Shownotes
In 2011, Ellen Greenberg was found in her Philadelphia apartment with 20 stab wounds. Despite the shocking evidence, her death was ruled a suicide—a decision that has haunted the true crime community for years.
This episode isn’t a documentary. It’s a narrative retelling designed to place you inside Ellen’s final hours—immersive, unsettling, and unforgettable.
👁️ What Lurks in the Shadows brings you immersive true crime and paranormal storytelling with eerie atmosphere and chilling detail. Each episode pulls you into a narrative rooted in real events, eerie speculation, or the unexplained.
⚡ Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening so you never miss another story from the shadows.
✨ Want eerie visuals to go with these stories? Visit our YouTube channel, What Lurks in the Shadows, for companion content.
Transcripts
0:00 The snow came soft that morning, gentle,
0:04 almost playful, the kind that makes
0:06 first graders press their noses to the
0:09 class and forget everything you're
0:11 trying to teach them about vowels or
0:13 subtraction. I didn't blame them. I was
0:16 watching, too. By midm morning, it
0:20 wasn't soft anymore.
0:22 It came down heavy, thick, relentless,
0:26 the kind of snow that swallows a city
0:29 whole. That turns Philadelphia into
0:32 something unrecognizable.
0:35 Every sharp edge buried, every sound
0:38 muffled, everything familiar made
0:41 strange.
0:43 Around noon, the announcement crackled
0:45 through.
0:47 Classes cancelled. Go home. Be safe.
0:52 The kids erupted, pure joy, coats yanked
0:56 on, hats a skew, their voices echoing
1:00 down the hallway at Junietta Park
1:02 Academy as they scattered into the
1:04 storm. I smiled, gathered my things,
1:07 told myself I should be happy, too. A
1:11 whole afternoon suddenly free. A snow
1:15 day, a gift. But stepping outside, the
1:19 cold hit me like a fist.
1:22 My boots sank deep. The wind sliced
1:25 through my coat, raw against my cheeks,
1:28 stinging my eyes. I pulled my scarf
1:31 tighter and kept my head down. But I
1:34 couldn't shake it. That feeling, not
1:37 excitement, not relief, dread.
1:42 I told myself I was being ridiculous. It
1:46 was just weather, just snow, just an
1:50 early dismissal on a Wednesday in
1:52 January. But my chest felt tight. My
1:56 breath came shallow. And the city around
1:59 me, this city I loved, this place I'd
2:03 chosen, felt too quiet, too still, like
2:07 it was holding its breath. I hurried
2:09 home. Home was apartment 603 in Manunk.
2:15 Small,
2:17 but ours,
2:19 Sam's and mine.
2:22 The kind of place that should feel safe.
2:26 Warm radiators,
2:28 familiar creeks,
2:30 the home of the refrigerator that never
2:32 quite shut off.
2:36 We'd been there a little over a year,
2:39 planning a wedding, building a life.
2:43 Sam Goldberg,
2:45 my fianceé,
2:47 a producer at NBC Sports.
2:51 Smart, driven,
2:54 the kind of guy who could make you laugh
2:56 even when you were drowning in work.
3:00 We'd met, we'd fallen, we'd said yes to
3:05 forever.
3:07 I thought I knew what forever looked
3:09 like.
,:3:17 Sam went to the gym around 4:45,
3:21 just down the hall, same building.
3:25 He kissed me, said he'd be back soon,
3:29 grabbed his bag. The door clicked shut
3:32 behind him, and I was alone.
3:41 The apartment should have felt normal.
3:45 It was normal.
3:47 The heater ticked on. Warm air pushing
3:51 through the fence.
3:53 Outside, the snow kept falling, thick
3:57 and silent,
3:59 piling against the windows.
4:03 Inside,
4:04 everything was familiar.
4:07 The couch where we watched movies.
4:10 The kitchen where we made breakfast.
4:13 The bedroom where we talked about
4:16 honeymoon destinations.
4:19 But something felt wrong.
4:22 I can't explain it.
4:25 There was no sound that shouldn't have
4:28 been there.
4:30 No shadow in the corner.
4:33 No footsteps in the hall.
4:36 just a heaviness,
4:39 a pressure in the air, like the
4:42 apartment was shrinking around me. I
4:46 tried to shake it off.
4:49 Anxiety. I told myself,
4:52 "You've always had anxiety, Ellen. You
4:55 know what this feels like. Just
4:58 breathe."
5:00 But my hands were shaking. The quiet
5:03 wasn't comforting.
5:05 It was the kind of quiet that makes you
5:08 aware of every small sound.
5:11 The creek of the four boards, the
5:13 rattling of the pipes, your own
5:16 heartbeat too loud in your ears.
5:20 I felt watched. I don't know how else to
5:23 say it. I felt like something was
5:26 waiting. I tried to distract myself,
5:29 checked my phone, thought about calling
5:31 my mom, thought about making tea, but I
5:35 couldn't move. I just stood there in the
5:38 kitchen, staring at the snow outside,
5:41 feeling the weight of something I
5:43 couldn't name pressing down on me.
5:47 The light was fading. The storm outside
5:50 turned the world gray, then darker. And
5:54 I was so tired. So tired of feeling
5:58 afraid.
6:01 I never answered when Sam called.
6:05 I never went to the door when he came
6:07 back.
6:09 By 6:30, he was calling 911.
6:14 The door was latched from inside. He
6:17 said he couldn't get in. He was
6:21 panicking.
6:22 Something was wrong.
6:26 When they finally broke through,
6:29 they found me on the kitchen floor.
6:33 A knife.
6:35 20 stab wounds.
6:38 Count them. 20.
6:41 10 of them to the back of my neck. The
6:45 back.
6:48 Bruises scattered across my body. Some
6:51 fresh, some days old, some healing in
6:55 shades of yellow and green.
7:00 The medical examiner saw what was there.
7:03 He wrote it down. Homicide.
7:06 Stabbed by another person.
7:09 That should have been the end of it. The
7:12 beginning of an investigation.
7:14 Questions, answers, justice.
7:18 But then came the meetings, the phone
7:20 calls, the police asking questions that
7:23 didn't sound like questions. No forced
7:26 entry, they said. No sign of a struggle.
7:30 The door was locked from inside.
7:33 Within a day, my death certificate was
7:36 changed.
7:37 Suicide.
7:39 Let that word sit with you for a moment.
7:43 Suicide.
7:45 20 stab wounds. tend to the back of my
7:48 neck, a place I couldn't even reach if I
7:51 tried. Bruises and different stages of
7:54 healing scattered across me like a map
7:57 of something no one wanted to read. And
7:59 they called it suicide.
8:02 I had struggled. Yes. Anxiety that
8:05 coiled around my chest some days.
8:08 Depression that made the world feel
8:10 gray. My parents knew. I'd talked to
8:13 doctors. I wasn't ashamed. Mental
8:16 illness is real. I know that. I lived
8:19 that. But this 20 wounds. 20. Say it
8:25 slow. Let the number settle. Picture
8:28 someone doing that to themselves.
8:31 Picture the will it would take, the
8:34 agony, the impossible contortion
8:37 required to stab yourself in the back of
8:40 the neck. Once, twice, 10 times. Does
8:45 that sound like suicide to you?
8:49 My parents knew. The moment they heard,
8:51 they knew. Josh and Sandy Greenberg. My
8:55 mom and dad. The people who poured the
8:58 whole world into me from the day I was
,:9:06 Their only child, their joyful,
9:08 funloving, beautiful girl. That's what
9:11 they called me. And I believed them
9:14 because they made me believe the world
9:16 was good. We moved to Harrisburg when I
9:20 was young. I grew up wrapped in their
9:22 love, in the certainty that I was safe,
9:25 that life was a promise being kept. I
9:29 went to Penn State,
9:32 studied education because I wanted to
9:34 give that same feeling to other kids,
9:38 that sense of possibility
9:41 of being seen and valued.
9:45 I got my master's degree. I moved to
9:48 Philadelphia.
9:50 I stood in front of a classroom of first
9:53 graders every day and they called me
9:56 Miss Greenberg
9:58 and they trusted me.
10:01 I had a life, a future, a man I loved, a
10:07 wedding to plan. I was 27 years old. And
10:12 someone took that from me.
10:15 The apartment was cleaned before anyone
10:19 could search it properly.
10:21 Evidence gone,
10:24 wiped away.
10:27 A relative of Sam's was even allowed
10:29 inside.
10:31 Allowed to take my phone,
10:34 my computer.
10:36 Pieces of me carried out before the
10:38 right questions could be asked.
10:42 No one stopped it. No one thought to
10:45 preserve the scene. Suicide they
10:49 decided.
10:50 Case closed.
10:53 My parents fought. God, they fought.
10:57 They hired experts, forensic
11:00 pathologists who looked at the
11:02 photographs, read the reports,
11:05 and said what should have been obvious.
11:09 This doesn't fit.
11:11 the wounds, the bruises, the physics of
11:15 it.
11:16 It doesn't fit. But the city didn't
11:20 budge.
11:23 Years passed. My parents carried my name
11:27 into courtrooms, into newsrooms,
11:31 into every office where someone might
11:34 listen.
In:11:38 examiner's office, begging for the truth
11:41 of my death to be acknowledged.
In:11:47 they filed another lawsuit against the
11:50 city itself,
11:52 accusing officials of covering mistakes,
11:56 of hiding the cracks in the
11:58 investigation to protect themselves.
12:05 14 years.
12:07 14 years they refused to let go. And for
12:12 14 years, the answer was the same.
12:16 Suicide.
12:20 Sam only spoke once years later to CNN.
12:26 He said, "When I died, part of him died,
12:29 too."
12:30 He said mental illness was real, that I
12:34 had been its victim.
12:36 He called the doubts about my case
12:39 pathetic, despicable attempts to
12:42 desecrate my reputation and his.
12:47 Then he went silent.
12:50 He stayed quiet and the questions stayed
12:54 loud.
12:56 Who was in the apartment with me? Why
12:59 was the door locked from inside?
13:02 Why was evidence removed before it could
13:05 be examined? Why were there bruises in
13:08 different stages of healing? Why did the
13:12 medical examiner change his findings so
13:15 quickly?
13:17 The answers never came,
13:20 but my parents never stopped asking.
Then in February:13:28 14 years after I died, something
13:32 shifted. The city settled.
13:35 Both lawsuits closed. The medical
13:38 examiner's office agreed to reopen my
13:42 case, and Dr. Marlon Osborne, the very
13:46 man who performed my autopsy, the man
13:50 who signed the original report, signed
13:53 an affidavit saying, which should have
13:56 been clear from the beginning, my death
13:59 could not be classified as suicide.
14:03 It must be called something else,
14:06 something undetermined,
14:08 something that leaves the door open for
14:11 the truth.
14:14 For the first time in 14 years, that
14:18 door locked for so long cracked open.
14:24 My mother told reporters, "Never in my
14:28 wildest dreams did I think anything like
14:32 this was going to happen." My father
14:35 said, "I hope today we made Ellen proud
14:39 of us." They did.
14:42 I was proud. I am proud. But pride is
14:48 not the same as peace.
14:51 The truth is still tangled in shadows.
14:56 The snow from that night still falls in
14:58 my memory,
15:00 covering the city,
15:03 covering the questions,
15:06 muffling everything in silence.
15:10 I was a teacher,
15:13 a daughter,
15:14 a friend. I was 27 years old.
15:20 I loved my students.
15:23 I loved my parents.
15:26 I loved my life.
15:29 Even when it was hard, even when the
15:32 anxiety made it hard to breathe,
15:36 I deserved answers,
15:39 I deserved an investigation that treated
15:43 my death like it mattered.
And on a winter's night in:15:52 in apartment 603,
15:55 someone decided I wouldn't get that.
16:00 My story was rewritten.
16:03 My voice was silenced.
16:07 My death was filed away under a word
16:10 that didn't fit
16:12 so the case could be closed and
16:15 forgotten.
16:17 But my parents wouldn't let me be
16:20 forgotten.
16:22 14 years they carried me. 14 years they
16:28 fought when no one else would.
16:31 And now finally
16:34 the questions are being asked again.
16:39 Who was with me that day? What really
16:43 happened in that apartment?
16:46 Why was the truth buried for so long?
16:54 I don't have the answers.
16:57 Not yet. But I need you to remember
17:01 something.
17:03 I need you to remember that I was here.
17:07 That I mattered. That 27 years of life
17:13 can't be erased by one word on a death
17:16 certificate.
17:18 I need you to remember my name. Ellen.
17:24 Ellen Greenberg.
17:27 And I need you to help me find the
17:31 ending to this story
17:34 because
17:35 14 years later, they're still searching
17:41 and so am I.