Original subtitles

[wind whistling]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

ALYSON: After a Jewish funeral,

the custom is to have Shiva.

For seven days, people sit Shiva,

which is going to the family of the deceased

and sitting with them,

taking their mind off of what is going on.

So, right after the service,

everybody went back to Ellen's grandmother's house.

Sam's family eventually made it about an hour late.

Harrisburg is a pretty small place.

So it shouldn't take an hour to get there.

But they did arrive.

DEBBIE: At Shiva, we didn't know what to believe.

We had just heard she killed herself,

and now we're hearing that she didn't kill herself.

But, again, no one said anything.

Sandee and Josh and Sam's parents and Sam...

they went into a bedroom.

Sam was here. His mother was here.

His father was here. Sandee was here.

And I was here.

And I said to Sam that what the police are going to do

is they're going to start their investigation

from closest to Ellen to farthest from Ellen.

They are going to question

somebody who knows Ellen or lived with Ellen.

And that's you.

♪ ♪

[wind whistling]

♪ ♪

MELISSA: Once it was announced that it was a homicide,

I did speak with a detective,

and they needed to come back out.

And he said, I'll be right over.

I got scared. I got scared.

I'd just let people into the apartment to clean it up.

Now all of a sudden, it's a homicide.

I've got reporters. I've got family members.

I've got residents knocking on the door.

It was... it was a crazy scene, and it was very chaotic.

REPORTER: Police are back out at the Venice Lofts

of Flat Rock Road in Manayunk,

searching for information on the suspicious death

of 26-year-old Ellen Greenberg.

She died Wednesday night

during the height of the snowstorm.

Police say the medical examiner

found that she had died of stab wounds

to her chest and torso.

Because of those findings,

investigators with the homicide unit

returned to the apartment today

to search for any additional evidence

that could result in this becoming a case of murder.

♪ ♪

GUY: Once the medical examiners

ruled this a homicide, it's like,

whoa, go back and investigate.

Too late. We allowed the crime scene to be cleared,

which allowed cleaners, professional cleaners...

and I'm not talking residential cleaners,

I'm talking crime-scene cleaners...

to come in and clean the crime scene.

DONNA: We're saying it's a suicide.

And then two days later, we're saying it's a homicide.

So they gave the window to be able to clean the scene up.

The scene is tainted.

As far as my personal investigation,

I've never been out after a professional company

cleaned the crime scene up.

RON: When a scene has a computer or a cell phone

or a laptop,

you tend to want to seize those

and to keep those in a safe place.

There's this whole concept in law enforcement,

and investigation and in... in court cases

known as chain of custody.

Where was this evidence? Who took control of it?

GUY: While retrieving items for the funeral,

Ellen's devices were taken out of her apartment

by two members of Sam Goldberg's family,

specifically his uncle Jamie Schwartzman,

a prominent Philadelphia attorney.

After her death was ruled a homicide,

he turned the devices over to the police.

So what should be done wasn't done.

GUY: So many errors

happened in this case that all snowballed.

You don't have crime scene unit coming.

You don't have investigation.

You don't have a held crime scene.

This snowball is getting bigger and bigger,

because now what are you going to investigate?

This scene is clean.

♪ ♪

DEBBIE: A week to ten days after Ellen's passing,

I got a phone call

from a homicide detective in Philly.

And he wanted to know

if he could come over and interview me

because I'd been all over Ellen's text messages.

[knocking on door]

And I was like, sure. Oh, my God, this is great.

He's going to, like, find the killer.

I was so happy to help them.

And I had all these questions I wanted to ask him.

But they only asked me six questions.

And I...

That was that.

♪ ♪

STEPHANIE: On January 31, 2011,

I was working a shift at the Philadelphia Daily News.

I was probably the only reporter

in the newsroom that day.

We were a small operation.

And I reached out to the police department

and asked for an update in Ellen's case.

Her case had been covered by my colleagues

earlier in the week.

And we wanted to see where the investigation stood.

The Medical Examiner's Office

had already ruled her death a homicide,

but when I talked to the police spokesperson,

he said that while they were carrying it

as a suspicious death

that they may be leaning towards suicide.

♪ ♪

As I noted in my reporting,

police told me

the scene was carried as a suicide that night

because Sam had stayed on the scene and was cooperative.

The door had been broken from the outside

and locked from the inside, apparently.

There were no signs of an intruder in the apartment,

and Ellen didn't have any defensive wounds on her body.

In my initial reporting,

I noted that this was highly unusual.

I can't recall another instance in my career

where the police department publicly contradicted

the medical examiner's findings to the press.

GUY: Think about this... you're not looking at a woman

who has two slit wrists and a suicide note.

You're looking at a woman

who's been stabbed 20 times, right?

Multiple stab wounds to the back of the neck,

a huge blunt force trauma from a knife to the head,

stab wounds on the torso, right?

And then, ultimately, a stab to the heart.

So what does that mean?

Do you say, automatically, this is a homicide?

Maybe.

But we have to do our investigative work,

because if you don't know one way or the other,

treat it as a homicide until proven otherwise.

And they didn't do that.

DONNA: It's detrimental to a homicide scene

if it was cleaned up before we were able to collect

any type of evidence.

As a police officer, I'm suspicious.

Why is this cleaned up so fast?

JOSH: I had no experience in this.

I just didn't know what was going to happen

or what was not going to happen.

I grew up trusting the police, believing the police.

That's why they're the police, right?

So what are we supposed to do?

We're supposed to... it's a murder investigation.

We believe it was murder.

It's in the hands of the police,

and you figure they're going to...

they're going to be professionals,

and they're going to do their job.

JOSH: We had no reason to suspect anything

was out of the ordinary.

STEPHANIE: At that point, the police department

was giving us little information.

The Medical Examiner's Office

wasn't going to give us an interview either.

So, at this point, really, reporters are stymied

in their quest for answers.

And then on March 10, 2011,

the Medical Examiner's Office

publicly declares Ellen's death a suicide.

♪ ♪

SANDEE: After suicide, we heard nothing.

It was done.

They were like, we're done. Case closed.

I was so devastated and so...

distraught.

It was like the night of her murder.

We blacked out.

I can't recall anything about it.

Fortunately or unfortunately,

we don't have any experience in this,

so I didn't know what to do.

We were in the dark.

♪ ♪

Suicide is not a crime

in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In other words, there is no investigation.

They're done.

[dramatic music]

MELANIE: I remember getting in the car,

it still being very cold,

and I kind of just remembered my mom telling me,

like, oh, well, Miss Ellen's

not going to be in school today.

After that, I just remember going into class

and not seeing her.

And I'm like, okay, well, maybe she's late,

which is very rare because she was never late.

[chuckles]

ALEXANDRA: I remember that day,

the day we came back, we all waited for each other.

♪ ♪

And we walked up the hallway together...

[voice breaking] To her room...

♪ ♪

Because that was just, like, such a solidified thing...

'cause she wasn't going to be there.

I think that was maybe one of my hardest days,

just walking up that hallway.

And we all did it together.

MELANIE: You don't know how to tell a five-year-old

or a six-year-old that type of news.

I was very confused.

I was... just I wasn't getting the concept

until one of the students kind of just whispered to me,

like, she's dead.

Like, she's not coming back.

♪ ♪

DELANI: I couldn't believe it.

I've never dealt with death before that.

ALEXANDRA: I can remember talking about it

with my students,

you know, probably after they had spoken with the therapist.

And I remember, I just... I could not hold back.

I was just crying all the time. -Me too.

And it was so difficult.

There's a huge ripple effect.

It was a massive loss for the school.

♪ ♪

[birds chirping]

SANDEE: That's a cute one. CAROLINE: Mm-hmm.

Oh, at school.

SANDEE: I know. This is one of the best pictures ever.

CAROLINE: Did you go to her school?

Yeah. We... I helped her, um, set the room up...

-Mm-hmm. -And put all the different...

You know, it was very colorful.

♪ ♪

My mother loves pictures.

And she made this for Ellen and Sam.

♪ ♪

That's San Francisco. -Where...

He had just finished a Pebble Beach golf tournament,

and then they went to San Francisco

and then to Napa...

so...

After Ellen's passing was a very dark,

dark, dark time.

And I wasn't in a very good place.

Remember, I used to come to your house

and lay on the floor next to the dog in the sun?

-I don't remember. -[chuckles] I did.

But, um, it took me a while

to fight through it, power through it.

But, eventually, I built myself up.

And, uh...

I don't really remember a whole lot of stuff...

but it was...

it was pretty awful.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

It took me a long time to regroup,

get myself strong,

and put Humpty Dumpty back together again

so that I could, you know, figure this out.

THOMAS: Let's go over the autopsy report.

I have a lot of problems with a lot of it, okay?

I don't think it's done properly.

My name is Thomas Patrick Brennan, Jr.

I was with the Pennsylvania State Police

for 25 years.

And in February of 2013,

I met with two friends of mine...

one a retired dentist, the other who is a judge.

They were both friends of the Greenbergs.

The first meeting we had,

I asked them... I said, well, what documentation do you have?

And they said, well, we have the autopsy report,

and we have some autopsy photographs

and some crime-scene photographs,

but we've never looked at the photographs.

[dramatic music]

I said, well, I'd like to have that documentation

so I can study it, look it over.

♪ ♪

JOSH: He came to us.

He reviewed various things that we had.

And he said, this is a murder. This is a homicide.

♪ ♪

THOMAS: They said, well, will you continue

to look at it for us?

And I said, well, you're going to have to be

extremely, extremely patient.

I said, this is not going to be a year

or two years, three years.

I said, that's not going to happen.

Josh, being Josh, said to me...

well, what's this going to cost me?

And I looked at him, and I said, well...

I don't make money on somebody else's grief.

So my time is not going to cost you anything.

I worked in Philadelphia.

I worked in Philadelphia for a long time.

You don't know the politics of Philadelphia.

I said, you are going to have to fight, fight, fight.

And if you're not willing to do that, don't start,

because you are going to have to fight this

for everything that's in you.

JOSH: That's the right thing to do.

That's what I'm about. I was Ellen's father.

I still am Ellen's father.

And I'm not going to leave Ellen out there alone.

I'm going to find out what happened.

She deserves her justice.

She deserves to maintain her dignity.

And Philadelphia owes that to her.

[dramatic music]

THOMAS: We arranged another breakfast meeting,

and I pointed different things out to them

in the crime-scene photographs and in the autopsy photos.

And a lot of discrepancies in the autopsy report.

The first thing that stood out to me

was the dried and coagulated blood

on the victim's face.

And that's the dried and coagulated blood

that runs across the face to the ear.

But she's found sitting up and leaning

against the corner of the cabinets.

I looked at it, and I said, wait a minute.

If she's sitting up, it should be running down her face.

That indicated to me right away

that, hey, the body's been moved.

ANNIE: According to the medical examiner's report,

Ellen's body was found in a supine position.

She had no defensive wounds on her hands or her arms.

She did have blood covering her face.

Her hands were cold to the touch.

Her torso was warm.

Investigators felt that this was consistent

with the position that her body was found in.

THOMAS: If you take a look at the autopsy report,

there was a lot of bruising on the body,

and it was in different stages of healing.

♪ ♪

ANNIE: According to the autopsy report,

there were bruises on Ellen's body

that were in various stages of healing,

but this did not factor in to the manner of death.

Now, we know in January of 2011

that Ellen started to see a psychiatrist,

and she was prescribed two medications...

Klonopin, which is an anti anxiety drug,

and also Ambien, which is a sleep aid.

When Stephanie Farr

interviewed the original investigators,

they did question whether or not those medications

could have contributed to the bruising on Ellen's body.

There's also the possibility

that Ellen was involved in some strenuous physical activity,

like intense workouts.

According to the case file,

we know that Ellen had three appointments

with a psychiatrist to talk about her anxiety,

but she never said anything bad about Sam.

In fact, the psychiatrist said

that she smiled whenever mentioning him.

When the psychiatrist directly asked Ellen

if there had been any abuse, she denied that there were

any verbal or physical confrontations with Sam.

♪ ♪

SARAH: Ellen had significant bruising.

Now, though I wasn't involved in the investigation

at the time, I noticed the bruising...

it's in various stages of healing.

So it's not indicative of an attack.

This was something that happened over time.

SANDEE: To find out in the autopsy report

of all the bruising...

I knew nothing. I didn't know anything.

♪ ♪

It just... I-I feel...

I feel very, very sad.

♪ ♪

[rain falling]

THOMAS: As time went on,

I developed some other sources.

And Debbie Schwab called me,

and she said, Tom,

I was talking to this individual,

and this individual said

that she knows an individual

who works in DA's office.

♪ ♪

GUY: I remember so clearly

getting involved in the Ellen Greenberg case.

It was 2015.

DEBBIE: Guy was working in the DA's office,

and someone had asked him to look

on behalf of us

at Ellen's records.

GUY: I had to do some digging.

I didn't know anything about it.

All I knew was this...

20 stab wounds, suicide.

That's... that's a bizarre, bizarre set of facts,

without knowing anything else.

But we've all seen stranger things.

I start looking for the case file.

Couldn't find it anywhere.

And part of that is because it wasn't a homicide, right?

So it's not in the homicide file room.

It wasn't in the regular file room,

because at least at that point,

it's not technically a crime, right?

So where is this file? Ultimately, I do find it.

A little odd, but it was in a closet

where we kept sort of our various holiday decorations

in the office.

I pull this Ellen Greenberg file out of the closet,

and I do like I did in any other case.

Every single piece of evidence is pulled out.

It's organized. It's categorized.

So, essentially, there's three files that exist, right?

The medical examiner's, the district attorney's file,

and the homicide file.

I gathered all three of those, and I built my file.

♪ ♪

From the beginning, it just felt wrong.

And I really, really wanted to do the right thing,

and so I wanted to make sure

that if this was going to be set...

or looked at with a fresh set of eyes,

it got at least the justice that it deserved.

And at some point, I was communicating

directly with a man by the name of Tom Brennan.

And so I asked around. People knew him.

He was a very respected law-enforcement officer,

retired, now working as a private investigator

for the Greenbergs.

And would I be willing to speak with him?

[speaking indistinctly]

So Guy and I met, and, you know, we became friends.

And then I asked if he could get access to the 911 call.

And Guy said, I still have some contacts.

He said, I'll see if I can get it.

A couple weeks later, he got the 911 call.

I-I listened to it,

and I could not believe what I was hearing.

[dial tone drones]

[line trilling]

OPERATOR: Philadelphia Fire Department, 842.

SAM: Please hurry. OPERATOR: What's wrong?

SAM: My... my... I just... my...

I went downstairs to go work out.

I came back up. The door was latched.

My fiancée is inside.

She wasn't... she wasn't answering.

So, after about a half hour, I decided to break it down.

I see her now, just on the floor with blood.

Like, she's not... she's not responding.

OPERATOR: Okay, is she breathing?

SAM: She... I... OPERATOR: Look at her chest.

I need you to calm down,

and I need you to look at her chest.

It's really... SAM: I don't think she...

I really don't think she is. OPERATOR: Listen to me.

Someone's on the way. Look at her chest.

Is she flat on her back?

SAM: She's on her back. Do I bring her...

OPERATOR: Okay, look at her chest

and tell me if it's going up and down, up and down.

SAM: I don't see her moving.

OPERATOR: Okay, do you know how to do CPR?

SAM: I don't.

OPERATOR: Okay, I can tell you what to do, okay,

until they get there.

I want you to keep her flat... SAM: Oh, God.

OPERATOR: Hello? SAM: Yeah. Hi. Okay.

OPERATOR: Are you willing to do CPR with me over the phone

till they get there? SAM: I-I have to, right?

OPERATOR: Okay, so get her flat on her back.

Bare her chest, okay? You want to rip her shirt off.

SAM: Oh, shit. OPERATOR: Okay?

You need to kneel down by her side.

SAM: Oh, my God. Ellie, please.

OPERATOR: Listen, listen, you can't freak out, sir...

SAM: Okay, I'm trying not to. I'm trying not to.

Her shirt won't come off. It's a zipper.

Oh, my God, she stabbed herself!

OPERATOR: Where? SAM: She fell on a knife.

Oh, no. Her knife is sticking out.

GUY: I have listened to thousands of 911 phone calls

prior to listening to this 911 call.

And I don't know at that time

that I had ever heard anything like it.

SANDEE: The crushing part of that

was when he was asked to do CPR.

I was alarmed.

I-I could not believe my ears.

In that 911 call, you hear him discover

that the knife is still in her chest.

He asked the operator what to do,

and he sounds completely overwhelmed.

There's a lot of ways that you could pick apart that 911 call.

However, witnesses say that they saw Sam visibly upset,

crying in the hallway,

and that he was more than eager

to talk to homicide detectives.

That call, it was not what I would expect

from somebody who loved my daughter.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

ALYSON: When Ellen started dating Sam,

there were definitely some changes that we noticed in her.

And, you know, were we jealous of some of the changes?

Maybe.

I joke around... I say, she went kind of from shopping

at Nordstrom's to shopping at Neiman's.

♪ ♪

She was spending more and more time

with him wherever he was,

more time at his family's house.

So we were seeing less and less of her.

Ellen got engaged in June...

and then I got engaged in October.

She wanted to be there to celebrate for me

but wasn't open about her planning.

She was very closed off about it.

You know, at times, it was a little frustrating for me.

Like, I'm sharing all these details,

and I just want to share the joy with you.

But then, you know, as time went on,

I was starting to feel like,

okay, there's something going on with this.

♪ ♪

ALEXANDRA: One thing that always stood out to me

towards the end is she never wore her engagement ring.

That was something that I always noticed.

And I would ask her, and she was like, oh...

she's like, oh, I just didn't put it on,

or, oh, it rolls around. I didn't want to wear it.

And that was something that struck me.

I don't know the reason

why she wasn't wearing it at the end,

but that was probably the first time I was, like...

sort of curious about what was going on.

But like I said, whenever I said something about it,

it was just sort of, like, a, oh, it's just...

it was bothering me.

♪ ♪

ANNIE: When Ellen's body was found,

she was not wearing her engagement ring.

And at the time,

investigators conducted two interviews with Sam,

and they asked him, why wouldn't she be wearing

her engagement ring?

And he said that he assumed

it was because she didn't wear it to school.

They also asked Sam about his relationship with Ellen.

He told investigators

that they never had any domestic issues,

that they never had to get their parents involved.

He said that day that she came home at 1:30 from school,

and she was really unhappy,

and she said that she wanted to quit her job.

When it came to her mental health,

Sam said that she never talked about wanting to hurt herself,

and she also never made any past attempts.

He also said that that January she was more depressed

than he had seen her before.

And she also asked him the question,

would you still love me if I was crazy?

ALYSON: If that was what was such a big deal

and that's what he saw going on with her,

then why didn't he reach out to any of us as her best friends?

Why didn't he call us and say, hey, help me?

Help me help her.

♪ ♪

ANNIE: Ellen's death wasn't a story

that dominated the news

when it first happened.

♪ ♪

At the time, in 2011, we had over 300 homicides

in the city of Philadelphia.

So, with that many homicides

and the messaging from police that this was a suicide,

it seemed that there really wasn't any question to it.

And at the time,

there really wasn't anybody coming out to say,

hey, somebody needs to take a look at this.

This is strange. This isn't adding up.

At the time, the Greenbergs, I think,

were still wrapping their head around everything.

And so it didn't stay in the news.

THOMAS: After four years,

I sat down with the parents and said,

listen, we have to get the media involved.

They can get other people excited

and involved in this case.

So I called ten individuals, journalists,

who had done stories initially.

The only one that called me back was Stephanie Farr.

STEPHANIE: In late fall of 2017,

I received a voicemail message from a man named Tom Brennan,

asking if I remembered the case of Ellen Greenberg.

I've covered thousands of cases in my career,

and I don't remember all of them,

but I never forgot hers, because it was so unusual.

THOMAS: She said, Tom, I'm interested,

but what can you give me?

I said, well, I talked to the parents.

I said, I can give you everything that I have.

♪ ♪

STEPHANIE: In April 2018,

I went to interview the Greenbergs.

I remember being nervous.

I remember Sandee being more nervous.

And I remember her saying to me,

we've never done anything like this before.

And I said, very few people have.

People don't come to us as a first resort.

We're often a last resort

for people who have had every door shut in their face,

and I think that's what happened to the Greenbergs.

And Tom recognized that the only way

there was going to get some movement on this case

was to bring it to the media.

♪ ♪

[telephone ringing]

[dramatic music]

SANDEE: Sam would check in with me periodically.

And I don't know what possessed me,

but we would have a...

you know, a very cordial conversation.

And I would always say,

you know, Sam, we know this was not a suicide.

And then there was an awkward silence.

♪ ♪

DEBBIE: After Ellen passed away,

Sam and I met for coffee a couple times

just to get together and, like, talk about things.

And I wanted to see where he was

and how things were going.

[cell phone chimes]

And we always text each other on her birthday

and the anniversary of her death,

like those type of things.

[cell phone chimes]

♪ ♪

He didn't seem so concerned with how Ellen died.

He never questioned anything, if it was a homicide.

He was pretty confident, that's all.

It was a suicide.

[cell phone chimes]

♪ ♪

He always kept it that Ellen killed herself,

and it was mental health.

And that's how he portrayed it all the time.

[cell phone chimes]

♪ ♪

He did ask me at one point, do you think I killed Ellen?

And I was like... [sighs]

Well, I don't think she killed herself.

That's all I'll say.

♪ ♪

SANDEE: I have to clear this up.

Ellen did not commit suicide.

And it's not up to anyone else

to tell me how to spend my time...

and investigate what I want to investigate.

♪ ♪

Because the Greenbergs were adamant

that their daughter did not commit suicide,

they wanted to find the truth.

They believed that the final ruling was wrong.

While I was working on this story,

I reached out to the District Attorney's Office.

Their office referred it

to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office

which at that time was headed by now-Governor Josh Shapiro.

I called up that office and said,

I'm working on this investigative piece.

The spokesperson confirmed that the office

did indeed have the case and that they were reviewing it.

I asked him to let me know

when they had reached a conclusion.

♪ ♪

What journalists are really good at...

is a little bit of everything,

but our main quality is, we know how to ask questions,

and we're not afraid to do it.

And I did reach out

to the Philadelphia Police Department

to see if any of the investigators on the case

would give me an interview.

And much to my surprise,

I was granted an interview

with two of the investigators who had worked Ellen's case.

♪ ♪

The police told me in my interview

that they believed that Ellen's death was a suicide,

because the door had been locked

and broken from the outside,

the apartment being undisturbed.

And they really focused heavily

on the lack of defensive wounds on Ellen.

I remember the detective saying to me

that he had never seen a stabbing case

without defensive wounds.

And so that was a big point for them.

They did tell me that the scene

was not treated as a homicide the night it happened

and that they had to go back and reinvestigate

once the case was ruled a homicide

by the Medical Examiner's Office.

Police told me they did test the knife for DNA

and that Ellen's was the only DNA found on the knife.

They did not seem to have any pause that it was a suicide,

despite my questions.

♪ ♪

Looking at the case file given to me by Tom Brennan,

we know that Ellen made three visits to a psychiatrist

and that she talked about her anxiety.

But in the psychiatrist notes, there were no indications

of any suicidal ideation,

and none of her friends or her family that I spoke to

noted anything of that nature either.

Then in 2019,

as I'm ending more than a year of reporting on this case,

I reach back out to Josh Shapiro's office,

which at this point has also had Ellen's case on a review

for more than a year.

The interaction was contentious, I would say.

They said they had done a thorough investigation

and had found searches on Ellen's computer

between December and January

for "quick suicide" and "painless suicide."

♪ ♪

My first question was...

why does the medical examiner's report

from 2011

not seem to say anything indicative of suicide

was found on her computer?

Why did Guy D'Andrea not see these searches

in the case file that he had looked through?

GUY: There weren't suicide searches

in the police file that was given to me.

There wasn't suicide searches

from the Medical Examiner's Office.

And there weren't suicide searches

in terms of a report from the District Attorney's Office.

And you're telling me that the file you got was mine.

So it's a simple question... where did they come from?

Now, maybe there's a good answer,

but I still don't actually know an answer to that.

STEPHANIE: At that time, I was told they believed

that these searches confirmed the suicide findings

and that they considered the case closed at this point.

One of the surprises of the Attorney General's Office

leaning heavily on the searches

on Ellen's computer and phone

is that we know that these devices

were at some point taken from the apartment

before the actual homicide investigation starts...

which means that the chain of custody

of these devices is tainted...

and they wouldn't hold up in court.

Search histories can be deleted, of course.

Documents can be deleted.

You can add additional search histories.

You can add search histories,

and if you know what you're doing,

they can be time/date-stamped back in time.

Was it done here? We don't know yet.

And so for the highest law-enforcement office

in Pennsylvania

to rely on these searches on Ellen's computer

in their response to me was surprising.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

ANNIE: Since police were so determined

and dead set on the fact that this was a suicide,

I don't think people realized

you know, how many times she was stabbed at first.

I think there was, you know, eyebrows raised,

thinking, how could this happen?

But I think the first time that everyone realized

how strange and twisted Ellen's case was,

was really not until Stephanie Farr's article

came out in 2019.

STEPHANIE: In the days leading up to publishing this story,

to say I was anxious, I think, would be an understatement.

I don't get nervous a lot.

I don't get butterflies a lot,

but I had put a lot into this case,

and I believed that, above all else,

the Greenbergs had valid questions

that deserved answers from the city of Philadelphia,

and they weren't getting them.

And this could be the chance

to hopefully force the city's hand

to at least tell them something,

to turn over the case file,

anything to give these folks some insight

into how their daughter's death was changed

from a homicide to a suicide.

ANNIE: Her article

took a very complex story, investigation

and created a road map...

SAM: Oh, my God, she stabbed herself!

ANNIE: For everybody to understand

all the nuances in the case.

For the first time, you're getting an idea

of what exactly police are saying in detail.

Then you're hearing some of the strange explanations

that are coming from the Medical Examiner's Office.

STEPHANIE: It was extremely well read.

It generated a ton of interest on social media,

from reader emails,

and also in the true-crime community.

What gets me is the physical evidence.

She has stab wounds...

Her case has been plagued with investigative failures.

If you're just beginning to play along...

The case took a very strange and unexpected turn.

PERSON: That just do not seem to align with suicide.

DEBBIE: Stephanie Farr broke the story,

and it came out on the front cover of The Inquirer,

and that was huge for us.

We were like, oh, my God, wow.

Like, so much is out there now.

It was just a whirlwind of, oh, my God.

Everybody was, like, hounding the Greenbergs.

And after that, Ellen was on every show and news station.

It's a story making national headlines.

A Pennsylvania family's fight

for answers.

Was Ellen Greenberg's death

a suicide or homicide?

That's the question a grieving family

is still trying to get answered.

I think what made covering Ellen's story really difficult

was, when Stephanie's article came out,

it answered a lot of questions,

but then it created even more questions.

-You guys all set? -All set.

From this point out of this building,

eyes are everywhere, okay?

-Got it. -All right? Let's go.

ANNIE: And then it was only a few months later

that Joe Podraza took the case and filed the lawsuit,

asking the court to compel the city

to change the manner of death

from suicide back to homicide, or undetermined.

JOE: I first became familiar

with the Ellen Greenberg matter

by reading Stephanie Farr's article

that was published in The Inquirer.

I was struck with...

there is something seriously wrong with this case.

It just does not add up.

Four months later, I received a call out of the blue

from a gentleman,

and he identified himself as Josh Greenberg.

He started generally talking

about, my daughter died in 2011.

She was stabbed.

And at that point, I stopped him.

I said, is this the matter where the young lady

was stabbed 20 times and our esteemed authority

in Philadelphia is calling this a suicide?

He said, yes, the very matter.

And I said, you got me at go.

Let's do it.

It was time to take the gloves off.

Something happened here,

and the family has not gotten a fair shake.

♪ ♪

[singing indistinctly]

SANDEE: She's singing her song to Daddy.

Hello.

JOSH: See, Mommy gets to go, too.

You want to try it, Josh? JOSH: No. Can I...

It's all about justice with me, really...

that she's being mistreated,

and I'm not going to let that happen.

I've tried to stop,

but I can't stop.

Just part of my makeup, I guess.

If Ellen was to ask me, I would tell her,

Daddy and Mommy are not going to give up...

Ooh.

Ever.

[indistinct chatter]

She knows that.

♪ ♪