Ellen Greenberg was a 27-year-old first-grade teacher living in Philadelphia when she died on January 26, 2011. Her fiancé, Sam Goldberg, found her body on the kitchen floor of their apartment after coming back from the building’s gym during a snowstorm. Greenberg had been stabbed 20 times and had a 10-inch kitchen knife still stuck in her chest. Even with such violent injuries, police said her death was a suicide.
The case became controversial right away. Dr. Marlon Osbourne did the autopsy and first ruled Greenberg’s death a homicide. He wrote that she was “stabbed by another person.” But after meeting with police who believed no one else had been in the apartment, Osbourne changed his ruling to suicide. Philadelphia police treated the scene as a suicide from the start and never called the Crime Scene Unit. By the time they came back, the apartment had already been professionally cleaned.
The big question is how Ellen Greenberg’s death with 20 stab wounds, including 10 in the back of her neck, was ruled a suicide. This has confused forensic experts for years. Several well-known pathologists looked at the case and had serious doubts. Dr. Cyril Wecht called it “strongly suspicious of homicide,” while forensic scientist Henry Lee said the evidence was “consistent with a homicide scene.” The wounds to her back and neck are especially strange because forensic pathologists say they have never heard of someone stabbing themselves in the back.
Major developments in the case
After 14 years of legal fights by Greenberg’s parents, Josh and Sandee Greenberg, big progress happened in February 2025. Dr. Osbourne signed a statement taking back his earlier position. He said her manner of death should be called “something other than suicide.” He pointed to new information, including questions about whether Goldberg was seen entering the apartment before calling 911, whether the door was really forced open like reported, and findings from a brain doctor who looked at Greenberg’s spinal cord.
I wanted to remind everyone to please watch Hulu's -Death in Apartment 603.
— Jennifer Coffindaffer (@CoffindafferFBI) September 29, 2025
It is about Ellen Greenberg – see link below for brief case synopsis.
The Greenbergs will also be on Dateline tonight and were on Good Morning America this morning.
I don't know if there will ever be… pic.twitter.com/zbwtHQygi9
The statement came as a jury was about to be picked for a lawsuit filed by the Greenbergs against city officials for emotional distress. Before the jury was picked, both sides reached a settlement. The city agreed to pay the Greenbergs $650,000 and the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office agreed to reopen the investigation into Greenberg’s cause of death. The case has drawn comparisons to other controversial death investigations featured in documentaries.
More evidence from the family’s investigation has raised more questions. Dr. Lyndsey Emery, a brain doctor who looked at Greenberg’s spinal cord tissue in 2019, said in a legal interview that one of the deep stab wounds to the back of Greenberg’s neck seemed to have happened after her heart stopped beating. Other forensic experts found bruises in different stages of healing on her body and what looked like strangulation marks on her neck.
Goldberg has said he is innocent throughout the whole thing. In a 2024 statement, he said that when Ellen took her own life it left him shocked, and he has had to deal with attempts to damage his reputation. He has since remarried and lives in New York with his wife and children. The case is now the subject of the Hulu docuseries Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg, which came out in September 2025. Like other true crime documentaries that challenge official findings, the series looks at evidence and asks questions about whether justice has been served.
