Sneha Anne Philip is listed as a victim of the 9/11 attacks, but she was last seen shopping at a Manhattan department store on September 10, 2001 — and it's unclear where she went after that.
9/11 Living MemorialMany questions remain about Dr. Sneha Anne Philip’s exact fate.
The disappearance of Sneha Anne Philip, on the surface, appears to be a simple story. The official belief is that Philip, a doctor, died while responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City.
However, the deeper you go, the less straightforward the story becomes. Philip was last seen at a Manhattan department store near the Twin Towers on Sept. 10, 2001, one day before the horrific attacks. Some police reports and court records have claimed that Philip may have been living a secret double life before she vanished, which allegedly included alcohol abuse, mounting legal trouble, and extramarital affairs with women.
But her passport and other important documents were still in her Manhattan apartment, with no apparent indication that she was planning on running away. Meanwhile, her parents and other loved ones claim that she didn’t have issues with alcohol, and while she had experienced a depressive episode, she was feeling better at the time of her disappearance.
The many inconsistencies have led to numerous theories as to what truly happened to Sneha Anne Philip. Officially, she has been counted as one of the fatalities from the 9/11 attacks, but is it possible that her disappearance was completely unrelated to that infamous day in 2001?
Sneha Anne Philip Was Last Seen One Day Before The 9/11 Attacks
9/11 Living MemorialSneha Anne Philip with her husband, Ron Lieberman.
Sneha Anne Philip and her husband Ron Lieberman lived just blocks away from the Twin Towers in downtown Manhattan. Philip, who was 31 at the time of her disappearance, worked as an internal-medicine intern in the city.
She was last seen on Sept. 10, 2001. That day, she repotted orchids, spoke with her mother for two hours over instant messenger, and went shopping at a Century 21 department store, which was close to both her apartment and the Twin Towers. According to The Independent, she was captured on CCTV while buying items like a dress, lingerie, bed linens, and shoes.
This was the last confirmed sighting of Sneha Anne Philip. She never came home that night, and the following day, she was nowhere to be found.
9/11 Living MemorialSneha Anne Philip in front of the Taj Mahal.
Her husband wasn’t too worried at first. Instead, he was irritated, as she had developed a habit of staying out all night and then crashing at a family member’s place without checking in with him beforehand.
But then, a plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Ron Lieberman began calling the couple’s apartment from his workplace, as Sneha Philip didn’t have a cell phone, but he got no answer. He then started reaching out to her relatives to see if they had heard from his wife.
Chillingly, no one knew where she was, and the search for Philip began.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Philip was initially considered to be one of the thousands of presumed 9/11 victims, especially after police ruled her husband out as a suspect. Her family began to believe that she had died while treating the injured at the Twin Towers alongside first responders.
However, authorities soon learned that there was not much evidence to prove this was the case. In fact, they didn’t believe there was much evidence to prove anything at all. The lack of physical proof, combined with new information that police learned about Philip’s personal life, meant that her actual fate was treated as more of a question mark.
Could she have been the victim of a separate murder, completely unrelated to 9/11? Or did she die by suicide? Or is there a chance she ran away?
Sneha Philip Had A Complicated Private Life
9/11 Living MemorialWhile investigating Sneha Philip’s disappearance, police began to believe her case may have been unrelated to 9/11.
After Sneha Anne Philip’s disappearance, police began to look further into her personal life, hoping it would provide some clues as to what happened to her after she was last seen on September 10th.
What they found suggested a story that was possibly unconnected to the terrorist attacks on September 11th. For one thing, they found reports that stated her medical internship at Cabrini Medical Center had not been renewed due to her tardiness and “alcohol-related issues.”
Additionally, she had purportedly been skipping out on meetings with her substance abuse counselor, causing her to get suspended from her new position at Staten Island’s St. Vincent’s Medical Center.
But work wasn’t where her problems stopped. Philip and Lieberman’s marriage was reportedly in trouble. Court records showed the couple had been going through a rough patch, possibly due to the fact Philip would sometimes stay out all night without telling her spouse where she was.
The records allege that Philip would sometimes go out at night to various bars, including lesbian bars, where she would find a woman to go home with. Another police report claims her own brother John walked in on her having sex with his girlfriend shortly before the disappearance.
Philip also had a recent history with the law. She had spent a night in jail after a bar fight, and she had also been charged with filing a false complaint about a coworker, after she alleged that they had groped her.
9/11 Living MemorialSneha Anne Philip and Ron Lieberman at their graduation from Chicago Medical School.
On the morning of September 10th, Philip went to court to plead “not guilty” of filing a false complaint. At the courthouse, Philip and her husband allegedly had a “big fight,” after which Philip stormed off.
Despite these discoveries, Philip’s family members and her husband denied the more salacious allegations about her life. John claimed that the story about walking in on his girlfriend and his sister having sex was completely untrue — though it’s unclear why police would make that up.
Philip’s family also denied that she had an issue with alcohol abuse, and that, while she had previously experienced a bout of depression, she had largely recovered and was ready to get her life back on track.
Additionally, Lieberman says the alleged fight at the courthouse on September 10th didn’t happen. He also called reports that his wife was bisexual “ridiculous,” and while he admitted that she had gone home with women before, he said these nights were only filled with art or music.
“Because we don’t live a conservative lifestyle doesn’t mean that anything abnormal is going on,” Lieberman told New York Magazine in 2006.
However, Lieberman also added that the allegations about his wife’s personal life wouldn’t point to any clear answers about her fate anyway: “Even if she did all these things, it doesn’t explain what happened.”
After Court Battles, Sneha Anne Philip’s Name Is Back On The 9/11 Victims List
9/11 Living MemorialSneha Anne Philip’s loved ones paying tribute to her memory.
Even though the family strongly disputed the findings of the police’s investigation into Sneha Anne Philip’s personal life, a Surrogate Court judge removed her from the 9/11 victims list in 2004 due to a lack of evidence of her whereabouts on the actual day of the attacks.
One year later, a Manhattan judge ruled that Philip’s date of death was officially September 10th, much to the dismay of her family.
“It’s more peaceful for me to think she died in the World Trade Center than… I cannot bear to think that somebody killed her,” her mother Ansu said.
After years of fighting, Philip’s family members were able to get the decision changed in 2008, when an appeals court reversed the Surrogate Court’s decision. Philip is now considered the 2,751st victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and her name is included at the official 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
Wikimedia CommonsMany 9/11 victims have not yet been officially linked to human remains, as it’s often difficult to extract DNA from the remains found at Ground Zero.
The exact circumstances of Philip’s disappearance and presumed death are still a mystery. Both the police investigation and the private investigator hired by Lieberman couldn’t find anything conclusive.
Though the private investigator raised the possibility that Philip could’ve intentionally vanished to start a new life, her passport and other important documents were all found in her apartment, and there were no other clear signs that she was getting ready to make a run for it.
Another theory that was considered is that Philip could’ve been the victim of a murder unrelated to 9/11, perhaps after crossing paths with the wrong person after a night out. Curiously, a salesclerk at the Century 21 store Philip was shopping at recalled seeing her with an unidentified female friend, but that friend was never identified anywhere in the store’s CCTV footage.
However, no concrete evidence was ever unearthed to suggest that Philip was the victim of a murder (or that she died by suicide).
That said, there’s still hope that Philip’s remains will be found one day, especially as officials continue to identify human remains from Ground Zero even decades after the 9/11 attacks.
It’s been estimated that about 40 percent of the 9/11 victims have not yet been officially linked to human remains, as it’s often difficult to extract DNA from the remains, especially those that spent weeks buried under rubble. But as technology improves and grows, so does the hope for identifying all of the remaining unidentified victims of the attacks.
After reading about the disappearance of Sneha Anne Philip, go inside nine harrowing phone calls and voicemails from 9/11. Then, learn about Genelle Guzman-McMillan, the last person rescued after the 9/11 attacks.
