Sneha Philip’s family continues to press for answers a quarter century after the physician vanished.
Dr. Sneha Anne Philip, 31, was an internal medicine resident living in Lower Manhattan with her husband, Dr. Ron Lieberman, in a apartment less than half a mile from the World Trade Center. She spent September 10, 2001, at home on a day off, repotting orchids and chatting with her mother over instant messenger for hours. During that conversation, she recalled a fun night out from the evening before and laid out plans for the week ahead.
Later that afternoon, surveillance cameras captured Philip at a nearby department store. She purchased lingerie, a dress, bed linen and shoes. According to official records, those images are the last known trace of her.
When Lieberman returned from his shift at Jacobi Hospital that night, his wife was not home. It was not unusual for Philip to stay with relatives in the West Village without notifying him, so he assumed that was where she had gone. He left again the next morning without seeing her. After the 9/11 attacks began, Lieberman started calling friends and family to ask if anyone had seen Philip. Nobody had.
Philip was eventually listed among the presumed victims of the attacks, but her exact fate has never been established. Her loved ones have advanced their own theory about her final moments. They believe Philip was near the World Trade Center when the planes struck and rushed in to aid the injured, according to New York Magazine.
City officials have entertained a different possibility. They have pointed to what they described as Philip’s “struggles,” which her family has acknowledged, and suggested these difficulties had cost her her job and created marital problems. Some officials have floated that she may have died on September 10 rather than during the attacks. Her family has long rejected this account.
To push back against the official narrative, they hired a private investigator. The investigator found no evidence of an affair or a planned disappearance, according to WBTW. Philip had left her glasses, passport, identification and credit cards behind in the apartment.
The uncertainty surrounding her death has made Philip’s official status unusually unstable. The medical examiner’s office removed her name from the 9/11 victims list in 2004, citing an inability to confirm she was alive on September 11. A judge subsequently ruled her date of death as September 10. Her family appealed, and four years later the decision was reversed. Authorities determined it was far more likely that Philip died in or near the World Trade Center than not.
Philip’s name now appears on the 9/11 Memorial in New York City.