Ellen Greenberg’s unlikely ‘suicide’ verdict emerges as detectives delve into video

Ellen Greenberg, a Philadelphia teacher, died on January 6, 2011, during a nor’easter that paralyzed much of the city. She had 20 stab wounds, including 10 to the back of her head and neck, but authorities ultimately ruled her death a suicide.

Few people looking at the case from the outside agree with this. Outside investigators and a panel of Pennsylvania judges have pointed to glaring flaws in the police response and autopsy results while calling for an independent review.

According to the family’s attorney, Joe Podraza, a crime scene cleanup company cleared the apartment before police arrived with a search warrant. No fingerprints were ever left of the knife found in Greenberg’s chest, and a second possible weapon was never found. Investigators did not use the blood-detecting chemical luminol to examine the crime scene.

An independent investigation is underway, launched about 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 governor, recused themselves.

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Amateur detectives and family supporters from across the country have spent hours watching clips of surveillance video from the apartment building’s lobby and hallways to find clues. Two of them recently shared their findings with the family, their parents told Fox News Digital.

One, a childhood friend of Greenberg’s who works for the Navy in Mechanicsburg, said Ellen’s mother, Sandee, told her he believed the body language of men coming and going from the elevator shaft indicated “nervous” and “suspicious” behavior . He also questioned whether a man the family had previously thought might be the cousin of Greenberg’s fiancée, Sam Goldberg, might be someone else entirely.

WATCH: Sam Goldberg, Ellen Greenberg’s then-fiancé, seen in 2011 surveillance footage

The other, who works full-time as a librarian in Chester County, where the outside investigation is ongoing, told PennLive that she believes a man who was seen “jumping around nervously in the lobby” was pacing in the elevator , before “using a tissue to blot.” Blood” from an unspecified injury. She reportedly sent this information to investigators.

Greenberg’s father, Dr. Josh Greenberg, told Fox News Digital that the family welcomes the support – but more concrete evidence may be available on video that has not yet been released to the public.

WATCH: Phil Hanton, then a security guard at Ellen Greenberg’s apartment, is seen in surveillance footage from 2011

“What the police are holding back is that they only gave us a three-hour video window, not the whole day before and not the whole day after,” he told Fox News Digital. “You have Melissa Ware, the building manager’s videotape from the crime scene. Somehow they can’t produce that.”

“The police have no interest in solving this crime,” he sighed.

Philadelphia police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They previously declined to discuss the case, citing the ongoing investigation in Chester County and the ongoing civil trial.

A shared image shows Ellen Greenberg smiling in an undated family photo and a computer-generated photo based on an autopsy report showing knives where she was stabbed 20 times. The forensic pathologist Dr. Marlon Osbourne concluded that they were self-inflicted. (Greenberg family)

Greenberg’s parents were embroiled in bitter court battles with the government. They accused the coroner of covering up their daughter’s murder, demanded that police release more evidence and asked that the term “suicide” on her death certificate be replaced with “undetermined.” or “murder.”

Police passed several hours of surveillance footage from Greenberg’s home 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.

PHILLY MAYOR UNDER INVESTIGATION AS CITY STRONGLY RESISTS RE-INvestigating ‘suicide’ of woman stabbed 20 times

Ellen Greenberg’s parents discuss the case. (Fox News)

According to Dr. Greenberg has hours of additional surveillance video that police have not yet turned over, and a recording of the crime scene before the cleanup was also withheld from the family, he said.

“The building’s property manager, Melissa Ware, later explained that it was an unnamed perpetrator [Philadelphia Police Department] “The agent had advised her to call a third-party service provider to have the apartment thoroughly cleaned,” Commonwealth Judge Ellen Ceisler wrote in an appellate ruling last year. “There is no evidence on file that Ms. Ware, the unidentified cleaning service, or… PPD officials were ever interviewed by investigators.”

WATCH: Melissa Ware talks decluttering Ellen Greenberg’s apartment

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Ware previously spoke with Fox Nation about the case and the eviction.

“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 collect some personal items for the funeral. I immediately called the police to see what I could or could do.” “That wasn’t the case and they told me there was no problem letting them in. It is no longer a crime scene,” said Ware. “And then I asked: What is the condition of the apartment? Because I wasn’t there. And is there anyone who could clean them up? And they said they didn’t do that. I asked” for a recommendation. They gave me crime scene cleanup.”

WATCH “TEACHER DEATH MYSTERY” ON FOX NATION

Dr. Greenberg believes Ware’s video may contain clues that could shed light on what really happened. This also applies to his daughter’s devices – three laptops and two cell phones – which he said disappeared from the crime scene.

Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old teacher from Philadelphia, was found dead in her apartment in 2011 – with 20 stab wounds – in a case that investigators ruled a suicide. Her parents do not believe the manner of death is correct, based on information they have uncovered in more than a decade of battles with city leaders. (Sandee Greenberg)

“As a first-time paramedic, he had 30 years of experience with these things and 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 property manager, found the cleanup strange and videotaped the apartment, he said. But despite repeated requests to the police, the family does not have a copy.

“Something’s wrong,” said Dr. Greenberg. “We have evidence. We have facts. It’s not about a crazy dad and mom screaming on a table. We did everything right.”

He said he and his wife have continued the fight for answers for 14 years and have no plans to give up.

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Last year, an appeals court jury ruled against the parents’ request to compel the court Philadelphia coroner to reclassify Greenberg’s death. The panel concluded the parents lacked standing to sue, but the justices criticized the city, police and the coroner’s office for the investigation.

A meeting with an independent forensic psychiatrist is scheduled as part of the parents’ civil lawsuit.

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According to Podraza and the family’s private investigator, Tom Brennan, much of the evidence in the case deserves close scrutiny. Although Greenberg collapsed in a bloodstained kitchen with nearly two dozen stab wounds, she was found with a “pristine” white towel in her left hand.

Dr. Cyril Wecht, a renowned forensic pathologist who conducted an independent review of the autopsy, found the evidence to be “highly suspicious of murder.”

Whoa, who? died in Maypreviously told Fox News Digital that after reviewing the forensic evidence, he found the idea that Greenberg may have died by suicide to be “highly, highly unlikely.”

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Another highly respected forensic pathologist, Dr. Henry Lee, also investigated the case. He noted that the angle of the wounds to the back of Greenberg’s head “would have been difficult to inflict on himself” and that her injuries were “consistent with a murder scene,” according to court documents.