In 2011, 27-year-old first-grade teacher Ellen Greenberg was found dead in the kitchen of her apartment in Manayunk, Pennsylvania. She shared the apartment with her fiancé, Sam Goldberg. She was found with a ten-inch knife in her chest and 20 stab wounds,
At first, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner, Marlon Osbourne, said it was a murder because of all the wounds, including ten on the back of her neck. Two wounds were inflicted after death.
But after the police pressured him to revise his findings, he changed his mind and ruled it suicide. He gave no reasons for his change of opinion.
Then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro stood behind the edited version of the cause of death, agreeing it was suicide.
Ellen’s parents, Josh and Sandee Greenberg, have been battling the city of Philadelphia to change the ruling back to homicide. In 2021, former Philadelphia Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Lindsey Emery said that she had reviewed a part of Ellen’s spinal column in 2019 at the request of Chief Medical Examiner Sam Gulino. She believed that at least two of the stab wounds happened after Ellen had already died.
After the Greenbergs’ lawyers told Pennsylvania Attorney General Shapiro about this new testimony, His office responded with a letter saying they had looked over the case and still thought it was a suicide.
On January 26, 2011, Goldberg called 911 at about 6:31 pm to report that Ellen was lying on the floor covered in blood.
He told investigators that he had left their apartment on the sixth floor about 45 minutes earlier to go to the gym on the first floor of their building. When he returned, he found the door locked from the inside with a swing bar lock. He couldn’t reach Ellen, so he broke the door open and discovered Ellen’s body in the kitchen.
Cell phone records show that at 6:14 p.m., Goldberg made a five-minute phone call to his cousin, Kamian Schwartzman. During the next seven minutes, Sam missed several calls from his uncle, James Schwartzman. At 6:26 p.m., James tried calling again, and Sam finally answered.
Kamian and James Schwartzman, both lawyers, arrived at the apartment building around 6:34 p.m. before the first responders arrived. However, they later wrote in a letter that they arrived closer to 7:30 p.m.
The day after Ellen Greenberg was found dead, James went back to the apartment to get a suit for Goldberg to wear to Ellen’s funeral. However, they also took Ellen’s personal and work laptops, another laptop, and her cell phone from the apartment, even though it was now a crime scene. The Philadelphia Police collected these items from Schwartzman two days later.
Shapiro and Kamian Schwartzman’s daughter Kimberly went to school together, and Shapiro considered her a friend. The Schwartzmans also donated money to Shapiro’s political campaigns.
James Schwartzman and Josh Shapiro know each other from their political and social circles and come from the same neighborhood. Schwartzman is well-connected in politics. His firm’s website says he is the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Group chair and a former Assistant US Attorney. He became a judge on the Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline. In 2019, he was elected as the President and Judge of that court and was on the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority board for 19 years.
The Greenbergs are criticizing Shapiro, saying there was gross negligence during the investigation and a conflict of interest from the beginning. They claim he had been sitting on the case as AG.
They have also accused the police of mishandling a piece of the victim’s spinal tissue. That evidence has resurfaced. Now, forensic pathologists have a new lead on the cause of death – murder.
Only two conclusions can be drawn from the latest findings in the case. Either Shapiro was covering it up to help his friends, or he believed a suicide victim could stab herself 20 times, including twice after her death.
The case has resurfaced as Shapiro is considered one of Kamala Harris’s top VP picks. Shapiro’s ability to distort the truth and cover for his friends makes him a perfect pick.
