Sam Goldberg Caught on Camera: the Evidence, the Broken Latch, and the 2026 Federal Reopening

From key trends to fundamental details, get a complete picture of Sam Goldberg Caught on Camera: the Evidence, the Broken Latch, and the 2026 Federal Reopening in our latest feature.

The core mystery remains tethered to apartment 6102 at the Venice Island complex in Manayunk, a historic Philadelphia neighborhood. On January 26, 2011, during a severe winter blizzard, 27-year-old Ellen Greenberg was found dead on the kitchen floor. She suffered 20 separate knife wounds, including 10 to the back of her neck and head, alongside 11 distinct bruises across her extremities in varying stages of healing.

Goldberg told police he left the apartment around 4:45 p.m. to work out in the complex's ground-floor gym. When he returned roughly forty minutes later, he claimed the heavy interior swing-bar latch barred the door from inside. Over the next half hour, Goldberg sent a sequence of increasingly frantic text messages to Greenberg's phone, alternating between affection and agitation. By 6:31 p.m., Goldberg told emergency dispatchers that he forced the door open, snapping the interior swing latch, only to discover Greenberg's body slumped against the kitchen cabinetry with a 10-inch serrated knife plunged into her chest.

Philadelphia police originally treated the apartment as a crime scene, and the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office initially classified the manner of death as homicide. Days later, following an unpublicized meeting between police detectives and forensic pathologists, the ruling shifted to suicide. That reversal anchored a 15-year legal dispute that has outlasted multiple city administrations.