Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Parents of Teacher Stabbed 20 Times in 'Suicide' Challenging Death Ruling: 'A Cover-Up!'

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Ellen Greenberg's fiancé found her stabbed to death in their Philadelphia apartment in January 2011. Greenberg had been stabbed 20 times in the neck, chest and abdomen. Her death was initially labeled a homicide but later changed to a suicide. Greenberg's parents have fought for years for answers in Ellen's death and recently scored a major legal victory. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with Josh and Sandee Greenberg about their long legal battle and how the governor of Pennsylvania is involved in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. We want justice for Ellen. That's what this is all about. Very simple. It's not involved. The parents of Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old woman found stabbed 20 times in her Philadelphia

apartment, score a legal victory in their quest to find out how their daughter died. It was the most crushing blow of our lives. I lay out the disturbing details of Ellen Greenberg's death and her parents' 13-year fight for answers. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Ellen Greenberg's parents have been looking for answers for years about her death. They say they just want to know the truth about what happened to their daughter, and they're hopeful they might be getting closer to it. More on that shortly, but first, I want to start at the very beginning. Ellen was just 27 years old when she was found stabbed

to death in her apartment that she shared with her fiance. It was January 26th of 2011. Her fiance, Sam or apartment? Oh no. Oh no. It's an apartment. What apartment number? Please, Harry, please. Where is she bleeding from? I don't know. I can't tell. You have to calm yourself down in order to get you some help. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She, I don't know. I'm looking at her right now. I can't see anything. There's nothing broken. She's bleeding. Goldberg had been working out at the gym in their building, and he explained what he found when he returned to their apartment. I went downstairs to go work out. I came back up. The door was latched.

My fiance's inside. She wasn't answering. So after about a half hour, I decided to break it down. I see her now just on the floor with blood. She's not responding. An autopsy report showed that Ellen had been stabbed 20 times. Ellen suffered 10 stab wounds to her neck, going back to front, and others to her chest and abdomen. The steak knife from her own kitchen was found in her heart. Ellen's death had initially been ruled a homicide, but then the medical examiner changed that finding to suicide. That seems curious and has raised a lot of questions. How on earth would someone stab themselves in the back of the neck 10 times? Ellen's parents have never felt they have gotten the truth about Ellen's death. They've been fighting since 2011 for answers about what happened to their only daughter. Even contacting experts like the late renowned forensic pathologist, Dr. Cyril Wecht,

who reviewed the information and wrote that it was his professional opinion that Ellen's manner of death is strongly suspicious of homicide. Other experts have agreed, including neuropathologist Wayne Ross, who wrote, there are multiple bruises over the body, some of which were fresh, many of which were older. The patterns were consistent with a repeated beating and the seen findings were indicative of a homicide. In 2018, the attorney for Ellen's parents became the district attorney in Philadelphia County, so they asked him to review the case. But there was obviously a conflict, so he asked then Attorney General Josh Shapiro to review the case. In 2019, a spokesperson for the AG's office wrote to a reporter,

We conducted our own thorough investigation to determine a manner of death, interviewing the chief medical examiner of Philadelphia and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, meeting with the family's representatives, and reviewing information they provided to our attorneys, among other steps. The AG's spokesperson also wrote that they had uncovered other evidence during the review. That included web searches from Ellen's computer that included methods of committing suicide, quick death, and depression in the weeks before her death, along with text messages between Ellen and her family members showing she was in emotional distress the day that she died. The AG's office determined that the evidence supported suicide as the manner of death and then sent the case back to the Philadelphia DA's office.

There has been suspicion among some that there may be connections between Shapiro and people who might not want Ellen Greenberg's death classified a homicide. But Shapiro's office told the Philadelphia Inquirer it had never addressed those claims because they were, quote, not acknowledging unfounded accusations. Ellen's parents have gone to court suing for information about her death. They've been told they don't have the standing to challenge her manner of death or the medical examiner's findings. But now the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is actually taking their case, which gives them hope that they could be getting closer to answers so many years later. I want to bring in Ellen Greenberg's parents, Sandy and Josh Greenberg. They have been leading the charge on getting answers about their daughter's death for over a decade now. So Sandy and Josh, thank you so much for coming on. A major victory for you guys.

You are getting to be heard in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and they will decide whether or not potentially whether you will have standing to basically ask that your daughter's case be reviewed and that you get to maybe challenge her manner of death so this is a major victory How are you feeling about this right now? Great. We're very optimistic and very... We understand what it's all about. We know the odds were like 3,000 to 100 that we would get our case heard.

All those things are tremendous. We're not attorneys. So when we go through this case, which we've gone through for actually almost 14 years, we are almost learning about how to become an attorney. Everything we learn is brand new. So we found that the fact that we're being heard by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is quite a feather in our lawyer's hat and quite a big step for us. Sandy, you're a mom.

I mean, Josh, you're a dad. But Sandy, you know, it's just excruciating being a parent and not having answers. And, you know, you raise your children and you love them and you want what's best for them. And then you get this call. How horrible has this been, not only to lose your daughter, but then to feel that you don't have the answers that you need and that you believe her case was mishandled from day one? Well, number one, it was the most crushing blow of our lives. And I really wasn't in the best shape for quite some time initially, rightfully. We were raising our daughter. We wanted more children, but we were grateful to have one healthy, wonderful young woman. We were raising

her to be the best possible version of herself, but not wanting to bring her up like a spoiled brat. I wanted her to be able to stand on her own, walk into a room and feel comfortable with herself. She seemed pretty gregarious and she could bring, you know, all her friends together. On a personal note, Ellen was an individual who was an achiever and an individual who made big decisions and followed through on them. She wasn't really happy with her postgraduate situation. She decided, and I agree with her, to change it. And she went ahead and moved to Philadelphia. She got a teaching certificate. She got specialty certificates. She's student taught. She did taught she did everything master's degrees she did everything she had to do on her own well we and we weren't we were like two hours away

in harrisburg now two hours away a lot of parents out there are going to say is oh that's almost nothing and they're right but our daughter was alone she was in't at Philadelphia alone and she did it all. So it was quite a achievement in my mind. There's been a lot said about Ellen by some of the officials in this case that she was suffering from, you know, some anxiety and things of that nature um would you like to address that at all because as it stands right now her her death has been ruled a suicide it was at first determined to be a homicide and then changed to suicide did you have any concerns that ellen was in a way that made you believe that she was contemplating anything or that she was depressed or anxious or thinking about taking her own life?

She had anxiety. She was overwhelmed with the number of students per teacher in her classroom. And she had things going, you know, she was planning the wedding. But never did I realize that, you know, after the fact, all these years later with all the investigation, we didn't know she was having bruising all over her body, that she was being physically abused i didn't know that then we knew something was wrong i knew something was wrong i made a deal with ellen because i didn't feel i could help her i didn't have a degree in psychology or psychiatry i was a periodontist i made a deal that if ellen went to a, somebody who could help her situation, which was she was at the same time she was sending out save this date cards for a wedding. She was also saying she wanted to come home to very incongruent. We couldn't figure it out.

So I arranged with Ellen that she went to a psychiatrist who we found and worked with her and she said she could come home, she could come home. Now we knew there was something different, but we didn't know what it was. When she went to the psychiatrist, we found out a lot of this. We found out after Ellen's death because we never, my concern when she saw the psychiatrist was to help Ellen and try and save the job. Then we found out about bruises, which were consistent with abuse, and Ellen also had passed. So a lot of things we found out were post-haste. We had no reason to think that anything was really, really wrong.

We didn't know about the abuse till after the death. When we saw the autopsy report and it was so- We had no reason to suspect that. Like I said, something was different about my daughter and I was trying to help her and save her job. That's it. We didn't think of anything like abuse. Hey, Crime Fix viewers. I want to tell you about Wondry's awesome podcast. It's called American Scandal.

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Dome early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus and by clicking on our link, wondery.fm slash lawandcrimefix. When Ellen's death was first determined to be a homicide, did you feel that they were taking this seriously and treating it as a homicide investigation? Or take me back to that time. I was so numb. We're not law enforcement people. We were in a batting cage. You know how the balls just keep coming, coming, coming, coming, coming?

We basically don't even have driver's uh tickets i mean we're not we're law-abiding citizens we believe we were both grew up believing the police there was a snowstorm then we get this horrific life-changing news that our daughter is no longer with us. We didn't even get that. We're Jewish. So you immediately plan. She was an organ donor, which I want. And I know that was important to her. We wanted her, she wanted to give her organs and her retinas and do all that stuff to help other people. But apparently her autopsy took, was very extensive till the body was removed from the Philadelphia morgue back to Harrisburg, back to our synagogue. They do Hebra Kedisha and she was in a traditional Jewish service. It went very, very quickly. I wasn't raised to be able to deal with this, but we did. And we've tried to do it in the most respectful way. And we want to make

our daughter proud. And that's why we're pursuing all that we are. If you had heard the call we got from the fiance's father, he never said Ellen was dead. He never even said she passed. He only said that something terrible has happened to Ellie. And we don't even refer to her as Ellie. And he didn't even say anything about a ambulance coming or anything like that. All the communication between us and them, meaning the fiance's parents and the police and the district attorney was so evasive and so vague that we didn't even know what was going on. We had no idea.

I asked Sandy and Josh Greenberg when they had last spoken to Sam Goldberg and his family. I would speak to him periodically after Ellen passed, even though he and his family and his family associates chose not to join us in Shiva. I don't know what they were doing in philadelphia but they weren't with us which i think we should have all been together if we were all going to be a family the only thing i knew was they were purporting the misinformation that ellen had a psychological problem the diagnosis was anxiety that's not a psychological problem where you kill yourself and you just don't do it. And also her psychiatrist said she was not suicidal and was written in her notes like that. I've made attempts to reach out to Sam

Goldberg, but haven't been able to reach him. I also asked Josh and Sandy Greenberg about Ellen's injuries. A rendering shows what her injuries looked like, including a gash to Ellen's head. I don't want to bring up something so horrific, but it's a key point here, and this is your daughter. But you've had experts go over her case for you many times. She had 20 stab wounds and 10 of those were to the back of her neck. There's a Justice for Ellen Facebook page and there's a diagram on there, a graphic, and it said eight to the chest, one to the head, one to the abdomen, but 10 to the back of her neck. And I just don't understand how anybody could think that somebody somehow could stab themselves eight times in the back of the neck. And your experts have said the same thing.

Well, I think the next question for you is you need to talk to the Philadelphia establishment, meaning the attorney general, the district attorney, the Philadelphia police department, and the Philadelphia ME. They need to look at those things. We didn't know any of those things existed. We've been in the dark. And if we didn't pursue this, we wouldn't know any of this because they didn't share anything with us. In fact, as strange as this is going to seem to you, there's a gash on her head. Have you seen any pictures? Like this. They don't even mention that in the autopsy.

There are other things that are not mentioned about Ellen's physical condition in the autopsy that we didn't even realize or think about. Kelly Cervantes If you're ultimately successful at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and they determine somehow that you're able to challenge, you know, if you are able to have standing and somehow get Ellen's case reviewed, what's the next step for you? I mean, is there an exhumation what what happened no a trial there's enough evidence that we have experts also it would be a trial the purpose of the trial

is to get the medical examiners to change the the conclusion of suicide to undecided or harmless suicide. Now, here's the problem with that. The medical examiner's conclusion cannot be challenged by any normal tools. So we're breaking precedent there also. So there's two big precedents, as far as I know, there may be third or fourth, who knows, that we've learned about that were challenging. The medical examiner's conclusion and standing. So you've got two things that work against a person when they have this type of situation. We're not alone. It may start,

I've started out that we were getting quote unquote justice for Ellen and we are trying to get justice for our daughter, but there's other people out there that have backed out. When I was in practice, I was a periodontist. I had a patient who was a attorney convinced her to back out on the whole thing because she's not going to win. I've had two attorneys,

one working for the New York criminal justice system, and one who's a criminal defending lawyer, retired, who about, I would say, within the last three, four months, told me to give up. You're not going to win. I didn't. And I didn't say,

what about if it was your daughter? But I'm just telling you what's out there. There are precedents, obviously, in the law that date back God knows how long that should not be there. The medical examiner should not be able to walk on water. He's not infallible. He's a human being like you or me. And they can come up with the wrong conclusion if they have the wrong facts. And here they had the wrong facts. And we're probably going to talk about the famous meeting between the medical examiners and the police where the police fed them the wrong facts. So they changed homicide to suicide. And also when the district attorney was involved in one of the wrong facts. So they changed homicide to suicide. And also when the district attorney was

involved in one of the secret meetings. Talk to me a little bit about what you're referring to with the meeting between police and the medical examiner, where you're saying they were given false facts. Well, first of all, we found out about these secret meetings only because we were pursuing the case and these people were deposed. And so we have that information. Otherwise, they wouldn't have delivered this stuff to us. And we don't even have all the material that the Philadelphia police are withholding from us. Suicide is not a crime. There's no reason if you're not a crime and the case is also closed to withhold any information from our attorneys. But the Philadelphia authorities have only given us about 70% of what they have so far after a judge ordered them to turn it all over.

What do you ultimately want to see? Let's say it is changed to homicide. This would have to start from square one. I mean, you believe, I would assume that this has been botched from the very beginning. We haven't gone that far. We are trying to A, get an unbiased investigation by an unbiased team with an unbiased leader. That's what our suit is about. And guess what? If it leaves Philadelphia, maybe it will have an unbiased opinion. Okay. I'm just, you asked a question and I've answered it. We want the truth. We want justice for Ellen. That's what this is all about. Very simple. It's not involved. We have never, ever pointed a finger at any individual or group of individuals that this

has caused our daughter's death, that she was murdered by you or A or B or C, never. The Greenbergs have a lot of support. There's a Justice for Ellen Facebook page that posts updates frequently, and the case has received widespread coverage. We love the support of the followers of Justice for Ellen on Facebook. And we love the support that the media is giving us. And the fact that you're listening, spreading the word, because when you spread the word,

it's in the universe. It comes down to this. And when it's in the universe, people, the truth will set us free. If it wasn't for the media, we wouldn't have gotten this far. And we thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy and Josh. And just to let you know, I reached out to the officer of now Governor Josh Shapiro. He used to be the AG, as I mentioned earlier. At the time of this recording,

I have not yet heard back. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.