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The sad case of Sneha Philip has reached a final conclusion. Typically, my appearance-driven assumptions about who Philip was and how her destiny played out were wrong, too simple, and changed across time. From a beautiful young woman with an unlimited future who suffered a tragic fate she went through many transformations. The first tale was the unknown: on the night of September 10th, Sneha did not return to her apartment, nor call her husband, Ron Liebermann. When shortly after daybreak the towers next to their apartment building were attacked and collapsed, Ron realized that the police were going to have no time to spare looking for a missing person. So Sneha underwent her first transformation, from unknown disappearance, to 9/11 victim. Ron told police that witnesses had seen Sneha, a medical practicioner, rushing to help victims of the Twin Towers. However the story did not hold up, and a year later I discovered that her husband had made up the story. Sneha was back to being a mysterious disappearance, but now with a sinister twist. Any student of crime or crime dramas knows that when someone is murdered their spouse is always a suspect. Why had LIeberman lied about his wife? Was it truly for the reasons stated? Why did he and the family hold to the lie for so long, even attending memorials for 9/11 victims until 2003? Given the tragedy I didn't want to compound it with speculation, but her husband's initial lie made that hard to maintain. A police report in 2004 unearthed even more troubling tales, of alcoholism, promiscuity, and a staggering career. And her brother added to the confusion with stories of his own. The frosted side of me wants to see the lies of the bereaved as ways to deal with and glorify the victim, but my crunchy side wondered about payments out of the 9/11 victims funds, and insurance. At the peak of this uncertainty, a court ruled against the family, and Sneha Philip was removed from the list of 9/11 victims. But the family persisted, and based on a lack of evidence to support any other demise, the court over turned Philip's removal from the list of victims. Based on a glare-filled security camera image from minutes before the first plane hit, and without compelling evidence to the contrary, the court ruled it most likely that Philip left her apartment building on the morning of 9/11 and was killed shortly thereafter in the attacks on 9/11. Sneha Philip's final transformation was no less tragic, but more complex. From a cartoon hero perishing in an evil attack, Sneha Philip became a real woman with real problems. A marriage facing challenges, a career with both downs and ups, a loving family trying to deal with their grief. Most heroes are two dimensional, but the final Sneha, the Sneha who changed and who now sleeps, is one who crossed the street to the World Trade Center as a three dimensional woman, and as a three dimensional woman met her fate. As grueling as it was, the seven year search for the real Sneha Philip helped define her death, and in some ways, also brought her to life. Post a comment in response: |
Truly dedicated readers will remember that every couple of years on 9/11 I look back on the case of Sneha Philip. Out of the 2,750 other victims of 9/11, I happened to take a rain-draggled copy of HER "missing" poster as a memento of my visit to Manhattan on Sept. 16, 2001 (for a pre-scheduled training class).| © 2002-2008. Blurty Journal. All rights reserved. |