DENVER (Court TV) — Months after a medical examiner reversed his ruling and called Ellen Greenberg‘s death a homicide, Nancy Grace highlighted the case at CrimeCon, urging the audience to join the fight for justice.
Nancy Grace and Joseph Scott Morgan speak about Ellen Greenberg at CrimeCon on Sept. 5, 2025. (Court TV)
Greenberg, a 27-year-old Philadelphia schoolteacher, was found stabbed to death in her apartment on Jan. 26, 2011. Dr. Marion Osbourne initially ruled the death a homicide but changed the ruling to suicide just days later after a closed-door meeting with Philadelphia police and the district attorney’s office.
MORE | Report: Medical examiner again reclassifies Ellen Greenberg’s death as suicide
“This beautiful young first-grade teacher at Juniata Park Elementary School was stabbed at least 20 times, including 10 times to the back,” Grace said as she introduced the case to the CrimeCon audience. “How can a woman be stabbed 10 times in the back, plus so many more and that be suicide?” Grace asked, suggesting that not even five-time Olympic gold medalist Nadia Comăneci would be able to create the stab wounds to herself.
MORE | Medical examiner reverses ruling in Ellen Greenberg case
Joining Grace was frequent Court TV guest and forensic pathologist Joseph Scott Morgan, who highlighted autopsy photos showing bruising to Greenberg’s neck and wrists. “These are textbook strangulation marks,” Morgan said. “So she strangled herself to subdue herself before she stabbed herself?” Morgan suggested that Greenberg was held down by her neck while she was being stabbed, and said that suicide in this case is an “empirical impossibility.”
“I’ve been around a lot of dead bodies,” Morgan said. “I’ve never had one attack me with a knife.”
Marks are seen on Ellen Greenberg’s neck in a postmortem photo. (Court TV)
Grace, who has developed a close relationship with Greenberg’s parents, told the audience the family has spent their life savings trying to prove their daughter did not take her own life. The Greenbergs said they can’t even bear to visit her gravesite.
MORE | Ellen Greenberg documentary premieres as case ruling reversed
Despite Dr. Osbourne formally reversing his ruling and calling the death a homicide, no suspects or persons of interest have ever been named. “Who is being protected, and why is it at the cost of justice?” Grace asked.
When audience members pressed for more details about Greenberg’s fiancé, Grace noted only that his “uncle is a judge who works with the judicial nomination committee.”
