18):
her chest. Nine one one was called service personnel come
and as the determination of what happened to Ellen Greenberg
has made and it's determined to be a suicide. You know, Jackie,
we're talking about a young woman, healthy, fit woman. She's
a school teacher, has got her entire life ahead of her.
(02:38):
Seemingly she's enjoying life like you had mentioned, she's excited
about her upcoming nupteals. You know, she's taking the time
to send out Save the date cars. She's been living
with this guy for a while, they're making plans, and
he goes the gym and comes back and after he
breaks the door down, he finds her on the floor
(02:59):
suffering from this many wounds. I gotta tell you, Jackie,
I in in over the course of my career, I
don't ever recall working a case where I had an
individual that had self inflicted sharp force injuries at at
this number. I mean, this is almost an unimaginable number
(03:21):
that we're talking about twenty because you know, you begin
to think, how can anyone endure that level of pain?
I mean, we all know what it's like to cut ourselves,
cut ourselves on a piece of paper even and it stings.
Can you imagine driving a knife blade in into your
body this many times? And this is this is a
curious thing. The knife wounds are not simply what you
(03:44):
might think, just like into the abdomen or maybe a
single time into the chest. We're talking about multiple injuries
on not just the chest but also on the back. Now,
how do how does that work? I'm trying to understand
this and in to her neck as well. And one
of the things that was discovered at autopsy was the
(04:04):
fact that the knife had actually penetrated the cervical spinal
column right at about the C one or C two
level and had actually actually penetrated and touched and brushed
up against the spinal cord. Now, this is almost an
unimaginable feat and I don't know that there's any way
(04:25):
that you can kind of do the arithmetic on here
to make it come out right. Let me jump in
here and get just a little explanation for folks described
for me where exactly the C one and C two
area is. If if folks will at home, just think
about the first cervical vertebra that you have is commonly
(04:45):
it's got an interesting name. A lot of people aren't
aware of it. The very first cervical vertebra that we
have is actually called the Atlas. And just imagine, you
know from mythology, that gigantic man that's that's holding up
the earth. I'm sure that many people have seen that
Atlas was his name, and that you know, I think
that early anatomous. They felt like, well, that's that's a
(05:06):
great representation. People can understand that I need it. I'm
kind of a simple minded fellow. So if I'm thinking
about something holding something up, I'm thinking about that C one.
That's that first cervical vertebra that's actually supporting the head,
all right, and everything that we do, all of our
actions are dictated by our head and our brain. So
(05:26):
it's a critical area. As a matter of fact. It's
so critical that when you look at that area C one,
C two, and C three, that's where our brain stem
kind of comes down it. It's it's the gateway to
our autonomic nervous system. And what folks don't understand that
that's that's what controls our respirations, that's what controls our heartbeat.
It's the hub of everything, kind of the primal brain,
(05:49):
those things that that occur without us thinking about it.
You're talking directly at the base of the skull, at
the back of the neck. Yeah, we're We're right at
the base of the skull in this particular case, Jackie.
And that's that's one of the things that's so troubling. Now,
I'll put it to you this way. If you were
let's just put in the context of say, if you
(06:09):
were a professional killer, uh, if you were looking to
take someone out, Okay, that is a primary area where
you're almost guaranteed, say, if you're firing a gun for
a kill shot, because you know that you're gonna you're
gonna take them out in that split second of time.
And the fact that she had this injury there is significant.
(06:30):
It's very significant because you you think about this and
you say, well, how in the world could anybody recover
from that type of injury to go on and continue
to stab himself. Remember, that's only one of twenty stab
wounds that she sustained one and in addition to that
(06:52):
stab wound that we've just reflected upon, she's also got
a real nasty gash on the back of her head.
It's kind of a if you'll think of a half
moon or a quarter moon, it's it's kind of elliptical
in shape, kind of an odd, an odd injury, and
it it appears, according to what the autopsy report was saying,
(07:14):
that the edges what we call the margins of that
injury are clean, which more than likely indicates that this
was generated by an edged weapon. So, you know, you
think about how can someone endure this kind of trauma?
And upon further examination of Ellen's body, when you begin
to look at her arms and her legs, there are other,
(07:37):
I don't know, contusions, little bruises that are on her body. Now,
the pathologist says that they're resolving in nature, so he
doesn't go into great detail relative to to how distant
they might be in the past or how recent they are.
But there's one major thing that is left out in
this autopsy report that I've discovered that in cases I've
(08:01):
been involved in, is essential relative to someone's ability to
handle a weapon or handle a knife in this particular case,
and that is arm lengths. You know, just think about it.
We all don't have the same length arms, do we.
You know, you think about the measurement from your shoulder
to your elbow, and from your elbow to your wrist,
and from your wrist to the tips of your fingers.
(08:22):
All of that equates into, uh, this thought of what
is your ability to wield a knife in order to
self inflict an injury? And you have to look at
the injuries that Ellen had on her body. How is
it that you can take a knife and literally drive
it into your own back And you have to think, well,
(08:44):
maybe you could do that once, maybe you could do
it twice, But then you think all of the pain
associated because once you've driven it into those areas once
you have made contact with your skin, You've you've cut
through nerves, you've cut through the muscle, and you have
literally gone to bone at that point. How much pain
is associated with You're gonna tell me, you're gonna do
that over and over and over again. I don't think so.
(09:08):
I mean, the individual that would be capable of self
inflicting this kind of injury would, in my estimation at least,
have to be a raving psychotic. And there is no indication,
no indication whatsoever that Ellen Greenberg suffered from any kind
of acute psychosis whatsoever. I mean, this poor young lady.
(09:32):
She had anxiety. Who in the world doesn't have anxiety?
She had trouble sleeping at night. Well, she she was
taking Clinais a PAM. Do you realize how many people
in our population take Clinaise apam? And there is no
association between clinais a PAM and psychotic behavior that I've
been able to find in the literature. Everybody has trouble
sleeping every now and then. She's got a lot on hers,
(09:53):
she teaching in public schools, she's you know, planning a
wedding and so in that since there's no evidence to
indicate that she's in it some kind of frenzied mental
state where she could inflict these kind of insults to
her body, and not just these kinds of insults, but
to continue to do it over and over and over
(10:15):
again until finally she takes this single edged serrated knife,
now that's that's a stake knife, just so that you
were clear, and buries it in her chest where they
find it at the scene. And just so people can
visualize this, if you, if you have access to a
dollar bill, take that dollar bill out. Okay, look at it.
(10:38):
I mean look at the face of it. From the
left side of it to just pass George Washington's head,
that's ten centimeters. That's how deep this knife was buried
in her. So you you think about that and think
about all of the pain associated with that. It really
is a head scratcher, Jackie. I want to take a
step back to something that you mentioned a minute ago.
(11:00):
I hadn't never thought of arm length in relation to
this case, although obviously it is it is a very
important part. But what I was thinking about was flexibility.
I mean, I'm very lucky to be able to scratch
the back of my neck when it you know, or
the back of my shoulder blades when I have an
itch let alone, to be able to hurt myself, to
(11:21):
stab myself in the back. Is it possible that, despite
your arm length, that your flexibility gives you the capability
to create these kinds of injuries? Jackie, I gotta say,
that's an excellent question. You begin to think about this,
and it's like, Okay, you know, if you are that flexible,
all right, Let's say she's in tip top physical shape.
(11:42):
Maybe she does yoga, she can stretch, she can be
in I mean, she probably do a lot better than
than my old body could do. Uh. And you think
about doing this maybe once to be able to manipulate
a knife in everybody at home kind of think about
how you would have to hold a knife and or
to inflict this injury. So you would have to turn
(12:03):
the knife so that the tip is facing your your face,
the tip of your looking down, the long axis of
the blade blade edge is probably up, and then you
would have to take it and and as as your
elbow binds, drive it into your shoulder blades, down your
back near your spinal column, into the back of your head.
(12:25):
Even if you try to do this into the back
of your head. That's that's hard to do. You would
have to be tremendously flexible. And the one thing that
that folks might not understand or grasp all the while
that you're doing this. Every time you make another little cut,
another little nick in your body, your pain center is screaming,
(12:50):
screaming over and over again. You know, don't do this.
Your body is trying to don't do it. Don't do it.
Is too much pain associated with don't do it. But
yet you can tinue to do it. And you you
are able to be this nimble and this flexible in
order to facilitate this over and over and over and
over again. It's absolutely mind blowing. That's why myself and
(13:16):
a lot of other colleagues of mine that have taken
a look at this case that are forensics folks, we
we don't understand how, how, how plausible this could be
that someone could actually do this and self inflict these
insults to their body. But you know, there's really no
clear answers to this case. One of the fascinating things
(13:40):
is this when the autopsy was completed, it was determined
that she had stabbed herself. According to the M E.
In several vital areas, I mean areas in her body
that would absolutely lead lead to death. She's got both
eyes of her chest cavity and her lungs are filled
(14:04):
with blood. Okay, So that means that somewhere along the
way her ability to respire has been compromised. So her
chest cavity is filling up with blood, and that's compromising
the lungs ability to inhalate and excellate. Also, interestingly enough,
in your in your heart, your heart actually sits in
(14:26):
a little sack that's called pericardium, percardial sack that's been nicked. Well,
not only has it been nicked, the aorta has been nicked. Uh,
And that's the major vessel that comes off of the
heart that supplies that supplies the rest of the the body
with oxygenated blood. That pericardial sack around the heart, it's
(14:47):
becoming engrossed with blood as well. So the heart's laboring
to beat all of this time. Not to mention, you've
got this spinal insult that has taken place with a knife,
and all the while you're only me that even though
she is this physically compromised, she's still capable of carrying
out the self inflicted insults to her body. I just
(15:10):
I can't see it happening. I don't understand how it's
even possible. Just supposed, for a second that you just
(15:38):
take your hand, an empty hand, and you move it
about your body twenty times. Think about that that requires
a certain amount of energy in order to facilitate this.
You begin to think about this poor young woman, Ellen Greenberg.
She's holding a knife in her hand, a serrated edge knife, nonetheless,
And what they're trying to tell us is that as
(15:59):
she's hold in this knife, she is inflicting all of
these injuries to her body, compromising her lungs, her heart,
and potentially her brain. And yet she's able to keep
up this pace with a lack of oxygen eated blood.
Remember what the pathologist is saying in the autopsy report
is that steadily her her chest cavity, her chest cavity
(16:22):
on both sides, is filling up with blood. Her pair cardium,
which actually encases the heart, is filling up with blood.
They even make note of a superficial sub arachnoid hemorrhage
in her brain, which is putting pressure on her brain
all the while. And they expect us to believe that
she could facilitate inflicting all of these injuries upon herself
(16:45):
while all the while just so slowly depriving herself of
much needed oxygenated blood. I gotta tell you, I'm just
not buying it. I don't see how it's physically possible
for her to have done this in her apartment. Are
all alone. How is this possible that she could have
done it? And you know what, it's not like she
(17:05):
wandered over the entire apartment while she's doing it. Everything
that occurred appears to have occurred in one spot, and
that's in her kitchen. Joe. Let's talk about the forensics itself.
We've talked about the body and the wounds that she had,
but let's talk about the forensics of the room itself.
We know that the door was broken, we know that
(17:25):
Ellen was found with the knife still in her body.
She was found in a seated position, which I think
most people find odd. What strikes you about this scene?
I think the fact that she is seated in an
upright position. It almost seems unnatural, doesn't it. Uh? And
(17:46):
and the fact that this boyfriend that discovered her, he
would have made note of that at that time that
she was in this position with a knife in her
chest and didn't lay her to the floor. You know,
they gave him a rective to start CPR on her,
but he's saying, she's got a knife in her chest.
Can you imagine this? And it should It was probably
(18:09):
a horror show in this environment. There's probably blood all
over the floor, it's all over her. Obviously it's gonna
be on her hands and this knife. I've actually seen
the pictures of the knife. The blood is just encrusted
around the handle of the knife as well as on
the surface of the blade as well. They had to
remove it at autopsy, so you begin to think about this,
(18:30):
it seems almost unnatural. But one of the really curious
things about this, Jackie, is that we know that gravity
is a constant force in the universe. It impacts our
bodies everywhere we go. One of the interesting things that
was noted about Ellen's body is that she actually had
(18:51):
a streak of blood that was coming out of her
ear that get this was traveling from front to back,
so that if if it's it would violate the laws
of nature. It's almost as if she had sustained an
injury while laying back, the blood came out of her
(19:14):
ear and dripped down to the floor, and then she
sat up and left this blood stained uh mark on
her ear. And that's that's just not possible. It almost
implies that some way, in some way, her body may
have been manipulated. And that's why it's so key that
when they arrived at the scene, what exactly did they
(19:36):
find relative to her body and the remainder of the scene.
You know, what, how long had she been down? Because
the timeline here is crucial. What to what degree had
postmortem changes begin to take place in Ellen's body? Well,
was the temperature of her body when the investigators first
got there, was she and riger mortis? Because that takes
(19:59):
a very specific amount of time to set in. Did
she have lybra morris where blood had settled? Remember she
was in a seated position, all right, So that would
indicate that if she had lybra mortis in her body,
that is the settling the blood where the the skin
actually changes color because of congestion, deepended congestion we call it,
(20:20):
it would have settled to the backs of her legs
and her buttocks would have been touching the floor, and
so you would, it would be really, really purple, livacious,
as they call it. So I'd be very interested to
know was there any lybra mortis on her shoulder blades
or on her lower back that would indicate that at
some point in time she had been laying on her back.
(20:40):
So all of this is key, it just doesn't necessarily
marry up. So let's have a little bit more about
the room itself. The door was locked, there was one
way in or out. Ellen did not live on the
ground floor, so there was a very small balcony, but
it was not like a balcony that you would go
out side and sit and you know, hang out with
(21:02):
friends and talk or have dinner. It's a very small balcony.
There's only one way in or out of this room,
and the door is locked. Jackie, that's a good point.
I've always imagined this, this uh, this apartment to look
somewhat like, uh, maybe an extended stay suite that you
would find out on the road in a hotel. And
(21:23):
the one thing it has in common is one of
these interior swing locks. And I'm sure that many people
that are listening have had access to these. You know
it it's got the one little bar that's attached to
the door itself, and then it's got this kind of
gate that swings over that one little bar, And if
you try to open the door, even after the dead
(21:44):
bolt is off and you kind of swing that, that
little bar catches on that handle on that on that
swing and it prevents it from opening any further. That
was physically in place, according to the boyfriend, when he
came to enter the apartment. As a matter of fact,
he reports getting rather upset. Whether he's texting her, you know,
he's saying, look, don't you know, don't be playing around
(22:05):
or whatever it was that he had stated, let me in,
let me in. I don't know what's going on, And
of course he eventually had to force his way into
the apartment. How is this possible with the swing lock, Uh,
that this would have been in place, he could not
have gotten in. And we've got a woman that is
essentially seated in the kitchen that has sustained twenty stab wounds.
(22:27):
But to my account, it would seem that it's not
possible for to for her to have self inflicted these wounds. Jackie,
I just don't see how that's plausible. There's only one
way into this place. You've got a single entrance in
an interior hallway. Uh. I don't see anybody leaping off
of that balcony uh down out of this multi story building.
(22:49):
I think that they probably wind up breaking their ankles
or bringing their leg How is it possible that someone
could have come and gone without them being seen, Jackie,
(23:17):
I don't know that there's necessarily any clear answers uh
in the in the case involving Ellen Greenberg's death, But
I can tell you this, I know that there's somebody
out there that does want want answers, and that's her
mom and dad, because for ten years now they've been
searching for someone to tell them definitively what happened on
(23:40):
that day that their daughter passed away. Joe, You're absolutely right.
The Greenbergs have been fighting for a very long time
now to get this ruling of suicide changed. They have
been to court, they have filed motions, they have done depositions,
and we know that in those depositions there were some
things brought up that that really raises questions about whether
(24:03):
this finding is accurate. What were those jokes? The most
significant thing, Jackie, is that upon further reflection, there was
a another pathologist who was working for the medical examiner,
the same medical examiner's office that did Ellen's exam. Let's
just go blow you away. Remember that that injury that
(24:26):
we talked about that was involving the C one, C two,
and C three cervical spawn. Well, when this mythologist looked
at this, she she saw something very interesting, the fact
that when this knife entered that area, that critical area
that literally dictates um the quality of life that we're
(24:47):
going to have. During the course of a deposition, she
revealed that it was her opinion that this insult this
injury that Ellen sustained to the back of neck, to
their spinal column. She stated that there was no hemorrhage.
There was no hemorrhage in that specific area. You have
(25:09):
to factor that with this. The head and the neck
are arguably the most vascular areas in our body, and
what that means is is that there is more blood
supply probably going to that area of the human body
because the brain requires so much oxygen. So you're gonna
tell me that you're going to insert a knife into
(25:29):
this area and there is no significant hemorrhage surrounding the
spinal column. Well, the thing that she came up with
this other pathologist that did this examination, was that yeah,
she got stabbed in that area, but because there was
no hemorrhage, she doesn't believe that this happened in life.
(25:52):
She thinks that it was post mortem. That means that
it occurred after death. Because, as we know, if you
sustain a bump, a contusion, a bruise, if you sustain
a laceration, an incized wound with an edged weapon or
a gunshot wound, and you're alive at the time that
you sustain those injuries to your body, you're gonna bleed.
(26:15):
Ellen Greenberg, according to this pathologist, didn't bleed in that
specific area, and that specific area is key to this Jackie.
It's key because in most people that would be an
area that would be so affected by this type of
injury that it would shut you down. We had talked
about already that that's that's where the autonomic nervous system
(26:38):
kind of roots out of. It comes up out of
that the base of the of the spinal cord right there.
It's critical to everything that we do. So any any
the slightest little insult in that area, the slightest little
injury can be very impactful. And the fact that there
was no hemorrhage in there, according to this pathologist, indicates
(26:58):
that this injury may very well have occurred after Ellen
had passed away. So that leaves us with a big question,
doesn't it. How can a young woman who has reportedly
been stabbing herself over and over and over again, according
to the medical examiner, how can she sustain an injury
(27:20):
like this to her neck after she's deceased? How is
that even physically possible. I've been around a lot of
dead bodies in my life, Jackie, over the course of
my career, thousands of them, and I have never seen
someone that is deceased to self inflicting injury. So that
that begs the question, how did this occur? And by
(27:40):
whose hand? And so that's that's the kind of question
that the family has asked, and that's the kind of
question that the family deserves an answer to. But you
know what's really sad about this, Jackie, is the fact
that this mythologist, she never filed a report. Here the
here the family is there asking for answers. I'd say
(28:01):
that this is a a pretty big answer. This is
a big piece of information from an investigative standpoint that
the family should have known immediately. It took a deposition
in order to pull this dat out. So Joe, I
am by no means I'm not even a forensics beginner.
(28:22):
I don't even have to go that far because all
I have to look at, and I think most lay
people all they have to look at, is the fact
that Ellen Greenberg had twenty stab wounds that were supposedly
self inflicted. And I'm standing here on the outside looking in,
(28:43):
going there is no way that you can stab yourself
twenty times and it be considered a suicide. So explain
it to me, Joe, how this could have been ruled
a suicide to begin with? Let me correct jump something there,
and Jackie, this this case was not originally ruled a suicide.
(29:04):
In the first iteration of this thing that the m
E had come out and said that they thought that
it was a homicide. So what what changed along the
continuum here to make them suddenly doing about face say oh, well,
it's it's not a homicide. This is this is obviously
a suicide. Obviously a suicide, Okay, obviously no equivocation. This
(29:26):
is a suicide. A suicide involving twenty self inflicted stab wounds.
That that's obvious that this is a suicide, and you know,
it defies I think on many levels logic that this
could in fact be be a suicide because we're talking
(29:46):
about a young woman who has not expressed any kind
of what psychiatrists refer to as suicidal ideation. And yeah,
I know that people do on occasion, uh take their lives,
and they haven't sent up any signals, but in this
particular case, she seems as though that she was rather
stable in the world that she was existing in. And yeah,
(30:08):
she has suffered from anxiety, but she wasn't stark, raving
mad where she would take as where she would take
a steak knife and plunge it into her body twenty times.
It just it doesn't it doesn't balance. This equation doesn't
balance at the end. What's of striking about this case
is that not only was she in a lock department
(30:31):
and the boyfriend had to make his way through this
gate lock on the door, and that she had blood
streaming out of her ear that's consistent with her laying
on her back, and that she has taken a steak
knife and plunged it into her body twenty times, and
then to boot leaves the knife embedded in her own chest.
(30:52):
It gets it gets a bit more murky because you know, initially,
as as I've stated, the the pathologist had actually originally
ruled this as in fact a homicide, but then they
did at about face and changed it to suicide. One
other odd thing is that out of all the people
(31:12):
in the world that the medical examiner could have referred
this case to UH, they referred this case for further
examination by one of the most renowned UH neuropathologist um
in American history, and that's Dr Lucy Rourke, who's up
(31:33):
in Philadelphia. The pathologist claims that Dr Lucy Rourke actually
examined ellen spinal cord. Well, guess what. Dr Rourke says
that she never was involved in this case, and this,
of all cases, is one that you would want to
have a neuropathology consult on because of the injury to
(31:56):
the spinal cord. She says she never saw the case.
So that adds an other layer. And I think that
now we can begin to see why the parents would
be so suspicious about this case, why they have so
many questions that have remained after a decade unanswered, or
at least the answers that they've been given are not satisfactory.
(32:18):
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs
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