Police consider Manayunk death 'suspicious': not homicide was the headline of one of the very first articles on the death of Ellen Greenberg, a teacher at Juniata Park Academy in Philadelphia where she also lived in an apartment in the Manayunk neighborhood.
The article itself was very short, little more than a few paragraphs written in Montgomery News by local reporter Bernard J. Scally on Feb 2, 2011.
The investigation into a death at the Venice Lofts Condominiums in Manayunk took a strange turn over the weekend. On Jan. 26, Ellen Greenberg was found stabbed to death in her apartment. She was a first grade teacher at Juniata Academy. On Jan. 27, the Medical Examiner’s office ruled the death as a homicide. But on Jan. 28, the Philadelphia Police Department announced that “the death of Ellen Greenberg has not been ruled a homicide… Homicide investigators are considering the manner of death as suspicious at this time.”
It was reported that residents did not hear any commotion the night she was killed. Greenberg and her fiancé became engaged over the summer and had moved from another unit in the building.
Venice Lofts is equipped with 24-hour concierge service at the front door, but like other complexes people often allow friends in through the side and back doors.
Greenberg, born in New York City on June 23, 1983, was found dead on the kitchen floor of the apartment she shared with her fiancé, NBC Sports producer Samuel Goldberg, when Goldberg came home from the gym to find the door locked from the inside on January 26, 2011.
After failing to reach his fiance, he tried to get security to open the door, who told him it was against building policy. Goldberg forced open the door, found Ellen’s corpse leaning slumped up against a cabinet, and called 911, and said that she “stabbed herself.”
A copy of Goldberg was, "instructed to start CPR until he noticed a knife in her chest, then was instructed to stop."
The knife was still lodged in her heart; she had 20 stab wounds in total, with 10 on her neck and head, including two that penetrated deep into her brain. The assistant medical examiner at the time, Dr. Marlon Osbourne, noted more stab wounds to the chest, as well as 11 bruises "in various stages of resolution" on the right side of Ellen's body, including her arm, abdomen, and leg.
Just one day after her death, it was ruled a homicide by Dr. Osbourne. The next day, investigators told reporters they were "leaning" towards suicide, according to the Inquirer, because Ellen had been on anti-anxiety medication, investigators found no signs of an intruder and the only DNA found on the knife belonged to the victim. There was no suicide note. A half-made bowl of fruit salad was still on the counter.
The apartment door had been locked until broken by Goldberg, who told police that a swing bar lock on the door had been latched from the inside. Months after his initial ruling, Dr. Osbourne reversed the cause of death to suicide.
"Everything that happened pretty much happened right where she was," Homicide Sgt. Tim Cooney told the Inquirer. "The rest of the apartment was pretty unremarkable."
Over a decade later, forensic experts still don’t agree as to how the 27-year-old died, and Ellen Greenberg’s parents have fought for any meaningful investigation at all into the "suspicious” death of their only child.
In October 2019, Greenberg's parents filed a civil suit against the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office and Dr. Marlon Osbourne in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
"The family is looking for a manner of death designation other than suicide so that a thorough investigation, that should have been done, can be done," Podraza told 48 Hours.
The lawsuit was an attempt to change the death from “suicide” to "homicide" or at least "undetermined," in order to re-start the investigation. Marlon Osbourne reportedly admitted to changing the manner of death under pressure from police.
"This is a homicide case and it's indefensible as suicide," family attorney Joe Podraza told CBS Philadelphia.
The case was sent to the Attorney General due to Larry Krasner's involvement in the case as a private attorney before becoming Philadelphia’s district attorney in November 2017. Krasner was hired by the Greenberg’s to look into the case prior to being elected.
The Attorney General’s office at the time was lead by Josh Shapiro, who would later be elected governor in November of 2020, five years later. A statement released by the attorney general’s office in 2022 said that they had conducted an “exhaustive review,” including “new forensic analysis,” in over “four years of work.”
In the meantime, her family has turned to the media for answers. "I want truth and justice for my daughter," Josh Greenberg told 48 Hours.
The Greenbergs consulted with Cyril H. Wecht, a Pittsburgh-area forensic pathologist, in 2012, who said Ellen's death was "strongly suspicious of homicide," based on the locations of the wounds, especially the wounds to the back of the neck.
Dr. Wayne K. Ross, an expert the family consulted in 2017, said that the stab wound that penetrated the brain would have resulted in, "severe pain, cranial nerve dysfunction and traumatic brain signs" as well as "numbness, tingling [and] irregular heartbeat."
After the initial autopsy, the original medical examiners report says that, "Neuropathologist Dr. Lucy Rouke [sic] examined the spinal cord and concluded there is no defect of the spinal cord."
Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams, interviewed by the Inquirer in 2018, confirmed that she did contract work for the medical examiner's office, but further investigations by the newspaper revealed there were no invoices or reports from Rorke-Adams on Ellen Greenberg’s case.
"I would conclude that I did not see the specimen in question although there is a remote possibility that it was shown to me," she wrote to the Inquirer. "However, I have no recollection of such a case."
Next the family consulted with Detective Scott Eelman who reviewed crime scene photos and questioned bloodstains that were inconsistent with the position in which her body was found. He found a trail of blood suggesting that the body was moved.
A report co-authored by Henry Lee, the forensic scientist who testified for the defense at the O.J. Simpson trial, along with fellow forensic scientist Elaine Pagliaro in 2018, concluded that, "The number and types of wounds and bloodstain patterns observed are consistent with a homicide scene."
A company named Biomax took the information from the medical examiner's report and recreated the depth and angle of the wounds.
"In this way, you're able to see the two — really lethal — wounds in the back of Ellen's head," Podraza told 48 Hours. "You can tell that it's very improbable that Ellen could inflict the wounds from behind. She would not be able to generate enough force to self-inflict."
Podraza said to CBS Philly in an interview that, "I think it's so powerful that it's clear to me that there's a murderer walking among us, or murderers, and that's frightening from my vantage point."
In 2019, a pathologist at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office said that a portion of the spine didn't show clotting or blood, and most likely occurred after Ellen was dead.
“That means that Ellen could not have administered that stab, which means it's impossible for her to have committed suicide,” the Greenberg's' lawyer, Joe Podraza, told DailyMail.com.
“Suicide by definition would mean that she would have had to of self-inflicted all of these 20 wounds, and then to top it off, that wound to the spinal cord. Ellen was found with a knife in her chest, so even assuming that the stab into the spinal cord that they had the sample of was the second to last stab - the knife ends on her chest.”
'You'd have to then conclude that Ellen stabbed herself twice when she was dead, which is medically impossible. I think that by itself is enough to say this can't be a suicide.'
“Unfortunately, after four years of work, new expert testimony and information has been publicly alleged but withheld from our investigators, and new accusations of a conflict of interest have been made against our office,” the Attorney General's Office said in 2022.
Alyson Stern and Ellen grew up together and were roommates at Penn State. They had been best friends with Ellen since they were 10, but Alyson didn't answer when Greenberg tried to call her after being sent home early from work due to a blizzard on January 26, 2011.
“She called me at 1 o'clock that day but I was on the other line and I didn't pick up,” Stern told DailyMail.com. “I tried to call her back and she didn't pick up.”
Stern had last seen Ellen a few days before her death.
“We spent that Saturday together bridesmaid dress shopping for my wedding,” Stern said. “I could tell her she was not herself. Even when I picked her up to go dress shopping, she just looked disheveled. She was always fully put together, but her hair wasn't done and she just wasn't herself. When we were in the fitting room, she even started crying a little and just like "I'm so sorry, I know I'm not myself. But I'll get it together."
“I can't believe my best friend is dead and the way I can keep her memory alive is by naming my daughter after her,” she said.
Stern told the Mail that Ellen's behavior began to change around the end of 2010, and that just a few weeks before her death, Stern talked to Ellen on the phone while out shopping at CVS. Ellen was rambling about how she was stressed and wanted to quit her job and move home. Her father told her she could be move home if she got help after her “personality shifted.”
Ellen was seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety as a deal with her parents, and also saw a psychologist three times before dying. Her psychiatrist said she was anxious about work, and had been prescribed Klonopin and Ambien, which were the only drugs found in her system; suicidal thoughts and behavior are possible side effects of both, but her psychiatrist didn’t think that Ellen was suicidal.
“I knew something wasn't right other than school,” her friend said. “My father-in-law worked with her and he said there was nothing for her to be stressed about, they loved her there.”
In August of 2022, the Chester County District Attorney's office announced that it would reopen the investigation after the Pennsylvania Attorney General released the case, and the investigation is now ongoing.
Interesting case & glad it’s reopening for further investigation! Definitely not possible & doubt that it could be suicide with 20 stab wounds. Could possibly be combination of drug overdose, drug interactions combined with homicide. Strange & suspicious case. Thanks for investigating & look forward to further revelations that come forth from reopening this case. Be safe out there!