The 12-year-old death of a Philadelphia area school teacher is being reinvestigated after an exhaustive push from her parents when officials declared the teacher had died by suicide after suffering over 20 stab wounds.
Ellen Greenberg was found dead in her apartment in 2011 with 20 stab wounds, most of them inflicted to the back of her head and neck. Though she was found with a 10-inch blade stuck in her chest, officials with the city’s medical examiner office ruled her death a suicide after a meeting with police and prosecutors, Fox News reported.
Two Democratic prosecutors, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and former Attorney General, now Governor Josh Shapiro, recused themselves from reinvestigating Greenberg’s death, leading the family’s supporters to petition Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney to reopen the investigation into Greenberg’s death, Fox News reported.
“The best way to get away with homicide is to have it ruled a suicide,” Thomas Brennan Jr., a veteran Pennsylvania State Police and retired Dauphin County detective who trained with the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, told PennLive in May about the case.
Greenberg’s parents believe the ruling was issued to hide allegations that their daughter was being abused. In addition to her multiple stab wounds, Greenberg’s autopsy report noted the victim was covered in bruises, all in different stages of healing. “My daughter was being abused,” her father, Dr. Josh Greenberg, told Fox News. “She had injuries on her body consistent with abuse.”
“That’s what I think the whole issue of this story,” he continued. “Somebody didn’t want Ellen’s abuse to get out there … and that’s why she’s dead.”
#Philly mayor under scrutiny as city resists push to reinvestigate ‘suicide’ of woman stabbed 20 times #EllenGreenberg https://t.co/VKTIQgtZZZ
— Michael Ruiz (@mikerreports) July 3, 2023
After a decade-long investigation, Greenberg’s parents have filed two civil lawsuits, one of which is seeking to overturn the suicide ruling. If successful would be the first time such a ruling would be overturned in Pennsylvania, PennLive reported, citing the Greenberg’s attorney, Joseph Podraza.“The city’s of the belief the coroner can do whatever he or she wants,” Podraza said. “It’s unassailable, according to the city.”
“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 prosecutor with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, told Fox News in 2022. “At a minimum,” the cause of death should have been “undetermined,” he argued.
Investigators also said they found evidence that the Greenberg’s body had been moved and the crime scene staged. “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,” 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, told PennLive.
Apart from the civil lawsuits brought by Greenberg’s parents, the Chester County District Attorney’s Office began an outside investigation into the case in August 2022, claiming that couldn’t do so earlier because Shapiro “sat on the case” as Attorney General for years before finally recusing himself, Fox News reported.
“He stole four years from us, holding the case in his office, and we have no evidence of him doing anything,” Sandee Greenberg, the victim’s mother, told Fox News. (RELATED: Meet The Convicted Killers Pennsylvania’s Dem Gov Wants To Save From Death Row)
A spokesperson for Shapiro told the outlet that Shapiro’s office had conducted “an exhaustive review and conducted new forensic analysis” in the case while serving as Attorney General. Shapiro later recused himself, the spokesperson stated, not because of an “actual conflict of interest” but because of the “appearance” of one.
A ruling on the the Greenbergs’ lawsuit seeking to change their daughter’s death from a suicide to a homicide is expected to come down from the Commonwealth Court some time this year. If the Greenbergs are successful in changing the ruling of their daughter’s death, it will allow for a full investigation into her death and could help set a new legal standard in Pennsylvania for appealing manner of death rulings within the state, PennLive reported.