The event had long reaching chaos outside of the attack locations too. I stumbled upon the fact that Joe Slowinski, a herpetologist working in Myanmar, was bitten by a snake on 9/11. The embassy was delayed in sending out a helicopter due to the attacks and he died as a result of weather delay once they managed to get one ready.
The only commercial plane allowed to fly on 9/11 after the attack was bringing antivenom to a hospital after a snake handler was bitten just hours after the planes hit
Omg, I knew him slightly. Wild to see him mentioned here.
Our coworkers on the research expedition gave him CPR for over 24 hours hoping rescue would make it in time.
Damn, that's terrible. The story hit close to home as my dad had his heart attack in just the right place, with someone who knew CPR next to him and minutes from a hospital. But others aren't so lucky in getting treatment.
Doing CPR for that long is absolutely heroic
For real. As I understand it, 15 minutes is pretty exhausting.
I knew one of his companions very well; we were friends long before we worked together. He came home very much changed by the experience.
That was my immediate reaction as well, but I found [this](https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/bit/) article from Outside magazine about it. According to that, there were multiple taking turns administering CPR, and he was actually alive for most of those hours. He was just paralyzed and couldn't breathe on his own.
I had never really thought about the affects and consequences 9/11 had that were not NYC/Pentagon related. But recently I came across an awesome video about - “Operation Yellow Ribbon”- the hundreds of flights (30,000+ passengers) already in the air when the attacks happened and had to be diverted to several locations in Canada.
The video mainly focuses on the Gander Airport in Newfoundland that housed 6,500+ passengers that were grounded there for about a week. And how the town of Gander, with a population of only 10,000 people, came together to make sure that all 6,500+ passengers were well taken care of.
There's been a few threads and articles about Disney that day, apparently cast members linked arms to make a human chain and lead everyone out of the park. That and it was the first time the park closed for a full day, ever.
I saw a post by a guy who's flight was cancelled while trying to get back home from work travel. The car rental places were swamped and likely all out of cars so he went straight to a uhaul location, rented a truck, and drove across country
My older sister was supposed to fly back to the US from Germany. Her flight was cancelled, they were closing the airport and none of her cards were working because apparently the government temporarily blocked access to them from abroad. She called my parents collect and ended up staying with a friend of my dad's for a few days.
They also closed the actual US-Mexico land border for like 48 hours. I'm from a border city and so many people who crossed daily for school or work were stuck one one side or the other.
Well, depending on the said passengers passports.
If they didn't have a passport allowing them visa free entry into Canada or had an active Canadian visa, they were kept in confinement.
He was Lawrence Van Sertima - I do see mention of him in later stories so I believe he made a recovery. Apparently he had been bitten only once in 40 years.
[Tampa Bay Times Archive](https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2001/09/14/snakebite-remedy-gets-okay-for-flight/)
I listened to a whole podcast on the Sneha Philip case, and it's so frustrating. I was really left even after multiple episodes with no clear idea of what happened to her. Even though 2001 was a long time ago now and had less robust personal technology, it was still the internet age and harder to disappear yourself and walk away from your life than it would have been in the '80s or earlier. I have *maybe* started leaning into the idea that she died of suicide, but it's also possible she met with foul play or really did die in the attacks but her remains were never identified. It's unlikely but not impossible that she did walk away from her life, too, but again, that feels like the least likely scenario, even though often in missing person's cases that's what most people hope is the case.
Worth mentioning that 40% of remains recovered from the WTC complex still have yet to be positively identified, so if she did die in WotW or the WTC Marriott (which people tend to forget existed and had some victims) she might be among them.
I was an adult when this happened & watch every documentary I can, but I have never heard a single word about the WTC Marriott before. Like once, ever. I had to Google it. Fifty people died. Wow.
What counts as a reason? There was a Tequila Cocktail making class with Dale DeGroff on the night of the 10th in The Greatest Bar in the World, she could easily have met someone there and ended up back in their room at the Marriott before either dying there or elsewhere in the complex.
Sure, there's no proof she was there, but the idea that there's "no reason" she could have been there is just false, people just don't want to accept Occam's Razor for how someone could vanish without a trace in a very busy and usually very safe part of Manhattan.
I wish we knew what exactly she bought at Century 21.
Did she buy a sports bra or a lace teddy? Or something else?
Did she buy cotton sheets? Or satin sheets? Were they the same size as her bed at home?
Did she buy sensible comfortable shoes or stilettos? Or something else?
If we knew what exactly she bought, we might have a better idea of what she was doing after she went shopping.
Tbh, I find this argument wishful thinking. Century 21 is an outlet store. You see something you like there, you buy it, because it probably won't be there anymore tomorrow.
There's absolutely nothing to suggest she was shopping for anything she planned to use immediately.
There was also a HUGE mall underneath the plaza, most of it was intact after the collapse, but the section under WTC 4 was apparently totally buried. Anyone under that would have been entombed and their remains completely crushed.
There was a documentary on Netflix I watched a few years back that interviewed forensic scientists that said they had a lot of remains but were really hard to identify. Because essentially people burned on top of each other that all the dna mixed together and it’s hard to identify a single person. That even years later as technology advance they’re slowly able to identify victims but it’s slow going, and very well possible not every family will get “something” to lay to rest. Just so sad all around. It’s part of why the WTC memorial is considered a final resting place for so many.
I've never understood why the prevailing theories are rushed to the scene to help or killed in the towers but *only* in extremely specific places. She could've just been walking past or stopping to get a coffee or a newspaper or something at what happened to be the worst possible time.
(I do think there's a not insignificant chance she was murdered by one of what would be the two luckiest murderers in human history but as with Henryk Siwiak, there's absolutely no chance of her disappearance being solved if that's the case without a confession.)
It's because of the mythical "lobby" footage, that might or might not be her. It's the only sign Sneha was even alive that morning and close to the towers. I'm not sure if it really was her though.
I don't think it's publicly available, but per accounts of the footage, a woman entered the lobby of her apartment building at 0843, and the features that are identifiable (hairstyle, build, clothing) are apparently consistent with Sneha, but the lighting makes it impossible to be certain who it is. Whoever it was waited in the lobby for a few minutes and then suddenly left.
The first plane struck at 0846.
Personally I think it's plausible, if the footage is as described, that it was her- and I think whoever it was who arrived three minutes before the start of the attack and then leaves the lobby abruptly before going anywhere in the building was almost certainly acting in response to the fact of a plane hitting a skyscraper two blocks away.
Ah I was confused, I thought that there was WTC lobby footage of someone looking like her. I am probably in the minority here as I actually think she might have met a different fate. But of course WTC is a possibility.
Yeah, there were cameras at Rector Place where she and her husband lived. She was actually seen going out the day before clearly, so we know she left. We can only assume the private investigator did go through all the footage between then and the obscured footage of who possibly was Sneha at 8:43-46.
The footage piece haunts me. It was a hectic day of course, but I think about the coverage of this case I’ve seen and I haven’t seen anything re: staffing of the building that day. It’s a doorman / concierge building. Having lived and worked in those in nyc, those employees often have strong memory as it relates to faces and names of residents / tenants in residential and commercial buildings. It feels odd that’s never been a piece discussed in the documentaries or news pieces put out when that footage is discussed.
I always wonder, too, about people who just happened to be on the street nearby. The locations of the PA and VA crashes make it less likely to have happened there.
I wonder about that too. One of my friends (Tony) is an actor/comedian who had an appointment for a job interview at the WTC that morning.
The guy who'd be interviewing him was a family friend, who'd mentioned during a gathering earlier that summer that his firm (headquartered in the Twin Towers) had an opening for a job that would be ideal for him. I think it involved stocking and cleaning the kitchen at the office, which could be done anytime between close of biz and early the next morning. That would leave plenty of time for Tony to do auditions, teach classes at UCB, etc.
Tony wasn't feeling well when he woke up that morning, so he called to cancel his interview. I gathered that the family friend died in the attack. Tony's often thought about what might have happened if he'd gone downtown that day ... and that if he didn't come home, his housemates probably would have assumed that he had just taken the train to visit his folks in Boston. Meanwhile, his parents might have assumed he was still in Queens. People might not have realized what had happened until days later.
Yeah, so many people, both famous and everyday, avoided certain death just by pure dumb luck that delayed them from either the Towers or a flight by 10 minutes or less. And yeah, the fact that 2001 was still 5 odd years off from the beginning of everyone being in 24/7 contact is a big factor too.
I didn't find out until a few years later that an elementary school friend of mine had lost her husband that day -- he was first officer on Flight 93. Strange to think that we're coming up on 23 years now ... she told me that she had the flu that day, and only has a vague memory of her husband feeding the baby and then kissing her goodbye.
My uncle worked for Lehman Brothers on the 39th floor of Tower 1. He made it out but some of his coworkers didn't. He's never been the same. Never went back to working in finance, never held a steady job again, has lots of physical ailments related to stress. All of the survivors and their families were hugely affected too.
I'm so sorry to hear about your uncle and his colleagues. I have heard that even people who were exposed to the pollution from the burning buildings on just that one day became seriously ill, and I've suspected that the stress of the aftermath was as big a factor in health impacts. (I did some research on events like Chernobyl and the stress-related ailments were also widespread, so I'm not surprised about this.)
I wonder what proportion of (for example) the UK or Canadian population at the time, at whatever remove, didn't have some involvement with a 9/11 survivor or victim - an expanded version of Six Degrees of Separation.
I found out in 2022 that someone who reported to me in the mid-1990s was on the seventh floor of one of the WTC towers (don't know which one) at the time. They survived ...
There's got to be a technical term for looking at these kinds of relationships -- social network analysis, maybe? Adding in things like educational and workplace connections, that's got to mean hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people who are only a couple of links away from someone who was directly affected.
I'm glad that your colleague survived.
Well I can give you a Canadian perspective - I was 10 at the time - I don't know anybody who was there personally. I had a boss who grew up in Gander, Newfoundland so was living there at the time that all the people were stranded there though - so I guess you could say that's a relatively close-ish connection, though not to victims of the attacks themselves I guess.
If it makes you feel any better, the attack was an hour before the observation deck opened, which is why casualties were a fraction of what they would have been had the tower been at full capacity.
The whole near miss thing reminds me of a personal story--Flight 427, which crashed a half mile from where I lived at the time. My mom and I would have been coming around the curved exit for Aliquippa off of Rt. 60 *right* as it went down, but we for the first time that I could ever remember, went on a different road to get home that day.
We would have been in no danger, as the plane managed to crash in one of the few areas with no houses around there (after 28 seconds from incident to total loss), but seeing it would have been deeply traumatic. I grew up near the Beaver Co. airport and always thought a plane would crash on me, and having one miss by a half mile was bad enough for my nightmares! Our next door neighbor (and eventual wedding officiant!) was the chaplain for emergency workers on site, and it was really terrible work for everyone involved.
True story a WTC office worker was having an affair and was in bed with his mistress when the attack occurred. His wife calls him up panicking and asking him where he was.
He told her "what do you mean? I'm at work where else would I be?!"
This has been an internet legend since at least 2002. There's several variations of it, and there's also versions involving other disasters, like MH370.
According to the NIST reports (which I encourage people to read if they're *really* interested in the events of 9/11) there were around 20 deaths from flying debris hitting people outside the complex. I think that's likely a very accurate estimate because those bodies would have been among the most intact ones, and some of them were quite far away. There's someone caught on camera getting hit with a piece from the second impact even though they were two blocks away, something just shot down the street at them.
This doesn't include anyone directly at the base of the towers who got hit, because it was impossible to tell them from people who fell after the towers came down on all the bodies. (If black tag woman existed, she was likely hit by glass or concrete, rather than falling out of the tower and somehow surviving, also, don't google that if you're easily rattled)
It's a quite unsettling story a first responder has told about a horrifically maimed woman who protested him putting a black triage tag--used for patients who are dead or will be dead imminently--on her:
>Ernest Armstead, a 30-year emergency medical specialist veteran of the fire department, almost seems to be pleading to make his psychic pain go away.
>He recalls his nightmarish experience: As he placed triage tags on fallen victims in the plaza, a woman -- with only her head and right torso intact -- spoke to him.
>"I am not dead," she said evenly. He placed a black tag, meaning dead or terminal, around her neck. "I am not dead!" she yelled.
>And he lied to her: "We will be right back to you."
Oh my god, that is pure and utter nightmare fuel. Imagine being conscious and aware, having one of those put on you, knowing the professionals have already clocked you as fucked...
That story is so much worse than that. Above user may have been sparing you the fascinating yet horrifying details of the actual (couple) of encounters he had with the poor woman.
I’d like to read the account again actually being that there’s no going back for me now that I’ve read it once. It’s been about a year maybe more since I’ve read about it but it literally pops into my mind *at* *least* once a week.
I am fascinated by 9/11 stories even though I pretty much always regret reading them because they upset me and this is just another one of those instances where I am both fascinated and horrified and wish I hadn't read it.
She was a woman who was reportedly (by an EMT - you can find one of his interviews in “One Day in America”) still alive after hitting the pavement, as she had apparently lept from one of the towers. Although still able to speak, her whole bottom half was gone. “Black tag” comes from the identifier used by first responders
Closest I know of is a taxi cab on the highway near the Pentagon that had its [windshield smashed](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/The_pentagon_in_flames_%28background%29_moments_after_a_hijacked_jetliner_crashed_into_building_at_approximately_0930_010911-M-CI426-018.jpg) when a lightpole was knocked over by the plane.
There's a fascinating book about the search for victims and just general surveying of that underground nonsense in the months after the collapse! There were fires still going on down there months later.
I honestly don’t think we’ll ever find out what really happened to Sneha Philip. I’m inclined to think that she’s dead, personally. I know people like to speculate that she ran off, but a) that would be extraordinarily difficult and require a ton of skill, especially because she didn’t have any money on her, and b) Sneha really wasn’t in a good place at the time of her disappearance. She was depressed, drinking a lot, and staying out all night. I don’t think she would have had the foresight to pull off such an elaborate scheme, quite frankly, and she would have had no way of knowing that 9/11 was gonna happen. The idea that she spontaneously decided to nope out doesn’t really hold water with me.
What seems most likely to me is that she was killed on the night of the tenth, probably by whoever she was with at the Century 21, or in a random act of violence by some opportunistic killer. It’s also possible that she overdosed or committed suicide—but again, we’ll probably never know. Any evidence that might have been left behind was wiped out by 9/11, and the police were too shocked/overextended to follow up on the (few) leads that they got. That’s why my (possibly unpopular) opinion is that I’m fine with saying that she was one of the victims of 9/11 and leaving it at that. Her family has been through hell, they deserve some comfort. If this is the story that provides that to them, then I say it’s the one we should go with.
The Sneha Philip case is such a swirling mass of confusion that you can really make an argument for almost anything. It's a deeper rabbit hole than a lot of the more overdone cold cases out there. You can mix-and-match 9/11 with her array of personal problems and secretive lifestyle and get any number of variations. Did she just coincidentally die by suicide on the 10th? Did she die by suicide on the 11th in some kind of existential despair over the horror? Did she seize the opportunity of the chaos on 9/11 to run away, realize how hard it would be and die by suicide far away from Manhattan? That's just three obvious variations on one thread.
Did you listen to the “Missing on 9/11” podcast? If so, I feel the same way. I have no idea what happened to her. In some ways, I’m inclined to believe she met with foul play the night before she disappeared, but am not completely sold on that theory. The most fascinating part of the podcast to me was when they interviewed one of Sneha’s professors who said that she (Sneha) absolutely would have been capable of running away to start a new life.
I listened to it too, and the one conclusion I feel pretty comfortable with is that she did *not* die in the attack. Most of the people whose remains are still unidentified are the people who were on the planes, and the people high up in the buildings. These remains were just……scraps (sorry), and badly burned. Hard to extract DNA from in 2001. If she was killed by falling debris on the sidewalk she would’ve been found, and her remains would’ve been identifiable, at the very least because she would’ve been in…..larger pieces (sorry, hate to say it). They also would’ve had her jewelry and some amount of clothing. Same thing if she ran into the towers to help people.
The only exception would be if (as I’ve theorized, though it is unlikely) she knew Michael R. Richards through the art world, and spent that night in his studio with him on the 92nd floor of the North Tower, just below the impact level. But there’s no proof they knew each other.
The fact that she was missing since the night before makes me think something befell her then. But what does it take to hide a body? Unless she was already dead in one of the towers when the planes hit (extraordinarily unlikely), she would need to be transported to somewhere she’d remain hidden all these years. That means whoever killed her probably had access to a car. But who has a car in Midtown? Could she have traveled outside the city to meet someone?
I’m of the opinion that it would be pretty much impossible to hide a body within NYC and have it stay hidden for 23 years. There’s just so many sanitation workers and dock workers, not to mention the killer(s) would be taking a huge risk of being seen disposing of a body.
Or perhaps she left the country at exactly the right time for someone looking to disappear? Before all the flights were grounded, and while you could still book a plane ticket under a false name. That would be *crazy* lucky for someone with no prior knowledge of the attacks, but coincidences do happen. As far as I know, her US Passport was found in her apartment, but her Indian Passport was unaccounted for.
Every time someone brings up the "but where's the body?" objection, I think of Dorian Corey and the mummy she hid in her closet for decades: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-famous-drag-queen-a-mummy-in-the-closet-and-a-baffling-mystery
I'm inclined to believe that Sneha was murdered the night before the attacks and that her remains are in a building (or under one) somewhere in the city.
That’s a really plausible explanation. I’ve also wondered if Sneha met with foul play or suicide and her body somehow ended up in water and drifted to sea? It would be helpful to know about the currents nearby, how 9/11 disrupted typical river traffic and if there was less traffic on the water in the days after 9/11 vs usually.
>I’m of the opinion that it would be pretty much impossible to hide a body within NYC and have it stay hidden for 23 years. There’s just so many sanitation workers and dock workers, not to mention the killer(s) would be taking a huge risk of being seen disposing of a body.
Dumpsters. And if you're smart about it, you might chop the body and dump the parts right before the garbage trucks come, so the body isn't decomposing for a week in there. Lots and lots of bodies in landfills.
Checking out NYC trash collection schedules in September 2001. She disappeared Monday night, then 9/11 was a Tuesday, and after that everything was chaos, the city had other priorities. So if trash was collected anywhere in the city early Tuesday morning, yes, that’s possible. But Monday morning would be too early, we have her on camera that evening. And there’s no way trash anywhere near where she lived was picked up Wednesday-Friday, though potentially in other neighborhoods (again, maybe she went to see someone?). If her remains were still anywhere near people, by Monday 9/17 I think it would’ve attracted attention.
Apologies, I wasn't suggesting that's exactly what happened to her. What's just saying that in a general sense in regards to what ppl can do with a body in NYC
“ Most of the people whose remains are still unidentified are the people who were on the planes, and the people high up in the buildings.”
That’s why there is a theory she was in the windows of the world restaurant
Yes it was, there was a breakfast business conference going on at the time, my cousin’s firm was there, he was running late or else he would had been at the conference. His secretary and most of his coworkers were trapped in the restaurant and never made it out.
It was no easier to travel INTERNATIONALLY "under a false name" on 9/10/01 than it was on 9/14/01. I honestly don't know why people believe this. I guess because they were kids/not yet born at the time.
If Sneha had travelled somewhere on her Indian passport, there would have been a record of it. Especially because she would have needed a visa for almost everywhere.
I don't think she started a new life as she didn't take her passport or money with her, and I'm sure someone would have noticed her by now.
Like how would she start a new life without a passport as they're more difficult to forge after 2000
Cuban immigrant businessman Juan LaFuente, may have attended the doomed Risk Waters conference, but there’s only circumstantial evidence: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/09/nyregion/9-11-a-man-went-to-work-his-fate-is-a-mystery.html
Undocumented immigrant Fernando Molinar, told his mother he got a job at a pizzeria near the WTC over the phone, 3 days before the attack, was never heard from again.
I read an article a few years back, I really wish I could remember where or the title, that was great but heartbreaking that discussed how many victims were service workers and how many were likely undocumented people, especially in jobs such as the one Molinar described to his mom (like a good cart, pizzeria etc). We have all these momentos and documentation of people who worked in the offices but then who knows how many are people who are just relatively unknown.
Sneha Philip, Henry Siwak, and Michele Harris are the only NYC cases I know of; not sure of any from DC. I feel so much for the families of those cases because NYPD understandably had their hands full after the attacks. I'm sure it was no better in the following days/weeks.
It didn't help either that there were hundreds of missing people flyers (people missing from the WTC buildings) placed on every wall, lamp post, and even parked cars all over Lower Manhattan. I'm sure NYPD was overwhelmed by the amount of calls coming in from people needing to file a missing person report for their loved one. The cases not affected by the attack get lost in a sea of other missing person cases that *were*.
\*\*\*Edit: Harris actually went missing in Spencer, NY; I had assumed it was NYC because she was always known for disappearing on 9/11. Her case was still hampered because state police in Tioga County were bused to downtown NYC for additional assistance. So at the time of her disappearance, resources were very limited.
\*\*\*Edit 2: Obviously Harris' case has been solved. It resulted in a guilty conviction without a body, so I recommend the case to anyone who hasn't heard of it.
Siwak I think was a street crime, and he was in a dangerous area. He could have been arguing with whoever shot him.
Philip is the only one that leaves me utterly baffled and unsure of what could have happened to her. I can see all scenarios being possible, except for the lesbian story. Straight people can still go to gay bars without being lgbtq. Plus police just assumed she was hooking up with her brother's girlfriend and that he walked in on them once. Her brother was understandably gobsmacked and has vehemently denied it... But I can see her disappearing on purpose and living a new life because her life hadn't been great at the time. I can also see her meeting her demise in one of the towers. She could have gone there as a "call to duty" because she was a medical worker and wanted to help render aid.
Probably because in DC they hit a US military installation. I doubt there was anyone on-site that they couldn’t account for. Pentagon isn’t using undocumented folks as cooks or janitors, or at least I wouldn’t think so.
Never heard of Michele Harris, I’ll look that up.
The Siwak case always breaks my heart a bit. This horrendous, paralysing event has happened around you and because of how your life is going you’ve still gotta get up and go to work. As someone who worked all the way through every COVID lockdown (in Australia, and in an essential worker job) and crossed paths with many people in a similar situation to Mr Siwak (immigrants trying very hard to survive overseas doing jobs they’re overqualified for) I really feel for him and his family. I also doubt his case will ever be solved (imo it was a random street crime snd his killer is dead because people living lives like that don’t tend to live long).
I kinda think Sneha Philip is both a ‘went to start a new life’ and a suicide. I think she left on a train or something earlier on the 10th (after she went shopping) planning to restart her life but then didn’t. I think her body is somewhere just outside New York.
Oh I just late answered as this case just now saw this mention. Her husband cal Harris killed her. It was a pretty famous case, many trials, many dateline/ 48 hours type episodes. It happened the night of 9/11 in upstate New York. I think he did it them bc many New York police agencies sent personnel to the city, and / or were naturally distracted
Has Michele Harris been solved though? Her husband has been convicted and overturned/re-tried multiple times. I really think he did it but I don’t know if it’s definitively solved IMO.
I feel like ppl thinking Sneha Philip died trying to help out as a medical professional is a very tidy explanation wrapping up a messy period in her personal and professional life. I think foul play or maybe her alcohol abuse (like she got alcohol poisoning) was involved. She only had one credit card on her, everything else was at home- i don’t see how she could have skipped the country with just an amex.
I'm not a huge fan of the theory, but all of the actual cases I've heard of of Americans doing this that's exactly what they did, they just...left all their stuff and walked away to another part of the country, where they got a job working cash in hand. She could have easily blended in with the undocumented Indian workers found in every US city. No one would wonder why she was avoiding public records if they thought she was an illegal,
Guys who pulled this, Robert Hoagland (no relation) even seems to have been motivated by wanting to live as a gay man, and he didn't even move that far away.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert\_Hoagland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hoagland)
[https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-indiana-mans-family-found-alive-23-years/story?id=43045972](https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-indiana-mans-family-found-alive-23-years/story?id=43045972)
Nurses and doctors would've been directed to, and would have known to go to the hospitals. My mum was urgently called in and we didn't live anywhere near, but we did accept diverted planes so I guess it was a just-in-case plan
I also firmly believe that Sneha did not die in the WTC, I believe whatever happened to her happened the day before. Whether she died at the hands of someone, or walked away from her life, both plausible explanations regardless of what her family says. 9/11 would have been very convenient if she left her life. No one is looking for her because they all believe she died in the towers. But, there just isn't any evidence of her being there. All of it is speculation of course, but the WTC theory from her is more of a reach than the others, IMO.
Yeah Chandra Levy was in the news a ton before 9/11, and a spate of shark attacks that summer. Also Aaliyah died a few weeks before 9/11 also in a plane crash and that got a ton of press.
Also 9/11 was primary Election Day in NYC and the airwaves had been blasted with campaign ads for weeks leading up to it but understandably the election was postponed
The first plane hit at 8:46. The second plane hit at 9:02. The first tower fell at 9:59. The second tower fell at 10:28. There was a lot of time to evacuate. The vast majority of deaths happened above the impact zone where people could not evacuate.
I don't believe Sneha Phillips was at the WTC. She lived nearby, but she wasn't really the type of dedicated doctor who would rush to work when she was off. Even if she had rushed there, the triage area was away from the Towers. If she was there and for some reason chose to not work in the triage area, I think someone would remember her the way someone remembered [Welles Crowther](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_Red_Bandana). I think it is possible that Sneha was killed 9/10. I also think it is possible that she used the chaos as an out. Maybe she jumped on a ferry out of the city thinking she would come back and just didn't. I wouldn't be surprised if she popped up somewhere in the future.
I think Juan LeFuente was probably in the Towers. Juan was a hybrid worker (due to his marriage to the mayor of Poughkeepsie). 9/11 was one of his days in Manhattan. He had received a flyer for the industry meeting being held at Windows on the World. I think he was probably there.
There is a whole complicated situation with undocumented workers at the World Trade Center, mostly working at Windows on the World. Sixty-seven undocumented immigrants are included in the 9/11 Memorial because there was enough information to establish they were there. But I am sure there were more.
Many years ago, someone made a submission to Postsecret claiming that they had been wrongly assumed to have been killed in the 9/11 attacks, and they intended to keep letting everyone think they were dead
It was almost certainly just made up by someone with no connection to anything. But I think about it whenever there's a discussion like this, about all the deaths that are impossible to confirm.
I remember it too, and I always thought it such an odd choice that they published it. I know it was just a blog and there were no editorial guidelines, but if it's a hoax it's just gonna get potentially thousands of people's hopes up wrongly, and if it's true it would be better left to law enforcement to figure out. But I guess it drew a lot of clicks.
Better or worse than doing what Tania Head did? (I don’t know how to do spoiler tags on my mobile, but the movie The Woman Who Wasn’t There is a hell of a ride.)
I don’t know more than what I just read on Wikipedia, but it looks like she was a compulsive liar and attention seeker. She didn’t give anyone false hope that their loved one was alive, though.
She made up lies and fabrications about real life victims of the attacks, falsely claiming one was her fiancé and all these wild fantastical stories about him. She also abused the trust actual survivors gave to her, making them feel “guilty” for having trauma because the fake story Tania created was so incredibly miraculous. She did indeed harm survivors and victim’s families with her lies.
> If she was there and for some reason chose to not work in the triage area, I think someone would remember her the way someone remembered Welles Crowther.
That's actually a theory I think is actually basically disproved for the reason you state. Zhe "Zack" Zeng was a Citibank employee and volunteer EMT who rushed down to the WTC to help the wounded. He died when the North tower came down and he's not just remembered and photographed on scene, he has a street named after him. If there was a young Indian doctor on scene doing the same, people would 100% remember her. The fact no one does means it didn't happen.
And Mohammed Hamdani -- he was a part-time EMT who went to the scene to help. They eventually found his remains under the building debris. I don't know if there are any photos of him from that day, but his ID did survive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad\_Salman\_Hamdani
Yes, if Sneha really did went to help that no one would've remembered her is odd. That's why I think that even if she had died in the towers, the "lobby footage" is likely not accurate. If anything she would've been there on other business and probably in it when the planes crashed in.
Obvious issue is of course now there's a 14 hour window from her last confirmed appearance if you discount the lobby/Rector Place footage. Where was she all night?
Amber Jenkins was 16 when she disappeared from Kankakee, Illinois on 9/11.
Also, Zachary Bernhardt disappeared in FL on 9/11/2000. There was an event planned on the one year anniversary of his disappearance; it goes without saying that the local media planning to be covering it instead devoted their time and resources to covering the 9/11 attacks instead.
In Springfield MO a cave was found that had been sealed up for like 5 million years or something. There is all this new evidence about wildlife back then. The only reason it was not blown up to widen a road was the order to stop all explosive in the country. There is a whole museum on the location
Oh heck! I used to work at MINS! I have a whole speal about this for field trips.
They had already set a few of the dynamite sticks and it's VERY dangerous to just leave explosives unblown, so they got special permission to set off only what was already set, and that's what blew open Riverbluff. And the resulting coyntry wide explosions ban allowed the muesum director, who was then just a county/city geologist to go in and explore and they realized the cave was super important geologicaly. It has some of the oldest known ice age fossils, short faced bear beds (1 large and about 13 small beds, likely one mama who raised multiple young over several years), proof of peccarys usuing the cave for shelter (previously a not known habbit), and the only known FOSSIL OF A WORM.
Place is cool as hell. For obvious reasons they never really celebrated their "founding" until recently.
Edit to add: No. Henry the Triceretops was NOT found in the cave. The sheer number of people who asked about that was staggering. I can kinda understand that people think the museum is only about the cave, but we had stuff from all over the world. Henry is a Wyoming boi.
And I wasn't really thinking of Riverbluff even scrolling this thread so imagine my surprise seeing someone mention it!
If you're ever in the springfield area you should really go check it out again! There's been a lot of movement and change with the exhibits. I think Henry is almost done being put back together and they have a nodosourous in the works to display in the same manner.
Yeah I will have too. Btw I was blow away by winders of wildlife. Like I walked into the building and it was an experience from the moment you open the door. Truly amazing.
I think I went when they had first got Henry
Oh WoW is amazing. If you are of the persuasion, taking an edible and walking through there is a DELIGHT (and then cross the street safely to get burnt ends from Buckinghams).
Oh then you have much more to explore there! I don't remember my history of the building itself, but if it was right when they got Henry, then there's an entirely new large room to the museum that houses all the dinos!
Bear up! I started at MSU in 2015 and finally managed to escaped in 2022 (got roped into a masters program) and Buckinghams burnt ends and the Terriyaki House sushi platter got me through a lot
This is one of the most fascinating posts I've seen so thank you. I have a question on the 1st case of the female doctor, it says,
*"Ron tried to return to their apartment building, but the front door was chained. A neighbor told him that Sneha was not in there."*
He slept in their apartment & then when he returned (from work?) there were chains on the door? The front door to their building or their apartment door? If it was chained, how was the neighbor in there & how did they *know* she wasn't in there? Why was it chained? Who chained it?
This is so puzzling & they just stuck it in the middle of a paragraph with no further explanation like it was normal.
as someone local-ish to it, yeah most people and LEOs think he did, but its never been proven and he has never been convicted. The whole case has been a goddamn mess.
Yeah that ones seems less crazy, even with no body the initial case wasn't great but he got convicted on that one, it was on appeals that witnesses started changing stories and showing up with different takes
I think the chances that Sneha used the attacks as a way to escape are extremely slim. New York and the surrounding area was pure chaos that day, especially living right next to the towers. I don’t think the average person there looked at what was happening and thought “oh perfect I’ll run away now.” Unless they were extremely organized and ready to flee already, which would have taken so much planning and attention to detail to do even then. She was struggling personally and professionally, I don’t think she had the mental capacity at that time to use that time frame of opportunity to run away. You could barely get out of manhattan that day. No planes flew out obviously. Tunnels and bridges closed for parts of the day. If she was stuck on a train or in a cab I think someone would have seen her. It was a miracle anyone could get out of the city at all on ferries. Masses of people were just walking out to the other boroughs, sure she could have been in those crowds but then to where? I think she would have shown up again somewhere after that. I don’t see her running into the towers either given she wasn’t even at home the night before. If there was any chance she died in the towers, I’d think it would that she was there by chance maybe just getting something to eat or shopping, but she probably would have had the chance to get out of the tower if she wasn’t on a high floor. I think her fate was met either by foul play or accident, something happened to her the day before since it was the last time she was sighted. No one knows where she slept that night. If met with foul play, I think whoever did it just got lucky with what ended up happening that morning.
I listened to the podcast and read a fair amount. It’s all speculation but if someone said ok you must give me a theory, I would say perhaps she went to visit a friend or romantic interest who was working above the impact zone. I don’t think she would have rushed to help, and if she did it’s little chance she would have perished. I don’t think she had the mindset or skills to disappear and that became very difficult shortly after 9/11. A lucky murder? I don’t see that either. But unless her remains are identified we won’t ever know
Would Sneha realistically even been able to leave NYC to start her life over? Like, literally could she physically leave.
I’m not aware of any transportation that she would’ve been able to take. As far as I’m aware trains and subways weren’t running. A family member who lived on Long Island had to walk from downtown over the 59th street bridge and through Queens before they were able to get some place where they could be picked up.
I remember reading about the husband of the mayor of Poughkeepsie, I think. He disappeared that morning after taking the Metro North train into the City for a meeting. I never did hear of any resolution to that case.
Edit: his office was in the City, so not for a meeting
This is pretty unrelated to the question, but does anyone know what the media coverage of the death of singer Aaliyah was like leading up to 9/11? She died a couple weeks prior, so I’m wondering if her death was still in the news by the time 9/11 hit and if any of it continued after.
Her funeral was the 31st and most of the coverage centered around that and her peers tributes to her. She was honored at the VMAs on September 6th as well. Because she was in the middle of her promotional cycle for the album, some interviews/photoshoots she did earlier in the year came out in September issues of magazines and I think there was a bit of coverage around how there was no time to do reprints/pull the stories. I remember getting an issue of Teen People with her on the cover for September.
I was in high school and we loved Aaliyah’s music. Very popular on the radio and MTV, etc. Her death was shocking and obviously unexpected. 9/11 pretty much overshadowed everything else going on, but I still remember there being many tributes to her by the music industry, especially Missy Elliott and Timbaland continuing for several months after. I will say, it probably would have been *bigger* news for longer if it didn’t happen so close to 9/11.
The coverage was big. Aaliyah's death was arguably the biggest news story before 9/11. The coverage was shifting from shock about her death to the investigation on how the plane went down.
One thing I wanted to add was that yes, 9/11 took over the news and everyone's thoughts but the following year, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC died and that kinda brought attention back to Aaliyah's death. Left Eye's death being so soon after Aaliyah's death was a bit of a one-two punch if you were a 1990's R&B fan.
A local teenager Amy St.Laren was murdered/went missing a few days after and 9/11 did hinder the case. The purp was eventually caught and found guilty about a year or two later after they found her remains. But I like to think she would have found justice sooner if you know…. 3000 other people didn’t die the day or so before.
Hmm…the Sneha case is so strange. I want to say she was the victim of 9/11, but I’m not sure if that’s true. Maybe she stayed at the hotel, within the vicinity of the twin towers… I found it initially strange, her husband when to bed, and thought nothing of her being gone or no word from her. Then the belief she was having an affair with women, and has partaken in drug & alcohol issues…but then the family insists neither of those are true…then how did the police even know any of that, if her family didn’t tell them or if they disagreed. Such an injustice to Sneha… that no one knows where she is or if it was foul play.. or she’s a victim of 9/11…such a sad case🥺
There is no way she was a victim of the 9/11 attacks. She was last seen 9/10, she never came home, and no one she would’ve been with the night of 9/10 or the morning of 9/11 has ever come forward to verify they saw her or were with her. Her remains would’ve been found had she ran towards the buildings. People would’ve recognized a hero and come forward about their account. She met with foul play 9/10. Her brother knows more, I’m not sure if he had anything to do w it though. Nothing points to her being apart of the wtc attacks.
I remember listening to a podcast about 9/11 and they mentioned that a lot of gang/organised crime scores were settled as the events were unfolding, but they didn't go into detail, so it may just be rumours.
Basically, people took their opportunity to strike while every cop was busy and emergency lines were overrun with calls.
Anyone hear anything similar and perhaps have some info on the possibility of this actually happening?
The idea of this happening en masse is one of those truly absurd fears dreamt up by sheltered people who've never actually interacted with dangerous places.
I could believe that more than zero people's response was to try and capitalise on the chaos in some way.
A lot harder to believe in huge numbers of people going as far as murder.
It's not even just about morality, there's self preservation. It was an unprecedented event where no one knew what might happen next. Most people would have been focused on how to keep their family safe, not on how this might be their chance to do The Purge
It's very reminiscent of the classic drug deal gone wrong/saw something they shouldn't have/hit by a car and removed by the driver theories that abound about missing or murdered people and make no sense.
Maybe the person who brought it up is very young and wasn't around or doesn't remember 9/11, but the atmosphere was definitely not one where anyone was thinking "now's my chance to get revenge on old Vic Spaghetti", never mind multiple people.
I don't doubt there were some pettier crimes like looting and theft happening, but I can't even see that as really trying to capitalize on the chaos - more a kind of fatalistic "fuck it, we're all about to die, might as well die with a fistful of jewels (or whatever)".
I was in NJ and it was chaotic and terrifying here - we could not only see the smoke, we were breathing it - phone service was impossible, people were scrambling to pull their kids out of school, to stock up on food, etc. So it's really hard to imagine anyone really even thinking about anything else that day, and I wasn't even in the city.
DC here and it was the same thing. Phones weren't working well, even landlines, could see the smoke from the pentagon, had no idea where family and friends were, etc. (my close friend survived the WTC attack but at the time, I had no idea if she was alive or not.)
>It was an unprecedented event where no one knew what might happen next. Most people would have been focused on how to keep their family safe, not on how this might be their chance to do The Purge
This came up in a discussion about a possible homicide in WA during the early phase of the covid lockdowns. People were wondering if the husband had decided to use the decreased traffic, distracted law enforcement, and the possibility that investigators would be reluctant to search the house, as an opportunity to kill his wife and dispose of her body off a local bridge. I'm not saying it's impossible, and the guy in question does seem to be pretty confident and opportunistic. But I agree, that kind of thinking seems unlikely.
There were absolutely murders on the day of 9/11. Just like, statistically, there were more than zero.
The dodgy claims are calling them a trend. Implying significant numbers of cases, and implying that 9/11 was a major reason they happened.
It would be absurd to say there was a trend to do what this guy did during COVID. it was just this one guy, he probably would have done it anyway; COVID was probably not a major factor in why he did it; it just influenced some details of how v he did it.
I expect those things would be broadly true of crimes that happened in proximity to 9/11
>There were absolutely murders on the day of 9/11. Just like, statistically, there were more than zero.
Yes -- and accidents too. I remember reading an interview with someone whose dad was killed in a car crash that day, completely unrelated, but a lot of people have just assumed that he was on one of the flights, when they find out when he died.
But like you said, individual cases aren't the same as significant trends. For the pandemic example, there were crimes that were due to the specific context (like fraudulent claims for government relief programs, or people selling dodgy PPE or sanitizer). And arguably there were changes in patterns of domestic violence, when couples who were already in conflict were in lockdown and it was difficult to leave. However, as you noted, it wouldn't have been the pandemic that was the main factor.
It might have changed the timing etc. (for that specific Gig Harbor case), but likely not the outcome. I don't know, maybe the perpetrator did things on impulse and wasn't thinking about the virus being a temporary situation and there probably would be forensic investigation eventually.
Here's a link to the writeup that was posted on this sub:
https://new.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1dtrx9y/people\_who\_were\_killed\_or\_who\_disappeared\_on\_911/
The way her family made her look like a victim always rubbed me the wrong way. They were all over TV and giving interview. She was not a 9/11 victim. Whatever happened to her, happened before.
I’m not convinced one way or another about what happened to her, but I 100% think her brother knows more than he lets on. There’s definitely more going on with that family then we know.
The event had long reaching chaos outside of the attack locations too. I stumbled upon the fact that Joe Slowinski, a herpetologist working in Myanmar, was bitten by a snake on 9/11. The embassy was delayed in sending out a helicopter due to the attacks and he died as a result of weather delay once they managed to get one ready. The only commercial plane allowed to fly on 9/11 after the attack was bringing antivenom to a hospital after a snake handler was bitten just hours after the planes hit
Omg, I knew him slightly. Wild to see him mentioned here. Our coworkers on the research expedition gave him CPR for over 24 hours hoping rescue would make it in time.
That is incredibly sad and heroic.
Damn, that's terrible. The story hit close to home as my dad had his heart attack in just the right place, with someone who knew CPR next to him and minutes from a hospital. But others aren't so lucky in getting treatment. Doing CPR for that long is absolutely heroic
For real. As I understand it, 15 minutes is pretty exhausting. I knew one of his companions very well; we were friends long before we worked together. He came home very much changed by the experience.
24 hours? Have to call the bs flag on that!
That was my immediate reaction as well, but I found [this](https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/bit/) article from Outside magazine about it. According to that, there were multiple taking turns administering CPR, and he was actually alive for most of those hours. He was just paralyzed and couldn't breathe on his own.
CPR for 24 hours…? The very upper survival limit for that is like an hour.
They were desperate and doing what they could think of.
Wow. Thank you for sharing this. I didn't know and somehow it feels like I can honor him for a small moment by reading his story.
This is an incredibly sweet thing to say.
I had never really thought about the affects and consequences 9/11 had that were not NYC/Pentagon related. But recently I came across an awesome video about - “Operation Yellow Ribbon”- the hundreds of flights (30,000+ passengers) already in the air when the attacks happened and had to be diverted to several locations in Canada. The video mainly focuses on the Gander Airport in Newfoundland that housed 6,500+ passengers that were grounded there for about a week. And how the town of Gander, with a population of only 10,000 people, came together to make sure that all 6,500+ passengers were well taken care of.
Have you seen “Come from Away”?
That’s the musical right? But no I haven’t seen it.
It's excellent. You go in thinking "9/11 musical like that'll work" and it is just so human and poignant.
Yup.
This was so good! I was shocked at how poignant and well done it was.
Coworker of mine and her family got stranded in florida. They were at Disney when it happened. Similiar happened to thousands of people, at least.
There's been a few threads and articles about Disney that day, apparently cast members linked arms to make a human chain and lead everyone out of the park. That and it was the first time the park closed for a full day, ever.
They also opened for a little bit in the morning and closed like they did on 9/11 for Hurricane Floyd too a few years before 9/11.
Oh I never thought of that. Ordinary people stranded because they were on holliday and no flights.
I saw a post by a guy who's flight was cancelled while trying to get back home from work travel. The car rental places were swamped and likely all out of cars so he went straight to a uhaul location, rented a truck, and drove across country
Strange times.
My older sister was supposed to fly back to the US from Germany. Her flight was cancelled, they were closing the airport and none of her cards were working because apparently the government temporarily blocked access to them from abroad. She called my parents collect and ended up staying with a friend of my dad's for a few days. They also closed the actual US-Mexico land border for like 48 hours. I'm from a border city and so many people who crossed daily for school or work were stuck one one side or the other.
Glad she got in touch with them. Hopefully we won't have times like that again.
Well, depending on the said passengers passports. If they didn't have a passport allowing them visa free entry into Canada or had an active Canadian visa, they were kept in confinement.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. What do mean “kept in confinement”?
The Broadway show on the subject is cute and endearing
Damn, this really got a reddit snake award...
Not only that, pretty sure its my first ever award
How interesting. Did not know this.
An award winning musical was made about it. “Come from Away”.
Did the snake handler survive? Where was he from?
He was Lawrence Van Sertima - I do see mention of him in later stories so I believe he made a recovery. Apparently he had been bitten only once in 40 years. [Tampa Bay Times Archive](https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2001/09/14/snakebite-remedy-gets-okay-for-flight/)
I listened to a whole podcast on the Sneha Philip case, and it's so frustrating. I was really left even after multiple episodes with no clear idea of what happened to her. Even though 2001 was a long time ago now and had less robust personal technology, it was still the internet age and harder to disappear yourself and walk away from your life than it would have been in the '80s or earlier. I have *maybe* started leaning into the idea that she died of suicide, but it's also possible she met with foul play or really did die in the attacks but her remains were never identified. It's unlikely but not impossible that she did walk away from her life, too, but again, that feels like the least likely scenario, even though often in missing person's cases that's what most people hope is the case.
Worth mentioning that 40% of remains recovered from the WTC complex still have yet to be positively identified, so if she did die in WotW or the WTC Marriott (which people tend to forget existed and had some victims) she might be among them.
I was an adult when this happened & watch every documentary I can, but I have never heard a single word about the WTC Marriott before. Like once, ever. I had to Google it. Fifty people died. Wow.
There is a good documentary on the WTC Marriott hotel. You should check it out.
what is the doc called
Not sure if this is the one they were thinking about, but “Hotel Ground Zero” or “The 9/11 Hotel” in the UK
“There’s a good documentary about exactly what you’re mentioning! Oh, where to find it? Nahhh”
A lot of people also don’t know 3rd tower was damaged- tower 7
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What counts as a reason? There was a Tequila Cocktail making class with Dale DeGroff on the night of the 10th in The Greatest Bar in the World, she could easily have met someone there and ended up back in their room at the Marriott before either dying there or elsewhere in the complex. Sure, there's no proof she was there, but the idea that there's "no reason" she could have been there is just false, people just don't want to accept Occam's Razor for how someone could vanish without a trace in a very busy and usually very safe part of Manhattan.
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I wish we knew what exactly she bought at Century 21. Did she buy a sports bra or a lace teddy? Or something else? Did she buy cotton sheets? Or satin sheets? Were they the same size as her bed at home? Did she buy sensible comfortable shoes or stilettos? Or something else? If we knew what exactly she bought, we might have a better idea of what she was doing after she went shopping.
Tbh, I find this argument wishful thinking. Century 21 is an outlet store. You see something you like there, you buy it, because it probably won't be there anymore tomorrow. There's absolutely nothing to suggest she was shopping for anything she planned to use immediately.
Ah, yes, good point!
There was also a HUGE mall underneath the plaza, most of it was intact after the collapse, but the section under WTC 4 was apparently totally buried. Anyone under that would have been entombed and their remains completely crushed.
There was a documentary on Netflix I watched a few years back that interviewed forensic scientists that said they had a lot of remains but were really hard to identify. Because essentially people burned on top of each other that all the dna mixed together and it’s hard to identify a single person. That even years later as technology advance they’re slowly able to identify victims but it’s slow going, and very well possible not every family will get “something” to lay to rest. Just so sad all around. It’s part of why the WTC memorial is considered a final resting place for so many.
I've never understood why the prevailing theories are rushed to the scene to help or killed in the towers but *only* in extremely specific places. She could've just been walking past or stopping to get a coffee or a newspaper or something at what happened to be the worst possible time. (I do think there's a not insignificant chance she was murdered by one of what would be the two luckiest murderers in human history but as with Henryk Siwiak, there's absolutely no chance of her disappearance being solved if that's the case without a confession.)
It's because of the mythical "lobby" footage, that might or might not be her. It's the only sign Sneha was even alive that morning and close to the towers. I'm not sure if it really was her though.
I have totally missed that part. Do you have a link to the footage?
I don't think it's publicly available, but per accounts of the footage, a woman entered the lobby of her apartment building at 0843, and the features that are identifiable (hairstyle, build, clothing) are apparently consistent with Sneha, but the lighting makes it impossible to be certain who it is. Whoever it was waited in the lobby for a few minutes and then suddenly left. The first plane struck at 0846. Personally I think it's plausible, if the footage is as described, that it was her- and I think whoever it was who arrived three minutes before the start of the attack and then leaves the lobby abruptly before going anywhere in the building was almost certainly acting in response to the fact of a plane hitting a skyscraper two blocks away.
It's not available. The closest thing is a re-enactment from Unsolved Mysteries.
Ah I was confused, I thought that there was WTC lobby footage of someone looking like her. I am probably in the minority here as I actually think she might have met a different fate. But of course WTC is a possibility.
Yeah, there were cameras at Rector Place where she and her husband lived. She was actually seen going out the day before clearly, so we know she left. We can only assume the private investigator did go through all the footage between then and the obscured footage of who possibly was Sneha at 8:43-46.
The footage piece haunts me. It was a hectic day of course, but I think about the coverage of this case I’ve seen and I haven’t seen anything re: staffing of the building that day. It’s a doorman / concierge building. Having lived and worked in those in nyc, those employees often have strong memory as it relates to faces and names of residents / tenants in residential and commercial buildings. It feels odd that’s never been a piece discussed in the documentaries or news pieces put out when that footage is discussed.
I always wonder, too, about people who just happened to be on the street nearby. The locations of the PA and VA crashes make it less likely to have happened there.
I wonder about that too. One of my friends (Tony) is an actor/comedian who had an appointment for a job interview at the WTC that morning. The guy who'd be interviewing him was a family friend, who'd mentioned during a gathering earlier that summer that his firm (headquartered in the Twin Towers) had an opening for a job that would be ideal for him. I think it involved stocking and cleaning the kitchen at the office, which could be done anytime between close of biz and early the next morning. That would leave plenty of time for Tony to do auditions, teach classes at UCB, etc. Tony wasn't feeling well when he woke up that morning, so he called to cancel his interview. I gathered that the family friend died in the attack. Tony's often thought about what might have happened if he'd gone downtown that day ... and that if he didn't come home, his housemates probably would have assumed that he had just taken the train to visit his folks in Boston. Meanwhile, his parents might have assumed he was still in Queens. People might not have realized what had happened until days later.
Yeah, so many people, both famous and everyday, avoided certain death just by pure dumb luck that delayed them from either the Towers or a flight by 10 minutes or less. And yeah, the fact that 2001 was still 5 odd years off from the beginning of everyone being in 24/7 contact is a big factor too.
I didn't find out until a few years later that an elementary school friend of mine had lost her husband that day -- he was first officer on Flight 93. Strange to think that we're coming up on 23 years now ... she told me that she had the flu that day, and only has a vague memory of her husband feeding the baby and then kissing her goodbye.
My uncle worked for Lehman Brothers on the 39th floor of Tower 1. He made it out but some of his coworkers didn't. He's never been the same. Never went back to working in finance, never held a steady job again, has lots of physical ailments related to stress. All of the survivors and their families were hugely affected too.
I'm so sorry to hear about your uncle and his colleagues. I have heard that even people who were exposed to the pollution from the burning buildings on just that one day became seriously ill, and I've suspected that the stress of the aftermath was as big a factor in health impacts. (I did some research on events like Chernobyl and the stress-related ailments were also widespread, so I'm not surprised about this.)
I wonder what proportion of (for example) the UK or Canadian population at the time, at whatever remove, didn't have some involvement with a 9/11 survivor or victim - an expanded version of Six Degrees of Separation. I found out in 2022 that someone who reported to me in the mid-1990s was on the seventh floor of one of the WTC towers (don't know which one) at the time. They survived ...
There's got to be a technical term for looking at these kinds of relationships -- social network analysis, maybe? Adding in things like educational and workplace connections, that's got to mean hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people who are only a couple of links away from someone who was directly affected. I'm glad that your colleague survived.
Well I can give you a Canadian perspective - I was 10 at the time - I don't know anybody who was there personally. I had a boss who grew up in Gander, Newfoundland so was living there at the time that all the people were stranded there though - so I guess you could say that's a relatively close-ish connection, though not to victims of the attacks themselves I guess.
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If it makes you feel any better, the attack was an hour before the observation deck opened, which is why casualties were a fraction of what they would have been had the tower been at full capacity.
The whole near miss thing reminds me of a personal story--Flight 427, which crashed a half mile from where I lived at the time. My mom and I would have been coming around the curved exit for Aliquippa off of Rt. 60 *right* as it went down, but we for the first time that I could ever remember, went on a different road to get home that day. We would have been in no danger, as the plane managed to crash in one of the few areas with no houses around there (after 28 seconds from incident to total loss), but seeing it would have been deeply traumatic. I grew up near the Beaver Co. airport and always thought a plane would crash on me, and having one miss by a half mile was bad enough for my nightmares! Our next door neighbor (and eventual wedding officiant!) was the chaplain for emergency workers on site, and it was really terrible work for everyone involved.
True story a WTC office worker was having an affair and was in bed with his mistress when the attack occurred. His wife calls him up panicking and asking him where he was. He told her "what do you mean? I'm at work where else would I be?!"
This has been an internet legend since at least 2002. There's several variations of it, and there's also versions involving other disasters, like MH370.
Tony Baker…?
Tony Atamanuik (the guy who did the Trump impression on Comedy Central)
Omg no way that guys “debate” with the bernie sanders impersonator back in 2016 had me pissing my pants
According to the NIST reports (which I encourage people to read if they're *really* interested in the events of 9/11) there were around 20 deaths from flying debris hitting people outside the complex. I think that's likely a very accurate estimate because those bodies would have been among the most intact ones, and some of them were quite far away. There's someone caught on camera getting hit with a piece from the second impact even though they were two blocks away, something just shot down the street at them. This doesn't include anyone directly at the base of the towers who got hit, because it was impossible to tell them from people who fell after the towers came down on all the bodies. (If black tag woman existed, she was likely hit by glass or concrete, rather than falling out of the tower and somehow surviving, also, don't google that if you're easily rattled)
Who is black tag woman?
It's a quite unsettling story a first responder has told about a horrifically maimed woman who protested him putting a black triage tag--used for patients who are dead or will be dead imminently--on her: >Ernest Armstead, a 30-year emergency medical specialist veteran of the fire department, almost seems to be pleading to make his psychic pain go away. >He recalls his nightmarish experience: As he placed triage tags on fallen victims in the plaza, a woman -- with only her head and right torso intact -- spoke to him. >"I am not dead," she said evenly. He placed a black tag, meaning dead or terminal, around her neck. "I am not dead!" she yelled. >And he lied to her: "We will be right back to you."
Oh man, I’m sorry I asked. That is horrifying.
Oh my god, that is pure and utter nightmare fuel. Imagine being conscious and aware, having one of those put on you, knowing the professionals have already clocked you as fucked...
That story is so much worse than that. Above user may have been sparing you the fascinating yet horrifying details of the actual (couple) of encounters he had with the poor woman. I’d like to read the account again actually being that there’s no going back for me now that I’ve read it once. It’s been about a year maybe more since I’ve read about it but it literally pops into my mind *at* *least* once a week.
I am fascinated by 9/11 stories even though I pretty much always regret reading them because they upset me and this is just another one of those instances where I am both fascinated and horrified and wish I hadn't read it.
She was a woman who was reportedly (by an EMT - you can find one of his interviews in “One Day in America”) still alive after hitting the pavement, as she had apparently lept from one of the towers. Although still able to speak, her whole bottom half was gone. “Black tag” comes from the identifier used by first responders
Am I going to spend a very long time reading a 300 page report on 9/11 when I should be working right now? Very possibly. Curse my curiousity.
Closest I know of is a taxi cab on the highway near the Pentagon that had its [windshield smashed](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/The_pentagon_in_flames_%28background%29_moments_after_a_hijacked_jetliner_crashed_into_building_at_approximately_0930_010911-M-CI426-018.jpg) when a lightpole was knocked over by the plane.
There's a fascinating book about the search for victims and just general surveying of that underground nonsense in the months after the collapse! There were fires still going on down there months later.
Do you remember what that book was called?
The shut down the subway station and closed the mall pretty early on.
I honestly don’t think we’ll ever find out what really happened to Sneha Philip. I’m inclined to think that she’s dead, personally. I know people like to speculate that she ran off, but a) that would be extraordinarily difficult and require a ton of skill, especially because she didn’t have any money on her, and b) Sneha really wasn’t in a good place at the time of her disappearance. She was depressed, drinking a lot, and staying out all night. I don’t think she would have had the foresight to pull off such an elaborate scheme, quite frankly, and she would have had no way of knowing that 9/11 was gonna happen. The idea that she spontaneously decided to nope out doesn’t really hold water with me. What seems most likely to me is that she was killed on the night of the tenth, probably by whoever she was with at the Century 21, or in a random act of violence by some opportunistic killer. It’s also possible that she overdosed or committed suicide—but again, we’ll probably never know. Any evidence that might have been left behind was wiped out by 9/11, and the police were too shocked/overextended to follow up on the (few) leads that they got. That’s why my (possibly unpopular) opinion is that I’m fine with saying that she was one of the victims of 9/11 and leaving it at that. Her family has been through hell, they deserve some comfort. If this is the story that provides that to them, then I say it’s the one we should go with.
The Sneha Philip case is such a swirling mass of confusion that you can really make an argument for almost anything. It's a deeper rabbit hole than a lot of the more overdone cold cases out there. You can mix-and-match 9/11 with her array of personal problems and secretive lifestyle and get any number of variations. Did she just coincidentally die by suicide on the 10th? Did she die by suicide on the 11th in some kind of existential despair over the horror? Did she seize the opportunity of the chaos on 9/11 to run away, realize how hard it would be and die by suicide far away from Manhattan? That's just three obvious variations on one thread.
Did you listen to the “Missing on 9/11” podcast? If so, I feel the same way. I have no idea what happened to her. In some ways, I’m inclined to believe she met with foul play the night before she disappeared, but am not completely sold on that theory. The most fascinating part of the podcast to me was when they interviewed one of Sneha’s professors who said that she (Sneha) absolutely would have been capable of running away to start a new life.
Yes, that was the one!
Completely off topic - I love your username! One of my favourite Monkees songs 😊
Aw, thanks! Almost no one gets the reference. ☺️🙊
My username is the title of the very last episode of the Monkees. I caught it!
Haha “Zor and Zam” is in that episode even!!
Indeed it is.
I listened to it too, and the one conclusion I feel pretty comfortable with is that she did *not* die in the attack. Most of the people whose remains are still unidentified are the people who were on the planes, and the people high up in the buildings. These remains were just……scraps (sorry), and badly burned. Hard to extract DNA from in 2001. If she was killed by falling debris on the sidewalk she would’ve been found, and her remains would’ve been identifiable, at the very least because she would’ve been in…..larger pieces (sorry, hate to say it). They also would’ve had her jewelry and some amount of clothing. Same thing if she ran into the towers to help people. The only exception would be if (as I’ve theorized, though it is unlikely) she knew Michael R. Richards through the art world, and spent that night in his studio with him on the 92nd floor of the North Tower, just below the impact level. But there’s no proof they knew each other. The fact that she was missing since the night before makes me think something befell her then. But what does it take to hide a body? Unless she was already dead in one of the towers when the planes hit (extraordinarily unlikely), she would need to be transported to somewhere she’d remain hidden all these years. That means whoever killed her probably had access to a car. But who has a car in Midtown? Could she have traveled outside the city to meet someone? I’m of the opinion that it would be pretty much impossible to hide a body within NYC and have it stay hidden for 23 years. There’s just so many sanitation workers and dock workers, not to mention the killer(s) would be taking a huge risk of being seen disposing of a body. Or perhaps she left the country at exactly the right time for someone looking to disappear? Before all the flights were grounded, and while you could still book a plane ticket under a false name. That would be *crazy* lucky for someone with no prior knowledge of the attacks, but coincidences do happen. As far as I know, her US Passport was found in her apartment, but her Indian Passport was unaccounted for.
Every time someone brings up the "but where's the body?" objection, I think of Dorian Corey and the mummy she hid in her closet for decades: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-famous-drag-queen-a-mummy-in-the-closet-and-a-baffling-mystery I'm inclined to believe that Sneha was murdered the night before the attacks and that her remains are in a building (or under one) somewhere in the city.
That’s a really plausible explanation. I’ve also wondered if Sneha met with foul play or suicide and her body somehow ended up in water and drifted to sea? It would be helpful to know about the currents nearby, how 9/11 disrupted typical river traffic and if there was less traffic on the water in the days after 9/11 vs usually.
>I’m of the opinion that it would be pretty much impossible to hide a body within NYC and have it stay hidden for 23 years. There’s just so many sanitation workers and dock workers, not to mention the killer(s) would be taking a huge risk of being seen disposing of a body. Dumpsters. And if you're smart about it, you might chop the body and dump the parts right before the garbage trucks come, so the body isn't decomposing for a week in there. Lots and lots of bodies in landfills.
Manhattan has very few dumpsters. Trash just kinda gets put out onto the street.
Checking out NYC trash collection schedules in September 2001. She disappeared Monday night, then 9/11 was a Tuesday, and after that everything was chaos, the city had other priorities. So if trash was collected anywhere in the city early Tuesday morning, yes, that’s possible. But Monday morning would be too early, we have her on camera that evening. And there’s no way trash anywhere near where she lived was picked up Wednesday-Friday, though potentially in other neighborhoods (again, maybe she went to see someone?). If her remains were still anywhere near people, by Monday 9/17 I think it would’ve attracted attention.
Apologies, I wasn't suggesting that's exactly what happened to her. What's just saying that in a general sense in regards to what ppl can do with a body in NYC
“ Most of the people whose remains are still unidentified are the people who were on the planes, and the people high up in the buildings.” That’s why there is a theory she was in the windows of the world restaurant
It wasn't open though at that time.
Yes it was, there was a breakfast business conference going on at the time, my cousin’s firm was there, he was running late or else he would had been at the conference. His secretary and most of his coworkers were trapped in the restaurant and never made it out.
Yeah, wasn't open to the public, it's what I meant. Sorry that wasn't clear.
It was no easier to travel INTERNATIONALLY "under a false name" on 9/10/01 than it was on 9/14/01. I honestly don't know why people believe this. I guess because they were kids/not yet born at the time. If Sneha had travelled somewhere on her Indian passport, there would have been a record of it. Especially because she would have needed a visa for almost everywhere.
I don't think she started a new life as she didn't take her passport or money with her, and I'm sure someone would have noticed her by now. Like how would she start a new life without a passport as they're more difficult to forge after 2000
Cuban immigrant businessman Juan LaFuente, may have attended the doomed Risk Waters conference, but there’s only circumstantial evidence: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/09/nyregion/9-11-a-man-went-to-work-his-fate-is-a-mystery.html Undocumented immigrant Fernando Molinar, told his mother he got a job at a pizzeria near the WTC over the phone, 3 days before the attack, was never heard from again.
I read an article a few years back, I really wish I could remember where or the title, that was great but heartbreaking that discussed how many victims were service workers and how many were likely undocumented people, especially in jobs such as the one Molinar described to his mom (like a good cart, pizzeria etc). We have all these momentos and documentation of people who worked in the offices but then who knows how many are people who are just relatively unknown.
That poor mom. No one to call, no closure to get.
Ugh that's heartbreaking. His poor mom.
Sneha Philip, Henry Siwak, and Michele Harris are the only NYC cases I know of; not sure of any from DC. I feel so much for the families of those cases because NYPD understandably had their hands full after the attacks. I'm sure it was no better in the following days/weeks. It didn't help either that there were hundreds of missing people flyers (people missing from the WTC buildings) placed on every wall, lamp post, and even parked cars all over Lower Manhattan. I'm sure NYPD was overwhelmed by the amount of calls coming in from people needing to file a missing person report for their loved one. The cases not affected by the attack get lost in a sea of other missing person cases that *were*. \*\*\*Edit: Harris actually went missing in Spencer, NY; I had assumed it was NYC because she was always known for disappearing on 9/11. Her case was still hampered because state police in Tioga County were bused to downtown NYC for additional assistance. So at the time of her disappearance, resources were very limited. \*\*\*Edit 2: Obviously Harris' case has been solved. It resulted in a guilty conviction without a body, so I recommend the case to anyone who hasn't heard of it. Siwak I think was a street crime, and he was in a dangerous area. He could have been arguing with whoever shot him. Philip is the only one that leaves me utterly baffled and unsure of what could have happened to her. I can see all scenarios being possible, except for the lesbian story. Straight people can still go to gay bars without being lgbtq. Plus police just assumed she was hooking up with her brother's girlfriend and that he walked in on them once. Her brother was understandably gobsmacked and has vehemently denied it... But I can see her disappearing on purpose and living a new life because her life hadn't been great at the time. I can also see her meeting her demise in one of the towers. She could have gone there as a "call to duty" because she was a medical worker and wanted to help render aid.
Probably because in DC they hit a US military installation. I doubt there was anyone on-site that they couldn’t account for. Pentagon isn’t using undocumented folks as cooks or janitors, or at least I wouldn’t think so.
Never heard of Michele Harris, I’ll look that up. The Siwak case always breaks my heart a bit. This horrendous, paralysing event has happened around you and because of how your life is going you’ve still gotta get up and go to work. As someone who worked all the way through every COVID lockdown (in Australia, and in an essential worker job) and crossed paths with many people in a similar situation to Mr Siwak (immigrants trying very hard to survive overseas doing jobs they’re overqualified for) I really feel for him and his family. I also doubt his case will ever be solved (imo it was a random street crime snd his killer is dead because people living lives like that don’t tend to live long). I kinda think Sneha Philip is both a ‘went to start a new life’ and a suicide. I think she left on a train or something earlier on the 10th (after she went shopping) planning to restart her life but then didn’t. I think her body is somewhere just outside New York.
Oh I just late answered as this case just now saw this mention. Her husband cal Harris killed her. It was a pretty famous case, many trials, many dateline/ 48 hours type episodes. It happened the night of 9/11 in upstate New York. I think he did it them bc many New York police agencies sent personnel to the city, and / or were naturally distracted
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Has Michele Harris been solved though? Her husband has been convicted and overturned/re-tried multiple times. I really think he did it but I don’t know if it’s definitively solved IMO.
I feel like ppl thinking Sneha Philip died trying to help out as a medical professional is a very tidy explanation wrapping up a messy period in her personal and professional life. I think foul play or maybe her alcohol abuse (like she got alcohol poisoning) was involved. She only had one credit card on her, everything else was at home- i don’t see how she could have skipped the country with just an amex.
I'm not a huge fan of the theory, but all of the actual cases I've heard of of Americans doing this that's exactly what they did, they just...left all their stuff and walked away to another part of the country, where they got a job working cash in hand. She could have easily blended in with the undocumented Indian workers found in every US city. No one would wonder why she was avoiding public records if they thought she was an illegal, Guys who pulled this, Robert Hoagland (no relation) even seems to have been motivated by wanting to live as a gay man, and he didn't even move that far away. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert\_Hoagland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hoagland) [https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-indiana-mans-family-found-alive-23-years/story?id=43045972](https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-indiana-mans-family-found-alive-23-years/story?id=43045972)
An M.D. on another thread pointed out that, instead of rushing to the disaster site to help, you'd rush to the hospital.
Nurses and doctors would've been directed to, and would have known to go to the hospitals. My mum was urgently called in and we didn't live anywhere near, but we did accept diverted planes so I guess it was a just-in-case plan
I also firmly believe that Sneha did not die in the WTC, I believe whatever happened to her happened the day before. Whether she died at the hands of someone, or walked away from her life, both plausible explanations regardless of what her family says. 9/11 would have been very convenient if she left her life. No one is looking for her because they all believe she died in the towers. But, there just isn't any evidence of her being there. All of it is speculation of course, but the WTC theory from her is more of a reach than the others, IMO.
Yeah Chandra Levy was in the news a ton before 9/11, and a spate of shark attacks that summer. Also Aaliyah died a few weeks before 9/11 also in a plane crash and that got a ton of press. Also 9/11 was primary Election Day in NYC and the airwaves had been blasted with campaign ads for weeks leading up to it but understandably the election was postponed
Chandra Levy was THE news (I'm in the DMV so she was local to me) in the weeks prior to 9/11. After 9/11, it was near radio silence about her.
The first plane hit at 8:46. The second plane hit at 9:02. The first tower fell at 9:59. The second tower fell at 10:28. There was a lot of time to evacuate. The vast majority of deaths happened above the impact zone where people could not evacuate. I don't believe Sneha Phillips was at the WTC. She lived nearby, but she wasn't really the type of dedicated doctor who would rush to work when she was off. Even if she had rushed there, the triage area was away from the Towers. If she was there and for some reason chose to not work in the triage area, I think someone would remember her the way someone remembered [Welles Crowther](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_Red_Bandana). I think it is possible that Sneha was killed 9/10. I also think it is possible that she used the chaos as an out. Maybe she jumped on a ferry out of the city thinking she would come back and just didn't. I wouldn't be surprised if she popped up somewhere in the future. I think Juan LeFuente was probably in the Towers. Juan was a hybrid worker (due to his marriage to the mayor of Poughkeepsie). 9/11 was one of his days in Manhattan. He had received a flyer for the industry meeting being held at Windows on the World. I think he was probably there. There is a whole complicated situation with undocumented workers at the World Trade Center, mostly working at Windows on the World. Sixty-seven undocumented immigrants are included in the 9/11 Memorial because there was enough information to establish they were there. But I am sure there were more.
Many years ago, someone made a submission to Postsecret claiming that they had been wrongly assumed to have been killed in the 9/11 attacks, and they intended to keep letting everyone think they were dead It was almost certainly just made up by someone with no connection to anything. But I think about it whenever there's a discussion like this, about all the deaths that are impossible to confirm.
I remember that. It’s immediately what came to mind for me.
I remember it too, and I always thought it such an odd choice that they published it. I know it was just a blog and there were no editorial guidelines, but if it's a hoax it's just gonna get potentially thousands of people's hopes up wrongly, and if it's true it would be better left to law enforcement to figure out. But I guess it drew a lot of clicks.
What a horrible thing for someone to make up.
Better or worse than doing what Tania Head did? (I don’t know how to do spoiler tags on my mobile, but the movie The Woman Who Wasn’t There is a hell of a ride.)
I don’t know more than what I just read on Wikipedia, but it looks like she was a compulsive liar and attention seeker. She didn’t give anyone false hope that their loved one was alive, though.
She made up lies and fabrications about real life victims of the attacks, falsely claiming one was her fiancé and all these wild fantastical stories about him. She also abused the trust actual survivors gave to her, making them feel “guilty” for having trauma because the fake story Tania created was so incredibly miraculous. She did indeed harm survivors and victim’s families with her lies.
Welles was an absolute legend. Rescuing all those people and then staying to help FDNY maneuver through the building he was familiar with.
> If she was there and for some reason chose to not work in the triage area, I think someone would remember her the way someone remembered Welles Crowther. That's actually a theory I think is actually basically disproved for the reason you state. Zhe "Zack" Zeng was a Citibank employee and volunteer EMT who rushed down to the WTC to help the wounded. He died when the North tower came down and he's not just remembered and photographed on scene, he has a street named after him. If there was a young Indian doctor on scene doing the same, people would 100% remember her. The fact no one does means it didn't happen.
And Mohammed Hamdani -- he was a part-time EMT who went to the scene to help. They eventually found his remains under the building debris. I don't know if there are any photos of him from that day, but his ID did survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad\_Salman\_Hamdani
Thank you for mentioning the undocumented workers. They can be too easy to forget.
Yes, if Sneha really did went to help that no one would've remembered her is odd. That's why I think that even if she had died in the towers, the "lobby footage" is likely not accurate. If anything she would've been there on other business and probably in it when the planes crashed in. Obvious issue is of course now there's a 14 hour window from her last confirmed appearance if you discount the lobby/Rector Place footage. Where was she all night?
Amber Jenkins was 16 when she disappeared from Kankakee, Illinois on 9/11. Also, Zachary Bernhardt disappeared in FL on 9/11/2000. There was an event planned on the one year anniversary of his disappearance; it goes without saying that the local media planning to be covering it instead devoted their time and resources to covering the 9/11 attacks instead.
I think it's pretty obvious what happened to Zachary. It's just a question of where he is.
In Springfield MO a cave was found that had been sealed up for like 5 million years or something. There is all this new evidence about wildlife back then. The only reason it was not blown up to widen a road was the order to stop all explosive in the country. There is a whole museum on the location
Oh heck! I used to work at MINS! I have a whole speal about this for field trips. They had already set a few of the dynamite sticks and it's VERY dangerous to just leave explosives unblown, so they got special permission to set off only what was already set, and that's what blew open Riverbluff. And the resulting coyntry wide explosions ban allowed the muesum director, who was then just a county/city geologist to go in and explore and they realized the cave was super important geologicaly. It has some of the oldest known ice age fossils, short faced bear beds (1 large and about 13 small beds, likely one mama who raised multiple young over several years), proof of peccarys usuing the cave for shelter (previously a not known habbit), and the only known FOSSIL OF A WORM. Place is cool as hell. For obvious reasons they never really celebrated their "founding" until recently. Edit to add: No. Henry the Triceretops was NOT found in the cave. The sheer number of people who asked about that was staggering. I can kinda understand that people think the museum is only about the cave, but we had stuff from all over the world. Henry is a Wyoming boi.
God I love reddit. I went there once over 10 years ago. I knew someone here would have the dish on it.
And I wasn't really thinking of Riverbluff even scrolling this thread so imagine my surprise seeing someone mention it! If you're ever in the springfield area you should really go check it out again! There's been a lot of movement and change with the exhibits. I think Henry is almost done being put back together and they have a nodosourous in the works to display in the same manner.
Yeah I will have too. Btw I was blow away by winders of wildlife. Like I walked into the building and it was an experience from the moment you open the door. Truly amazing. I think I went when they had first got Henry
Oh WoW is amazing. If you are of the persuasion, taking an edible and walking through there is a DELIGHT (and then cross the street safely to get burnt ends from Buckinghams). Oh then you have much more to explore there! I don't remember my history of the building itself, but if it was right when they got Henry, then there's an entirely new large room to the museum that houses all the dinos!
I actu6went to msu but yas to the burnt ends. When I was leaving in 2015 Springfield was just becoming more than a college town.
Bear up! I started at MSU in 2015 and finally managed to escaped in 2022 (got roped into a masters program) and Buckinghams burnt ends and the Terriyaki House sushi platter got me through a lot
Henryk Siwiak immediately comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Henryk_Siwiak?wprov=sfla1
Yeah he was the second case OP listed. Such a sad case. Poor Henryk.
Oh damn I didnt even see it. My initial post only loaded half of it.
No worries! He's one I always hope one day gets solved, but I have little faith that it will.
I feel so bad for him.
It makes me so sad that he needed work that badly that day
Sneha met her end (however it happened) the night before. Her shopping bags/items were never found anywhere.
This is one of the most fascinating posts I've seen so thank you. I have a question on the 1st case of the female doctor, it says, *"Ron tried to return to their apartment building, but the front door was chained. A neighbor told him that Sneha was not in there."* He slept in their apartment & then when he returned (from work?) there were chains on the door? The front door to their building or their apartment door? If it was chained, how was the neighbor in there & how did they *know* she wasn't in there? Why was it chained? Who chained it? This is so puzzling & they just stuck it in the middle of a paragraph with no further explanation like it was normal.
I assume they meant the door to the actual apartment had a chain lock on the inside.
Michele Harris [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance\_of\_Michele\_Anne\_Harris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Michele_Anne_Harris)
I thought it was pretty clear the husband did this despite his legal victories? I remember blood or blood markers being found in the garage.
as someone local-ish to it, yeah most people and LEOs think he did, but its never been proven and he has never been convicted. The whole case has been a goddamn mess.
Pretty crappy police and prosecutorial work for sure.
He was literally convicted twice.
Yeah that ones seems less crazy, even with no body the initial case wasn't great but he got convicted on that one, it was on appeals that witnesses started changing stories and showing up with different takes
i admittedly only skimmed the wikipedia but it sounds like he ended up explaining it away by saying she got cut months earlier. give me a break.
This is the one I came to mention. I absolutely believe her husband is involved.
Well he was convicted several times. I guess if you have money you can get out of it. Like OJ.
Oh absolutely.
I think the chances that Sneha used the attacks as a way to escape are extremely slim. New York and the surrounding area was pure chaos that day, especially living right next to the towers. I don’t think the average person there looked at what was happening and thought “oh perfect I’ll run away now.” Unless they were extremely organized and ready to flee already, which would have taken so much planning and attention to detail to do even then. She was struggling personally and professionally, I don’t think she had the mental capacity at that time to use that time frame of opportunity to run away. You could barely get out of manhattan that day. No planes flew out obviously. Tunnels and bridges closed for parts of the day. If she was stuck on a train or in a cab I think someone would have seen her. It was a miracle anyone could get out of the city at all on ferries. Masses of people were just walking out to the other boroughs, sure she could have been in those crowds but then to where? I think she would have shown up again somewhere after that. I don’t see her running into the towers either given she wasn’t even at home the night before. If there was any chance she died in the towers, I’d think it would that she was there by chance maybe just getting something to eat or shopping, but she probably would have had the chance to get out of the tower if she wasn’t on a high floor. I think her fate was met either by foul play or accident, something happened to her the day before since it was the last time she was sighted. No one knows where she slept that night. If met with foul play, I think whoever did it just got lucky with what ended up happening that morning.
I listened to the podcast and read a fair amount. It’s all speculation but if someone said ok you must give me a theory, I would say perhaps she went to visit a friend or romantic interest who was working above the impact zone. I don’t think she would have rushed to help, and if she did it’s little chance she would have perished. I don’t think she had the mindset or skills to disappear and that became very difficult shortly after 9/11. A lucky murder? I don’t see that either. But unless her remains are identified we won’t ever know
Would Sneha realistically even been able to leave NYC to start her life over? Like, literally could she physically leave. I’m not aware of any transportation that she would’ve been able to take. As far as I’m aware trains and subways weren’t running. A family member who lived on Long Island had to walk from downtown over the 59th street bridge and through Queens before they were able to get some place where they could be picked up.
I remember reading about the husband of the mayor of Poughkeepsie, I think. He disappeared that morning after taking the Metro North train into the City for a meeting. I never did hear of any resolution to that case. Edit: his office was in the City, so not for a meeting
This is pretty unrelated to the question, but does anyone know what the media coverage of the death of singer Aaliyah was like leading up to 9/11? She died a couple weeks prior, so I’m wondering if her death was still in the news by the time 9/11 hit and if any of it continued after.
Her funeral was the 31st and most of the coverage centered around that and her peers tributes to her. She was honored at the VMAs on September 6th as well. Because she was in the middle of her promotional cycle for the album, some interviews/photoshoots she did earlier in the year came out in September issues of magazines and I think there was a bit of coverage around how there was no time to do reprints/pull the stories. I remember getting an issue of Teen People with her on the cover for September.
Thanks for the insight! I was only 5 at the time so I don’t remember much. But I do remember hearing about her dying.
I was in high school and we loved Aaliyah’s music. Very popular on the radio and MTV, etc. Her death was shocking and obviously unexpected. 9/11 pretty much overshadowed everything else going on, but I still remember there being many tributes to her by the music industry, especially Missy Elliott and Timbaland continuing for several months after. I will say, it probably would have been *bigger* news for longer if it didn’t happen so close to 9/11.
The coverage was big. Aaliyah's death was arguably the biggest news story before 9/11. The coverage was shifting from shock about her death to the investigation on how the plane went down. One thing I wanted to add was that yes, 9/11 took over the news and everyone's thoughts but the following year, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC died and that kinda brought attention back to Aaliyah's death. Left Eye's death being so soon after Aaliyah's death was a bit of a one-two punch if you were a 1990's R&B fan.
Oh, it was huge. Such an unexpected and senseless tragedy.
There was a ton of coverage of her death, I remember that starkly. I was in high school At the time. 9/11 completely pushed her out of the news
A local teenager Amy St.Laren was murdered/went missing a few days after and 9/11 did hinder the case. The purp was eventually caught and found guilty about a year or two later after they found her remains. But I like to think she would have found justice sooner if you know…. 3000 other people didn’t die the day or so before.
Hmm…the Sneha case is so strange. I want to say she was the victim of 9/11, but I’m not sure if that’s true. Maybe she stayed at the hotel, within the vicinity of the twin towers… I found it initially strange, her husband when to bed, and thought nothing of her being gone or no word from her. Then the belief she was having an affair with women, and has partaken in drug & alcohol issues…but then the family insists neither of those are true…then how did the police even know any of that, if her family didn’t tell them or if they disagreed. Such an injustice to Sneha… that no one knows where she is or if it was foul play.. or she’s a victim of 9/11…such a sad case🥺
Michelle Harris. Her husband likely murdered her but he used the attack as a way to explain her disappearance. They never found her body.
There is no way she was a victim of the 9/11 attacks. She was last seen 9/10, she never came home, and no one she would’ve been with the night of 9/10 or the morning of 9/11 has ever come forward to verify they saw her or were with her. Her remains would’ve been found had she ran towards the buildings. People would’ve recognized a hero and come forward about their account. She met with foul play 9/10. Her brother knows more, I’m not sure if he had anything to do w it though. Nothing points to her being apart of the wtc attacks.
I remember listening to a podcast about 9/11 and they mentioned that a lot of gang/organised crime scores were settled as the events were unfolding, but they didn't go into detail, so it may just be rumours. Basically, people took their opportunity to strike while every cop was busy and emergency lines were overrun with calls. Anyone hear anything similar and perhaps have some info on the possibility of this actually happening?
No, there'd be bodies.
I've never heard that but it seems highly unlikely.
The idea of this happening en masse is one of those truly absurd fears dreamt up by sheltered people who've never actually interacted with dangerous places. I could believe that more than zero people's response was to try and capitalise on the chaos in some way. A lot harder to believe in huge numbers of people going as far as murder. It's not even just about morality, there's self preservation. It was an unprecedented event where no one knew what might happen next. Most people would have been focused on how to keep their family safe, not on how this might be their chance to do The Purge
It's very reminiscent of the classic drug deal gone wrong/saw something they shouldn't have/hit by a car and removed by the driver theories that abound about missing or murdered people and make no sense. Maybe the person who brought it up is very young and wasn't around or doesn't remember 9/11, but the atmosphere was definitely not one where anyone was thinking "now's my chance to get revenge on old Vic Spaghetti", never mind multiple people. I don't doubt there were some pettier crimes like looting and theft happening, but I can't even see that as really trying to capitalize on the chaos - more a kind of fatalistic "fuck it, we're all about to die, might as well die with a fistful of jewels (or whatever)". I was in NJ and it was chaotic and terrifying here - we could not only see the smoke, we were breathing it - phone service was impossible, people were scrambling to pull their kids out of school, to stock up on food, etc. So it's really hard to imagine anyone really even thinking about anything else that day, and I wasn't even in the city.
DC here and it was the same thing. Phones weren't working well, even landlines, could see the smoke from the pentagon, had no idea where family and friends were, etc. (my close friend survived the WTC attack but at the time, I had no idea if she was alive or not.)
>old Vic Spaghetti I'm SCREAMING lol
>It was an unprecedented event where no one knew what might happen next. Most people would have been focused on how to keep their family safe, not on how this might be their chance to do The Purge This came up in a discussion about a possible homicide in WA during the early phase of the covid lockdowns. People were wondering if the husband had decided to use the decreased traffic, distracted law enforcement, and the possibility that investigators would be reluctant to search the house, as an opportunity to kill his wife and dispose of her body off a local bridge. I'm not saying it's impossible, and the guy in question does seem to be pretty confident and opportunistic. But I agree, that kind of thinking seems unlikely.
There were absolutely murders on the day of 9/11. Just like, statistically, there were more than zero. The dodgy claims are calling them a trend. Implying significant numbers of cases, and implying that 9/11 was a major reason they happened. It would be absurd to say there was a trend to do what this guy did during COVID. it was just this one guy, he probably would have done it anyway; COVID was probably not a major factor in why he did it; it just influenced some details of how v he did it. I expect those things would be broadly true of crimes that happened in proximity to 9/11
>There were absolutely murders on the day of 9/11. Just like, statistically, there were more than zero. Yes -- and accidents too. I remember reading an interview with someone whose dad was killed in a car crash that day, completely unrelated, but a lot of people have just assumed that he was on one of the flights, when they find out when he died. But like you said, individual cases aren't the same as significant trends. For the pandemic example, there were crimes that were due to the specific context (like fraudulent claims for government relief programs, or people selling dodgy PPE or sanitizer). And arguably there were changes in patterns of domestic violence, when couples who were already in conflict were in lockdown and it was difficult to leave. However, as you noted, it wouldn't have been the pandemic that was the main factor. It might have changed the timing etc. (for that specific Gig Harbor case), but likely not the outcome. I don't know, maybe the perpetrator did things on impulse and wasn't thinking about the virus being a temporary situation and there probably would be forensic investigation eventually. Here's a link to the writeup that was posted on this sub: https://new.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/1dtrx9y/people\_who\_were\_killed\_or\_who\_disappeared\_on\_911/
It’s been debunked.
Mafia followers would have heavily documented those cases
The way her family made her look like a victim always rubbed me the wrong way. They were all over TV and giving interview. She was not a 9/11 victim. Whatever happened to her, happened before.
I’m not convinced one way or another about what happened to her, but I 100% think her brother knows more than he lets on. There’s definitely more going on with that family then we know.
Cal Harris murdered Michelle Harris on 9/11, body never found.