 Ellen Greenberg was a first grade school teacher and loved her job and her life. She'd met the man of her dreams and the two were engaged to be married. But in January of 2011, all of that would change. A winter storm forced Ellen to leave work early, returning home to her apartment. At around 5 p.m. that evening, a terrible tragedy occurred. When Ellen's fiancee returned home from the gym, he found his soon-to-be wife on the floor in their kitchen, completely unresponsive. When responders and investigators arrived just seven minutes later, rescue personnel announced that there was nothing they could do. The crazy thing is, according to detectives, Ellen had been wounded more than 20 times and many of these injuries were on her back, very clearly suggesting that Ellen had been ambushed while her fiancee was away. But after a relatively brief investigation, police determined that Ellen had done this to herself. Ellen Greenberg was just 21 years old in 2011. She'd been living in Philadelphia for much of her adult life, but had originally come from Harrisburg. Ellen taught first grade students at the Juniata Academy, located in Philadelphia. Even though the school is labeled as an academy, which in my area means it's a pretty high-end, decent place to be, well, the school seems average at best. With math and reading proficiency scores coming in at 20 and 39% respectively, well, it's not really the best school in the world. Overall, it ranks in the mid to low ratings compared to other schools in the area, but Ellen never let that deter her. If anything, this just meant that her students needed her more now than ever. Ellen seems to have been incredibly happy with her job at the school, and she seems to have loved all of her students dearly. At least that's how it appeared on the outside. In reality, underneath it all, Ellen, known by her family as Ellie, have been struggling pretty severely. We don't specifically know what led to all of this, but her parents had known that she'd been dealing with some pretty serious anxiety for quite a while. Considering Ellie lived in a less than desirable area, there's a chance that the crime and unpredictability of the city just placed her on edge. There's a chance she'd been struggling with her students at school. There's just so much that's uncertain and so much that we don't know about her private life. But what we do know is that Ellie called her parents just a couple weeks before the crime unfolded, and announced that she wanted to quit her job. And in her words, come home. Her parents were very sympathetic to Ellie's struggles. They openly welcomed her back into their home, but they requested that she get some professional help with her anxiety if she decided to do so. When they pressed her about what was bothering her, all that Ellie revealed was that the stress of planning a wedding was getting the best of her. Her wedding was set to take place in August, about seven months away. She also revealed that her job as a teacher had been super busy lately, and it was really starting to stress her out. She'd been planning for her wedding for a number of weeks, and she sent out her Save the Date cards just four days before tragedy struck. While all of these complaints are certainly understandable, none of them should have been enough of a reason for Ellie to have done what the police claim she did, which was take her own life. According to Ellie's father, when he spoke with her on the phone in January of 2011, he felt like something was a little bit off about Ellie. He claims that her personality had changed and she didn't sound like her typical happy-go-lucky self. He says that Ellie had been continually complaining about how the stress of her job was affecting her, and she felt like she may have been falling behind. But when the teacher, who eventually took Ellie's class over, looked through her books and general housekeeping, she said that everything looked perfect. It appeared as though Ellie was on top of everything and was doing remarkably well with her class. After learning this, many people began to wonder if Ellie had been sharing the whole truth with her parents. Was her job really the problem here, or was there something else going on that she didn't want her family to know about? Eventually, Ellie gave in to her parents' wishes and agreed to go to a professional for help with her anxiety. This professional appears to have been chatting with Ellie extensively for several weeks, with the two meeting on at least three separate occasions as far as I was able to confirm, but it's possible that they'd been meeting for a lot longer than this. Her doctor says that at no point during any of their discussions, did Ellie give any indication that she would want to claim her own life. She was a perfectly healthy young woman who was simply overwhelmed by various stressors that had appeared all at once in her life. In the end, the doctor offered Ellie a couple medications to help her sleep and help her take the edge off, so that she could have a clear head to try to work through whatever it was that was bothering her. While seeking help should have been the start of a new beginning for Ellie, unfortunately, it just wasn't. In fact, it was quite the opposite. If anything, it merely marked the beginning of the end. It was January 26, 2011. A terrible winter storm had begun to blow into the area, and the local schools quickly became concerned that the buses may not be able to finish their rounds before the roads were covered in snow and ice. As a result, school was called off early that day, and all the children were sent home in the early afternoon hours. The teachers would follow soon after. After leaving the school, Ellie headed to a nearby gas station and filled up her car with gas before returning home to her apartment that she shared with her fiance, Sam Goldberg. Sam was a local television producer, and he and Ellie had met about three years prior. By all outward appearances, the relationship between Ellie and Sam was going great. Shortly after Ellie had returned home from school that day, Sam announced that he was going to head to the nearby gym, which was still open despite the storm. He left their apartment at about 4.45 p.m. that day, saying goodbye to Ellie and not thinking anything else of it. He was at the gym for around 30 minutes before he returned home. When he got back, he tried to open the door to their apartment, but it was wedged shut. Sam quickly realized that someone had engaged the swing lock from inside of the apartment. He tried and tried to open the door, but he just couldn't. Clearly frustrated, he began to text Ellie, asking her to open the door. Ellie didn't respond. He texted her again and again, with this taking place over the course of around an hour. His texts grew increasingly frantic, and he got so frustrated with Ellie's lack of response that he went and found one of the apartment building's security personnel and asked them to unlock the door, but they refused, claiming that it was unethical and against their building's policy. Sam, undeterred, returned to the apartment and broke through the latch that was keeping the door closed. As soon as the door flung open, Sam's anger turned to sheer terror. As he peered into the apartment, he saw Ellie slumped down on the kitchen floor. She was covered in pools of evidence, as was the ground around her. Sam immediately called the police and explained what was going on. He was instructed to begin CPR, hoping to keep Ellie alive until rescuers could arrive, but that's when he noticed the knife. The emergency responder then instructed Sam not to conduct CPR and to wait until first responders could get there. Paramedics showed up within a couple of minutes, but it was quickly determined that Ellie was gone. She was pronounced deceased at 6.40pm, not even two hours after Sam had last spoken to her. The big question here is, who could have done this to Ellie? After all, the door was not only locked, but it was also lashed from the inside. So who could have been responsible? Well, if investigators are to be believed, Ellie. Once detectives entered the apartment, they immediately noticed there were no signs of forced entry, aside from the broken latch that Sam had burst through in order to gain access to the apartment. As police canvassed the apartment, there was no sign of anything being disturbed outside of the kitchen. Very clearly, the crime had begun and ended within the boundary of the kitchen. In fact, it doesn't even seem as though Ellie had even walked around in the kitchen. Best I can tell, all of the evidence was collected in one small corner of the kitchen, where Ellie had collapsed in the corner of a set of cabinets. A fresh bowl of blueberries was found on the counter, as was a freshly peeled orange. It seemed as though Ellie may have either prepared herself a snack or was getting ready to have dinner, but she was ambushed from behind. But detectives refute this belief. When a medical examiner arrived, it was determined that Ellie had passed away from a total of 20 individual wounds. Each wound was infected with a single weapon, the knife that was still found in the kitchen. 10 of the wounds were found on the back of her head, her back and her neck. She also had a pretty serious cut on the top of her head, sort of on her backside, but the fatal blow was to her chest. What's crazy is that no matter how much police investigated the scene of the crime, they couldn't find a single shred of evidence that suggested anyone else had been inside the apartment that day. There were no shoe prints, obviously no forced entry, no open windows, nothing. So how had someone broken in, taken Ellie's life and then fled without leaving a shred of evidence behind? Well, investigators first looked at the weapon for any signs of evidence. They found no fingerprints nor any DNA outside of Ellie's. They also began to look at all the exterior walls of the home. They noticed that the home had a large balcony, but none of the snow that had fallen on the balcony had been disturbed. There was also no evidence that anyone had entered the home after being in the snow. No wet marks on the floor or anything else of the sort. There was nothing. This led police to one seriously dangerous but honestly understandable conclusion that Ellie had taken her own life. Police quickly contacted the apartment security team, hoping they captured CCTV footage of someone that day. The apartments did have cameras set up in the main lobby, but they didn't have any surveillance in the hallways of the building, likely for privacy reasons. After combing through the footage, police found no evidence of anyone who couldn't be accounted for. When speaking with neighbors, investigators recalled that none of the nearby residents heard anything unusual that day outside of Sam repeatedly banging and shouting at the door trying to get inside. Sergeant Tim Cooney remembered the investigation and said that the entire crime unfolded in the exact spot where they found Ellie, in the corner of the kitchen cabinets. He said the rest of the apartment was unremarkable. No further evidence was found outside of what was collected from the kitchen. When speaking about the case, Detective Cooney explained that the case was not ruled as a homicide for a number of reasons. The most obvious was the lack of any further evidence suggesting such, but he also recalled the state of Sam, the fact that he never left the scene of the incident for that entire night, as well as the fact that Sam was extremely cooperative throughout the investigation. I say this because naturally, police always suspect the spells are partner, especially considering Sam was the only other person with the key to the apartment as far as we know, outside of security staff. But Sam's alibi checked out and there was zero reason to believe he was involved in the crime. I remember reading one report that claimed that there was evidence found on Ellie's laptop, claiming that she'd been looking up details regarding taking one's own life. But the best I can tell, this report was false. Every other report I've found claims that nothing was found on her laptop or in her search history, but it does clarify that police did check into her laptop just to be sure. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, okay, cool story. Ellie was more depressed than she let on and she eventually took her own life, case closed, right? Well, no, not exactly. And in fact, not at all because the results of Ellie's autopsy soon came in and what they revealed would cast a case in a completely different light. Just a day after Ellie lost her life, the local medical examiner began the autopsy. He began searching her body for wounds. When he would find one, he would label them with the letter, obviously beginning with the letter A. By the time he was finished, he made it all the way to letter T. He noted that Ellie had a total of eight wounds on her chest alone. Each of these injuries ranged from a couple centimeters to more than four inches. Now, I could certainly understand how someone may have done something like this to themselves in an attempt to claim their own life. I'll admit there are easier ways of going about this, but we don't know Ellie's mental state at the time. So this may have been a reasonable option for her. But what about the tin wounds that were found on her back? How in the world would a petite person like Ellie have been able to get herself in the back with such tremendous force? Worse yet, how could she have done this and still been able to inflict the final tin blows on the front of her body? After all, one expert took a look at the results of this investigation and explained that the wounds on her back appear to have taken place first, but she would have been in such excruciating pain that she would have either been rendered unconscious or maybe even paralyzed. This is because the wounds on her neck completely severed much of her nervous system. To put it plainly, there's no logical way that Ellie did this to herself. The examiner also found 11 bruises on her body with them being in various stages of healing. This seems to suggest that Ellie may have been in some sort of a scuffle in the days leading up to her demise, though admittedly she was also an elementary school teacher. First graders are nuts, so many of these bruises may have just come from her day-to-day life as a teacher. We just don't know for sure. I've seen several people suggest that these bruises prove that Sam may have been abusive and this could have led to Ellie's sudden change in personality as well as her sudden onset of anxiety. But police found no evidence to support this theory and I didn't find any reason to believe this either. The bruises are certainly suspicious, that much is obvious, but that doesn't mean that Sam was involved in any way. At the end of it all, the medical examiner weighed the options and listed Ellie's case as a homicide. But that's not the end of it because no sooner than Ellie's case was handed off to the homicide unit, it was updated once again. This time the homicide unit rejected the idea of her case being listed as such and they once again claimed that Ellie had done this to herself. They claimed that they believed this to be true after Ellie had obviously been struggling with her mental health as well as the fact that there was literally nothing found at the crime scene. When investigators eventually spoke with Ellie's closest friend, Debbie, she revealed some information that didn't really help this ruling. Debbie explained that in the weeks leading up to Ellie's demise, she had become incredibly reserved and didn't wanna talk about much of anything. When Debbie pressed her about this, Ellie would shut down and refused to reveal what had been bothering her. Debbie says that if she asked her anything, there'd be a long pause followed by Ellie saying, I don't wanna talk about it. Debbie worked alongside Ellie at school and she says that while working, Ellie didn't seem any more stressed than any of the other teachers. She believes that whatever's going on, it wasn't work related. Ellie's father says that despite Ellie's obvious signs of anxiety, she never complained about anything or anyone in particular outside of her wedding plans. When investigators spoke with Ellie's psychiatrist, she revealed that Ellie never complained about anyone either. She specifically explained that Ellie never complained about her relationship with Sam, which in essence completely rules Sam out as having any involvement in this. Her psychiatrist even recalled that when speaking about Sam, Ellie would begin to smile. Ellie's family rather obviously does not buy into the belief that Ellie claimed her own life. They firmly believe that she had her life stolen from her. They've hired various detectives on their own and one of these detectives described the scene of the crime as a so-called Blitz attack, which is essentially an attack that's carried out incredibly quickly and would certainly explain the number of Ellie's wounds as well as the varying severity of them. But still, investigators were undeterred. In the end, Ellie's family took the case to court and demanded that it be reexamined as a homicide. This all took place as recently as September of 2023, just a few weeks ago at the time of making this video. But in a two to one vote, the case was rejected. Ellie's demise is still listed as having been carried out by herself. Now, I tend to be fairly quick to be critical of investigators during cases like this, but if we take a step back for a moment, we have to ask ourselves what other choice do officers have? Rather obviously, they should continue pursuing the case and looking for leads. But as the case stands, there's simply no evidence pointing to anyone else being in that apartment that day. The only two entrances were the front door and the balcony, which was on the sixth floor of the building, mind you. The front door was latched shut from the inside and the balcony was covered in countless inches of snow, all which had been undisturbed. Now, to be clear, I'm not defending the belief that Ellie did this to herself, not for one second, but in terms of a simple black and white investigation, what other option do investigators have? I hate this so much for Ellie and her family. Sam has since moved on and continued with his life and he's now a married man and a father of two young children. But for Ellie's family, the pain never stops. They've announced that they plan to continue pushing for justice and I'm so thankful that they have the strength to do so. In the end, something happened to Ellie that day and I for one, do not believe she was alone in that apartment. All we can do is hope that at some point, more information will become available. Investigators will finally be able to get this case solved properly. Thank you guys for tuning into another episode of True Crime Stories. If you wanna see more true crime documentaries like this, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe. If you'd like to help support the channel, the best way you can do that is simply by leaving a comment below, any comment at all. It helps out the channel a lot more than you may realize. If you wanna help out financially, you can do that by clicking the blue join button below or by picking up a True Crime Stories mug like the one you see on the desk behind me from tieknots.com. But with that, my name is Tie Knots and I'll catch you guys in the next video.