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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Back on January 26, 2011, a 27-year-old elementary school teacher was found dead inside of her locked Philadelphia apartment that she shared with her fiancé.
She'd been stabbed 20 times with a 10-inch kitchen knife with no apparent defensive wounds. The medical examiner counted eight stab wounds to her chest, one on her stomach, a slash across her head, and 10 stab wounds to the back of her neck. Her death was initially ruled a homicide until a few weeks later, the medical examiner did something almost unheard of.
They changed the manner of death to suicide. For over nine years, the family of Ellen Greenberg have fought to get their daughter justice. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 49, The Mysterious Death of Ellen Greenberg. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved. Others have become cold cases.
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Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the first episode of December. I want to start the episode by letting you in on exactly why I chose the case we're covering about on the show this week. I originally didn't even have the story on the show's content calendar.
But here's why we're talking about it this week. So last Monday on the show, I covered the death of 21-year-old Christian Andreacchio from Meridian, Mississippi. His death had been ruled a suicide, but many people, including Christian's very own family, don't believe it was a suicide. They believe Christian was murdered.
So while researching his story for the show, I kind of went down a rabbit hole on the internet that I absolutely didn't intend on doing. I'm on so many deadlines for the show as it is, and I found myself spending way too much time. But while down in this rabbit hole, I came across a story I have never heard of, which is rare.
It's a case where even though it's been ruled a suicide, many speculate that it's absolutely not a suicide, but a homicide. And the deeper I found myself getting into this hole, I knew that I absolutely needed to cover this case on the show.
So that is why, you guys, that we are covering two cases back to back that were ruled a suicide but quite possibly could be murder. If some of the stuff you hear about in this episode makes you angry, makes you scratch your head, or just plain makes you feel crazy, welcome to the club. You might even wonder how this case could ever be ruled a suicide.
And full disclosure, this is probably one of the craziest cases we've covered on the show ever. So buckle up and let's dive right into it. The story goes back to late January 2011 near Philadelphia. 27-year-old Ellen Greenberg lived with her fiancé Samuel Goldberg at the Venice Loft Apartments.
Ellen worked as an elementary school teacher and she taught first grade English. And she was the only child to parents Josh and Sandra Greenberg. Ellen was really the apple of her parents' eyes. The weather in January 2011 in Philadelphia was even colder than usual. There had been a terrible snowstorm that plowed through town constantly.
So on the afternoon of January 26, 2011, the school that Ellen worked at was dismissed early for the day. So she left work, stopped by a gas station to fill up her car, and then she returned back to the apartment that she shared with her fiancé. Around 4.45 p.m., Ellen's fiancé Samuel went downstairs to use the apartment complex's gym.
So Ellen and Samuel lived on the building's sixth floor in one of those high-rise luxury type apartments. So they had their very own gym. You just had to take the elevator down to the first floor and you were there. Samuel returned back to the apartment about 30 to 40 minutes later. So that's around 5.15 p.m. But when he tried to open the apartment door, it was locked.
Even though Samuel had his key with him, the apartment was locked from the inside. It had one of those swing bar locks. So he bangs on the door a few times. He doesn't get an answer. He knows Ellen is inside, so he starts to get a little frustrated. And over the next 22 minutes, Samuel starts sending Ellen text message after text message. Hello. Hello.
Open the door. What are you doing? I'm getting pissed. Hello. You better have an excuse. What the F? Ah, you have no idea. So Samuel's getting mad. He's getting frustrated. He can't understand why his fiance has locked him out of the apartment and why she won't return any of his texts.
So after texting Ellen for 20 minutes and getting no response from her, Samuel decides to go down to the lobby and he speaks with a security guard who's on duty that night. Samuel tells the security guard that he's locked out of his apartment and asks him if he would be able to help him break down the apartment door.
And the security guard tells him, like, look, I'm sorry. That sucks. But that's completely against our policy. I can't help you break down your door. Sorry, man. So Samuel makes his way back up to the sixth floor and decides that he's just going to have to break down the door himself, that he's sick of waiting for Ellen to unlock the door.
By this point, it's almost 6.30 p.m., and he's been locked out of the apartment for a little over an hour, and he's pissed. He's able to break open the door, breaking the lock, and that's where he sees Ellen lying on the kitchen floor, slumped against a kitchen cabinet. And at 6.33 p.m., he picks up the phone and dials 911.
Initially, the 911 dispatcher instructed him to perform CPR on Ellen. But as he starts the compressions, he sees a knife that has been plunged into her chest. So 911 immediately tells Samuel, you've got to stop CPR. We're on our way.
paramedics and first responders arrived inside of the apartment and at 6.40 p.m. Ellen Greenberg was pronounced dead. Ellen was found lying on the kitchen floor just inside of the apartment's front door. Her head, neck, and shoulders had been propped up against the kitchen cabinet and both of her feet were lying out in front of her.
In her left hand, she was holding on to a perfectly clean white kitchen towel. Police recovered a 10-inch kitchen knife that was still lodged inside of Ellen's chest. In total, Ellen had 20 stab wounds to her body.
The medical examiner who would later on perform the autopsy noted that she had eight wounds to her chest, ranging from 0.2 centimeters deep all the way up to a four-inch deep puncture. She also had a two-inch deep wound to her stomach, and she had a two-and-a-half-inch kind of slash across her head, but she
It wasn't just wounds to the front of her body. Ellen had 10 different wounds to the back of her neck. A few were just some nicks, but two of the wounds to the back of her neck were three inches deep.
The medical examiner who performed the autopsy also found several bruises across her body. In fact, he counted a total of 11 bruises that were what he described as in different stages of resolution, meaning they had formed at different times. He found bruises across her legs, her right arm, and a couple bruises on her stomach.
Now, based on everything he observed on Ellen's body, the medical examiner ruled her death a homicide. But that's not where this story ends. Not even close. After the medical examiner issued his ruling of homicide and the Greenberg family had to lay their daughter to rest, the Philadelphia Homicide Unit kept on investigating Ellen's death.
They had a handful of their own concerns about the case. The investigators believed Ellen had killed herself. For starters, investigators didn't notice any type of defensive wounds on Ellen's hands, like she had put up any sort of fight against her attacker. Next was the issue of the locked apartment. The place had been locked from the inside,
And they didn't find any disturbance in the snow on the apartment's balcony. There had been nobody other than Samuel, Ellen's fiance, seen either coming or going from the apartment. And the building they lived in had surveillance cameras. And the cameras from that afternoon didn't catch anyone either going or leaving.
and neighbors of Ellen. Neighbors who police interviewed said that they didn't hear anything. They didn't hear any sounds of struggle. Of course, the only thing they reported to police that they heard was Samuel banging on the door to get in, but that was it. It was completely quiet. Nobody heard anything like a woman getting stabbed to death. And then next, there's the inside of the apartment.
Everything seemed pretty unremarkable is how they described it. Nothing was turned over or looked like Ellen had been engaged in this struggle for her life. Next was the apartment lock. So the apartment complex that they lived in had a registry of when the door was opened with the key fob.
And the information that police obtained didn't show anyone else leaving or entering that apartment after Sam went to the gym. Meaning the last information on the registry of the key fob matched Samuel's timeline of when he went to the gym,
and when he was able to break down the door. So in between that time frame, which we know is a little over an hour, there wasn't any other key fob or any attempt to open the door, at least not in the registry. Now, if you remember, there was a perfectly clean white towel found right next to Ellen's body. I believe she may have even been holding it at the time.
And there was absolutely no blood on the towel. So the police theorized that Ellen may have used the towel in order to get a better grip on the knife while stabbing herself. The police have never offered an explanation as to how exactly it would be possible to do that without even getting a drop of blood on the towel itself.
But it is worth noting since we are going to mention the towel and we're going to talk about the blood. When Samuel got into the apartment and he discovered Ellen, he initially didn't even know that she was stabbed.
There wasn't that much blood, especially for someone that had been stabbed upwards of 20 times. It wasn't really apparent. In fact, he didn't even know that she had been stabbed until the 911 operator had instructed him to do the chest compressions. But it is worth noting that this perfectly white kitchen towel had absolutely no blood on it.
Now, last for the police argument here was the 10-inch kitchen knife that was found inside of Ellen's chest. So when the knife was sent to the forensic lab for fingerprint testing to be done on it, the only set of fingerprints found on the knife's handle was Ellen's fingerprints and DNA.
They didn't find any other DNA profile on the knife other than Ellen's. So with very little for investigators to go on to support the medical examiner's ruling of a homicide, they decided that they needed to look into every corner of Ellen's life.
The Philadelphia Homicide Unit learned that in the few months leading up to her death, Ellen's demeanor and behavior had changed. For someone who was once described as bubbly and outgoing was starting to suffer from some pretty bad anxiety. This was a change that Ellen's parents noticed right away in their daughter. And when they asked her what was wrong, what was going on,
She just told her parents that she was stressed, mostly stressed about her teaching job at the school. She was a teacher to little first graders after all. I can only imagine how stressful that could be and how many glasses of wine I would need to do that job. But her mom thought, well, maybe she was also stressed about planning her upcoming wedding.
Now, this is something that I can totally relate to, and I can absolutely vouch to say that planning a wedding is stressful. But every time Ellen's mom would ask her daughter about how she was feeling, she said Ellen would just be very vague about things, that she really didn't want to talk about it. Something else that Ellen said in the months leading up to her death was,
was that she told her parents that she wanted to move back home with them. This was a little strange because she's engaged to Samuel. They live together. They share an apartment. He's supposed to be the love of her life. So it's kind of odd that she would want to move back in with her parents just months before getting married. But Ellen had never complained about her relationship with Samuel.
She never expressed being unhappy in the relationship or wanting to call off the wedding. She never said anything like that to anyone. She just made comments to her parents that she was thinking about moving home. Ellen's mom suggested that she go see a psychiatrist to help work through some of the stress and some of the anxiety that she had been experiencing.
So investigators spoke with Ellen's psychiatrist, a woman by the name of Dr. Ellen Berman. And Dr. Berman was adamant that Ellen never expressed having any suicidal thoughts, that she never had a bad thing to say about her relationship with Samuel.
And that during their meetings, Ellen would mostly just express feelings of being overwhelmed at work. And that was pretty much it. So Ellen was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication as well as given Ambien to help her sleep. So the anti-anxiety medication that she was prescribed was Klonopin. And like any other medication, it can have side effects.
including depression, weakness, dizziness, and some people may experience problems with thinking or memory. And Ambien, well, it's a very common sleep aid. And you take an Ambien and 15, 20 minutes later, you've completely shut the world out.
by no means. And of course, I'm not a medical doctor, but by no means were the prescription that Ellen was given, they weren't out of the ordinary for what she had been feeling. And just to note, both of these drugs were found in Ellen's system the day of her death.
So based on the condition of the apartment, the locked door, the no defensive wounds to her hands, only her DNA on the knife, the change in demeanor in the months leading up to her death, the Philadelphia Homicide Unit didn't believe that Ellen was murdered. They didn't even believe the medical examiner's report. They believe she killed herself.
Very early on, Detective John McNamee, who was the supervisor assigned to Ellen's case, believed that Ellen committed suicide, that she suffered from severe anxiety, that she found herself alone in a locked apartment, that some of the wounds to her body, the ones that were only a centimeter long, not even that actually,
that some of these smaller wounds were actually test or hesitation wounds. The kind of wounds Ellen would made as she sat in the apartment thinking about killing herself. So Detective McNamee and his team of investigators reportedly hired an outside independent neuropathologist in order to take a look at Ellen's spinal cord.
Now, I say reportedly because this is going to come up again. So we can put this in the back of our minds for now. But remember, Ellen had a number of stab wounds to the back of her neck.
So the police reportedly hired this private neuropathologist to find out if any of the stab wounds to the back of her neck would have damaged her spinal cord, making it pretty much impossible for her to be able to continue stabbing herself.
They wanted to determine if any of the wounds to the back of her neck would have rendered her basically incapacitated and therefore she wouldn't have been physically able to continue stabbing herself. According to the lead detective here, this private neuropathologist said that Ellen's spinal cord wasn't in that bad of a shape, that it wasn't severed.
And that this doctor concluded Ellen would have been able to continue stabbing herself even after the wounds to her neck. This is big for the police's case, right? Because this essentially means that she would have been able to still inflict that final four inch stab wound to her chest, which by all accounts ultimately caused her death.
This supports the police theory that she inflicted all 20 wounds to herself, including the smaller what they were calling hesitation wounds where she was kind of just poking herself with the knife to to see if she was going to be able to go through with this.
And they were saying that she was able to stab herself in the back of the neck. The spinal cord wasn't severely damaged, that she was still able to pull it out and then ultimately stab herself one final time in the chest four inches deep.
This neuropathologist believed that Ellen, during this, would have gone numb after starting to stab herself. And that's why she was still able to inflict a total of 20 stab wounds. So armed with these findings by the police, on March 7, 2011, the medical examiner reversed its earlier ruling of homicide.
And they changed Ellen's manner of death to suicide without offering much, if any, any explanation for the change. Now, this was obviously extremely devastating news to Ellen's parents and family. Her parents just weren't able to accept that, one, their daughter killed herself, and two, she did so in such a violent way.
I mean, we're talking about a total of 20 stab wounds, half of which were to the back of her neck. In terms of suicide, this case is practically unheard of. Suicides by knives and stabbings are really rare.
When it comes to suicides involving knives, it's far more common for a person to inflict cutting wounds, like to their wrist, for example. Stabbing is even more uncommon. Stabbing 20 times, many to the back of the neck, is
I don't know many other documented cases, if there are any, of confirmed suicides where we see a similar pattern. It's also uncommon for females to commit suicide in such a violent manner. Females, historically, use less violent, less messy methods of suicide. Overdoses, things like that.
Another thing about Ellen's case worth mentioning is that stabs went through her clothing. It's more common for people when they're inflicting self-injuries to lift their clothing up beforehand. So taking all of this into consideration, Ellen's family, her parents, aren't on board with a ruling of suicide.
So in 2012, the family consulted with Cyril Wetsch, a forensic pathologist from the Pittsburgh area. Wetsch is a famous pathologist who was someone that challenged the single bullet theory of the John F. Kennedy assassination way back in the day.
And you may not know this guy's name, but if you've watched any true crime documentary in the last two decades, he's probably in it. So after reviewing Ellen's case, this pathologist released a report in 2012 that said everything was, quote, strongly suspicious of homicide. Wetsch even went on to say that he couldn't even believe Ellen.
how the police could write this off as a suicide, that nothing about the case made sense for it to be a suicide. His biggest concern with it were the stab wounds to the back of the neck. Ellen had a three-inch stab wound to the back of her neck. And it wasn't just Cyril Wetsch that the family consulted who had some serious problems with this homicide ruling.
The Greenberg family consulted a number of forensic experts over the years, trying to get the police to reopen Ellen's case and ultimately rule it a homicide. They also hired an attorney, Larry Kroszner, who had a long history of taking on police, civil rights cases in the past.
And the main reason that the family went on and hired Kroszner was that they weren't even allowed to read or review Ellen's autopsy report. They weren't even given access to any of the police reports. So here's two parents of a murder victim or someone who's dead who aren't even allowed to access their very own daughter's autopsy findings.
And when the police did allow them to review the reports, they were only allowed to look at them. They weren't allowed to make copies or to take photographs. Not exactly what the Greenbergs were hoping for from the police. So over the next couple years, the Greenbergs continued to partner up with different experts and professionals to help find some answers.
And two people that jumped on board to look at the case were Tom Brennan, a former Pennsylvania police chief, and former State Attorney General Walter Cohen, both who have pretty much volunteered to help the Greenbergs for free.
And the first thing that Tom Brennan and Walter Cohen did was questioned why was the police assumption that because Ellen didn't have any defensive wounds on her hands that she wasn't attacked. They basically argued that there are plenty of physical assault victims or murder victims who are attacked and they don't show defensive wounds.
Tom Brennan specifically refers to a blitz-style attack where a victim can be taken completely off guard and they essentially are unable to defend themselves. So Brennan and Cohen also called into question some very important details regarding where the blood was found on Ellen's body. Photos of Ellen's body from the crime scene inside of the kitchen show
show a stream of dried blood running horizontally across her cheek. The dried blood goes from the side of her nose all the way to her left ear. But when police first arrived, Ellen's body was propped up against the kitchen.
Remember, her head, neck, shoulders were propped up and both of her feet were out in front of her. And the blood was dried on her face. It wasn't even fresh. In their report, the police believe that Ellen started stabbing herself while standing and then ultimately slid down to the floor after becoming more and more injured.
The police also agree that Ellen's body was never moved. So Brennan and Cohen raised the question about how could there be a horizontal bloodstream down the side of her face from nose to ear when she was sitting upright? Doesn't that defy the simple laws of gravity?
In 2015, Guy D'Andrea, a former hotshot Philadelphia homicide prosecutor who also looked at Ellen's case, agreed with Tom Brennan and Walter Cohen that the horizontal bloodstream defied gravity and said that you don't have to be a forensic pathologist to see that.
Guy D'Andrea said that she either moved herself or someone moved her. It's that simple. But could Ellen really have moved herself? I think this is a good time for us to go back to the 10 stab wounds to Ellen's neck. Remember,
Earlier, I said that the lead detective on the case brought in this private neuropathologist who examined Ellen's spinal cord. And after examining and a full report came,
This doctor determined that her spinal cord wasn't that damaged, that Ellen could have continued to stab herself even after the 10 wounds to the back of the neck. Now, guys, I would argue that this is the biggest piece of evidence that the police have to rule this one a suicide.
This private neuropathologist basically provided proof to the fact that Ellen's spinal cord hadn't been severely damaged and that she would have been able to continue stabbing herself and ultimately stab herself four inches deep in the chest, the wound that would ultimately kill her. But here's the thing. When Guy D'Andrea, the former prosecutor who joined in to help the Greenbergs,
looked through Ellen's file, he couldn't find a single report on this. So he goes to the police and he requests a copy of this report on Ellen's spinal cord. Well, it turns out they don't have one. He goes to the medical examiner's office. They don't have this report on her spinal cord either. Not only do they not have a report, but
They don't even have an invoice from this private neuropathologist who would have performed the examination. Now, unless this doctor works for free, there has to be an invoice somewhere around here. So who is this private neuropathologist who was reportedly hired by the police investigating Ellen's death? What does she have to say about all of this? Her name is Dr. Lucy Rourke Adams.
In 2018, she confirmed that she did perform contract work for the medical examiner's office back in 2011. And when questioned, she said that she doesn't have a recollection of Ellen Greenberg's case at all. She said it's possible that she may have been given a picture of the spinal cord that
But without a report or a bill of service, an invoice, she herself said that she wouldn't have seen it. She confirmed what the experts working for the Greenbergs thought. Dr. Work Adams doesn't work for free. She never examined Ellen's spinal cord. There was no report. So how does someone, how does anyone explain this?
We have the police who claimed they obtained an examination and that they had a report on Ellen's spinal cord that showed little damage to the spine itself. And the piece of evidence police claimed proved that Ellen killed herself. But that didn't happen. There's no report of that. There was no examination done back in 2011. How does this happen?
Is it some gross oversight by the police assigned to the case? Or is it something more negligent? You can't say there's a finding that proves homicide when the report itself doesn't exist. So between all of this confusion about whether there was an exam done on Ellen's spinal cord or whether there wasn't, there's one thing that could clear everything up. And that's Ellen's spinal cord.
And it turns out that a piece of Ellen's spinal cord is still kept in storage at the medical examiner's office. Dr. Wayne Ross, another private pathologist for several Pennsylvania counties, was called in to look at the spinal cord.
And after Dr. Wayne Ross's examination, Dr. Ross concluded that one of the stab wounds had penetrated through Ellen's cranial cavity and it had severed her cranial nerves and actually part of her brain.
This doctor concluded that not only would it be extremely painful for Ellen, but she would have been experiencing a near certain loss of consciousness and severe impairment, a physical impossibility that she would have been able to then take the knife out of the back of her neck and then stab her chest four inches deep. Okay.
So that's the opinion of the pathologist that was hired by the Greenberg family to help explain her injuries and whether or not she would have continued stabbing herself. But the experts helping the family had some other serious obstacles that they had to look at. The police pointed to the evidence that it was a suicide, like the fact the apartment was locked from the inside.
This was a huge factor that police argue proves that Ellen's death was a suicide. Well, if you ask Guy D'Andrea and Tom Brennan who work for the Greenbergs, it's not that hard to manipulate a swing bar lock from the outside.
In fact, a quick Google search on how to do that, you'll get 101 articles and YouTube videos showing you just how easy it is to manipulate a swing bar lock.
Certainly, it's easy enough to do and shouldn't be one of the biggest piece of evidence that the police have in order to prove suicide here, besides the neuropathology report that never existed. So also back in 2018, the famous and very well-respected forensic scientist Henry Lee jumped on board.
Henry Lee is another person that if you've ever watched true crime on TV, you've seen his face. When you think of Henry Lee, you also think of someone who testified for OJ Simpson's defense team. And when Henry Lee looked at Ellen's case, he concluded that the number and type of wounds and the bloodstream patterns in the kitchen weren't consistent with a suicide and
but were consistent with a homicide scene. You now have a handful of world-renowned experts in the field of forensic science. We're talking about the best of the best experts who are all backing the Greenberg family, that this was no suicide. So does this mean the family's quest for justice will finally be answered? Well, not exactly.
While the Greenbergs fought to get Ellen's case reopened over the next seven years, the state attorney general's office was also doing an investigation on their own. In 2019, nearly eight years after Ellen's death, the state attorney general's office released information regarding a forensic search that was done on Ellen's computer.
Now, this was the first time that it was ever disclosed about any forensic search being done on Ellen's computer. This is now, again, eight years later that we're learning about this. So all these years after Ellen's death, authorities revealed that an analysis on the computer that was found inside of the apartment had searches for terms including suicide methods,
quick suicide, and painless suicide. According to the state attorney general's office, it was Ellen who made these internet searches within just a couple weeks leading up to her death. Of course, it's completely unclear why they decided to wait eight years to release this information into Ellen's search history. And it also has to be said that
One of Ellen's searches was reportedly painless suicide, right? But she ended up dead from 20 stab wounds. But the attorney general's office also cited text messages between Ellen and her mother back on January 8th, 2011 that read, quote, I'm starting the med. I know you don't understand, but I can't keep living this way, end quote.
The day before Ellen's death, her mom texted her saying, quote, you need to see a professional, end quote. To which Ellen texted her mom back saying, OK, I'm trying. I'm just scared a bit for everything, end quote. So according to the state attorney general's office, they were satisfied with the police investigation.
that all the evidence they had fully supported a suicide finding. And therefore, the office didn't find a need to continue investigating. So once again, the case was closed. Now, in October 2019, so a little over a year ago and eight years now after Ellen's death,
The Greenbergs filed a lawsuit against the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office and also named the pathologists who conducted the autopsy that had the ruling changed from homicide to suicide. And the lawsuit contends all of the issues that we've already talked about here, including
that the police shouldn't have been able to influence the initial ruling of the first medical examiner, that the lack of defensive wounds and locked door aren't enough evidence to support suicide,
And probably the biggest point of contention in the lawsuit is about the police's neuropathology report on Ellen's spinal cord that, well, just doesn't exist. The lawsuit is asking the court to declare the manner of death be changed from suicide to undetermined at the very, very minimum.
The Greenbergs, of course, ultimately hope that the lawsuit will have the court change it to homicide and that the case will be reopened and reinvestigated for possible suspects in her murder. But the family has settled for at least at the bare minimum that the manner of death be changed from suicide to undetermined. Earlier this year, so in January 2020, a Philadelphia judge ruled on the case.
And the judge said that the Greenbergs may move forward with their lawsuit against the medical examiner's office, that the case would absolutely go to trial in an effort to change the manner of death and move the ruling of suicide off the table. Now, this means that the case will go to trial and that the judge agreed with the Greenbergs that this case needed to be looked at.
It needed further examination, and the judge believed that there is enough evidence here. So the lawsuit is set to move to trial sometime next year in 2021. The exact date isn't known, given the current situation with COVID-19. Many trials and lawsuits, just like the Greenbergs, have been severely delayed, but
So it's possible that the trial won't happen until possibly the end of 2021, maybe even 2022. The parents of Ellen Greenberg, along with the forensic experts who to this day are still diligently working on the case, believe that a new technology that is known as photogrammetry
provides important clues about what happened to Ellen. This method allows for experts to recreate her anatomical as well as her physiological attributes. So an independent company known as Biomax took the medical examiner's report of Ellen and they were basically able to recreate the
the depth and angle of each one of her stab wounds. This is really helpful because we see which stab wound might have actually been fatal. And this method helps to determine whether Ellen could have continued to stab herself or not. It's pretty straightforward.
If a stab wound to the back of her neck would have been proven practically fatal, it would be impossible for her to then stab herself in the chest where the knife was ultimately found. And it also tells us how much power or force would be needed to inflict any of these wounds.
Like, is it possible for Ellen herself to generate enough force to inflict these type of wounds, especially those to the back of her neck? Like we're talking wounds anywhere from two to four inches deep, right?
That's not something that is easy to do. When we're talking about your neck is a little softer, yes. But when we're talking about your chest cavity where her knife was found and it was found four inches deep and she has to be able to do that. So after the experts from Biomax did this test, they found that two of the wounds to the back of Ellen's neck were described as lethal.
that it's highly improbable that Ellen would have been able to inflict the two wounds from behind, right? I know it's a little graphic and it's difficult to do because at the end of the day, we're talking about a real person here, a real soul. But you would have to believe if you believe a suicide theory, which the police do, that
She would have been able to take this 10-inch knife upwards on the angle of which it was and then penetrate it to the back of her neck over two inches deep. And then she would have had to go on to stab through her chest four inches deep. And what this Biomax company did through this method was that from the angle of these two wounds to the back of the neck,
They believe that she wouldn't have been able to generate enough force to do that. It's just darn near impossible. So this company, the Greenbergs, their attorneys, the countless forensic experts working with the family are determined that Ellen's murderer is walking among us, that this wasn't a suicide, that someone out there knows who did this.
But the question becomes, who? If not suicide, then who might have killed Ellen Greenberg? The first person you might name is her fiancé, Samuel Goldberg. He was the only other person inside the apartment with her that afternoon, and he was the one who left for the gym, came back 30-40 minutes later, and discovered her locked inside of the apartment.
Since Ellen's death, Samuel has completely moved on with his life. I read some reports that he's married. He's completely removed herself from the picture. Samuel has never been named a suspect or a person of interest, and there is no evidence that directly links him to Ellen's death. And me as a podcaster, I want to make sure that that's made very clear.
That although Samuel is the fiance, did live with her, was the one at the apartment that day, there is absolutely no evidence, circumstantial or physical, that that could link him to Ellen's death. Until the lawsuit is resolved sometime hopefully in 2021, the Greenbergs will continue to fight for justice for Ellen.
This is one of those cases where there's just been an egregious miscarriage of justice for Ellen, for her parents, for anybody that knew her. So if you as my listener, if you would like to help support the family and help bring justice to Ellen, you can join the Facebook page Justice for Ellen that has well over 10,000 members online.
You can also sign the petition on change.org that will help to persuade the courts to reopen Ellen's case. Or if you simply just want to read more or to keep up to date with the case, they have an Instagram as well as a Twitter account, both of which are at Justice for Ellen.
I will be providing links to all of these resources on our website at ForensicTales.com. And if you are interested in this one and you'd like to, again, maybe just stay updated or to get involved, you can absolutely check them out. This is a case that I will continue to follow.
especially as the lawsuit makes its way through the Philadelphia court system, hopefully sometime next year. I, for one, am someone that after hours and hours of researching this story for the show, I believe that this has been a huge miscarriage of justice, that I don't believe in any way, shape or form that her death should have been ruled a suicide, but
And I hope that I can share with you as my listener someday soon that the case has been reopened and that the case is officially ruled a homicide. I hope someday there is a tiny, a small amount of justice for Ellen Greenberg. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production.
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Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.