Sneha Anne Philip
Encyclopedia
Sneha Anne Philip was an Indian American
physician
who was last seen on September 10, 2001 by a department store
surveillance camera
near her Lower Manhattan
apartment. She may have returned to the building at some point that night or the next morning. Due to the proximity of the World Trade Center
and her medical
training, her family believes she perished trying to help victims of the next day's terrorist attack. On January 31, 2008, a New York State appeals court
overturned a lower-court ruling and declared that she had been a victim of the attacks, officially making her the 2,751st victim of the Twin Towers' collapse
.
No physical evidence has been found to suggest that she was killed in the attacks. An investigation by the New York Police
into her disappearance detailed a history of marital problems, bisexual
experimentation, job difficulties and alcohol
and drug abuse
by Philip, as well as a pending criminal charge against her, in the months before her disappearance. Citing that evidence, a Surrogate's Court
judge had denied her family's petition
to have her declared a victim of the attacks, suggesting it was equally possible she may have intentionally disappeared or been murdered by someone she met on her frequent nights out. Her family has strongly disagreed with that possibility, pointing out that there are many other 9/11 victims whose remains were never found, and other victims who were added to the list despite equally tenuous connections to the attack.
of Kerala
, Philip later moved with her parents to upstate New York
, settling first in the Albany area
and then in Hopewell Junction, New York
, a small hamlet in Dutchess County
. A few years after graduating from Johns Hopkins University, she decided to pursue a career in medicine
and enrolled in Chicago School of Medicine in 1995. There she met Ron Lieberman, a student a year behind her from Los Angeles
, and began dating him. The two shared creative interests outside of their intended career — he was a musician
and she was interested in painting
. She took a year off traveling around Italy
so the two could graduate together. They moved to New York City
where they had both gotten internships. Lieberman was at Jacobi Medical Center
in the Bronx
, while she did hers at Cabrini Medical Center
, closer to their small apartment in the East Village
.
The couple were married in May 2000 at a small ceremony held in Dutchess County, combining Jewish and South Indian
elements. Lieberman gave his bride a minnu, a traditional Indian wedding pendant shaped like a gold
teardrop with a diamond
set in it. They moved to a larger apartment in Battery Park City shortly afterwards.
with her mother, during which she mentioned that she was planning to check out the Windows on the World
restaurant on top of the nearby 1 World Trade Center building, where a friend was to be married the next spring. At 4 p.m. she signed off and went to drop off some clothes at a neighborhood dry cleaners
, then went to a Century 21
where she used the couple's American Express
card to buy lingerie
, a dress, pantyhose and bed linens. Afterwards she bought three pairs of shoes at an annex to the store.
A security camera at Century 21 recorded her during this shopping trip. The taped image and the credit-card records are the last confirmed records of Philip's presence anywhere.
Later investigation found that someone had called Lieberman's cell phone from the apartment at 4 a.m. Lieberman doesn't remember it, but thinks he may have awakened briefly to check his voicemail
. When he got up for work at 6:30, his wife had still not returned. That evening, after the terrorist attacks, he was able to use his medical credentials to get through the security perimeter and return to their apartment. Since the window had been left open, dust from the towers had accumulated throughout. There were tracks in it from the couple's two kittens, but none from any human.
She was one of hundreds of people reported to police as missing
that day. Like those of other victims, her family posted flyers all over the city in an effort to find her. Her case was the only one not connected to the attacks, and her brother claimed he had last heard from her during the attack to generate media interest. She has never been found or otherwise accounted for.
Ken Gallant, a former FBI agent, initially presumed her disappearance and possible death were unrelated to the attacks but later concluded it was the most likely outcome. A later investigation by New York City police delved into her life leading up to September 11 and found sordid details of a double life
and declining fortunes, leading them to conclude it was just as likely that she had met a different fate. Lieberman and Philip's family have strongly disputed some of the facts and many of the conclusions of the report, insinuating that the police did poor work or even fabricated some of them.
and learned about the credit-card purchases on the previous evening. He posted flyers in other Century 21 stores, and later that week a clerk from the Lower Manhattan store who had been relocated to Brooklyn called to say she remembered Philip, who had come in frequently. On the evening she disappeared, the clerk recalled that Philip had been accompanied by another young woman, possibly Indian. After reviewing videotape for three weeks, Lieberman found the footage of his wife browsing in the coat department, but without anyone else.
Since police detectives initially seemed to Lieberman to assume she had died with the other victims, he hired Gallant, who found two pieces of evidence suggesting she may have returned to the apartment building early on the morning of September 11. The first was the call from the home phone to Lieberman's cell; the second was some videotape from the security cameras in the lobby. Timestamp
ed at 8:43 a.m., a few minutes before the first plane was crashed into the North Tower, and within the 7-9 a.m. timeframe during which, Lieberman later testified
, Philip always returned after her nights out, it shows a woman entering the building, waiting near the elevator and leaving after a few minutes. Due to the poor contrast from the sunlight in the lobby, she was visible only in silhouette
, but her hair and dress are consistent with Philip in the Century 21 tape from the previous evening. Her family also says the woman exhibits similar mannerisms. She is, however, not carrying any bags that she would have had from her shopping trip, and again she is apparently unaccompanied. Lieberman could not positively identify her as Philip, but a city police investigator believes it was her.
Gallant at first considered the possibility that Philip had used the attack to flee her mounting personal problems and start a new life under a new identity. But her computer's hard drive revealed no evidence of any such plans or contacts, and she had also left her glasses
, passport
, driver's license
and credit card
s save the American Express card behind. Lieberman kept the account open in case any leads developed from attempts to use it, but none ever did. Gallant and Lieberman eventually concluded that Philip saw the attack and, as a physician, rushed to the site to render aid and somehow perished there.
That spring, Cabrini had declined to renew Philip's contract, citing repeated tardiness and alcohol-related issues, effectively firing
her. Shortly after she had been informed of that decision, she went out to a bar
with other Cabrini employees. The outing led to her spending the night in jail
. She complained to police that a fellow intern touched her inappropriately
during that time. The prosecutor
who investigated the case dropped the sexual abuse charge and instead charged Philip with third-degree falsely reporting an incident
, a misdemeanor
under New York law. He offered to drop the charge if she recanted the original complaint, but she refused and was held overnight pending release.
After her dismissal from Cabrini, she began spending nights out at gay and lesbian bars
in the city, some known for their rough clientele. She would sometimes leave them with women she met there, according to police, and at one point they claim her brother discovered her and his then-girlfriend having sex. She got another internship, in internal medicine
, at St. Vincent's Medical Center on Staten Island
, but was running into similar problems there — she had already been suspended
for missing a meeting with a substance abuse
counselor.
On the morning of September 10, she had been formally arraigned
on the criminal charge and pled
not guilty. The police report says she and Lieberman fought loudly at the courthouse afterwards about her problems and nights out, which ended with her walking away and leaving him to go home alone and get ready for work. After reviewing it, the city medical examiner removed Philip from the official list of victims in January 2004, one of the last three.
" who complained about racial and sexual bias (the hospital later told a reporter it had no evidence of any formal complaints by her). Lieberman says that while his wife frequented lesbian bars, it was because she did not want a repeat of the situation that had happened with her coworker. She never had sex with the women she went home with, he claims, and they would often merely listen to music, sleep or paint. One time, in fact, she came home covered with paint after going home with an artist. Her drinking was a temporary phase to ease her through the depression she was experiencing after being fired by Cabrini, and would stop once her life got back to normal, as he believed it was doing.
Her brother says the report of him catching her with his girlfriend is completely fabricated and that he never even spoke with the detective who wrote it. Similarly, Lieberman says the couple never fought at the courthouse after her arraignment. The police, they believe, were extrapolating from what little they could find in an effort to make up for their early inattention to the case.
matters, to have his wife declared a victim of the attacks regardless of what the police had said. New York state law requires "clear and convincing" evidence of a possible victim's exposure to any lethal peril in order for any presumption of death and subsequent legal provisions, including benefits from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund
, to apply. He believed that his wife's profession would have led her to rush to the nearby World Trade Center, if she was in the vicinity, and offer aid to victims. Her mother further testified to their online chat, in which she said she was going to check out Windows on the World and possibly do some shopping at the trade center's mall. The author of the police report testified that he believed she probably died in the attacks.
Ellen Winner, appointed guardian ad litem for Philip, introduced the police report and argued that there was no clear evidence she was at or near the Trade Center during the attacks. On June 29, 2006, Judge Renee Roth ruled that it could not be established that Philip died on September 11, 2001 and instead set the date of her legal death
at September 10, 2004, three years after she was reported missing, per state law.
The family appealed, contrasting her case with that of Juan Lafuente, another possible victim whose petition the court's counterpart in Dutchess County, where he lived, had accepted. Like Philip, his exposure to the attacks is based on circumstantial evidence
. He, too, had recently lost a job and struggled with depression
, and as a volunteer fire marshal
in Poughkeepsie
might himself have had a reason to offer assistance at the attacks. His office was eight blocks north of the site, but the court accepted testimony from someone who frequented the same local deli
claiming he had overheard Lafuente say he had a meeting at the Trade Center that morning. Philip's family believes Lafuente's petition, with similarly minimal evidence of the alleged decedent's presence at the attacks, was accepted primarily because his wife, Colette, was mayor
of Poughkeepsie at the time and the case was heard there rather than in Manhattan.
"This is a disturbing case," wrote Judge David Saxe for the other three majority judges. Its central problem was the lack of direct evidence putting Philip at the site of the attack, he agreed. However, he said the "clear and convincing" standard
He dismissed the claims made in the police report, saying they were hearsay
and had not been properly introduced in the original hearing, instead appended by Winner to a post-hearing report. Nor did she properly follow up on assertions made in the report during the actual hearing. Thus, "any reliance by the court on purported facts asserted in those reports but unproved at hearing was improper." If Juan Lafuente had been found to have faced exposure to the attacks, then Philip could be too, he concluded. He considered it unlikely that she had deliberately disappeared due to the lack of evidence of preparations, and agreed with Lieberman, Gallant and Stark that had she died some other way, some evidence would have turned up in the years since the attack.
The dissenting judge, Bernard Malone Jr., said:
He contrasted her case to Lafuente's by noting that he had had a more predictable daily routine, a stabler life, and that there was independent evidence confirming the meeting at the World Trade Center he might have been on his way to. "The degree of speculation is greater here," he said.
The decision leaves only one missing person whose possible death at the World Trade Center is unresolved. Fernando Molinar, an Ecuador
ean immigrant
, has not been seen or heard from since September 8, 2001, when he told his mother on the telephone that he was starting a new job at a pizzeria near the building. A similar petition to Surrogate's Court on his behalf also was rejected and has not been appealed.
, where her mother works as a computer programmer
. The family buried an urn
full of ashes from Ground Zero
at a cemetery near their home. Six months after the appeals court decision, in July 2008, the family was officially notified by the city that Philip had been added to the victims' list.
No physical remains have been found for over a thousand victims of the attacks at the Trade Center, but the family still hopes that they might find yet some remnant of Philip. The diamond in her minnu, which they believe she was wearing at the time of the attacks, would have survived the high temperatures of the fires in the freshly collapsed buildings. They have sent pictures of it to the city property clerk's office in the event it can be matched to several hundred other unmatched personal items recovered from the ruins.
At the National 9/11 Memorial, Philip is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-66.
Indian American
Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestral roots lie in India. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Indigenous peoples of the Americas who are commonly referred to as American Indians.-The term: Indian:...
physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
who was last seen on September 10, 2001 by a department store
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
surveillance camera
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
near her Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...
apartment. She may have returned to the building at some point that night or the next morning. Due to the proximity of the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
and her medical
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
training, her family believes she perished trying to help victims of the next day's terrorist attack. On January 31, 2008, a New York State appeals court
New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division
The Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division is the intermediate appellate court in New York State. The Appellate Division is composed of four departments .*The First Department covers the Bronx The Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division is the intermediate...
overturned a lower-court ruling and declared that she had been a victim of the attacks, officially making her the 2,751st victim of the Twin Towers' collapse
Collapse of the World Trade Center
The twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, as a result of al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks, in which terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners, flying one into the North Tower and another into the South Tower...
.
No physical evidence has been found to suggest that she was killed in the attacks. An investigation by the New York Police
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
into her disappearance detailed a history of marital problems, bisexual
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
experimentation, job difficulties and alcohol
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
and drug abuse
Drug abuse
Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, refers to a maladaptive pattern of use of a substance that is not considered dependent. The term "drug abuse" does not exclude dependency, but is otherwise used in a similar manner in nonmedical contexts...
by Philip, as well as a pending criminal charge against her, in the months before her disappearance. Citing that evidence, a Surrogate's Court
New York Surrogate's Court
The Surrogate's Court handles all probate and estate proceedings in the state of New York. All wills are probated in this court and all estates of people who die without a will are handled in this court...
judge had denied her family's petition
Petition
A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer....
to have her declared a victim of the attacks, suggesting it was equally possible she may have intentionally disappeared or been murdered by someone she met on her frequent nights out. Her family has strongly disagreed with that possibility, pointing out that there are many other 9/11 victims whose remains were never found, and other victims who were added to the list despite equally tenuous connections to the attack.
Life prior to 2001
Born in the Indian stateStates and territories of India
India is a federal union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are further subdivided into districts and so on.-List of states and territories:...
of Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
, Philip later moved with her parents to upstate New York
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the region of the U.S. state of New York that is located north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York...
, settling first in the Albany area
Capital District
New York's Capital District, also known as the Capital Region, is a region in upstate New York that generally refers to the four counties surrounding Albany, the capital of the state: Albany County, Schenectady County, Rensselaer County, and Saratoga County...
and then in Hopewell Junction, New York
Hopewell Junction, New York
Hopewell Junction is a hamlet in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 2,610 at the 2000 census...
, a small hamlet in Dutchess County
Dutchess County, New York
Dutchess County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York, in the state's Mid-Hudson Region of the Hudson Valley. The 2010 census lists the population as 297,488...
. A few years after graduating from Johns Hopkins University, she decided to pursue a career in medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
and enrolled in Chicago School of Medicine in 1995. There she met Ron Lieberman, a student a year behind her from Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and began dating him. The two shared creative interests outside of their intended career — he was a musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
and she was interested in painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. She took a year off traveling around Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
so the two could graduate together. They moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where they had both gotten internships. Lieberman was at Jacobi Medical Center
Jacobi Medical Center
Jacobi Medical Center is a municipal hospital, under the direction of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, in Morris Park, Bronx, New York located at 1400 Pelham Parkway South; it is the largest Public Hospital in the Bronx with 470+ beds....
in the Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, while she did hers at Cabrini Medical Center
Cabrini Medical Center
Cabrini Medical Center of New York City was created in the late 20th century by a merger of two Manhattan hospitals. It closed in 2008 due to financial difficulties....
, closer to their small apartment in the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
.
The couple were married in May 2000 at a small ceremony held in Dutchess County, combining Jewish and South Indian
South India
South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...
elements. Lieberman gave his bride a minnu, a traditional Indian wedding pendant shaped like a gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
teardrop with a diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
set in it. They moved to a larger apartment in Battery Park City shortly afterwards.
September 10
On the day she disappeared, Philip was off from work. According to Lieberman, she was planning to spend the day cleaning up the apartment in anticipation of a dinner visit by her cousin Annu two nights later. She had a two-hour online chatOnline chat
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...
with her mother, during which she mentioned that she was planning to check out the Windows on the World
Windows on the World
Windows on the World was a complex of venues at the top floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan that included a restaurant, Windows on the World, a smaller restaurant called Wild Blue, and a bar called The Greatest Bar on Earth, as well as rooms for private functions...
restaurant on top of the nearby 1 World Trade Center building, where a friend was to be married the next spring. At 4 p.m. she signed off and went to drop off some clothes at a neighborhood dry cleaners
Dry cleaning
Dry cleaning is any cleaning process for clothing and textiles using a chemical solvent other than water. The solvent used is typically tetrachloroethylene , abbreviated "perc" in the industry and "dry-cleaning fluid" by the public...
, then went to a Century 21
Century 21 (department store)
Century 21 is a chain of department stores in the northeastern United States. There are stores located in Long Island/Westbury , Brooklyn , Morristown , and Paramus , but the largest location is in Lower Manhattan, across the street from the World Trade Center site...
where she used the couple's American Express
American Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
card to buy lingerie
Lingerie
Lingerie are fashionable and possibly alluring undergarments.Lingerie usually incorporates one or more flexible, stretchy materials like Lycra, nylon , polyester, satin, lace, silk and sheer fabric which are not typically used in more functional, basic cotton undergarments.The term in the French...
, a dress, pantyhose and bed linens. Afterwards she bought three pairs of shoes at an annex to the store.
A security camera at Century 21 recorded her during this shopping trip. The taped image and the credit-card records are the last confirmed records of Philip's presence anywhere.
Disappearance
Ron Lieberman returned to the couple's apartment after midnight that night and noticed Philip was not there. He believed she had stayed out late or all night, as she had been doing, and resolved to remind her the next time he saw her to call him under those circumstances. He went to bed as he had to get up early the next morning for work.Later investigation found that someone had called Lieberman's cell phone from the apartment at 4 a.m. Lieberman doesn't remember it, but thinks he may have awakened briefly to check his voicemail
Voicemail
Voicemail is a computer based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to individuals, organizations, products and services, using an ordinary telephone...
. When he got up for work at 6:30, his wife had still not returned. That evening, after the terrorist attacks, he was able to use his medical credentials to get through the security perimeter and return to their apartment. Since the window had been left open, dust from the towers had accumulated throughout. There were tracks in it from the couple's two kittens, but none from any human.
She was one of hundreds of people reported to police as missing
Missing person
A missing person is a person who has disappeared for usually unknown reasons.Missing persons' photographs may be posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, along with a phone number to be contacted if a sighting has been made....
that day. Like those of other victims, her family posted flyers all over the city in an effort to find her. Her case was the only one not connected to the attacks, and her brother claimed he had last heard from her during the attack to generate media interest. She has never been found or otherwise accounted for.
Investigations
Two investigations were conducted. The first, by Lieberman and private investigatorPrivate investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
Ken Gallant, a former FBI agent, initially presumed her disappearance and possible death were unrelated to the attacks but later concluded it was the most likely outcome. A later investigation by New York City police delved into her life leading up to September 11 and found sordid details of a double life
Double Life
Double Life is a 2-CD compilation album of songs by Värttinä. It includes the entire 6.12 live album, and songs from studio albums Seleniko, Aitara and Ilmatar...
and declining fortunes, leading them to conclude it was just as likely that she had met a different fate. Lieberman and Philip's family have strongly disputed some of the facts and many of the conclusions of the report, insinuating that the police did poor work or even fabricated some of them.
By Lieberman and Gallant
Lieberman called American ExpressAmerican Express
American Express Company or AmEx, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is best...
and learned about the credit-card purchases on the previous evening. He posted flyers in other Century 21 stores, and later that week a clerk from the Lower Manhattan store who had been relocated to Brooklyn called to say she remembered Philip, who had come in frequently. On the evening she disappeared, the clerk recalled that Philip had been accompanied by another young woman, possibly Indian. After reviewing videotape for three weeks, Lieberman found the footage of his wife browsing in the coat department, but without anyone else.
Since police detectives initially seemed to Lieberman to assume she had died with the other victims, he hired Gallant, who found two pieces of evidence suggesting she may have returned to the apartment building early on the morning of September 11. The first was the call from the home phone to Lieberman's cell; the second was some videotape from the security cameras in the lobby. Timestamp
Timestamp
A timestamp is a sequence of characters, denoting the date or time at which a certain event occurred. A timestamp is the time at which an event is recorded by a computer, not the time of the event itself...
ed at 8:43 a.m., a few minutes before the first plane was crashed into the North Tower, and within the 7-9 a.m. timeframe during which, Lieberman later testified
Testimony
In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. All testimonies should be well thought out and truthful. It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on a Bible when taking an oath...
, Philip always returned after her nights out, it shows a woman entering the building, waiting near the elevator and leaving after a few minutes. Due to the poor contrast from the sunlight in the lobby, she was visible only in silhouette
Silhouette
A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades...
, but her hair and dress are consistent with Philip in the Century 21 tape from the previous evening. Her family also says the woman exhibits similar mannerisms. She is, however, not carrying any bags that she would have had from her shopping trip, and again she is apparently unaccompanied. Lieberman could not positively identify her as Philip, but a city police investigator believes it was her.
Gallant at first considered the possibility that Philip had used the attack to flee her mounting personal problems and start a new life under a new identity. But her computer's hard drive revealed no evidence of any such plans or contacts, and she had also left her glasses
Glasses
Glasses, also known as eyeglasses , spectacles or simply specs , are frames bearing lenses worn in front of the eyes. They are normally used for vision correction or eye protection. Safety glasses are a kind of eye protection against flying debris or against visible and near visible light or...
, passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
, driver's license
Driver's license
A driver's license/licence , or driving licence is an official document which states that a person may operate a motorized vehicle, such as a motorcycle, car, truck or a bus, on a public roadway. Most U.S...
and credit card
Credit card
A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
s save the American Express card behind. Lieberman kept the account open in case any leads developed from attempts to use it, but none ever did. Gallant and Lieberman eventually concluded that Philip saw the attack and, as a physician, rushed to the site to render aid and somehow perished there.
By New York City police
The police department was not able to begin investigating the Philip case for some time after the attacks. When it did it found many details about Philip's life prior to September 11 that suggested she may have been elsewhere, or already dead, when the towers fell.That spring, Cabrini had declined to renew Philip's contract, citing repeated tardiness and alcohol-related issues, effectively firing
Termination of employment
-Involuntary termination:Involuntary termination is the employee's departure at the hands of the employer. There are two basic types of involuntary termination, known often as being "fired" and "laid off." To be fired, as opposed to being laid off, is generally thought of to be the employee's...
her. Shortly after she had been informed of that decision, she went out to a bar
Bar (establishment)
A bar is a business establishment that serves alcoholic drinks — beer, wine, liquor, and cocktails — for consumption on the premises.Bars provide stools or chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. Some bars have entertainment on a stage, such as a live band, comedians, go-go...
with other Cabrini employees. The outing led to her spending the night in jail
Jail
A jail is a short-term detention facility in the United States and Canada.Jail may also refer to:In entertainment:*Jail , a 1966 Malayalam movie*Jail , a 2009 Bollywood movie...
. She complained to police that a fellow intern touched her inappropriately
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
during that time. The prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
who investigated the case dropped the sexual abuse charge and instead charged Philip with third-degree falsely reporting an incident
False statement
A false statement is a statement that is either willfully or unknowingly untrue. Though the word fallacy is often used as a synonym for false statement, this is not what is meant by "fallacy" in logic or most formal contexts....
, a misdemeanor
Misdemeanor
A misdemeanor is a "lesser" criminal act in many common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished much less severely than felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences...
under New York law. He offered to drop the charge if she recanted the original complaint, but she refused and was held overnight pending release.
After her dismissal from Cabrini, she began spending nights out at gay and lesbian bars
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
in the city, some known for their rough clientele. She would sometimes leave them with women she met there, according to police, and at one point they claim her brother discovered her and his then-girlfriend having sex. She got another internship, in internal medicine
Internal medicine
Internal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. Physicians specializing in internal medicine are called internists. They are especially skilled in the management of patients who have undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes...
, at St. Vincent's Medical Center on Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
, but was running into similar problems there — she had already been suspended
Suspension (punishment)
Suspension is a form of punishment that people receive for violating rules and regulations.- Workplace :Suspension is a common practice in the workplace for being in violation of an organization's policy...
for missing a meeting with a substance abuse
Substance abuse
A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
counselor.
On the morning of September 10, she had been formally arraigned
Arraignment
Arraignment is a formal reading of a criminal complaint in the presence of the defendant to inform the defendant of the charges against him or her. In response to arraignment, the accused is expected to enter a plea...
on the criminal charge and pled
Plea
In legal terms, a plea is simply an answer to a claim made by someone in a civil or criminal case under common law using the adversary system. Colloquially, a plea has come to mean the assertion by a criminal defendant at arraignment, or otherwise in response to a criminal charge, whether that...
not guilty. The police report says she and Lieberman fought loudly at the courthouse afterwards about her problems and nights out, which ended with her walking away and leaving him to go home alone and get ready for work. After reviewing it, the city medical examiner removed Philip from the official list of victims in January 2004, one of the last three.
Family response to police report
Philip's husband, brother and family dispute much of what the police say and their interpretations of the documentary evidence. She was fired from Cabrini not because of alcoholism but because she had been a "whistleblowerWhistleblower
A whistleblower is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company...
" who complained about racial and sexual bias (the hospital later told a reporter it had no evidence of any formal complaints by her). Lieberman says that while his wife frequented lesbian bars, it was because she did not want a repeat of the situation that had happened with her coworker. She never had sex with the women she went home with, he claims, and they would often merely listen to music, sleep or paint. One time, in fact, she came home covered with paint after going home with an artist. Her drinking was a temporary phase to ease her through the depression she was experiencing after being fired by Cabrini, and would stop once her life got back to normal, as he believed it was doing.
Her brother says the report of him catching her with his girlfriend is completely fabricated and that he never even spoke with the detective who wrote it. Similarly, Lieberman says the couple never fought at the courthouse after her arraignment. The police, they believe, were extrapolating from what little they could find in an effort to make up for their early inattention to the case.
Court proceedings
The family's first attempt to have a court declare Philip a victim of the attacks was denied. A year and a half later, it was reversed on appeal.Surrogate's Court
In 2003, after the police investigation concluded, Lieberman filed a court petition in New York County Surrogate's Court, which handles probateProbate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
matters, to have his wife declared a victim of the attacks regardless of what the police had said. New York state law requires "clear and convincing" evidence of a possible victim's exposure to any lethal peril in order for any presumption of death and subsequent legal provisions, including benefits from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund
September 11th Victim Compensation Fund
The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund was created by an Act of Congress, the AirTransportation Safety and System Stabilization Act , shortly after 9/11 to compensate the victims of the attack in exchange for their agreement not to sue the airline corporations involved...
, to apply. He believed that his wife's profession would have led her to rush to the nearby World Trade Center, if she was in the vicinity, and offer aid to victims. Her mother further testified to their online chat, in which she said she was going to check out Windows on the World and possibly do some shopping at the trade center's mall. The author of the police report testified that he believed she probably died in the attacks.
Ellen Winner, appointed guardian ad litem for Philip, introduced the police report and argued that there was no clear evidence she was at or near the Trade Center during the attacks. On June 29, 2006, Judge Renee Roth ruled that it could not be established that Philip died on September 11, 2001 and instead set the date of her legal death
Death in absentia
Death in absentia is a legal declaration that a person is deceased in the absence of remains attributable to that person...
at September 10, 2004, three years after she was reported missing, per state law.
The family appealed, contrasting her case with that of Juan Lafuente, another possible victim whose petition the court's counterpart in Dutchess County, where he lived, had accepted. Like Philip, his exposure to the attacks is based on circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime...
. He, too, had recently lost a job and struggled with depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
, and as a volunteer fire marshal
Fire Marshal
A fire marshal, in the United States and Canada, is often a member of a fire department but may be part of a building department or a separate department altogether. Fire marshals' duties vary but usually include fire code enforcement and/or investigating fires for origin and cause...
in Poughkeepsie
Poughkeepsie (city), New York
Poughkeepsie is a city in the state of New York, United States, which serves as the county seat of Dutchess County. Poughkeepsie is located in the Hudson River Valley midway between New York City and Albany...
might himself have had a reason to offer assistance at the attacks. His office was eight blocks north of the site, but the court accepted testimony from someone who frequented the same local deli
Delicatessen
Delicatessen is a term meaning "delicacies" or "fine foods". The word entered English via German,with the old German spelling , plural of Delikatesse "delicacy", ultimately from Latin delicatus....
claiming he had overheard Lafuente say he had a meeting at the Trade Center that morning. Philip's family believes Lafuente's petition, with similarly minimal evidence of the alleged decedent's presence at the attacks, was accepted primarily because his wife, Colette, was mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
of Poughkeepsie at the time and the case was heard there rather than in Manhattan.
Appeals court
Despite it being suggested that the chances of success were slim, Lieberman and the family's lawyer went ahead with an appeal. On January 31, 2008, a five-judge panel reversed Judge Roth's decision, finding the simplest explanation to be the most likely - that Philip died trying to help people at Ground Zero."This is a disturbing case," wrote Judge David Saxe for the other three majority judges. Its central problem was the lack of direct evidence putting Philip at the site of the attack, he agreed. However, he said the "clear and convincing" standard
He dismissed the claims made in the police report, saying they were hearsay
Hearsay
Hearsay is information gathered by one person from another person concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience. When submitted as evidence, such statements are called hearsay evidence. As a legal term, "hearsay" can also have the narrower meaning of...
and had not been properly introduced in the original hearing, instead appended by Winner to a post-hearing report. Nor did she properly follow up on assertions made in the report during the actual hearing. Thus, "any reliance by the court on purported facts asserted in those reports but unproved at hearing was improper." If Juan Lafuente had been found to have faced exposure to the attacks, then Philip could be too, he concluded. He considered it unlikely that she had deliberately disappeared due to the lack of evidence of preparations, and agreed with Lieberman, Gallant and Stark that had she died some other way, some evidence would have turned up in the years since the attack.
The dissenting judge, Bernard Malone Jr., said:
He contrasted her case to Lafuente's by noting that he had had a more predictable daily routine, a stabler life, and that there was independent evidence confirming the meeting at the World Trade Center he might have been on his way to. "The degree of speculation is greater here," he said.
The decision leaves only one missing person whose possible death at the World Trade Center is unresolved. Fernando Molinar, an Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
ean immigrant
Immigration to the United States
Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants,...
, has not been seen or heard from since September 8, 2001, when he told his mother on the telephone that he was starting a new job at a pizzeria near the building. A similar petition to Surrogate's Court on his behalf also was rejected and has not been appealed.
Aftermath
Since the victims' fund made all its payments and closed in 2003, Lieberman will not receive any money. The decision does mean that Philip's name can be added to official memorials to the victims. One to her specifically has already been established at Dutchess Community CollegeDutchess Community College
Dutchess Community College is one of 30 community colleges within the State University of New York system . The College, located in Dutchess County, is situated on on a hill above Poughkeepsie, New York...
, where her mother works as a computer programmer
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
. The family buried an urn
Urn
An urn is a vase, ordinarily covered, that usually has a narrowed neck above a footed pedestal. "Knife urns" placed on pedestals flanking a dining-room sideboard were an English innovation for high-style dining rooms of the late 1760s...
full of ashes from Ground Zero
World Trade Center site
The World Trade Center site , also known as "Ground Zero" after the September 11 attacks, sits on in Lower Manhattan in New York City...
at a cemetery near their home. Six months after the appeals court decision, in July 2008, the family was officially notified by the city that Philip had been added to the victims' list.
No physical remains have been found for over a thousand victims of the attacks at the Trade Center, but the family still hopes that they might find yet some remnant of Philip. The diamond in her minnu, which they believe she was wearing at the time of the attacks, would have survived the high temperatures of the fires in the freshly collapsed buildings. They have sent pictures of it to the city property clerk's office in the event it can be matched to several hundred other unmatched personal items recovered from the ruins.
At the National 9/11 Memorial, Philip is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-66.
External links
- Charley Project page on the case