Three-part Penn Live Article 

Ellen Greenberg died by ‘suicide’ with 20 stab wounds. Her parents are out to prove that’s impossible.

Lamb McErlane attorney Joseph Podraza represents the Greenberg family.

Article by:  John Luciew | jluciew@pennlive.com

May 15, 2023

 Part I
Homicide detectives hate to admit it. But there’s an all-but-certain way to get away with murder.

“The best way to get away with homicide is to have it ruled a suicide,” said Thomas Brennan Jr., a veteran Pennsylvania State Police and retired Dauphin County detective who trained with the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit.

What’s worse, it’s almost impossible for victims’ families to legally challenge a manner of death ruling by a medical examiner or coroner in Pennsylvania.

Brennan should know.

Now a private detective, he’s hammered away for the past decade, trying to change the ruling that the bizarre, bloody death of 27-year-old Ellen Greenberg was a suicide.

The freckle-faced elementary school teacher, who grew up in the Harrisburg area as the daughter of a prominent family, was found slumped on the kitchen floor of the Manayunk apartment she shared with her fiancé in 2011.

Ellen had been stabbed 20 times, mostly in the back of her neck and head and in her chest. She was found with a 10-inch kitchen knife buried in her chest.

This undated photo of Ellen Greenberg was provided by her family.

Her parents, Joshua and Sandee Greenberg of Lower Paxton Township, have filed two civil lawsuits, one of which is aimed at convincing a court to overturn the suicide ruling, allowing a full investigation of her death.

If they prevail, it would be the first time a medical examiner’s ruling in such a case was successfully challenged in Pennsylvania, said Joseph Podraza, one of the Greenbergs’ attorneys.

This three-part series is based on evidence the Greenbergs, their detective and their attorneys say they have discovered through their own investigation over the past decade. This includes detailed forensic files and medical findings; 3D stab wound analyses of each of the 20 strikes Ellen suffered; and lengthy depositions of three Philadelphia medical examiner officials, one of whom said Ellen was likely already dead when one of those stab wounds occurred.

The evidence is contained in various exhibits filed as part of the Greenbergs’ lawsuits against Philadelphia officials. However, this evidence hasn’t yet been part of the legal arguments, which center on whether medical examiners’ and coroners’ discretion in ruling manner of death can be challenged under Pennsylvania law.

“The city’s of the belief the coroner can do whatever he or she wants,” Podraza said. “It’s unassailable, according to the city.”

A ruling by Commonwealth Court in that aspect of the case is expected this spring or summer.

Joshua and Sandra Greenberg are searching for justice and answers to their daughter Ellen’s death in 2011. April 9, 2019. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.comPENNLIVE.COM

No matter the decision, Josh Greenberg, who estimates he’s spent more than a half-million dollars on the investigation and ongoing legal battle, vows to never give up.

“I feel I’m doing the right thing,” he said. “This is what a father does or should do.”

A ruling in the family’s favor could advance Ellen’s death investigation, clearing the way for the evidence the Greenbergs have collected to be presented in court. It also could help set a new legal standard, establishing specific grounds for appealing manner of death rulings in Pennsylvania, Podraza said.

“We believe when the coroner acts arbitrary and capriciously, the court can step in and correct the error and the arbitrary and capricious conduct by the coroner,” the lawyer said.

Philadelphia Assistant City Solicitor Kelly Susan Diffily, who is defending the officials and institutions named in the Greenbergs’ lawsuits, referred PennLive’s questions and request to interview the officials named in the suits to the city’s communications director. That person did not respond to PennLive’s emails seeking comment.

The Commonwealth Court ruling, if and when it comes, would shift the focus of the case back to the snowy, stormy evening of Jan. 26, 2011, when Ellen, who was being medically treated for anxiety, was found stabbed, bloodied and lifeless in the kitchen of her apparently locked unit in the Venice Lofts apartment building.

Or was it locked?

The 911 call

The case began with a panicked 911 call by Ellen’s live-in fiancé, Samuel Goldberg, placed around 6:30 p.m. from inside their apartment.

Here are excerpts of the call:

Goldberg: “I went downstairs to go work out. I came up and the door was latched. My fiancé’s inside. She wasn’t answering so after about a half hour, I decided to break it down. I see her now. She is on the floor — bloody. She’s not responding.”

Asked by the 911 operator what happened, Goldberg responds, “She may have slipped. There is blood on the table, and her face is a little purple.”

The 911 operator asks if Ellen is breathing, instructing Goldberg to look at her chest.

Goldberg: “I don’t think she is. I really don’t think she is. She’s on her back. I don’t see her moving.”

He’s instructed to attempt CPR. As he draws nearer to Ellen, he sounds shocked by what he sees.

Goldberg: “Oh my God. Ellie, please!”

He’s instructed to bare her chest to perform CPR.

Goldberg: “Her shirt won’t come off. It’s a zipper.”

He then glimpses something more.

Goldberg: “Oh my God, she stabbed herself.”

“Where?” the operator asks.

Goldberg: “The knife’s sticking out. There’s a knife sticking out of her heart.”

“She stabbed herself?” the operator asks.

Goldberg: “I guess so. Or she fell on it.”

“Okay, with a knife in her chest, it’s going to be kind of hard for you to do CPR,” the operator says, then adds: “Don’t touch it. Don’t touch anything.”

Asked to check for “signs of life,” Goldberg says: “Her hands are still warm. I don’t know what that means. But there’s blood everywhere… I’m not touching anything. I can’t believe this, though. We’re the only ones here.”

The operator asks about signs of a break-in.

Goldberg responds at various points: “No, no, no, no. No sign of a break in. There will be when you get here because I had to break the latch to get in. I went downstairs to work out. When I came back, the door was latched. It was like locked from the inside. And I’m yelling…”

An undated photo of Ellen Greenberg with her fiancé, Samuel Goldberg. Photo provided by Greenberg family

Was the door locked?

One of the first things that caught Brennan’s eye when he decided to take the case two years after Ellen’s death were police and medical examiner photos from the scene showing the apartment’s internal door latch.

The device is similar to a bar latch found in numerous hotel rooms. When connected, the unlocked door can be opened a crack, but the metal latch bars further entry.

Goldberg told both the 911 operator and responding police that he opened the door by breaking the latch. Brennan said it’s his professional opinion that the limited number of police and medical examiner photographs of the scene show otherwise.

“The state police sent me to lock-picking school. I used to do all of the surreptitious entries,” Brennan said. “The only way you can open that lock is if one or the other piece is completely dismounted from where it’s mounted, okay? That bar isn’t going to open up for you any other way.”

Brennan points to photos showing the latch only partially dislodged. Both sides of the latch are still fastened to the door and the jamb with multiple screws, the photos show.

“Three of those screws are still mounted. There’s one that’s out,” noted Brennan, concluding damage to the latch wasn’t extensive enough for the apartment door to have been broken open.

Two separate crime scene experts hired by the Greenbergs made similar findings after viewing police photos of the door latch.

A photograph from the crime scene shows the security bar lock, which experts examined for the Greenberg family.

The Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the University of New Haven states in a written report: “Some damage appears to be in the area of this lock in the close-up photograph. There does not appear to be damage to the doorjamb or evidence of a break-in at the dead bolt lock from the other side of the door.” That report is signed by Lee and Elaine M. Pagliaro.

A second report by Det. Scott Eelman of Lititz, a veteran detective employed by the East Lampeter Township Police Department and a court-qualified expert on crime scene analysis and blood spatter, states: “There is damage noted to the door side of the security latch which is still attached to the door. The screws are still present in the screw hole. The doorjamb side of the security latch does not appear to show any damage.”

To be clear, neither Brennan nor the Greenbergs are pointing fingers at anyone. Both civil cases brought by the family against Philadelphia officials refer simply to an “unknown assailant” in what they believe was Ellen’s homicide.

Goldberg and his family have long declined to comment on the case. An August 2022 letter from the Goldberg family attorney, Geoffrey R. Johnson, written in response to a media account of the case says the family has “maintained a respectful silence on the terrible events of that day while law enforcement authorities have done their job and concluded correctly that Ellen’s death was a suicide…”

In his letter, Johnson wrote: “Ellen Greenberg was taking a variety of powerful psychotropic drugs which unfortunately caused suicidal ideation as a side effect.”

The Greenbergs acknowledged Ellen was “struggling with something,” and had seen her psychiatrist on January 12, 17 and 19. Over the course of her treatment for anxiety, Ellen had been prescribed Zoloft first, then switched to a “low dose” of Xanax. After “no success,” she was prescribed Ambien and Klonopin. All this is according to a report compiled by Pennsylvania pathologist Cyril H. Wecht, who was commissioned by the Greenbergs to review Ellen’s case.

Wecht, who had access to Ellen’s psychiatric files, wrote that on Ellen’s Jan. 17 visit, her psychiatrist, Dr. Ellen Berman, noted in her file, “She starts thinking about everything else – not suicidal.” On Jan. 19, Berman noted, “way better.”

PennLive contacted Johnson for additional comment and requests to interview Goldberg and his various family members. Johnson would not discuss the case on the record. But in his August 2022 letter, he wrote that Goldberg was on the phone with his uncle and cousin, James and Kamian Schwartzman, when he broke into the apartment and found Ellen. Johnson also represents the Schwartzmans.

“James and Kamian heard Sam scream hysterically on the phone,” Johnson wrote. “At that time, James and Kamian instructed Sam Goldberg to call 911, which he did immediately.”

When police and detectives arrived, they questioned Sam Goldberg for three hours at the scene and then later that night, at police headquarters, all without an attorney present, Johnson noted in the letter.

“At all times that night, and subsequently, Sam Goldberg has fully cooperated with the police investigation. He has never asserted any privilege and has never refused to speak with the police,” Johnson wrote.

It was Sam’s father, Richard Goldberg, who phoned the Greenbergs that night to “tearfully tell them of Ellen’s death,” Johnson wrote.

 

Wrong-way blood?

As Brennan sifted through photographs of Ellen’s body taken by the medical examiner’s representative at the scene, he made another observation. Although the body was slumped in a sitting position, a horizontal line of dried blood could be seen on her face.

Police and medical examiner photos taken at the scene show coagulated blood that runs straight across to her ear, the detective noted. The blood, he said, should have run down her face, based on her position when found.

Similar findings were made by the two independent crime scene and forensic analysts who reviewed the case for the Greenbergs, issuing written reports that are filed as exhibits in their lawsuits.

Eelman states: “Ms. Greenberg was found in the corner of the kitchen area of the apartment between the sink and the stove. Her back was leaning against the corner cabinet, she was slumped downward with her feet and arms extended. Her head was found to be tilted slightly forward and to the right, with her chin resting against her right shoulder…The bloodstains on her face are inconsistent with the position in which she was found. Specifically, the bloodstain flow pattern diagonally across her forehead from the right to the left and terminating in the left eyebrow would move against the law of gravity… It is my opinion that the blood stain evidence in this case is inconsistent with the position in which Ms. Greenberg was found.”

The report signed by Lee and Pagliaro states: “The view of the decedent in Photo #2 shows a female on the kitchen floor with her head and shoulders against the coroner cabinets near the stove and sink…The blood is flowing in different directions on her face. This could mean she moved after receiving the initial bleeding injuries to her head.”

Or it could mean that someone moved her body, Brennan said.

The autopsy would later show that Ellen suffered 11 stab wounds to the back of her head and neck, which are not visible in the photos. Only a limited number of photos were taken by police and the assistant ME at the scene.

Eelman stops short of drawing any conclusion about Ellen’s death scene with regard to homicide or suicide. Lee and Pagliaro wrote: “The number and type of wounds and bloodstain patterns observed are consistent with a homicide scene.”

Dr. Wayne K. Ross, a veteran forensic and neuropathologist based in Lancaster who often conducts autopsies for county coroners across central Pa., was also commissioned by the Greenbergs to review the case. He wrote: “It is my opinion that the investigating authorities should pursue this case as a homicide. It is further my opinion to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the manner of death is a homicide…The scene findings were indicative of a homicide.”

Additionally, Wecht concluded in his written report for the Greenbergs: “It is my professional opinion that the manner of death of Ellen Greenberg is strongly suspicious of homicide.”

In reaching this conclusion, Wecht cited the lack of a suicide note; what he called “unlikely suicidal stab wounds” to the back of Ellen’s upper neck and lower head; the unlikelihood of suicidal stab wounds made through clothing; and the rarity of multiple wounds in a suicidal stabbing.

It’s not known if investigators on the scene took notice of the details described in the various forensic and crime scene reports commissioned by the Greenbergs. The police incident report dated Jan. 26, 2011, stated: “Homicide and ME processed scene and ruled a suicide.”

Brennan was critical of this, noting he approached his many death investigations with one rule: “You treat every death scene as a homicide until you’ve proven otherwise.”

The very next day, the case would be turned on its head.

‘We never believed suicide’

Joshua Greenberg was about to eulogize his daughter at a Harrisburg synagogue when he received news that her death had been ruled a homicide by the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s office.

As grim as the news was, this brightened an otherwise dark day, he said.

“I was happy,” he recalled. “That’s what I thought it was — murder. We never believed suicide. We didn’t think her problems were so great. She didn’t have depression. She had anxiety.”

Greenberg told PennLive he didn’t get word of the abrupt change in the case from investigating police. He said he heard very little from them throughout the case.

“‘Do you think your daughter committed suicide?’ Nobody ever asked me that,” Greenberg said. “No contact, even that day. We had little contact with any of the detectives.”

He announced the news that Ellen was killed during his eulogy.

“I said, ‘Everybody close your eyes. The spirit of Ellen is with you now, and she will always be there’,” Josh Greenberg recounted.

In that moment, Josh said he believed there’d be justice for Ellen and that it was only a matter of time before her killer was caught.

As the grieving father buried his beloved daughter, he had no idea of the heartaches ahead.

‘Sanitized’ crime scene
Philadelphia pathologist Dr. Marlon Osbourne’s autopsy, conducted the day after Ellen’s death, cited “multiple stab wounds by an unknown person.” With that, he ruled Ellen’s death a homicide.

Yet, by the time Osbourne’s ruling changed the case, investigating police had left Ellen’s apartment late on Jan. 26 without sealing it as a crime scene. The apartment was cleaned and sanitized the next day — before detectives and their forensics team secured a search warrant and returned there on Jan. 28.

The cleaning took place after the apartment management and Sam Goldberg’s father, Richard, each called police on Jan. 27 asking for instructions on how to go about cleaning the bloodied apartment, Johnson confirmed. Both were referred by police to a company specializing in crime scene sanitation. James Schwartzman also entered the apartment and retrieved a funeral suit for Sam, his nephew. He also took work and personal laptops, phones, and credit cards belonging to Sam and Ellen to safeguard them, Johnson confirmed.

Police requested and received the items removed by Schwartzman. The electronic equipment was later analyzed by the FBI. But Brennan said submitting any of the removed items as evidence at a court proceeding could be problematic as the chain of custody had been broken.

Brennan said the chain of custody requires police and prosecutors to document the handling of evidence the entire time it’s held by authorities to ensure its authenticity.

“They abandoned the scene,” Brennan said of police.

The worst twist was yet to come.

Investigation, interrupted
The police investigation into Ellen’s homicide appeared to stall, based on media reports noting little progress in the case and the lack of police updates to the Greenbergs.

Philadelphia police and prosecutors were stuck with a high-profile killing of a pretty, pre-school teacher from a prominent family – and a lack of answers.

Then on April 4, 2011, the rug was pulled out from under the investigation.

Osbourne, the pathologist who performed the autopsy and initially ruled the death a homicide, amended Ellen’s death certificate, officially changing the manner of death to suicide.

The Greenbergs, their attorneys and Brennan said evidence they’ve collected show Ellen’s death ruling was changed after a meeting among police, at least one prosecutor and two medical examiner officials handling the Greenberg case. This evidence includes the ME officials’ own depositions describing the meeting.

Based on this, the second of the Greenbergs’ civil suits accuses the police, prosecutors and ME officials involved in the meeting of “individual and willful misconduct and participating in a conspiracy to cover-up the murder of Ellen R. Greenberg.” The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

The effect of the suicide ruling was to shut down the homicide investigation. Ellen’s 20 stab wounds were filed away as self-inflicted.

But the Greenbergs wouldn’t hear of it. In 2013, they turned to Brennan.

As he sat down with the couple at their Lower Paxton home, listened to their story and reviewed a limited number of files, reports and photos, Brennan spotted what he considered inconsistencies almost immediately. The door latch. The dried blood on Ellen’s face. And there were bruises on Ellen’s wrists, he said.

“They (police at the scene) said that she lacked defense wounds,” Brennan said. “In looking at the autopsy photographs, I take a look at the victim’s wrists. Both wrists show trauma.” All of this would later be documented in forensic exhibits for the Greenbergs’ court cases.

The veteran detective had seen enough. He laid the reports and photos on the table and lifted his stern face to the still-grieving parents and offered his professional opinion.

“From what I’ve looked at and everything you’ve given me, this is, in fact, a homicide,’” he told them.

In the decade since, Brennan said he’s unearthed what he believes to be overwhelming evidence that Ellen Greenberg was killed.

This is what the Greenbergs and their attorneys are fighting to present in court. They have just one question: Why are Philadelphia officials battling so hard to stop them?

“They just don’t want us to be in court with them,” Josh Greenberg said. “Why are the officials so afraid to get into court with us?”

Click here for Part 1 of the article online in Pennlive.com

Part II

Parents’ $500K investigation of Pa. woman’s ‘suicide’ uncovers clues they say point to murder

By: John Luciew | jluciew@pennlive.com

May 16, 2023

Some cases are a prosecutor’s dream. Then there’s the Ellen Greenberg case.

More than a nightmare, her death investigation became something of a hot potato. It was tossed around to several prosecutors in different jurisdictions. There’s no indication any made much progress.

Seth Williams was Philadelphia’s district attorney when Ellen was found stabbed inside her Manayunk apartment on Jan. 26, 2011. The Greenberg family, whipsawed by changed rulings on Ellen’s manner of her death, eventually sought an attorney of their own to dig into what had happened.

That lawyer was Larry Krasner. He’d go from looking into the case from the outside for Joshua and Sandee Greenberg to being elected Philadelphia’s DA in November 2017.

Because of the conflict of interest created by his private work for the Greenbergs, the new DA handed Ellen’s case and all the government files that Philadelphia police, prosecutors and medical examiner officials had generated on it over to the state attorney general’s office.

Heading that office at the time was Josh Shapiro, who’d become governor five years later.

The Greenbergs have little good to say about Shapiro’s four-plus years of handling their daughter’s case. They accuse him and his lieutenants of “sitting on” the case the entire time.

A statement released by the attorney general’s office in 2022 defended their work. It says the office under Shapiro conducted what it called an “exhaustive review,” including “new forensic analysis,” over “four years of work.”

Despite this, the office said it “regretted” those efforts could not bring more closure. Then, citing the “appearance of a conflict of interest,” the AG’s office washed its hands of the matter and returned the case to Philadelphia.

In other words, back to square one.

Conflicted out

The Ellen Greenberg case had come full circle. But it wouldn’t remain there.

Philadelphia was now defending two civil lawsuits filed by the Greenberg family. One seeks to overturn the official ruling of suicide. If granted, this would re-open the death investigation and open the door for all the evidence collected by the Greenbergs’ and their private detective to be aired in court.

The second suit seeks monetary damages and accuses members of Philadelphia’s police, district attorney’s and medical examiner offices of “individual and willful misconduct and participating in a conspiracy to cover up the murder of Ellen R. Greenberg.”

• Murder or suicide? Pa. parents ask FBI for corruption probe in daughter’s 2011 death case

When the Greenberg case was returned by the AG, it was quickly re-assigned to Chester County. The neighboring county has jurisdiction to this day.

Amid the many prosecutorial handoffs, forward progress has been virtually non-existent. There have been no public updates on the case since the attorney general’s statement last year. The Greenbergs said they’ve heard nothing from Chester County.

Ellen’s death remains designated a suicide, and frustrations for the Greenbergs and their detective have never been higher.

“There’s been a lot of passing the buck in terms of the investigation,” said detective Tom Brennan, a veteran of the Pennsylvania state police and Dauphin County, who’s worked privately on the Greenberg case for the past decade.

If the truth about Ellen’s death was to be found, Brennan would have to find it.

When the Greenberg case was returned by the AG, it was quickly re-assigned to Chester County. The neighboring county has jurisdiction to this day.

Amid the many prosecutorial handoffs, forward progress has been virtually non-existent. There have been no public updates on the case since the attorney general’s statement last year. The Greenbergs said they’ve heard nothing from Chester County.

Ellen’s death remains designated a suicide, and frustrations for the Greenbergs and their detective have never been higher.

“There’s been a lot of passing the buck in terms of the investigation,” said detective Tom Brennan, a veteran of the Pennsylvania state police and Dauphin County, who’s worked privately on the Greenberg case for the past decade.

If the truth about Ellen’s death was to be found, Brennan would have to find it.

Do-it-yourself investigation

A veteran of scores of homicide investigations, Brennan has one golden rule: The crime scene is sacrosanct. He dwells there until every possible detail can be absorbed.

In Ellen’s death, police and the assistant ME at the scene ruled it a suicide that very night, as indicated by the Jan. 26, 2011, incident report. After the autopsy the next day, the case was ruled a homicide, and police returned to her apartment on Jan. 28 to collect evidence. But in the intervening period, the apartment had been cleaned and sanitized.

The only remaining documentation of Ellen’s death scene is a limited number of photos taken by police and the assistant ME on the evening of her death. Brennan began with these and saw enough to tell the Greenbergs at his initial meeting with them that he believed Ellen’s death was a homicide.

He would take the case – but not his usual hourly fee.

“I don’t make money on somebody else’s grief,” Brennan said. Instead, he limited the Greenbergs’ costs to his expenses. A decade and thousands of hours of investigation later, the deal remains in place.

From the start, Brennan honed in on the decision that shut down the original homicide investigation. That was the April 4, 2011, manner of death reversal by pathologist Marlon Osbourne, who switched the case from homicide to suicide.

Why did the doctor who performed Ellen’s autopsy do a complete about-face less than three months later?

That was the question Brennan sought to answer.

A Sept. 13, 2013, conference call placed from the Dauphin County coroner’s office to medical examiner officials in Philadelphia began supplying some answers.

Present on the call in Dauphin County was Brennan, pathologist Dr. Wayne Ross, whom the Greenbergs hired to review the autopsy and forensic findings, and county Coroner Graham Hetrick, who according to Brennan’s memo of the call, didn’t speak.

At the other end of the line was Osbourne and his boss, then-Philadelphia Medical Examiner Dr. Samuel Gulino.

Here are excerpts of Brennan’s written memo of the call. Brennan said he reviewed the memo with the call participants in Dauphin County and they agreed with its accuracy.

“Dr. Ross began the conversation by asking Dr. Osbourne a number of questions related to Dr. Osbourne’s findings in his autopsy report. Osbourne responded to all Dr. Ross’ questions. Although Dr. Ross did not agree with a number of Dr. Osbourne’s responses, the call remained congenial.”

The tone of the call changed markedly, however, when Brennan posed the one question he’d been waiting to press ever since taking the case seven months before.

“I then asked Dr. Osbourne why he changed the cause and manner of death from homicide to suicide. Dr. Osbourne responded, ‘I changed it at the insistence of the police because they said there was a lack of defense wounds.’”

Brennan then asked: “Since when do the police have anything to do with making a medical decision regarding the cause and manner of death?”

“Dr. Osbourne did not respond to the question,” Brennan wrote in his memo.

The call was terminated shortly thereafter.

Brennan said he knew he was onto something.

Police, prosecutors seek suicide ruling

The next time the Greenbergs’ team questioned Osbourne and Gulino, both were under oath at April 2021 depositions taken for the family’s lawsuits against Philadelphia officials, including the pair of pathologists.

They were asked about the previously undisclosed meeting among Philadelphia police, a prosecutor and the two ME officials that preceded Osbourne’s decision to amend Ellen’s death certificate to reflect suicide, not homicide.

“It occurred in the medical examiner’s office, in one of our conference rooms,” Gulino said.

Gulino said he couldn’t recall the exact date nor who from the police attended. He did say the meeting occurred before Ellen’s death certificate was officially changed on April 4, 2011, and it included the DA’s deputy chief of homicide.

“I don’t recall who it was that asked me to take part in this meeting,” Gulino said. “I did not initiate the meeting. What I recall being discussed is that the police wanted to present additional evidence that they felt showed that the death of Ellen Greenberg was a suicide and not a homicide.”

Asked what evidence police presented, Gulino said: “The two topics that I remember from that meeting were the absence of defensive cuts on Ellen Greenberg’s hands or forearms and the fact that the door was locked – or the lock was engaged from inside the apartment.”

Osbourne’s deposition went further, with the pathologist saying he’d been asked by a police investigator on at least one other occasion prior to the meeting to change the manner of death. He did not recall the officer’s name nor the names of two officers he said attended the meeting.

Osbourne said he’d never participated in a similar meeting with police and prosecutors to discuss changing the manner of death in any of his other cases.

Osbourne now works as associate medical examiner in Palm Beach County, Fla. He did not respond to PennLive’s emailed questions about the Greenberg case.

Osbourne was the only person with power under Pennsylvania law to change Ellen’s death certificate, according to the Greenbergs’ attorneys.

Following the meeting, he did just that, effectively ending the homicide investigation with the stroke of his pen.

But the Greenbergs wouldn’t allow it.

Subpoena power

It would be nearly nine years between the time Brennan first learned of the meeting and when the Greenbergs and their attorneys filed the second of their civil suits.

Filed in June 2022, this legal action accusing officials of a cover-up is just getting started, especially in terms of the relatively slow process of preliminary motions and discovery. Brennan said he expects they’ll learn the names of more people who attended the meeting once more records and officials are put under subpoena by the Greenbergs’ attorneys.

Meanwhile, the result of that meeting — Ellen’s death being officially changed to suicide — is what the Greenbergs’ other lawsuit, now before the Commonwealth Court, is out to overturn.

But the meeting wasn’t the only thing Brennan unearthed from the medical examiner’s office.

Unbeknownst to the Greenberg family, the office kept a key specimen of Ellen’s knife-stabbed spinal tissue.

What might it prove?

Postmortem wound

Eight years after Ellen’s homicide investigation had been closed by the change to suicide, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner asked his recently hired assistant ME to examine the specimen of Ellen’s spinal cord.

Dr. Lyndsey Emery conducted the exam in 2019, but did not write a report about it, which she said would have been her usual practice. When deposed by the Greenbergs’ attorneys in May 2021, she said she instead communicated her findings verbally to Philadelphia Medical Examiner Sam Gulino.

Those findings contained a bombshell.

The tissue she examined came from a deep stab wound to the back of Ellen’s neck that likely occurred after Ellen’s heart had stopped beating, she said at her deposition.

“She stated that her examination revealed that the wound lacked hemorrhage, and if it lacked hemorrhage, then what? It lacked pulse. And if it lacked pulse, then the victim was dead,” Brennan said.

In a supposed suicide case, bombshells don’t come any bigger.

This image is the result of a 3D computer analysis of the trajectory and depth of 5 of Ellen’s stab wounds. The analysis was commissioned by the family of Ellen Greenberg and conducted by BioMX Corp., a Virginia-based independent computational biomechanics engineering consulting company that reconstructs accidents and “criminal injuries” for court cases.

 In her own words

What follows are excerpts from the transcript of Emery’s 94-page deposition:

The spinal specimen, she said, came from “the stock jar, which is something that we retain on every case, you know, representative portions of organs, and so this was just what was available to me. I don’t know who procured that. I mean, typically, it’s the performing pathologist.”

Emery said she was asked by then-ME Gulino to perform what she called an “informal, curbside” exam of the spinal specimen that lasted “45 minutes to an hour” and included her making “sections” of the specimen to “look at under the microscope.” She also took photos.

To place the specimen into proper context with the injuries found at autopsy, she looked at file photos and found “sharp-force injury … to the bone and ligaments of the back of the spinal column, the vertebral column.” These injuries lined up with damage to the spinal specimen, Emery said, with her exam finding, “a corresponding cut of the dura” that covers the spinal cord. She also found a “1.1-centimeter defect of the vertebral column itself.”

What she didn’t find was any sign of bleeding from the wounds to the spinal specimen.

“There is a defect in the dura that corresponds with the spinal cord – or the spinal column injury, but there is no hemorrhage around it,” she said.

The Greenbergs’ attorney then asked: “And by the fact that now the dura is not demonstrating hemorrhage, as you found also that the spinal column didn’t, would that weigh a little more in suggesting that Ellen was dead at the time that this wound was administered?”

Her answer: “Yes.” And then later in the deposition: “So I have all of this evidence that says there is no hemorrhage or reaction to any of these changes (injuries) in the spinal cord.”

“So, what you’re saying is, Ellen would have been dead when this was administered?” the Greenbergs’ attorney Joseph Podraza asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and elsewhere in the deposition: “I mean, lack of hemorrhage means no pulse.”

Another possible cause of the lack of hemorrhage seen in the spinal tissue sample is that the blood was washed away during the autopsy, Emery said in her deposition. She said this explanation would be more likely for the dura covering, but far less likely for the spinal column, itself.

The doctor seemed to discount another possibility that the cuts to the spinal tissue were made during the autopsy. She said the cuts to the spinal specimen matched the knife damage to the vertebra and spinal column.

Asked if her exam led her to any conclusion on whether Ellen’s death was suicide or homicide, Dr. Emery stated repeatedly throughout the deposition: “I have no opinion on the manner of death.”

This prompted the Greenbergs’ attorney to ask: “All right. But if the 1.1-centimeter wound was administered after Ellen was dead, can we agree that she couldn’t have administered that wound, correct?”

“That is true,” Emery answered.

In her deposition, Emery was asked about the lack of any record of her exam.

“Traditionally, when you are in your official capacity being paid to perform a service, do you generate a report?” the Greenbergs’ attorney asked.

“I do,” she said.

Yet in this case, she said, “the discussion that Dr. Gulino and I had was that he would – we would discuss my opinions and he would incorporate them into his own summary report.”

Asked if Gulino ever did such a report, Emery said, “I don’t know.”

Asked if she ever saw such a report, she said, “No.”

Brennan read these sections aloud to a PennLive reporter, then lowered his copy of the deposition transcript.

“Now, why would they withhold that type of information?” he asked.

The information in that deposition led the Greenbergs to file the second of their two lawsuits, accusing Philadelphia officials who handled the case of a cover-up.

Meanwhile, Brennan said he now had to wonder about something else:

“What other secrets had been buried with Ellen Greenberg?”

Click here for Part II of the article online in Pennlive.com

Part III

May, 17, 2023

Modern analysis of 2011 death finds Pa. teacher’s 20 stab wounds were likely from ‘assailant’

To believe Ellen Greenberg stabbed herself to death, one must accept that she was able to strike 20 consecutive wounds of varying severity. She just kept on stabbing, despite the pain, the blood and at least two major disabling injuries.

Finally, the 27-year-old who stood 5-feet, 7-inches tall and weighed 136 pounds, still had the strength and sheer will to bury a 10-inch kitchen knife in her chest.

The knife was still there when her body was found on Jan. 26, 2011.

Ellen’s parents, Joshua and Sandee Greenberg, insist their daughter was utterly incapable of harming herself at all, but especially in this brutal manner. They’ve been battling for a dozen years to prove it, filing two lawsuits against Philadelphia officials.

The private detective and medical and forensic experts the family has hired say they now can prove it.

The evidence they point to includes 3D computer analysis of the trajectory and depth of all 20 of Ellen’s stab wounds. The analysis was commissioned by the Greenbergs and conducted by BioMX Corp., a Virginia-based independent computational biomechanics engineering consulting company that reconstructs accidents and “criminal injuries” for court cases. The report and the 3D images and the written conclusions it contains are included as exhibits in the Greenbergs’ lawsuits.

The process digitized Ellen’s autopsy photos, producing a 3D model of her exterior and interior anatomy. Each of Ellen’s 20 stab wounds also was digitally re-created based on the exact measurements, depths and placements of each wound, as documented at autopsy.

Finally, the kitchen knife recovered from her chest was digitized and placed into each wound, according to the exact measurements of location, width and depth.

The result is more than 40 3D computer images showing the knife’s angle of entry at each wound and the depth the knife’s blade reached within Ellen’s body for each strike.

The conclusions drawn from this 3D wound analysis contradict the official ruling of suicide in Ellen’s death, the report states.

This image is the result of a 3D computer analysis of the trajectory and depth of all 20 of Ellen’s stab wounds. The analysis was commissioned by the family of Ellen Greenberg and conducted by BioMX Corp., a Virginia-based independent computational biomechanics engineering consulting company that reconstructs accidents and “criminal injuries” for court cases.

 ‘Biomechanically inconsistent’

To believe Ellen stabbed herself is to accept she was able to strike 11 of the 20 blows to the back of her head and neck. When the 3D computer analysis tried to re-create how Ellen did this, it couldn’t, the report states.

“Eleven posterior head and neck wounds sustained by Ellen Greenberg are not biomechanically consistent with self-infliction,” the report states.

Rather, the wounds are “consistent with focalized stabbing by an assailant,” the 3D report adds.

Tom Brennan, the Greenbergs’ private detective who’s hammered away for a decade on the case, put the findings in plainer language.

“If you take a look at the trajectory of the knives, it’s not right. It’s not this.”

Brennan then mimicked holding a knife and jutting it toward his torso, the back of his neck and head.

“It’s this.”

Brennan then reversed the knife, jutting forward, as if stabbing another person.

The 3D analysis identified two of the posterior stab wounds as being particularly severe.

Both were so deep, one penetrated Ellen’s vertebra, spinal column and spinal cord, and the other bored into her brain, the 3D analysis showed.

The stab wound to the spinal column was the one examined years later by Dr. Lyndsey Emery using a spinal specimen retained by the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s office. Based on the lack of hemorrhage from this wound, Emery stated at her sworn deposition in the Greenbergs’ lawsuits that there was a strong possibility Ellen was dead when this blow was struck.

The 3D analysis could not determine the sequence in which each stab wound was struck. The autopsy also did not, or could not, determine the stabbing sequence.

The only thing known for sure is the wound where the knife was found in Ellen’s chest was, by definition, the last one.

But the 3D analysis does conclude that several of those previous stab wounds, such as the neck injury, would have debilitated Ellen, causing “impaired coordination, semi consciousness and unconsciousness,” among numerous other physical and mental effects.

Given this, Brennan posed a question:

“How could she have put a knife in her chest?”

 Brain injury
The autopsy results and 3D wound analysis also show Ellen sustained a deep stab wound to her brain. This strike alone could have caused her to lose consciousness, among other serious effects. This is according to both the 3D analysis and one of the Greenbergs’ pathologists.

The knife used in the Ellen Greenberg case along with the 3D model of the knife used in simulations.

Dr. Wayne Ross, the Lancaster-based neural forensic pathologist hired by the Greenbergs and a court-qualified expert on stab wounds, wrote this about Ellen’s brain injury following his review of the autopsy files:

“There was evidence of a stab wound, which penetrated the cranial cavity and severed the cranial nerves in the brain. As a result, (Ellen) would experience severe pain, cranial nerve dysfunction, and traumatic brain signs and symptoms, including numbness, tingling, irregular heartbeat, bradycardia, respiratory depression, neurogenic shock and impaired loss of consciousness.”

This again begs the question: While suffering such profound effects from this brain wound alone, how could Ellen still have stabbed herself in the chest?

Beyond the devastating physical effects of the spinal and brain wounds, there’s the cumulative toll of 20 separate stab wounds.

The 3D computer modeling report simulated the severity and effects of each of these wounds. What follows is a listing of some of the cumulative physical effects Ellen would have suffered, as concluded in this report:

“Unconsciousness, cranial nerve defects, severe facial pain, impaired coordination, impaired or loss of vision, seizure, weakness, blood loss, loss of heart rate and blood pressure, hypoxic brain damage, respiratory failure, cardiac dysrhythmia, and loss of cerebrospinal fluid” — among other significant symptoms and physical damage.

A ruling of suicide means she just kept stabbing herself through all the blood, all the pain, all the debilitating effects.

The Greenbergs, Brennan and their forensic experts simply don’t buy it. At the very least, they say, the wound analysis findings should be enough to change Ellen’s manner of death from suicide to ‘undetermined.’ This would be enough to reopen her death investigation.

Then there are the bruises.

Defensive wounds

The 3D computer analysis of Ellen’s autopsy photos shows multiple bruises on Ellen’s wrists, right arm, neck, right hip, and both legs.

Of these, the report states: “Multiple contusions of Ellen Greenberg’s upper and lower extremities of various resolutions are biomechanically consistent with assailant-oriented trauma and not self-inflicted injury.”

Brennan suggested, based on his homicide experience, that someone may have held Ellen’s wrists and ankles.

“You can’t say there’s a lack of defense wounds,” he said. “There are defense wounds, that being the bruising.”

Wecht’s report for the Greenbergs also makes note of the bruising, stating: “Multiple contusions in various stages of resolution were present on the upper and lower extremities.”

Wecht’s report didn’t draw a specific conclusion about the bruises. But his overall conclusion reached after reviewing the case states: “Based upon reasonable degree of medical certainty, it is my professional opinion that the manner of death of Ellen Greenberg is strongly suspicious of homicide.”

Dr. Ross, a court-qualified expert on blunt-force trauma, wrote in his report for the Greenbergs that the bruising on Ellen’s neck was “evidence of strangulation.” He adds in the report: “There was a mark over the front of the neck which was consistent with a fingernail mark. There were multiple bruises under the neck and in the strap muscles over the right side of the neck.”

The latter details were based on Ross’ review of autopsy photos of the internal structures of Ellen’s neck and throat.

Detective Tom Brennan with documents dealing with the Ellen Greenberg case.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com

Brennan explained this further based on his experience working homicide cases and witnessing autopsies.

“At autopsy, they take the skin from in front, and they flip it up so they can see what’s going on underneath with the esophagus and everything,” Brennan said.

He moved a finger to a spot on an autopsy photo of Ellen’s internal throat anatomy.

“Here you see a hemorrhage,” he said. “Okay, you can see it more plainly on this one. That’s hemorrhage. That’s from this.”

With both hands at his throat, Brennan mimicked strangulation, demonstrating what in his opinion had occurred.

“That’s what causes that,” he said. “So, you have manual strangulation.”

Dr. Ross drew the same conclusion from the neck bruising and internal throat hemorrhage, writing: “The patterns were compatible with a manual strangulation.”

Wecht’s report doesn’t mention the neck bruising or the possibility of manual strangulation.

Still more forensic evidence suggests Ellen suffered a sustained pattern of physical abuse in the weeks leading up to her death.

‘Repeated beatings’
Beyond the fresher bruises, Ellen’s body was marked by numerous older bruises at various stages of healing. They were on her torso, arm and both legs.

“There were multiple bruises over the body, some of which were fresh, many of which were older,” wrote Ross, one of two pathologists hired by the Greenbergs. “The patterns were consistent with a repeated beating.”

Wecht’s report describes the bruising but doesn’t draw any conclusions about the cause.

The Greenbergs believe the bruises merited more scrutiny by Philadelphia police, prosecutors and the medical examiner.

“I don’t understand why the abuse wasn’t a bigger issue,” Ellen’s dad said.

In retrospect, any abuse that Ellen may have suffered could explain her darkening mood and her intention, communicated to her parents, to leave Philadelphia, where she had a teaching job and live-in fiancé, and return home to Harrisburg, her parents said.

The Greenbergs said they later learned through a family friend that Ellen was preparing to leave the very day she died.

Wecht, in his review of Ellen’s psychiatric files, stated in his report for the Greenbergs that there was no information about any “verbal or physical confrontations with her fiancé.” In fact, there’s a record of Ellen telling her psychiatrist nothing of that nature had ever occurred, Wecht’s report states.

“There is somebody out there who did this, and that person is on the loose,” Josh Greenberg said. “If that person is set off again, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

An undated photo of Ellen Greenberg and her parents Sandra and Joshua. Photo provided by Greenberg family

 ‘Bleeding in pain’

The Greenbergs’ long search for justice for Ellen is sure to continue.

Even if the family prevails at Commonwealth Court in its bid to legally challenge the suicide ruling, Josh Greenberg said he’s positive Philadelphia will appeal.

“We’re just moving up a legal ladder,” he said. “It’s a very tough, frustrating life. And it’s very disappointing who we are fighting.”

He accused the city of trying to wait him out — or bleed him dry financially.

“The city’s job is to postpone, procrastinate and make excuses,” Greenberg said. “It’s a stall. They’re hoping I die or run out of money.”

Sometimes, this causes Greenberg to burn with rage.

“I hope these people … see my daughter bleeding in pain every time they look at a child. That’s what we have to face. That’s what we see,” he said. “It should haunt them forever and ever, if they have any kind of conscience.”

Overall, the Greenbergs say their goal of winning justice for their daughter has imbued their golden years with deeper meaning.

“This has given us a purpose and a mission,” Josh Greenberg said. “When I think about stopping this mission, I get sick.”

So does Brennan.

Sick, he said, because his experiences on this case have caused the law enforcement veteran to wonder what ever happened to finding the truth?

“All we’re trying to do is to present our evidence,” Brennan said.

Click here for Part III on Pennlive.com.