Philadelphia judge rips city for taking too long to reexamine death of Ellen Greenberg
A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge on Wednesday afternoon blasted the city and its attorneys for the time it's taking to conclude a reexamination of the 2011 suspicious death of Ellen Greenberg.
The schoolteacher was discovered inside her Manayunk apartment, where she had been stabbed close to two dozen times. Her death was initially labeled a suicide, but the medical examiner disagreed, listing the death as a homicide.
Months later, after a meeting of city officials, the ruling was changed back to suicide. In a virtual hearing, Judge Linda Carpenter said she was frustrated and didn't understand why the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office was taking so long to reinvestigate Greenberg's death.
Earlier this year, Ellen's parents, Sandra and Joshua Greenberg, reached a settlement with the city.
In exchange for dropping their lawsuit, the city paid them $600,000 and agreed to expeditiously undertake a review of Ellen Greenberg's death. The Greenbergs, their attorneys and the experts they've hired to investigate Ellen's death have maintained she was murdered. This past winter, a former pathologist who performed Ellen Greenberg's autopsy backed away from his ruling that she had died by suicide and, in an affidavit, said her death should be something other than suicide.
That was a major development in a case where it's alleged city officials conspired to cover up a botched police investigation into Ellen Greenberg's death.
A pathologist hired by the family concluded at least one of Ellen Greenberg's stab wounds happened after she had died.
On Wednesday afternoon, Carpenter said even she didn't understand why Ellen Greenberg's death certificate couldn't be changed to "undetermined." She quizzed the attorneys in front of her about why didn't she have the power to change the death certificate.
"I can do that," she said.
Attorneys for the Greenbergs said changing the death certificate to undetermined will allow a law enforcement investigation to begin. A city attorney defended the time that the review has taken, saying a municipal worker strike this summer created challenges, but said the review was well underway.
The judge is allowing the city until Oct. 14 to conclude its re-examination.