There is a scary story that looks into the thoughts of the person who people thought was the most famous survivor of 9/11. Her name is Tania Head. She told a shocking story about escaping from one of the towers that fell during the attack. She talked about the terrible things she saw, the injuries she got, and how her fiancé, Dave, died in the other tower. People all over the country knew about her because she became the leader of a group for people who survived the attack, called the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network.
In 2001, Alicia Esteve Head was 28 years old and lived in Barcelona, Spain. She came from a rich family and had a very privileged childhood. She grew up on a farm in Mallorca, where she enjoyed riding special horses called Arabian stallions. She was kind to her friends, and they remembered her often talking about having rich boyfriends, although no one ever met them.
On September 11, Alicia was studying at the Esade Business School in Barcelona, working toward getting her Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). The next year, she moved to Manhattan, a borough in New York City, and got an apartment in Midtown. She also decided to change her first name to Tania.
Over the years, Tania became very involved with a group of people who survived the September 11th attacks. They connected through the internet and would meet in person to share their experiences and plan ways to remember the event. Eventually, they became like a family to Tania.
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Among all the stories of how people survived, Tania Head’s story was quite special. She spent a lot of time reading news reports about the attacks and talking to other survivors. From all of this, she created a detailed story about how she was in a meeting at Merrill Lynch on the 78th floor of the South Tower when the first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 am.
Tania said she was leading a meeting on the 78th floor of a tall building called the South Tower when a plane hit another building nearby, called the North Tower. This happened at 8:46 in the morning. She talked about how her partner, Dave, had a job on the 100th floor of the North Tower, which was higher up than where the plane hit.
Then, at 9:02 am, another plane crashed into the South Tower where Tania was. She told about how she got hurt badly, with her arm almost being cut off and getting burned as she tried to get away from the fire and find a safe place. She mentioned a man who was buried under debris asking her to give his wedding ring to his wife, and she said she did that later.
After the attack, Tania said she woke up six days later in a hospital for people with burns. She was told that her partner, Dave, had died in the attack. She became one of the people who survived the attack and shared her story with the media. She also joined a group called the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, led by a person named Gerry Bogacz.
In a message to the Survivors’ Network, Tania wrote: “I looked around and it was like a horror movie. People were mounted on top of each other, the smell of burned skin, and people’s insides, I was gagging. I kept thinking about my fiancé and about our wedding. I wanted to wear that white dress and swear my love for him.”
Among the 500 survivors in the support group who shared their stories, Tania’s stood out. Despite her traumatic tale, Tania actively supported the survivor’s group by preparing materials, hosting fundraisers, creating meeting agendas, and even using her own money to fund specialized trauma experts. Through her work, Tania also secured state funding for the Survivors’ Network, but as her story gained worldwide media attention, the details Tania added to her story stirred up suspicion from other survivors.
One survivor noted how her arm injury was not consistent with burns, while others questioned why she never brought her friends to support sessions. Despite their doubts, no one confronted Tania for fear of being rude or insensitive.
She wanted a filmmaker named Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. to make a movie about her group, and they became good friends. She sat down in front of his camera and told her story in a lot of detail. But there was a big problem – Tania Head was never actually in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. She made up the whole story.
In 2012, a documentary titled ‘The Woman Who Wasn’t’ There” was released, focusing on Tania Head. The documentary narrates how Tania gained fame, the revelation of her fabricated story, the reactions of her friends, and attempts to unravel the question: who is Tania Head?
Tania’s lie was caught after the New York Times investigated her story very carefully. They found out that Tania didn’t work at the World Trade Center, and she wasn’t even in the United States when the attacks happened.
Her real name wasn’t Tania. It was Alicia Esteve Head. She was from Spain and was studying at the Esade Business School in Barcelona when the attacks occurred. Alicia came from a wealthy family in Spain and grew up with many privileges on the island of Mallorca.
Alicia talked about her fiancé, Dave, who tragically died in the attacks. However, it was true that Dave existed. David Suarez was his name, and he had a connection to Schuylkill County. Rory Schuler, who grew up in Port Clinton, knew the real David Suarez well. (Source)
According to Schuler, David was exceedingly friendly and sociable. They were both members of the Kappa Alpha Order at Penn State, even though their personalities were quite different. Despite their differences, they were good friends. David had a unique style, with long hair and a preference for wearing polo shirts tucked into khaki pants. Schuler always remembered him smiling.
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David Suarez was from New Jersey and had a compassionate heart. He was an Eagle Scout who volunteered at soup kitchens and was always willing to help those in need. Schuler recalled an incident where David gave money to a homeless man in a wheelchair, who then stood up and left with the wheelchair folded. David wasn’t upset by the deception; he always gave people the benefit of the doubt.
Years later, Tania Head, a woman David had never met, would cry at his name on a memorial wall dedicated to the 9/11 victims. It seemed strange to Schuler that she would cry for someone she didn’t know, especially to convince her friend that her story of surviving 9/11 was true.
When people learned more about Alicia’s complex story, survivors of the attacks shared how they felt. They were torn because Alicia’s lies shocked and upset them, but at the same time, they couldn’t ignore the fact that she had somehow helped them, even if her help was based on falsehoods.
“I’m very torn,” survivor Carrie Coen Sullivan explained in a Channel 4 documentary, “She did a lot of good for our network. It’s hard to discredit it all. But she didn’t have to lie. She could have done those things without needing to lie.” (Source)
Monica Iken-Murphy lost her husband, Michael Iken, in the tragic events of 9/11. She met Tania while working on creating the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero in Manhattan’s Financial District. Even after 20 years, the pain of losing her husband is still very strong. However, Monica has chosen not to hold any grudges against Tania.
She said, “I don’t get angry; I just feel sorry that they think it’s okay to do that. I can’t be hurt because it’s not me doing it. I feel really sorry for her. And if you feel it’s good to lie about something like that, those poor souls?”
Monica believed that lying about such serious matters doesn’t go unpunished forever. She expressed her sympathy towards Tania but also pointed out that there are consequences for deceit. She stated, “There was no reward for me. I had to deal with the trauma of watching my husband die, with no compensation that could ever make up for it. You might think you want to be in my shoes, but you don’t want to experience what I did.”
After Tania, also known as Alicia, was exposed, she disappeared from the public eye. Nobody has seen her for more than ten years. A newspaper called El País from Spain reported that she is still listed as living in her house in Barcelona, but nobody has checked if this is true.
The Independent tried to find out more about Alicia. They found a profile on a website called LinkedIn that seems to be hers. It says she still works at the Esade Business School and lives in New York. But when The Independent asked the Esade Business School about her, they didn’t answer. Nobody knows where Alicia is right now. (Source)
