In 2011, schoolteacher Ellen Greenberg was discovered lifeless on the kitchen flooring of her Philadelphia house with some 20 knife wounds and quite a few bruises. A metropolis health worker dominated her loss of life a suicide – a discovering rejected by the 27-year-old’s mother and father, who had been satisfied she’d been murdered.
Their fourteen-year quest for the reality prompted a number of lawsuits, quite a few headlines, an internet petition with 167,000 signatures and a brand new Hulu documentary sequence, “Dying in Condo 603.” Earlier this 12 months the pathologist who carried out her post-mortem reversed his findings, saying he now not believed Greenberg killed herself.
However on Monday the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Workplace, after reviewing the proof within the case, issued a report reaffirming its earlier discovering. In a 32-page doc, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lindsay Simon concluded, “the way of Ellen Greenberg’s loss of life is greatest labeled as ‘suicide.’”
In her report, Simon wrote that on the time of her loss of life on January 26, 2011, Greenberg was affected by nervousness over her work as a schoolteacher – particularly, over grades she was giving her college students. “She had a rise in vitality to behave on her anxious ideas,” Simon wrote.
At the least one of many many knife wounds on Greenberg’s physique was to the again of her neck. Whereas Simon discovered that the sample of wounds was “admittedly uncommon,” she added that “the very fact stays that Ellen can be able to inflicting these accidents herself.” Simon described lots of Greenberg’s accidents as per “hesitation wounds” – tentative, self-inflicted accidents that may precede a deadly wound.
Greenberg’s physique was discovered by her live-in fiancé Sam Goldberg, who known as 911 and later discovered himself a topic of scrutiny over her loss of life. The health worker decided that he and Greenberg weren’t in an abusive relationship and that Goldberg’s DNA was not detected on the knife used to inflict Greenberg’s accidents.
“His self-reported timeline of occasions is corroborated by telephone logs, textual content messages, surveillance footage, keycard swipes and police interviews,” Simon wrote. She added that authorities discovered no defensive wounds on Greenberg’s physique and no indicators of a battle within the house.
Ellen Greenberg together with her fiancé, Sam Goldberg. – Courtesy Greenberg Household
Simon said she reached her conclusion after reviewing the post-mortem, police paperwork, pictures and testimony from consultants – together with these employed by the Greenbergs – plus the Hulu docuseries.
However an lawyer for Greenberg’s mother and father, who had filed two lawsuits in opposition to the town of Philadelphia, scoffed on the health worker’s new report, calling it “a deeply flawed try to justify a predetermined conclusion.”
“By ignoring key proof that contradicts suicide — the in depth 3D photogrammetry proving Ellen couldn’t self-inflict all the wounds, unexplained bruises, lacking surveillance footage, an intact lock, accounts of a poisonous relationship, and many others. — Simon builds a flimsy case on distorted portrayals of Ellen’s psychological well being, propped up by cynical distortions of Ellen’s managed nervousness, a situation broadly skilled every day by over 40 million Individuals,” stated William Trask in a press release.
“This report is a humiliation to the Metropolis and an insult to Ellen and her household,” added Trask, who represents Josh and Sandee Greenberg. “Ellen’s household simply needed the reality. It’s clear the reality won’t come from Philadelphia’s legislation enforcement equipment. Although Ellen’s metropolis turned its again on her, we are going to proceed via different avenues to get justice for her homicide, by any means mandatory.”
CNN has reached out to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Workplace for remark.
The health worker’s workplace had agreed in February of this 12 months to re-examine the Greenberg case as a part of a settlement in a swimsuit by Josh and Sandee Greenberg in opposition to varied metropolis officers. The Greenbergs had been additionally to obtain a financial fee as a part of the settlement, though Philadelphia metropolis officers didn’t admit legal responsibility.
The Greenbergs had filed a separate lawsuit in opposition to Dr. Marlon Osbourne, the pathologist who carried out the 2011 post-mortem and initially labeled their daughter’s loss of life as a murder earlier than altering his ruling to suicide.
That swimsuit was additionally settled in February after Osbourne re-examined proof within the case and signed a doc stating, “it’s my skilled opinion Ellen’s method of loss of life ought to be designated as one thing aside from suicide.”
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