Parents fight suicide ruling in case of woman stabbed from behind
- The parent's of Ellen Greenberg have been fighting to reopen her case
- Sandra Greenberg: 'The police never cooperated with us.'
- Pennsylvania court ruled investigation 'deeply flawed'
maylen
(NewsNation) — After 12 and a half years, the death of 27-year-old Ellen Greenberg continues to be shrouded in uncertainty and controversy.
The Philadelphia teacher’s body was discovered Jan. 26, 2011, by her fiancé, Samuel Goldberg, slumped against her kitchen cabinet, with 20 stab wounds, 10 of those concentrated in the back of her head and neck.
Authorities originally ruled her death a homicide, and later reclassified it to a suicide.
What makes the case even more puzzling is that all the doors and windows of her residence were locked, and she was clutching a clean white towel.
Her parents, Joshua and Sandy Greenberg, sued the city Medical Examiner’s Office in 2019, seeking to have their daughter’s manner of death changed from a suicide back to a homicide or at least “undetermined.”
They are suing city officials over alleged botched police work and an alleged cover-up of her murder.
Sandra and Joshua Greenberg spoke exclusively with “NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield, saying, “We had so much trouble obtaining the facts.”
The Greenbergs remain adamant that their daughter did not take her own life, and they have been fighting to reopen the case.
“Number one, we were never given any answers. The police … never cooperated with us,” Sandra said. “We tried and tried and tried. It was frustrating. But we wanted to get to the truth. We want the truth.”
Sandra told NewsNation in February that she “want(s) my daughter’s name cleared” and called the police investigation a “disgrace.”
Sandra said she didn’t understand why the city of Philadelphia felt that her daughter’s cause of death was a suicide, why they would be holding back on all the facts and information that she said they had at their fingertips.
Joshua Greenberg said he and his wife are just after the truth.
A Pennsylvania court ruled that the Greenbergs do not have standing to sue the city of Philadelphia over the investigation, even though the court determined that the investigation was “deeply flawed.”
“Initially, we kind of thought that, well, this is just absolutely sloppy police work. That’s what our discovery brought out,” the Greenberg’s attorney, Joseph Pedraza, said. “But as we progress with this, it became pretty clear that the pathologists who are involved in Ellen’s case, they themselves had uncovered sufficient information to say that, my lord, this is really a murder.”
NewsNation’s Tyler Wornell contributed to this report.
