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September 11th, 2001, a day all Americans will always remember. One of the darkest days in American history. The terrorist attack on 9/11 left almost 3,000 people dead and over 25,000 people injured. The world we knew it would be forever changed. But the terrorist attacks weren't the only thing that happened that day.
While the world watched the World Trade Center buildings crumble to pieces, the family of 31-year-old Sneha Philip were busy searching for her. The doctor hadn't been seen or heard from since the day before, September 10, 2001. Was she one of the thousands of victims to lose their life that day?
Or, as Sneha watched the towers fall, she saw this as a perfect opportunity to run away and start a brand new life. This is Forensic Tales, Episode 29, The Mysterious Disappearance of Sneha Ann Phillip. ♪
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I am your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case. Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases remain unsolved.
If you're interested in supporting the show and getting access to exclusive content and bonus material, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash forensic tales. Every contribution, big or small, helps me to continue to produce the true crime content you love. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon.
Now, let's talk about Sneha Philip. Hey, Forensic Tales listeners. I cannot wait to get into this week's case. From the very moment I heard about it, I'm obsessing over it in my head. I just don't know what to think or what to believe. It's a case and a story you've probably never heard about because it made very little, if any, media attention.
It didn't get any media attention because on the very day our story begins, the entire United States had their attention on something else. September 11th, 2001, a date that will forever be in the minds of Americans. The day the country experienced a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks, which left almost 3,000 Americans dead.
and more than 25,000 people injured. I think we all know where we were and exactly what we were doing when we first heard about the terrorist attacks. Now, I was in middle school at the time, and even to this day, I remember it like it was yesterday.
Even when I got to school that morning, the very first thing the teacher did was put on the news coverage in class, just replaying the footage of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center buildings. So anything else going on in the world besides coverage of the 9-11 attacks simply didn't exist. Although the world kept going on and other events were happening just like any other day,
All we could pay attention to was 9-11 news. Crimes were still being committed. Murders were still happening. Life continued to go on. But around 9-11, it's like time stood completely still. But the terrorist attacks on 9-11 wasn't the only thing that happened that day.
On September 11, 2001, 31-year-old Sneha Ann Phillip went missing from Lower Manhattan, New York. She was last seen the day before, on September 10, 2001, and has never been seen or heard from since. Sneha Ann Phillip was born on October 7, 1969.
She's originally from India, but immigrated to upstate New York with her parents. The family first settled in to the Albany area before moving to Hopewell Junction. Sneha graduated from John Hopkins University, and then she went on to pursue a career in medicine at the Chicago School of Medicine in 1995.
And while studying to become a doctor, that's where she met Ron Lieberman, a fellow med student from Los Angeles. Sneha and Ron began dating, and she even decided to take a year off of medical school so that the two of them could graduate together. Sneha and Ron got married in May 2000 in a Jewish and South Indian Christian ceremony.
It was super important to both of them to combine both of their religions into their marriage. After they got married, they settled into an apartment together in Battery Park City, a city on the west side of the southern tip of Manhattan. Fast forward one year to September 10th, 2001.
On the morning of September 10th, Sneha's husband Ron went with her to a court appearance that Sneha was required to appear at. So a little background on this court appearance. While Sneha was in her second year of her residency program at the hospital she worked at, she was fired.
The hospital cited her for tardiness and they also cited her for alcohol abuse. But Sneha didn't agree with the hospital's decision to terminate her. And she said she was terminated because she had filed a sexual harassment claim and was basically fired out of retaliation.
So when Sneha's termination was investigated by the hospital, they believed that she filed a false sexual harassment claim. That she was just trying to get back at the hospital for firing her for the tardiness and for alcohol issues.
But Sneha stuck to her story. She maintained that she didn't have a drinking problem and that the sexual harassment claim was very much true. So on the morning of September 10th, Sneha was scheduled to appear in court to face criminal charges for allegedly filing this false claim. And that morning, while Ron had to take the morning off from work,
Sneha didn't actually have to because after she was terminated from her first program, she got accepted into another residency with the condition that she regularly attend alcohol counseling classes. Well, she ended up missing at least one of her classes, so she was suspended from that second program.
which explains why she didn't have to go into work on September 10th. After the court appearance that morning, Ron and Sneha had breakfast together, Ron went off to work for the day, and then Sneha went back to the apartment that they shared. According to Ron, Sneha was planning just to spend most of the day cleaning up the apartment because they were expecting her cousin from out of state to come visit just two days later.
From 1 o'clock to 4 o'clock p.m., Sneha was on the computer in their apartment. During this time, she chatted with her mother online just about different things going on.
Sneha's mother later said that the only thing that stood out about their conversation that afternoon was that her daughter mentioned that she was planning to visit the Windows on the World restaurant, which is on the top floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She wanted to visit the restaurant because her friend was going to get married there.
But during their conversation with her mother, she never mentioned exactly when she was going to check out the restaurant. This part of Sneha's conversation stood out to her mother because the very next day would be 9-11. Sneha signed off from the computer at 4 o'clock p.m. that afternoon. She's seen on her apartment surveillance camera leaving the apartment at 5-18 p.m.
She heads to the dry cleaners to drop off some clothes and then goes shopping at Century 21, which is not a realtor. It's actually a high-end discount clothing store in New York. Surveillance footage inside the Century 21 store captured Sneha and everything appears to be completely normal. She appears to be by herself and she's just browsing and shopping the racks.
Around 6 o'clock p.m., Sneha uses her husband's credit card, where she spends $500 on lingerie, a dress, pantyhose, and bed linen. Later on, the cashier at the Century 21 store who rang Sneha up for her purchases recalled seeing Sneha with another Indian woman.
But there was nothing on the store's surveillance camera to suggest that she was with anybody else. After Sneha purchased her items, they were placed inside of a shopping bag and then she just walked out of the store. Now, this would be the last confirmed sighting of her.
So I want to mention here that the items and the shopping bags that Sneha was carrying when she left the Century 21 store have never been found. They were never located inside of her apartment, nowhere. Even to this day, nobody knows where those bags are or where the items that were inside those bags are.
Later that night, around midnight, Sneha's husband Ron returns home to the apartment, but notices that his wife isn't home. Now, initially, Ron's not too worried or concerned about the fact that his wife isn't home. It wasn't really uncommon for her to go out and spend the night at either a friend's place or her cousin that lived nearby.
Now, it was a little weird that she hadn't called him to let him know what her plans were, but still, it didn't really worry Ron at this point. So he went to bed that night and would wake up the following morning on September 11th, 2001. Ron, just like the entire world, had no idea what was coming later that morning on September 11th.
Once Ron wakes up, he notices that Sneha still isn't home. Now, not too concerned, he gets ready and heads out of the house to go to work. And a few hours into his shift at the hospital is when the first attack on the World Trade Center happened. After the first plane crashed into the building, and then the second, everything just became a complete, utter chaos.
Nobody knew what was going on. After the attacks started, Ron was instantly panicked and worried about Sneha. His heart sank not knowing where his wife was during all of this. And he wasn't alone. There were thousands of people that day that didn't know where their loved ones were.
In 2001, Sneha didn't have a cell phone. And during the chaos of 9-11, Ron wasn't able to use his phone to call the house phone inside of their apartment to try and get a hold of Sneha. The phone lines that day were just completely bombarded by 911 calls and just the commotion of what was happening in the city.
So Ron actually catches a ride on an ambulance from the hospital to try and get back to the apartment to find Sneha. It ended up taking him six hours just to get from the hospital to their apartment just because all of the traffic and everything that was going on in the city.
Once Ron arrived at the apartment building, he's not able to get inside because the power was out to the entire building. Still not knowing where Sneha is, he decides to go to his friend's house to spend the night and then get up the following morning to look for her. Now, I can't even imagine what must have been going on inside of Ron's head at this point.
9-11 just happened and he hasn't seen or spoken to his wife in over 24 hours. Ron goes to his friend's house because he thinks, well, maybe Sneha is just inside the apartment and that he'll see her the following day. But when the following day comes around and he's able to get inside of their apartment, he can't find her anywhere.
And even more troubling was the fact a window had been left open inside of the apartment and the entire place was covered in ash from the smoke. There was no sign of Sneha anywhere. Now, the next possible sighting of Sneha, besides the camera footage from inside of the Century 21 store,
came from a surveillance footage from outside of the apartment on September 11th at 8.43 a.m. A woman, who looks a lot like Sneha, is seen on the camera right in front of the apartment building.
The woman goes inside the building, stands in front of the elevator for a couple minutes, and then walks back outside and is never seen again. Although the woman appears to look like Sneha, she's wearing similar clothes, her hairstyle kind of look like Sneha's, you really can't tell whether or not it's her.
And the woman on the camera is not carrying the shopping bags from the day before. So by this point, it's now September 12th and no one has seen or heard from Sneha in over two full days. Ron contacts Sneha's family and no one in her family has spoken to her since her mom chatted with her online on the 10th.
But when Ron and Sneha's family try to go to the police to report her missing, they really don't get anywhere. Sneha was one of hundreds of people who were reported missing on or around September 11th. There were hundreds of families trying to get to the police to report their loved ones missing.
What was also working against Sneha's family was that she was last seen on September 10th, not the 11th. And the police's priority at this time was finding and locating potential victims of 9-11, not a woman who was last seen the day before. So Sneha's brother came up with an idea that would really end up backfiring.
to try and get the police to help find where Sneha was at. So the brother told police that he was on the phone with Sneha right when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. He said Sneha told him she had to get off the phone to try and go help people. She was a doctor after all, and it's her duty to help people.
Now, Sneha's brother completely made this story up. He never spoke to her on the phone on the 11th. He made it up as a way to try and get the attention out about his missing sister. And like I said, even though this would come back to backfire the family, in that moment, this actually worked. And the news about Sneha's disappearance finally made the local news.
During the investigation into Sneha's disappearance, things weren't really progressing in the case. The only solid piece of evidence came from the security footage from inside of the Century 21 store and the surveillance footage of the woman who looked like Sneha outside of the apartment building on the morning of September 11th. But that was it.
Frustrated with where the investigation was going, Ron decided to hire a private detective by the name of Ken Gallant. Pretty quickly, Gallant was able to uncover two really important pieces of evidence that suggested Sneha may have returned home to the apartment on the morning of September 11th.
The first was the surveillance camera footage of a woman who looked a lot like Sneha, the one that we've already talked about. But he also discovered that a phone call was placed from the house phone inside of the apartment to Ron's cell phone that very morning.
Ron doesn't remember his wife calling him that morning, but phone records confirmed that a phone call was placed from inside of the apartment on September 11th. Gallant spent hours analyzing the surveillance video outside of the apartment to try and figure out if that was Sneha or not. That woman on the footage is seen at the apartment at 8.43 a.m.,
just three minutes before the North Tower was hit. Then, the woman is seen leaving. And it wasn't just the private detective who thought that the woman on the surveillance camera just could have been Sneha returning to the apartment just minutes before the 9-11 attack.
Sneha's family also thought that the woman displayed very similar mannerisms as her, and they even thought her hair and outfit were very similar to Sneha's. But because the lighting and contrast was so bad, the morning sun just hits the camera in the worst possible way. And we have no idea if that really is Sneha.
So the first theory is that if that's Sneha on the surveillance camera, she was waiting by the elevator, heard the first plane crash, and then immediately went to go outside to see what she could do to help. She's a doctor after all. Well, this wasn't the only theory that emerged pretty early on.
From the possible sighting of Sneha on the apartment surveillance footage, there emerged another possibility that she didn't run out to try and help people that day, but rather she saw this as an opportunity to walk away from her entire life. Okay, I know you're thinking, where is this going?
Well, the theory goes Sneha returned to the apartment around 8.40 a.m. the morning of September 11th, and that is her on the camera. She goes inside, is seen right by the building's elevator, and then she hears the first plane crash.
She rushes back outside to see what is going on, but instead of going to go help people, she sees this moment, while the world is in complete and utter chaos, to run away. An opportunity to walk away from her entire life and start new.
She had already been fired from both of her medical residency programs. There's a pending criminal case against her, which is accusing her of filing a false sexual harassment claim. She's been accused of being an alcoholic to her doctor peers. This was a way out.
While the United States and the city of New York is being turned completely upside down, this is her moment to run away from all of it.
But the private detective that Sneha's family hired found no evidence to support this theory. Her passport, driver's license, credit cards, except for her husband's American Express, her glasses, were all left inside of the apartment. And Sneha's bank accounts and credit cards disappeared.
didn't show any activity since she made that purchase at the Century 21 store. If Sneha left in order to start a new life, she didn't take a single thing with her. During the investigation into her disappearance, there were a lot of rumors swirling about Sneha and her lifestyle.
People started saying that Sneha wouldn't just stay out all night and spend the night at her cousin's house. People started saying Sneha would stay at strangers' houses. People said that she would meet these people while out at the bar and then spend the night there. There were also rumors going around that Sneha had actually been involved in romantic relationships with other women.
And sometimes she would stay the night at these different girls' houses that she would meet out at the bars in the nightclubs. But Sneha's husband and family have adamantly denied that she ever had romantic relationships with women and that she wasn't hiding this secret bisexual lifestyle.
And there's never been a single woman to come forward claiming to have been in a romantic relationship with Sneha. Even though there's been very little or no evidence to support this theory on her lifestyle, the New York City Police Department believed that Sneha's lifestyle contributed to her disappearance.
They discovered that, yeah, she did like to go out to gay bars, but she wasn't gay. Hey, I know a lot of girlfriends who love to go to the gay bars because they're fun. Because you don't have to worry about drunk guys hitting on you all night. But the police also heard about a rumor involving Sneha and her brother.
Police claim that Sneha's brother discovered that she and his then-girlfriend were having sex. But again, Sneha's brother has adamantly denied this ever happened. And he says that he never talked to the police about this or even spoke to the detective who actually wrote about this. Sneha's husband, Ron, has also said that his wife never had sex with the people that she stayed the night with.
that she liked to go to gay bars because they were fun, and she didn't have to worry about getting hit on all night. He said that when she would spend the night places, she did things like listen to music, sleep, and even paint. He recalls a night in particular where Sneha came home the next morning completely covered in paint because she had spent the night at an artist's house.
Ron also explains her heavy drinking around this time as being a phase. He says that Sneha did go through a rough patch after being fired from her residency program, which I can't say I really blame her for having these feelings. I would be devastated if the same thing happened to me, especially if I was wrongfully fired as Sneha says that she was.
So a couple years go by and Sneha has not been seen or heard from since September 10th, 2001. Again, there's been zero activity on her bank accounts. Nobody has seen or heard from her. So by the year 2003, Sneha's family filed a court petition to have her officially declared dead.
They wanted her to be declared dead as one of the victims of 9-11. Her family believed that it really was her seen going back into the apartment on the morning of September 11th. And then after she heard the first plane crash, her doctor instincts kicked in and she went towards Ground Zero to help.
They believe that sometime after leaving the apartment and heading downtown to help, she was likely struck and killed by debris. So in the state of New York, in order to declare someone dead, the court requires, quote, clear and convincing evidence of a possible victim's exposure to any lethal peril in order for any presumption of death.
Now, Sneha's body has never been found. The police ended their investigation into her disappearance because they already believe that in some way her lifestyle contributed to her disappearance. So her family had to fight in court for her to be legally declared dead and a victim of 9-11.
Ron testified in court that his wife's profession as a doctor would have led her to rush to the nearby World Trade Center and offer aid to victims, that it was in her DNA as a doctor. Sneha's mother also testified in court about the online conversation that she had with her daughter the day before the attacks.
and how Sneha told her mother that she had plans to go to the Windows on the World restaurant that's located on top of the World Trade Center, and that she also mentioned that she wanted to do some shopping at the trade center's mall.
But the court's appointed guardian of Sneha argued to the court that there was no clear evidence that she was ever at the towers or even near the towers when the attack happened. Nobody saw her. Nobody spoke to her. She was never captured on any film or in any picture that day.
There is no solid forensic evidence that points towards her death happening on September 11th. The only piece of forensic evidence lies in the surveillance footage outside of Sneha and Ron's apartment building. But even a forensic visual analysis of the camera footage couldn't prove whether or not that was Sneha or someone else entirely.
Forensic work could not prove if she was a victim of 9-11 or a victim of something else entirely. After hearing arguments from both sides, on June 29, 2006, a New York judge ruled that the court could not establish that Sneha died on September 11, 2001.
Instead, the judge set her legal date of death as September 10, 2004, three years after she was last seen and reported missing. The three years is how New York state law handles cases like this.
Sneha's family was not satisfied with the court's ruling. They wanted her to be declared a 9-11 victim as they believed she really was. So the family appealed the court's ruling. In their argument, they compared Sneha's case to that of Juan Lafuente, who was another possible 9-11 victim whose petition in another New York county was accepted by the court.
Lafuente's case was similar to Sneha because in September 2001, he had recently lost his job and was suffering from major depression. And as a volunteer fire marshal, he may have had a reason to also offer his assistance to victims on the morning of the attacks. Lafuente was only nine blocks away from the World Trade Center.
And because he suffered from major depression, the New York City Police Department also thought that he may have just run off, just like Sneha. Juan Lafuente's case was a little different than Sneha's because his family had witness testimony who testified in court that Lafuente was in a local deli on the morning of the attacks, like he often did.
And the clerk said that La Fuente told him that he had a meeting at the Trade Center that very morning of the attack. This is different because in Sneha's case, there were no witnesses to testify that she would have been at or near the Trade Center on September 11th.
Of course, Sneha's mother did have the online chat about her wanting to go check out the restaurant there, but during their chat, Sneha never mentioned which day that she planned to go. Sneha's family went forward with the appeal anyway, and on January 31st, 2008, a panel of five judges reversed the original judge's decision in the case.
This time, the panel of judges found that the simplest explanation is that Sneha likely died while trying to help people at Ground Zero, just like what she was trained to do. The court also formally dismissed the police reports about her lifestyle and declared them hearsay.
Sneha was officially declared the 2,751st victim of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Since the closure of Sneha's case, there remains only one missing person whose possible death at the World Trade Center remains unsolved. That case is Fernando Molinar.
Molinar has not been seen or heard from since September 8, 2001, when he told his mother that he was starting a brand new job at a pizza restaurant just one block away from the Trade Center. His case has been rejected by the court, and his family has been denied the opportunity to declare him a victim of 9-11.
So family members of 9-11 victims are entitled to compensation under the 9-11 victim fund. But because the 9-11 victim fund closed in 2003, just two years after the attack, Sneha's family has not received any payment because her case didn't close until 2008.
But Sneha's name has been officially added to the 9-11 victims list. No physical remains have been located by over a thousand victims of 9-11. No forensic evidence, no DNA, nothing. But Sneha's family is still hopeful that they will find evidence of her being at the trade center that morning.
She was wearing a gold Indian-style pendant around her neck when she disappeared. Her family is hopeful that it may have survived during the attack. Pictures of the jewelry that she was wearing that morning have been filed with the New York City property clerk's office in hopes that it could be matched to the several thousand unmatched personal property recovered from Ground Zero.
Sneha Philip is memorialized at the National September 11th Memorial. She's memorialized at the South Pole on panel S66. The disappearance of Sneha Philip is a case with very little in the way of tangible forensic evidence. The only solid piece of forensic evidence comes in the way of a possible sighting on the apartment surveillance camera.
Not even a forensic audio and visual analysis could be done on that footage to determine whether or not that really was Sneha. Forensic video enhancement techniques can help detectives sharpen video footage and provide video stabilization to help identify people and objects. But in Sneha's case,
Because the morning sunlight was hitting the camera at just the right angle, even a forensic video analysis couldn't 100% identify the woman seen on camera. To this day, the woman seen entering and leaving Sneha's building has never been identified.
And the last few hours of Sneha Phillips' life remain a complete mystery. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell. For a small monthly contribution, you can gain access to bonus content and be one of the first to listen to new weekly episodes of the show.
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Please join me next week. We release a new episode every Monday. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
