ipsos is a good enough pollster to do some preliminary study before the main polling push. My hypothesis is that they found some people had no understanding of the word cursive.
It is possible that all respondents understood the word handwriting, but they didn’t all understand it the same way.
I admit to having posted some weak evidence. But isn’t weak evidence better than no evidence?
Yes, but many OTHER investigators and experts all said not-suicide, and the “multiple stab wounds in the back” angle would seem to support their opinion.
What I want to know is what exactly his “relationship” was with the boyfriend’s family. Were they close enough that he should have realized the main suspect in this case was related to his friends? If so, he should absolutely have recused himself from any involvement. I don’t imagine a State AG pays attention to every detail of every crime his office investigates, but this was a pretty high profile murder case.
Shapiro also has some unspecified personal connection to the boyfriend’s uncle, a judge who helpfully went into the apartment the victim and suspect shared in order to clean it up and take all their computers away before the police could get a search warrant. Shapiro may not be personally at fault in any of this, but everything about this case stinks to high heaven.
Not really. If i ran into a poll that asked if i supported “handwriting” being taught at school, i might say " yes". If i ran into a poll that asked if cursive should be taught at school, I’d burst into laughter. And if i bothered to vote, I’d vote “no”.
Also, the article that cites Ipsos is from 2018. That’s a long time ago. Before all the old fogies were killed off by covid, for instance.
And if Shapiro voted for the bill because the bill was popular, surely there was sometime less stupid than cursive in it, that he could mention when publicly signing it.
Still, it’s an incredibly minor point.
That’s a much more serious issue. Even if he wasn’t personally responsible, that could stick to him. And from the summary in this thread, it sounds like he might have had a hand in it.
We are not experts. Yes, two experts who did not actually do an autopsy said-
On March 15, 2019, The Philadelphia Inquirer released a front-page investigative report reviewing the suspicious circumstances surrounding Greenberg’s death.[5] Pittsburgh forensic pathologist Cyril H. Wecht, who challenged the single-bullet theory of the John F. Kennedy assassination, reviewed the case, determined it was “strongly suspicious of homicide”, and said he did not “know how they wrote this off as a suicide”.[5] Similarly, forensic scientist Henry Lee, who testified for the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder trial, reviewed the case files and concluded, “the number and types of wounds and bloodstain patterns observed are consistent with a homicide scene”.[5]
But Police said suicide, the medical examiners office- after some disagreement- also said suicide, the Chester County District Attorney office, which took over the case from Shapiros office went along with suicide. And upon reinvestigation- " Chief Medical Examiner Lindsay Simon, Philadelphia’s top pathologist, reaffirmed the original ruling that Greenberg died by suicide."
In July 2022, the internet community uncovered relationships between Josh Shapiro (then running for Governor of Pennsylvania) and the families of Samuel Goldberg and James Schwartzman,
But it doesnt make any difference. The police and medical examiner, working BEFORE Shapiros office (not Shapiro himself, mind you- his office- with many ADAs and investigators) both said suicide, and then the Chester County, Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Office agreed, and finally
On October 10, 2025, in a 32-page report,[29] Chief Medical Examiner Lindsay Simon, Philadelphia’s top pathologist, reaffirmed the original ruling that Greenberg died by suicide.[30] While Simon accepts that “the distribution of injuries is admittedly unusual,” she maintains that Greenberg “would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself.”[31] Based on an analysis of photographs taken at autopsy, Simon also contends that the defect found in Greenberg’s spinal cord could have been caused accidentally by a probe during the autopsy procedure. Simon further observes that even if Greenberg sustained such an injury to her spine antemortem, it would neither have incapacitated Greenberg nor have prevented her from continuing to move.[32]
So, even if Shapiro could order all his ADAs and Investigators to say it was suicide, he had no control of everyone else that said suicide. And his motive for doing so is doubtful and sparse- simply internet allegations of a “relationship” between Shapiros family and the Goldbergs family- which of course they all being prominent PA families such a “relationship” is normal.
See, the DA in such a large office just cant "cover up a murder’ so easily, and besides his office wasnt even connected with the case before the Police and the medical examiners office ruled suicide. Not to mention the two independent investigations that occurred after Shapiros office no longer had the case. Assuming Shapiro could do all that is impossible.
You know, it doesn’t actually matter whether he covered up that murder. We aren’t asking whether a just, all knowing God will let him into heaven. What matters is whether it looks like he covered up that murder. And… Motive, means, opportunity… Yeah, those all look to be in place.
Again, the question to me is what Shapiro’s relationship with the alleged killer’s family was. If it was just the sort of casual acquaintance you would expect prominent politicians to have with hundreds of people, there’s probably nothing there. If they were actually friends, that’s a whole other story, and at that point the appearance of impropriety is so massive that it no longer matters what the actual facts are.
I have a feeling this is why he didn’t end up becoming Kamala Harris’ VP pick.
This will continue being an issue for him if he is a contender in 2028. Tell us about the lady who stabbed herself in the back of the head ten or twenty times. “Oh, that was totally a suicide, nothing to see here” is not an answer that is going to pass muster even if that is what actually happened. The Republicans are still going to talk about him as if he murdered the lady himself.
Exactly. “Handwriting” and “cursive” are very different, and the fact that the poll combined them makes the poll useless for the purpose of figuring out whether parents want cursive to be taught.
It doesnt matter. In order for Shapiro to make it suicide, he’d have to make all 100 or so ADAs and investigators bend to his will. Then, he’d have to hop into a time machine and go into the past, when the police and medical examiner ruled it suicide and convince them. Then somehow convince the two investigations that happened after his office stopped investigating it and convince them. That time machine thing pretty much rules it out. If it was ONLY his office, then maybe. But it wasnt.
You’re right, it absolutely doesn’t matter if he actually did anything wrong or not. If they actually had a close personal relationship, the fact that he didn’t recuse his office from handling this case was grossly unethical even if he didn’t do anything else wrong.
And it’s possible that Shapiro might not have actively obstructed the investigation, but just not have looked as deeply into the matter as he would have if he hadn’t been friendly with the alleged suspect, which would also be wrong. You seem to be arguing against the theory that Shapiro was the secret mastermind who was singlehandedly responsible for the entire cover-up, which nobody is actually claiming.
You would think that the myriads of investigators- pro and amateur- would have found out how close the relationship was. But they got no further than a nebulous
In July 2022, the internet community uncovered relationships between Josh Shapiro (then running for Governor of Pennsylvania) and the families of Samuel Goldberg and James Schwartzman,
In other words- there was nothing there.
Well, we’ll see. The cite for the Wikipedia sentence you just quoted is paywalled, so I can’t see any further details.
Why was it so high profile?
Well, you could read the Wikipedia article, but I think the fact that her death has its own Wikipedia article kind of proves the point.
The victim’s family has been vocally critical of the investigation, including filing lawsuits against the medical examiner’s office. The death happened in 2011, but it looks like it didn’t become big national news until a 2019 front page article in the Philadelphia Inquirer outlining all the dubious aspects of the official story. (Shapiro’s office was in charge of the case from 2018 to 2022). Since then there have been multiple podcasts, a book and a documentary TV series about the case.
I would not jump to the conclusion that the proposed solution in my next link is correct, but the part I quote below is correct:
The Court of Public Opinion: Ellen Greenberg Mystery Solved?
Whether or not my link above is correct overall, whatever happened was extremely unusual.
As for Shapiro, he sent the case to my county DA’s office, and they couldn’t credibly solve it either.
Yeah, I’m definitely not buying that guy’s conclusion (to his credit, he states upfront that he is a friend of the suspect’s cousin). He’s trying to pin it on the combination of alcohol and Ambien, which can indeed produce bizarre and, rarely, violent behavior. But this would be the first known case of that combination inducing anyone to stab themselves, much less 20 times. It also wouldn’t explain the multiple bruises in various stages of healing.
I didn’t get past the paywall, but googling suggests otherwise:
Zolpidem overdose Command hallucinations with self-stabbing case
And even if ambien was ruled out, the facts could be consistent with other types of temporary psychosis:
Suicide by skull stab wounds: a case of drug-induced psychosis
We have here a classic situation where experts go up against the common sense of the average man. In this case, most of the experts, while having an opinion, seem unsure. But lots of voters will, after watching a TV show, or reading the Wikipedia article, think it a blazingly obvious homicide, and thus that Shapiro covered up murder.
I can see this morphing into something like the Clinton body count conspiracy theory. So it will hurt Shapiro’s electoral hopes without sending them down to zero.
Not really. A lot of experts said, “this must be a murder”.
Bruises can be acquired in any number of ways, including accidents and self-harm. Stab wounds to the back are pretty much always intentionally inflicted by another person. I’d need a really good expert to explain how she could possibly have inflicted those wounds herself to convince me it might possibly be suicide.
From the Wikipedia article, i believe:
It’s unclear to me what Shapiro’s role was, his link seems murky. It would be a lot easier to convince me that he had nothing to do with the cover-up than to convince me there wasn’t a cover-up of a murder.
I can’t get past the paywall on the first link, though the headline looks relevant. The second one has nothing to with Ambien. So the number of times similar things have happened is not zero, but is considerably smaller than the number of times abusive men have murdered their partners.
Anyway, what matters isn’t what happened, it’s how much dirt sticks to Shapiro. I’m not super good at estimating that, but the media coverage to date doesn’t look great for his presidential ambitions.