9/11 is a day the world remembers for the horrific terrorist attacks that took place but it may also hold the key to unlocking a mysterious missing persons case.
Sneha Anne Philip was born in the Indian state of Kerala on the Malabar Coast and later moved with her parents to upstate New York, they first settled in the Albany area and then in a small hamlet in Hopewell Junction in Dutchess County. Following her graduation from John Hopkins University, Sneha decided to pursue a career in medicine just like her father and enrolled in the Chicago School of Medicine in 1995, it was there she met Ron Lieberman, a fellow student in the year below from Los Angeles. The pair soon started dating, bonding over their creative sides with Ron being a musician and Sneha interested in writing, painting and music. Sneha decided to take a year off and travel around Italy so the two could graduate together in 1999.
Sneha and Ron
After securing internships the two moved to New York City. Sneha worked at Cabrini Medical Centre near their apartment in the East Village and Ron worked at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Sneha and Ron were married in May 2000 at a small ceremony in Dutchess County that combined Jewish and Indian Christian elements, Ron gave Sneha a minnu, which is a traditional Malayali Christian wedding pendant shaped like a golden teardrop with a diamond set in it. The newlyweds then moved into a bigger apartment in Battery Park City.
The happy couple on their wedding day
SNEHA GOES MISSING
It was September 10 2001 and Sneha was planning on cleaning up the apartment ready for a dinner with her cousin, Annu, two days later. During the day Sneha had a two hour online chat with her mother where she informed her of her plans to visit the Windows on the World restaurant located on the top of the nearby North Tower of the World Trade Center, the trip seemingly inspired by a friends wedding due to take place there the following spring.
At 4pm she said goodbye to her mother and went to drop off some clothes at the nearby dry cleaners and then went to Century 21 (department store) where she used the couples American Express card to buy lingerie, a dress, pantyhose and bed linens, soon after she bought three pairs of shoes at an annex to the store. The purchases were made at around 7.18pm and totalled $550, the bags nor the items have ever been located. Security cameras in Century 21 caught Sneha during the shopping trip, this footage and the credit card receipts are the last confirmed records of the 31 year old.
Sneha on the Century 21 CCTV footage
Ron returned home at around midnight to find no sign of his wife, he simply thought she had gone out with some friends as she had been doing recently and made a mental note to remind Sneha to call him to inform him of her plans so he didn't worry. Ron then went to bed as he had to get up early in the morning.
Police later discovered that someone had called Ron's mobile phone at 4am, something Ron doesn't remember but thinks he may have briefly woken to check his voicemail. When he woke up at 6.30am, his wife was still not home. The day of course would go down in history as that morning four coordinated terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda would happen, with two planes hitting the nearby World Trade Center towers.
Ron left a meeting at 9am to find his colleagues huddled around the TV and was horrified to learn of the unfolding attack that was happening just blocks from his apartment. Worried, Ron tried to call his wife but she never answered so then he called her family who also had not heard from Sneha and had no idea where she was.
Ron managed to get a ride with an ambulance to their apartment later in the evening but it took six hours to get there due to the masses of people fleeing Lower Manhattan and the emergency response to the terrorist attacks. When he finally got there he found the electricity was out so he couldn't get past the automatic locks, he ran around the building calling Sneha's name and eventually a neighbour asked what was wrong so he asked them to knock on his apartment door but when the person did they received no reply.
Ron stayed with a friend that night and finally managed to gain access to their apartment and when he got inside he found that the window had been left open and that during the collapse of the Towers that had coated the city in dust and debris had also left their apartment covered in dust. There were tracks of the couples kittens (Figa and Kali) throughout but no sign of any human. Ron was filled with dread as he realised Sneha had never made it home and reported her missing.
Immediately after the second plane hit the South Tower
Like many others that terrible day, Sneha joined the ever growing list of missing people. Her family posted flyers all over the city in the hopes that someone had seen her or knew where she was. Ron tried to get the press involved but as Sneha was not confirmed to be at Ground Zero they showed little interest, he then asked her brother to reach out to the press but to leave out the fact she had last been seen the day before. Unfortunately, her brother decided to invent a story that he had spoken to his sister during the attacks while she helped injured victims but later had to admit he had made up the whole thing.
Sneha's description is as follows:
5 foot 6 inches, a mole on her left cheek, last seen wearing a short sleeved brown shirtdress with buttons down the front, sandals and a black and gold beaded necklace with a cross pendant.
THE INVESTIGATION - KEN GALLANT AND RON LIEBERMAN
Ron was desperate to find out what had happened to his wife and started to retrace her steps. He called American Express after learning Sneha had used the card and then posted flyers in the Century 21 store she had been at and others in the area. Later that week a clerk from the Lower Manhattan store, who had been relocated to Brooklyn, called to say she had seen Sneha whom she had recognised as a frequent customer. On the evening of September 10, she had seen Sneha accompanied with a younger woman (who was possibly Indian or of Indian descent) and with this knowledge Ron looked at the security footage. After three weeks he found the recording of his wife in the coat department but she was alone. The younger woman was never seen on CCTV and has never come forward.
Police detectives were initially unhelpful to Ron as they had assumed Sneha was among the thousands of victims of the 9/11 attacks so he hired a private investigator named Ken Gallant. Gallant found two pieces of evidence to suggest Sneha had returned to the apartment the morning of September 11, the first was a call from the home phone to Ron's mobile phone and the second was security footage from the apartments lobby. The video was timestamped 8.43am, just three minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower, it was also within the 7am to 9am timeframe that Sneha would return home from her nights out. The footage shows a woman entering the building, waiting near the elevator and suddenly leaving after a few minutes. Due to poor contrast from the sunlight in the lobby the woman is only a silhouette but her hair and dress were consistent with the footage from Century 21 and the Philip's family say the mannerisms and general appearance of the woman are consistent with Sneha. The woman isn't carrying any of the bags she would have had from the shopping trip and the woman is alone. Ron could not positively identify the woman but the NYPD believe the woman is indeed Sneha.
Sneha's missing person poster
Gallant investigated the theory that Sneha had used the ensuing chaos from 9/11 to run away and start a new life under a new identity due to mounting personal problems. Her hard drive showed no evidence or sign that Sneha had been intending to flee as she also left behind her glasses, passport, drivers license and credit cards (apart from the couples American Express card she had on her). Ron kept the account open in the hope that perhaps someone would use the card but it was never used again. Gallant and Ron then concluded that Sneha had seen the events of 9/11 unfold and with her training as a physician had rushed to the scene to help and had died there, either within the towers or when they collapsed.
Sneha also enjoyed a very close relationship with her family, especially her mother. Her mother, Ansu, said her daughter told her everything. It didn't seem like someone who had such a good relationship with her family would disappear randomly.
Ron and her family believed she had fell victim to the attacks and attended many memorials for the victims of 9/11 and found some solace with the other loved ones mourning.
THE INVESTIGATION - THE NYPD
The NYPD was not able to investigate immediately due to of course the terrorist attacks but when they did they uncovered many details. Earlier in the year Cabrini Medical Center had declined to renew Sneha's contract due to her "tardiness" and "alcohol related issues"; this means she was effectively fired. Shortly after she found this out, Sneha went out to a local bar with other Cabrini employees with the night ending with Sneha spending the night in jail. She complained to police while there she was groped by an intern while at work, the prosecutor who investigated the case ended up dropping the sexual abuse charge and instead charged Sneha with third degree falsely reporting an incident which is a misdemeanour under New York law. The prosecutor offered to drop the charge if Sneha recanted her original complaint but she refused and held her ground and was held overnight as a result.
After losing her job, Sneha spent a lot of time having nights out at gay and lesbian bars in the city with some known for having "rough clientele"; police said that Sneha would leave these bars in the company of women. Police also claimed that Sneha had been caught in the act by her brother when he had walked in on his sister with his then girlfriend.
Sneha managed to get another internship for internal medicine at St. Vincent's Medical Centre in Staten Island but she soon ran into similar problems, she was suspended for missing a meeting with a substance abuse counsellor.
On September 10, Sneha was formally arraigned on the criminal charge and pled not guilty, a police report stated that Sneha and Ron argued loudly at the courthouse about her problems and nights out, which ended with her walking off.
Sneha
After the medical examiner reviewed Sneha's case, she was taken off the list of official victims of 9/11 in January 2004, she was one of the last three on the list. A spokesperson stated the reasoning for this was due to there being not any evidence that Sneha had lived past September 10 2001.
Ron and the Philip's family strongly disagree with the NYPD's investigation and conclusions. They claim she was fired from Cabrini not because of alcoholism but for being a whistleblower, she had apparently complained of racial and sexual bias something the hospital claims it has no records of. Ron says his wife's apparent fondness of going to lesbian and gay bars was due to her not wanting a repeat of the assault by her co-worker, many women prefer gay bars as they are safer and women won't be harassed. He claims she never had sex with any of the women she left the bars with but instead would often listen to music, sleep or paint, one time she apparently came home covered in paint after going home with an artist. Ron strongly denies his wife was having affairs and was bisexual or a lesbian. Sneha's increased consumption of alcohol was a phase she was going through and was due to the depression she found herself in after her firing from Cabrini and the assault she suffered and would stop once she got her life back on track as what her husband believed what was happening at the time of her disappearance.
Sneha's brother was particularly annoyed at the false report of catching his sister with his girlfriend and that he had never spoken to the detective that had written the so called report. Ron also called out the report for the argument outside the courthouse as false, Ron and the Philip's family believe the NYPD exploited what little they found to fit a narrative that excused their initial inaction in the case.
BATTLE WITH THE COURTS
In 2003, after the NYPD concluded their investigation, Ron filed a court petition in the New York County Surrogate's Court to have Sneha declared a victim of the 9/11 attacks, to do so you must have clear evidence that your loved one was a victim to be counted officially as a victim and to be able to claim from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Ron's case rested on his wife's medical knowledge and profession would have led her to rush to the scene to help where she could along with her mother's testimony of the online chat that stated her daughters intention of visiting the Windows on the World restaurant and possibly shopping at the World Trade Center's Mall. The author of the NYPD report testified he thought Sneha had died in the attacks.
Ellen Winner who argued against the theory Sneha had died in the 9/11 attacks stated that there was no clear evidence to place Sneha in either the area at the time of the attacks and no evidence to place her at the towers. On June 29, 2006, Judge Renne Roth ruled that it could not be proven Sneha was at the World Trade Center on September 11 2001 and set the legal date of death as September 10 2004, three years after she was reported missing as per state law. The judge believed the theory that she had ran away in the chaos or had been murdered before the attacks.
As Ron could not provide a death certificate that stated her date of death as 11 September 2001 his claim with the Memorial Fund was denied. Giving Sneha's age and future earning potential it is thought Ron would have received between $3 to $4 million.
Ron and the Philip's family appealed the decision, arguing her case with that of Juan Lafuente who was another suspected victim whose case was accepted in the courts counterpart in Dutchess County where he lived. Like Sneha, his death during the attacks was based on circumstantial evidence, Juan had also recently lost a job and struggled with depression and was a volunteer fire marshal in Poughkeepsie so like Sneha may have felt obligated to help.
His office was located eight blocks away from the World Trade Center but the court accepted testimony from someone who also visited the same local deli frequently and had overheard Juan saying he had a meeting at the towers that morning. The Philip's family and Ron believe Sneha's story is very similar to that of Juan but his case was accepted due to his wife's, Colette, then position of the Mayor of Poughkeepsie and the case was heard there instead of Manhattan.
Despite the appeals chance of success being low the family continued. On January 31 2008, a five judge panel reversed the original judges decision. They found the simplest explanation most likely, Sneha had died trying to help those caught up in the attacks but had sadly lost her own life in the process. Judge Saxe dismissed the NYPD report, criticising it as hearsay and that it had been appended by Ellen Winner to a post hearing report and that she had failed to follow up on assertions during the hearing. He also stated that if Juan Lafuente had been deemed to have died in 9/11 then Sneha could have too. Saxe considered it unlikely Sneha had run away due to a lack of evidence of any kind of preparation and agreed with the family and Gallant that had she died another way evidence of that would have turned up in the years since.
Ron and the Philip's family at the memorial at Ground Zero
Judge Bernard Malone Jr, said:
"Since it is not know where the dependent spent the night of September 10, it requires speculation to say, as petitioner does, that her route home... southwest of the World Trade Center, took her across or dangerously near the World Trade Center grounds, or that at 8.48am..., when the attacks began, she was even in the vicinity of the World Trade Center."
Malone also pointed out that Lafuente had a more structured and predictable routine making the evidence of the meeting at the towers more likely and that Sneha's case is one that is more speculative.
Sneha was officially declared the 2,751st victim of the Twin Towers collapse leaving only one person whose death is unresolved. Fernando Molinar, a Mexican immigrant, has not been seen or heard from since September 11 2001, he told his mother via a phone call that he was starting a new job at a pizzeria near the World Trade Center, a similar petition to the surrogate court was also rejected.
While any claims to the Memorial Fund cannot be made as it made all its payments in full and closed in 2003, Sneha's name can be added to official memorials to the victims. One to Sneha has been made at Dutchess Community College, where her mother works as a computer programmer. Her family buried an urn full of ashes from Ground Zero at a cemetery near their home. Six months after the appeal, the Philip's family were informed of Sneha's name officially being added to the victims list. At the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero Sneha's name can be found at the South Pool on Panel S-66.
Ground Zero today
No body has ever been found for Sneha so she joins the thousands whose remains have also never been found but her family remains hopeful that the jewellery she was wearing will be found and can be matched to photos given to the Country Clerk. Sneha was wearing diamond earrings and her wedding necklace at the time of the attacks and they would have easily survived the fire at Ground Zero.
Her parents have kept her room the way it was when she left as a memorial only adding photos and her diplomas. Due to the walking it involves the Philip's family no longer attend 9/11 ceremonies at the towers preferring instead to visit on her birthday. Ron has since remarried (in 2010) with the blessing of his former in laws and remains close.
Two memorial funds have been set up in Sneha's honour in Kerala. The Sneha Philip Memorial Fund pays for the treatment of indigent patients at a clinic outside Aluva and the Mar Thoma Doctor's Association also started a fund in her name.
Google Maps, showing the area from Battery Park to the World Trade Center
There are others that dispute Sneha died a hero on 9/11, here are the other theories and why we feel they don't work out:
No sign of her: No physical evidence has been found of Sneha at Ground Zero. At least 60% of the victims from the World Trade Center have been identified by the use of DNA and visual items such as jewellery and items known to be on the person that day by 2019. Sneha's DNA or belongings have never been found at the site. In 2021, scientists are still working hard at testing the vast amount of unidentified remains of around 1,106 victims (roughly 40% of the Ground Zero death toll); a woman's mother was finally identified from a tiny fragment of bone after 20 years. A large number of remains from Ground Zero had been badly damaged and degraded due to the extreme heat and prolonged exposure in the burning rubble for weeks or longer before their discovery which of course makes DNA testing incredibly hard and there are some bodies that were completely destroyed. There is still the possibility of Sneha being among the unidentified.
She met with foul play: Police believe they found evidence of Sneha's life spiralling out of control with her drinking and leaving bars with women. Having lost her job and things not going great at the new one with her being suspended, which is why she was not at work on 9/11. Police also believed her marriage was strained and that she was struggling with her sexuality. They believe she met with foul play, possibly killed by someone she picked up at a bar but if that theory is correct how did the killer get rid of Sneha's body in a city crawling with police and on high alert after a terrorist attack and why has no sign of this murder ever shown up since.
Ron's guilty: Some believe Ron is not the grieving husband he appears to be and that he killed her in a fit of rage and got rid of her body in the chaos following 9/11. The fight outside of the courthouse that was apparently about her drinking and alleged lesbianism which ended with an angry Sneha storming off, leaving Ron behind. The call which Ron claims not to remember, many find it strange that he doesn't remember it or why he would check his voicemail at 4am and that it is not known how well their apartment was searched have led some to suspect him. Police did not think Ron was a suspect, he took a month off of work to search for his wife and hired a private investigator and Sneha's family clearly do not think he had anything to do with her disappearance. Ron seems like a devoted husband who was devastated by his wife's death, he also wouldn't have campaigned so hard for Sneha to be added to the official victim list if he was guilty of killing her.
One thing that is left off a potential theory list of what happened to Sneha is that she had planned to visit the Windows on the World restaurant located in the North Tower the previous day perhaps she left this plan for the day after, the restaurant was cut off from all means of escape as the plane hit below the restaurant. Everyone who was trapped there were some of the most tragic as some jumped or fell to their deaths rather than stay in the smoke filled and boiling tower. If Sneha was in the restaurant then her remains would have been extremely hard to find after the intense heat and then collapse of the North Tower at 10.28am, 102 minutes after the initial impact of the plane.
OUR CONCLUSION
At Apollo's Raven, we agree fully with the Philip's family and the courts that Sneha died in the 9/11 attacks. While she may have been going through a tough time she shouldn't be defined by it, her caring nature and instincts as a medical professional would have kicked in. Police are wrong to have painted her as a troubled woman who ran off or was murdered with such flimsy evidence, while there is no concrete evidence all the signs lead to the most likely, Sneha died in the 9/11 attacks while trying to help others.
Her apartment was near the World Trade Center, her walk home could have taken her there at the time of the attacks as Ron said the timing does add up with when she would return home.
If the woman caught on CCTV in the lobby of the apartment block is Sneha it shows her leave the apartment and she is never seen again. The first plane that hit made an extremely loud noise and caused chaos in the streets as people looked on in horror, Sneha out of curiosity would have gone to see what the noise was and from there ran to the nearby Towers to see if anyone needed medical attention.
Being a medical professional she would have felt obligated to help those in need and after the second place hit it would have caused for even more help to be needed. Sneha could have within reason been inside the Towers when they fell, plenty of the injured were trapped inside and in need of desperate help. Depending on how high up people were when they realised the Towers were going to collapse they could not get down to the street in time.
This could explain where the shopping bags went, destroyed in the intense heat, dropped by Sneha and forgotten about in the chaos or whoever she spent the previous night had them, Sneha could have forgotten them and the person simply kept them and never came forward.
Sneha had a great relationship with her family and husband which isn't typical with people who run away, clearly something happened to her which stopped her from returning home to them.
If Sneha had ran away it is unlikely she wouldn't have gotten in touch considering how much time has passed since 9/11 and if she had still been alive she would have seen the countless news stories and herself featured on the television which would have prompted anyone to get in touch with their loved ones after seeing how much they missed you. Plenty of people are familiar with Sneha's story and would have recognised her making the running away to start a new life less believable.
Sneha's name on the South Pool memorial