Teacher's unlikely 'suicide' ruling called out as web sleuths dig into surveillance video
Ellen Greenberg, a Philadelphia teacher, died on Jan. 6, 2011, during a nor'easter that shut down much of the city. She had 20 stab wounds, including 10 to the back of her head and neck, but authorities ultimately deemed her death a suicide.
Few people looking at the case from the outside agree. Outside investigators and a panel of Pennsylvania judges have pointed out glaring flaws with the police response and autopsy findings while calling for an independent review.
A crime scene cleanup company cleared the apartment before police arrived with a search warrant, according to the family's lawyer, Joe Podraza. The knife found in Greenberg's chest was never fingerprinted, and a second possible weapon was never recovered. Investigators didn't use the blood-detecting chemical luminol to examine the scene.
An independent investigation is currently underway, initiated roughly two years ago by the Chester County District Attorney's Office, which stepped in after both Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and former Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, now the governor, both recused themselves.
Amateur sleuths and supporters of the family from around the country have spent hours watching clips of surveillance video from the apartment building's lobby and hallways for clues. Two of them recently shared their findings with the family, her parents told Fox News Digital.
One, a childhood friend of Greenberg's who works for the Navy in Mechanicsburg, Ellen's mother Sandee said, told her he believes body language shown by men coming and going from the elevator bay indicates "nervous" and "suspicious" behavior. He also questioned whether one man, who the family previously thought might be the cousin of Greenberg's fiance, Sam Goldberg, could be someone else entirely.
WATCH: Sam Goldberg, fiance of Ellen Greenberg at the time, seen in 2011 surveillance footage
The other, whose day job is as a librarian in Chester County, where the outside investigation is underway, told PennLive that she believes a man seen "nervously bouncing around" the lobby goes up and down the elevator before using "a Kleenex to dab the blood" from an unspecified injury. She reportedly sent that information to investigators.
Greenberg's father, Dr. Josh Greenberg, told Fox News Digital the family welcomes the support – but that more concrete evidence may be available on video that hasn't yet been released to the public.
WATCH: Phil Hanton, a security guard at Ellen Greenberg's apartment at the time, is seen in 2011 surveillance footage
"What the police are withholding, they only gave us like a three-hour window of video, not the whole day before, not the whole day after," he told Fox News Digital. "They have Melissa Ware, the building manager's videotape of the crime scene. They somehow can't produce that."
"The police aren’t interested in solving this crime," he sighed.
Philadelphia police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They have previously declined to discuss the case, citing the open investigation in Chester County and the ongoing civil litigation.
Greenberg's parents have been involved in bitter court battles with the government, accusing the medical examiner's office of covering up their daughter's homicide, demanding police turn over more evidence and seeking to have the designation of "suicide" on her death certificate replaced with "undetermined" or "homicide."
Police released several hours of surveillance footage from Greenberg's apartment building on the night of her death to Podraza, who first shared it with Gavin Fish, an independent investigative reporter who has a website dedicated to solving the case.
There are hours of additional surveillance video that police have not yet turned over, according to Dr. Greenberg, and a recording of the crime scene before it was cleaned up has also been withheld from the family, he said.
"The building’s property manager, Melissa Ware, later explained that an unnamed [Philadelphia Police Department] representative had advised her to call a third-party service to have the apartment thoroughly cleaned," Commonwealth Judge Ellen Ceisler wrote in an appellate ruling last year. "There is no evidence in the record that Ms. Ware, the unidentified cleaning service, or the PPD representative were ever interviewed by investigating authorities."
WATCH: Melissa Ware discusses cleanup at Ellen Greenberg's apartment
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Ware previously spoke to Fox Nation about the case and the apartment cleanup.
"I received a call from someone in Sam's family. I think it might have been the uncle. They wanted to come to the apartment to get a few personal effects for the funeral. I immediately called the police to see what I could or couldn't do, and they told me that there was no problem letting them in. It was no longer a crime scene," Ware said. "And then I asked, Well, what is the condition of the apartment look like? Because I hadn't been inside. And is there someone that could clean it up? And they said that it's something they didn't do. I asked for a recommendation. They gave me a crime scene clean up."
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Dr. Greenberg believes Ware's video could contain clues that might shed light on what really happened. So could his daughter's devices – three laptops and two cellphones – which he says vanished from the crime scene.
"The first EMT person, 30 years of experience with this sort of thing, he knew something was wrong on the scene," he told Fox News Digital. "No one ever interviewed him and asked, ‘What did you see when you walked into the apartment?’"
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Ware, a former building manager, thought the cleanup was odd and recorded the apartment on video, he said. But despite repeated requests to police, the family doesn't have a copy.
"Something isn't right," Dr. Greenberg said. "We've got evidence. We have facts. This is not a matter of a crazed father and mother screaming on a table. We did everything the right way."
He said he and his wife have kept up their fight for answers for 14 years and have no plans to give it up.
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Last year, a panel of appellate court judges ruled against the parents' request to force the Philadelphia medical examiner to reclassify Greenberg's death. The panel found that the parents lacked standing, but the judges slammed the city, police and the medical examiner's office for the investigation.
As part of the parents' civil lawsuits, they are scheduled to meet with an independent forensic psychiatrist.
A lot of evidence in the case deserves scrutiny, according to Podraza and the family's private investigator, Tom Brennan. Despite collapsing with nearly two dozen stab wounds in a bloodstained kitchen, Greenberg was found clutching a "pristine" white towel in her left hand.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, a famed forensic pathologist who conducted an independent review of the autopsy, found the evidence "strongly suspicious of homicide."
Wecht, who died in May, previously told Fox News Digital that after looking at the forensic evidence, he believed the idea that Greenberg could have died by suicide was "highly, highly unlikely."
Another highly respected forensic pathologist, Dr. Henry Lee, also reviewed the case. He found that the angle of the wounds on the back of Greenberg's head "would have been difficult to inflict herself" and that her injuries were "consistent with a homicide scene," according to court documents.