The bizarre 2011 death of a beloved Philadelphia school teacher who was found with 20 stab wounds was yet again ruled a suicide — but her family’s attorney blasted the latest report as “tripe.”
In the latest report on the high-profile case released Friday, the coroner’s office said a new review of the evidence determined that Ellen Greenberg, 27, likely took her own life on Jan. 26, 2011 in her apartment, People Magazine reported.
Greenberg was found with stab wounds all over, including the back of her head and her heart.
“While the distribution of injuries is admittedly unusual, the fact remains that Ellen would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself,” Philadelphia’s Chief Medical Examiner Lindsay Simon wrote, the outlet said.
Simon described Greenberg as a “young woman suffering from anxiety.
“With all of this information considered, it is the opinion of the undersigned that the manner of Ellen Greenberg’s death is best classified as ‘suicide,’” Simon wrote on Friday. “All opinions state in this report are expressed with a reasonable degree of medical certainty.”
The ruling is the latest twist in the wild case, which has seen Greenberg’s heartbroken parents twice sue the city and the medical examiner for allegedly botching the investigation.
In a scathing statement to The Post on Monday, Joseph Podraza, a partner with the law firm of Lamb McErlane, which represents Ellen Greenberg’s parents, called the new ME report “tripe.”
“It includes false claims, like the assertion that a stab wound in Ellen’s spinal column was made during autopsy, a theory rejected by every credible expert, including the city’s own neuropathologist,” he said.
Podraza called Simon’s review “deeply flawed,” and said it ignored unexplained bruises, missing surveillance footage from the scene and a recreation that found Greenberg couldn’t cause the wounds.
“Simon builds a flimsy case on distorted portrayals of Ellen’s mental health, propped up by cynical distortions of Ellen’s managed anxiety, a condition widely experienced daily by over 40 million Americans,” the lawyer said. “Shame on you, Simon.”
Greenberg was found dead in her Philadelphia apartment by her fiancé, Sam Goldberg, during a blizzard.
The autopsy determined that she was riddled with bruises and suffered 20 stab wounds, including to her neck, back, head and heart — with a knife found protruding from her chest.
Goldberg has never been considered a suspect.
In the initial autopsy report, then-assistant coroner Marlon Osbourne ruled Greenberg’s death a homicide.
But that changed weeks later, when Osbourne met with Philadelphia police and bizarrely changed his ruling to suicide, sparking the first wave of controversy over the case.
In 2023, an appellate court called the police investigation into the teacher’s death “deeply flawed,” but upheld the ME’s suicide ruling in the case.
Osbourne later flipped again, and in February called it “something other than suicide.“
The dead woman’s parents, Sandee and Josh Greenberg, questioned the suicide ruling and filed their lawsuits, meanwhile enlisting the services of two forensics experts to dispute the suicide ruling.
In February, the Greenbergs settled their claims in exchange for an undisclosed amount of damages and an agreement by the city that their daughter’s case would again be reviewed, People said.
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