Hi! If you came here, then you are probably also a true crime fan like me. I cordially invite you to check out my articles, where you will find detailed information on the most surprising, mysterious, and mostly unexplained disappearances, murders, and other crimes. Some of them are very famous, and you may have heard of them before. Others, quite wrongly, have not yet received the publicity they deserve. I am most interested in relatively recent cases where there is still a chance that the missing person will be found safe and sound. However, it is well known that the first hours after your disappearance are crucial. With each successive 24 hours, the chances of finding the person you are looking for decrease significantly. At the same time, the longer a case remains unresolved, the greater the mystery surrounds it.
Most of the most interesting and bizarre disappearances (and murders) took place in the United States. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they often gain media attention. Materials created in English also have a chance to reach a large group of people. For this reason, most of the stories I describe happened in the USA. However, I will try to tell you about interesting cases from other continents. I am also planning to present some interesting cases from Poland. Is there anything you would like to read about? Please let me know in the comment and I will try to write about it as soon as I can find sources on this topic. I will also be grateful for any comments or tips.
Sneha Anne Philip (October 7, 1969 - pronounced dead September 11, 2001) was an American physician of Indian descent. The woman was last seen on September 10, 2001, at a department store near her apartment in Lower Manhattan. She was also immortalized there by a surveillance camera. It is supposed that Sneha may have returned to her home at night or in the early morning of the following day. Due to the proximity to her apartment and the World Trade Center, and considering her medical training, the missing person's family believes that Philip was killed trying to help victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Sneha Anne Philip was born in India in the state of Kerala. She later moved with her parents to upstate New York. It probably happened during Sneha's childhood, but it is unknown when exactly. The family first settled near the state capital of Albany and then in Hopewell Junction, a small village in Dutchess County.
After graduating from Johns Hopkins University, the woman decided to pursue a medical career and in 1995 she entered the Chicago School of Medicine. There she met Ron Lieberman, a year younger student from Los Angeles, with whom she began dating. They both had hobbies related to art - he loved music and she was interested in painting. Sneha was an intelligent person, knew five languages, and liked to travel.
During her studies, the woman took a one-year break, which she used to explore Italy. She went there for six months and enjoyed the charms of life, but also trained her painting workshop. The idea for the trip, however, came from the fact that Lieberman and Philip wanted to graduate from the university at the same time. It also happened. The couple then moved to New York City, where each began an internship at a hospital. Lieberman worked at the Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx and Philip worked at the Cabrini Medical Center, closer to their small East Village apartment.
The couple got married in May 2000 during a modest celebration in County Dutchess. The ceremony combined the Jewish (groom) and Indian (bride) traditions. Lieberman gave his fiancée a minnu, a traditional Malay wedding pendant in the shape of a golden teardrop with a diamond. Soon after, the couple moved to a larger apartment in Battery Park City.
On September 10, 2001, the day she was last seen, Philip was off. According to her husband, the woman planned to spend the day cleaning the apartment. Two days later, Sneha's family would appear for dinner. The woman also had a two-hour chat with her mother on the internet. The 31-year-old mentioned that she plans to visit the "Windows on the World" restaurant on top of the nearby North Tower of the World Trade Center. In the spring of 2002, a wedding party for a woman's friend was supposed to take place there. It is also known that the doctor received the package she was waiting impatiently for. She was supplied with orchids from Hawaii, and she was delighted to see them.
At around 4 p.m. Sneha left the house. She went to the laundry which was nearby, then went to the Century 21 store. She bought underwear, a dress, tights and bedding there. She paid for everything with an American Express card. Then the woman bought three more pairs of shoes.
A camera in the store recorded her during these purchases. The doctor was also remembered by one of the store's employees. She alleged that Philip was accompanied by a woman who was about 30 years old and possibly also Indian. However, the recordings do not show it nearby. It's hard to say if the Century 21 cashier was wrong or if a woman actually went shopping with the missing woman. If that was the case, she never reported to the police.
Lieberman returned from work after midnight and noticed that his wife was not there. The man thought that she stayed with someone or stayed overnight. It happened to her because she was a social person who had a lot of friends. Sometimes she'd even drop by for a drink with a new acquaintance, so Ron didn't seem particularly bothered by his wife's absence. However, he decided to talk to Sneha about it, so that she would call him in such situations. The man then went to bed as he had to get up early the next morning for work.
A subsequent investigation revealed that around 4:00 a.m. someone called Lieberman's cell phone from the landline in their apartment. Many people emphasize that this is very strange. Interestingly, Ron claims to this day that he does not remember the whole situation. The man thought he might wake up for a moment to check his voicemail.
It is worth noting that it is quite common to use a landline phone to locate a cell phone. This could also be the case here. Often times, when we wake up for a while at night, we don't remember it at all, so it's possible Ron may not have memorized that moment either. However, it was not possible to confirm or exclude this hypothesis with certainty.
Anyway, when the man woke up at 6:30, his wife was still gone. The man was nervous at first, but thought that Sneha was probably staying with Cousin Annu or her brother John. However, he did not have time to check it as he was in a hurry to go to work. He was also reassured that Sneha was also off that day. So she could afford to sleep late. So he ate breakfast, left the house and went to the subway station. Moments after 9:00 am he showed up at work.
Only then did he find out that something terrible had happened. Shortly after 8:45 the plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At first it was considered a terrible accident. Just before 9:05 a second plane crashed into the South Tower. Then people started to think that it was a terrorist attack.
In 2001, many people did not yet have a cell phone. It is also not entirely clear if Sneha had it. Ron had rung their home phone multiple times, anyway. But the answering machine rang each time. After contacting members of Sneha's family, the man learned that they had not seen her either. The anxiety of everyone close to me began to grow.
It wasn't easy for any New Yorker that day to come back to the apartment. The city was in complete chaos and panic. The inhabitants of the metropolis tried desperately to reach their loved ones while dust and darkness engulfed the city. For this reason, it took Ron six hours to travel in an ambulance, which struggled through the city to the cordoned crash site. The couple lived just four blocks from the remains of the Two Towers.
It turned out, however, that Ron could not get inside his apartment building due to the lack of electricity. He managed to ask the neighbors to check if his wife had come home. But no one responded to their knock on the door. The man thanked for trying to help and started looking for accommodation. In the end, he spent the night on a friend's couch. He did not manage to return to the apartment until the next day, on September 12.
A gloomy sight awaited him there. The windows were left open, so all things were covered with gray dust. The pair's two kittens left many paw prints in a thick layer of dust. Inside, however, no signs of Sneha's presence were found. So the search for the 31-year-old began.
It was difficult, however, as Philip was one of the hundreds of people reported missing after the tragic attacks. The woman's family, as well as the relatives of other people who had not been found, began posting leaflets with Sneha's photo all over town.
Philip's case, however, was not directly related to the attacks and hardly anyone cared about it. In order to arouse media attention, the missing woman's brother began to falsely advertise that he had contact with her during the tragic events of September 11. This allowed for more publicity for Sneha's disappearance.
Lieberman also began to act on his own. He called American Express and found out about their credit card being used on September 10. He also placed posters in Century 21 stores. Later that week, a cashier from a Lower Manhattan store called to say she remembered Philip, who had been there frequently. She then told a story about a woman who allegedly had to accompany her on the day of her disappearance.
Since the police assumed that the woman was likely killed in the WTC attack, Lieberman hired private investigator Ken Gallant. The man initially considered the possibility that Philip took advantage of the chaos in New York following the attacks. It was undoubtedly a good opportunity to get away from growing personal problems and start a new life. However, no information was found on her computer's hard drive that would support such plans.
The woman also left her glasses, without which she was unable to function. She used contact lenses from time to time, but the ones she was wearing at the time did not work. For this reason, the woman planned to go for a prescription for new ones.
The woman's passport, driver's license and credit cards were also found in the apartment, with the exception of the American Express card she paid for purchases on the day she disappeared. However, it was never reused.
Gallant and Lieberman finally concluded that the doctor was probably a witness to the tragic events and rushed to the scene to assist the injured, and then died as a result of the collapse of the WTC towers.
Gallant also found evidence that suggests Sneha may have returned to the apartment building in the early morning of September 11. It was a video from cameras located in the hall of their apartment building. Unfortunately, the video has not been made available to the public. The video surveillance reportedly shows a woman entering the building. Then it waits near the elevator and finally leaves after a few minutes.
Due to the strong sunlight, only the silhouette of a woman was accurately captured. Although you can't see her face, her hair and outfit were in line with Philip's appearance the night before, as we know from the Century 21 store footage. The missing person's family also claimed that the unidentified figure was making gestures similar to Sneha's.
The mysterious woman, however, did not have any shopping bags. She was also not accompanied by anyone. Lieberman could not unequivocally identify the person on surveillance as his wife. However, NYPD investigators believed that it was just a missing person.
Police began investigating Sneha's disappearance with considerable delay. It is hardly surprising, however, taking into account the workload due to the enormous amount of similar cases. The findings of the investigators about Philip's life before 9/11 were very interesting.
It turned out that in early 2001, Cabrini Medical Center refused to renew its contract with Sneha. The hospital cited recurring lateness and alcohol issues. Shortly after being informed of the decision, Philip went to the bar with her associates. There was an incident during this foray.
Sneha reported to the police that another intern was groping her in the bar. The prosecutor who investigated the case dismissed it however, the allegation of sexual abuse. Additionally, he accused the doctor of giving false testimony. He offered to drop the prosecution if she dismissed the original complaint, but the woman refused. She also had to spend the night in custody.
On the morning of September 10, a court hearing took place. There was information in the police report that Sneha and her husband were arguing loudly after it ended. Apparently, it was about the woman's problems and her evening outings. Ron reportedly went home himself to get ready for work, and the doctor went the other way. After reviewing all this information, the city's medical examiner removed Philip from the official list of victims in January 2004.
After being dismissed from her job, the 31-year-old began to spend evenings in gay and lesbian bars. According to the police, she would sometimes leave them with the women she met there. Investigators also found out that his brother caught his then-girlfriend having sex with Sneha. Interestingly, John Philip denied such a situation. It should also be added that the siblings quarreled shortly before the doctor's disappearance, and the mentioned incident (if it happened, of course), may have been the cause.
Sneha started another internship at the internal medicine ward at the St. Vincent on Staten Island. However, she encountered similar problems as before. Right from the start, she was suspended for missing a meeting with an addiction counselor.
Philip's husband, brother and family questioned the investigators' findings. They argued that Sneha had been fired from Cabrini not because of alcoholism, but because she openly disagreed with the discrimination on the grounds of race and gender. The hospital later argued that it had never received any complaint on the matter.
Lieberman, in turn, maintained that although his wife had been to lesbian bars, it was because she did not want to repeat the situation with her associate. Ron also believed that his wife had never had sex with the women she visited in their homes in the evenings. They were supposed to just talk, listen to music or paint. The husband of the missing woman also told the story when Sneha returned home in the morning covered with paint after a night devoted to creating a painting together.
The relatives of the missing woman also believed that her drinking was a short episode. In their opinion, this was to improve the mood of the doctor after she was released from the hospital. Brother Philip also added that the report of how he caught her allegedly in bed with his girlfriend was completely fabricated. Moreover, the man maintained that he had never even spoken to the detective who had accessed the information. Ron, in turn, did not agree that there would be a row between them on the day his wife disappeared. The family believed that the police had greatly added color to the events they learned about. According to their relatives, the detectives tried to make up for their previous negligence during the investigation.
In 2003, following an investigation by the NYPD, Ron filed a petition with the inheritance court. The man requested that his wife be officially recognized as a victim of the 9/11 attacks. New York State law requires clear and convincing evidence that the victim was in mortal danger in order for the presumption of her death to apply.
Lieberman believed the wife would rush to the nearby World Trade Center if she were only nearby to help the victims. The missing woman's mother continued to test their online chat, in which she said she intended to visit Windows on the World and perhaps shop at the Trade Center Mall. However, there was no conclusive evidence that she was at or nearby the WTC during the attacks.
On June 29, 2006, Judge Renee Roth ruled that it could not be determined whether Sneha died on September 11. For this reason, she set the date of her death on September 10, 2004, three years after she was reported missing, under state law. The woman's family appealed. She cited the case of Juan Lafuente, another likely victim of the attacks. Like Philip, his fate was based on circumstantial evidence since his disappearance. There are also some similarities between the two.
The man also recently lost his job at IBM, where he worked for 31 years and struggled with depression. As a member of the Volunteer Fire Department in Poughkeepsie, he too could feel called to offer help to victims of attacks. The office of Citibank, the company he then worked for as vice president, was eight blocks from the World Trade Center. Lafuente was reportedly attending a meeting at a restaurant in the North Tower that morning.
Philip's family believed Juan's request was approved by the court because his wife Colette was the mayor of Poughkeepsie at the time, and the case was being heard there, not in Manhattan. There was no compelling evidence of a man at the site of the attacks that morning.
Despite suggesting that the chances of success were slim, Lieberman and the Philip family's lawyer appealed. On January 31, 2008, a five-person panel of judges overruled the previous decision, considering the simplest explanation as the most probable. It was assumed that Sneha had died trying to help the wounded as a result of the 9/11 attacks.
However, the verdict was not unanimous. Judge Bernard Malone Jr. he compared Philip's case with the aforementioned story of Lafuente. He noticed that he had a more predictable daily schedule and a more stable life. He added that there was independent evidence of a meeting at the World Trade Center he might have been on his way to. The judge believed that the degree of speculation was greater in Sneha's case.
Philip was thus officially recognized as the 2751st victim of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Sneha's family buried an urn full of Zero ashes in a cemetery near their home. In July 2008, six months after the appellate court's decision, the family was officially notified by the city that Sneha Anne Philip had been added to the victim list.
It should also be mentioned that no remains of more than 1,000 victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center were found. However, the family still hopes to someday find the jewelry that Sneha was wearing, in particular the diamonds that should survive the extreme temperatures of the burning WTC towers.
Philip's parents kept their daughter's room unchanged at their home in Poughkeepsie. Only a few of Sneha's photos and diplomas have appeared in it. Ron reportedly maintains a good relationship with his former in-laws. The man remarried in 2010 thanks to their urging.
Finally, it is worth adding that the family of the missing person had two compelling reasons to fight for Sneha to be included in the group of victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11. The first is money. Relatives of the victims were receiving a payment from the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. As all withdrawals had been made and the fund was closed in 2003, Lieberman, however, did not receive any money.
The second issue was certainly the desire to protect the good name of the woman and her relatives. A heroic death while saving the wounded sounds much better than running away from problems with work, alcohol or husband. There is no shortage of opinions that Sneha may have discovered that she is bisexual and no longer loves her husband. Perhaps she wanted to start a new relationship with a woman. It is often emphasized that the work of a doctor was not her dream, but her parents' dream. The missing girl loved art the most, and the profession of a painter would probably bring her the greatest joy.
By the way, I will mention here perhaps the most interesting thread related to this matter. It is linked to the PostSecret project. It is based on the fact that people who want to share their thoughts, secrets or dreams send hand-made postcards to its creators.
The blog was created in 2005 and new works are published on it every Sunday. In 2012, i.e. after Sneha was officially declared dead, attention was drawn to one special page that interested everyone familiar with the case of Philip.
It shows the two WTC towers on fire and the caption "Everyone who knew me before 9/11 Believes I'm Dead." (Everyone who knew me through 9/11 thinks I'm dead.) It fits perfectly with Sneha's case, assuming she actually wanted to get away from her life so far. On the other hand, it could also be a grim joke from someone who was aware that the postcard was likely to be linked to the doctor's disappearance.
One thing's for sure - the surveillance photos and credit card transactions at Century 21 are the latest verified evidence of Philip's presence. Her further fate after leaving the store is only a guess. To this day, unfortunately, it has not been possible to find out the truth of what happened to the missing woman.
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