Philadelphia medical examiner again rules Ellen Greenberg’s death as suicide

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (WHTM) — Philadelphia’s medical examiner once again ruled the death of Ellen Greenberg, who was found with more than 20 stab wounds, as suicide.

The 32-page report, signed on Oct. 10 by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lindsay Simon, differed little from the original 2011 report by the medical examiner’s office. It followed an agreement between the city and Greenberg’s family

earlier this year to re-examine the 27-year-old school teacher’s death.

Simon’s report described Greenberg as a young woman suffering from anxiety due to her job as a school teacher. On the day she died, Simon said Greenberg was worried about the grades she needed to submit for her students and was under the care of a psychiatrist.

Greenberg’s fiancé found her body in the kitchen of her apartment on Jan. 26, 2011, with 23 stab wounds on her chest, abdomen, scalp and the back of the neck, the report said. Simon’s report found three additional wounds not included in the initial report.

The large number of stab wounds led former Medical Examiner Marlon Osbourne to initially rule Greenberg’s death as a homicide. He changed the finding to suicide after police challenged the assessment.

In the new report, Simon agreed nobody other than Greenberg used the knife.

“While the distribution of injuries is admittedly unusual, the fact remains that Ellen would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself,” Simon said.

She added many of the wounds would best be categorized at “hesitation wounds,” superficial injuries common with suicide attempts, and that she had no defensive injuries nor was there evidence she was incapacitated.

Further, her fiancé’s DNA was not found on the knife and phone logs, text messages, surveillance footage and keycard swiped corroborated his timeline of events, Simon said.

Greenberg’s family, which have tried to move the cause of her death back to homicide for years, disagreed with the new report, their attorney said.

“Dr. Simon misunderstood the assignment,” said William Trask, an attorney at Lamb McErlane, in an interview with WPVI in Philadelphia. “This report, if you read it all the way through, seems to be written more to exculpate Ellen’s fiancé than to uncover the truth about how Ellen died.”

Greenberg’s fiancé has never been charged with any crime.