Episode Transcript
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And
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that was quite clearly a homicide.
1:59
considering she was stabbed 20 times. Several
2:04
of those stab wounds fatal blows,
2:07
which would make it a physical impossibility
2:10
for her to continue stabbing herself
2:13
up to 20 times. The
2:18
problem with this is her death has
2:20
been labeled as suicide by the Philadelphia
2:22
Police Department,
2:25
a department which refuses to investigate
2:27
the death further and
2:29
refuses to change the cause of death to
2:31
homicide, which it rightfully
2:34
should be. Why
2:36
is that? Why is
2:40
it so difficult?
2:42
Why are so many refusing
2:46
to speak the truth
2:48
about the death of Ellen Greenberg?
2:51
We discuss all of that and more in this five-part
2:54
series, our conversation
2:57
with Thomas Brennan, private investigator,
3:00
into the death of Ellen Greenberg. New
3:03
episodes every day this week, Monday
3:05
through Friday, here on the podcast.
3:11
Thomas, thanks for joining me. Let's
3:13
start at the very beginning. How did you get connected
3:16
to this case?
3:19
Two friends of mine, one a retired dentist
3:21
and the other a judge in
3:24
the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas,
3:27
William Tully. They
3:30
both were friends of the family and
3:33
the parents were struggling. They
3:37
knew what I did, that
3:40
I still worked homicides
3:43
in cold cases. They
3:49
arranged for a meeting with the parents and we sat down
3:52
and the parents told me what
3:54
in fact they would do in this week, March of 2013. They
4:00
provided me with the documentation
4:03
and some photographs that they had, seen
4:05
photographs that were taken by the
4:08
medical examiner's investigator. And
4:13
I told them, I said, well, let me
4:15
take, give me a chance to take a look at these
4:18
and then I'll get back to you. We did, you know, I did. I
4:21
got back to them and I
4:24
told them, I said, well, in my opinion, it
4:26
is in fact is a homicide. And
4:29
they said, well, the father
4:30
Josh, he's a character.
4:33
He said, well, what's this going
4:35
to cost me? And I said, well, I
4:38
don't make money on somebody else's brief.
4:40
I said, if you covered
4:42
my expenses, go to Philadelphia. I said it back.
4:45
I said, you know, that'll be it. You don't have
4:48
to worry about my time. And that's the way it's good.
4:53
And that's all I
4:55
got involved in. This is
4:57
obviously a very troubling case for
5:00
obviously many reasons. One of
5:02
the first most obvious being the likely
5:05
physical
5:06
improbability or
5:08
impossibility that Ellen could have stabbed
5:11
herself 20 times and
5:13
made it through 20 times and still survived
5:16
long enough to do that. When
5:19
you initially heard about this case and you, you
5:22
saw some of that evidence and you heard the story, if
5:25
we're just focusing on, on the manner of death, what
5:28
was going through your mind when
5:30
you learned about it first being looked at as a homicide,
5:33
then a suicide homicide back to suicide?
5:36
What was your reaction
5:36
to that? I
5:39
started looking at it and you know, I'm looking,
5:41
you know, looking
5:44
at the crime scene, you know, and
5:46
there's, first of all, you know,
5:48
you know, I understand what,
5:50
you know, the parents told
5:52
me that,
5:53
you know, the fiance broke into the apartment, et cetera. So, you know, you
5:55
know,
6:00
It was a real stormy, you know, I think it
6:02
was the biggest nor'easter that ever hit Philadelphia.
6:05
A lot of snow, a lot of snow.
6:07
And
6:10
they had an early dismissal
6:12
at Ellen's school. And
6:19
the one thing, I'll never forget
6:21
what they
6:24
told me right at the beginning. There
6:27
were a series of phone calls, okay,
6:29
about
6:30
probably 10 or 15 calls, all out
6:33
going. And
6:38
started with a code. And
6:40
they said, look at this.
6:42
See
6:45
how she was, she was, evidently,
6:48
she was really having a problem here.
6:50
Look at all these phone calls. I said,
6:52
did anybody ever call them to see who they were?
6:55
They said, no. I started calling them.
6:56
They were a
6:58
pair of children in her classroom. Okay.
7:02
Yeah. And the
7:05
code was that they, you know, they
7:07
didn't show where they were coming from. They didn't, you know,
7:09
they didn't show Ellen's cell
7:12
phone. That's all it was.
7:14
Sure. Sure. So,
7:16
you know, that's, that's how things started.
7:19
And then you take a look at
7:21
the crime scene itself. The photograph,
7:24
there are no police photographs, I can tell
7:26
you that right now, of the crime scene.
7:29
The Philadelphia police forensic shooting
7:32
was never at the crime scene. Why?
7:35
Okay. I mean, wouldn't this just
7:38
be a common sense thing
7:40
to do with someone who's been stabbed 20 times?
7:44
Well,
7:46
what you, what everybody has to understand
7:48
here, Tony, is that the
7:53
police did not know about
7:56
the stab wounds to the back of the neck or
7:58
the scalp.
10:00
Alrighty, so The
10:06
police tell the property manager,
10:08
yeah, you can let them in the property manager says well,
10:10
it's all bloody
10:12
The scenes all bloody
10:14
They said well, you can call Christ seen cleanups.
10:16
They'll come over
10:19
So she calls clients Christ seen cleanups
10:22
they come over and clean and sanitize
10:25
the scene Okay,
10:27
he comes in the prominent
10:29
attorney uncle and another individual they
10:32
come in and Not
10:34
only do they get a suit and
10:36
shoes for the hut for the fiance
10:39
for the funeral Okay, they
10:41
also remove all the laptops They
10:44
remove the victim's laptop or work
10:47
laptop for personal laptop and
10:49
her cell phone and all of her credit
10:51
cards her wallet everything he
10:53
takes it all including the
10:56
fiance's laptop also Okay,
11:00
so Anyone who says
11:02
that well, you know Anything
11:06
that comes off those laptops
11:10
At all in the future can be challenged. Okay,
11:12
because the police should have seized
11:14
those right at the scene But they did
11:17
they left is that because they were they were
11:19
still thinking of this as being a suicide
11:21
So there wasn't a lot of oversight
11:24
or he take them all. Okay. Yeah
11:27
And I have you know, like I said, I have
11:29
an incident memo
11:31
By the uniform police officer that was
11:33
at the sea. Okay, and
11:35
He says in that in in
11:38
there. Okay in his in
11:40
his report in his incident report.
11:43
Okay, it's titled
11:45
suicide, okay suicide
11:47
And
11:50
it says Homicide
11:53
was there and so was the
11:55
medical examiner's office. Okay,
11:58
just who shows up to 20 Who? Who?
12:02
At the apartment. The
12:04
police. Okay. The
12:06
performer search. All
12:08
these days later. Now,
12:13
the medical examiner said on
12:15
the 27th, this is awesome. Okay.
12:20
So now because the scene was never
12:22
ever secured, now they
12:24
have to go out and get a search warrant. Sure.
12:28
To go back in and search the apartment.
12:30
Mm hmm. Well, what are they going to get from the apartment?
12:34
Nothing because it's been cleaned and
12:36
sanitized. Yeah. About
12:38
the only thing that you could do, maybe you
12:41
might get some results with a luminol
12:43
test. Mm hmm. They didn't
12:45
even do that. They didn't even do that. This
12:48
is the Hidden Killers podcast with Tony
12:50
Brueske. There's more to come
12:53
in my conversation with Thomas Brennan,
12:56
private investigator into
12:58
the murder of Ellen Greenberg.
13:02
New segments playing Monday through Friday
13:04
this week on the podcast. Be sure to press
13:06
subscribe so
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you don't miss any of
13:10
this very intriguing story. Stay
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with us.
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