This year marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Almost 3,000 people died that day and it’s a day we’ll never forget. For one family, it became a battle to get their loved one’s name included in the list of victims. Sneha Anne Philip was last seen on September 10th, 2001, but was she a victim of the attacks on the World Trade Center?
September 11th, 2001
Everyone who was old enough remembers where they were on this day 20 years ago. We all remember how we found out what happened. We all remember watching the news. We all remember that day: September 11th, 2001.
On this day 20 years ago, our days started as usual while 19 terrorists executed their plans to hijack American airplanes with the intent to crash them into the 2 tallest World Trade Center buildings, the Pentagon, and the White House.
At 8:46 am American Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center between floors 93 and 99 immediately killing the people on the plane and some people in the building and trapping hundreds more people.
17 minutes later, at 9:03 am United Flight 175 hit the South Tower between floors 77 and 85. Again, the occupants of the plane were killed immediately along with people in the building while others became trapped.
At 9:37am, American Flight 77 crashed into the west wall of the Pentagon in Virginia killing 184 people.
Then at 9:58 am, the South Tower collapsed; covering Manhattan in dust and debris in about 10 seconds.
Meanwhile the passengers of United Flight 93 were fighting back against their hijackers who were headed for the White House, when the plane went down at 10:03 am in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing all 39 people on board and the terrorists.
Finally, at 10:28 am, the North Tower collapsed as well.
4 planes hijacked by 19 terrorists changed America forever and as of 2020, we are still working to identify many of the 22,000 remains from the wreckage. As of 2019, only about 1,645 victims have been accurately identified through either DNA or belongings. That’s only 60% of the victims.
The other 40% of victims and their families are still in limbo; waiting for someone to call and say we’ve found something that definitively proves your loved one was killed in the attacks on 9/11.
One of those families has been battling to have their loved one included because to them, that’s honestly better than the alternative where their daughter/wife/sister has disappeared or had some other unknown ending.
32-year-old Sneha Anne Philip is currently listed as the 2,750th victim of the attacks, but she was last seen on September 10th and investigations would reveal a darker side to her life creating more questions than answers.
Sneha Anne Philip
Sneha Anne Phillip was born on October 7th, 1969 in the province of Kerala in southern India. She is the only girl born to Ansu and Dr. Kochiyil Philip and grew up in Albany after her family moved to the United States.
Like her father, Sneha decided to become a doctor. She went to Johns Hopkins first and after graduating from there in 1991, she attended Chicago Medical School.
This is where she met Ron Lieberman in 1995. Ron was from Los Angeles and grew up in a Jewish family.
Ron was 1 year behind Sneha in med school so Sneha decided that she would take a year off and travel around Italy. This allowed them both to graduate in 1999.
They moved to New York and got a 1 bedroom apartment on East 19th St. just an hour from her parents and close to the jazz clubs and sushi restaurants they both loved to frequent.
In May of 2000, the couple married in a Jewish-Indian ceremony with 250 guests at an inn in Dutchess County.
At some point, they moved to their apartment at 225 Rector Place in Battery Park in New York City (just a few blocks from the World Trade Center).
On September 10th, 2001, Ron was a 3rd year resident in the emergency department at Jacobi Medical Center and Sneha was a 3rd year resident in internal-medicine at St. Vincent’s Medical Center (which is now Richmond University Medical Center) on Staten Island. Sneha was off that Monday. She had an appointment in the morning and had plans to run errands and get things done on this rare day without work.
Around 11 am on the 10th, Ron kissed her goodbye and headed out to work.
Sneha did some things around the apartment and around 2 pm she started a conversation with her mom on Instant Messenger. They messaged back and forth for over 2 hours talking about the fun time she and Ron had had at the bar Sunday night among other things. Around 4 pm, Sneha signed off with her mom and prepared to run her errands.
The security footage from the lobby of the apartment building showed her leaving at 5:15 pm.
After dropping off some dry cleaning, Sneha went by one of her favorite discount stores, Century 21 and did some shopping. She spent $550 on Ron’s American Express card and bought lingerie, a dress, panty hose, some linens and 3 pairs of shoes.
Century 21 was just blocks from their apartment and right down the street from the World Trade Center, but when Sneha walked out of the Century 21 shoe annex she seemingly disappeared.
Sneha didn’t return to their apartment that night. When Ron got home around midnight and his wife wasn’t there he wasn’t terribly concerned. Sneha often went out to bars and ended up going to other peoples’ houses and sleeping it off there. She also occasionally spent the night at her brother’s or her cousin’s apartment when Ron worked late as they lived nearby.
She still wasn’t home when he woke up, Ron was annoyed that she hadn’t called or left any messages, but he went to work for a meeting thinking she’d be back that night.
Ron’s meeting started at 8 am and ended around 9 am. When he left the meeting he found his colleagues around the TV.
9/11: Attacks and Sneha
As we know, the first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 am just 2 blocks from Ron and Sneha’s apartment. Ron had still not heard from Sneha and called her repeatedly now without answer. Ron called her family and found out none of them had seen or heard from Sneha either.
So, using the benefits of being a staff member at the hospital, Ron caught a ride with an ambulance. However, because of the mad rush of people (both civilians and first responders) headed toward the buildings and others desperately trying to evacuate, it took them over 6 hours and they were only able to get him as close as Tribeca, but the area was already cordoned off by police.
Ron was still in scrubs and was able to convince officers to let him by. By this time, both buildings had collapsed to the ground and the search for survivors and remains was in full swing.
Once he got home, Ron found that the electricity was out so he was unable to get in the apartment building due to the automatic locks. Ron ran around the building yelling Sneha’s name with the only answer coming from a neighbor. Ron asked the neighbor to go to his apartment and knock. The neighbor got no answer.
Ron had to go stay at a friend’s house for the night and in the morning he was able to gain access to the apartment. Once he got in the apartment, Ron was greeted by a distressing scene. They had left a window open and the inside of their apartment was covered in ash, dust, and debris from the building collapse.
Their cats, Figa and Kali had been walking around leaving their little paw prints in the dust, but there was no sign that Sneha had ever been back. The Century 21 bags weren’t lying around anywhere, but in the apartment was Sneha’s driver’s license, passport, credit cards (except the one she used the day before), and her glasses (she had been wearing contacts). Ron reported Sneha missing, but there were also thousands of missing people being reported in New York that day too.
In fact, over 9,000 people were originally reported missing on September 11th. Some were quickly closed when the family members called and said their loved one showed up and others turned out to be fraudulent, but that didn’t narrow down the numbers all that much.
When Ron attempted to get any media attention for Sneha he was turned away the second they found out he hadn’t seen her since the 10th. So Ron reached out to Sneha’s brother, John. Ron asked John to contact the reporters, but to leave out some little details like that she hasn’t been seen since the day before.
John did contact reporters, but he decided to vamp a little. Ron had told him to leave out details, but didn’t say anything about completely making shit up. John told the reporters that he had actually been talking to Sneha the morning of the 11th and that she was helping people from the World Trade Center.
John said, “I was on the phone with her, and she told me she couldn’t leave because people were hurt. She said, ‘I have to help this person,’ and that’s the last thing I heard from her.”
This definitely got the media’s attention and turned Sneha’s story into a heroic tale. John later admitted that this had all been fabricated. In fact, he hadn’t even spoken to Sneha in a few weeks because they were in a fight, but the damage was done and the narrative was out there and gaining traction.
Sneha’s hero narrative was further encouraged when the security camera footage from their apartment building was found. At 8:43 am on September 11th, a woman comes into the lobby and appears to be waiting for the elevator for a few minutes before abruptly leaving. (Remember the first plane struck at 8:46 am just 2 blocks away.)
The woman in the footage cannot be positively identified as Sneha because there was sunlight washing out most of the picture. The mostly silhouetted woman had a haircut like Sneha’s and was wearing a dress like the one she’d last been seen wearing. The woman even walked like Sneha, but you can’t see her clearly enough to say for certain and this woman didn’t have any shopping bags.
If this was Sneha, it’s not completely unlikely that she would have heard the crash (not knowing what it was) and then run out to check and offer help. Her medical training would have made her invaluable, but being at Ground Zero would have put her in danger.
Police didn’t seem to push off Sneha’s case and in fact seemed to almost accept the narrative that she was at Ground Zero, but some investigating by the police, Ron, and a PI would reveal questionable information and create theories.
Theory 1: She Left Because She Wanted To
The first theory was that Sneha had decided to leave and escape her life that seemed to be falling apart.
During the search for Sneha, it was discovered that she was having some real issues with her career as a doctor.
Sneha had been a resident at Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan, but they had decided not to renew her contract, in other words, she was fired. They noted their reasons for termination as “tardiness and alcohol-related issues.”
After she was fired, Sneha and some other interns went to blow off steam at a bar, but the night didn’t go well. At some point, Sneha reported that one of the other interns groped her, but the police didn’t believe her and instead arrested her and put her in jail for the night for filing a false report. She was charged with 3rd degree falsely reporting an incident, but prosecutors offered to drop the charges if she recanted. Sneha refused and stuck with her story.
Sneha got a new position at St. Vincent’s, but because of her previous issues, they had put down strict rules for her. One of the rules included that she see a substance abuse counselor; which she didn’t.
Because she failed to meet with the counselor, Sneha was suspended and that is actually why she was “off” on September 10th. The same day, her “appointment” that morning had been a court date in regards to the “false claim.”
Sneha and Ron’s marriage was also under the microscope and revealed that Sneha frequented lesbian bars and spent numerous nights with women she left with. Ron and her family believe that these were innocent nights because Sneha liked to have a good time and made friends with people quickly. They claimed she was a little gun shy after the groping incident and preferred lesbian bars so men wouldn’t hit on her. So this theory included that Sneha was actually a lesbian or at least bisexual and that, along with all the other things, she was running away from the life she had for a life she wanted.
However, there was no indication that Sneha had made any attempt to prepare for leaving. She left all her important information and her glasses at her apartment and after an extensive forensic computer search, it was determined that she hadn’t done any kind of research about leaving without a trace or living off the grid or different locations or anything else that would suggest she was leaving.
Sneha was incredibly close to her family. Her mom said Sneha told her everything. Sneha’s family is also adamant that Sneha didn’t have substance abuse issues or that her career was in danger. They have stated they feel that she was a victim of “persistent racial and sexual bias at Cabrini” and that she was dismissed because she was a whistleblower (of the resident that groped her).
Theory 2: The Husband Did It
Of course Ron had to be considered. Sneha’s frequenting lesbian bars, her drinking, her issues with her job, and her nights spent away from home were all thought to be reasons that Ron may have snapped.
The morning of the 10th, at the courthouse, Sneha and Ron were reportedly in a big fight. Witnesses reported that the couple was arguing about her substance abuse and her sexuality. Ron denies this fight and any suggestion that Sneha was cheating on him.
Her brother, John originally told police that about a month before she disappeared he had walked in on Sneha and his girlfriend having sex (hence their fight). He later denied that and claimed he never even spoke to the detective that reported that.
Ron was a big part of the search and hired a PI as well as leaving the American Express card active in case Sneha used it.
Ron was also questioned about a phone call from 4 am on 9/11. Ron claimed he was the only person home, but at 4 am there was a phone call placed from their landline to his cell phone. Ron told authorities that he didn’t remember making a call, but maybe he had been half asleep and checked his messages?
His behavior was not suspicious at all and he even took a month off work and hired a PI in an attempt to find Sneha. Sneha’s family have no doubt that Ron is completely innocent and he even moved in with them after moving out of the apartment.
Ron was quickly cleared of any involvement with sticking point being, how would he have gotten a body out of his apartment and hidden while there were police and people crawling all over the area and for her to never be found?
Theory 3: She Died In the Attacks
Sneha’s family is convinced that she died in the World Trade Center collapse and her name was originally on the list of victims.
Since no one saw her after she left Century 21, her family is convinced that she did what she usually does and stayed out overnight and then came home while Ron was gone to work. They firmly believe that was Sneha on the security footage and that when she left abruptly it was to render aid at the World Trade Center.
At the Century 21 store, a clerk said that she saw Sneha shopping with another woman who has never been located or identified and isn’t on the security footage.
On the security footage from the store, Sneha is seen shopping in her brown short-sleeved dress with buttons down the front wearing jewelry she wore frequently: a black and gold beaded necklace with a cross pendant, her solitaire gold engagement ring and gold wedding band with small inset diamonds, and flower shaped diamond stud earrings. It was noted in one source that gold turns to ash in a few hours when burned at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit and the Twin Towers burned at over 2,000 degrees for much longer than that so there wouldn’t be anything left other than the diamonds.
Sneha’s mom is convinced that they will get a call that they have been able to identify Sneha’s jewelry in the thousands of pieces still unidentified. The city property clerk stated that they recovered 1,350 pieces of jewelry and only about one-third of those have been returned to the families of victims.
Sneha’s mom, Ansu said that they are hopeful because after they sent pictures of Sneha’s jewelry, they got a letter that there was a chance they might still identify Sneha’s jewelry, but a reporter with New York magazine contacted the property clerk who said, “If you sent in a letter about a plain piece of jewelry, a Timex watch, if there was one of them, we sent you back a letter that there’s a possibility. We had no idea if there could even be a match. But everybody got those letters.”
In 2003, Ron filed a petition with the New York County Surrogate’s Court in order to have Sneha declared an official victim of the 9/11 attacks and around the same time he also filed a claim with the Victim Compensation Fund in order to get financial compensation for the money Sneha would have earned. This money would have been calculated based on the victim’s age and potential earnings. Sneha was 31 and a doctor; Ron could have gotten between $3-4 million.
However, in January of 2004, Sneha’s name was removed from the list of victims stating that there was no evidence she was still alive on 9/11 let alone at Ground Zero.
On June 29, 2006, the Surrogate Court judge presiding over the case, Renee Roth ruled that Sneha wasn’t proven to be a victim of the 9/11 attacks and that her official date of death would be listed as September 10th, 2004 (New York law states that a person can be declared dead 3 years after they are reported missing).
The state law to establish that a person died in the 9/11 attacks states that there must be “clear and convincing evidence of the person’s ‘exposure’ to the attack.” The judges that overturned the ruling stated that this standard “…does not require an absolute certainty, it merely requires that the evidence make the conclusion highly probable.” But, because this “standard” is vague, the law is not applied evenly.
Because Sneha’s death certificate wouldn’t officially say 9/11/2001, the Victim Compensation Fund rejected Ron’s claim.
Her family fought this and on January 31, 2008, a panel of judges voted 4 to 1 to overturn Judge Roth’s ruling and officially name Sneha as a victim of the 9/11 attacks making her the 2,750th victim and her name was placed on the National 9/11 Memorial on the South Pool. Her official cause of death was listed as “blunt trauma.”
However, the Victim Compensation Fund was closed in 2003 so Ron would never receive any money. Ron and Sneha’s family say that they don’t care about the money, but want the recognition that Sneha was a victim of the attacks. They feel that it gives them closure for Sneha to have been killed on 9/11 because otherwise, they don’t have an answer.
Ansu said, “I don’t have even a grain of hope that she’s alive or that anything else happened to her. It’s more peaceful for me to think she died in the World Trade Center than…I cannot bear to think that somebody killed her.”
9/11 20 years later
Part of Ansu’s hopefulness is encouraged by the fact that only a little over 1,600 of the almost 3,000 people that died in the attacks have been positively identified through DNA.
To most survivors and families, this statistic is troubling, but it’s a ray of hope for the Philips because that means there is still a chance Sneha will be found.
The medical examiner and other agencies are still working to identify all the remains from the rubble. As of September 11, 2012, 2,753 death certificates had been filed, but only 1,588 remains had been identified. Over the years remains were identified every now and then, but it’s been a slow and painstaking process. In October 2019, 3 more victims were identified bringing the total number of identified victims to 1,645; leaving 1,108 (about 40%) still unidentified.
Approximately 2,600 deaths were people from the World Trade Center buildings and on the ground not including the 147 victims from the 2 planes and 10 terrorists. The Pentagon accounted for 184 victims and 5 terrorists. And on flight 93 where the passengers took over, 39 innocent passengers died and the 4 hijackers.
Most of the deaths were from the North Tower’s top floors. Floors 92-107 accounted for approximately 1,084 deaths.
One of the men in the North Tower, John P. O’Neill was a former assistant director for the FBI and assisted in capturing Ramzi Yousef who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. O’Neill had become the head of security for the World Trade Center and died that day trying to rescue people from the building.
Even after September 11th, the death toll continued to climb as people who worked in the rubble developed cancer. In 2018, it was reported that at least 15 FBI agents, 10,000 first responders and people working at Ground Zero (1 out of every 8 firefighters that worked at Ground Zero) developed cancer and many have died.
Sneha Anne Philip is just one story in almost 3,000, but all the stories from that day are now a part of our history books as “the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in U.S. history.”
