Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Killers Amongst US: Bride sends out 'Save-the-Dates,' found stabbed 20 times, RULED SUICIDE! (episode 1)

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Teacher and bride-to-be Ellen Greenberg is found inside a locked apartment stabbed 20 times, including the back of the neck. It's ruled a suicide but does the evidence support the claim?  Listen as we learn more about the life of Ellen Greenberg. Joining Nancy Grace today: Sandee Greenberg - Mother Josh Greenberg - Father Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney  Dr. Angela Arnold - Psychiatrist, Atlanta Ga www.angelaarnoldmd.com  Tom Brennan - Private Investigator for the Greenbergs Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here. Welcome back to Killers Amongst Us, a production of iHeartMedia and Crime Online. Every day, so many of us go through life with blinders on. We're in a hurry to pick up the children from school, to make dinner, to get to work on time, to punch the clock, to get off, to beat the traffic, to this, to that. Do you ever look up and wonder who are these people around you? At the checkout line at the grocery store or as you walk up and down the aisles.

Somebody you talk to on the phone, the receptionist, the person jogging alongside you. Who are they? Believe it or not, there are killers amongst us. I'm Nancy Grace. Thanks for being with us. A beautiful girl, beautiful on the inside and the outside, Ellen Greenberg. It had just been a short while when she sent the save the date out for her wedding. The whole lives for her and her fiance unfolding before her like a long, wonderful road to be walked. Joining me, what a wonderful group. Sandy Greenberg.

This is Ellen's mother, Josh, her father. Former prosecutor-turned-defense attorney Daryl Cohen, defense attorney at Cohen Cooper, East Steppen Allen. Dr. Angela Arnold, renowned psychiatrist, joining me out of the Atlanta jurisdiction at AngelaArnoldMD.com. Private investigator for the Greenberg family, Tom Brennan and CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, Tyler Hunt. You know, when I look at the photos of Ellen, she's just absolutely beautiful. To you, Sandy Greenberg, tell me about when Ellen was born. Every day was exciting with her. She was just so much fun to be around. She had tremendous energy, big smile, deep laugh. She was a normal, she had a normal childhood but you know every little girl dreams of you know getting married and walking down the aisle and I think she was really looking forward to her future. I'm looking at a photo of her right now she has beautiful long you know people pay good money to have their hair colored this color. She has got long, beautiful raven locks.

She's very petite. She's standing on rocks at an ocean. And the waves are crashing up. That's when she got engaged. Ah, waves are crashing up behind her. She's got on this cute little short crop denim jacket over shirt. Beautiful. Wow.

Beautiful, perfect smile. And she is, you're right, she's holding up her left hand and on her ring finger is a huge diamond ring. What do you remember the most about her birth? Well, I had a cesarean, so her face and her skin were just beautifully shaped and just the smell of a new baby. It's just a beautiful thing. And we were very, very blessed with her every day that we had with her was just a blessing. Now that we look back and see how long ago that was. Josh Greenberg, you know, I miss my dad every minute of every day. I have my mom living with me right now. We're very, very close.

But my dad and I were soulmates. We liked the same things. We loved to dance. We loved to dance. We loved to laugh. We love a good party. My dad was just quiet, such a quiet guy, a very tender and sensitive, very tender hearted, but oh, he loved a good time. You know, those people that they walk in the room and everybody gravitates toward them? That's my dad. And the relationship between a dad and his daughter. Tell me about you and Ellen.

Well, let's go back to the birthing. Sandy went through a lot. And all of a sudden, this was the time when I was supposed to go into the OR if I wanted to wash, but it wasn't a thrill to me, so I didn't go into the OR. So they come out with this cart with this metal tray, and in this metal tray is my daughter. And I'm going, what am I supposed to do with her? So I watched the nurses finally came, and they took her and stuff. But as Ellen got to be more and more of a child, she became very clingy to me. I was the one she threw up on repeatedly. I was the one who learned how to eat my meals double quick fast because I had to take care of her. I was the one that when she wanted, we wanted her to ghost with somebody, she reached out her arms to grab me.

In fact, so that my mother-in-law could have some time with her when we would visit my mother-in-law who lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where we now live, but we lived in Tenafline, New Jersey. I would go away so Ellen couldn't grab me and she'd stay with my mother-in-law. I wanted her to have time. But Ellen was special. There's a characteristic as Ellen got older. I'm going to skip around a little bit here. Ellen had the ability, a very strange ability, a very special ability to bring different people together. Sandy can relate the story how Sandy asked her,

and she said, Mommy, I just bring my friends together. Mom, I make them be friends. That's what she would say. Yeah. And I remember things like when we moved into our house, we lived at first in a department in Fort Lee, and then we moved into a house in Tenafly. And I would go for walks with her,

and she was a couple years old already, and it was a softball field. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why she would drag me over there to watch the girls play softball. I mean, this is a girl. She's not supposed to be interested in softball or athletics or anything. And she was. She gradually grew into an all-star softball player in New Jersey and Port and Tenafly. Then there were the

times that she was like a little bouncing ball. I was a giant, New York giant football fan. And I would go to the games with her. I had two tickets. And we'd be dressed to the hilt, you know, in four-degree weather, sitting there freezing in a crowd. And she would be bouncing between the crowd. There was a little ball. People were knocking her around.

And I remember one game. It was so cold. I said, Ellen, can't we go home now? And she said, no, Daddy, I want to watch the game. I said, Ellen, I want to watch the game I said Ellen I'll buy you something I'll buy you a hot dog I'll buy you ice cream no daddy I want to watch the game and there were times again a father and a daughter it's not supposed to be this way where we got hockey tickets to the Devils and I would go with friends and their daughters and they didn't know what to do and I said first, first period, you give them something to eat.

Second period, you give them dessert. And the third period, you're ready to go home anyway, so it doesn't matter. Ellen would sit there. It was the time I took her to an ice capade show, and I'm not really good at heights. So I got the first row on the upper deck, but I didn't realize I'd have to walk down from the exit down to the first row on the upper deck.

Daddy, why are you sliding on your tushy to go to the seat? Because I was afraid, but she was not afraid. I held on to her and let her escape. I also had tickets to the Yankee games. I had really good tickets. I had the front row behind the visitor's dugout. We had one birthday party where I had to take her and two of her friends, and they were up on the scoreboard and the pictures of them,

and they got signed autographs by the visiting team. And when we went to the bathroom, you know, they went to the girls' room. So I couldn't go in, but I made them all. I herded them like little sheep, all of them, to keep them all together, figuring if I kept them all together, at least if I lost one, I wouldn't lose more. They'd stick together somehow. And every time a person came out, I sort of frisked them, and I bumped into them to make sure they weren't carrying

a little child underneath their coats. This was a time when people would cut the hair and change it, and I was nervous. I was afraid. But we got through it. So the free tickets cost me like $70 in food and this and that at the baseball game. But she loved70 in food and this and that. That's a baseball game.

But she loved it. That's what she wanted. She wanted to go to those games. On another note, remember they had these Chuck E. Cheese, and they had a clown and a monkey. And Ellen would go, Daddy, no like monkey. I had to take her out because she got afraid of the clown or the monkey, whatever it was.

But then Ellen grew and Ellen did some great things. She was a, what's called a lionizer. She went to Penn State University. I hope I'm not skipping too far. No, I'm loving every word. Keep going.

Okay, it all gets better. Then she was a lionizer. What they did until the University of Colorado ruined it by having their females do things they shouldn't do, Ellen would take the parents of the football recruits around. And the first night game that Penn State ever had was against the University of Nebraska,

Nebraska University, which is a red and white team. So unfortunately, Sandy was dressed in red and white, so we had to go back and change her into blue and white. But I'm sitting halfway up in some seats, and on the field running around waving to me is my daughter at a Penn State game with her hundreds and some odd thousand people screaming and yelling. And she's sitting there, and she did. And she loved it. She didn't want to do it. She didn't join Sorority, but she somehow, I don't know know i think sandy got her to go to the the lionizer uh she was she maybe for jay paterno's children and that's what she ended up that she

uh jay suggested to ellen that she come in for an interview and she wasn't really gonna do it and i said you've got nothing to lose. Please go for the interview. Then you can decide whether or not you want to accept or not. And it turned out to be fabulous. She really... Oh, she loved it. She, yes. She was an asset to the football team.

I just can't tell you how much I love these stories. Los Angeles is famous for the always captivating entertainment industry, some of the most famous sports teams, and incredibly expensive smoothies. But beneath the glamour, it's also a breeding ground for bizarre, historic, and unforgettable crimes. My name is Madison McGee. You might know me from my podcast Ice Cold Case, where for the last three years I've been investigating my father's murder. But now I've embedded myself into the LA Times crime beat to bring you not only some of the juiciest cases, but what it takes to be a gritty crime reporter in a giant metropolis.

From LA Times Studios comes its latest series, LA Crimes. From deep dives into the Menendez brothers to conversations about why Bravo TV seems to be a hotbed of white-collar criminals, we'll cover it all. The solved, the unsolved, the love triangles gone wrong, you get the idea. Tune in every Wednesday starting May 21st, wherever you stream your podcasts. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube and Spotify. You don't want to miss this. You're making me think about my dad and my mom. I remember when I did Dancing with the Stars and my mom and dad came from Georgia to live in the apartment next to me in LA and help me take care of the children because I'd never been away from my twins in the middle of the day because I had a night job. And I remember the first, first of course they put me in jeopardy every single week and I deserved it I'm sure but the first night I was in jeopardy I was in with Metta World Peace

the NBA star we were both somebody was getting thrown off and it was either me or him we were looking at each other I looked down the audience and out all those people I saw my dad and they had come all the way and relocated to LA to be with me and he was looking at me I thought he was gonna cry he had this look on his face that that he was so worried I'd be upset if I was thrown off the very first night with the stars and I saw his face I hadn't the Stars. And I saw his face. I hadn't been upset until I saw his face. I'm like, oh, dear Lord in heaven. Oh, dear Lord in heaven.

My father is going to have a heart attack. I'm looking right at him. He looks like he's going to cry. I know he's worried about me and how I feel. Please don't let me get thrown off this one night. Let it be next week for Pete's sake. Well, let me just tell you something, Sandy and Josh stayed on till the very the bitter end really my feet would actually bleed uh uh from practicing and as I say I made it till how far did I make it Jackie till the very

till there were three three people left and they were all fantastic dancers. But what I my takeaway is looking out at my dad sitting there. And when I would cheerlead or whatever I was going to do, my dad would take me to the event. And he and my mom, if she was there with and I would find them in the crowd. And that's kind of like all that mattered was that they were there. I mean, Daryl Cohen, when you hear the stories that Sandy and Josh are telling, so often, you know, as a former prosecutor, now a defense attorney, I didn't because I'm a crime victim, people don't realize the impact that one moment in time has for the rest of their lives. Well, Nancy, that is just so true. It just never, I can look back, my three daughters,

and there's certain things that have impacted me that I could never forget 10 years after I was deceased. It's unbelievable, that one special moment, and normally it's a special one, whether it's in Costa Rica, whether it's at home, you just, it lives with you forever, and it will never go away. It will be as if it happened seconds ago, rather than days, weeks, or years.

And Dr. Angie Arnold, a renowned psychiatrist joining me out of Atlanta, Dr. Angie, as I was growing up, my mother and father, my whole world, and they stayed that way, much to the chagrin of anybody I ever dated, until I had the children. And now the children and my mom are, you know, that's who I have to take care of every single day. But hearing Josh and Sandy talk, I realize what the twins are to me. That's what Ellen has always been to Sandy and Josh. I mean, when you have your heart, the center of your life, not to suggest they don't have a life of their own, but I mean, my twins, they're a whole world.

They're the center of my life. And Nancy, they always will be. Life without them. They always will be. I can't even imagine the pain that they must suffer on a daily basis. Go ahead. Go ahead, Josh. I have a story that I really would like to get out,

and this shows what kind of a person Ellen was, I think. When we moved to Tenafly, they had a girls' softball league, and somebody on a team that was a good team that always won, this guy was very much into winning, asked me about Ellen's softball credentials. And I said she played first base. She played third base. She was on the all-star team.

She batted fourth or fifth. And he wanted us not to show up to the tryouts so that nobody would pick Ellen. Because you're not going to pick a girl that you haven't seen. And Ellen and I walked away. And I said, Ellen, what do you want to do? No, Daddy, we're going to show up and go to tryouts. So instead of being on the best team in the league, Ellen was on the worst and they lost every game.

She never complained about that. She never picked on anybody. She never blamed the coach or anybody for the losing. She felt that she should do the right thing. And she did. And she was a child. Even as a little girl, I guess Freud was right that your personality, who you are, is formed by the time you're four. I mean, that's who you are. I wonder about that sometimes. Guys, who was Ellen Greenberg? I'm looking at her photo. I'm hearing stories about her and she's coming alive in my mind. Take a listen to our friend

Jackie Howard. Ellen Greenberg is an only child, so it's probably not a surprise that she went into a profession dealing with lots of children. She was a school teacher with a master's degree in education. Her specialty? Reading. She had a reading specialist certification. That meant she would help students who had difficulty with reading or help teachers learn how to instruct their students with reading difficulties. She liked working with young children and was working with first graders at Huniana on Huntington Park in Philadelphia.

In fact, she was one of the founding teachers and had been there for four years. Wow. I taught, a student taught while I was waiting to hopefully get into law school, which I managed to eke in somehow. And I loved teaching. Tell me about that. It's a real calling, Sandy, to be a teacher. And she was actually working with children in reading. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The classroom looked like any other classroom across the United States.

It was full of, you know, colorful posters and, you know, all kinds of learning tools. And she just, when I would go to the class and watch her in action with the children, it was so alive. And they don't always like to sit still, but she somehow was able to command a good learning atmosphere. And I even realized in, I think I read somewhere online, some of her students, after they found out that Ellen had passed, said some really beautiful things about how they taught she ellen had taught them to read and you know one of their most favorite teachers and she was firm in the classroom but then she loved them up you know they they knew you know and you

never know sandy how much that affects people. Because people can ask me any time, who was your favorite teacher? Well, I know that. I don't even have to think about it. It was Clarabelle Bryant, my second grade teacher that taught me how to read. That was when I wrote my first poem for Miss Clarabelle, Round the Meadow. And I remember her, what she looked like, her leaning over my desk, you know, to show me something or read something, what she smelled like. Always smelled like some kind of talcum powder.

Just always so gentle and loving. But oh, my goodness, if you misbehaved, oh, that didn't last long. But yet the soft, sweet, wonderful side of her. I'll never forget Miss Claribel, who's long, long been in heaven. But I think about her often. What made Ellen Greenberg so special? for the always captivating entertainment industry, some of the most famous sports teams, and incredibly expensive smoothies. But beneath the glamour, it's also a breeding ground for bizarre, historic, and unforgettable crimes. My name is Madison McGee.

You might know me from my podcast Ice Cold Case, where for the last three years, I've been investigating my father's murder. But now I've embedded myself into the LA Times crime beat to bring you not only some of the juiciest cases, but what it takes to be a gritty crime reporter in a giant metropolis. From LA Times Studios comes its latest series,

LA Crimes. From deep dives into the Menendez brothers to conversations about why Bravo TV seems to be a hotbed of white-collar criminals, we'll cover it all. The solved, the unsolved, the love triangles gone wrong, you get the idea.

Tune in every Wednesday starting May 21st, wherever you stream your podcasts. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube and Spotify. You don't want to miss this. You know, joining me as a private investigator, very well known, who's been working with the Greenberg family, searching for answers as we are here. Tom Brennan. Tom, all of this is just coming alive for me, hearing about Ellen. I lived in Philly for a while with my sister. She's a professor at Wharton.

Then my husband, my now husband, went to grad school there as well. And I just love Philly. I can just see her right now in her classroom with all of her students. What have you learned about Ellen that has made her so special, Tom? In the course of my review of the case, one of the things that the investigators... Were you a cop, Tom? Were you ever a cop? Oh, yeah. Because that's just exactly what I would expect a detective to write in a supplemental report in the course of my review.

I love the way you... Okay, go ahead. Tell me, what have you learned about... and a supplemental report in the course of my review. I love the way you do it. Okay, go ahead. Tell me, what have you learned about why is she, this girl, so special? I took a look at a list of telephone numbers, okay, with a special code prior to dialing the number. And the police put a lot of emphasis on that series of six or seven, well, almost ten different telephone numbers. And they said it was all, you know, special code so that they didn't know what she was dialing or who she was dialing. So I took the time to call several of those numbers, and they were all parents of students.

The morning of Ellen's death, there was a huge snowstorm in Philadelphia, and she was calling parents, notifying them that there was going to be an early dismissal, and to be sure that they were there to pick up their children. So she was taking the time to call all the parents, as many as she could get a hold of, to tell them about the snow. You know, we just get, and I'm glad to get it not knocking it when we have a snow alert or any other issue we get a text and i'm happy to get it i don't know what i would do i'd fall over if one of the teachers actually called me and said nancy just so you

know i don't even know i just that doesn't happen anymore. But that says volumes about Ellen Greenberg, the only child of Sandy and Josh. They put all their love into her, all their hopes, all their dreams, all their money to help foster and really create the woman this girl will become. And then the excitement. Take a listen to this. Greenberg's personal life was going just as well as her teaching career. Greenberg lived in an apartment with her boyfriend, Samuel Goldberg. He was a television producer for NBC. In fact,

the pair were engaged and planning a wedding. Save the date cards had just been sent to guests. Friends tell Oxygen Greenberg was all smiles. We all received the save the date in the mail. I remember calling her on the phone saying, oh my God, they're so beautiful. And she was so excited. Oh my goodness. i'm just imagining that moment now see that makes me wish i'd had the whole formal wedding sandy because my husband and i we decided on tuesday we were going to get married we got married on saturday and um i we flew various relatives in we let's see what did we have we had shrimp grits tenderloin, what did we have? We had shrimp, grits, tenderloin. What else did we have? Oh, scrambled eggs, of course.

And, oh gosh, anything you could think of to eat or drink that we liked. And I called a friend and said, can you make a cake? And he did. We had a cake. That morning I picked flowers. That was my bouquetquet and it was totally thrown together and when I hear about people that do save the dates and have this beautiful well-planned wedding I mean I barely have any pictures to show my twins for Pete's sake and uh do you remember when Ellen tells you, Mom, I'm getting married?

Well, they got engaged in California on that 12-mile picture that you had seen. Anyway, so it was a phone conversation of her announcing her engagement. And we were just over the moon with excitement. And, you know, then, of course, we were trying to get dates secured because I think she was going to plan on doing it that summer of 2011 in August. And just all the little details and everybody putting together their lists of who we were going to invite and I tried to do everything you know as fair as can be so that you know everybody we were starting off on the right foot and everybody, you know, had the same amount of guests. And the other details Ellen was more interested in than I was.

But I, of course, had to embrace it all because that's what she wanted. And, you know, I was hoping to or we were hoping to, you know, make it a very happy, joyous occasion. You know, I will never forget when I married David. Of course, I had cold feet, cold feet. Had nothing to do with David. You know, he was a gift from heaven that fell on me. But my fiance had been murdered shortly before our wedding, and I had never, ever really considered seriously going through with another triad marriage. I just know. And I remember I was almost two hours late to my own wedding, and I finally got there, and my dad came up, and he handed me a hanky. He always had a hanky with him.

He handed it to me. I stuck it in the Bible. I looked down the aisle, saw my mom, and held on to my dad, and off we went down the aisle together. And I'm just thinking, Josh, when you learned your baby girl was getting married, what did you think? Well, I was going to be a father-in-law, number one. Number two, I wanted my daughter to be happy.

But this is the man, the boy, she wanted to be happy with fine. But number three, it's like, I use this, and I know I'm being a little flippant. It's like the shot you hit off a tee on the golf course that goes in the rough. That may not be what you want, but you think you can work with it. And that was what I was thinking. As long as my daughter was happy, that's what I wanted. But I wanted certain things to be the way certain things are as a father-in-law. But who knows?

Never got the chance. At a time in her life when the world was unfolding in such a magical and wonderful way for Ellen Greenberg, why, why was her life cut so brutally short? Nancy Grace, Killers Amongst Us, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.