PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — In 2011, a Philadelphia elementary school teacher was found stabbed nearly two dozen times on the floor of her Manayunk apartment. It was first ruled a homicide by the Philadelphia Medical Examiner, then changed to death by suicide. After another review, it has once again been ruled a suicide.
Ellen Greenberg, 27, was found dead in her apartment on Jan. 26, 2011. Her fiancé told officials their apartment door was locked with a latch from the inside, so he tried to contact her through text, phone call and email for about an hour before he forced his way inside. He said he found her unresponsive on the kitchen floor. He called 911 and was instructed to render first aid. That’s when he claimed he discovered a knife in her chest, and the 911 operator instructed him to stop and wait until emergency responders arrived. They pronounced her dead at the scene.
The Philadelphia medical examiner initially ruled it a homicide, but about a month later, the manner of death was changed to suicide.
Her family has been fighting in court for more than a decade to change the ruling, pointing to evidence that her body may have been moved and that the wounds could not have been self-inflicted. Earlier this year, the city reached an agreement with Greenberg’s family for another review of the case in an effort to settle two of their lawsuits.
Dr. Lindsay Simon, chief medical examiner of Philadelphia, was tasked to decide if the manner of death should be changed from the current ruling as “suicide” to "could not be determined," or "homicide."
In a 32-page document, Simon stated that Greenberg suffered from anxiety around the time of her death, and while the 23 stab wounds to the back of her head, neck and torso were “admittedly unusual, the fact remains that Ellen would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself.”
Simon also noted that no one else's DNA was on the knife, there was no sign of struggle and her fiancé’s self-reported timeline of events “is corroborated by phone logs, text messages, surveillance footage, keycard swipes, and police interviews.”
With all of these findings, Simon said Greenberg’s death “is best classified as ‘suicide.’”
Joe Podraza, the Greenberg family's lawyer, spoke with our newsgathering partners at NBC10 and said he “is not shocked by her conclusion that it was a suicide since the city had doubled down, tripled down and quadrupled down on that over the years that I have been involved in the case, but I am very troubled by the contents of the report as far as I'm concerned the entire document is tripe."
Podraza said the 27-year-old teacher did not kill herself; she was murdered.
The document and the medical examiner's findings now go to a Philadelphia judge.