8. Vamoose

A cryptic postcard arrives. Is Sneha alive?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The postcard shows the Twin Towers on fire, rendered artistically
in black and white, haunting monochromatic carnage compressed onto four
by six cardstock. The view is from Brooklyn. You can
tell because the South Tower burns to the left. Smoke
rises up to a jagged line mimicking the edge of
a burnt piece of paper. At the top, in calligraphy,

(00:24):
it says, everyone who knew me before eleven believes I'm dead.
From my Heart Radio, 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,

(00:45):
John Wallzac. In November two thousand four, a man named

(01:16):
Frank Warren created an art project called post Secret. The
idea was simple and brilliant. Write a secret on a postcard,
mail it to him anonymously, and if it was good,
he would post it on his blog. It quickly blew up,
landing Frank's speaking gigs and book deals and permeating pop
culture to appearing most notably in the music video for

(01:37):
the hit two thousand five song Dirty Little Secret by
the All American Rejects. Post Secret had something for everyone.
Writer's got catharsis a chance to share deep, dark personal truths.
Readers got voyeurism plus an opportunity to see who shared
their secrets. And Frank got thousands of postcards, including the

(02:00):
nine eleven postcard. By now it's one of his most famous.
He even incorporated it into a Ted talk. It's a remarkable,
mind boggling singular secret, the idea that someone quote died
on nine eleven. But hey, guess what they're alive. I mean,
it's bonkers. Of course, I wanted to learn more about
the postcard. When was it mailed, where was it mailed from?

(02:24):
Could snay Ha have sent it? And by the way,
I'll put it on Twitter at at John wallzac j
O n w A l c z A K. In
June two thousand and six, snay Haunts Disappearance got a
burst of attention when New York Magazine ran an article
on it. That article, by Mark Fast is the reason

(02:46):
why it didn't just fade away, why it lives on today.
For the first time, people seriously considered the idea that
snay Ha used nine eleven to run away, to voluntarily disappear,
to essentially fake her owned So I wanted to know
did Frank get the mysterious postcard before or after the
article ran. If before, I'd be more inclined to think

(03:08):
it's legit. If after, though, especially right after, I'd be
more inclined to think it's a hoax, a fake, bullshit
secret sent in by publicity hungry crank. Unfortunately, Frank wouldn't
tell me when he got the postcard, so I bypassed
him www dot archive dot org copies of his old site,

(03:31):
and then there it was. The postcard first published on
March fourth, two thousand five, fifteen months before the New
York article. Now, obviously that doesn't prove it's legit, but
for argument's sake, let's say that it is someone thought
to have died on eleven actually survived and never came

(03:51):
forward except through this anonymous postcard. Well, who sent it.
The list of possible candidates is extremely short because there's
irrefutable proof that most nine eleven victims died d n A, eyewitnesses,
phone calls, etcetera. With snay Haa, though there's nothing, no evidence.

(04:11):
So yes, she is at the top of my list
of who could have sent it if it's legit. Let
me say also that although Frank wouldn't tell me when
he got the postcard. He did send me a high
resolution image of it, and not gonna lie, the first
thing I did was throw it into Photoshop to see
if I can make out anything like a postmark through

(04:32):
the image on the front alas no luck, but it
was worth a shot. Finally, I asked an art expert
to look at the postcard. He told me that whoever
drew the towers likely used either a graphite pencil or
soft charcoal. That's stuck with me. Remember in the mid nineties,
snay Hall left med school for a year and spent

(04:53):
six or seven months painting in Italy. Many people who
knew her, including Dr E one of her supervised there's
at Cabrini Medical Center, said she wanted to be an artist,
not a doctor. I can't describe her paintings and detail
I vaguely remember. I just remember she was always sketching,
and I remember commenting at times that they were beautiful,
and she would write she liked writing, and so I

(05:17):
saw some for writing. She like kind of showed them
to me when she was helping me write something. So
when you say sketching, um, do you remember was it pencil?
Charcoal pencil or charcoal. I don't remember colors. The first
time I spoke to Dr E by phone, I asked
if she knew about the postcard, if she had ever
seen it. She said no, So I emailed it to her. Wow. Yeah,

(05:41):
it's really creepy, right, that's very bizarre for whoever said that,
whoever sent that. Doctor E has long believed that snay
How used nine eleven as cover to escape to start
a new life. The snay How she knew, both professionally
and personally, was unhappy. She wanted to escape. Is it
just your gut feeling or do you have you have

(06:02):
anything to indicate that that might have been the case. No,
So just to go up feeling. But just knowing her,
I'm like, oh, there's no way, Like she's out there.
I really believe she's alive. Just my strong, strong up feeling.
I just knew her personality too. Well. I don't see her.
I just don't see your running to the the building. Number one, Sorry,

(06:26):
I don't see her doing that. And number two, I
she was so like, kind of manipulative and bright, and
you know she could play people, you know. Mark Boguton,
the attorney hired by snayhouse husband Ron after nine eleven
doesn't buy it could be that she ran away for
whatever reason, was living in European drinking espresso at some

(06:49):
cafe somewhere in either large meetings the size or small
European city. It's one possibility. But in order for that
to be feasible, they have to he should have some
means of support that have to have been some type
of evidence of preparation, bank withdrawals, credit card expenditures, anything
like that. And they went through all the credit card records, records,

(07:10):
bank records, they went through you know, whatever computer history
she had and things like that. There's no evidence of
any type of preparation, any means of financial preparation for
any type of fugitive secretive existence. And also there were
just some basic things like when Ron got to the apartment,
her travel papers with her passport was in the apartment.

(07:32):
I believe even he's like, her eyeglasses were in the apartment.
So people that say that she just decided she saw
what happened and decided to up and flee and take
advantage of the moment, that's so, that's crazy. How many
people did that. I'm like, look at this. The trade center.
I'm going to Paris and we will find me. Now,

(07:54):
I'm not letting, I'm not thinking my glasses the right passport. No, No,
that's crazy. It's just loot. Chris, He's not wrong. It
is ludicrous at least the idea. Retired NYPD detective Richard Stark,
who investigated the case, also thinks it's crazy. How does
somebody just get a new passport? No, I d that

(08:14):
quick and just disappear. But she planned it. But I
don't see that either. Would that be so hard though?
If I'm having personal problems and you know, this is
twenty years ago, so when technology was more in its
infancy to what convinces you that it would be so
difficult to disappear? Because so many people, so many thousands
and tens of thousands of people do it every year.

(08:35):
What makes you doubt that? In particular because it a
closeness to her mother. But she couldn't do that to
a family, not Ron maybe I don't know, but father,
no way, they were very close family photos I saw
and she told her mother every day. This is the
key piece of evidence most people cite to write off

(08:57):
the idea that snay Haw used nine eleven as cover
to voluntarily disappear. She loved her mom. She wouldn't do
that to her family. I get it. But every year,
all over the globe, people run off. It's an age
old story. Father's abandoned children, husbands, their wives, children, their parents.

(09:17):
No one wants to think someone they love could just
run away, but thousands do every year. White Detective Stark,
you might say, well, what about her passport, her credit card,
her glasses. Wouldn't she need papers, wouldn't she need help?
I'll concede that, yes, it would be nearly impossible for
someone to spontaneously run off and escape detection without some help.

(09:41):
But remember, say stayed somewhere on the night of September ten.
She stayed with someone, and that person never came forward.
So can I see that person helping Snayha escape? Yes?
I can say Snayha woke up on nine eleven, turn
on a TV and saw the attacks. Maybe she'd decided
to stay put wherever she slept a night of the tenth,

(10:03):
and then later decided not to go home, or say
she was walking home, saw the attacks, turned away and
melted back into the city. Then what multiple studies have
examined the behavior of people who voluntarily and spontaneously disappeared
and were later found in a paper titled Living Absence

(10:24):
The Strange Geographies of Missing People. One woman said, I
felt free when I left. As soon as I walked
out the door, I felt free. Researchers found that women
were more likely than men to plan in absence, but
planning usually occupied only a small window of time. Many
people who chose to disappear did so without any idea

(10:46):
of how long they would actually be gone. They just
decided to leave, then figured out what to do. Most
began by walking in urban environments. One woman told researchers
my mind was going nineteen to a dozen. I could
sit still. I had to keep moving because my mind
was in such disarray. The pacing was to try to

(11:06):
keep up with the anxiety I was feeling inside. I
just desperately needed to keep on the move all the time.
And then when I started walking along in the streets,
I was walking really quite quickly. Initially, the decision to
move was just a physical need to move. The pacing
up and down, and the stomach churning was getting so
intense it was painful. So the only thing that seemed

(11:29):
to relieve it was walking fast. Researchers learned that people
who voluntarily vanished went to great lengths to keep their
location secret. They changed their physical appearance and clothes. They
wore dark clothing and or clothing to conceal their face.
They used fake names, and their immediate journeys were nonlinear,
characterized by circles, loops, or squares lost in chaotic thought.

(11:54):
When considering whether or not to return home to family
and friends, they were racked with gilt, uncertainty, and fear
fear of how they would be received as that person
who did that to their family voluntarily. A second study
characterized the absence of people who voluntarily disappeared as quote
accidentally deliberate, or enacted as an unplanned crisis. A third

(12:18):
study listed common factors which led adults to voluntarily disappear,
including historic and current traumatic experiences, strong emotions related to
being unable to cope, feeling trapped and powerless to talk
about or share their feelings, and stress and depression. Initially,
when they escaped, they felt elation, but soon that jubilant

(12:40):
feeling was replaced by quote crisis mobility. They tried hard
to avoid detection to buy space and time to think,
to decide whether or not to go home. I knew
I had to stay away from authority, and I had
to stay away from people I knew because they were
already looking for me. For weeks, I just traveled about
and after every couple of days, I get myself some

(13:02):
fresh clothes, go and get cleaned up and washed and
dumped my other stuff. I didn't want to be seen.
I didn't want to be found. That's the hardest thing
coming home again. Going away is easy. Shortly after nine eleven,

(13:41):
there was at least one possible sighting of snay Ha.
On September thousand one, a reverend named Charles Bakin spoke
with a woman he thought was snay Ha at a
doctor's office in Manhasset, Long Island. He told the NYPD
that the woman strongly resembled snay Ha, but he wasn't
sure it was her. The woman had a strong Indian accent,

(14:01):
he said, but snay Haa did not have an accent.
Neither the NYPD nor her family think the woman Baking
spotted was actually snay Ha. Unfortunately I can't interview Bachan.
He died in on January two thousand four. The NYPD
got an alert that ongoing activity associated with snay Haa

(14:23):
was connected to an address in Los Angeles. By this point,
Detective Stark was no longer on the case, so a
different investigator picked it up. He asked the l a
p D to send officers to the address. Was snay
Hall alive? Did she live there? Well, she didn't live there,
but Ron did. It appears the alert was a false alarm,

(14:44):
some kind of database error. Ron spoke with two l
a p D cops then called the NYPD. In July
two thousand three, he said he moved back to California,
his home state, to restart his life to pick up
the pieces. After nine eleven, the new YPD investigator asked
Ron again about the mysterious phone call placed at four

(15:05):
oh five am on nine eleven from his apartment landline
to his cell phone. Ron Quote thought about it for
a while and came to the conclusion he was so
distraught over his wife that he woke up still half
asleep and called his cell phone to check the messages
to see if she called. The investigator told ron Quote,
there's no physical evidence that supports the theory that his

(15:26):
wife died in the world Trade Center incident. There are
no witnesses to her being there. Obviously ron knew that,
but still he assumed it's probably how Snaha died at
the Trade Center on nine eleven. When I started investigating
this case, one of the first things I did was
searched for signs of snay Haa on social media and

(15:48):
in public databases along shot I know, so I was
surprised when sna did show up in databases after two
thousand one, linked to addresses in California, including the home
where ron lived, the address the L A p D visited.
I also found a LinkedIn profile connected to one of
snay house email addresses, strange for multiple reasons. LinkedIn wasn't

(16:12):
even founded until two thousand three, two years after nine eleven.
The profile has no activity and no friends. It's listed
in the United Air Memorates or U A E. I
reached out to that snay Hah, but she never responded,
complicating things and providing a probable answer. There's a different
snaiha and without any fillip into U A E. The

(16:34):
likeliest answer then to explain why snay has shows up
post nine eleven connected to addresses in California and to
a LinkedIn profile in the u a E is simple
database errors. Earlier this year, during COVID, I sat down
outside freezing at a Brooklyn cafe with an expert on

(16:58):
pseudo side faking your own debt, Elizabeth Greenwood, and the
author of Playing Dead, a Journey through the world of
death fraud. Okay, and tell us a little bit about
the book. So, Playing Dead is a non fiction book
about what it would take to fake your death in
the twenty one century. I found myself mired in Sorry,

(17:23):
funny Bonnie is Greenwood's dog. We'll take that when I
get funny, come here, you're being a diva on set. Um.
I found myself in a lot of student loan debt,
like so many of my generation, to the tune of
six figures, and wasn't really thrilled about that. Wasn't really
thrilled about my life decisions that brought me there. Um.

(17:44):
So I just had the kind of fantasy of, man,
what if I could find a rickety country the beach
and no extradition policy, It just slip through the cracks.
And a friend of mine very jokingly said, oh, or
you could fake your death, And just that idea really
got me sent to the races about what is that about?

(18:06):
Can people still do that in the twenty one century
with all this technology? Can that help you or hinder you?
And you know, I wanted to approach this question from
a really broad purview, you know, because we have heard
so many great pop culture lure about Elvis faking his
death for example. UM So I was just really interested
in approaching this topic very broadly, very holistically, to see

(18:28):
what this thing is all about. Is it possible to
fake your death or to disappear and have nobody find
you in or even to say twenty years ago in
two thousand, two thousand one, Well, anything's possible. The problem
is proving a negative is really hard to do. Right So,
if we think the people successfully fake their death or disappeared,

(18:52):
we don't really have proof of that. Of course, if
it's a fake death, you don't have a body you
can prove to say I did this. I think the
real burden of proof kind of falls on people not
being found, right, on people um not having um, you know,
anything turn up to suggest that they they did in

(19:17):
fact fake something. So it's a kind of tricky thing
to quote unquote prove. Can you talk about the top
motivations people have for faking their own deaths, and then
kind of the breakdown between men and women. So I
think that the type of fake death we hear about
the most is UH for life insurance fraud. So this

(19:38):
is a kind of fake death for profit. It's almost
too tempting, right You see that you can take out
this policy and pay a fraction of what your eventual
payout would be in your death, and people think, well,
I don't want to wait and I want to be
around for that money. So that's a really common one.

(19:59):
Of course, there's a lot of life insurance fraud cases
where they'll try to file the claim still without a body.
Um in those take seven years to pay out, or
people in certain cases will try to pass off bodies
that are not theirs as their own, which is a
whole other thing. And from my experience and from interviewing

(20:21):
various private investigators who look at this sort of thing,
it does seem to skew very male um this particular
type of death fraud, but in general, faking your own
death is very much a male thing, right right, So
again this gets us into this fishy burden of proof.
So the people who fake their deaths and get caught

(20:41):
our men. Right, So people who fake their deaths and
don't get caught we don't know about. We presume they're dead.
So it's very possible that these are more women who
do that. But the ones that we can prove who
get caught, do you tend to be men? It's I'm
trying to I'm trying to let you speak and not

(21:02):
laugh too much as you're speaking. But um, why do
you think women would be better at faking their own deaths? Well?
I think that women. If we're going to go with
the premise that women don't fake their deaths as much,
which I think is true, and they don't fake their
deaths because women just you know, are culturally conditioned to

(21:25):
be caretakers, to be the people who stick around. We
have a term deadbeat dad. We don't have a term
called deadbeat mom, even though of course that happens in
certain cases. Women are just feel i think, a greater
burden of responsibility for their families, for their lives, for
their dependence. So for a woman to fake her death,

(21:48):
the motive I think would have to be much more
serious than trying to cash out on an insurance fraud
policy trying to light out with your second emily, which
is another reason men fake their debts. Uh. So, I
think when women do fake their deaths, they are doing
it for much more serious reasons, usually for threat of violence,

(22:10):
usually because they're really trying to save their own lives.
There for the stakes are just a lot higher. And
you know, I think that at least in a lot
of the men that I spoke with who fake their debts,
there was this kind of like oh wow factor that
they wanted to share with people, so they would do it,
get away with it, and then like lab to people
that they did it because they are so proud of themselves.

(22:33):
I don't think women have that same ego thrust. Of course,
I'm speaking in very broad generalizations right now, but when
I look at the breakdown, when I look at the
different cases, that that does seem to be a truism.
So in terms of motives, am I pronouncing his last
named Frank herne Okay. Frank said, typically his client Frank

(22:58):
by the way, helps people disappear um. Typically client motives
number one money, number two, violence, and the bronze medal,
occasionally love. And he said between two thousand one to twelve,
he helped about fifty people disappear and charged about thirty
dollars per case, but that if a woman came to
him an imminent danger that he would not charge them. So,

(23:22):
what are some of the steps that you would take
to fake your own death? And is it something that
you think you could do on a spur of the
moment if you hadn't been planning it before, and get
away with it. Um. So to the latter part of
your question, absolutely not, I think to successfully fake your death.
And again this is coming from taking from the experiences

(23:43):
of people who did fake their deaths successfully for you know,
a matter of years. In some cases, it's really hard
to speak to these ones that we just don't know
that are presumed dead. Of course, these are people who
put in lots and lots of very thoughtful planning about
what they were going to do later on, how they

(24:04):
were going to support themselves, how they were really going
to stay off the grade or at least cut off
from their previous life. So to the former part of
your question about how you would fake your death, this
is a question I asked a lot to everyone, from
people who did it themselves, to investigators to law enforcement,

(24:24):
and they always came back with the same question to meet,
which is, well, who's looking for you? If you are
a hedge fund person like Sam Israel the Third who
staged his death in two thousand and eight after absconding
um with half a billion dollars of investor money, there
there's quite a few people looking for you, right, uh,

(24:48):
you know, from the FBI to private investigators, sec like
you name it. If you're just a regular Joe who
isn't evading law enforcement or legal consequences or debt collectors
like of the FBI, or you know, I don't know,

(25:10):
mafia level or something, people who really care about their money, right,
I think that it's it's a bit easier, So it's
really a question about who cares about you. That also
kind of circles back to family. I mean, if you
are someone who doesn't have a lot of families strange
from your family, where where the family who's left behind

(25:30):
and grieving and confused, isn't going to hire a private
investigator to look for you, you know, that's also a
bit easier. So I think that's that that's really the
big question. And when it comes to how you do
it and the level of subterfuge. You need to employees
who's looking for you. So some of these cases, I'm
gonna list them off, And then I was wondering if
you could talk about them the Sam Israel the Third,

(25:53):
Benny went John Darwin and then Lisa boosin y Um,
can you just kind of run us through and tell
us some about these individual cases? Sure? So. Sam Israel
the Third was the founder of the Bayou Hedge Fund Group,
and in two thousand and eight it came to light
that it had been a rather large ponzi scheme. At

(26:17):
that time, it was the largest ponzi scheme in US
history until Bernie made Offs came out came to light
just a few months later. There's a great book about
Sam Israel the Third called Octopus by Gee Lawson, which
I highly recommend because Sam faking his death is like
the least crazy thing in Sam's story. So, Anny you,

(26:38):
he had stolen essentially this money and it all came out.
He faked his death by staging what was to appear
suicidal plunge off the Bear Mountain Bridge in upstate New York,
about thirty miles north of the city. He parked his

(26:58):
car on the bridge in the windshield. In the dust
on the windshield wrote suicide is Painless also happens to
be the theme song from mash Uh. So he jumped
off the bridge. He landed in construction nets that had
been strung below, and you know, kind of mcgever style
like hand over hand, crawled out to the other side,

(27:20):
to the New York state side, where he was picked
up by an accomplice and then lit out in an
RV and no one found him for almost a month.
He was staying at campgrounds around New York. In New England,
he saw himself on America's Most Wanted at one point,

(27:42):
and he turned himself in. So even with this many
people looking for him, and people were pressing his family
and telling them they were going to go to jail
and all this. You know, he turned himself in, So
make what you will of that. From the start, absolutely yeah,
I think Frank said it that. Do you know the
FBI didn't show up and say, oh, he left a

(28:03):
suicide note, let's go home. Guys like you know this,
this was suspicious from the beginning, again because of the
circumstances of his life at the time. So the next one,
Benny went disappeared in nine UH and he left behind
a grieving fiance and a four year old daughter from
a previous marriage. I guess you know, i'd ask you

(28:23):
in relation to that, the people that whose cases you examined,
or the people that you interviewed, what kind of role
did family play, how close they what are their family?
How many people were looking for them? Were you know,
certain people were willing to do this even if they
were very close to or loved members of their family. Yeah.
The family piece is really interesting because in a lot

(28:46):
of cases, some people's family members, whether it's a spouse
or a son or daughter, we're in on it with them,
especially in the life insurance fraud cases, because you need
someone to claim the UH policy the payoff right, so
they'd have to be conspiring with you. In certain cases,
people had no idea, and you know, did go to

(29:10):
a great deal of trouble and expense and hiring investigators
to check into all these things. But family, interestingly enough,
is one of the main ways in which people give
themselves up. Because I think we have this idea that
when we fake our own deaths were leaving behind who

(29:33):
we were becoming someone else. So there's an example in
the book to like kind of scale it out for
people who don't think about faking their deaths all the time.
I mean, I guess there are people out there like that.
You know, it's the same idea. If you think about
if you were to move to California, say, and you
would be this totally different, improved, better optimized version of

(29:54):
yourself in California. Well, you get to California and ship
you're still you. If that's the gag, that's kind of
the bad news, right. So when people fake their deaths, similarly,
they think that they're going to be able to kind
of leave behind all the parts of themselves that were crappy,

(30:14):
that had committed crimes, that had made all these terrible mistakes,
and still maintain some part of them that is precious
and is special to them. But do you fake your death,
it really means cutting off everyone and everything. It's a
complete severing. So the ways in which a lot of
people have gotten caught over the years is because they

(30:37):
can't make that clean cut. They still want to call
mom on her birthday. You still want to check in
on your daughter and see how things are going, and
unfortunately you just can't. So We've seen a lot of
people get caught in that very way. Those those are
the people who whose families actually believe that their loved
ones died. But can you talk a little bit about

(30:57):
some of the people whose families we're in on it?
So John Darwin is probably the most interesting part of
or case in the book. Can you talk about him? Yeah?
Absolutely so. John Darwin um is an Englishman and in
two thousand two he staged his death at sea. He's
kind of that phrase, okay, I never understand the exception

(31:20):
that proves the rule these ages as at see, and
did it quite successfully for I believe almost it's a
two thousand seven he's got five to six years anyway.
John Darwin, English guy. He had worked jobs such as
being a teacher, a prison guard, kind of mid level
um civil servant jobs, and at the time he had

(31:42):
gotten himself into a bit of real estate and credit
card debt. So he had the brilliant idea to stage
this kayaking accident at sea collect life insurance along with
um wow, an interview. Yeah, what's it called when you

(32:07):
Oh my god, I'm saving such a brain fart right now?
When you um retire like you're like ever, let's say
yes exactly, thank you, thank you, thank you. It would
have taken me a long time to get there. Thanks
a lot, and in collect pensions that his wife would

(32:28):
collect after he was deceased. So one day in March
two thousand two, Darwin packs his kayak with some dry clothes,
some food, paddles out, has a few witnesses that see
him do it. We're walking their dogs on the beach,

(32:50):
capsizes his canoe. They call it canoe in England, it's
really kayak here, of course, swims to shore. His wife
a few hours later picks him up. She's in on this,
of course, and drives him to the train station. He
takes a train to the west coast of England, where
he then goes and camps out on the beach for

(33:11):
a few months, gets completely gaunt like, grows a weird beard.
All this. A few months later his wife at picks
him up and brings him back home where he lives
next door to his own house. So in the intervening time,
she was completely playing the part of the grieving widow.
They had two adult sons who thought that their dad

(33:33):
was dead. Um she let them believe that, and she'd
started the process of starting to collect some of these payoffs,
so that the crazy thing about Darwin is that he
did live next door to his own house. You know,
his sons would visit here and there, and you know
he made himself scarce at those times. Of course, just

(33:54):
to emphasize how crazy this is, in two thousand two,
John Darwin faked his own death. His wife was in
on it. He moved home and the entire time his
sons thought he was dead, Darwin didn't get caught. He
did turn himself in eventually. He says it was because
he couldn't take Lyne to his son's anymore. Okay, so

(34:42):
let's talk specifically about this case. Say, Philip, had you
heard of her before I contacted? I had not heard
of her, and I was so excited I saw this
case because I think it's completely fascinating. But no, I
had not heard of her. Was thirty years old on
nine eleven UM. She was a medical resident, just gribe
by many people as brilliant, really smart, extroverted, but also troubled,

(35:06):
maybe dealt with mental illness, substance abuse affairs. Somebody who
knew her told me that she really didn't want to
be a doctor, that she came from a conservative, traditional
Indian family that kind of pushed her into medicine, but
that her love was art and poetry. It seems crazy,
like it's it's fascinating. And because there is no physical

(35:26):
evidence that she died at the trade center, none of
there's been no DNA match, none of her belongings have
been positively identified. And when you combine that with the
fact of who she was as this kind of brilliant,
confident person, you know, really really smart by all accounts,
and the fact that nobody knows where she stayed on
the night of September. If there was someone who could

(35:52):
or would try to successfully pull this off, it seems
to be heard. So I thought it was fascinating. I
was reading this book and I didn't know if you
were aware of this case obviously when I read the book.
But you say missing person's reports and the immediate wake
of the attacks climbed over six thousand, but the official
lives lost total two thousand, eight hundred and one at

(36:13):
the first year of commemoration. Of those more than three
thousand misidentified deaths, forty four were claims for people who
were either still alive or people who did not exist.
So those forty four are numbers that come from um
what the n y p D called Operation Vulture Sweep,
and that was for people who were just like very
flagrant fraudsters, like inventing a spouse who they say worked

(36:38):
at Cantor Fitzgerald, and they were really just trying to
very boldly exploit charities and collect money. And these were
like very easily disproven. And then the next passage, this
is what really got me, and I I highlighted it.
I put a bracket, and then I put a giant
highlighted star on the page. Imagine coming up from the subway,

(37:02):
recognizing the tragedy, immediately computing it as an opportunity, and
opening and slinking away. Nothing filed, no attempt at life insurance,
just a split second decision to vanish. Why nine eleven,
Why did you put that in the book before you
were even aware of this case? Why does it fascinate you?

(37:22):
You know, I think it's in our whole collective memory.
It's just such a seared moment for all of us, right,
it was just like this utter chaos and you couldn't
wrap your mind around it. Right, So I think the
idea that someone could make something I don't want to

(37:47):
necessarily say positive, but that someone could see this utter
tragedy and destruction and see how a kind of a
lightbulb moment. I think maybe it's just that contrast that
is really what kind of gets into my imagination, at

(38:07):
least something that Frank said. He used the phrase austere elegance,
which stuck out to me. Having looked at this case,
what's your general impression, Man, It's so interesting. It's it's
just so fascinating. I mean, there's so many really compelling
loose ends. She herself is such an interesting person, I think.

(38:31):
I think that's that's what really gets me about this case,
is that, you know, she seemed to be embroiled in
quite a bit of paradoxes. You know, I can't, I don't.
I don't obviously know her. I don't know the situation,
but you know, it sounded like she was in a
marriage but maybe had other identities that she was trying
to express at the same time. So I just think

(38:54):
about her and I think, you know, now you said
this thing about being a doctor but really wanting to
be an artist. You know, just these forces at her
that were at odds um and you know, sounds by
all accounts like a really brilliant and interesting person when
you think about you're kind of fake death hero, which
I never found in the course of my research in

(39:17):
terms of someone who fakes their death for what seems
like an altruistic or legitimate purpose, someone who's not just
kind of like a you know, bottom feeder trying to
scam money out of these things. You know, she seems
like she could be that person. She had maybe some
interesting motivations. Also, it sounds like had some some trouble

(39:37):
with UM, perhaps substance abuse and as you suggested, mental illness,
which again, when you think about the mindset of kind
of desperation of trying to make this calculus add up
that this is the best course of action, perhaps some
of those impulses could have led her there. So I

(39:58):
think she's so interesting. And then, of course, you know,
you just have that last image of her, you know,
the last images of her at Century twenty one buying Lingerie.
Of course, that's like very lifetime movie and super scintillating,
I guess. But also I think it's that her husband
said that there was perhaps someone who looked like her

(40:19):
that was seen standing in front of the elevators of
her building and then turning around. I mean, it's all
just so elliptical and mysterious and just completely fascinating. Well,
the question too, is like she stayed. She either was
alive on the night of September ten or she wasn't.
And most likely obviously she was alive, so she stayed somewhere.

(40:41):
So where did she stay the night of September ten?
I mean, it's if it was anybody, If it was
a family member or a friend, I mean, obviously they
would have come forward. So then what what are the alternatives?
Is that she stayed with someone with whom she was
having an affair maybe and they didn't want to come forward.
But you start to run through your mind. Can am
I missing anything? Can you think of any logical alternatives?

(41:04):
And where she might have been the night of the tent? Oh? Me, No,
definitely not. I mean, I think unfortunately, when we look
at these cases of women in particular disappearing, you know, unfortunately,
it's usually because they've been abducted and oftentimes murdered. Unfortunately,
you know it from what I've seen these cases, it's

(41:29):
it's not what we want them to be. It's not
this projection of sovereignty and freedom and reclamation. It's often
almost always violence at the hands of someone else. Have
you ever seen this postcard? No? Oh, that's eerie, right.

(41:50):
This is a postcard sent to post Secret. It says,
everyone who knew me before nine eleven believes I'm dead
over a picture of the burning Twin towers. So you've
never seen that before. So the idea that anybody out there,
that there's somebody out there who use line eleven as
a cover to to disappear, because you wouldn't even say

(42:14):
necessarily fake their own death because they didn't cause line eleven,
I mean, they just do you think that that's feasible
at all? Gosh? I mean, I've thought about this a
lot over the years, and I have loved to kind
of think about this dark fantasy of someone who's on
their way to work on the morning of nine eleven,

(42:36):
gets out of the subway, sees what's going on, and somehow,
in that instant and that split second, is able to
do this calculus and take advantage of that situation for
the means of disappearing. I think that's more in the realm,
still a fantasy and art. I mean, it just seems

(42:58):
so impossible to not only lay the groundwork. Of course,
during September eleven there was such a great deal of
chaos that in that initial aftermath, the first few months after,
when things are in disarray, it seems like you probably

(43:19):
couldn't you know, been able to get away with it
for for a short period of time. I don't think
in the long run, though, I think there's there's so
many steps that one needs to take two go about
making a believable identity that's going to really hold water
over the course of years. Well, when you talk about

(43:40):
a believable identity, though, I mean, there are eleven million
undocumented workers in this country who don't all have quote,
you know, by the legal sense, believable identities. I mean,
would you really need to have all that lined up?
I mean, what's what would stop you from going to
make you know, Los Angeles or another city and kind

(44:02):
of blending in I mean with even without an idea. Sure,
so if you take the example of undocumented workers, you're
absolutely right. But you know, when we're talking about undocumented workers,
the type of work these people are doing is usually
off the books, is usually kind of labor that is
extremely difficult, often very dangerous. The people who are educated,

(44:23):
um just wouldn't do or won't do for a long
period of time. So I think when you think about
having a quote unquote believable identity, you either go very
kind of analog like in this way where everything's off
the books, you're staying completely offline, everything's in cash. Or conversely,

(44:47):
you've invested quite a bit of money and time and
resources into getting pristine documents, into building a credit history
of another person, so you look like a believable person
who didn't just you was born yesterday and had this
you know, your thirty seven with a line of credit. Right.
And the third option I guess would be having somebody

(45:09):
in on it who had money or who was willing
to support you. Right, yeah, but what do you do?
What do you do though over the long haul? Right? Like,
that's the question. I mean, I think you can do
that for a few years maybe, but when you think
about decades, right, and if you are a person from
a professional background and you do have very specific profile,

(45:34):
portfolio of interests, it's really hard to just erase all
of that and become someone so so countered who you
were The thing is, though, the idea that stay Hot
used nine eleven to disappear twenty years ago and the
idea that she's still alive are two different things. Studies

(45:56):
show that missing women are at a much higher risk
of dying by murder or suicide. It's depressing, I know,
But even if Sna did survive, if she did abscond,
there's no guarantee that she's still alive. She could be
a Jane Doe somewhere. But if she did successfully disappear,
do he just kind of want to let her disappear

(46:19):
in peace? That's a good question. I think if personally
I would if I found her somehow, I I would
leave it up to her whether or not she wanted
to come forward. Like that's it's a really good question.
There's there's a good ethical Well, first of all, I
mean by that point, you know we've made it pretty
far in the investigation. No, that's that's a great ethical question. Um,

(46:42):
I haven't thought too much. No, I don't know the
answer myself. I just think if she's able to get
away with it for this long, what I would what
I would do is personally, if I were to magically
find her, I would approach her. I talked to her,
I wouldn't you know all of a sudden blast out
that I had found her where she was. It's not
my place to judge, and I think I probably would

(47:05):
treat her like a source. I'd probably say, I have
all these questions. You absolutely fascinate me, You fascinate the world.
This is incredible. But I'm I'm happy to respect your
anonymity and your privacy in terms of where you are,
what your identity is. But it's it's tough as a journalist.

(47:25):
And I also just look at there are other people
doing it and doing it with like really like some
of the like some of the headlines from when she disappeared,
like under you know that the post it was like
it's like the most like salacious thing, and some of
some ofhow it was initially reported or even in the
court case it was like she's conducting bisexual acts and

(47:47):
it's like, what you know is this like you imagine
that like puritan like, oh, we are in a court
of law, like but um no, I mean, that's that's
a good question. But I guess you know that's it's
a fair ethical point. I would ask you separate from
the show separate. Wouldn't this wouldn't she be? I feel
like I don't want to say the most magical example. Absolutely.

(48:10):
I mean people ask me all the time like, oh, so,
did you ever talk to someone who faked their death
and they were still presumed dead? And no, I never have, like,
never got that phone call. I would love to and
I'm available if anyone wants to talk, but um no,
she would be everything to speak to that experience. If

(48:30):
presuming she did disappear and has managed to stay gone
for almost twenty years now, I would live to talk
to her, just to have a coffee with her and
ask her what that's been like and everything, and try
to leave it at that, let her go back to
her wherever she is. Well, I guess I would ask
you the same question, because you know I'm working on

(48:52):
this project specifically, but you worked on the broader perspective here.
How would you handle that ethically? Let's say you were
resar saying this story and you found her sending at
a cafe or an apartment Los Angeles or something. How
would how would you handle it? If she said, I
don't want you to report that I'm still alive. Would
you respect that or would you find a balance between

(49:16):
that's a doozy, that's a real doozy. I think what
I would do is I would try to stay on
her as gingerly as possible. That's always kind of my
m O in probably years two. When you go into
this kind of work, you don't easily take no for
an answer. So I think I would try to stay

(49:37):
on her, build some trust, hopefully. I think I would
try to meet or talk on the phone under the
cover of total anonymity, total privacy, And I don't know,
maybe it's cowardly, but maybe there's some way you can
split the difference where you can say you did speak

(49:58):
with her, but not reveal any of the details she
I agree with you, Like, it's really hard, especially this
Your family's out there, you know, and if they would
have who knows me. Maybe the families usually know more
than they led on. So yeah, you have all these
ethical and then maybe even legal implications, So like, I

(50:19):
don't know, it's interesting. You'd also have to be really
careful about how you approach her. It couldn't just be
like I'm gonna place a phone call and then the
minute that somebody gets a hold hold of my phone records. Well,
the book is playing dead. We're not live, but I'm
going to give you the br treat. My guest today

(50:40):
on this cold COVID death winter about to snow day
as we're shivering, is Elizabeth Greenwood. Did I miss anything?
Is there anything else you want to say? Any important points?
I don't think those really good questions. So in the end,
can we rule out the idea that stay hot use
nine eleven as cover to voluntarily disappear? No, I don't

(51:05):
think so. She was a brilliant woman, unhappy with life,
her marriage, and her profession. The idea that she ran away, well,
the only remarkable thing about it is nine eleven. Otherwise
it's not unique. Thousands of people disappear every year. The
postcard says, everyone who knew me before nine eleven believes

(51:26):
I'm dead. Change nine eleven to any other day? Is
it really that crazy? Next week we're going to release
a special bonus episode. We'll be back with a brand
new full episode the week after that. Homework One, did

(51:48):
you successfully fake your own death and get away with it?
Do you know anyone else who did? Two? Did you
send a nine eleven postcard to post Secret? If so,
whether it's real or oaks, I'd love to hear from you.
I'll protect your identity. You can reach us by phone
at one eight three three new Tips that's one eight

(52:09):
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 iHeart media dot com. Ben Bollen is our executive producer.

(52:29):
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 Wallzack. Cover art by Pam Peacock. Please
donate to the Internet Archive. It's a vital resource. Go
to archive dot org slash donate Missing Person Studied participants

(52:51):
voiced by Samantha McVeigh, Any Reese, Brandy Supra, Paul Decan,
and Alice Chelf Sara Wong. Special thanks to Tamika Campbell
at iHeart and at Christoph Zapprey in New Orleans. Also
thank you to Dr e Mark bogutin Detective Richard Stark
Elizabeth Greenwood and ASoP Rock. Go by Elizabeth's book Playing Dead,
a journey through the world of death fraud. She's a

(53:12):
great writer and it's a fun book. Elizabeth also has
a brand new book coming out this month called Love Lockdown, Dating,
Sex and Marriage in America's Prisons. Original theme music by
ASoP Rock. Check out Asop's website at ASoP rock dot com.
You can find me on Twitter at at john wallzac
j O n w A l c z a K.

(53:34):
If you like the 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 I Heart Radio and Greenfork Media.