Philly mayor under scrutiny as city resists push to reinvestigate 'suicide' of woman stabbed 20 times
By Michael Ruiz | Fox News
Ellen Greenberg, a Philadelphia teacher, was found dead in her apartment the morning after a blizzard 12 years ago by her then-fiance. She had 20 stab wounds, including 10 to the back of her head and neck, and was covered in bruises in different states of healing.
Ever since, her parents have been fighting city and state leaders for an explanation.
"It's hard to believe with the amount of facts in the universe that no one can understand where we stand right now," her mother, Sandee Greenberg, told Fox News Digital. "And the politicians, they are unconscionable."
The city medical examiner's office initially ruled her daughter's gruesome death a homicide but then called it a suicide after a meeting with police and prosecutors, according to court filings.
"My daughter was being abused," her father, Dr. Josh Greenberg, told Fox News Digital. "She had injuries on her body consistent with abuse."
According to her autopsy report, in addition to wounds that included a huge laceration in the back of her head, she was covered in bruises that showed different stages of healing, he said.
"That's what I think the whole issue of this story," he said. "Somebody didn't want Ellen's abuse to get out there … and that's why she's dead."
But authorities have maintained that they found no evidence of foul play – without publicly explaining how they reached that conclusion.
After two prosecutors – Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and former Attorney General Josh Shapiro, both Democrats – recused themselves from reinvestigating the death, Greenberg's supporters have gathered more than 150,000 signatures on a petition to ask Mayor Jim Kenney, also a Democrat, to order the medical examiner to review her case.
"It’s important that these officials understand the public are watching closely and are prepared to hold them accountable," the petition reads. "Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has the power to order his Chief Medical Examiner to reopen Ellen’s case. We encourage you to reach out to the Mayor’s office and let him know this case is important to you, that Ellen’s death warrants a closer investigation, and that justice for Ellen must be done."
Kenney's office did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
"The big question is why Josh Shapiro, Mayor Kenney, Chester County, the courts, are radio silent," Sandee Greenberg said. "If they had a loved one walking in the shoes that we’re walking in, they would have answers by now."
As Greenberg's parents challenge the city of Philadelphia in two separate court cases, the Chester County District Attorney's Office began an outside investigation into Greenberg's death in August 2022.
But Chester County investigators didn't get their hands on the case until Shapiro, now the Pennsylvania governor, recused himself after sitting on the case for years as attorney general.
"He stole four years from us, holding the case in his office, and we have no evidence of him doing anything," Sandee Greenberg told Fox News Digital.
In July 2022, an independent journalist named Gavin Fish posted a YouTube video to allege that then-AG Shapiro had "a clear conflict of interest" in the case and that Ellen’s fiance’s family were among his campaign donors. The AG’s recusal from the case was announced three days later.
The governor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
When Shapiro was the attorney general, a spokesperson told Fox News Digital that his office undertook "an exhaustive review and conducted new forensic analysis" – but also that new expert testimony and information had been withheld from investigators. The former AG denied having "an actual conflict" but acknowledged the "appearance" of one.
"We wish Ellen's family nothing but the best and our office regrets that, despite our extensive work, our additional efforts have not brought more closure to the questions around her death," then-communications director Jacklin Rhoads said in a statement.
In Chester County, authorities said they could not comment due to the ongoing investigation.
"The case involving Ellen Greenberg is still an ongoing investigation, and therefore, we are unable to provide any further comment at this time," the DA's communications director, Dana Moore, told Fox News Digital.
Greenberg was 27 when her fiance, Samuel Goldberg, told police he came home Jan. 26, kicked in the locked door to their apartment and found her dead with a knife stuck in her chest, leaning against a kitchen cabinet, according to court documents.
"Reviewing the file and the crime scene photographs and the medical examiner’s photographs, I don’t know how you come to that conclusion [of suicide]," Guy D’Andrea, a former homicide prosecutor with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, told Fox News Digital last year.
"At a minimum," the cause of death should have been "undetermined," he said.
There was evidence the scene had been staged and that her body had been moved. The family's private investigator said dried blood would not have dripped sideways across her face if she’d died in the position she was found.
Video evidence from the building surveillance cameras and from the manager's cellphone has since gone missing, according to Greenberg's parents.
Despite the blood-soaked crime scene and stab wounds to the back of her skull, however, investigators found "no evidence of a struggle in the kitchen area or anywhere else in the apartment."
Photos also show the apartment's metal door with a slinging latch above a regular exterior door lock. The latch had minor damage – but still attached in a way that makes it unlikely anyone kicked in a locked door to get inside, experts have told Fox News Digital.
Dr. Marlon Osbourne, a former pathologist at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Philadelphia, initially ruled the death a homicide based on the injuries, then backtracked and revised the manner of death to suicide after conferring with city police, according to one of the lawsuits filed by Greenberg’s family.
The doctor, who now works in Florida, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Tom Brennan, a former state police trooper for 25 years and private investigator the family hired almost a decade ago, told Fox News Digital that through depositions in a civil lawsuit, the family discovered last year that Greenberg suffered a 6.5 centimeter wound to the back of her head after her heart stopped beating.
"We have evidence – we don’t have garbage," Dr. Greenberg said. "We have evidence that doesn’t substantiate what they said … and we have experts who have all the credentials."
Those experts include highly respected forensic pathologists like Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. Henry Lee and Dr. Wayne Ross, he added.
Ross, a specialist in forensic and neuropathology who re-examined Greenberg’s death at Brennan’s behest, found the facts support homicide as the manner of death and that the initial autopsy missed obvious signs of manual strangulation in addition to the stab wounds and other bruising.
"The constellation of scene findings are inconsistent with suicide," he wrote. "Scene findings compatible with being staged."
Wecht, one of the country’s leading experts in the field, also reviewed the case and found the circumstances "strongly suspicious of homicide."
"In all my years of experience and all of the homicides that I’ve done and suicides, I’ve never seen anything like this," he told Fox News Digital last year after the Chester DA announced its review of the case.
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