Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 27-year-old Ellen Greenberg lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and she was an elementary school teacher at the Juniata Academy.
She taught first grade, and her friends and family members affectionately called her Ellie.
On January 26th, 2011, there was a huge blizzard about to hit the area, so Ellen and her students wound up going home early that day, so as not to get caught in the impending snow.
Sadly, her students would never see her alive again. The teacher that they absolutely adored would meet a strange and tragic end.
Facebook; pictured above is Ellen
On her way home to her apartment in Philadelphia, Ellen stopped to make sure she had gas in her car.
She did not live alone; she lived on the sixth floor of the Venice Lofts apartment complex with her 28-year-old fiancé, TV producer Sam Goldberg.
The two of them had been together for three years and seemed to have a great relationship. Their wedding was coming up, and Ellen had already picked out her dress.
She also mailed out the save the dates for their wedding just 4 days before she died.
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Facebook; Ellen smiles in front of a cheese board in the photo above
But, in the months leading up to Ellen’s last day on earth, she started to act…not quite like herself at all despite seeming to have it all.
She was engaged to a handsome young man with a great job, she had her wedding to look forward to, and she was a talented teacher whose efforts didn’t go unnoticed.
Not only did her students love her; her family and friends thought the world of her too, and her parents were a wonderful support system for her.
Facebook; Ellen is pictured above on her way out the door while wearing a winter coat
Extroverted Ellen was typically vivacious and full of life, but she was becoming increasingly anxiety-ridden. She was withdrawn. She was just not the Ellen her friends and family knew and loved.
Ellen’s parents, Joshua and Sandra Greenberg, questioned Ellen about what was going on.
Facebook; Ellen smiles big in the above photo
She repeatedly told them she was just stressed out at school and the whole wedding planning process.
Some of Ellen’s fellow teachers would later say that she didn’t seem to be more frazzled or uneasy than her coworkers. She didn’t seem to be acting differently in their eyes.
And then, Ellen asked her parents if she could move back home to live with them, just months away from her wedding.
Facebook; Ellen excitedly shows off her engagement ring in the photo above
Of course, everyone wondered if Ellen’s anxiety and change in behavior had something to do with her fiancé Sam.
She insisted she didn’t want to move home because of anything that he did.
She also insisted that he had nothing to do with her anxiety. Ellen had nothing bad to say about Sam at all. She maintained he was the perfect man.
Ellen’s parents, Joshua and Sandra, were so worried sick about their daughter at this point that they encouraged her to seek professional help.
Facebook; Ellen smiles alongside her mom in the photo above
Ellen finally relented and made several appointments to see a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Ellen Berman.
She made three appointments with her leading up to her death.
Dr. Ellen Berman would later tell investigators that “there was never any feeling of suicidal thoughts” with her.
Facebook; Ellen curls up on the couch in the photo above
5 days before Ellen’s death was the very last time Dr. Ellen Berman would see her patient, even though she had an appointment with her on January 27th.
Dr. Ellen did inquire about Sam; Ellen denied anything was wrong in their relationship and she had “nothing but good things to say” about the man she was about to spend the rest of her life with.
Dr. Ellen confirmed that Ellen did have severe anxiety, so she prescribed Ambien to help her sleep at night and Klonopin, which is used to treat and reduce anxiety.
And, a toxicology report confirmed that Ellen had taken both her Ambien and Klonopin prescriptions the day that she died.
Facebook; Ellen is pictured above smiling while driving a golf cart
Let’s get back to January 26th, 2011; Ellen’s last day on earth. After she came home from work early due to the impending blizzard, her fiancé Sam headed to the gym at 4:45 that evening.
Sam was only gone for about 30 minutes, but when he got back, he was locked out and couldn’t get back in.
Even though he had keys to their apartment, the swing lock of the apartment had been put in place from the inside…
Facebook; 27-year-old teacher Ellen smiles in the photo above
For the next hour, Sam stood outside the apartment he shared with Ellen, asking her to open the door.
He tried knocking on their door over and over again, but there was no answer. He then sent Ellen a slew of text messages. He called her. He emailed her.
Sam ultimately ended up breaking into his own apartment, which had been barred from the inside with the security latch.
While court documents state that the security guard stood by while it happened since it was against the building’s policy to assist him in breaking the lock, Ellen’s family has publicly stated that Sam broke into the apartment alone.
It was now 6:33 in the evening when Sam was able to get inside, and what he found was truly horrific.
Ellen was right there, her legs lying across the floor of their kitchen, which was located a few steps away from the front door.
Her shoulders, neck, and head were up against the kitchen cabinets. She was holding a bright white towel in her left hand.
There was fruit neatly sliced on the countertop and two clean knives sitting in the sink.
She had over 20 different stab wounds across her body; 10 of which were located around the back of her neck.
When Sam saw her, he immediately called 911, and the operator told him to perform CPR on her.
Sam then told the operator that Ellen had a knife sticking straight out of her chest, and the operator told him to stop CPR.
What on earth had happened to Ellen, and why did authorities struggle with ruling her death a suicide or homicide?
Facebook; Ellen smiles big in the photo above
Police and first responders quickly arrived on the scene, and Ellen was sadly pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m., just 7 minutes after Sam had successfully forced their apartment door open.
Authorities immediately set to work processing the crime scene and trying to piece together what actually happened to Ellen.
Ellen was right there in front of them, and she had no visible marks or cuts on her to indicate she had fought off an attacker.
In cases where victims have been stabbed, they almost always have defensive wounds from where they tried to protect themselves from the knife used on them.
They either hold up their arms to try to shield themselves from the attack or sometimes they try to grab the weapon away.
That was just not the case here.
If Ellen had been attacked, she didn’t fight back. Maybe she didn’t have time. Maybe she was taken by surprise.
Authorities began looking at the rest of Ellen and Sam’s apartment. Ellen’s blood was only found inside the kitchen; nowhere else.
There were no signs of a struggle. Everything in the couple’s apartment was organized and clean. Nothing was out of place.
There were no signs of any kind of breaking or entering, aside from the swing lock Sam had busted down on the front door.
The balcony attached to the apartment had fresh snow on it, but there were no footprints. The snow was fresh, clean, and not disturbed in any way.
Again, the two of them lived on the sixth floor of the apartment complex, so it would be pretty difficult for someone to climb all the way up there to break in. Nothing of Ellen or Sam’s had been stolen, and there was plenty that could have been: 3 laptops and money had been sitting out.
Pictured above is a screenshot of the court documents detailing how the apartment looked after Ellen was found locked inside
Neighbors were questioned, but the only thing they heard was Sam coming back from the gym and trying to get into the apartment.
They never heard the couple argue that night.
The apartment complex was very secure and there was a security guard downstairs, who also had not seen anything.
Authorities reviewed all the security footage from the cameras in the apartment lobby, but nothing suspicious came up, and certainly, nobody suspicious was discovered.
The knife inside Ellen’s chest would later come back with no other DNA aside from her own.
Aside from that, the only DNA to be found anywhere in the apartment that didn’t belong to Ellen belonged to Sam.
Facebook; Ellen is pictured above eating something and looking at the camera
After questioning Sam, who was nothing but cooperative, authorities started to think this had to be a suicide.
The weird thing about this theory though was that Ellen didn’t leave a suicide note behind anywhere in the apartment.
She also hadn’t looked up ways to end her own life on any of the laptops the couple owned.
But, detectives pointed to there being no evidence of a break-in. They pointed to Sam not being home.
They pointed to Sam fully cooperating with them. They pointed to Ellen having absolutely no defensive wounds anywhere on her.
Facebook; Ellen smiles in the above photo while wearing a black dress
The day after Ellen was found dead in her apartment, Dr. Marlon Osbourne, the Assistant Philadelphia Medical Examiner, started her autopsy.
He discovered 10 different types of cuts on the backside of Ellen’s neck ranging in depth and severity. He found 8 stab marks in Ellen’s chest.
He took note of a head wound and a cut to her stomach. And he also noticed that Ellen was sporting 11 different bruises on her right leg, right arm, and abdomen.
Dr. Marlon considered what Ellen’s body was telling him. At first, he ruled her cause of death a homicide.
It quickly hit the headlines that Ellen had died by homicide.
Ellen’s parents Joshua and Sandra later stood at Ellen’s funeral to tell the gathered mourners that Ellen had not committed suicide. They broke the news to the room.
It was now up to the Philadelphia Homicide Unit to determine what had happened and who had ended Ellen’s life that night.
After months of reviewing all of the evidence, the detectives assigned to Ellen’s case had something to say.
They had reached their own conclusion. And it didn’t line up with what the medical examiner discovered.
Detectives considered the following facts: Ellen had been extremely anxious leading up to her death. She had been locked inside her apartment.
There was no DNA but hers and Sam’s at the scene. There were no signs of a struggle. There were no defensive wounds.
But some of her wounds were really shallow. They thought this pointed to something.
Facebook; Ellen smiles in the above photo
They thought her more shallow cuts were potentially indicative of her testing out how it would feel to turn the knife on herself.
They also had an outside neuropathologist take a look at her spinal cord near the back of her neck, and it was determined that if she did indeed stab herself, she hit her spinal cord sheath, which means she would have been unable to feel the wounds after that point.
It meant that she could have been able to inflict multiple wounds on herself without feeling the effects.
Investigators ruled Ellen’s death was a suicide, and the medical examiner who initially suspected Ellen had been murdered changed his ruling to suicide too.
That is hardly where Ellen’s story ends. In fact, it was just the beginning.
Facebook; Ellen sips a drink on a beach in the photo above
To say Ellen’s parents Joshua and Sandra were shocked was an understatement. They were appalled. They were outraged. They were beside themselves.
Ellen was not capable of hurting anyone according to her family, let alone capable of bringing any kind of harm to herself.
She didn’t have the guts to get her ears pierced. How could she find it in her to stab herself?
Also, why would Ellen fill her car up with gas if she was on her way home to end her life?
Just because she was struggling to balance work and a wedding in the months leading up to her death didn’t mean she was suicidal.
The Greenbergs were going to do their own digging and hire their own authorities to investigate Ellen’s death. It all just did not make sense. It didn’t add up to them.
Ellen’s parents have now spent more than a decade fighting for her. They are fighting for answers.
They are fighting to bring her justice and figure out who her killer is because they know in their heart of hearts Ellen would not take her own life.
In 2018, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office did review Ellen’s case and they considered her cause of death to be suicide.
The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office later made a statement saying that Ellen had done certain internet searches on one of the computers found in her apartment indicating she was thinking of ending her life, though this was contrary to the original court documents filed by authorities.
This is also something the team of experts hired by Ellen’s family disproved earlier this year.
“Ellen did NOT search for suicide or death on her computer,” her parents explained this past February.
“This is a significant development, as the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office stated that these searches supported a finding of Suicide.”
Ellen’s parents are currently pursuing a civil case, and they want Ellen’s case reopened.
Change.org; Ellen is pictured above holding a small dog
Ellen’s family has met with many experts who agree that it’s very unlikely Ellen would stab herself in the back of the neck. For one thing; it’s difficult to do. For another, it’s not typically seen in suicide cases.
She also had stab marks on her back, and it’s hard enough to put something like lotion back there, let alone stab marks.
In a recent update on the fight to have Ellen’s case reopened, her parents shared on October 10th that their legal team deposed a woman by the name of Dr. Lyndsey Emery.
Dr. Emery is a neuropathologist who was hired by the city of Philadephia to take a look at Ellen in 2019, and what Dr. Emery recently had to say raises some eyebrows for sure about Ellen’s true cause of death.
“During her deposition, Dr. Emery revealed that there was no hemorrhaging around the stab wound in Ellen’s spinal cord,” Ellen’s parents wrote on Facebook.
“If Ellen had a pulse during that particular stab wound, hemorrhaging would have occurred. Thus, Ellen because NO PULSE when she was stabbed in her spinal cord…. she did not stab herself there.”
On October 21st, Ellen’s parents said that their civil case is now headed to trial, which means a judge will finally be hearing their side of this strange story.