UPDATE: Ellen Greenberg’s parents settle all lawsuits after Philly ME agrees to review suicide ruling
The former Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office pathologist who first ruled Ellen Greenberg’s 2011 death by 20 stab wounds a homicide but then switched it to suicide about two months later now admits he was wrong.
In a stunning reversal nearly 14 years later, Dr. Marlon Osbourne signed a legal verification document spelling out why his medical opinion on the manner of Ellen’s death has changed.
“I have become aware of additional information I did not have at the time of issuing the amended death certificate which may have impacted my decision…It is my professional opinion Ellen’s manner of death should be designated as something other than suicide,” Osbourne wrote in the signed court document.
The court document is part of Osbourne’s legal settlement with Ellen’s parents, Joshua and Sandee Greenberg, formerly of the Harrisburg area, reached Saturday.
The settlement heads off Osbourne standing trial in the Greenberg’s lawsuit that is set to get underway Monday in Philadelphia Court. The case is still active against Philadelphia Chief Medical Examiner Sam Gulino and Homicide Det. John McNamee.
The Greenbergs’ suit alleges a conspiracy on the part of the officials to cover up evidence of homicide in Ellen’s case and seeks unspecified monetary damages for emotional distress suffered by the Greenbergs.
Osbourne, who conducted Ellen’s autopsy the day following her January 26, 2011, death in the Manayunk apartment she shared with her fiancé, cited several pieces of information turned up by the Greenbergs’ private investigation into their daughter’s death that Osbourne credited with changing his mind.
The pathologist now working in Florida cited these factors in prompting him to reconsider his professional opinion on Ellen’s death:
- Osbourne indicated it’s now unlikely that there were witnesses to fiancé Sam Goldberg breaking into the couple’s sixth-floor apartment after Goldberg returned from the complex’s gym to find Ellen unresponsive to his door knocks and texts to let him inside.
- Osbourne said it’s now in dispute whether Goldberg forced the apartment door open to gain access.
- Osbourne said there’s evidence to suggest “Ellen’s body was moved by someone else inside the apartment with her at or near the time of her death.”
- Finally, Osbourne cited the findings of then-assistant ME Dr. Lyndsey Emery, who in 2019 conducted a neuropathological evaluation of a six-inch specimen of Ellen’s spinal cord that was damaged by one of the 20 knife wounds she sustained. Emery found, “There is no hemorrhage in the spinal column that is pierced and none in dura that has been pierced,” according to her sworn deposition in the case. Asked by the Greenbergs’ attorney if that meant Ellen was already dead when she received the stab wound, Emery answered, “yes.”
Said Osbourne in his signed court statement: “I am now aware that information exists which draws into question” the suicide ruling in Ellen’s death.
Despite this, Osbourne added in the court statement he is powerless to change his official ruling of suicide in the case, made on April 4, 2011.
The Greenbergs have been seeking to change Ellen’s manner of death to homicide or undetermined. They have filed a separate civil suit in Ellen’s death seeking to overturn the suicide ruling. That case been accepted for arguments before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, with those arguments expected to take place in early 2025.
Said Osbourne: “It is my understanding that I am no longer empowered to amend Ellen’s death certificate myself because I no longer maintain a Pennsylvania medical license and am no longer employed by the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office. But based on my consideration of the new information brought to my attention after leaving my position as ME for the city, along with my original autopsy findings and information considered while I was actively involved in Ellen’s case, it is my professional opinion Ellen’s manner of death should be designated as something other than suicide.”
This image is the result of a 3D computer analysis of the trajectory and depth of all 20 of Ellen’s stab wounds. The analysis was commissioned by the family of Ellen Greenberg and conducted by BioMX Corp., a Virginia-based independent computational biomechanics engineering consulting company that reconstructs accidents and “criminal injuries” for court cases.
William Trask, one of two Greenberg attorneys, said this of the settlement and Osbourne’s signed court statement: “We have reached a resolution with Dr. Osbourne.”
Trask said Sunday no settlement talks were ongoing with the two other defendants facing the civil jury trial set to begin Monday.
“We’re assuming the case is going to try, although I suppose there’s a chance they’ll reach out at some point before trial gets underway,” Trask said of the city lawyers representing Gulino and McNamee.
This sets up a long-awaited courtroom showdown between Ellen’s parents who raised their daughter in the Harrisburg area, and the two remaining Philadelphia officials they accuse of covering up evidence of homicide in Ellen’s death.
The Greenbergs and their attorneys argued at a pre-trial hearing in December that the investigation into Ellen’s death was “botched” from the start on the snowy, stormy night she died. From there, it snowballed into a full-blown coverup and conspiracy as city police and medical examiner officials took action after action to bury evidence of homicide in Ellen Greenberg’s death.
The crux of the Greenbergs’ case is this:
Ellen’s fiancé, Sam Goldberg, said he returned from working out in the Manayunk apartment complex gym to find the door to the apartment he shared with Ellen, a first-grade teacher in Philadelphia, latched from inside. She wasn’t responding to his knocks, calls and texts. Goldberg later told police he had to break the inner door latch to enter and find Ellen slumped and bloodied on the kitchen floor, a 10-inch knife protruding from her chest. However, the Greenbergs’ attorneys and investigators say they’ve uncovered evidence disputing Goldberg’s account.
During Goldberg’s recorded 911 call he said, among other things, that Ellen had “stabbed herself.” Responding police and a medical examiner official also treated Ellen’s death by 20 stab wounds as a suicide.
At the time of her death, the 27-year-old former graduate of Susquehanna Township High School and Penn State was seeing a psychiatrist and being medically treated for anxiety. By assuming suicide in the Ellen’s death, police did not treat the bloodied apartment as a crime scene that evening. The unit at the Venice Loft Condominiums was left unsealed when investigators departed that night. It was cleaned and sanitized the next day.
READ MORE on Ellen’s last days: ‘She wanted that happy ending.’ It never arrived
As potential evidence at the apartment was being lost, Osbourne was conducting his autopsy on Ellen, who was shipped off to the city morgue with the knife still protruding from her chest. Citing “multiple stab wounds by an unknown person,” Osbourne ruled Ellen’s death a homicide on Jan. 27.
The next day, detectives returned to Ellen’s death scene with a search warrant and a crime scene unit – only there was nothing to search, nor evidence to process. The apartment had been completely sanitized.
That’s when and why the alleged coverup began, the Greenbergs’ attorney said in court.
Osbourne officially changed the manner of Ellen’s death to suicide on April 4, 2011. It has remained so ever since.
PennLive’s three-part special report on the Ellen Greenberg case:
READ MORE:
- What Ellen Greenberg’s final days were like: ‘She wasn’t right. But not suicide’
- Ellen Greenberg’s fiancé breaks silence on ‘despicable attempts to desecrate my reputation’
- For Ellen Greenberg’s parents, 1st time in court ‘advocating’ for late daughter proves ‘surreal’