‘Death in Apartment 603’ Director “Shocked” by New Medical Examiner Report Calling Ellen Greenberg’s Death a Suicide

In the mysterious case of Ellen Greenberg’s 2011 death, Nancy Schwartzman is not of the same opinion as Dr. Lindsay Simon.

On Monday, Dr. Simon, the chief medical examiner for the city of Philadelphia, released her findings on Greenberg’s suspicious death 14 years ago: it was a suicide, Simon concluded. On Tuesday, Schwartzman, the director of Hulu documentary series Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?, called the medical opinion “totally disappointing” and “outrageous.”

“We’re all just shocked,” Schwartzman told The Hollywood Reporter. “Really shocked.”

Schwartzman is aligned with the Greenberg family’s line of thinking, that the 27-year-old teacher’s death was a homicide. And if it were a homicide, which it had been ruled as at least once (it’s a whole thing), the number-one suspect would be Greenberg’s live-in fiancé, Sam Goldberg. It was Goldberg who found Greenberg dead with a knife in her chest, 20 stab wounds and numerous bruises. What kept Goldberg from being a suspect, basically, was the fact that their shared-apartment’s door was found to be latch-locked from the inside, where only Greenberg was. Goldberg broke through the latch and found Greenberg unresponsive in their kitchen, he told police. The only DNA found on the knife was Greenberg’s, and there was no sign of a struggle. There was no known history of domestic violence in Greenberg’s and Goldberg’s relationship.

Greenberg had been suffering from anxiety, Goldberg, her friends and family told investigators. On this particular day, she was feeling extra pressure to get her students’ grades in by a deadline. Greenberg’s manner of death would later be reclassified as a homicide, but by then, the alleged crime scene had been professionally wiped clean. Greenberg’s death was later reaffirmed as a suicide — and then Simon got her turn.

“With all of the information considered … Greenberg’s death is best classified as ‘Suicide,’” Simon concluded, which keeps the case closed — for now.

In a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter, William Trask, the attorney for the Greenberg family, called Simon’s review “a deeply flawed attempt to justify a predetermined conclusion.” Trask said Simon’s report “includes false claims” and that the chief medical examiner is “ignoring key evidence that contradicts suicide.”

Trask further called Simon’s report “an embarrassment to the city and an insult to Ellen and her family.”

A noticeably odd part of Simon’s report is its bibliography (of sorts). A “Materials Reviewed” section not only includes four (of five) opinions that Greenberg’s death was a homicide, it also includes Schwartzman’s docuseries as source material. I asked Schwartzman if she found that part to be “bizarre.”

“I think everyone found that to be bizarre,” Schwartzman responded, laughing. “It’s like, ‘Oh, are you just getting up to speed on this case?’”

“Maybe [Simon] needed sort of the CliffsNotes version of the case or something,” Schwartzman said. “They should use [their microscopes] instead of watching TV.”

Trask says he and the Greenbergs “will continue through other avenues to get justice for her murder, by any means necessary.” Will Schwartzman do the same via bonus episodes of Death in Apartment 603?

“We’re just tracking this. It’s unfolding so quickly. There’s so much that we could track here, so I do hope that a followup — I think, look, we had, just as a start last week, 38 million views to the trailer. And the trailer has a lot of the 9-1-1 call on it, a 9-1-1 call that leaves people speechless — like one of the sketchiest, strangest, 9-1-1 calls, right?” Schwartzman said. “So can we elicit some people to come forward and give us new information? That would be wonderful, people close to those involved. But yeah, I think that time and this kind of exposure always tends to inspire people to come forward. So we’re definitely hoping for a bit more of that, and any kind of unbiased external investigation.”