Death of Ellen Rae Greenberg: Was It Murder or Suicide?

When the police started investigating, they found a knife set on the kitchen counter next to the sink and fruit on the other counter; so they determined that she may have been making a fruit salad. Everything else in the apartment looked clean and was in its proper place; nothing seemed to be missing.

On January 26th, 2011, a snow blizzard hit Philadelphia. Ellen was at school with her students at this point, which prompted everyone to leave early. Ellen gathered her things; she left work; she stopped at a gas station; she filled her car with gas and then headed to the apartment she shared with her fiancé Samuel.

Ellen was allegedly in her apartment by herself with the latch door locked. The fiancé allegedly left the room to go work out; he was gone for 30 minutes. When he returned and couldn’t get into the apartment door, he began to text Ellen and call her to let him in. After she didn’t respond to his text messages, Sam said that he attempted to kick the door open.

As the cops continued to investigate, they found three different medication bottles prescribed to Ellen. There was also a notebook in Ellen’s purse that she was supposed to use to track her state of mind while taking her medications. They found her cellphone in the master bedroom; they saw that she had sent her last text at 3:47 pm to a friend. When asked, the neighbors didn’t hear any commotion coming from that room except for when Sam kicked the door open.

Ellen and Sam’s apartment was on the sixth floor, and the only way to get in or out was through the front door or the balcony. The balconies of the apartment were very shallow; they weren’t big enough for jumping between rooms. Nobody entered through the windows according to the evidence shown. So when the investigators finished scoping out the crime scene, they deemed Ellen’s death a suicide.

A few hours later, Sam’s father called Ellen’s parents to tell them basically what had happened. Ellen’s mom answered the phone, and when she did, she just couldn’t process what she was hearing. Other than Ellen’s anxiety, they said there would be no reason for her to end it all. They also kept doing interviews; they’re the ones who have continuously tried to get this investigated because they couldn’t make sense of it.

The next day, the day of Ellen’s autopsy, Sam’s uncle and cousin took Ellen’s belongings from the house. They asked the property manager if it was okay to go in, and she said she checked with police if it was okay, and they supposedly said yes. She even asked if they were sure, just in case; she made a video recording of the state of the apartment before letting anyone in. She booked a cleaning service, and once all of that was done, she let Sam’s uncle and cousin enter. They allegedly took her engagement ring, car keys, electronics, and more. But they didn’t immediately give the stuff to Ellen’s family. When asked, they said that they took her stuff for safekeeping. They did eventually give Ellen’s laptop to the police and returned Ellen’s car to her family. When Ellen’s parents went through her car, they found the receipt for the gas that she got on the way home that day, which is why they were even more confused: “Why would she stop and fill up her car if she was just planning on going to her apartment and ending it all?”

When the autopsy was performed, the medical examiner noted far more stab wounds than they originally thought Ellen had at the scene. Some wounds were only 0.2 centimeters deep; these could indicate hesitation from Ellen. They determined that the chest wound was the fatal one, and the knife used was the knife from the set in the apartment that was sitting by the kitchen sink. So after the autopsy, the Philadelphia medical examiner then deemed the death of Ellen a homicide. However, the next day, the Philadelphia PD backtracked in their statement and said that “the death of Ellen Greenberg has not been ruled a homicide. Investigators are considering the manner of death suspicious at this time.”

After the funeral, everyone gathered at Ellen’s grandmother’s house during this time, when Ellen’s father, Josh, went up to Sam and said, “Do you know that you are the prime suspect?” And it is said that Sam immediately started crying and went over to his mother to comfort.

The day after the detective gave the announcement that there may be suspicious circumstances and it may not be ending it all, the day after he made that statement, he came out with another statement saying that Ellen had been struggling with mental issues. They found out that Ellen had only had three sessions with her psychiatrist; she said she hadn’t thought of ending it all but was really stressed about work and deadlines she had to meet. But she only had good things to say about her fiancé Sam. She stressed that work was her only stressor in life, and when Ellen’s toxicology report came back, it showed nothing that they would consider alarming since she was prescribed those medications and seemed to be taking them appropriately.

To make this a little weird, Sam later said that when he couldn’t get the door open, he went down and got Phil to come back up to the apartment with him while he tried to kick the door open. Phil was the security officer who was on duty at the apartment that evening, but Phil would later come out and say that he never went back up there with Sam to kick the door open; it was against company policy, and he wouldn’t do that. Their statement here contradicted each other, and Sam was all alone.

Another twist came in February of 2011; the case was reversed again and deemed to be suicide once more. Ellen’s parents immediately began doing everything to get justice for their daughter but unfortunately hit a lot of roadblocks over the years, and time had gone by without much progress, and they have just been so strong-willed about this; they’ve gotten other professionals involved, and make no mistakes—they do not believe again that she ended it all.

So eight years later, in February of 2019, a newspaper called “The Philadelphia Inquirer” released a front-page investigation report reviewing the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Ellen Greenberg. This brought more attention to Ellen’s case than ever before, which put pressure on law enforcement. Then a Pittsburgh forensic pathologist, Dr. Wayne Ross, reviewed the case at the request of the family and determined that it was strongly suspicious of a homicide. He said that some of the wounds she had were just impossible for her to do herself, and then other experts started to chime in as well. A forensic scientist Henry Lee, who testified for the defense in the O.J. Simpson trial, reviewed the case file and concluded that the number and types of wounds and blood stains that he observed are consistent with a homicide case. One significant point of contention were the stab wounds that penetrated Ellen’s brain. Dr. Wayne Ross wrote that “the stab wounds to the brain and the spinal cord would have caused severe pain, cranial nerve dysfunction, and traumatic brain injuries.” He also says that “there’s evidence that she was strangled, and there were marks on the front of her neck, from her fingernails, multiple bruises under and on the side of her neck, and bruises on her body are consistent with repeatedly beating.”

The original medical report stated that there was no such wound, then a former prosecutor with the district attorney’s office said that there were four key pieces of evidence that prompted him to doubt that it wasn’t ending it all. He said that Ellen’s body was found sitting upright, but that she had blood down the side of her face; he also brought up the fact that Ellen had bruises on her body that were in different stages of healing, and also the fact that Ellen’s fiancé Sam said that he had broken the latch by kicking in the door, but then the evidence showed that the latch was still on both sides, the doorframe and the door.

Tom Brennan, a former state trooper for 25 years and the private investigator the family hired almost a decade ago, said that through the depositions in a lawsuit, the family had discovered in 2021 that Ellen suffered a 6.5 centimeter wound to the back of her head after her heart stopped beating. The PI also says that they believe that she was hit or attacked in a blitz attack and it happened so fast, which is why they believe that Ellen didn’t have any defensive wounds. He said that to him there was evidence at the scene had been staged, that her body had been moved, and definitely the fact that there was blood dripping down the side of her face but yet her body was found sitting up against the cabinets was just too suspicious. However, investigators still deemed this an ending it all and basically a no foul play.

Then the attorney general’s office came out and said that there was additional evidence that was found that supports the ending it all theory. So it was all back and forth and back and forth. There were texts between Ellen and her mom that show what people believe to be Ellen being in mental distress, and also computer of Ellen that were turned in; when investigators went through it, they found all of these searches from Ellen’s computer that would say things like “painless suicide” or “quick ways to suicide,” but it’s also weird because the original report says that nothing like that was ever found on Ellen’s computers.

It is said that Sam moved on and in 2014 he got married and he has kids and has a family now. His uncle is also a judge.

Some things online showed that, about a year after the incident, Sam kind of pulled away from the family, and that the family was still fighting, but Sam moved on.

In August 2022, the district attorney announced that they are going to reopen this case, which seems very hard because lots of the evidence was trampled upon, they wrote it off as an “ending it all.”Phind Instant