Parents of teacher stabbed in ‘suicide’ case: Cops kept journal

( NewsNation ) — Ellen Greenberg ‘s parents want authorities to hand over the journal of their daughter, who was found dead in 2011 with 20 stab wounds.

The Philadelphia teacher’s death was ruled a suicide, but Josh and Sandee Greenberg have since won the right to challenge that ruling.

“The medical examiner’s office still is holding that journal,” Sandee Greenberg told NewsNation’s Brian Entin. “They won’t give me her boots, her glasses.”

The Greenbergs discussed the physical evidence on their daughter’s body with Entin and said the fact that agencies insist she committed suicide “defies logic.”

“How could she put the knife in and take it out?” Sandee asked. “How could you hurt yourself that many times?”

Greenberg’s body was discovered Jan. 26, 2011, by her fiancé, Samuel Goldberg, who told police he kicked open the apartment door after returning home from the gym and receiving no answer from Greenberg. Once inside, Goldberg said, he found his fiancée in the kitchen, leaning against a cabinet with a knife in her chest and 20 stab wounds.

Greenberg suffered stab wounds to her torso, back and head. The family consulted two experts, one of whom determined that a stab wound to her brain would have resulted in “severe pain, cranial nerve disfunction and traumatic brain signs” as well as “numbness, tingling (and) irregular heartbeat.”

That conclusion went against the findings in the medical examiner’s report, which determined that there was no damage to the spinal cord. But the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2019 that neuropathologist Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams said she had no recollection of the case, despite being the doctor cited in the medical examiner’s report.

When Gov. Josh Shapiro was reportedly asked to review the case as attorney general, his office stood by the ruling. Greenberg’s parents fear Shapiro never took the case seriously.

“I think he (Shapiro) tried to keep his hands off it as much as possible. I think deep down he knew this was a hot potato,” Josh Greenberg said. NewsNation has reached out to Shapiro’s office, but has yet to hear back.

NewsNation’s Tyler Warnell contributed to this report.

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