Nursing student found strangled in Kensington

Elaine Goldberg had finally straightened out her life.

Bright, pretty, and smart, Goldberg turned 21 on Sept. 12. She was ready to put her past behind her.

She reenrolled as a nursing student at Gwynned Mercy College in Montgomery County. She had kicked a persistent drug problem. As she told her friends on her Facebook page on Oct. 27, "30 days clean today - hollllaaa."

After ending a tumultuous relationship and losing a baby to miscarriage, she was back living with her tight-knit family in Northeast Philadelphia, said her sister, Careen Goldberg.

"She wanted to go places," Careen said. "She had set goals and she was going to achieve them."

But the path to those goals was cut short.

On Wednesday, Goldberg's half-naked body was discovered in a trash-strewn lot in Kensington.

The former honor's student at Little Flower Catholic High School appeared to have been strangled, police said. On Friday night, the medical examiner had not yet determined a cause or manner of death.

"She didn't deserve to die. She worked so hard to stay alive," her sister said. "She just overcame a disease. She wanted to stay alive and somebody else took that from her."

Mike Jones, her ex-boyfriend said Elaine's addiction had become so bad that he kicked her out of his Wellington Street apartment in May. She returned home to her family that includes five siblings.

"Everyone knew she was going to get in trouble," Jones said. "You wouldn't wish that to happen to her."

According to her friends, Goldberg's addiction to narcotics had brought her to the brink of death several times. But she told them she did not want to get high anymore. She was rekindling friendships with her high school friends, some of whom lived in Kensington, her sister said.

"I could tell Elaine really, really wanted to be a nurse," said Andrea Hollingsworth, dean of the School of Nursing at Gwynned Mercy. "I greatly admired her perseverance."

Just before Halloween, Goldberg e-mailed friends looking for a nondrug or alcohol party to attend.

Goldberg had gone out Wednesday morning. Her family grew concerned when she didn't return by sundown.

"I went out looking for her," said Joe Goldberg, Elaine's father. "Then I tried calling her friends."

At 11 p.m., a police officer knocked on the door of their two-story ranch house. Elaine's body had been found on the 2800 block of Ruth Street in a lot ringed by barbed wire adjacent to an abandoned warehouse.

The news left the family reeling.

"I was shocked, just really confused," said Elaine's brother Joey, a freshman at Father Judge High School. "I still am. I was hoping she would walk through the door."

Elaine's sister Careen said the family was angered by the following media coverage.

"This is not about the drug problem," she said. "She was murdered."

Careen said that her sister had set her sights on becoming a nurse in eighth grade after the death of her beloved grandmother, Elizabeth Marie Goldberg.

"She had an very close relationship with my grandmom who spent the last few years of her life in nursing homes and hospitals," Careen said. "She really wanted to take care of people."

A Funeral Mass is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday morning at St. Martin of Tours Roman Catholic Church. She will be buried next to her grandmother, her sister said.