Jan. 16, 2026
Stabbed 20 Times But Young Teacher’s Death Ruled a Suicide; Feds Now Involved
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RSS Feed This week, the parents of 27-year-old Elle Greenberg are hopeful, after fighting for nearly 15 years to have their daughter’s death ruled a homicide. Greenberg was found dead by her fiancé in January of 2011 with more than 20 stab wounds, some in the back of her neck, and a 10 inch knife in her chest. 2 weeks later, investigators ruled it a suicide, but now the medical examiner who performed Greenberg’s original autopsy is saying her death should NOT be designated as a suicide.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it it's Friday, January sixteenth, and when you hear that a woman was stabbed more than twenty times, but her death has ruled a suicide, you're gonna have questions. But now here we are, fifteen years after the death of Ellen Greenberg, the federal government seems to have some questions about this too. Finally, and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Fascinating case. That's the first question, how is it possible that someone who is stabbed twenty times you're going to tell me that's a suicide.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: Yes, And imagine being the parents of Ellen Greenberg and you find out that your twenty seven year old daughter.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: Who is seemingly happy, engaged.
00:00:42
Speaker 2: She has a fiance, she's a school teacher, that all of a sudden she is found in her kitchen in Philadelphia with all of these stab wounds, including a ten inch knife in her chest. That she died by suicide and not by homicide. That has never sat well with her parents, who have said, our daughter did not commit suicide. We know that she was murdered. However, her official cause of death is suicide.
00:01:12
Speaker 1: To anybody with common sense, that just doesn't make sense now you're curious and you want to hear some more answers, and we'll get into some of the back and forth. But one medical examine the rules it a homicide and comes back and said a suicide, and then another group says, no, we think it's a suicide. Then another group says, so there's been a lot of back and forth. The official ruling, we should say is in fact that she died by suicide. There has, at least as far as I have seen robes, never actually had a suspect, never had anybody under investigation in this case, in concluding the fiance.
00:01:43
Speaker 2: And that's a problem for the parents. And they feel like and they have said, this is a victory for them because this week on Thursday, we are talking almost fifteen years to the day, because Ellen Greenberg died on January twenty six, twenty eleven. But on Thursday, the US Attorney's Office issued subpoenas around this case. They are apparently opening an inquiry into whether Ellen Greenberg's death was properly investigated. And that's important because they're not necessarily going back and saying we're going to change or potentially change her manner of death. But what they're doing is they're saying this investigation possibly was not conducted properly. The family has said the investigation was botched from the beginning. They're mincing no words, but apparently the US Attorney's Office is seeking documents from the Philadelphia Police Department and other agencies.
00:02:39
Speaker 3: That's the information we receive.
00:02:41
Speaker 1: You have to ask why, why now? And if you're not looking into the actual death, why are you looking into the investigation of her death? So this looks like they're looking into this is a corruption exactly right, So why that? Now? For the family, you have to go, Okay, if this came across their desk, what else is coming? This is our case. So even if they I bet the family's been screaming this. So I bet even if they don't get a change in the ruling of the manner of her death, to hear that maybe there was some wrongdoing that led to an extended amount of pain that their family didn't need to go through, who knows.
00:03:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, think about this now.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: It's hard enough to lose a child, period, but to have her death be unexplained, or at least for you not to feel like you actually know what happened to your daughter. That's a whole other level of pain and torture on top of the death itself. This is the statement the official statement from the family after the announcement of.
00:03:40
Speaker 3: This inquiry. So here's what they said.
00:03:42
Speaker 2: The prospects of the federal United States attorneys investigating any aspect of Ellen's murder is a dream come true for her parents, Sandy and Josh. We have only wanted justice for Ellen and now have renewed hope this will occur. Sandy and Josh and their lawyers will continue to pursue and support all avenues to secure justice in this matter.
00:04:05
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
00:04:07
Speaker 1: What is how is it pot What does justice now look like? They didn't like the investigation or is it your understanding as well, ropes they didn't like how it was conducted, or just they didn't like the conclusion. It almost SPADs like it's two different things, right.
00:04:23
Speaker 2: I mean to think that her death, and we'll get into the details of it, was initially ruled a homicide for obvious reasons, but two weeks later they changed it to suicide, and so that doesn't seem like a lot of time. But we'll get into the why and how this all happened. The details of her death as we know them. She was found by her fiance on January that was January twenty sixth, correct, twenty eleven.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: He said he found.
00:04:49
Speaker 2: Her in the kitchen of their home, slumped on the floor against the kitchen cabinets. He said that she had been stabbed at least twenty times, including and this is the thing that gets me, ten times in the back of her neck. And when he found her, she still had a ten inch knife lodged in her chest.
00:05:09
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not for most folks you hear that. Okay, obviously she was murdered. It's just not possible. But then they started adding, let's before we even get into the stab wounds. I mean, there was no what is it, no sign of forced entry and the place was locked. There was no sign of a struggle, There was no evidence of anybody else being in that.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: House, and there was no defensive wounds. Yeah, when you say no sign of struggle, but to have no defensive wounds and we'll get into what the one of the medical examiners said that they described the stab wounds as hesitation wounds. So this is what all led to their conclusion ultimately that there was a suicide, not a homicides because the door I would say a big part of this was that the door was locked from the inside. But this is all according to the fiance, and the investigators did a you know, did their due diligence, and of course he would have been someone they would have wanted to talk to immediately, because we know from crime stories, if someone's murdered, you look at the person who reports to love that.
00:06:10
Speaker 1: Now this is one that oh look, we deal with and cover a lot and watch a lot when it comes to crime. Always, no matter where he was on planet Earth, if his fiance ends up dead, he is in that moment. So I suspect number one, no matter where he is. You add to that, you're the one that reports that she has died. You're nobody else is around and you found her all Now they're really the zeroing in on you. So robes for them to say he has been cleared, then you know they gave him all kinds of scrutiny.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: Yes, unless there was corruption involved at some level like that, you know, that's those are some of the.
00:06:52
Speaker 3: Questions, right.
00:06:52
Speaker 1: The question is the cover up to possibly cover this guy?
00:06:55
Speaker 3: One knows?
00:06:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so here's what's changed, because something did change in Jaianuary of twenty twenty five, so exactly one year ago. Doctor Marlon Osborne, that is the pathologist who performed the original autopsy on Ellen. He said in a sworn statement this Ellen's manner of death should be designated as something other than suicide. A little ambiguous, but certainly a reverse from what he had said originally. Now a month after this, so, in February of twenty twenty five, the city of Philadelphia reached a settlement with the Greenbergs, and so they paid the family six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and agreed to an independent review of their daughter's autopsy, and in exchange, the family the parents dropped their lawsuit against the city. So that all happened in February of twenty twenty five, following this sworn statement by the original pathologist who conducted the original autopsy.
00:07:58
Speaker 3: Does that move the needle free in any way?
00:08:01
Speaker 1: No, It's one of those things. If there is a medical professional, I need to hear the answer as to why. If there is a medical professional who looks at a case in which somebody was stabbed twenty times and said it was a suicide. I obviously have another question, and some of them have been answered. I haven't done a deep enough dive, done a deep enough dive into this case. But you hear another. I think it's just impossible. Robes for medical professional, you have to they know something. I don't know right to call this a How are you going to convince me it's a suicide? She's gotta stabbed twenty times?
00:08:37
Speaker 2: It is?
00:08:39
Speaker 1: There is where I guess some context is needed for what a stab wound is and how it's classified and how it's characterized. Sometimes I hear stab wound, we generally think we know what that means. But like you said, some of these were They said they considered them to be attempts practices, hesitation wounds. That's still a tough cell.
00:09:03
Speaker 2: It's so tough. Here's another wrinkle. So in twenty twenty four Pennsylvania, a court in Pennsylvania acknowledged serious flaws in the investigation into her death. It dismissed a lawsuit that the parents brought to try and change her death certificate. They wanted to change the death certificate from suicide to homicide, so they sued Pennsylvania. The court refused to change the death certificate, but in their ruling acknowledged that the investigation. So they said, the court wrote that it was acutely aware of the deeply flawed investigation conducted by city police prosecutors and the City of Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office.
00:09:48
Speaker 3: That's a serious charge that.
00:09:50
Speaker 2: A court in Pennsylvania put into a court filing about this investigation. That's significant.
00:10:00
Speaker 1: And I guess this is where and this is why it's corruption coming into that. I don't know the motivation for the corruption.
00:10:07
Speaker 3: I don't either.
00:10:08
Speaker 1: You're covering your own butts because you screwed up and now you have to double and triple and quadruple down on making sure nothing comes out. I don't know. Or it could be an awful, unfortunate mess in which this young lady was troubled in some way that people didn't realize. She didn't know any other way out who. I haven't seen any other explanation. Have you seen a lot about her? I mean her family and friends. Would they say her state was or mental state was?
00:10:33
Speaker 2: Yes, so there is there was some information and we can get into it that she may have been suffering from anxiety at the time of her death, and that anxiety came from.
00:10:45
Speaker 3: Her work as a teacher.
00:10:47
Speaker 2: Look, we don't know what she was going through, and a lot of times people don't share with close family and friends their actual problems or how they're truly suffering. But it is a strange way. I think it's fair to say everybody can agree that it is a very bizarre way to die by suicide.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: You can't question that after the fact.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: But it just seems like, especially for me, the stabs on the back of your neck, it's almost like suicide made to look like homicide. I don't I can't get my head around choosing that method.
00:11:21
Speaker 1: I didn't look and I haven't heard of a case of anything like this possibly before. But that's just twenty stable and then some of the number. I think later on they came back and added, so we missed some wounds, and so there was twenty plus in the back of the neck. Now that we're concentrated, there wasn't if she I don't know, Robes, you make the argument, if she was being attacked and stabbed, she didn't raise a finger to fight back, and if she was incapacitated immediately, why stabber in the back of the neck, roll her over stabber in the chest. What'd you say? She was found how.
00:12:02
Speaker 2: Sitting with her legs splayed out, slumped over with a knife in her chest, up against kitchen cabinets.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: It is tough, all right.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: When we come back, we are going to tell you the only public statement her fiance has ever made over these past fifteen years publicly, and he made it actually fairly recently to a news organization. Will tell you what he had to say about the mysterious death of his fiance. And welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ, where we are talking about a mysterious death that happened in twenty eleven twenty seven year old Ellen Greenberg. Her death was ruled a suicide. However, she was found in her Philadelphia kitchen with a ten inch knife in her chest but more than twenty other stab wounds, including almost a dozen in the back of her neck. Her parents have never believed that she died by suicide, and now late this week we got worried that the US Attorney's Office is opening an inquiry into whether or not her death was properly investigated. So they're not necessarily saying, hey, we're here to find out how she died and to potentially switch it to homicide from suicide. But they are acknowledging, and a court last year also acknowledged that it appears there were problems and perhaps bigger issues when it came to how police and the Medical Examiner's office actually investigated this case.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: And for that that represents hope for the family of some kind of they haven't had for coming up on twenty years. Right, it's been fifteen years, and to them, they still don't know how their daughter died and somebody who's running around out there who killed her?
00:14:00
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and that is what they believe. Now we should point out you said this earlier before the break. The fiance, Sam Goldberg was never a suspect. He has never been charged. He is the one who found her, he said. He told investigators that the lock on the door was latched from the inside, but he has never again been accused of any wrongdoing. This past fall, in September, Hulu did a whole documentary on her death, and they did raise questions about his actions, including a nine to one to one call where apparently he told dispatchers that his fiance had fallen on a knife.
00:14:35
Speaker 3: So he has obviously been cleared.
00:14:38
Speaker 2: I'm sure he's been grilled, investigated everything.
00:14:41
Speaker 3: You might imagine.
00:14:42
Speaker 2: If you're the fiance who finds your partner in this condition and you're the only one who saw her, and you're the only and you're the one who found her, of course you're going to be scrutinized significantly by police.
00:14:54
Speaker 1: Imagine the detectives that got that call. Oh, she's been stabbed twenty times. The fiance found her. Gonna be a short knife us.
00:15:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got our guy. Yeah, that's what they would have. I mean, that would be the immediate, first drawn conclusion.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: So but the only time he has ever spoken publicly was in twenty twenty four, and it was to CNN, and here is his quote. And this is really interesting. Mental illness is very real and has many victims. I hope and pray that you never lose someone you love like I did to a terrible disease and then be accused by ignorant and misinformed.
00:15:33
Speaker 3: People of causing her death. Year was that twenty twenty four.
00:15:38
Speaker 2: So on the same page the family, it doesn't seem as though.
00:15:42
Speaker 1: He's accepted that she killed herself.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: Yes, and he is acknowledging that he has been in some online circles and certainly potentially even with the family considered possibly responsible for her death. He understands what some people are saying, and especially after this Hulu documentary, a lot of people if you go online, Reddit, forums, et cetera. Oh, they think he's absolutely the guy. There are so many conspiracy theorists out there, and look, I get it, I mean, it makes sense, but he is living under that scrutiny. I'm sure he would welcome this investigation if he wants his Look, he has been cleared officially, but unofficially he hasn't, and so that has to weigh on him. Wow, in so many ways, everywhere he goes throughout his life, people might just question him, and that has to be a terrible cloud to live under.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: That's tough. That's tough. But what an awful story you've made me want to look into this one a little more and see some of those reports and see some like you said, her family their team put out their own, yes, draw up drawings of you showed it to me, like, holy hell, if this is how she was stabbed.
00:16:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you look, you can look, you can google it pretty easily.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: But they had their own private investigator actually put knives where all of her stab wounds were and the depth at which the blade went in, and it was this independent investigator's opinion that especially a couple of the knive wounds, the stab wounds that went into the back of her neck, would have incapacitated her. That they went in deep enough where it would have hit her brain, she would not have been able to then give that final stab in the chest where the knife ended up.
00:17:19
Speaker 3: So they are absolutely of the.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: Belief that she was murdered and not she did not die by suicide. Look, we may never know, but this new inquiry could give us some answers or at least some insight into the process. And we will be sure to follow this story and give you any updates as they become available.
00:17:40
Speaker 3: But in the meantime, thank you so much for listening to us.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: As always, guys, I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ.
00:17:45
Speaker 3: Holmes. We will talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it it's Friday, January sixteenth, and when you hear that a woman was stabbed more than twenty times, but her death has ruled a suicide, you're gonna have questions. But now here we are, fifteen years after the death of Ellen Greenberg, the federal government seems to have some questions about this too. Finally, and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Fascinating case. That's the first question, how is it possible that someone who is stabbed twenty times you're going to tell me that's a suicide.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: Yes, And imagine being the parents of Ellen Greenberg and you find out that your twenty seven year old daughter.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: Who is seemingly happy, engaged.
00:00:42
Speaker 2: She has a fiance, she's a school teacher, that all of a sudden she is found in her kitchen in Philadelphia with all of these stab wounds, including a ten inch knife in her chest. That she died by suicide and not by homicide. That has never sat well with her parents, who have said, our daughter did not commit suicide. We know that she was murdered. However, her official cause of death is suicide.
00:01:12
Speaker 1: To anybody with common sense, that just doesn't make sense now you're curious and you want to hear some more answers, and we'll get into some of the back and forth. But one medical examine the rules it a homicide and comes back and said a suicide, and then another group says, no, we think it's a suicide. Then another group says, so there's been a lot of back and forth. The official ruling, we should say is in fact that she died by suicide. There has, at least as far as I have seen robes, never actually had a suspect, never had anybody under investigation in this case, in concluding the fiance.
00:01:43
Speaker 2: And that's a problem for the parents. And they feel like and they have said, this is a victory for them because this week on Thursday, we are talking almost fifteen years to the day, because Ellen Greenberg died on January twenty six, twenty eleven. But on Thursday, the US Attorney's Office issued subpoenas around this case. They are apparently opening an inquiry into whether Ellen Greenberg's death was properly investigated. And that's important because they're not necessarily going back and saying we're going to change or potentially change her manner of death. But what they're doing is they're saying this investigation possibly was not conducted properly. The family has said the investigation was botched from the beginning. They're mincing no words, but apparently the US Attorney's Office is seeking documents from the Philadelphia Police Department and other agencies.
00:02:39
Speaker 3: That's the information we receive.
00:02:41
Speaker 1: You have to ask why, why now? And if you're not looking into the actual death, why are you looking into the investigation of her death? So this looks like they're looking into this is a corruption exactly right, So why that? Now? For the family, you have to go, Okay, if this came across their desk, what else is coming? This is our case. So even if they I bet the family's been screaming this. So I bet even if they don't get a change in the ruling of the manner of her death, to hear that maybe there was some wrongdoing that led to an extended amount of pain that their family didn't need to go through, who knows.
00:03:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, think about this now.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: It's hard enough to lose a child, period, but to have her death be unexplained, or at least for you not to feel like you actually know what happened to your daughter. That's a whole other level of pain and torture on top of the death itself. This is the statement the official statement from the family after the announcement of.
00:03:40
Speaker 3: This inquiry. So here's what they said.
00:03:42
Speaker 2: The prospects of the federal United States attorneys investigating any aspect of Ellen's murder is a dream come true for her parents, Sandy and Josh. We have only wanted justice for Ellen and now have renewed hope this will occur. Sandy and Josh and their lawyers will continue to pursue and support all avenues to secure justice in this matter.
00:04:05
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
00:04:07
Speaker 1: What is how is it pot What does justice now look like? They didn't like the investigation or is it your understanding as well, ropes they didn't like how it was conducted, or just they didn't like the conclusion. It almost SPADs like it's two different things, right.
00:04:23
Speaker 2: I mean to think that her death, and we'll get into the details of it, was initially ruled a homicide for obvious reasons, but two weeks later they changed it to suicide, and so that doesn't seem like a lot of time. But we'll get into the why and how this all happened. The details of her death as we know them. She was found by her fiance on January that was January twenty sixth, correct, twenty eleven.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: He said he found.
00:04:49
Speaker 2: Her in the kitchen of their home, slumped on the floor against the kitchen cabinets. He said that she had been stabbed at least twenty times, including and this is the thing that gets me, ten times in the back of her neck. And when he found her, she still had a ten inch knife lodged in her chest.
00:05:09
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not for most folks you hear that. Okay, obviously she was murdered. It's just not possible. But then they started adding, let's before we even get into the stab wounds. I mean, there was no what is it, no sign of forced entry and the place was locked. There was no sign of a struggle, There was no evidence of anybody else being in that.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: House, and there was no defensive wounds. Yeah, when you say no sign of struggle, but to have no defensive wounds and we'll get into what the one of the medical examiners said that they described the stab wounds as hesitation wounds. So this is what all led to their conclusion ultimately that there was a suicide, not a homicides because the door I would say a big part of this was that the door was locked from the inside. But this is all according to the fiance, and the investigators did a you know, did their due diligence, and of course he would have been someone they would have wanted to talk to immediately, because we know from crime stories, if someone's murdered, you look at the person who reports to love that.
00:06:10
Speaker 1: Now this is one that oh look, we deal with and cover a lot and watch a lot when it comes to crime. Always, no matter where he was on planet Earth, if his fiance ends up dead, he is in that moment. So I suspect number one, no matter where he is. You add to that, you're the one that reports that she has died. You're nobody else is around and you found her all Now they're really the zeroing in on you. So robes for them to say he has been cleared, then you know they gave him all kinds of scrutiny.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: Yes, unless there was corruption involved at some level like that, you know, that's those are some of the.
00:06:52
Speaker 3: Questions, right.
00:06:52
Speaker 1: The question is the cover up to possibly cover this guy?
00:06:55
Speaker 3: One knows?
00:06:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so here's what's changed, because something did change in Jaianuary of twenty twenty five, so exactly one year ago. Doctor Marlon Osborne, that is the pathologist who performed the original autopsy on Ellen. He said in a sworn statement this Ellen's manner of death should be designated as something other than suicide. A little ambiguous, but certainly a reverse from what he had said originally. Now a month after this, so, in February of twenty twenty five, the city of Philadelphia reached a settlement with the Greenbergs, and so they paid the family six hundred and fifty thousand dollars and agreed to an independent review of their daughter's autopsy, and in exchange, the family the parents dropped their lawsuit against the city. So that all happened in February of twenty twenty five, following this sworn statement by the original pathologist who conducted the original autopsy.
00:07:58
Speaker 3: Does that move the needle free in any way?
00:08:01
Speaker 1: No, It's one of those things. If there is a medical professional, I need to hear the answer as to why. If there is a medical professional who looks at a case in which somebody was stabbed twenty times and said it was a suicide. I obviously have another question, and some of them have been answered. I haven't done a deep enough dive, done a deep enough dive into this case. But you hear another. I think it's just impossible. Robes for medical professional, you have to they know something. I don't know right to call this a How are you going to convince me it's a suicide? She's gotta stabbed twenty times?
00:08:37
Speaker 2: It is?
00:08:39
Speaker 1: There is where I guess some context is needed for what a stab wound is and how it's classified and how it's characterized. Sometimes I hear stab wound, we generally think we know what that means. But like you said, some of these were They said they considered them to be attempts practices, hesitation wounds. That's still a tough cell.
00:09:03
Speaker 2: It's so tough. Here's another wrinkle. So in twenty twenty four Pennsylvania, a court in Pennsylvania acknowledged serious flaws in the investigation into her death. It dismissed a lawsuit that the parents brought to try and change her death certificate. They wanted to change the death certificate from suicide to homicide, so they sued Pennsylvania. The court refused to change the death certificate, but in their ruling acknowledged that the investigation. So they said, the court wrote that it was acutely aware of the deeply flawed investigation conducted by city police prosecutors and the City of Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office.
00:09:48
Speaker 3: That's a serious charge that.
00:09:50
Speaker 2: A court in Pennsylvania put into a court filing about this investigation. That's significant.
00:10:00
Speaker 1: And I guess this is where and this is why it's corruption coming into that. I don't know the motivation for the corruption.
00:10:07
Speaker 3: I don't either.
00:10:08
Speaker 1: You're covering your own butts because you screwed up and now you have to double and triple and quadruple down on making sure nothing comes out. I don't know. Or it could be an awful, unfortunate mess in which this young lady was troubled in some way that people didn't realize. She didn't know any other way out who. I haven't seen any other explanation. Have you seen a lot about her? I mean her family and friends. Would they say her state was or mental state was?
00:10:33
Speaker 2: Yes, so there is there was some information and we can get into it that she may have been suffering from anxiety at the time of her death, and that anxiety came from.
00:10:45
Speaker 3: Her work as a teacher.
00:10:47
Speaker 2: Look, we don't know what she was going through, and a lot of times people don't share with close family and friends their actual problems or how they're truly suffering. But it is a strange way. I think it's fair to say everybody can agree that it is a very bizarre way to die by suicide.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: You can't question that after the fact.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: But it just seems like, especially for me, the stabs on the back of your neck, it's almost like suicide made to look like homicide. I don't I can't get my head around choosing that method.
00:11:21
Speaker 1: I didn't look and I haven't heard of a case of anything like this possibly before. But that's just twenty stable and then some of the number. I think later on they came back and added, so we missed some wounds, and so there was twenty plus in the back of the neck. Now that we're concentrated, there wasn't if she I don't know, Robes, you make the argument, if she was being attacked and stabbed, she didn't raise a finger to fight back, and if she was incapacitated immediately, why stabber in the back of the neck, roll her over stabber in the chest. What'd you say? She was found how.
00:12:02
Speaker 2: Sitting with her legs splayed out, slumped over with a knife in her chest, up against kitchen cabinets.
00:12:11
Speaker 3: It is tough, all right.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: When we come back, we are going to tell you the only public statement her fiance has ever made over these past fifteen years publicly, and he made it actually fairly recently to a news organization. Will tell you what he had to say about the mysterious death of his fiance. And welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ, where we are talking about a mysterious death that happened in twenty eleven twenty seven year old Ellen Greenberg. Her death was ruled a suicide. However, she was found in her Philadelphia kitchen with a ten inch knife in her chest but more than twenty other stab wounds, including almost a dozen in the back of her neck. Her parents have never believed that she died by suicide, and now late this week we got worried that the US Attorney's Office is opening an inquiry into whether or not her death was properly investigated. So they're not necessarily saying, hey, we're here to find out how she died and to potentially switch it to homicide from suicide. But they are acknowledging, and a court last year also acknowledged that it appears there were problems and perhaps bigger issues when it came to how police and the Medical Examiner's office actually investigated this case.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: And for that that represents hope for the family of some kind of they haven't had for coming up on twenty years. Right, it's been fifteen years, and to them, they still don't know how their daughter died and somebody who's running around out there who killed her?
00:14:00
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and that is what they believe. Now we should point out you said this earlier before the break. The fiance, Sam Goldberg was never a suspect. He has never been charged. He is the one who found her, he said. He told investigators that the lock on the door was latched from the inside, but he has never again been accused of any wrongdoing. This past fall, in September, Hulu did a whole documentary on her death, and they did raise questions about his actions, including a nine to one to one call where apparently he told dispatchers that his fiance had fallen on a knife.
00:14:35
Speaker 3: So he has obviously been cleared.
00:14:38
Speaker 2: I'm sure he's been grilled, investigated everything.
00:14:41
Speaker 3: You might imagine.
00:14:42
Speaker 2: If you're the fiance who finds your partner in this condition and you're the only one who saw her, and you're the only and you're the one who found her, of course you're going to be scrutinized significantly by police.
00:14:54
Speaker 1: Imagine the detectives that got that call. Oh, she's been stabbed twenty times. The fiance found her. Gonna be a short knife us.
00:15:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got our guy. Yeah, that's what they would have. I mean, that would be the immediate, first drawn conclusion.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: So but the only time he has ever spoken publicly was in twenty twenty four, and it was to CNN, and here is his quote. And this is really interesting. Mental illness is very real and has many victims. I hope and pray that you never lose someone you love like I did to a terrible disease and then be accused by ignorant and misinformed.
00:15:33
Speaker 3: People of causing her death. Year was that twenty twenty four.
00:15:38
Speaker 2: So on the same page the family, it doesn't seem as though.
00:15:42
Speaker 1: He's accepted that she killed herself.
00:15:43
Speaker 2: Yes, and he is acknowledging that he has been in some online circles and certainly potentially even with the family considered possibly responsible for her death. He understands what some people are saying, and especially after this Hulu documentary, a lot of people if you go online, Reddit, forums, et cetera. Oh, they think he's absolutely the guy. There are so many conspiracy theorists out there, and look, I get it, I mean, it makes sense, but he is living under that scrutiny. I'm sure he would welcome this investigation if he wants his Look, he has been cleared officially, but unofficially he hasn't, and so that has to weigh on him. Wow, in so many ways, everywhere he goes throughout his life, people might just question him, and that has to be a terrible cloud to live under.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: That's tough. That's tough. But what an awful story you've made me want to look into this one a little more and see some of those reports and see some like you said, her family their team put out their own, yes, draw up drawings of you showed it to me, like, holy hell, if this is how she was stabbed.
00:16:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you look, you can look, you can google it pretty easily.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: But they had their own private investigator actually put knives where all of her stab wounds were and the depth at which the blade went in, and it was this independent investigator's opinion that especially a couple of the knive wounds, the stab wounds that went into the back of her neck, would have incapacitated her. That they went in deep enough where it would have hit her brain, she would not have been able to then give that final stab in the chest where the knife ended up.
00:17:19
Speaker 3: So they are absolutely of the.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: Belief that she was murdered and not she did not die by suicide. Look, we may never know, but this new inquiry could give us some answers or at least some insight into the process. And we will be sure to follow this story and give you any updates as they become available.
00:17:40
Speaker 3: But in the meantime, thank you so much for listening to us.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: As always, guys, I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ.
00:17:45
Speaker 3: Holmes. We will talk to you soon.