3. 9/12

chaos and panic. Later, you hop in an ambulance, get as close as you can to your apartment, hop out and walk past smoldering ruins. And now it's like nine or ten PM and you're standing in front of your chained up building, flashing a light to the only residents still there, asking them to see if your wife is home. She isn't. But you can't just sleep. You feel sick, bubbling, anxiety, exhaustion,

irvis energy, tired but wired. So you go to a high school near the World Trade Center, a staging area, and volunteer. Finally, around two AM you leave. You walk to a friend's place in the West Village. You crashed on their couch, fit full feverish sleep for my Heart Media. This is Missing on nine eleven, The story of one woman who vanished on the eve of history and my

quest to find her. I'm your host, John Wallzac. On September twelve, two th one, Weary and in shock, Ron uses a volunteer badge to once again slip past security barricades into the restricted zone. A post apocalyptic dust escape nine eleven reduced the World Trade Center to two million tons of debris, the pile, they call it, and later ground zero. Accompanied by friends, Ron makes his way to to Rector Place in Battery Park City, where he and

Snaha live. Sammy Fliciano, a doorman, is already there along with two other building employees, going door to door checking each unit. Well, were checking the apartments. One of the one of the pieces of the of the airplane. One of the pieces was inside one of the apartments. I remember that. Wow, Yeah, I remember when I went to one of the apartments and there was a piece of an airplane inside the one of the apartments, the small

new piece. It's true, part of one of the planes that hit the Twin towers, flew nine feet south and crashed into an apartment at Rector. The FBI stops by to take custody of it. When Ron gets to the building, the power is off, so he takes the stairs and enters his apartment. Here's what he told in two thousand one. Everything looked untouched and there was just this gray layer of of soot everywhere through the apartment because one of

the windows was open. I was really looking very hard to see if I could see any trace of her, and there was nothing. Nothing human. But Ron does see prints in the dust, cat prints. He and have two cats, Figa and Collie. Figa is a vulgar Italian word for forgive me here pussy. Collie with a K is the Hindu goddess of death and destruction, the black mother goddess who inhabits the cremation ground. She's associated with sexuality and violence,

but also maternal love. Viga and Collie left little Prince all over apartment in the nine eleven dust. Using a digital camera, Ron starts taking pictures. I haven't been able to view the images, but I'd love to. He also grabs some stuff, including two phone books packed with numbers. Then he leaves. When he started making calls, I called every single person in her phone book, and no one had heard from her. Next up flyers designed by Say

has older brother Ashwyn. They quickly go up all over the city, thousands of images of black and white and in color too. She's everywhere and nowhere quote missing since before the World Trade Center attack. Last seen five pm Monday one. Dr sna and Philip M. D black hair, brown eyes, five six and fifteen pounds olive skin, Indian, thirty one years old, physician at St. Vincent's Hospital, Staten Island.

Last known to be at Century any one across from w TC Monday, eighteen pm, while leaving with multiple large shopping bags, wearing a brown knee length short sleeve shirt dress and sandals. End quote and at the bottom Ron and Ashwin's phone numbers, an email, and a website Ashwin created. If you want, you can view an archive version of the site via the Internet Archives way Back Machine. Go to archive dot org, then search for a Magical Lab dot com slash snay ha I M A G I

L A b dot com slash snay. For the families and friends of World Trade Center victims, posting flyers around the city is therapeutic, but ultimately, for the most part, not useful. The flyers are portraits of humanity, of grief, of love, but their investigative utility is minimal. They can't bring back victims who were, say, trapped above the point of impact high end the towers, unable to escape. But the flyer of snay Huh is different because there's no

evidence snayhow was actually in the towers. Maybe she's just lost or in a hospital or a shelter. I think she's alive. I think she's somewhere and I just can't find her yet. I want you to feel this immediacy. Your wife is missing. Time is running out, so you pacete flyers, and when you run out of energy, you paste more with a sense of purpose. Flyers are just the start, though. Snay House family also goes on a media blitz, or to be more accurate, they try to

get media attention. Initially they fail. Thousands are missing. There are too many stories to tell and too few reporters to tell them. So on the evening of nine and an act of desperation, snay house younger brother, John approaches a reporter with w ABC and says this but on the phone with her and she and she told me that she was She couldn't leave because there was there are people who are hurt. I told her, come on, you know, just just leave the building, and and she said, no,

I have to help this person over here. Is lest its last thing I heard from her. None of it is true. It's all a lie. John made it up. He did not speak to snay Haa on nine eleven. Weird, right, This guy just calmly, casually and convincingly lies saying he spoke to snay Haa on nine eleven that she called him when she ran into the burning towers to save people. But when you think about it, is it really that weird?

If your wife or daughter or sister disappeared, if you felt a sense of urgency, if you felt like no one was paying attention, what would you do. It isn't just John's lie that grabs reporters, though The Flyer works too. Remember Hugo Kogia, the man in episode one who knew snayha in Seattle in the nineties whose ex girlfriend was snay has roommate well. By two thousand one, Hugo is living in New York working as a reporter for Newsday,

and by chance he sees the Flyer. She looked pretty much the same I guess she did pretty much the same. And then I saw her name and say, huh, I mean that's a pretty unique name, snay Huff Phillip. And I want to say. It took five to ten seconds and then I put it together. Wait a minute, this, I think this has to be her. I mean, it looks like her. I think it looks like it looks like what I remember. It looks like the person I remember.

And I'm almost positive that was her name. But right it didn't add up that she was in New York, because this is someone a new from Seattle. Um, so that also seemed unlikely. You know, I'm going to say that it was really out. Not until I spoke to her husband that I think I right. So even even at that point, I thought I'd pretty sure this is her, But until I spooked her husband, I didn't know for sure.

Hugo's article, prompted by the fire Ron's on September two, one headline lost in attacks wake family fears for city woman missing since September by all signs, snay Ha Philip is one of dozens, hundreds thousands of people who go missing every day of every year for any number of reasons she is different because she went missing in Lower Manhattan the night before one of the biggest events in American history. While the following buildings might not have killed her,

they essentially erased her. Here's what Ron said. I know we live in a random universe, but is it really that random? Is what happened to her and what happened on September eleven unlucky timing or is it connected? The police keep trying to lump her in with the missing people from the World Trade Center. I don't know if it's because they don't believe me, or they just don't want to deal with anything else. We're using valuable time.

If she's somewhere, we can save her. The family has filed two reports with the FBI, a missing person's report with detectives at the First Precinct and with authorities investigating the World Trade Center disaster. They've hired a private investigator, checked hospitals and shelters, posted flyers all over Lower Manhattan, and phoned every person in snay Haw Phillips addressed book.

They've even consulted with a psychic who told Lieberman his wife is somewhere safe, unharmed, but unable to speak initially, snay House family does not think she was at the World Trade Center on nine eleven. Denial maybe, but logic too. Here's what Ron told Rachel Shier, a reporter with the New York Daily News. The only link to the World Trade Center is that we live in Battery Park City. We never go there. She had no business being there.

Shire's article runs on September headline She's law in a sea of missing Battery Park City doc vanished the day before attack. When you contacted me and said that you were interested in a story that I wrote, I instantly guessed that it was that it was that one, because out of all the stories I wrote for the Daily News, um that that is honestly the one I remember the most. Shire started working for the Daily News eleven she was

in Brooklyn, unable to make it into Manhattan. I was a New York reporter, and and like our our instinct was to go and try and and and get close to the place to do our jobs. And there was a sense of of like excitement, because you know, that's what we're sort of trained to feel when when a big story happens. Um strangely enough, I mean, also was this horrific thing that was sort of beyond anybody's comprehension.

And I mean, now we all look back on it, you know, we all know what happened, but you know,

in the moment, of course, we we didn't anticipate. It was just impossible to imagine that that the World Trade Center was going to collapse after the attacks, one of her editors assigned her a story on the family believed that if the media, you know, covered the story that at that point, it was still days after she had disappeared, and so I think that they had a belief that the more coverage there was of her story, the more chance they had of finding her. Tell me what you

remember about reporting it, what you remember about it? Well, I remember I remember talking to her husband, Ron. I can't remember now exactly what he remember him being very distraught. Um, you know, and really again, I mean, I think that my story, I think was one of the earlier ones that was written about her case. It was just days

after nine eleven, or a week or two afterwards. So you know, they still had a lot of hope that that maybe they would locate her or at least find out what had happened to her, and Um, I remember him being very you know, very distraught and really kind of at his wits end about what had happened to her, And he was very focused on the idea that somehow what had happened to her, if I'm remembering this correctly,

had had somehow connected to nine eleven. He had this idea that maybe the day before she had been at you know, in the wrong place, you know, or or in proximity to the wrong people, like you sort of theorized that maybe there were you know, there were terrorists who were lurking around the day before nine eleven, you know, and she had sort of been in the wrong place at the wrong time or something. I mean, I don't that was I don't think based on any actual evidence

or or or reality. But of course these were early days, like we knew much less about the whole event of nine eleven than we do now. Um so, I mean, and also it was just a time. I think it was a very strange moment in New York, especially where you know, the world had turned upside down and there was this kind of general sense that we had entered this this kind of apocalyptic reality where anything was possible.

Snay House story also appears on multiple TV programs, including Extra and where her mom Onto makes an emotional plea for help. I have the feeling that she is alive and that we are not getting enough how to go to find her, and that's the hardest block. Snay House family is skeptical of the ny p D. They take matters into their own hands and hire a private investigator, and when he fails to turn up leads, they hire another investigator, a retired FBI agent named Ken Gollant, who

declined to speak with me. All the while, they pushed the NYPD hard. They don't want SNA preemptively written off as quote, just another nine eleven victim. They need people to understand. They need the cops to understand that something could have happened to say, before nine eleven she disappeared

on she could still be alive. The first big clue arrives via credit card records say used Ron's Amex to make two purchases at Century twenty one on the evening of six oh five pm bed linens and lingerie, three pairs of shoes. Ron calls Century twenty one and they allow him to view their security footage and for about two weeks. I set and watched this tape for about five hours a day, you know, frame by frame. It's one of those stop action photos. What I actually found

my wife on the tape shopping alone. There she is, in slow motion, browsing through coats. The time stamp says sixteen fifty seven military time for four fifty seven PM. That's a problem. There's a discrepancy because, according to the nyp DNA left her apartment between five fifteen and five thirty thirty minutes after she was caught on tape in century one impossible. So something's off, either the camera's clock or the end I p d S timeline. Anyway, PM,

three pairs of shoes, then nothing. Here is snay Haus cousin au in two thousand two Unsolved Mysteries. She leaves the store and then she just disappears. There is not a trace of her nothing, not a credit card transaction, no money taken out of her account, no emails, no phone calls. Nothing. How does that happen? It's it's a complete mystery. As snay House family frantically searches for clues, a critical witness comes forward. Her name is Sonya Mora.

She's a shoe saleswoman at Century She claims to remember ringing up Snayha and something else. She says Snaha was with someone another woman except what she is that true? This is a critical clue. But the mystery woman does not show up with sna on Century twenty one security footage, and Sonya, the saleswoman, well, her story either changed multiple times or it's been misreported by the NYPD, snay House family and the media. Because I've seen multiple versions of

it and they can't all be true. We reached out to Sonya, but once we identified ourselves as journalists, she stopped responding and she changed her voicemail greeting to remove her name for now. Then, unfortunately, we have to rely on second hand accounts of what Sonya claimed to have seen on the evening of nine. In one version, Sonya said snay House with another woman, an Indian woman, who

she described as a friend. The two women allegedly told Sonya that after buying shoes, they might go quote to the lingerie area, presumably inside Century twenty one. In another version, according to Sonya, snay might have been with another woman. Maybe these are obviously very different accounts. In one is clearly with another woman. She speaks to Sonya directly and says she and the mystery woman might go to the lingerie area in the other Sonya isn't even sure if

the two women are together. And then there's this. Remember earlier when I gave you the website snay How's older brother Ashwyn created imagical lab dot com slash snay Haa. Well, via an archive version of that site, I found something that, to my knowledge, has never been reported in any account of snay house disappearance. According to the site, quote, Ron spoke to the saleswoman who assisted snay Haa at century one.

She said Snayha was in good spirits and with another Indian maybe woman around thirty five to a hundred and twenty pounds with short black hair, and that they were headed to Victoria's Secret and Jones of New York. End quote. This is the very first concrete clue I've ever seen indicating where sna may have gone on after century twenty one.

For some reason, though her family never mentioned it publicly, not in interviews, and later not in court, it exists only on one archive page of a site created right after nine eleven by say As brother Ashwin is it true, which account of the last known sighting of sna is accurate? What was she alone clearly with another woman, maybe with another woman going to the lingerie area or specifically to Victoria's Secret and Jones New York. Unfortunately I don't know.

Ashwyn says older brother did not respond to interview requests. So what about the version in which Snay and the mystery woman said that after century one they were going to Victoria's Secret and Jones New York, a clothing store.

If accurate, this is a critical clue, the only clue so far about where may have gone on after century So, even though I think this is a long shot, I tried to find all Victoria's Secret and Jones New York locations in Manhattan in two thousand one to see if there were any neighborhoods or malls that had both stores to see where Snahob might have gone. First, I contacted Authentic Brands Group, which owns Jones New York, and L Brands,

which owns Victoria's Secret. Authentic Brands didn't respond to us at all. L Brands told me that they looked into it and quote, do not have the information you are requesting a list of their Manhattan's stores in two thousand one. So we dug into old phone books. A quick shout out here to the New York Public Library, which searched through a two thousand one phone book for US and sent us scanned images. We found eight Victoria's Secret locations

in Manhattan, but only one Jones New York store. Interestingly enough, one of the Victoria's Secret stores was in the mall underneath the World Trade Center. Do you hear it mentioned in this emergency dispatch from nine eleven a minute ago? And I was set up the building buildings now building now, I was treatment build all this day. I got it on the floor of that. It makes sense that on Snayhop may have gone to this Victoria's Secret in the

mall under the Trade Center. It would have been on the way back to her apartment, but she would have had only forty minutes to get there and shop. She left Century one around seven eighteen pm, and the Victoria's Secret at the Trade Center closed at eight pm. Also, there was no Jones New York store in the Trade Center mall. In fact, the only Jones New York store in Manhattan in two thousand one that we could find

was located at one nineteen West Street in Midtown. The nearest Victoria's Secret to that was at four Seventh Avenue, a five minute walk. So if the account in which Hot and the mystery Woman said they were going to Victoria's Secret and Jones, New York is true, and that's a big if, then maybe they went to Midtown. Anyway, what about the mystery woman? Did Snayhouse stay with her the night of did she even exist? Here's snay House

cousin on you on Unsolved Mysteries. We have no idea who this person is and that she never existed in Snail's past. We've gone through her phone books, We've gone through email. There's no like phone call even made to this person during that day. She doesn't exist anywhere else. I mean, it could be very possible Snail run into her. It could be an old time friend. But if the woman was an old time friend, why would she stay

in the shadows. She never came forward, not to snay House family, not to the cops, not to the press. As Snayhouse family forced forward with an independent investigation, the NYPD was on the case too. The lead investigator's name was Detective Richard Stark. I tried really hard to find Stark. Unfortunately his name is more common than you'd think. Good evening, Hey, Richard, this is John Waltzock. How are you alright? So? How are you good? So? I don't know if I have

the right person. I'm looking for a detective Richard Stark or Starks, who investigated, uh, the Snayhoff Phillip case and the fall of two thousand one. Would that be you? No? No, that that that is not me. This was Richard A. Starks, who also worked for the NYPD. Coincidentally, on nine eleven, Richard A. Starks saw United flight hit the South Tower and later he worked at ground zero looking for bodies.

But wrong guy. Then there's Richard Stark, an eight year old nine eleven survivor who escaped from the Marriott World Trade Center, the hotel between the twin Towers. Nope, Plus a Richard Stark in Arizona who runs the NYPD the New York Pizza Department. But as hard as I tried, I could not find the Richard Stark, the one who investigated this case. He's never spoken publicly about it. He's

never given an interview until now. Um and a Richard Stark, Um, I live in Manhattan, Oh, the police office from five next time on missing on nine eleven? Were you able visually to make an identification of that woman as her? How much how certain were you? How much doubt did you? Not? A facial? No? No, not a positive idea? This week A little vignette. It doesn't fit neatly into the narrative,

but I want to include it anyway. Shortly after nine eleven, Patrick Tracy, an Irish doctor and world renowned aesthetic medicine specialist, visited New York. While wandering the streets, he saw one of the ubiquitous missing Snayhuff flyers. He took it with him back to Ireland, a nine eleven memento, a piece of history. Later, he framed it alongside an article he wrote for the Irish Medical Times and hung it in a library in his Dublin clinic. Well around June two

thousand and six. Guests who visited the clinic and saw the poster Michael Jackson. Tracy writes in his book Behind the Mask about Jackson quote, his attention was drawn to a picture high on the for part of my wall, which he studied intensely. It was an image of a young doctor sna and Philip, who had gone missing during the World Trade Center terrorist attack. I watched as Michael stood up, took the picture from the wall and studied it.

His facial expression totally changed and his eyes grew sad as he focused on the picture of the missing intern set against the twisted wreckage of the buildings. That the singer was a deeply empathetic person was now beyond doubt in my mind. That's so very sad, he said in a mournful voice. Recently I spoke to Dr Tracy via Skype. Jackson was already upset at Tracy's clinic. He had just shown him his videlago and burned scars. Then he saw

the flyer of snay Ha. So do you think that this poster when he saw, in addition to discussing vid al Ago, you think that's kind of what triggered that moment for him. I think he wanted to cry, probably anyway, and he had left the room and just GiB a sort of a focus. But he didn't do anything more than we presides and talked, you know, sort of in

an emotional sense. So there you have it. Snay House family and friends were so successful in spreading the missing flyer that years later even Michael Jackson saw it in Ireland homework this week. One? Did you or do you work for Authentic Brands Group which owns Jones New York or L Brands, which owns Victoria's Secret. Do you have a list of their two thousand one Manhattan store locations? Do you know if either company saved security footage from

or nine eleven? Did you work for Victoria's Secret or Jones New York in Manhattan in two thousand one? Two? I don't know the name of the first private investigator that Snayhouse family hired. Do you Three? Do you have a copy of the report prepared by the second private investigator? Can go on? If so? Contact us if you want,

we will protect your identity. You can reach us by phone at one eight three three New Tips that's one eight three three six three nine, eight four seven seven again one eight three three six three nine eight four seven seven, or you can reach us via email at tips at iHeart media dot com. That's tips t I p s at I heeart Media dot com. Ben Bowen is our executive producer. Paul Decan is our supervising producer. Chris Brown is our assistant producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson is

our producer. Sam T. Garden is our research assistant, and I'm Your host and executive producer John Wallzach. Cover art by Pam Peacock, Newsday article voiced by Paul Deckan Ron Lieberman voiced by Seth Nicholas Johnson. Special thanks to Tamika Campbell at I Heart and to Christophe Zappery in New Orleans. Also thank you to Hugo Kogia, Rachel Shyer, Sammy Fli, Siano, Richard A. Starks, Dr Patrick Tracy, Detective Richard Stark, the New York Public Library, and asp Rock. Original theme music

by ASoP Rock. Check out a soops website at ASoP rock dot com. Archival audio from Unsolved Mysteries provided by Cosgrove Mirror Productions. Audio from twenty provided by ABC News. You can find me on Twitter at at John wallzac j O n W A L c z A K. If you like this show, check out our first season, Missing in Alaska, about the nineteen seventy two disappearance of two congressmen. Missing on nine eleven is a co production of iHeart media and Greenfork media