Jury Dropouts Podcast
Welcome to Jury Dropouts, the true crime podcast that digs deeper. Every week, hosts Mike, a former law enforcement officer, Jamie, a registered nurse with forensic instincts, and Marissa, a sharp thinker with an eye for detail, come together to unravel real-life mysteries from all sides.
Whether it’s a cold case, a criminal conspiracy, or a quietly buried clue, this trio brings their unique perspectives to the table—blending investigative insight, medical knowledge, and razor-sharp observation. No story is too dark, and no detail too small.
Three minds. One mission. Find the truth beneath the surface.
Jury Dropouts Podcast
Ellen Greenberg: Reexamining A Controversial Death
Twenty stab wounds, a locked apartment, and a Hulu documentary that convinced almost everyone it was murder. We took the harder road: slowing down, cross-checking the autopsy findings, scene photos, surveillance timestamps, and medical records to ask what the evidence really shows—and why it might point in a direction most people don’t want to consider.
We start with the timeline and the door. The swing-latch wasn’t magically intact; it was displaced in a way that makes mechanical sense when a door is rammed, allowing it to open without ripping the hardware free. The 911 call confusion? Add stress, a partially obscured knife handle, and a four-minute video timestamp variance, and the “gotchas” fade. Then we dig into the wounds: many superficial punctures, one fatal chest wound, and no defensive injuries. The blood is localized, with no true castoff you’d expect from a rapid, repeated stabbing in a struggle. A tipped butcher block sits inches from an undisturbed fruit bowl and coffee pot—hard to square with a chaotic assault in tight quarters.
The biggest twist comes from the medical and behavioral context. Ellen had newly started clonazepam and zolpidem, both associated with increased suicidality, dissociation, and rare parasomnias early in treatment. Co-workers described acute anxiety and obsessive rumination that day. Forensic literature documents self-stabbings with multiple shallow “test” wounds before a fatal thrust. The debated “spinal cord” injury? A later review suggests a round autopsy probe likely caused the minor dural puncture, consistent with the lack of hemorrhage at that site. When you stack these elements—mechanics, blood dynamics, wound profiles, psychological factors—the pattern aligns with suicide, not homicide.
We don’t dismiss the family’s grief or the frustration triggered by a thin initial investigation. Poor scene documentation invited speculation and internet certainty. But certainty should live or die on facts, not edits. Listen for a careful walk-through of what’s in the record and why our conclusion differs from the viral narrative. If this challenges your view, lean in with us. Then tell us what you think, where we’re wrong, and what evidence would change your mind.
If this deep dive resonates, follow the show, share with a friend who’s true-crime-savvy, and leave a review with your take—we’ll read the best ones on air.
#JuryDropoutsPodcast #TrueCrime #EllenGreenberg #SuspiciousDeath
Intro- Stomping Rock by Alex Grohl,
Outro- Don't Talk by CosMonkey
You recorded? We're on? Okay. Is your mic on?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh.
SPEAKER_01:Is it? She's just not talking. I'm just a ways away. Oh.
SPEAKER_00:I see.
SPEAKER_04:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03:Did you guys watch this documentary?
SPEAKER_00:This one?
SPEAKER_03:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, I watched it.
SPEAKER_01:Did you watch it, Marissa? Yes.
SPEAKER_00:I what do you think? Um I don't um Well, I mean maybe people should know what documentary we're talking about.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, let's let's let's start with that.
SPEAKER_00:So the documentary is about Ellen Greenberg. And uh is it on Netflix or what's it on? I can't remember.
SPEAKER_03:It's on Hulu.
SPEAKER_00:Is it Hulu? And what do you remember what it's titled?
SPEAKER_03:Death and Apartment 603.
SPEAKER_00:That's it. So I did watch it. And uh, you know, I didn't I didn't formulate any opinions based on that documentary.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I s I remember I started watching it. I watched, I think, the first episode. And then I I think I had shared with you guys we gotta do this case. We have to do this case, because this is really weird. This this woman was supposed had supposedly committed suicide and she was stabbed 20 times. Everybody's kind of in an uproar about it. We have to we have to look into this. And I didn't finish watching the documentary.
SPEAKER_00:Have you finished watching it yet?
SPEAKER_03:I have now.
SPEAKER_00:You have now, okay.
SPEAKER_03:And um every I swear to God, every single person I have seen on TikTok or podcast that I've listened to are completely convinced that she was murdered.
SPEAKER_00:Well, why don't we go through the case, we'll describe what took place and uh we'll get into it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We'll we'll we'll uh maybe we'll present both sides. So Yes. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. So Yeah. Do we do we wanna well, it's gonna be pretty obvious how I feel about it, I think. That's all right. Um Do we want to ask Marissa right off the bat what what what your perspective was of this? I think that she committed suicide.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. That's not the that's not real common.
SPEAKER_03:That is not the popular opinion. No, that's not the popular opinion.
SPEAKER_00:So now and I will say that just starting off, w when you hear that a a person dies and that person's been stabbed or has twenty stab wounds. Um I guess you would think, well, geez, who the who the heck stabbed this woman? I mean that that sounds brutal. And I can't imagine you know, I I've never been to a scene where where somebody has been a victim to to that sort of a death. But uh we can get into it a little bit. So this this occurred uh, let's see, January 26th, I believe, 2011.
SPEAKER_03:Right. A long time ago.
SPEAKER_00:So it's been quite a while ago.
SPEAKER_03:And uh and it's fresh in people's minds because of this documentary, I think. Yeah. Because I had never ever heard of this case before.
SPEAKER_00:I hadn't either. So and so Ellen Greenberg, she's uh she's a school teacher. And is it uh primarily elementary, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's pretty young kids. And uh so, anyways, I don't know if we want to start maybe with uh the fiance, possibly. Because that's kind of how this you know, when you read any reports or maybe even with the documentary, it's kind of how it starts. So uh the fiance's name is is Sam, Samuel, uh-huh, and I believe it's Goldberg.
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So he leaves their apartment. They live together, they live on the sixth floor in this apartment complex. It's in Philadelphia. And he goes down to the weight room. He's gonna, he's gonna work out. And so it's about uh 4.15 in the afternoon uh that he leaves, and he works out for maybe 30, 40 minutes, and he comes back to the apartment. He gets back to the apartment about oh, around quarter after five, five thirty. And he goes to enter, and the door's locked, and not locked as in like deadbolt or key lock, but it's one of those swing latch locks from the inside, kind of like what you would see a lot in a uh uh in a hotel.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So now Ellen is supposedly inside, and so he begins to send her text messages and he's calling her, and he's knocking on the door, and she she's not coming. He doesn't know what the heck's going on. So he goes back downstairs and he goes to the concierge and he asks the concierge if there's somebody that can help him get into the room. And I think probably initially the concierge thought, well, just use your key. And he goes, Well, no, it's not the it's not my key. It's not that lock, it's the swing latch lock. It's locked from the inside. And uh they really don't have a tool. So he goes back up to the apartment, still trying to contact Ellen, no luck. And ultimately, he breaks breaks the door in. And that's when he sees Ellen in the kind of the kitchen area, and she's in kind of a seated position, leaning up against a cabinet, and she's covered in blood and not moving. And so he calls 911. He's talking to the operator, um kind of describing what he sees. Um the operator's gonna walk him through some CPR, and in the process of unzipping his or her sweatshirt, he says, Oh my god, she's been stabbed. She stabbed herself. Maybe she fell on her knife, something to that effect. And so at that point, because there's a knife stuck in her, they don't have him uh do CPR. So law enforcement shows up, paramedics show up, fire department shows up, and ultimately he's determined that she's she's passed. And so, probably a couple hours later, that's when the uh medical examiner's um investigator shows up, they uh do their investigation, which initially was ruled a homicide. The next day they return with the search warrant to collect more evidence, because I don't think it was ruled necessarily a homicide that night. So the next day they return. The apartment by this time is being cleaned by a professional cleaning service. They collect whatever evidence that they can. Um, I think it's maybe a month, a couple weeks, something down the road. There's a meeting with the medical examiner, some law enforcement, and uh they change their finding to suicide. Now, Ellen has been stabbed 20 times. Some of those stab wounds are in the back of her neck, some of those are in the in the chest, and the depths of those stab wounds are uh they kind of range, and they range from about, and I'll say this in inches, about 0.078 inches to as deep as 3.9, so almost four inches deep.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Now her family is pretty upset, and understandably so. Because in reality, when when I look at it, the investigation was really, really poorly done. Sure. And so there isn't they didn't do a I don't think a probably a good job of talking to people, witnesses, um, at least quickly enough. I don't think they did a good job of really photographing the scene. And I think some of that is is maybe there was a maybe too quick of a determination by people that showed up that maybe this was in fact a suicide. Because initially they didn't even note that there were stabs to the back of the neck. Yeah, or to the head, I don't think.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So uh that's kind of where the controversy starts. And really why there's pressure by the parents for this thing to be opened back up, because they're, of course, upset it's been ruled a suicide. And uh I think they're upset with just how the whole thing in general was handled.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And I think not only that, I think I think the speculation comes that initially when the word homicide was was spoken, um and then it's changed to suicide, you think automatically, well, how? Like, how can you change your opinion on that? Or how can how can you say it's one thing and then all of a sudden it's another thing? Coupled with the fact that in anyone or that has a family member that commits suicide, I feel like that family never really wants to believe that their loved one would kill themselves. Because it's very difficult to understand.
SPEAKER_00:And I think probably the one thing that doesn't help in this particular case is the manner of death. I mean, we're talking about 20, and actually in a later report, I think it was up to 22, 23 stab wounds. That's a lot.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean you know, we've we've probably heard of people committing suicide uh with a sharp instrument, such as uh, you know, maybe cutting their wrists, things of that nature. Uh probably some of the more common methods would be, you know, they shoot themselves or they overdose, hang themselves. But 20 to 22, 23 stab wounds, that's really hard to imagine.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Because of the I mean the pain that would be involved. So why don't we get into some reports?
SPEAKER_03:Sure, let's do that. Yeah, so I think the first thing that people um when they hear 20 stab wounds, they automatically think, Yeah, how could they do this themselves? Keep in mind, I feel like a lot of people are still coming off of maybe upset or speculation coming off of the Idaho 4 murders. So that case was re relatively recent, and people were had were hearing a lot about those stabbings and murders, and they were pretty brutal. So then you have this case come up and you hear 20 stab wounds, and you think, oh my god, it's a here we go again. And I think maybe that's you have to keep in mind, maybe that's what some people are have in the back of their mind, like as as a point of reference, possibly. I don't know. But really, you have to deep do a deep dive in to look at the really all of what they consider stab wounds. And in my opinion, um most of these stab wounds are nothing more than superficial cuts.
SPEAKER_00:There are in there are. I mean that so one thing that I I want to bring up that uh I've seen a few times is people are saying, well, how can you stab yourself in the back? And I want to make clear that none of these stabs were really in the back.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Like as somebody would imagine. Right. It's the back of the neck and towards the tops, kind of even with the shoulder blades.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So when they say, hey, she she had so many stab wounds to the chest, the abdomen, to the back and neck, it's actually the back of the neck and of the head. So just just to make that really clear. But but yeah, so I actually took a count in a depth on on the stab wounds. And uh I'll start with the neck. So on the neck, there was uh three stab wounds that were 0.12 inches or or less, four of them that were about three-quarters of an inch, up to one inch, and then there were three of them that were over an inch deep, and those were 1.18 inches, 2.76 inches, and 3.15 inches deep. And so I think that's a total of 10 stab wounds to the back of the neck. Uh she did have one to the abdomen, it was about 2.36 inches deep, and she had nine to her chest. Five of those were 0.078 inches. So that's really pretty shallow.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um, not deep at all. One of those was uh just over a half an inch, and then there was two, one at 1.57 inches, and one of them about 3.93 inches. And if you read the reports, uh they all their measurements are gonna be in centimeters. I just converted it to inches because a little easier for me to to picture and understand. And most people around here, I think, uh use inches instead of centimeters.
SPEAKER_03:Except for nurses.
SPEAKER_00:Except for maybe nurses. So if you're using nurses. Do you use centimeters? Always. Oh.
SPEAKER_03:We measure wounds in centimeters. You know, when you're having a baby, you measure dilate dilation in centimeters.
SPEAKER_00:It's just Well, I can switch them all to centimeters.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, it's fine. I have them all written written down in centimeters. It's fine. For the for the lay person, it's probably easier to understand inches. Just because you're more familiar with that.
SPEAKER_00:But so I mean, there is that that's a lot of stabs.
SPEAKER_04:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:So uh now one of those stabs, uh only one of them was fatal. And that was uh the one to the chest that was uh 3.9 inches deep. And I think that that one did that puncture her lung? The fatal one? I believe it might have.
SPEAKER_03:I wrote it down here if I can find out where I wrote it. Um it punctured the aortic arch and the upper lobe of the left lung. So yes.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And then the there was one deep stab wound to the back of the neck that um there there's some controversy surrounding because uh during the at least one of the autopsies, they noticed that there was some damage to a spinal cord.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And that's kind of up for debate on what caused that. But yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So basically it said uh that it was seven centimeters deep, which was about three inches or so deep, correct?
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Approximately. Um between the second and third vertebrae. Which it may have entered the subdura of the spinal cord, but it didn't actually sever or touch the spinal cord.
SPEAKER_00:And so some people think that maybe if it hit the spinal cord that that person would either lose feeling or become completely incapacitated.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Right. And that that that's why you have to know that a lot of these people who are reporting on it or podcasting on it are saying, well, she it went into the spinal cord. Well, technically it didn't.
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_03:It did not. So um, I mean, that's why you just really have to look at the actual reports and and know what you're reading to uh be able to understand it, I feel like.
SPEAKER_00:So I think maybe we should get into what what the arguments are.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And uh and so I I do have some concerns myself um if I'm gonna argue that this was uh was a homicide.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And uh my first one has to do with the timeline. And I kind of want to look at this because I thought this was uh actually interesting. So I'm looking at the at the times because they have times that are known, such as when a person uses their key card, when they make phone calls, when they make text messages. Uh there's some timestamps on also some video. So we we kind of know, at least when Ellen was alive, uh when, of course, she's making phone calls or text messages. And uh we know some of um her fiance's movements because of one witnesses talk to him like the concierge, and then also through video surveillance.
SPEAKER_04:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:So where my concern is is well, a couple. So the last known uh, and I think it's a text message uh from Ellen, where we know that she'd be alive is about 3 41 p.m. And that was a text like a text exchange that she was having, I believe, with a coworker or a friend. And I believe those text messages were maybe about I I think the the friend was expecting or something to that effect. So there's nothing between 341 and 451. And 451, let's see, that's uh that's when he leaves to go down to the well that's uh walks into the gym. Yes, that's when he walks into the gym.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And then uh at 5.30, uh the fiance is on surveillance, leaving the gym and walking towards the concierge desk. And then at uh 531, that's when he's on video getting into the into the elevator. And then he's seen again at 610 leaving the lobby elevator and walking back towards the concierge desk. So um that's about oh, 40 minutes that he would have probably been up on the sixth floor, at least the apartment door. Um now when he made the 911 call, where was he at?
SPEAKER_02:He I I don't know. Go ahead. He didn't make the 911 call until after he had gone into the apartment. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So where would he have been located when he made the 911?
SPEAKER_02:Standing in the doorway. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Probably standing in the doorway on the sixth floor, correct?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I don't necessarily know if he's in the doorway because he's already seen her.
SPEAKER_00:Would he have been on the sixth floor, though, of the apartment when he makes a 911 call?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:And the only reason I ask is because he's describing the scene of what he's seeing, and he's seeing Ellen, you know, Ellen. Right. I mean you can hear him Yeah. I mean, you can hear him talk to the 911 operator about oh my God, she's so at 633 is when the video, and this is according to the their timeline, 6.33 p.m. fiance on surveillance getting on an elevator. 633, 911 call made. And at least looking at the timeline, um, and actually I'll back up a little bit. 631, according to the timeline, it says fiance on surveillance video walking through the apartment building a lobby while talking on his cell phone. So 631, he's on his cell phone in the lobby, 633 seen getting onto the elevator, and at the same time, he's making this phone call.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, now I do have to stop you there because I did listen to um uh it was a podcast saying that in the report, I believe it's in the report, or what should be known is that there could there is a um a four-minute window of variance. Okay. So potentially the video cam footage could be a different time within four minutes. Does it have a lag? Yeah. So that's one thing to keep in mind. So he may have made that 911 phone call in the apartment. You're seeing him get on the elevator at the same time, but technically it might be four minutes later, up to four minutes later, that you're actually so there could be that discrepancy. So I just wanted to point that out. And that could explain why you're having you know difficulty with that.
SPEAKER_00:So that that was my uh issue number one. I'm gonna kind of walk through this as uh as the case kind of goes along.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:So the next thing he does is he does he kicks in the door or breaks down the door because remember it's got that swing latch. And when you look at the the photographs, the latch does appear that it's been dislodged, correct? Yes. But if he forced the door open and the latch itself doesn't break, wouldn't part of it be dislodged from either the door or the wall?
SPEAKER_03:No. I I'm gonna say no.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Because if you look in those pictures, those screws are so loose. Yes, it's still technically attached, but they're so loose that if he's banging that door and that latch comes this way, it's gonna get over to a point, it's loose enough to that where that other side is going to, he can unlatch it.
SPEAKER_00:You think so?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's what that's that's my speculation of it. I'm like, okay, so he's wiggled wiggled it loose enough to where, like if he's banging on it and and it's going back and forth. Because there's, I mean, you can open those doors so far. If he's getting that part loose with the screws and it's now coming inward a little bit or wiggled out loose a little bit, that other portion is gonna it's gonna open the door wide enough to you can get your hand in there and unlock it. That's what I believe happened.
SPEAKER_00:See, and I don't know. I just uh I was looking at that picture and I was like, you know, that is a good point. The latch is still screwed to the wall. It is loose. I mean, obviously the screws are sticking out, but it's still attached there, still attached to the door. And I thought, man, you would think if you really put your shoulder into it that one of those pieces is gonna go flying through the room, and but they're still attached. I really struggle with that.
SPEAKER_03:Well, the the con there's so many reports supposedly was what was said, but supposedly the concierge said, well, I guess you can break it down, but you're gonna have to pay for the damages. So maybe he's thinking, okay, well, I got it loose enough, maybe I can unlatch it now, you know, and where he doesn't have to do so much damage as to it. I really feel like it's loose enough he could unlock, he could get his hand in there and unlock it.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. And also in the early reports when he's talking to law enforcement, supposedly he has security or somebody with him, and they later find out that there was nobody with him. He's by himself. And so that leads to uh some people believe it maybe he lied.
SPEAKER_03:There again, I'm gonna I feel like I'm you're gonna say one thing and I'm gonna say kind of the opposite thing. And I think that's kind of how our conversation should go, just to have two points of view of why you think one thing and why I think another. At one point, his neighbor was with him. His neighbor had heard some ruckus outside in the hallway. And his neighbor came out and said, Hey, but what's what's going on? What you doing? He's like, She locked me out. I can't get in. And he's like, But you use your key. He's like, Well, I can't, I can't use my key. It's not the key, it's the deadbolt. And so the neighbor had actually come out and seen him and talked to him as he was trying to get into the apartment and trying to call Ellen to get in. So, in all those conversations, do you think possibly he would have said, Well, ask so-and-so. He was with me, meaning the neighbor. And somehow though, they get construed, the information gets construed and lost in translation, and that's really what he was talking about. It wasn't the concierge. Yes, he went down and asked the concierge concierge for advice. He told him to break the door down. I feel like some of that information was getting misconstrued in the crossfire.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Well, there's some other questions.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And now we're going to get into the scene. So he makes his 911 call. Did you listen to the whole call, by the way?
SPEAKER_03:I did. And and that's another thing that I have a problem with with the documentary.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. What's your problem with that?
SPEAKER_03:They didn't put the full 911 call on.
SPEAKER_00:What part did they miss?
SPEAKER_03:Um, I feel like they missed quite a bit of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, the the 911 call, I don't remember what it was in a documentary. I did re-listen to the 911 call today. And it's kind of in two parts because the initial when he initially calls 911, the first operator he's talking to isn't the one that asked him to perform CPR because he was actually transferred to, I believe, dispatch for EMS. And the EMS is the one that asked him if he knew how to perform CPR, which he said he did not. And so they're going to give him instruction on how to do so. And this is where another argument comes in.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Because he's standing at least near. And I don't know if he's in the doorway or if he's in the apartment standing over top of her, if he's knelt next to her. I don't know what what his location is when he's actually on the phone speaking to 911. Um but as he's given instruction, and he's talking about how he's struggling to unzip her. It's like a zipped-up hoodie. And then he notices the knife. So uh one of the arguments is well, why didn't he see the knife? I mean, obviously, there's this big old stake knife. Now, I will say some people are saying butcher knife. And I will say it is absolutely not a butcher knife. This is like a stake knife.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And they want to know what how could he not see the steak knife sticking out of not exactly the middle of her chest, but just off of the breastbone. A big old knife. You know how how how would he not see that? Because it doesn't say anything to dispatch until after he's messing around with her zipper, and then he's like, he says, Oh my god, she stabbed herself. And then he transitions to I think she fell on a knife.
SPEAKER_03:Mm-hmm. So Okay, so uh how I'm going to describe how that happened or why he's talking like that, because he was he was there was a lot of judgment going on with that 911 call. And everybody can say hindsight 2020 and how they would sound and what they would do, but when you're in a panic situation, I think sometimes you get tunnel visioned.
SPEAKER_02:And I think maybe and he was already annoyed that she was not answering the door, she was not answering text, you know. So he's already worked up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I feel like he's, you know, as you walk into a situation like that, you're like, what in the heck has just happened here? And he's trying to process the surroundings. He's on the phone with 911. He's trying to listen to directions to what she's saying on the 911 call. He's also trying to figure out, like, what in the hell has just happened here? He's seeing a pool, a pool of blood on the floor. He's not really knowing what's going on. His and also I have to take into consideration maybe how her body was positioned because she had long dark hair. In how I believe this happened, it could be a possibility that her hair was flung forward and her hair was covered, like she had long hair and it was covering her chest. And she was slumped over, kind of mostly on her back. Her shoulders and her head were up against the cabinet. 911 is telling her to expose her chest. So initially, I'm thinking, okay, maybe he's going from the bottom up and trying to, like, and it's not going. And he's like, what in the world? And so if he's trying to flip her shirt up from the belly up, he's covering up that knife. He's not really paying attention to it. So he's trying to figure out what in the heck's going on. And then he notices, oh, okay, it's zipper, okay. And then he's like, oh my God, there's the knife. Like, I don't know that necessarily he was focusing on that part. I think there's so much going on that maybe he does I he truly doesn't see it. That's right.
SPEAKER_00:I'm trying to picture it too.
SPEAKER_03:So I'm just trying to speculate from one point of view and and how this could possibly been a suicide. That's how I want to look at it. Because that's that is 96% of people, maybe even more, 99% of people think it's a it's a homicide. I want to view it from the point where it maybe was a suicide.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Now so far as the scene itself, I mean the the apartment isn't destroyed. However, the butcher block is tipped over. It's tipped over.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And uh, you know, something else they noticed during the autopsy is there is some bruising on her body. Now, some of that bruising is old, um and some of it maybe not not so old. And so one could maybe make an argument that with one, there's she's covered in stab wounds. She has bruising on her body, butcher blocks knocked over, that this very well could have been, even though it's confined to a small area, maybe a scene of a struggle. Like maybe there was some sort of an argument, and the argument had to do with the fact that uh she had made reference of quitting her job or whatever the case may be, and uh maybe this was who knows what happened. Uh a fight gets out of control, and uh he winds up stabbing her. Who knows? Maybe she had the knife first and and he took it away from her, but you know, in just a rage.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:He just went at her.
SPEAKER_03:First thing I wanted to ask is where are the bruises and how big are they? Because I feel like I saw one on her wrist, like maybe the size of a dime.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there was some on her neck, too.
SPEAKER_03:Um, and one maybe I think it said by her ribs or something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. And I think on her legs, but I know one of the bruises that they pointed out was what looked like some light bruising on her neck, like maybe at one point someone had grabbed her neck and and was possibly choking her. And that come from let me find the doctor's name.
SPEAKER_03:Um I I think I saw I saw the bruising on her neck, and to me it didn't look like a grass, like um yeah, I don't. I think that would be a stretch. Oops, sorry.
SPEAKER_00:And it might have been this uh this Ross that maybe brought that up because this uh this was a medical examiner or Dr. Wayne Ross. Oh, he's a specialist in forensic pathology and uh neuropathy. I am not even gonna try and say neuropathy. Yes, that's it. So but uh but he does point out that you know one that there's a there's a big gash on her head. Of course, there's there's all these stab wounds in her. But then there's and this is I'm just gonna read this right from his report. Ross also observed marks and bruises on the victim's neck consistent with strangulation.
SPEAKER_03:See, and I I don't agree with that.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe they like weird things in the bedroom.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:That's a possibility.
SPEAKER_00:I'm not gonna go that far. But um that just leads to, of course, with the butcher block being knocked over, and maybe there's this bruising on her body, on her neck. You know, the there's even uh some argument that has to do with if we're getting back to the scene itself, how the blood, I mean how how she's bled, because some of the blood looks like it's going sideways or in an upward direction, which wouldn't be consistent with either standing or sitting in the upward direction.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, well, yeah, I'm gonna dispute that a little bit also, because okay. If she's got if she if she starts doing this to herself and she's got a little bit of bleeding and she's got a drop that lands on her nose or wherever this started from, and then she at some point tilts her head, that blood drop is gonna run down as if she's laying sideways or on her back. It it the head is not stationary, the head is very mobile. So if you have a drop that lands somewhere and and she's turning her head, and say she's cranked her head so she's trying to do this, and she's got her head tilted, that drop is gonna run down sideways. It's a no-brainer. Sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Marissa looked like she was gonna say something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I was doing the same thing. It's like if you're putting your hand back more towards your shoulders, I mean you kind of do put your head back a bit. Like I don't yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I mean, I'm going like if I'm going like this, I'm tilt, I'm yeah, I'm tilting my head this way. The drops here already, and and I'm it's it's gonna run this way.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So in looking at so I'm trying to think, what what are some possible ways that all these stab wounds could have happened? Um and back to the whole struggle and stuff. So let's say um if you can picture this, they're in this fight and one of them has a knife. Now I don't know if it'd be it's in her hand, it's in his hand, but somebody's got this knife. And they're wrestling, they're moving all over. Because one of the arguments is some of these stabs are not very deep.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Now, is it possible that during all this commotion, they're grappling uh over this knife, that that's when these injuries would have happened to her, at least the the superficial or the shallow? It's not that necessarily that he is attempting to stab, but in the course of wrestling of this knife that it you know grazes her head or it whacks her on the back of the neck a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:Or so Marissa, what was one thing that wasn't found on her defensive wounds? There was no defensive wounds.
SPEAKER_02:So your fat your argument that they're that they're fighting over a knife is like you talked about the depth of the stab wounds. Okay. How long were them? Were they like were the depth? Because if if as you talk as they're grappling over this knife, like I'm thinking that if the knife is hitting either of them in any way, that it's more of a dragging and not a stabbing.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So I agree with that, too.
SPEAKER_00:Three of them on the back of her neck. Well, one of them was.078 inches. So that's um what a sixteenth of an inch. So that's the thing.
SPEAKER_03:They're like little tiny puncture. Like they're t tiny punctures.
SPEAKER_00:Two more of them are 0.12. Also, that's about maybe an eighth, pr pretty shallow. Uh now there was four of them on the back of the neck, they're about three-quarters of an inch. So um if I'm gonna use something that's three-quarters of an inch, we'll say like one joint of the finger, maybe.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe a little more than that, uh, depending on the size of the hand. But then there was also three of them that were pretty deep. So one of these, the shallowest of the the three deep ones on the back of the neck was just over an inch. Another one was two and three-quarters of an inch, and the deepest on the back of the neck was three inches deep. I mean, that's that's pretty deep.
SPEAKER_03:Sure. Okay, so a couple things I want to ask you.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Or can I maybe maybe I'll ask Marissa. If Mike is Mike and you are arguing in the kitchen and he's stabbing you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, if we're arguing, she's stabbing me.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Okay, so then let me ask you. This would be more appropriate since you're kind of on the defensive about this. Uh if Marissa's a stabbing at stabbing you, are you going to stay in the same spot? Are you gonna maybe try to run away from her and try to get away from her?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it depends. Probably the first thing I'm gonna do is try and keep her from stabbing me. So I'm gonna maybe have a hold of her hands or or her wrists or or try and control her to keep her from from stabbing me. And that, you know, if the knife is in her hand, of course, I'm gonna focus on her hand.
SPEAKER_03:Sure. I I just feel like in this situation, if you have somebody stabbing you 20 times, that are pretty superficial. To me, it's in in relatively like this, it is the same area. Like you're in the same spot. How can a person stab somebody else that many times in the same area with no movement from the person being stabbed? There's no way. Logically, there's no way that I'm gonna stand there and have you stab me 11 times in the same vicinity. It's not it's not logically going to happen. I'm going to move away. I'm going to move away from you. You're not going to get the same area 11 times. And relatively the same depth.
SPEAKER_00:No, I will say that she was up against the counters. And if you looked at the picture, that's kind of in a corner. So it's like an L-shaped counter. And she's kind of in the corner of this.
SPEAKER_03:So, you know, but there's no possible.
SPEAKER_00:She's trapped. There's nowhere for her to go.
SPEAKER_03:There's not one defensive wound on her hand. You think if he's stabbing her in the back, there's or in the back of the neck, there's not she's not going to be reaching back to stop him. There's going to be wounds on her arms, her hands, wherever, because she's not going to she's not even going to keep her head in the same spot to let somebody stab her that many times in the same area. It it's it's just not gonna happen, people. I want people to think about this logically, because it just is not going to happen.
SPEAKER_02:She's gonna be pushing, she's gonna be scratching, she's gonna be doing whatever she can to get away.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And or to stop him. Here's the other thing I want to bring up. And maybe I'm jumping the gun on you. No, go ahead. Is is the blood pattern.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Where was all the blood? The blood was all of the blood was contained to the countertop and below. There was one, maybe two drops of blood on the countertop. I know there was one drop for sure that I saw on the countertop. And it was a round drop. The other blood, there was some smeared on the bottom of the cupboards. There was a pool of blood on the floor, and there was also droplets of blood on her sweatpants on the front of her legs.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Tell me how there's no other blood anywhere in that apartment, and how the blood was not in a spray pattern or a what do you call it? Um, casting off pattern.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:How is that possible? If she was being stabbed, wouldn't there be blood on the knife and he's coming up with a knife? Wouldn't there be some type of cast off? Wouldn't there be some kind of of those elongated blood marks on the walls somewhere, even the countertop?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Now there would be cast-off if he's making like big long, you know, swings.
SPEAKER_03:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:But if he's just making these really short jabs, um I mean, I still feel that that would be cast off.
SPEAKER_03:I I agree. I still feel like there would be some.
SPEAKER_00:So if we're talking about the stab, you know, something else is if you look at suicide, I mean stabbing is pretty rare. Now cutting is not rare. But stabbing, especially multiple times, is pretty rare. A lot of people if we're gonna commit suicide, I wouldn't imagine that they'd want to continually stab themselves 20 times uh in in order to do that. Um so that seems weird. And one of the uh this Dr. Welch, who's another one that uh that looked at this case afterwards, this is during, I think, maybe a lawsuit between the family and the medical examiner's office when they're trying to get this changed, at least to undetermined. Um they pointed out that a lot of times in a stabbing, when it is suicide, that the victim will typically remove their clothing first. And the fact that it's not uncommon if someone's gonna stab themselves where they're gonna have some shallow ones, but there was several deep.
SPEAKER_03:Mm-hmm. Okay. I I want to go back to the blood.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Um so in my theory, how would Okay, if she's standing up being stabbed, how would there be perfectly round drops land on the front part of her sweatpants?
SPEAKER_00:Well, unless maybe those uh those round ones I mean, happened after she was finally dead on the floor and they dripped off her head onto her pants.
SPEAKER_03:But it according to the picture, her head wasn't that high. Her I mean, she was she was for the most part lying on her back except for her shoulders and her head. My theory is is the only the the only way, and I agree with somebody another report that I read is that the only way those could happen is if she had already, if she was doing the stabbing herself seated, like in a seated position. She was already see sitting down or on the ground. I I just don't understand how they would land perfectly round. If she's standing up and she's being stabbed and she's getting blood on her pants, they're gonna be elongated and like like it's dripping down and it's gonna be.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let me ask you this. Why would she stab herself?
SPEAKER_03:Um, well, I feel like she stabbed herself because she was in an um ambient psychosis.
SPEAKER_00:What do you mean?
SPEAKER_03:Or an ambient coma.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Um, she was going to therapist, she got a new prescription of colonopin and ambien. And first thing I want to say is people go look those drugs up and go look up the side effects of those drugs. Mind you, she was not on these drugs for a long time. These were newly prescribed drugs. Um, and the side effects of both of these are suicidal tendencies. It is known fact that ambien causes what they call an ambient coma. People don't people do things and they don't even remember doing things.
SPEAKER_00:Now they did talk to her psychiatrist, who she did meet with three times. And the psychiatrist did state that uh, you know, she never really exhibited any signs of suicidal thought. She never brought it up. Uh, she never told any of her friends that she would ever even thought about suicide.
SPEAKER_03:Right. She did completely express that she was very anxious. She had an anxiety disorder. Um and also in the report that the her and her therapist also talked about another medical condition she had. However, they didn't disclose that other medical condition. So, you know, there we don't know. Um I suppose only her family knows. Maybe, maybe they don't either. Um there is some speculation that maybe that other medical condition that she had was possibly anorexia. We don't know. Or maybe her other medical condition was some form of mental illness. We don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I don't know you wouldn't.
SPEAKER_03:So if you have a ment if you have a mental disorder, if you have um who knows, schizophrenia. Um some kind of psychosis. Um it is noted that she did ask Sam, would you still love me if I was crazy? Like there were several instances instances where she expressed that she was very anxious and thought she might be crazy. Her coworkers um said that she was highly anxious over stuff and she really obsessed over certain things. In fact, the one co-worker who was helping, so school got out early that day because they're expecting a big snowstorm. So um one coworker walks her out to her car and helps her scoop her scoop her car out and get the snow off her windshield, and she was obsessing about grading papers, and grades were due for these students and um going on and on and on about it before they left the school parking lot. And he says that then by the time he got that they both left and he got to his own apartment complex or wherever he lived in the parking lot, she was calling him again and obsessing about it and talking to him about it over the phone. She gets off the phone with him, he calls another coworker that's her friend, and says, Your boy, your girlfriend is nuts. She's crazy. And so whatever he heard on the phone from her, he's calling the coworker and like, this your friend is freaking nuts. Like she is going on and on about this. So it's not I feel like in the documentary when they're interviewed, you know, people are gonna s not speak poorly of the deceased. They're just not. I have a feeling. They're gonna be respectful, they're not gonna say a whole lot of what their true feelings were, and they're gonna leave part of that hush-hush. Because they don't want to speak ill of somebody that's gone. But behind her back, they were they were talking about her how how cuckoo she was.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I do have one more thing that uh was noticed in the apartment, at least at the scene, that you can actually pick up from the few photographs that were taken. And that was in one of her hands, she was holding a towel. And on that towel, there's not very much blood. So had she been one holding the towel while she's stabbing herself, and mind you that a lot of these stab wounds are in multiple directions, um, especially the ones on the back of her neck. Um how could she have stabbed herself in all these directions while also grasping at a towel and not getting any blood on a towel? Like there was almost no blood on this towel she's holding on to.
SPEAKER_03:I I guess I don't know. I I don't know when she grabbed the towel.
SPEAKER_00:So that's just that was just one other thing that I saw that I thought, well, that is kind of odd. She's holding this towel, there's hardly any blood on it. And if she was holding this towel, she was stabbing herself.
SPEAKER_03:I did notice that in in the picture, um her hand was cupped, her right hand. And it and it was there was blood on the inside of her palm.
SPEAKER_00:See, I didn't see that.
SPEAKER_03:And so it did look like it would correlate with her stabbing herself, and there's kind of blood pooled in her the palm of her hand.
SPEAKER_00:So you're convinced, absolutely convinced, that she killed herself.
SPEAKER_03:A hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00:And Marissa, you're convinced?
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So am I.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Actually, so am I. Um I know I argue that this may have been foul play or she may have been murdered, but to be honest, I I actually from the very beginning when I read this, never believed that. I never I always believe that at least looking it at everything that I saw, that she did in fact stab herself.
SPEAKER_03:I realize that's very difficult for people to comprehend.
SPEAKER_00:But I think it's important that maybe I explain why. Yeah, yeah. Why I think that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you kind of heard snippets of Marissa and I trying to like defend why we think that. But what are some other things that you kind why you came to that conclusion?
SPEAKER_00:I'm just gonna walk, I'm gonna try and walk through this from beginning to end on what I saw that led me to believe that she more likely stabbed herself than she was actually stabbed. And I will start with that broken door latch. So if you go to a hotel room or an apartment complex where it has a swing latch, and you look at how that operates, there is it's kind of like a a tapered groove. And so it's there's a bigger taper at the very base where that thing is screwed to the wall, and it narrows out pretty quick to where there's no taper at all. And that's actually when that swings over, and there's that ball that's attached to the door, and that's kind of where it comes, because that that is in a loop, the the part that's attached to a wall. It's this long loop. And that ball goes through the center of that loop, and then as the door opens up, it tracks on the opposite side of that loop and then stops it, because it's basically it's it's around that ball. And so it then, of course, it would stop the door. If that's dislodged the way that it is, and now it's gapped about a quarter inch away from the wall. What it also does is the portion that that ball starts to travel through and then goes through that loop and then actually engages or grabs the loop as the door is open and stops it with that space in there. It doesn't, what it does instead now is let's say he banged into that a few times, and every time he bangs the door open and it it the loop is engaged, it swings the loop out, the loop grabs the ball, the door stops. As you pull the door shut, it actually also pulls that steel loop in back towards the door. So if he bangs into that door once, it dislodges that loop where it's bolted to the wall outward and he pulls the door closed, so therefore it starts to swing that loop in. The next time he opens that door, the ball isn't gonna go through kind of that tapered opening of the loop to where it would engage.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Now when he opens it, it's gonna hit more of the closed loop part where that ball won't fit through it. So now it's just actually gonna fling that loop open to the side. It's not gonna engage the ball that's attached to the door, and the door is gonna open.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that's why I think that you know, did I find it first odd that it didn't rip that thing off and fling it across the room or stay attached to the ball that's attached to the door? I did at first. But then when I got to looking at it, I thought, well, if you just look at how mechanically that works, once that's dislodged and it's spaced against the wall, it's not gonna engage the way it's supposed to. So it's just gonna fling it open. You know, the loop's gonna swing open to the side around to the wall. The ball's not gonna engage it whatsoever, and the door's just gonna open because it didn't latch.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I feel like I came to that conclusion of having a lifetime of loose and screws and broken apparatuses that are about so it's just it's not gonna operate properly.
SPEAKER_00:So it's it's very likely that that's what happened, at least when I look at it. And I think that if if there was a video where they would have tried to latch that and they opened the door, you're gonna see that that ball is actually gonna engage the portion of that loop that isn't big enough for the ball to actually slide through and lock itself through the loop, it's just gonna push the loop open.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So that was one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh the second is I'm getting to thinking about, okay, so when are they saying that maybe the struggle took place if it was a homicide? Would it be, were they in the apartment fighting and it occurred? Or are they saying that he was pissed off? He busted open the door and then he stabbed her. So I'll start with in the apartment itself. One, they did interview the neighbors, the neighbors never ever heard any sort of yelling, screaming, fighting, anything ever from that room. Not just on that occasion, but from any other previous occasions.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And I realize that some of these apartments are probably fairly soundproof. And I'm guessing that if you have your TV on, maybe the noise doesn't come out. But if someone's stabbing you, you're not at TV volume level.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_00:You are screaming for your life. Yeah. And I guarantee you there is not an apartment that is so soundproof that that noise doesn't go through a wall or through a door.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Second, if he had busted the door open and now he's pissed off because he was locked out of the apartment because a prior argument and then he stabbed her, now you have an open door in Screen. Screaming, uh that's definitely definitely gonna neighbors are gonna notice that.
SPEAKER_03:And there's just not enough time, logically.
SPEAKER_00:Second, or I guess not a second, this is probably third or fourth. So they're engaged, let's say it's a stabbing, and they're engaged into this fight. He's not a small guy, and mind you, he's he's into sports, he's into golf. And if you look at pictures of him, he's not this granny little dwarf. He's a fair amount larger than she is. And I think I saw her height and weight in here. I think she's like 5'7, maybe 135. So she's not a real big gal. He's much larger than that. And if he's stabbing her, even if she's trying to wrist lock him and hold onto his wrists, excuse me, those stabs are gonna be much deeper than they are. There's probably not gonna be really any superficial stab wounds. And actually, it's probably gonna be more violent of a scene, like you were talking about cast off before. There's probably gonna be cast off because at some point, if she's wrist grabbing his wrist, he's gonna try and jerk his hand away. And if he's already stabbed her and there's any blood anywhere on her, when he's she's got a hold of his wrist, he's pulling his wrist away because by God, he's gonna stab her. Any blood on her hand, his hand, that knife, her arm, there is gonna be a cast.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_00:At that point. Now they did, I will say, they did a terrible job on the initial investigation. An awful job. One at evidence collection, uh, photographs of the scene, uh, and interviews. So I will give the family that. They did a terrible job, and the family should be pissed off about that because you expect better out of out of your law enforcement.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And they should have called an investigator and they should have they should have photographed everything.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And they did not. And they should have taken a thousand different angles. One thing you can always do with the photograph is dispose of it if it's not needed. But you can't create new ones once a scene has been cleaned up. So then uh also the scene itself where we were talking about uh, hey, maybe the the butcher block being fallen over is a sign of a struggle. She also had a freshly made fruit salad in a bowl right next to it and a coffee pot. Neither one of those disturbed or knocked over.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_00:So if if there's a fight and they're whacking up against this counter and there's a struggle, I'm I mean, if you're being stabbed, like you said earlier, you're moving all over. Even if she's trapped in the corner of that uh that kitchen, I guarantee you her arms, legs, everything's moving, banging against that counter, that bowl's not going to be sitting there, and it's certainly not gonna be upright with fruit in it. And that coffee pot, I guarantee was on its side, at the very least.
SPEAKER_03:Logically, wouldn't you be grabbing shit and trying to like hit him with something? Like there would be stuff everywhere. Yeah. You'd be grabbing stuff and well imagine this.
SPEAKER_00:Let's say I'm even I have both hands, and I'm the one being stabbed. I'm the I'm the female, I'm the victim here, and I'm holding both wrists. And you have a subject, and I'm not saying it's him, let's say it's even an intruder, and he's trying to grab her and he's trying to stab her. Now, your hands might be in close proximity to your body or his body, but your elbows aren't. Your elbows are moving around this way, I guarantee you, with your arms in front of you, and that elbow is gonna swing around, it's gonna probably clear off everything behind her. So there's gonna be no bowls, there's gonna be no coffee pots, there's anything on that. Well, I would say everything on that counter is gonna be upside down or off.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Yep. I know.
SPEAKER_00:So that was another thing I I did see. Uh, you talked about the the blood being pretty localized, and it was pretty localized to one spot, maybe two on the counter. On the floor, the only blood that I observed in the photographs was maybe a few spots, but most of it was blood that would have leaked out of her body after she was on the floor. So it was more of a pooling. I didn't notice um any droplets with tails.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So if we're talking there, there's a you can look at a cast off and you can tell if it was a really quick swing or even if it's a slow swing. But if there's movement of that blood droplet other than straight down to the ground, then it's gonna have a tail on it. So if she's moving at all, like there's any struggle, there would have been a blood drop with a tail on it. And I didn't see any with a tail, none.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So that was another thing that got my attention. And we were talking about um her medications and her state of mind. So I've worked, uh, I've worked a few suicides myself. And I never worked a single suicide. And I'm not saying this doesn't happen because there are suicides where people leave notes. I've I think I had one where they actually left a note. And that was actually the only one where a family member had had communications with that person that and then they expressed suicidal thoughts. None of the suicides that I'd worked other than that one, um, did I have a family member say, Yeah, they mentioned suicide in the past. Matter of fact, it was more likely that the family was shocked. It was like, well, I had no idea. I knew they were depressed, I knew they were upset with their job, maybe they lost their job, or for whatever reason they were down, but not once. I shouldn't say once. Once I did. All the other times, they said, Well, they never mentioned that they wanted to hurt themselves, kill themselves, anything like that. So that's not abnormal at all.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_03:I f I feel like i in this such specific situation my opinion is is that I don't think she intended to r kill herself.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think she did. You know, we mentioned that she was on some medications, and uh like you'd mentioned before, some of the uh some of the warnings on those medications mention suicide. Um one of the things that's also I think important is she was new to these medications.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And the suicidal tendencies on these medications is most prevalent when you begin using them.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So um, you know, I I also want to say that I, you know, in looking at some of these side effects, I did notice on, I believe it was clonapin that she was on. I read in one of the sites that one of the side effects was called um people have what they describe as brain zaps. And that was listed under the side effects. Brain zaps, and it was in quotation marks. To where I suppose a brain zap is somebody feeling like their brain is getting zapped. I mean what it says. If it's a big enough side effect that it's listed under under one of the side effects, you have to take in consideration that maybe that's a possibility that that was happening. Here's what I think happened. I mean, I think she's super anxious, she's got these new medications on board. She's really anxious that day. She goes home. Maybe they got into a little bit of an argument because if you're with somebody who's constantly is constantly anxious and is constantly expressing their worry about something, at some point you're gonna say, Jesus, just shut up about it already. Like get over it, whatever. I'm not saying that didn't happen. I'm saying that that's probably exactly what happened. They were, you know, she's anxious. She's already called her one coworker twice and expressing anxiety about this to her coworker, her coworkers saying to the other one, your girlfriend is crazy. Your your best friend's crazy. Maybe he she's saying the same stuff at home and he's like, Jesus Christ, would you just shut up about it already? Like, figure that, figure it the fuck out. I'm going to the gym. Like, sure. You're stressing me the fuck out already. Shut up. I'm going to the gym. And and he's irritated. I can totally see that. Then he comes up the stairs and he's locked out. Now he's really freaking irritated. Mind you, the therapist had said that she had never once mentioned that there was any abuse. She adored Sam. Sam apparently adored her. It was a loving relationship. She talked highly of Sam. There wasn't any signs of abuse in any text messages from way beyond between her and Sam. Nothing aggressive towards her at all. The family liked him. There was no signs of any type of abuse.
SPEAKER_00:And I I do want to point out, um, so they were talking about the the the bruising on her. Um some that look like bruises on her neck in various parts of her body. I have various bruising on my body. And although Marissa can be abusive at times, none of the bruises are from her.
SPEAKER_02:When needed.
SPEAKER_00:So something else is they interviewed not only the psychiatrist, but they interviewed a lot of the friends. And I friends know when one of their close friends are being abused, and the friend doesn't have to come out and say, Oh, he he beats me. So I'm sure everybody knows somebody that's a victim of domestic abuse. And they know that without the person telling them. They don't know it because their friend come out and says, Hey, you know, I went home last night and Steve was pissed off at me and he he slapped me around. They don't need to.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And I know a lot of people that will say, Yeah, I think such and such is abusive in the relationship, not because they come out and set it, but because there's other signs. You will see things at gatherings, you'll see how somebody looks at another person, you will you'll notice that person uh wearing clothing and purposely concealing marks that are left behind. So I think had this been an abusive relationship ever, that at the very least, one of her friends would have said so. And even if one of her friends didn't say so, I'm guessing that one of his coworkers, somebody that had known him from the past, um, I'm guessing in Philadelphia, this was probably pretty big news at the time, even though we didn't hear it out here, maybe at the time, or maybe it was in the news at the time and we didn't even pay attention. Remind would remind everybody this was back in 2011. So this isn't something that just happened a couple of years ago. So I I think somebody would have come forward and said, well, actually, Sam was abusive to women at times, or there would have been a prior victim because, you know, they're in their, I think, were they in their 20s or their 30s?
SPEAKER_03:Late 20s, 27. I think she was 27.
SPEAKER_00:By then. Uh most people who are abusers, and I'm not saying all, but most, um, were probably abusers as early as maybe even in high school or college. So I'm guessing somebody would have come out and said, actually, he'd have a pattern of abuse with women because he abused me. That never happened either. So there was never any indication, either from a friend, from old classmates, from old roommates, old friends, old girlfriends, old family members, nobody that there was ever abuse in a relationship. As a matter of fact, they all said the same thing, which is they thought they had a beautiful relationship.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. The only thing that was said was that um in leading up to it, she was starting to make some excuses for like not going to events or coming out with them. So she would say things like, Well, I don't know, I need to talk to Sam about that, or I don't know, let me check with Sam about that. And so, of course, you know, they're gonna speculate that, okay, well, maybe that was a sign of some abuse going on where she said that she had to check with Sam. I'm gonna tell you. I do that all the time. It could be respect or it could be a cover because I know that um I throughout my lifetime I have developed a social anxiety and um I I kind of won't need to come up with an excuse not to go, not to being go somewhere because I I just either I'm exhausted, I don't want to go, I'm too tired. Um, or I'm just in her case, too anxiety-ridden um to socialize that I I need to come up with an excuse. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna blame it on my spouse. I mean, I think that's maybe what she did.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I ask for permission for things all the time, and Marissa can tell you there's times where I asked, do you mind if I go lie on the couch? And that's true, but I always ask before I do anything, before I make almost any plan, if I'm talking to somebody, say, Well, I'll ask Marissa to make sure she doesn't have plans. One, because I'm terrible at planning shit. And I, you know, this might come as a shock to some people. I forget about a lot of the plans that we already have made. Um, and there has been times where I said, Yeah, I can do that, and then I'll talk to Marissa and she'll say, uh, we're not gonna be home.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, whoops. Yeah. So I am in a pretty good habit now of asking. So it wouldn't strike me as unusual that she would say, well, I don't know, let me let me ask.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think people are just, you know, because because everybody's up in arms about this and how it they just can't believe it's a suicide. And so now now they're just kind of grasping at stuff that they think is clues. They need some kind of validation. They need to blame somebody because they can't blame her.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, because she would never do that. Right.
SPEAKER_00:You know, that's and I just want I want to make sure everybody understands I do feel terrible for the family. So nothing I'm saying here is is meant to be disrespectful whatsoever. Where I'm coming from is is having investigated myself, suicides, assaults, domestics. Um, I can't say as I've investigated a murder. I have not done that. So just to be fully transparent there. But looking through this, there wasn't one thing other than the fact of somebody said, Yeah, this person died of 20 stab wounds, if that's all the information I had, my brain would immediately go to maybe homicide. And I will say, when law enforcement first showed up to this, and I don't care what the situation is, if you show up and there's a person deceased, it should always, always be assumed that it's a homicide or there's foul play or there's something funny going on. It should always be investigated as a homicide first, mainly to avoid this sort of a problem.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, because it's it's what's best for the family. They deserve that. It's best for the law enforcement agency because you do have to protect yourself and your agency as well. And you do that by doing a good job.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And, you know, the other rumors that are, I just want to bring those up that are going out there is oh, supposedly had Sam had all these uh family members that were in the high political scene. I think one was a judge, you know, and how they're covering up for him. Well, I I don't believe that at all. Um everybody's up in arms about how they were allowed to go up into the apartment and get her laptop and her engagement ring. And I mean, the way it was described is that they went into the apartment the next day to get, because she's Jewish, they're going with her funeral really quickly. He needed his suit, and then they were gonna grab the laptops, I imagine, maybe for pictures, songs, I don't know. But it wasn't until the the next day. If they were really worried, if if Sam or the family were worried about destroying evidence, why wouldn't they take it that night?
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's true.
SPEAKER_03:And why wouldn't why would they wait? They wouldn't wait. If they're worried about covering something up and deleting stuff off of the computer, they're gonna take it immediately. They're not gonna wait till the next day because possibly the police have already taken it. It might be the same. It didn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_00:You were cleared by law enforcement to take these items. Something else I want to I want to point out because they did say, well, the uncle took her laptop. Now, Sam wasn't the one that retrieved all of the stuff from the apartment. It was the uncle because the family sent the uncle. I'm guessing they sent the uncle because it's possible Sam was mourning her death and Sam was with his immediate family, being his mom, dad, any brothers or sisters they might have had, and the one family member that they would trust to go gather some of their items would be more of a, you know, I don't want to say a distant relative, but an uncle or a cousin or even a family friend. And if uh let's say I'm playing the uncle and a family member says, Hey, can you run up the apartment? Um, grab the laptop and you know, some personal items, and I get up there and I'm looking and I see three laptops. I'm probably instead of just calling to bother people and say, hey, which one is it? I'm just gonna grab them all.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And then I'm gonna take them back to where they're at. I'm just gonna hand all of them to them. They're gonna know which one's theirs, which one's hers. So that's a pretty good probability.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. I think you know, I think she came home, she was stressed and anxious, she took her prescription meds, and she had a deadly deadly combination of them. Not that she the the combination of the drugs killed her, but ultimately um it was secondary to that because it caused her to ha have some type of psychosis and and stab herself. I feel like she was, this is my opinion, I feel like she was in some type of ambient coma. She did not know what was going on. She may have been hallucinating. Um, she may have been feeling these brain zaps, and she was like, Oh my god, I can't take this anymore. And so she grabs a knife and she's bent over and she's doing this. And one of them that says that, oh, the one that went into the subdura says that it could have incapacitated her. Well, uh the other argument is that it also made her not have sensation. Like she could fully move, but she might not have sensation.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I'm gonna read something.
SPEAKER_03:Um and then and then she goes on to the she slumps down, then she goes on to the front of herself. And the last one was the fatal one.
SPEAKER_00:I've got some notes in here because there was something pointed out um that has everything to do with that that stab wound to the back of the neck, and the fact that they they later found that there was some uh some damage to uh a spinal cord. Okay. So this might take me just a second because I I don't even know if I highlighted it in here. I did. Okay. So this has to do with the spinal cord uh damage. In the documentary, they they pointed out that they spoke to this doctor, Emery, who had four possibilities of how the damage occurred. So she did state that the injury, and this is in the the report, and this is the report that was collected by the by the family's attorneys. So she says that the injury to the duramatter surrounding the victim's spine did not result in hemorrhaging as it normally would occur. So basically saying that if a person was alive and you stabbed this portion of the body, it would hemorrhage, it would bleed. It did not. So because it did not, she could determine that this injury occurred either after death or right before death. So she also went on to say that uh, okay, first that it could have happened just a moment before death. Second, it could have happened moments after the victim expired. Third, it could have occurred during Dr. Osborne's autopsy. And lastly, the injury may have been simply too minor to cause reactions such as hemorrhaging or cellular death. But what I'm getting at, and I can't remember where I saw this, if it was in a documentary or somewhere else, but oh no, I think it was in the uh the latter report.
SPEAKER_03:It was in the report, because I know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. So after after this lawsuit, they did have the medical examiner uh redo the investigation. They couldn't redo the autopsy, obviously, but they could go back and look at all the photographs that were taken of the scene. They could read through the statements, uh, reports by police, statements by witnesses, statements by uh Sam. But she was also able to look at the photographs which were taken during the autopsy itself. And in one of those photographs, she noted, and this is from the medical examiner on the second report. I know some people are gonna maybe argue this, that when they're doing the autopsy, they're using a probe. And I suppose they're using a probe because they're probing the depth of the stab wound. The probe is round. The probe in one of the photographs was next to the deep stab wound that uh was the same stab wound where they noticed that there was some damage to the spinal cord or surrounding the spinal cord. She also noted that the injury, the puncture of that spinal cord was more circular. The tip of a knife is not circular, but the tip of the knife of the probe is. Yeah. So it is likely, and she also stated, and I tend to believe this, it's not uncommon that when you're probing a wound during an autopsy, that you inadvertently probe and cause maybe some damage in the process. The damage is gonna be minor, and in this case, it was minor.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It'll probably come from that probe.
SPEAKER_03:And especially to uh fragile tissue. Yes. The the subdura is gonna be very fragile tissue and it's gonna be easily damaged. If so, if they're probing it, and they might just be, you know, poking in to see how long that is or how deep it is, and they they're trying to hit the end of it.
SPEAKER_00:And I I will say so the the original um medical examiner initially did rule this a homicide, and there was some question as to why did the medical examiner then change their mind uh to a homicide after this meeting with other members of law enforcement, the DA's office, and uh the uh medical examiner uh investigator. And the reason is because there was some information that the medical medical examiner did not have. Some of that information had to do with the medication medications she was on. Um, some of it had to do with her mental state, some of it probably had to do with some statements from witnesses that have been collected since her original ruling, which was done the night she was killed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, mind you, that law enforcement went back after the fact to continue the investigation after she ruled it a homicide. And I'm guessing that she changed it because after their investigation, they collected more of this evidence, brought it to her, or him, I guess. It wasn't her. And the medical examiner reviewed this and said, Oh, okay, well, this actually does look like a suicide.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that's probably why it was changed.
SPEAKER_03:I don't think it was well, and part of it was the evidence on her laptops. I mean, there was evidence that there were that she was searching suicide. And and not just once, several times, I think. And did I read nine times, several times? I don't know. I can't remember, several times. And whether she was actually looking up suicide or she was looking up side effects to her medications, and a pop-up ad came up about are you are you feeling suicidal? You know, sometimes that'll happen. Regardless, something's happening that she's looking up information that relates to suicide. Coupled with the medications that she's on, coupled with her anxiety disorder. Again, I'm gonna mention we don't know what other medical condition she has that might couple along with it.
SPEAKER_00:Uh and real quick, how how how long are we in this? Oh, a little long. Okay, so just uh also real quick before this uh slips my mind because it did slip it earlier. Um, when we were talking about the the injuries to the back of the neck and the angles, and um there was some argument that um she couldn't have biomechanically made these injuries to herself. And so I just thought, why just try it? So I grabbed a butter knife, and I used the butt end, so I didn't accidentally stab myself, and I tried to see if there was a portion of the neck, and I only used one hand, I used my right hand, um, I'm left-handed, by the way, to see if there was an angle or a part of the neck that I couldn't reach, and I could hit them all. And I could hit them from multiple directions, especially like you said, if I was leaned over a sink, um I could hit any angle I wanted to on any portion of my neck that I wanted to. So is it biomechanically possible? Yeah, because I did it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm gonna I I'm also gonna bring this up because you and I had taught mentioned this before when we were talking about this, um, I think briefly before what we what conclusion we had come to, but and I told you I I didn't tell Marissa this, but I told you this that I have a history of migraines. I remember when I was in college, I had such a terrible migraine. It was so bad. I said, I told Steve, You've got to take me to the emergency room. I can't stand this anymore. I have to have something done. Went into the ER and they said the doctor came in, he's like, on a scale of one to ten. I'm like, it's a thousand. I said, I don't care. I said, I'm I'm ready right now for you to just chop my head off. I and I said those words, I'm like, I need to get rid of this pain. Just I don't care if you chop my head off. I it hurts so bad. If she's having a side effect to where she's having brain zaps and it's hurting so bad, I mean, because people are like, how could she stab herself? How could she stab herself that many times and it would be so painful? I can believe it. If she's having some kind of pain in her head or her neck where it's hurting and she's trying to get rid of it, she might be trying to do something just to get rid of that pain. Or, like I said, she's in some type of altered reality psychosis type scenario where she doesn't know what the hell she's doing. Or both. Right. I just I don't I don't think she probably intended to kill herself. I think it was a an episode of some type of something. Oh, there's several stories. If you go, if let's let's take TikTok, for example, if you go on TikTok and you look up Ambient episodes or ambient stories, there's thousands of people talking about what they did without their knowledge while they were on Ambien. And uh there's a there's an instance of a gal that said she was in labor and they they gave her they they took her into the hospital to be induced. They gave her an ambien to sleep because they weren't gonna start the actual induction until the next day. On that ambient, her mom was there. She saw someone behind her mom with a with an axe trying to murder her. She's in the hospital for induction, and she's she's hallucinating and seeing this. So this this happens, like this is a real thing. Ambient coma, ambient psychosis happens. So we don't know what she saw, but I fully believe that's that is what happened to her.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's a bad deal. Again, I feel bad for the family. It doesn't change, you know. We're on the this podcast, and it is a it's a discussion. These are obviously our opinions. However, I would say that my opinion is based on a little bit of experience. This isn't something that I just watched a documentary and formulated that opinion.
SPEAKER_03:I actually watched the documentary and thought, well, I think most people that are were listening to that's all they have.
SPEAKER_00:I I did read the initial um autopsy report, medical examiner report. I read the entire lawsuit. Um, I read all of the uh all of the opinions of the examiners and other doctors and professionals within that lawsuit, and I read the entire second uh medical examiner report. And I didn't come across any information in there that it really at any time that led me to believe that it was anything but, you know, self-inflicted.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um as much as I would have liked to have believed that.
SPEAKER_03:Well, people want a story.
SPEAKER_00:Sure.
SPEAKER_03:People want to be the ones to solve the crime.
SPEAKER_00:And I know that there's gonna people be some people that say, well, but the uh the fiance isn't talking. Well, I think the reason the fiance isn't talking is because one, the documentary was looking for people to believe a a certain thing. Sure. And it if it was me and I was a fiance, I wouldn't want to talk because I know what happens um in some of these documentaries. You can easily cut and paste and and you can make it look like anything. And he probably was fearful that if he said anything at all, regardless of what he said, when that documentary came out, they're gonna make it look like he was hiding something. So I can understand that fear, and I can understand not wanting to talk about it. I can understand not wanting to relive it because I can't imagine what it would be like to walk into a room and see your fiance lying on the floor.
SPEAKER_03:And it's 14 years later.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And he's got a family of his own now.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So I mean he really had nothing to gain by saying anything, and he still doesn't have anything to gain by saying anything. So that's that's probably why.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So what what do you have anything to add? I do not. Yeah. Do you think we covered it all of why we think that? I think so.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I I just encourage people to look into the actual reports, look into the side effects of those medications, think about it logically. Picture yourself in the own situ in that situation, and that's what I did. I pictured myself in that kitchen and somebody trying to stab me, and how that scenario would look. It's not gonna look like the picture that no, no, so that's all I have on that particular thing.
SPEAKER_00:I wanted to bring up something real quick, um, talk about some more local stuff. Uh, we live in Nebraska, and uh I've noticed uh a lot in the news lately about some sex trafficking in an Omaha. And I'm thinking maybe in some future episodes we're gonna go over uh and we've mentioned it before we're looking into uh some stuff that that happened that is portrayed in the the Franklin, is it called the Franklin scandal?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um but just this year there's been like uh a dozen people arrested in Omaha for sex trafficking, and and a lot of this involving minors.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so um it's a it's a problem.
SPEAKER_03:It's a big problem, and it's and it's not a recent problem. This problem has been going on for years and years.
SPEAKER_00:No, and I don't think it's getting the attention that it it really deserves.
SPEAKER_03:And maybe, maybe we do need to finally bite the bullet and actually start with the Franklin scandal. Um, that's gonna open a lot of eyes. Even though it's happened years ago, it's it opened my eyes for a lot of things in a lot of where you can't believe that that stuff happens in Nebraska or where or particularly where we live.
SPEAKER_00:When that book was written, and that book was written quite a long time ago, I can see where somebody would read that book and say, this does not seem real. But now when you when you read that book, and then if you just even search uh trafficking Omaha, and I think I started in January of 25 up to today's date, and we're into October, and I think I come up with three or four within three or four months. I didn't even get through the whole year. And uh these were larger operations. One of these that took place, I think there was like uh five people arrested. And it these five people all either owned or operated hotels in the Omaha area where the trafficking took place. So it's it's a big deal.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And in in the Franklin scandal, um it originated uh uh uh with Boys Town and also with child protective services and f the foster care system.
SPEAKER_00:And it uh was perpetrated at least a now this is alleged because the guy was never arrested for it, but uh by a pretty powerful member in Omaha, so a wealthy individual. So um I think maybe going through it now, it's it's definitely more believable because of course we've seen the news with with uh Diddy. Um we've seen uh who are some other ones that were here within the last year. Epstein Epstein. Um that's still actually ongoing. Yeah. Funny how that was a open investigation, closed investigation, open investigation.
SPEAKER_03:So I mean, the I heard somebody say that this is the original Epstein.
SPEAKER_00:I believe so.
SPEAKER_03:The the the Franklin scandal in Omaha, Nebraska with Boys Town was the original Epstein type situation. I think it's probably bigger. I think if I maybe.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's possible had this investigation taken place today, that maybe the outcome would have been a little different. But we'll probably have to get into that on a later episode.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah, we're gonna. Because this we're yeah. Well, that's gonna be like a five-part episode, I think. That's it's huge.
SPEAKER_00:So well Marissa's rolling her eyes, so that must be time to close this off.
SPEAKER_03:So Marissa's doing no such thing. So uh anyways, I guess send us that hate mail.
SPEAKER_00:All right, well, next time.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe we'll get some listeners. Maybe this is a state listener after this one.
SPEAKER_00:All right, well, we'll see you later.