AG’s Office refers Ellen Greenberg case back to Philly DA due to ‘the appearance of a conflict’

The state Attorney General’s Office has referred the case of Ellen Greenberg — a Philly teacher whose death by 20 stab wounds in 2011 was ruled a homicide, then changed to suicide — back to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office due to “the appearance of a conflict” of interest, according to a statement from the AG’s Office.

“While the Office of Attorney General does not have an actual conflict in this matter, circumstances beyond our control have created the appearance of a conflict and our involvement is no longer serving one of the primary purposes of the District Attorney’s original conflict referral,” AG spokesperson Molly Stieber said via email.

Four years ago, when Greenberg’s parents, Joshua and Sandra Greenberg, began publicly raising questions about their daughter’s death and asked that the investigation be reopened, District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office referred the case to Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office, due to Krasner’s own conflict of interest in the case.

While in private practice, Krasner had represented the Greenbergs, who live in Harrisburg, in their quest to obtain information from Philly police about the 2011 investigation into their daughter’s death.

Stieber declined to detail the nature of the current conflict-of-interest allegations against the AG’s Office. Shapiro, who is running for governor, has never publicly spoken about the case or his office’s investigation into it.

“We do not plan to publicly delineate these allegations of conflicts that we do not believe exist,” Stieber wrote. “However, these new allegations may undermine public trust in the investigation, thereby leading to the appearance of a conflict of interest, which is why our office referred this case back to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.”

Philadelphia attorney Joseph Podraza Jr., who represents the Greenbergs in their ongoing civil suit against the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office and the pathologist who conducted their daughter’s autopsy, said the AG’s statement, which was first released on July 15, came as a shock.

“My initial reaction was complete surprise because I had no reason to expect it,” he said. “Neither our office nor the Greenbergs had made any such requests prior to the release of that statement.”

Podraza said he later learned that a YouTuber who’s been following the case had posted allegations of a conflict of interest on his channel and some members of the media sought requests for comment about it from the AG’s Office.

The Inquirer is withholding the allegations made on social media, as they could not be immediately and independently verified.

In her statement, Stieber said the case was sent back to the DA’s Office “so that it may be referred to another county pursuant to Pennsylvania law.”

Jane Roh, spokesperson for the Philly DA’s Office, said the first assistant district attorney will handle referring the case elsewhere, due to Krasner’s conflict of interest.

It was not immediately clear where the case will be referred to or when, but Podraza said the Greenbergs were happy with the turn of events.

“It’s been no big secret the Greenbergs have not been satisfied by the alleged investigation by the Attorney General as to the circumstances surrounding their daughter’s death,” he said. “I can say they are extremely elated the investigation will be moved from the Attorney General’s office to another venue where a serious investigation will be commenced and completed.”

Greenberg, 27, a first-grade teacher at Juniata Park Academy, was found by her fiancé in the kitchen of their Manayunk apartment with 20 stab wounds to her body and a 10-inch knife lodged in her chest on Jan. 26, 2011.

Investigators on scene treated her death as a suicide because the door to the apartment — which her fiancé said he broke down — had been locked from the inside, there were no sings of an intruder, and she had no defensive wounds to indicate she’d tried to fight off an attacker, police have said.

But the next morning at autopsy, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her death a homicide. Police publicly disputed the findings and by April 2011, the ruling was changed to suicide, with no explanation to Greenberg’s parents.

Stymied in their quest for answers, the Greenbergs launched their own investigation and retained numerous forensic experts who’ve questioned authorities findings, as first detailed in a March 2019 Inquirer report. Armed with their expert reports, the Greenbergs asked Krasner to reopen the case, but he referred it to the AG’s Office, due to his conflict of interest.

In 2019, after The Inquirer pressed the AG’s Office for the status of its investigation into the case, a spokesperson said a “thorough investigation” had been conducted, the “evidence supports ‘Suicide’ as the manner of death,” and the AG’s Office had “closed this investigation.”

Unsatisfied with the AG Office’s findings, the Greenbergs and their supporters started a Change.org petition, asking Shapiro to reopen the case. It currently has more than 145,000 signatures.

In October 2019, the Greenbergs filed a civil suit against the Philly ME’s Office and the pathologist who conducted their daughter’s autopsy, seeking to have her manner of death changed back to homicide or to undetermined.

The civil suit, which has revealed new details and testimony in the case, is currently held up in Commonwealth Court on a rare pretrial appeal filed by city attorneys.

In December, Podraza delivered depositions and other records obtained as a result of the civil suit to the AG’s Office, in the hopes it would reopen the case. But at that time, Stieber said the information “brought to light no new facts in this case,” and the AG’s Office stood by the suicide ruling.