Authorities in Philadelphia have reaffirmed that the 2011 stabbing death of first-grade teacher Ellen Greenberg was a suicide, closing a court-ordered re-evaluation with a 32-page report that cites the absence of defensive injuries, a lack of other people’s DNA on the knife recovered from her chest, no signs of forced entry at her snowbound apartment, and contemporaneous records of mental-health struggles. The ruling—issued by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lindsay Simon—maintains the manner of death first recorded after police consulted with the medical examiner’s office more than a decade ago, despite sustained public skepticism and a years-long campaign by Greenberg’s parents to have the death reclassified as homicide or undetermined.
Greenberg, 27, was found in the kitchen of her Manayunk apartment on the evening of January 26, 2011, during a heavy snowstorm that had shuttered schools. She had sustained approximately 20 stab and incised wounds to the neck, back, head and chest, and the kitchen knife was lodged in her sternum when first responders arrived, according to case records recounted in the new report and earlier disclosures. Her fiancé, Sam Goldberg, told investigators he forced his way into the unit after returning from the building gym and finding the swing bar latched from the inside; police documented no signs of a struggle in the small apartment, which was undisturbed aside from traces of blood consistent with the injuries. The opening police assessment treated the death as a homicide; after case conferences, the medical examiner’s manner-of-death ruling was changed to suicide, effectively halting a murder inquiry.
The decision to stand by that conclusion comes after years of litigation, political scrutiny and outside expert reports that pulled the case back into the headlines and, this year, onto streaming television. In February 2025, Greenberg’s parents, Sandee and Josh, reached a legal settlement with the city that compelled a formal re-evaluation of the death; the agreement followed a series of court skirmishes over access to records and the right to challenge a manner of death. As part of the same sequence, the pathologist who performed the original autopsy, Dr. Marlon Osbourne, filed a sworn statement saying he no longer believed suicide was the correct manner and that, in his professional opinion, Ellen’s death should be designated “as something other than suicide.” Osbourne no longer works for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office, and his revised opinion did not control the official determination.
Simon’s new report, released this week, recounts the investigative record and the office’s review of physical and circumstantial evidence. It highlights that Greenberg’s apartment door was secured by a swing bar when her fiancé returned, that the knife bore only Greenberg’s DNA, and that the distribution of wounds and blood evidence inside the kitchen was, in the office’s view, consistent with self-infliction. The report also cites clinical notes from the weeks before her death indicating anxiety and treatment discussions, and it says no reliable forensic indicator places a second person at the scene at the time of her death. On that basis, the office concluded that the totality of the evidence does not support changing the manner of death.