Ellen Greenberg was found dead with 20 stab wounds<\/a> in the kitchen of her Philadelphia apartment. After breaking down a latched door, Sam Goldberg, Greenberg\u2019s fianc\u00e9, 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.<\/p>\nAt the scene, police surprised all of Greenberg\u2019s family and friends when they ruled her death a suicide. After police removed her body, a professional cleaning company wiped down Greenberg\u2019s kitchen.<\/p>\n
Then, just days later, during Greenberg\u2019s funeral, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner\u2019s Office ruled the case a homicide. Inexplicably, four months later, Greenberg\u2019s cause of death was switched back to suicide. The city of Philadelphia closed the case without further investigation.<\/p>\n
Greenberg\u2019s bizarre and tragic death is the subject of the ABC News Studios docuseries \u201cDeath in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?\u201d The three-part series, directed by Nancy Schwartzman, reexamines the grisly case and follows Ellen\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was this perfect moment to get the cameras rolling on the story because there was momentum,\u201d says Schwartzman. \u201cThere 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Josh and Sandra Greenberg, teaming with ABC News and Schwartzman meant a chance to bring more attention to the case and Ellen\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would love to have this documentary to help bring justice for Ellen,\u201d Josh Greenberg says. \u201cBut the main part of this series is to talk about Ellen and how special she was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandra Greenberg adds, \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to the Greenbergs, Schwartzman interviewed Ellen\u2019s 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 \u201ctextbook strangulation marks\u201d on Greenberg\u2019s neck as well as bruises in various stages of healing across her body.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no rumors, theories, and conspiracies (in this doc),\u201d says Schwartzman. \u201cEverything 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those human errors arguably include cleaning the kitchen where Greenberg died and Sam Goldberg\u2019s uncle mysteriously taking Greenberg\u2019s computer from her bedroom without permission after her death.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, what we wanted to point out was this snowball effect,\u201d Schwartzman says. \u201cYou 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, \u2018You know what. On that night, our beat cops made a mistake.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
While Goldberg did not participate in the series, his voice can be heard via a 911 call he made after discovering his fianc\u00e9e\u2019s bloody body.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe fell on a knife!,\u201d Goldberg tells the 911 operator. \u201cHer knife is sticking out. There\u2019s a knife sticking out of her heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the 911 operator says she\u2019ll walk him through doing CPR, if he\u2019s willing, Goldberg replies, \u201cI have to, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe man that was going to marry my daughter, have children with her \u2013\u00a0 when he is asked to do CPR\u00a0 and says \u201cI have to, right,\u201d I couldn\u2019t believe my ears,\u201d says Sandra Greenfield.<\/p>\n
The series also includes Governor Josh Shapiro\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Shapiro\u2019s stance on the Greenberg case remains unchanged. \u201cThere\u2019s 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\u2019t show what they wanted it to show, but actually rather pointed to more data more information that pointed toward a suicide,\u201d Shapiro said at a press conference in February.<\/p>\n
Schwartzman reached out to Shapiro for an interview. He declined, as did Philadelphia\u2019s Police Department, Medical Examiner\u2019s office, Attorney General\u2019s office, and the District Attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is where documentary films really shine because we do our best to hold those in power to account,\u201d Schwartzman says.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeath in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?\u201d is currently streaming on Hulu.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2025 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Originally Published: September 30, 2025 at 4:36 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Addie MorfootVariety In January 2011, first-grade teacher Ellen Greenberg was found dead with 20 stab wounds in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":268485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,5295,50,1448,2830,15273,1311,1072,16748,7156,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-268484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-news","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-things-to-do","16":"tag-top-stories-dln","17":"tag-tv-and-streaming","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115297498411867289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}