Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags: Behind the Locked Door

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

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. The original finding by the medical examiner determined homicide. So, why does the final ruling say Ellen Greenberg committed suicide? Follow this case on Facebook at 'Justice for Ellen." Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. There's a well-worn adage that talks about death by a thousand cuts. It implies that it's slow and it's painful. Something that no one would ever want to endure. For years, I handled cases involving 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 stab wounds and so many

unanswered questions. I'm talking about 20, not a thousand, but 20 cuts. The case of Ellen Greenberg. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Today, I'm joined by my friend Jackie Howard, who's the executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jackie, why don't you 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, Grace. Jackie, why don't you 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 live-in boyfriend went to the gym in their apartment complex. He came back up and found the door locked. At that time, he began beating on the door, calling, texting, but Ellen did not answer he tried to get into the door the fiance finally manages to break the door down and I'm sure most

people are thinking why didn't he 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 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, 20, as you said, and the knife is still embedded in her chest. 911 was called, service personnel come. And as the determination of what happened to Ellen Greenberg is 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. She's got her entire life ahead of her. Seemingly, she's enjoying life. Like you'd mentioned, she's excited about her upcoming nuptials. You know, she's taking the time to send out save-a-date cards. She's been living with this guy for a while. They're making plans. And he goes to the gym and comes back.

And after he breaks the door down, he finds her on the floor, suffering from this many wounds. I got to tell you, Jackie, 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 this number. I mean, this is almost an unimaginable number that we're talking about, 20, because you begin to think, how can anyone endure that level of pain? I mean, we all know what it's like to cut ourself, cut ourself on a piece of paper even, and it stings. Can you imagine driving a knife blade into your body this many times. And this is a curious thing. The knife wounds are not simply what you 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 does that work? I'm trying to understand this. And into her neck as well. And one of the things that was discovered at autopsy was the fact that the knife had actually penetrated the cervical spinal column right at about the C1 or C2 level and had 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 that you can kind of do the arithmetic on here to make it come out right. Joe, let me jump in here and get just a little explanation for folks. Describe for me where exactly the C1 and C2 area is.

If folks will at home, just think about the first cervical vertebra that you have is commonly, 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 holding up the earth. I'm sure that many people have seen this. Atlas was his name. And that, you know, I think that early anatomists, they felt like, well, that's a 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 C1,

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 it's a critical area. As a matter of fact, it's so critical that when you look at that area, C1, C2, and C3, that's where our brainstem kind of comes down. It's the gateway to our autonomic nervous system. And what folks don't understand,

that's what controls our respirations. That's what controls our heartbeat. It's the hub of everything, kind of the primal brain, those things 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 right at the base of the skull in this particular case, Jackie. And that's one of the things that's so troubling. Now, I'll put it to you this way. Let's just put it in the context of, say, if you were a professional killer, 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 going to take them out in that split second of time. And the fact that she had this injury there is significant. It's very significant because 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 themselves?

Remember, that's only one of 20 stab wounds that she sustained. One. And in addition to that stab wound that we've just reflected upon, she's also got a real nasty gash on the back of her head. And it's kind of a, if you'll think of a half moon or a quarter moon, it's kind of elliptical in shape, kind of an odd, an odd injury. And it appears according to what the autopsy report was saying, 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, 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 how distant they might be in the past or how recent they are. that is left out in this autopsy report that I've discovered that in cases I've 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 length. 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, from your elbow to your wrist and from your wrist to the tips of your fingers.

All of that equates into 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 you have to think well 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 it? You're going to tell me you're going to do that over

and over and over again? I don't think so. 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, she had anxiety. Who in the world doesn't have anxiety? She had trouble sleeping at night. Well, she was taking clonazepam. Do you realize how many people in our was taking clonazepam. Do you realize how many people in our population

take clonazepam? And there is no association between clonazepam 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 her. She's teaching in public schools. She's planning a wedding. And so in that sense, there's no evidence to indicate that she's in 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 again until finally she takes this single-edged serrated knife. Now, that's a steak knife, just so that we're clear, and buries it in her chest where they find it at the scene. And just so people can visualize this, if you have access to a dollar bill,

take that dollar bill out, okay? Look at it. I mean, look at the face of it. From the left side of it to just past George Washington's head, that's 10 centimeters. That's how deep this knife was buried in her. So you think about that and think about all of the pain associated with that. It really is a head scratcher, Jackie. Joe, I want to take a step back to something that you mentioned a minute ago. I had never thought of arm length in relation to this case, although obviously 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 or the back of my shoulder blades when I have an itch, let alone to be able to hurt myself, to 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 got to 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. Maybe she does yoga. She can stretch. She can bend. I mean, she'd probably do a lot better than my old body could do. And you think about doing this maybe once to be able to manipulate a knife. And everybody at home, kind of think about how you would have to hold the knife in order to inflict this injury. So you would have to turn the knife so that the tip is facing your,

your face, the tip of you're looking down the long axis of the blade, blade edge is probably up. And then you would have to take it. And as, as your elbow bends, drive it into your shoulder blades, down your back near your spinal column, into the back of your head. Even if you try to do this into the back of your head, that's hard to do. You would have to be tremendously flexible.

And the one thing 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, screaming over and over again. You know, don't do this. Your body's trying to, don't do it. Don't do it. It's too much pain associated with, don't do it. But yet you continue to do it and 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. Myself and a lot of other colleagues of mine that have taken a look at this case that are forensics folks, we don't understand 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 is this. When the autopsy was completed, it was determined that she had stabbed herself, according to the ME, in several vital areas. I mean, areas in her body that would absolutely lead to death. She's got both sides of her chest cavity and her lungs are filled 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 exhalate. Also, interestingly enough, in your heart, your heart actually sits in a little sack that's called pericardium, pericardial sack. That's been nicked. Well, not only has it been nicked, the aorta has been nicked. And that's the major vessel that comes off of the heart that supplies the rest of the body with oxygenated blood. That pericardial sac around the heart, it's becoming engrossed with blood as well. So the heart is laboring to beat all of this time. Not to mention, you've got this spinal insult that has taken place with the knife. And all the while, you're telling me that even

though she is this physically compromised, she's still capable of carrying out these self-inflicted insults to her body. I just, I can't see it happening. I don't understand how it's even possible. just suppose for a second that you just take your hand, an empty hand, and you move it about your body 20 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 she's holding 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 oxygenated blood.

Remember what the pathologist is saying in the autopsy report is that steadily her chest cavity, her chest cavity on both sides is filling up with blood. Her pericardium, which actually encases the heart, is filling up with blood. They even make note of a superficial subarachnoid 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 while all the while just so slowly depriving herself of much needed oxygenated blood. I got to 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 there all alone? How is this possible that she could

have done it? And you know what? It's not like she 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 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? 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 directive to start CPR on her. But he's saying she's got a knife in her chest and didn't lay her to the floor. You know, they gave him a directive to start CPR on her.

But he's saying she's got a knife in her chest. Can you imagine this? And it was probably a horror show in this environment. There's probably blood all over the floor. It's all over her, obviously. It's going to 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'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. 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 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 ear and drip down to the floor. And then she sat up and left this bloodstained mark on her ear. And 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 find relative to her body and the remainder of the scene? How long had she been down? Because the timeline here is crucial. To what degree had post-mortem changes begin to take

place in Ellen's body? What was the temperature of her body when the investigators first got there? Was she in rigor mortis? Because that takes a very specific amount of time to set in. Did she have liver mortis where blood had settled? Remember, she was in a seated position, all right? So that would indicate that if she had liver mortis in her body, that is the settling of blood where the skin actually changes color because of congestion, dependent congestion, we call it, it would have settled to the backs of her legs and her buttocks would have been touching the floor.

And so it would be really, really purple, vivacious, as they call it. So I'd be very interested to know, was there any liver mortis on her shoulder blades or on her lower back that would indicate that at some point in time she'd been laying on her back? So all of this is key. It just doesn't necessarily marry up. So let's talk 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 outside and sit and, you know, hang out with 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 apartment to look somewhat like maybe an extended stay suite that you would find out on the road in a hotel. And 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'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 deadbolt is off and you kind of swing, that little bar catches on that handle, 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 be playing around, 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 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 20 stab wounds. But to my account, it would seem that it's not possible 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. I don't see anybody leaping off of that balcony down out of this multi-story building. I think that they probably wind up breaking their ankles or breaking their leg. How is it possible that someone could have come and gone without them being seen. Jackie, I don't know that there's necessarily any clear answers in the case involving Ellen Greenberg's death. But I can tell you this.

I know there's somebody out there that does want answers, and that's her mom and dad. Because for 10 years now, they've been searching for someone to tell them definitively what happened on 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 really raises questions about whether this finding is accurate. What were those, Joe? The most significant thing, Jackie, is that upon further reflection, there was another pathologist who was working for the medical examiner, the same medical examiner's office that did Ellen's exam. This is just going to blow you away. Remember that injury that we talked about that was involving the

C1, C2, and C3 cervical spine? Well, when this pathologist looked at this, she saw something very interesting. The fact that when this knife entered that area, that critical area that literally dictates the quality of life that we're 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 her neck, to her spinal column, she stated that there was no hemorrhage.

There was no hemorrhage in that specific area. And you have to factor that with this. The head and the neck are arguably the most vascular areas in our body. And what that means 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 going to tell me that you're going to insert a knife into 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. She thinks that it was postmortem. After death, because as we know, if you sustain a bump, a contusion, a bruise, if you sustain a laceration, an incised 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 going to bleed.

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 where the autonomic nervous system kind of roots out of. It comes up out of the base of the spinal cord right there. It's critical to everything that we do. So 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 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 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-inflict an injury. So that begs the question, how did this occur and by whose hand? And so 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 pathologist, she never filed a report. Here the family is, They're asking for answers. I'd say that this is 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 data out. So, Joe, I am by no means, I'm not even a forensics beginner. 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 20 stab wounds that were supposedly self-inflicted. And I'm standing here on the outside looking in going, there is no way that you can stab yourself 20 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 you on something there, Jackie. This case was not originally ruled a suicide. In the first iteration of this thing, the ME had come out and said that they thought that it was a homicide. So what changed along the continuum here to make them suddenly do an about-face say, oh, well, it's not a homicide. This is obviously a suicide.

Obviously a suicide. Okay. Obviously. No equivocation. This is a suicide. A suicide involving 20 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 a suicide. Because we're talking 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 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, she suffered from anxiety, but she wasn't stark raving mad where she would take a steak knife and plunge it into her body 20 times.

It just it doesn't it doesn't balance. This equation doesn't balance at the end. What's so striking about this case is that not only was she in a locked apartment 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 20 times and then to boot leaves the knife embedded in her own chest 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 an about-face and changed it to suicide.

One other odd thing is that out of all the people in the world that the medical examiner could have referred this case to. They referred this case for further examination by one of the most renowned neuropathologists in American history, and that's Dr. Lucy Rourke, who's up in Philadelphia. The pathologist claims that Dr. Lucy Rourke actually examined Ellen's 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 the spinal cord. She says she never saw the case. So that adds another layer. And I think that now we can begin to see why the parents She says she never saw the case. So that adds another 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. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.