Ellen Greenberg’s former fiancé has finally spoken out after Philadelphia upheld its contentious finding that her death, which involved 20 stab wounds, was a suicide.

Sam Goldberg told the Daily Mail that the situation has been ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ due to the extensive media focus on the shocking death of the 27-year-old teacher back in 2011.

Goldberg, who is now living in Manhattan as a married father of two, was asked by the Daily Mail if a recent Hulu documentary examining Greenberg’s last days left him feeling ‘betrayed.’

‘Yeah I have been. It’s awful and it sucks,’ he said. ‘But I have nothing else to say,’ he added.

Goldberg’s comments mark only the second time he has ever spoken out publicly about his former fiancée’s death.

His only other remarks were made in a written statement sent to CNN in fall 2024, where he maintained that Greenberg’s death was a suicide and condemned the ‘lies, distortions, and falsehoods’ that have been circulated about him over the years.

‘When Ellen took her own life it left me bewildered. She was a wonderful and a kind person who had everything to live for,’ he said at the time. 

‘When she died, a part of me died with her,’ he said. In the time since, he has had to bear the ‘unimaginable’ grief of losing his future wife, along with ‘pathetic and despicable attempts’ to ruin his reputation and invade her privacy by promoting a false narrative. He emphasized that mental illness is a very real issue that affects many people.

‘I hope and pray that you never lose someone you love like I did to a terrible disease and then be accused by ignorant and misinformed people of causing her death.’

The Daily Mail approached Goldberg Tuesday outside his luxury apartment building in Gramercy Park, Manhattan, where he lives with his family in a home they bought for $1.88m. 

Dressed in a baseball cap and casual wear, Goldberg initially remained silent and rushed back inside the lobby of the building, before jumping into his car when Daily Mail first approached that morning.

On his return, he gave his brief comments. 

Goldberg’s remarks came just hours after Philadelphia’s Chief Medical Examiner Lindsay Simon released the findings of her reinvestigation of Greenberg’s death, reaffirming the city’s stance that she died by suicide. 

Greenberg was found dead on January 26, 2011, inside the sixth-floor apartment she shared with Goldberg in the quiet, safe neighborhood of Manayunk, Philadelphia. 

Goldberg told police he went to the gym in the apartment building at around 4.45pm and returned around 30 minutes later.

Finding the door apparently locked from the inside, he sent a series of increasingly irate texts to Greenberg: ‘Hello,’ ‘open the door,’ ‘what r u doin,’ ‘i’m getting pissed,’ ‘hello,’ ‘you better have an excuse,’ ‘what the f***’ ‘ahhh’ and ‘u have no idea.’

During that time, he also spoke to his uncle and cousin James and Kamian Schwartzman, both powerful attorneys, on the phone.

After around an hour, Goldberg said he broke down the door to get inside and found his fiancée in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.

He placed a 911 call at around 6.30pm.  

Around two minutes into the call, Goldberg mentioned there was a knife sticking out of Greenberg’s chest.

‘She stabbed herself,’ Goldberg said.

Moments later, he said: ‘She fell on a knife.’

Greenberg had been stabbed 20 times, including 10 times to the back of the neck and head, and her body was covered in bruises in various stages of healing. 

A 10-inch kitchen knife was sticking out of her chest. 

Despite the nature of her wounds, her death was ruled a suicide.

Greenberg’s parents have fought for 14 years against the ruling, with numerous experts, pathologists and investigators finding evidence they say contradicts this conclusion.

But, Goldberg has never joined the Greenbergs in the fight. 

Sandee Greenberg previously told the Daily Mail she and Josh had not heard from their once future son-in-law since 2013 when he sent them an email announcing his engagement to his now-wife Caroline Shnay.

Goldberg and Shnay – the daughter of a prominent New York real estate magnate – married in a lavish bash at the Plaza in New York City on January 11, 2014 – almost exactly three years after Greenberg’s death.

Their nuptials were announced in The New York Times.

In 2017, Shnay spoke of married life in an interview with a blogger, describing her husband as ‘hands on, and present, a true life saver’ as well as a ‘star in the kitchen’. 

The couple now live with their two children in Manhattan. 

At the time of Greenberg’s death, Goldberg worked as a features producer for NBC Sports but now works for LIV Golf.

Goldberg has never been named a suspect or been accused of a crime in connection to Greenberg’s death. 

In the medical examiner’s office’s review, released Monday, Simon cited a lack of any evidence that Greenberg and Goldberg’s relationship was abusive among her reasons for the suicide ruling. 

The medical examiner also said that Goldberg’s DNA was not found on the kitchen knife used to inflict the fatal wounds. 

Greenberg, meanwhile, was suffering from anxiety at the time of her death and had recently changed medication which was helping with her insomnia – meaning she had ‘an increase in energy to act on her anxious thoughts’, the review found.

Simon also concluded that Greenberg could have inflicted the 20 stab wounds on herself and there were no signs of a struggle or defensive wounds at the scene. 

‘While the distribution of injuries is admittedly unusual, the fact remains that Ellen would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself,’ Simon wrote, saying that many of the wounds could be classed as hesitation wounds and that there is no evidence she was ‘incapacitated’ when they were inflicted. 

‘With all of this information considered, it is the opinion of the undersigned that the manner of Ellen Greenberg’s death is best classified as ‘suicide,” Simon wrote. 

‘All opinions stated in this report are expressed with a reasonable degree of medical certainty.’

In a statement to the Daily Mail, Joe Podraza, the attorney for Greenberg’s parents, slammed the medical examiner’s conclusion as ‘tripe, an embarrassment to the City, and an insult to Ellen and her family’.

Podraza branded the city’s ‘so-called ‘independent review” into Greenberg’s death ‘a deeply flawed attempt to justify a predetermined conclusion’. 

‘It includes false claims – like the assertion that a stab wound in Ellen’s spinal column was made during autopsy, a theory rejected by every credible expert, including the City’s own neuropathologist,’ he said. 

‘By ignoring key evidence that contradicts suicide – the extensive 3D photogrammetry, a recreation which proves Ellen could not self-inflict all of the wounds, unexplained bruises, missing surveillance footage, an intact lock, accounts of a toxic relationship, etc.’

Podraza slammed the city’s ‘distorted portrayals of Ellen’s mental health, propped up by cynical distortions of Ellen’s managed anxiety’.

While Greenberg was struggling with anxiety and had been prescribed Klonopin and Ambien in the months leading up to her death, her psychiatrist insisted she was not suicidal.

Greenberg had not disclosed any domestic abuse either. 

She put her anxiety down to stress with work but had recently asked her parents if she could move back home with them.  

Podraza added: ‘Ellen’s family just wanted the truth. It is clear the truth will not come from Philadelphia’s law enforcement machinery. Though Ellen’s city turned its back on her, we will continue through other avenues to get justice for her murder, by any means necessary.’

The reexamination had been part of a settlement agreement reached between the Greenbergs and the city in February, after they filed two lawsuits against Philadelphia.  

A brief, remote court hearing was held before Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Linda Carpenter Tuesday afternoon, where the cases were closed. 

‘What the future holds we will see,’ Podraza told the court.

The medical examiner’s ruling comes despite the pathologist who carried out the original autopsy now believing he was wrong to rule her death a suicide. 

In a sworn statement in January, Dr Marlon Osbourne said he now believes her manner of death should be designated ‘as something other than suicide’. 

Multiple independent experts, hired by the Greenbergs, have also uncovered damning evidence they say contradicts the suicide ruling: including evidence that someone moved her body, that one of the knife wounds appears to have been inflicted post-mortem, and that the discovery of her body did not take place the way officials said. 

Not only were half of the stab wounds inflicted to the back of Greenberg’s body, several were also catastrophic: one three-inch wound near the base of her skull caused a stroke, one severed the spinal column membrane, one sliced her aorta.

Prominent pathologist Wayne Ross also found bruises, a scratch and what looked like finger marks on Greenberg’s neck indicating she could have been strangled.

The other bruising on her body – in various stages of healing – also indicated she had suffered ‘a repeated beating’ prior to her death, Ross concluded.

And he found that one of the stab wounds to her head ‘severed the cranial nerves and brain’ and would have caused her to lose consciousness – therefore making it impossible for her to cause the final stab wound to her chest.

Separately, Dr Lyndsey Emery, a pathologist in the medical examiner’s office, also examined Greenberg’s spinal column in 2019 and testified in a deposition that she found no hemorrhage. 

One possible conclusion from this is that this stab wound was inflicted post-mortem, she testified.  

And due to the knife being found in Greenberg’s chest, that could not have been the final stab wound.

To some, the scene itself also looked staged, with the position of dried blood on Greenberg’s face indicating she had been moved to where she was found propped up against the kitchen cabinets.

Questions have also been raised over whether or not the apartment door was locked on the inside, meaning that Goldberg had to break the door down to get inside. 

The official account that Goldberg was accompanied by a security guard when he entered the apartment has now also been refuted by surveillance footage and the guard’s sworn testimony.

Now, with the city standing by its suicide ruling, it’s unclear what Josh and Sandee’s next steps could be.