We've reported before on the case of Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old who was found dead from 20 stab wounds on Jan. 26, 2011, in the Philadelphia apartment she shared with her fiance. Her death was initially ruled a homicide but then changed to suicide, a classification her parents have fought for more than a decade to be changed. Writing for CNN, Thomas Lake dives deep into the case via dozens of interviews and reams of official records, some of which he says had not previously been made public. Lake writes that those who knew Greenberg noted a change in her around the holidays: She was anxious, and spoke of coming home or moving in with a cousin. Her mother came to visit but couldn't get her daughter to open up.
"In hindsight, some memories seemed to take on new importance," Lake notes, like the cousin who recalled Greenberg once recommending Dermablend, a makeup that could cover bruises. The city medical examiner photographed 11 bruises on Greenberg's body "in various stages of resolution." The knife wounds include one that was three inches deep and located near the base of her skull; another passed through her chest muscles and into her liver. Her parents have spent more than $700,000 on two suits: one to remove the suicide ruling from her death certificate and another that alleges a conspiracy by local officials to conceal a murder.
The medical examiner explained his change in part by saying Greenberg died alone in an apartment that was locked from the inside by a hotel-style swing bar latch, and that police told him fiance Sam Goldberg had to break the latch while accompanied by an apartment employee to get in. Except Lake found nothing in the records backing up the assertion that Goldberg was accompanied by a security guard when he finally broke in, and the building's former property manager says that even if the door was locked, it doesn't mean Greenberg locked it: "If you shut the door hard enough, it swings" the lock shut, she recalled. (Read the full piece, which presents more of her parents' case and more on Greenberg's work-related anxiety at the time, as well as comments from one of the reporting officers and from Goldberg.)