Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg? Review 2025 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
“Death in Apartment 603: What Happened to Ellen Greenberg?” is a three-part documentary series released in 2025 that revisits the fraught, long-standing mystery surrounding the death of 27-year-old Philadelphia teacher Ellen Greenberg—an episode that defies easy categorization as either suicide or homicide. Directed by Nancy Schwartzman, the show delves into the tangled pathways of investigation, institutional reluctance, and familial determination, weaving together archival materials, newly recorded interviews, crime-scene photos, forensic experts, and the personal testimony of Ellen’s parents to challenge the official narrative that has stood for more than a decade.
What the series does best is to lay bare the jarring contradictions between the facts of Ellen’s physical wounds and the manner-of-death ruling imposed by authorities. On January 26, 2011, in the midst of a snowstorm, Ellen left work early and returned to the apartment she shared with her fiancé, Samuel “Sam” Goldberg, in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia. Later that afternoon, Goldberg returned from a gym session in their building to find the apartment door latched from the inside. After failing to reach Ellen, he forced entry, discovering her lying on the kitchen floor, covered in blood, with a large kitchen knife protruding from her chest.
The autopsy revealed that Ellen had been stabbed 20 times, including multiple wounds to the back of her neck—ten just in that region—and she bore more than 11 bruises in various stages of healing on her arms, torso, and legs.The early investigator’s notes also indicate that the body did not show classic defensive wounds, a detail which the authorities seized upon in their decision-making. In the immediate aftermath, the medical examiner initially classified the death as a homicide, writing that “she was stabbed by another person,” but following consultation with law enforcement, the ruling was reversed to suicide without full transparency or explanation.
The documentary interrogates why such a drastic reclassification was made, and dissects the procedural lapses that followed. Because the death was treated as a suicide from the start, the Philadelphia Police Department did not regard Ellen’s apartment as a crime scene: forensic units were not summoned immediately, and in the ensuing 24 hours the space was cleaned and items removed—actions which would have been inconceivable had murder been suspected.Even more striking is that Sam Goldberg’s account evolved: in the original 911 call he tells the operator that she “stabbed herself” or “fell on a knife,” though he later claimed uncertainty. The timing and wording in those communications, as played in the series, add emotional weight to the atmosphere of confusion and suspicion.
A large portion of the narrative energy comes from the voices of Ellen’s parents, Sandra and Joshua Greenberg, who have publicly refused to accept the suicide determination and have, for the past 14 years, waged a lonely, uphill battle to restore the case to “active status.” Their efforts, backed by private forensic consultants and civil litigation, become the spine of the series’ central arc.In 2019, they filed a civil suit against the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office and Dr. Marlon Osbourne, the pathologist who originally signed off the ruling, seeking a change in the cause of death from suicide to either homicide or “undetermined.” The state and city resisted, yet in 2025 a settlement was reached: the city agreed to reopen the inquiry, and Osbourne submitted a sworn affidavit stating that upon reviewing additional evidence he no longer believed the suicide classification was valid.
“Death in Apartment 603” is particularly effective at dramatizing how institutional inertia, fragmentary oversight, and the silences of reluctant participants coalesce to obscure the truth. The legal and bureaucratic hurdles—delays in medical examiner reviews, standoffs over paperwork, and shifting responsibility among agencies—are laid bare in crisp, interwoven episodes. The viewer is left acutely aware how each oversight snowballs: when crime scene units are denied access, evidence vanishes; when a medical examiner reverses a ruling after private conversation with police, accountability fades. Schwartzman’s direction resists the temptation toward sensationalism; she lets the disjointed timeline and conflicting testimonies tell much of the story, though she does not shy away from showing graphic pathology images when those visuals illuminate rather than shock.
One of the more compelling voices brought into the investigation is that of Guy D’Andrea, a former prosecutor who examined the case and appears in the documentary to analyze the legal and forensic inconsistencies. He questions, among other things, how someone might stab themselves so many times—including the back of the neck—and why investigators ignored bruising that would suggest a struggle or prior assault. His presence helps bridge the realm of procedural law enforcement and lay intuition: the contradictions become not merely curiosities, but unsettling signposts that demand scrutiny.
Critically, the series does not present a neat conclusion. It refuses to assert definitively whether Ellen was murdered, nor does it villainize any single party conclusively. Instead, it invites the viewer to examine the evidence, weigh the unanswered questions, and consider the institutional failures that may have allowed an alleged injustice to persist. In its firmness about ambiguity, the show draws strength—acknowledging that real mysteries often resist tidy endings. Nonetheless, the momentum of accumulating contradictions, expert affidavits, legal victories, and the sheer physical implausibility of some rulings make the suicide verdict increasingly untenable.
Reception has been mixed but generally favorable. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a 57% rating based on limited critical reviews, suggesting a cautious but intrigued response from reviewers. Critics have praised its emotional core and investigative thoroughness: Karina Adelgaard of Heaven of Horror awarded the show 4 out of 5 stars, describing how watching it elicited anger on behalf of Ellen’s loved ones. Joel Keller of Decider called it compelling, particularly for the way it brings to light how “startling the mishandling of Ellen Greenberg’s case really was.” Yet the series has also been critiqued by some for pacing issues and episodic redundancy, particularly in revisiting the same contradictions over multiple episodes without always delivering fresh insight. It sometimes feels overburdened by its own insistence that the viewer must dwell in uncertainty.
From a storytelling perspective, the series’ strengths lie in its personal stakes and moral urgency. The parents’ quiet persistence anchors the narrative with emotional resonance, making abstract legal fights feel immediate and vital. Their reflections—on their daughter’s personality, her aspirations, and the wrenching frustration of battling opaque systems—add weight beyond cold documents and crime scene photos. In this sense, the series transcends the mechanics of true crime to become a portrait of grief, hope, and endurance.
On the technical side, the production is solid though unremarkable. The cinematography and editing serve the procedural tone rather than seeking flashy stylization; archival footage, crime-scene photos, and re-creations are woven carefully, and the pacing is deliberate enough to allow the viewer to absorb detail. The direction is judicious in revealing graphic content—Schwartzman has defended such choices as necessary to understanding the wounds, rather than sensationalizing them. The show’s limitations largely trace to its source material: the reclassification of the case to suicide from the start and the subsequent destruction or cleaning of key evidence means that many questions may never be answered. The show is, in some ways, fighting an adversary it cannot ever fully overcome.
As a viewer, one comes away both unsettled and profoundly sympathetic to Ellen’s family. The paradox of 20 stab wounds, many to the back, and a ruling of suicide seems, at surface level, untenable—and the series effectively conveys that dissonance. But the true power of “Death in Apartment 603” lies in how it frames institutional accountability: how much of justice depends not only on evidence, but on the willingness of agencies to follow protocols, to resist self-justifying conspiracies, and to keep truth open even when it is inconvenient. The documentary thus becomes a case study in how public institutions can fail—and how a bereaved family’s persistence can at least keep questions alive.
Whether future investigations will conclusively settle what happened to Ellen Greenberg remains unknown. But the series makes clear that the suicide ruling, long taken for granted, is deeply contested—and that justice is not just about verdicts, but about process, transparency, and the moral obligation to question. In that regard, “Death in Apartment 603” is more than a true crime miniseries; it is a meditation on institutional trust, the limits of certainty, and the resolve of those left behind to demand the truth.
