In 2011, first-grade teacher Ellen Greenberg, 27, was found in her apartment stabbed to death: a colander of blueberries in the sink and a fresh sliced orange on the counter.
The coroner initially ruled the death a homicide.
But the police pressured the coroner to change ruling because of the facts of the case:
Inside the apartment, police found no signs of an intruder or that Ellen tried to flee. Her body was in the kitchen, just inside the front door, with her head, neck, and shoulders propped up against corner cabinets and her legs splayed in front of her. In her left hand was a nearly pristine white towel.
Looking at her hands and arms, police did not see any wounds that might be expected if she'd tried to fight off an attack by someone wielding a knife.
There was no blood spilled beyond the kitchen. The knife was tested later and showed only Ellen's DNA.
The Venice Lofts had surveillance cameras at the main entrance, but none in the hallway leading up to the apartment.
The couple's sixth-floor unit had a narrow balcony. The day's snow there was undisturbed.
'Everything that happened pretty much happened right where she was,' Homicide Sgt. Tim Cooney would later say. 'The rest of the apartment was pretty unremarkable.'
However, the coroner pushed back since ten of the stab wounds were in the back of the neck, there were bruises on her arms and legs beyond the stab wounds, and the door to the apartment was broken down.
Here's a diagram showing where she was hit:
This is her fiancé Josh Goldberg, who found her 👇
When he found her, he called 911 and the emergency operator asked him if he could do CPR on Greenberg. He responded with, "I have to, right?", then went on to say she fell on a knife.
Here is the audio (the text is posted after if you don't want to listen):
Text:
People sometimes say very strange things under duress, so it is important not to be quick to rush to a particular conclusion, but it is an interesting point of data that was released thanks to an ongoing civil suit from Greenberg's parent.
Ultimately, the police stood firm and said that Goldberg broke the door down because he was worried about Ellen. He was the one who discovered her body, and since he had no defensive wounds on his body, he could not have killed her.
Cooney said Ellen's death was treated as a suicide that night for several reasons. The apartment door had been locked until broken in by Goldberg. He had remained on scene and was cooperative. There were no signs of an intruder. And the lack of defensive wounds also factored heavily in police's determination.
The case was handed over to the office of then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is now Pennsylvania's governor.
Shapiro's involvement is important because there is family history between him and Goldberg. In fact, Goldberg's family appears to have serious political connections, as detailed in threads like this one, but whether or not that had anything to do with the case ruling is unknown and unproven.
From Jacqueline Sweet, an investigative reporter for Politico, Business Inquirer, the Guardian, and The Intercept:
In the end, the coroner backed down and ruled the case a suicide.
But Greenberg's family has never been satisfied with that outcome, and the state supreme court has finally agreed to their appeal.
Is it possible Greenberg stabbed herself in the back of the neck ten times and then ten more times to the rest of her body?
Maybe, but it definitely doesn't sound like a suicide.
In fact, it sounds more like this Pennsylvania teacher had some dirt on the Clintons.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
