True crime in the Delaware Valley: A cover-up in the case of Ellen Greenberg?

A little over a year ago, I began posting about the strange course of the investigation into the death of a Philadelphia teacher, Ellen Greenberg.

For background, you can see the following posts:

• The Mysterious Death of Ellen Greenberg - A 12-Year-Old Homicide or Suicide?
• True crime in the Delaware Valley - an update on the Ellen Greenberg case
• True crime in the Delaware Valley - Ellen Greenberg: The narrative collapses?

My last post on the subject was about five months ago, but from time to time, I do a web search in order to see if there have been any updates. In the last week or so, I have noticed a couple of updates.

First, a brief recap.

Ellen Greenberg was a Philadelphia teacher who lived with her fiancé, Sam Goldberg, in a Manayunk, PA apartment. On January 26, 2011, Goldberg dialed 911 to report that his fiancé was having a medical emergency. You can hear the 911 call here. The weirdness begins on this very call, when you can hear Goldberg surprised to discover a knife sticking out of Greenberg's chest. Apparently, he had not noticed this detail for quite some time.

As Goldberg told it, he left the apartment to go to the downstairs gym, and when he came back he found the apartment door locked. After banging on the door, texting and calling, Goldberg eventually broke through the apartment door. That is when he found Greenberg's body slumped against the kitchen counter and made his 911 call.

It turned out that Greenberg had been stabbed 20 times, and some of the wounds were in places (like the back of her head) where it would seem difficult or impossible for her to have stabbed herself. Some forensic experts have also suggested that she would have been incapacitated by several of the injuries, after which she would have been unable to continue stabbing herself.

On January 27, the day after Greenberg's death, the medical examiner reported that the death was a homicide. In February, however, the determination was changed to a suicide.

In addition to these oddities, the case has followed a strange path during the subsequent 13 ¹/₂ years, apparently due to a series of conflicts of interest. First the investigation was moved from Philadelphia to the Pennsylvania state attorney general's office, and then it was moved again to the Chester County district attorney's office. There it has remained since August of 2022.

Greenberg's parents have never been persuaded by the suicide determination, and they have been fighting in the courts to have that rescinded or reverted to homicide. In September of 2023, they lost a case on the grounds that they don't have standing to challenge the determination. Experts said that the ruling was strange in its detail, though. The court highlighted a series of irregularities in a ruling that clearly implied that the suicide designation should be corrected, but ultimately concluded that they didn't have a basis in law to order the change.

Later, in April of this year, a former district attorney was reported to have testified that Greenberg's body had been moved - after death - to the position where Goldberg said that he found it.

So, that recaps where things stood after my previous articles. What do we have now that's new? Three things:

1.) The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to review the case that was dismissed on the grounds of standing. This raises the possibility that the courts still might force the cause of death to be changed.

2.) In a second case, involving a lawsuit that Greenberg's parents filed alleging a cover-up, authorities are still holding on to some of Ellen's possessions. Specifically, they are refusing to return a journal that could offer clues to Greenberg's state of mind at the time of her death. New documents, filed in August, are reported to have made the following claim:

New documents filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas on Thursday were in response to motions by the defendants to dismiss the case.

They accused the defendants of asking the court to 'whitewash their conduct and perpetuate the concealment of their criminal misdeeds without taking responsibility for their abhorrent wrongdoing or the severe harm attributable to their unspeakable criminal actions' by dismissing the case.

The alleged cover-up was 'orchestrated' by Sam Gulino, Philadelphia's then-Chief Medical Examiner, and police including Sergeant Tim Cooney and Detective John McNamee.

3.) The Chester County DA made a pseudo-statement to pre-announce a statement about the status of the case. On September 3, they are reported to have said,

At this time the District Attorney’s Office is not able to comment on the Ellen Greenberg case, but we are looking to have an update in the next couple of weeks.

So, more "wait and see" for now on all fronts, but things are happening.... slowly.

For more on the topic, you can see the following sources:

• Gavin Fish, a True Crime blogger who has covered the case extensively.
• The Justice for Ellen Facebook Page
• Justice for Ellen on Twitter

Epilogue: It seems that Sam Goldberg is now a TV & movie producer in Manhattan.

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Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

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^{Pixabay license, source}

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