After years of seeking to get their daughter’s cause of death changed from suicide to homicide or undetermined, Sandee and Josh Greenberg were shocked when the Philadelphia medical examiner reassessed the case and pronounced it a suicide once more.
“I was kicked in the stomach pretty much, and dumbfounded,” Sandee Greenberg told ABC’s Nightline co-anchor Juju Chang on Tuesday, October 14th.
“I couldn’t talk for two days, and I couldn’t read it,” she said of the 32-page reevaluation of her daughter Ellen Greenberg’s stabbing death from 2011.
“I don’t know what our future options are, but we are not going away and we’re not giving up,” she told me. “So just because there was a period at the end of the phrase does not imply that we forgot about our daughter. We really love her.”
The two spent years attempting to change the cause of death so that their daughter’s death might be explored further.
“We want to know the truth,” Josh Greenberg remarked on Nightline in an exclusive footage shown below.
The family’s experience began on the night of January 26, 2011, when Ellen’s fiancé, Sam Goldberg, then 28, discovered her body on the kitchen floor of their Philadelphia apartment.
An autopsy revealed that she had 20 stab wounds, including those on the top of her head, back of her neck, spine, and heart. Dr. Marlon Osbourne, then-assistant Philadelphia medical examiner, discovered 11 bruises on her body, each in varying states of healing.
Dr. Osbourne declared her death a murder. Weeks later, after consulting with law enforcement and others, he decided to commit suicide.
As a result, the Greenbergs launched two cases against the city of Philadelphia, which were settled in February. The settlement included a review of the manner of death by Dr. Lindsay Simon, the current Chief Medical Examiner.
At the time, Dr. Osbourne issued a statement stating that he no longer believes Ellen committed suicide after receiving fresh evidence.
On October 14, Nightline interviewed the Greenbergs after they attended a remote hearing with Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge Linda Carpenter about the completion of Simon’s report, which marked the end of the Greenbergs’ lawsuits against the city.
In the report, Simon stated that she reviewed findings from experts hired by the Greenbergs, including renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who concluded Ellen’s wounds were not self-inflicted.
She also stated that she watched the recent Hulu three-part docuseries Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?, in which experts explain why they believe she was murdered. One specialist claimed that some of her wounds were caused after her death.
In the video, retired pathologist and medical examiner Dr. D’Michelle DuPre states, “This is a unique case since there were problems from the start. I’ve examined stabbing suicides throughout my career, but I’ve never seen anyone stab themselves in the back.”
In her final analysis, Simon stated that “while the distribution of injuries is admittedly unusual, the fact remains that Ellen would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself.”
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“The fiancé’s DNA was not detected on the knife used to inflict the injuries” and there was no proof of an abusive relationship, she added.
Simon discovered three more superficial cuts and 20 additional bruises during her evaluation.
“If that doesn’t demonstrate more support for a homicide, I’m not sure what does,” the Greenbergs’ attorney Joseph Podraza told Nightline.
Chang summarized the Greenbergs’ ideas by saying, “In your scenario, somebody got away with murder,” to which Josh Greenberg answered, “That’s what I believe.”
Her fiancé, Goldberg, was never a suspect and has never faced criminal charges. He declined to respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
