What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?”

By Addie MorfootVariety

In January 2011, first-grade teacher Ellen Greenberg was found dead with 20 stab wounds in the kitchen of her Philadelphia apartment. After breaking down a latched door, Sam Goldberg, Greenberg’s fiancé, discovered her body with a 10-inch-long kitchen knife sticking out of her chest and stab wounds to the back of the head and her back.

At the scene, police surprised all of Greenberg’s family and friends when they ruled her death a suicide. After police removed her body, a professional cleaning company wiped down Greenberg’s kitchen.

Then, just days later, during Greenberg’s funeral, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the case a homicide. Inexplicably, four months later, Greenberg’s cause of death was switched back to suicide. The city of Philadelphia closed the case without further investigation.

Greenberg’s bizarre and tragic death is the subject of the ABC News Studios docuseries “Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?” The three-part series, directed by Nancy Schwartzman, reexamines the grisly case and follows Ellen’s parents, Josh and Sandra Greenberg, who having never believed that their daughter killed herself, spent the last 14 years trying to discover what really happened.

Schwartzman began filming the series in February, right after a civil lawsuit that the Greenbergs raised against the city of Philadelphia was settled with an agreement that the current medical examiner would reexamine the case. Philadelphia officials were ordered to complete their reinvestigation into the death of Ellen Greenberg by Oct. 14.

“It was this perfect moment to get the cameras rolling on the story because there was momentum,” says Schwartzman. “There was legal action, which took forever, but suddenly, finally, all came together so that when we filmed, we had that in-the-moment, unfolding right now story coupled with who Ellen was, who her family was, and how all of this evidence came together.”

For Josh and Sandra Greenberg, teaming with ABC News and Schwartzman meant a chance to bring more attention to the case and Ellen’s life.

“We would love to have this documentary to help bring justice for Ellen,” Josh Greenberg says. “But the main part of this series is to talk about Ellen and how special she was.”

Sandra Greenberg adds, “We wanted the world to get to know us as a family. We wanted people to learn who Ellen was and what kind of person she was. She loved life.”

In addition to the Greenbergs, Schwartzman interviewed Ellen’s friends and extended family, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Stephanie Farr, former Philadelphia police officers, a detective, and forensic pathologists Joseph Scott Morgan and Dr. Michelle Dupree, who noted that they had never heard of a case where someone stabs themselves in the back. The pathologists also discuss “textbook strangulation marks” on Greenberg’s neck as well as bruises in various stages of healing across her body.

“There are no rumors, theories, and conspiracies (in this doc),” says Schwartzman. “Everything we (examine) in the series is public record and came through legal process and discovery. It raises a lot of questions. What we saw with our dive into the investigation is that there was obviously human error made.”

Those human errors arguably include cleaning the kitchen where Greenberg died and Sam Goldberg’s uncle mysteriously taking Greenberg’s computer from her bedroom without permission after her death.

“Basically, what we wanted to point out was this snowball effect,” Schwartzman says. “You have all of these grave errors, whether they are nefarious or not, that would be considered mistakes in any investigation, and then a lack of willingness to actually just come correct and say, ‘You know what. On that night, our beat cops made a mistake.’”

While Goldberg did not participate in the series, his voice can be heard via a 911 call he made after discovering his fiancée’s bloody body.

“She fell on a knife!,” Goldberg tells the 911 operator. “Her knife is sticking out. There’s a knife sticking out of her heart.”

When the 911 operator says she’ll walk him through doing CPR, if he’s willing, Goldberg replies, “I have to, right?”

“The man that was going to marry my daughter, have children with her –  when he is asked to do CPR  and says “I have to, right,” I couldn’t believe my ears,” says Sandra Greenfield.

The series also includes Governor Josh Shapiro’s voice via archival news footage. Shapiro inherited the case when he was the Attorney General of Pennsylvania. In 2019, his office reaffirmed its ruling of the case as a suicide.

Shapiro’s stance on the Greenberg case remains unchanged. “There’s nothing I wanted more than to give these parents some finality, some answer, some clarify and we received more evidence more information during the course of our investigation that sadly didn’t show what they wanted it to show, but actually rather pointed to more data more information that pointed toward a suicide,” Shapiro said at a press conference in February.

Schwartzman reached out to Shapiro for an interview. He declined, as did Philadelphia’s Police Department, Medical Examiner’s office, Attorney General’s office, and the District Attorney’s office.

“I think this is where documentary films really shine because we do our best to hold those in power to account,” Schwartzman says.

“Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?” is currently streaming on Hulu.

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Originally Published: September 30, 2025 at 4:36 PM EDT