RedHanded - Tania Head: 9/11 Trauma Fraud | #416

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Being in the World Trade Centre when the second plane hit the South Tower; watching her assistant be decapitated; crawling over the bodies of her dead and injured co-workers; and becoming one of only nineteen people to survive being at or above the point of impact: these are all things Tania Head did not experience. Yet for six years, Tania (real name Alicia) was the 9/11 survivor. She inspired others, worked tirelessly for their cause, and even became a beacon of hope as the president of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network. This is how the greatest 9/11 story ever told turned out to be a hoax.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. What if I told you that the crime of the century is the one being waged on our planet? Introducing Lawless Planet, Wondry's new podcast exploring the dark side of the climate crisis. Uncover shocking tales of crime and corruption threatening our world. world's future. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to. We're at-handed. How you feeling? Ready to go? Me personally? Yeah. Or listener, viewer. You? Me? Fine. Ready? I feel fine. Excited. This is a case I've had on my list for a very, very long.

time and it's quite unsatisfying because it's like the 24th anniversary this year should have held out for next year but hey man we can't do harambe and turn your head in the same year the world will explode it's true and look we had to do it this year because if you're listening to this on the day of release general release then it is of course september the 11th september 11th 2001 specifically is a date that needs no introduction at 846 a m in New York, the first hijack plane of the 9-11 attacks, American Airlines Flight 11, collided with the North Tower of the World Trade Center. As millions of people across the world watched the now rolling news coverage, at 9.03 a.m., a second plane. United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into

the South Tower. At 937am, a third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. And then, at 10.03 a.m., a fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed into a field in Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania, after heroic attempts by the passengers and crew to try and regain control from the al-Qaeda hijackers. It was the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil in history, killing 2,97 people. And it changed the world, forever, setting in motion, sweeping changes to US intelligence and counterterrorism practices and launched two major wars. The ripple effect of the attack still impacts our lives, to this day from how we get on airplanes to government surveillance and civil liberties.

But this is not an episode about the large-scale global aftermath of 9-11, or even An episode on how jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams. This is the story of just one woman. Her name is Tanya Head. Or is it? Tanya Head was a woman who made it out of the collapsing South Tower, who had to endure hell, lost the love of her life in the attacks,

and yet went on to find the strength to campaign for her fellow survivors as the president of the World Trade Center Survivors Network. She became a beacon of hope for millions, a woman who made miracles seem possible. And her story of survival against the odds was exactly what people needed to hear, to see, to feel after this catastrophe

that had left us all feeling more vulnerable than we'd ever felt before. The problem was, literally none of it was true. Not a single thing that Surity just said. You know how they say there's like a kernel of truth? in everything. Nah.

Not this time. Not even a little bit of colonel that stuck in your teeth. Does not exist in this story. Tanya Head hadn't even been in the US on 9-11. Tanya Head had never been to the World Trade Centre, ever. And Tanya Head was not her real name. So why and how did this woman fool the world with the hoax of all. hoaxes. Well, let's get back to that nightmare day, 9-11, 2001. As I said, exactly 24 years ago

today, if you are listening on the day of release. Everyone old enough to know what was going on remembers exactly where they were that day. I was at school. Presumably you were as well. I was at school, yeah. And they sent us home. We got sent home, and I remember coming back to my parents' house. And my parents have lived in that house for a very long time. And it's been remodeled multiple times. And the only way I can actually remember what it looked like back in 2001 was because of the vivid memory I have of sitting on the sofa in the living room and watching the TV of rolling news of 9-11 happening. It is such a like vivid memory. And we're talking 24 years ago. I'm 35. So like we were young. I remember us being sent home and

obviously it was just like this unbelievable thing. My dad used to work for a little bit of Lehman Brothers at the time, and he had also been sent home, he'd come back. And I have told the story before, I think on Under the Duvet. But it's just such a crazy, crazy thing that because my dad worked for Lehman Brothers in London, the Lehman Brothers in London, the Lehman Brothers in New York, were in the World Trade Center. And they were that morning on a call, like a video conference call with New York, when the planes hit. So they're talking to the New York office when all of a sudden, the video footage just cuts off, they're screaming, shouting a loud bang, and then it just goes dead. And obviously, when you work in a bank, you've got rolling news going on all the time,

and it's when they turned around and looked at the screens to try and figure out what was going on that they saw a plane had hit that tower that their colleagues were in, that they had been on a video conference call with at the exact time that the planes hit. It's just like, unbelievable. It's crazy, crazy, crazy coincidence. And yeah, like, I think everybody probably has quite a visceral memory of that day if you are old enough to. I think we all watched on in horror as the towers fell and thousands of people died, sat at their desks for what should have just been an ordinary day at work. Then there were those left still alive after the impact, but stuck inside the burning towers, trying to make their way out of these collapsing

buildings. And who can forget the haunting image of the falling man, an unidentified figure who had apparently leapt from a window of one of the towers who was captured a plummeting head first to the ground. I think there's a documentary about trying to identify him. I think it's just called The Falling Man. And the important thing is to understand about the towers and the way in which they came down was that many of the people who managed to escape,

because there were lots and lots of people who did escape the towers. Most of them had been below the point of impact where the planes had hit. so on the lower floors. Among thousands of people who have been in the buildings, today we know that just 19 people, 1-9, managed to escape from offices above or at the collision points. Something I think about when the world gets me down

is that Steve Bershemi, the actor, before he was an actor, he was a firefighter, and he went down to the World Trade Centre to get people out of the rubble because he had the training. Didn't tell anyone, just went, pulling people out. Again, very much the opposite of everybody else in this fucking story. Not everybody. Obviously, Daniel, that's not her own name. And a couple of people will come on to at the end.

But yeah, I think you'd be hard pushed to find a bigger incident that shaped everything, quite literally everything, that has occurred in this century. And, yeah, another thing that I remember reading about 9-11, maybe when I went to Ground Zero, because I did go there, quite a few years ago and I was it sounds weird I was shocked

by how much it moved to me emotionally obviously you know nearly 3,000 people fucking died and then the rest of the people who died afterwards

as a result of like injury sustained or like firefighters who died of fucking cancer because they had gone in there and saved people but yeah it was really harrowing and I think one of the things

that was the most harrowing the most harrowing exhibit for me was they have these telephones like attached to the wall as part of this installation and you pick up a telephone and you put it to it. And it's the voice messages of people who know they're going to die, trapped inside, that they left their loved ones.

And it is just, it, honestly, it's fucking hideous. But one of the reasons apparently it was so bad, not just because two massive fucking planes crash into these buildings, was because back then in 2001, so much was just on paper. And paper was just kindling. It was just burning everything even more. it's just so hard to cast your mind back to a time when that was one of the fundamental problems for where it was so, so horrific.

Turn your head, claimed to be one of those 19 people that survived from above the collision points. Yeah. Because just to be clear, at the time, they didn't know exactly how many people had survived from above the collision points, but they knew it wasn't a lot. So immediately saying that made your story even more shocking even at the time than if you had been below. the point of collision. And so right out the gate, lying about being there is already completely unconscionable. Yeah.

But being one of the ones who survived in the most difficult part of the building, do you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really sets the stage for what we're going to learn about Tanya Head and who she claimed to be, but actually who she really is. Yes, absolutely. Because like you said, she could have just said she was. in there. Thousands of people were in there. Loads of people fucking got out.

She could have easily just said she was one of them. But no. As you will find out with Tanya, that's just not good enough. She wasn't satisfied with being one of the many hundreds of people who did escape. And I think if I was going to lie, obviously I wouldn't. But I'd be like, yeah, Steve Bishemi,

pull me out. That would be what I would lie about. Honestly, if Steve had like made a thing of it, Tanya Head would have said that. She She couldn't be normal enough. No. She had to be, not only there, but in the worst possible place it was possible to be on that day.

Her story had to be the most bombastic, the most intense, the most everything. I'm just going to look up what the name Tanya means to see if there's any like. It means fairy queen. Hmm. Make believe. Interesting. and Tanya the fairy queen claimed that she worked for Meryl Lynch and that her desk was on the 78th floor of the South Tower. On the morning of September the 11th, 2001, Tanya was waiting for a lift after a meeting

when the plane smashed into the side of the building. She saw her assistant actually get decapitated in front of her very eyes and then her body was thrown across the floor by the impact and then she passed out. When Tanya came too, she was surrounded by flames and chaos as the building was collapsing. You're listening to an episode of Shorthand, our weekly show for Wondry Plus subscribers. Listen exclusively and ad-free every Tuesday on Wondry Plus through Apple Podcasts and Spotify or in the Wondry app. How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our time. And crimes like that, they don't just happen. We call things accidents. There is no accident. This was 100% preventable. They're the result of choices by people. Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet. Stories of scams, murders and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Tanya said she clambered over unconscious dead and dying colleagues, trying to find some way out.

The scene was the closest thing Tanya could imagine to hell itself, but she said she kept crawling forward. And then she heard the voice of a man. He was talking to her and holding out a ring. He hoarsely whispered two words, my wife, imploring Tanya to please take his wedding ring to make sure it got to his wife. And they were apparently his father.

final words. As the seconds ticked on, the 78th floor was becoming engulfed by flames. Tanya's right arm was in agony, and she felt like her whole body was on fire. But she was determined to make it out alive. The image she held on to keeping her going was that of her wedding dress. Tanya was engaged, and her fiancé Dave also worked in the World Trade Centre, so she was determined to make it out and make it back to Dave. That's what kept her going through the horror of all of it that morning.

Well, that's what she told the rest of the world. The city was reeling from what had happened. It needed to clean up the dust and debris filling up the streets of downtown New York. Emergency services were still looking for survivors in the days after the attack. Then it became a recovery mission to find as many bodies as possible and everyday people and Steve Buscemi alongside the authorities were trying to do all they could

to help those who had suffered unimaginable loss that day but as you can imagine a major concern filling everybody's mind was how had this happened who had carried out this attack and what was the US going to do in retaliation slowly as the week's past thoughts did turn to how the nation could pay their respects to those who had died but the survivors well they just weren't really part of that plan so no one in the immediate aftermath was too concerned with tanya head or anything she had to say

yeah i think that is like a fundamental part of the story that you have to understand as to how she managed to get away with it right because there's so many things for everybody to worry about there's a fact that the twin dowers are fucking collapsed downtown new york is in a state of mess people are fucking terrified the u.s is thinking about foreign policy what are we going to do to like we've just got punched in the face like what are we going to do about this and survivors were really kind of the bottom of the heap i think the mentality was kind of like you survived you know it wasn't the most pressing yeah so fatania had to creep into that part of this story made it certainly much more easy for her to get away with spinning her web of lies.

It's fair to say that many true survivors, having lived through the most devastating terrorist plot that America has ever seen, felt completely abandoned, disorientated, and a loss for how to move on. For a lot of them, the question that haunted them the most was, why me? They had no one to turn to, to explain the terror. and the trauma of what they had lived through and why they had survived. And of course, like, you know, a lot of them in the documentaries that I watched, talk about going to therapy, talk about opening up to people.

But it's like this feeling of this one significant event was so enormous, so like paradigm shifting. And I lived through that. And I don't know how when I saw so many dead bodies and so many people died and I saw the devastation it caused and how much of a massive impact this had, that they still felt like when they went to therapy, Nobody could really understand what they had been through because it was such a unique experience. And so they definitely have this very, very intense feeling of survivors' guilt that they feel nobody else can truly understand.

And Tanya absorbed all of these feelings and dished them back up to add color to her own story. And we're going to have a listen here to a clip of Tanya talking about her survivor's guilt, which is taken from the documentary, the woman who wasn't. there. We'll talk about it on the other side, but here you go. Some of my co-workers had families. They had little kids, and they died and I didn't. So why? Why am I special? Why was I spared? Why didn't they make it? Why was, why did I make it? Was it God? Was it faith? Is it because we have something to do? Was it because we were shielded by the elevator machinery? It just makes you go crazy, you go crazy asking yourself, why, why, why?

We're going to listen to a few more clips throughout this episode of Tanya, I'm speaking. But I think there's a little flavor. And if you are watching this rather than just listening to the audio, which we should have said at the start, we are releasing this as a full video recording, which you can watch on the red-handed YouTube channel. So go check that out. But I think it's the way she's talking, right? The way she's lying, you still like her. Right. I know she's lying.

I know she's lying. And I know all of the lies she's going to go on and tell. But she comes across as very jovial, right, as very engaging, very warm, very upbeat. She's lived through this horrific nightmare atrocity that, you know, other people could only but imagine. But yet, look how, look how upbeat she is. And I think that definitely plays a part in all of this. I don't know how much of it is intentional, right? but I think

Tanya hit she could have played this straight like weeping, crying lower than low I've been through hell persona but she doesn't I think that's why she gets away with it for so long 100% and that's why so many of the survivors gravitate towards her

because they're like Tanya went through far worse than I did she lost a love of her life she was up above the collision point she saw her assistant get decapitated but look at her she's pulling herself together she's so upbeat she's so positive

I should be the same and I think she does a good job I honestly think and we're going to talk about this as we listen to a few more clips of Tanya Head but I think in the last 10 years of doing this

she's the best liar I've ever seen interesting and I will say this before somebody says it in the comments like she's smiling she keeps smiling as she's talking of course like you guys we can put that down to like duping delight she knows she's lying

and she can't help but let this little smile creep across her mouth because she's like, oh, they're buying this, they're buying this. Because although that clip is in the woman that wasn't their documentary, it was obviously filmed way before. And Tanya is like a willing participant in this interview. And she loves telling her story. And that's a good like, obviously don't lie about something so horrific. But if you need to get away with something, just in your day-to-day life, being likable is the number one hot tip I'm going to give you. Make people like you. And then

it will be easier for you to get what you want. People don't like crocodile to you. I think it's easier to sniff out as well. Exactly, because it's kind of what's expected. People lie when they're in crisis, you know? So that's what we're trained to like look for those sort of like, if you're the, obviously lying is negative, but like the negative is like lying of like the sobbing or the anger or whatever,

all of those like negative sad face emotions. we're better at spotting lies in those. Yeah, and I think you would have to be a ridiculously good actor to pull that off convincingly. We're also, I know we've said this multiple times on Redhander before. We're not very good at detecting deception. We think that we are, but we're not actually very good at detecting deception. And people don't have a uniform way in which they behave when they are grieving

or in shock or trauma. But if you do a bad job of crying, there's something uncanny value about it. But if you do have this jovial, upbeat, kind of positive, if I'm a survivor attitude, as we see with tan your head, it's far harder for people to poke holes in it. And I will also say that she was, not lucky, but she is operating within a sphere of a circumstance that people are not going to question as much

because who wants to be that asshole who's like, meh. Yeah, it's like the cancer conners or like, you don't want to accuse anyone of lying about something so horrible. So people wait till they're really short before getting you. But because of this phenomenon, this like extraordinarily unique experience of 9-11 survivors and them feeling like they didn't, or any sort of normal avenue that would be open to trauma survivors, so quite blanketly didn't work. Or there was this communal feeling of being left behind, but also being unable to process what had happened to them.

So they turned to each other. The World Trade Center Survivors Network was born. out of the need to share their stories and talk freely about what happened. It started as an open, online group, which was pretty quiet and informal at first, but grew as more and more people realised that they needed somewhere to turn. Tanya didn't post right away. At first, she just watched. But after a while, she'd type up a short line or two with a few details from the story that we told you at the top. Yeah, another very important part of this story is that,

like you said, Tanya doesn't come forward with this story for a long time. She's not there like the next day, screaming and shouting about how she survived. Well, she's not in the US, as you told us. She waits weeks. And initially on this forum, Tanya keeps things very vague, almost as if she was testing the waters. But she needed to know worried.

in a group of survivors each dealing with their own trauma they had no reason to doubt her everyone welcomed tanya as they would with any new member there was no vetting system I mean why would there be yeah it's not like you can on like true crime podcast Facebook groups

where they're like what's the title of episode 307 you're not going to do that nobody was going to do that it was an exclusive club that nobody wanted to be a part of but this environment gave tant Tanya Head pretty much carte blanche to weave her deceptive story of immense courage and place herself at the centre of this unimaginable tragedy and this vulnerable group of survivors. Soon, the group started to hold in-person meetings of more than 100 people at time.

It was the perfect audience for Tanya Head to tell the full version of her story, which now included the heartbreaking twist of how she would. She'd woken up in hospital almost a week after the attack only to discover that her fiance, Dave, who had been in the North Tower, when the first plane had crashed, Dave, who had kept her going through it all, Dave, the reason she made her out, Dave didn't make it out alive. And we've got another clip for you here of Tanya talking about Dave on the five-year anniversary of 9-11. It's the morning of September 11th, and we're all going to go to the official. ceremony at the site, and we hope to make it there by the first moment of silence at 846. It's one of the hardest experience of my life to go down that ramp every anniversary, but I do it for day because I knew he wants me to be there, but let me show you something.

Dave and I met outside the World Trade Center when he stole my cap, so every year when I go to the site and bring a New York City cub with me, and I put it in the reflection full. For the audio only of you, it sounds like she's saying cup. She's saying cab, like taxi cab. And so she's invented this meat cute for her and Dave, which is, as luck would have it, at the World Trade Center. And she's got a little New York yellow taxi, like model toy. God, she's good.

She is good. She is very, very good. Do you see what I mean, though, by like, she's such a good liar. The way she's like telling the story about Dave and then just effortlessly slips into you, oh, let me show you something. It's just, if she weren't so fucking sick, it would be admirable. How good a liar she is. It's, honestly, it's remarkable.

And as she told her story in full for the first time, the Survivor's group wept along with her. and from that point on she was never going to let that go like we said Tanya only stepped forward with her story a little bit later once the reports had already been published in the press

and other survivors had already shared their stories so by this point Tanya already had a wealth of information that she could mine from and when she shared what had happened to her people were horrified amazed and yes in all

that she had come out alive. And she just can't stop. She can't stop, right? She adds another grizzly twist her tail because soon she adds in this part of the story about how her right arm had been totally torn off in the impact, right? And it had been hanging off her body by just like a sinew. And how, as she was trying desperately to crawl out of this burning hellscape,

this man was like grabbing at her arm and pulling it and she was terrified that it was going to rip right off and so she like takes this arm and tucks it into her top to try and save it in the hopes that doctors might be able to reattach it if she makes it out of this building and Tanya had the scars on her arm to prove it it would be years before anybody discovered that those scars had actually come from a car accident

when Tanya had been in our 20s. And it's one thing me telling you guys about her heroic experience. Let's have a listen to the woman herself. Tell us a bit about it. I was in the hospital until Thanksgiving, November 2001. My bag was really burned. My arm was burned.

I couldn't walk, so I was in a wheelchair. I couldn't even pull myself on the wheelchair because I only had one good arm. So, you know, between the wheelchair, the trauma, the loss, I didn't know where to start. It was just too hard. It was like looking at a mountain that was 20,000 feet tall. I'm sure a lot of people felt that way.

And I'm sure that the feeling, the visceral feeling that you get from listening to Tiny Story is coming from the fact that she has read actual survivors talking about what they went through. If I sat and read a forum in which people were talking about, I don't know, something horrible happening like losing a baby, I too, I'm sure within 24 hours would be able to tell a convincing story not as convincing as Tanya head but you're getting all the meat of the story

right that you need, you're getting all the feelings that these people naturally felt and that's exactly what she does and over time her confidence and creativity with these stories and her lies only seem to grow

in later versions of her story Tanya's taxi fiance Dave suddenly became her husband fiancée or husband seemed to be interchangeable depending on who she was talking to. She told some people that they'd been married in a private ceremony, but the proper celebrations were still to come. And to some, she said that she had actually got a judge to marry her and Dave posthumously,

which you can't do. No, I checked. You cannot marry a dead person. Maybe. Tanya discovered that losing her husband, not just fiancé, got her an ounce more of that delicious sympathy and attention that she craved so much. Also, I think the word fiancé is a word that a lot of people don't like to use. It's a weird word. It's a weird word.

It just, oh, my fiancé, it just sounds pretentious. That's what it sounds. It sounds pretentious. So, no, maybe she's just like, yeah, I don't like this word. I'm going to start saying. husband and just to be clear Dave real man real man who died in 9-11 oh that's foul I didn't know that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah she doesn't just pick a name out of thin air well she does but she just finds a Dave right she finds a Dave so she's kind of going through all the reports right of people who died

and you know maybe Dave's family had posted about him I don't know exactly where she got him from but she finds out about this guy Dave she looks at a social media she learns all she learns all all about him and she starts telling herself this story of this love affair that the two of them had and she like waxes lyrical in this documentary which I'd highly recommend people watching because there's so much footage of Tanya Head talking of like how he proposed to her and how he like you know got them little Hawaiian shirts and then cooked a disgusting meal that he didn't know how to cook but it was like Hawaiian food and then he whisked her off to Hawaii because she had been so stressed at work and then how he proposed and like all of

of these lies, all of these lies. It's unbelievable. And Dave's family obviously find out about her later and they're like, what the fuck? So yeah, Dave's a real guy. Don't know whether he was a cabstealer or not, but he was a person who died in 9-11, who she just completely, for one of a better word, hijacks his life and death. And whenever Tanya told the story of the poor dying man with the wedding ring, people reacted with horror. Nobody stopped to ask who he was. Or whether Tanya had bothered to get that ring to his wife. Everyone just felt such sympathy for what she had gone through.

No one was going to even gently probe a survivor. You would come across as an abominable bitch, wouldn't you? Be like, what floor did you say it was again? Who was it? Did you get the ring back? I mean, she'd have had an answer anyway. But there's no real deep digging. No.

And again, I'm not criticising the people who believe her. They are just doing the correct, humane thing, which is when a person tells you a story like this to say, oh my God, that is awful, you poor person. And Tanya Head realized quite quickly that she could make all of that work for her. She played on everyone's understanding that some things were just too trod, and too personal to want to relive.

In fact, Tanya's story was so extreme that it quickly seemed to outshine everybody else's. Many of the 500 members of the Survivors' Network became good friends of hers, when they had nobody to turn to, when some days seemed harder to carry on than others. Tanya's strength gave them strength. They saw how well she was doing,

and this inspired some of them. to heal. Tanya seemed to them to be coping with her loss remarkably well, recovering in a way that many of them were struggling to even imagine. She became an inspiration. And soon Tanya began to become a little bit more vocal within the group. Her confidence and involvement grew by the day. She helped to set up fundraisers and find speakers for meetings. She donated her time and even her money. She appeared to be truly dedicated to the survivors. And soon enough, she up the ante. And she started at Ground Zero. In the months after the attack, some groups, including the families of the victims, were given permission to go onto Ground Zero,

which if you don't know is where the towers used to be, to pay their respects. But even two years after the attack, not a single survivor had been allowed in. And I think that's just further proof, right, of the fact that, like we said earlier in the episode, how the survivors kind of felt a bit sidelined. It wasn't just a feeling. Like, there is real evidence of the fact that people bizarrely weren't that bothered about them. And I don't want to be unfair, right?

Maybe not that they weren't bothered, but they were certainly at the bottom of the pile. Yeah. So a lot of survivors did feel completely overlooked by being denounced. by being denied entry to the site of Ground Zero. A lot of them said that they thought it might help bring them a bit of closure or at least help a little bit in healing their trauma, but the authorities weren't budging. It was a perfect opportunity for Tanya Head to come to the rescue.

And somehow Tanya Head worked her magic. And I really don't know much more than that how she actually managed it. She comes across a very credible, very believable. She's a really good talker. And Tanya worked her magic and got the authorities to agree, got them to agree to allow the survivors to go onto Ground Zero for the very first time in years since the attack. And yeah, I think we've played you guys like three clips from that documentary,

and I think it's fair to say she is very engaging. She's very confident. She's a very good storyteller. Brings her own props. Absolutely. and I think you'd have to be to manage everything she managed to pull off and so in April 2004

the first group of survivors were able to enter the site it was a huge win and Tanya massively impressed everyone at the Survivors Network with her dedication and her ability to get things done and the attention she got only grew from there and what's so interesting I think about this story

is it if Tanyaed had known when to stop. She could have continued this farce forever. To this day, she would have cemented her legacy as a 9-11 survivor and she would have got ample love and attention from those in the group and those outside. Every anniversary, she could have, you know, got another little, like, article in the press.

She could have got another little, like, a ceremony she goes to to cut a ribbon or something. She could have absolutely made that her life story if she had known when to stop. She could have even met someone romantically convinced him or her of that story and then dined out on it for the rest of her life. Every time they have an argument, I'm traumatised. I'm a 9-11 survivor, above the point of collision. She could have if she wanted to, but down your head could not get enough.

And she didn't know how or when to fucking quit. She played up her heartbreak. telling people how she had finally, at last, come to terms with Dave's death, and how she had bravely given her wedding dress to charity. And I think she realizes quite quickly that what makes her stand out is not only that she's pretending to have been in the worst possible situation, like above the point of collision, or at the point of collision, because remember her assistant got decapitated by that plane,

but I think she realizes that story of lost love, of trying to get out of there to be with Dave only to find out that he's died clearly worked in that attention-grabbing arena well she's playing both sides isn't she because she's like yeah I'm a survivor so I understand you but I also lost someone so I understand you too absolutely she's got it all she's got it all

and so realising this Tanya turned the notch up on that as well when she first told her tale of escape she'd casually mention seeing a man in a red band during her efforts to get out of the building. At the time, Jerry Bogatch, co-founder of the Survivor Network, asked her a bit more about this red bandana man. And Tanya told Jerry that she'd only seen this man.

That was it. There was no more to the story than that. So they moved on. But after making tsunami-sized waves in the Survivor's Network, Tanya suddenly found herself elaborating a little bit more. And now Bandanaman had a name. Wells Crother. And this is why I said if Tanya had even had a whiff of the fact that Steve Bouchemy was there,

she would have brought him into it because Wells Crother was a very real 24-year-old trader and volunteer firefighter who had given his life in order to help others escape the towers on 9-11. His incredibly brave story by this point had already been. told in the press and after his sacrifice he became the first citizen ever to be made an honorary member of the new york fire department and that's the one that's the one she saw and tanya knew god damn well how beloved wells this story was a young man like that to save people and sacrifice himself she knew that wells had been in the south tower as well and had helped rescue people and that he had saved lives. So why couldn't Wells have helped her too? What harm would it do to put Wells into

her story? As you can see, this is very much the evolution of Tanya Head as her confidence grew and she tricked more and more people, including top officials, by the way. I'm sure she felt like there was nothing she couldn't do and nothing she couldn't say. And as for attaching herself to Wells' a story. It's so parasitic. Her feeding off the adoration and recognition of an actual genuine hero. Just pulling him into her story to give hers another boost. And this is the vivid detail that Tanya added to her story. Her new scene happened as she was clambering over the dismembered bodies and all of the gore which she does not hold back on, by the way. And all of a sudden, she felt something.

She was on fire. She could smell her own skin burning and was helpless to put it out with her arm hanging off. And she could move. But then she felt someone patting out the flames on her back. Whoever it was had saved her. Because it was only after this fire had been put out that Tanya was able to escape

and wouldn't you know it that guardian angel that patted out the flames on Tanya head was only the emblem of New York bravery himself Wells Grother what a perfect person to pick to feature in your story

a known hero who everybody already loves why not ride on those coattails as well and make your own story even more touching And since everyone from Tanya's survival tale was dead, no one could challenge her. All her colleagues are dead. As she well fucking knows. And this extra element of the story even got back to Wells Crotha's family.

And they were thrilled to learn that their hero relative had saved yet another life. It's so sick. In the documentary, there's an interview with Wells' mother. And she's talking about how happy she was to hear from people. in the network saying, oh, you should know Wells saved another woman. Here's her name, Tanya. And then Wells Crowther's mother is like, oh, I would love to meet her. I would love to speak to her just to understand a bit more about what my son did.

And Tanya's really reluctant. She's really, really reluctant to do it. She's like, no, no, no, no, no. And she twists it even more to blame other people for why she doesn't want to do it. And she says it's because she's met with other family members of people who died in 9-11 and how they had been horrible to her probably, you know, they're traumatised but they were awful to her

because they were angry she had survived and their loved one had tied. And that's why she was scared to meet Wells Crowther's mother. Again, do you know what I mean? She's like blaming innocent people because I can't imagine anybody really did that

and if they did, of course they're not in their right minds if they did. But to use that as the reason because again, you're a victim. You're a victim, Tanya. You're being bullied by these people because you survived. She's such a fucking piece of shit.

In the end, though, in 2006, Tanya was invited to an annual memorial concert that was held in Wells' honour, and she did go, but she was too emotional to speak. She couldn't possibly. And if you think that this was Tanya showing restraint, possibly even humility, you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong. Because she didn't shy away from having her story told at this memorial. She got her mate to do it for her. so she just doesn't want anyone to see the whites of her eyes I think I think it's also kind of the perfect situation right it's like Wells isn't there to speak for himself this whole memorial is there for him

and the lives that he saved I almost think in a weird perverse way Daniel was like if I stand out there it kind of slightly weakens my legacy because I'm still here and people will feel less sorry for me because I am still alive I am still walking, the closest I can come to what Wells has lost, which is his fucking life in the attempt to save other people, is I'll send my friend up there, who can also say much more heroic and nice things about me and how I've made her better, because the friend that goes up there is this lady called Linda, who is absolutely, seems like a very, very nice lady, a long-suffering friend of Tanya's, goes up there and she says, Tanya saved me, because she'd been through far worse than I

Had. You certainly can't say that about herself, and she knows that. It would be distasteful to say it at this moment. Oh, you're so right. I hadn't thought of that. It's perfect. Perfect. Yeah. I'm sure we're a real. What a fucking piece of work, my God, honestly. So yes, with little stunts like this, over the years, Tanya Head grew in respect, stature, and, crucially, sympathy. Whenever there were instances of Tanya not wanting to answer a question or perhaps when her answers changed with each retelling, nobody really battered an eyelid. Most people put it down to trauma and all the chaos that they had all lived through. Tanya would also explain away her reluctance to sometimes speak by saying, you know,

like I said, she'd had these negative experiences with people who had been angry at her for surviving, so she should just keep to herself and just stay within the survivors' network. Or she'd say, and this is another one that I just found so despicable. When Wells Crowther's mother wants to speak to her, she also says, Oh, well, I just, I don't want to put any more horrible images in your head of what your son went through. She's a mother. Do you not think all the horrible images that are possible to exist in her head already there? She's honestly, it's just, it's so gross.

And again, you see the manipulation to make herself the martyr. I don't want to speak to you, even though that's what you're asking me as a woman who lost her son in there, because I don't want to make it worse for you. I've got your best interests at heart. I will keep these images in my head. It's my burden to suffer with them. And yeah, I just think that besmirching of victims' families as well by saying they had been cruel to her,

it's just another like horrible rotten cherry on the cake. I think in that comment you can see that Tanya Head is willing to say just about anything, about just about anyone, to keep getting what she wanted. And as her fame grew up, There was one member of the Survivors Network who really wanted to speak to her. Cynthia Shepard, a local postal worker, had heard Tanya's story and felt a sense of connection.

Cynthia had lost her fiancé in the North Tower just like... You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices. Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses

no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling, they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Today is the worst day of Abby's life. The 17-year-old cradles her newborn son in her arms. They all saw much. I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me.

Between 1945 and the early 1970s, Families ship their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and force them to secretly place their babies for adoption. In hidden corners across America, it's still happening. My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me. The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical right and the founder of the. Liberty University. Where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent

and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Like Tanya had claimed to. And while Cynthia hadn't been in the buildings herself, she had been delivering post in the area when the planes hit. And she had suffered the immense trauma of witnessing people jumping out of the burning buildings and knowing that her fiancée was inside. And I think for those who can't remember it, I think what is quite often not retold is that in the however many minutes between the first and second plane, everyone thought it was an accident. That's what was being reported. But when the second plane happens, they're like, oh no, this is on purpose. Absolutely. And the narrative completely changed in that

second. And there are really, there's really weird collections of photos of when the first plane goes and loads of people are taking pictures of it because they don't really know what they're looking at. And then, then it's the second plane and then everything changes. Absolutely. Because you're right, completely right. It's such a shift in mentality. The first plane hits. Of course, it's nightmarish what you're witnessing. Second plane hits and now it is you're under attack. It's like apocalyptic on a biblical scale, like planes falling out of the sky, but being targeted into downtown New York. So absolutely, I think it's not just the people who were inside. It's not just the people who lost their families or lost their loved ones.

It is people like Cynthia who were witnessing the absolute destruction of safety and security, everything that we in the West believe that we had had. and Cynthia thought that Tanya would understand her and what she had been through. They had so much in common. They had both lost the loves of their lives inside the North Tower. But Tanya seemed to dodge all of Cynthia's requests to chat. Time in time again, Cynthia would try to connect. But Tanya seemed to actively avoid her.

And Cynthia was left feeling rejected and completely confused. And I just think this is really sad because, tragically, Cynthia basically figured that she wasn't worthy of a survivor's time or attention. She hadn't actually been inside the towers after all. She hadn't had to climb over dead colleagues and nearly burned to death. And so poor Cynthia was left feeling convinced that she had been bothering this poor woman, Tanya had. Someone who had actually survived the attack and lost her fiancé. And this is a sentiment that wasn't isolated to Cynthia.

We absolutely recommend that you guys go and watch the woman who wasn't there. It's on YouTube. It's full of clips from all of these people, not just Tanya, but other survivors as well. And there is this repeated theme that survivors really felt like their stories were insignificant compared to Tanya and what she had been through and the horrors she had seen and the enormity of her loss. So what she's done is gaslight them into thinking that their trauma is not particularly, particularly valid actually. And they do sort of add that Tanya told them actively not to feel like that, but it's a pretty unavoidable side effect of what she's done. There's so many of

them just saying, like, I felt like such a charlatan and a fraud for feeling down for not being able to get out of bed in the morning because I was like, I was okay. I was way below the collision point. You know, look at what Tanya's been through. Why am I complaining? It is such a headfuck what she did to these people. And they do say, and all the text messages that you see and the messages that you see posted on the forum by Tanya is her telling people not to feel that way, that everybody's trauma is equal.

But Linda, the friend that we mentioned earlier, who she made read her, like, living eulogy at Wells Crowther's Memorial, she does say that Tanya would do this thing that she said she had been told to do in therapy, right? Tanya told Linda that she had to practice these flooding exercises, where she had to talk and talk and talk and talk about her trauma in front of another survivor. And she chose Linda to do this. And Linda was like, we did this for so long.

We did this so many times. And at some point I told her, I can't do this anymore. I can't cope with this anymore. I'm so sorry, Tanya. I feel like a terrible friend, but I can't do this anymore. And Tanya, apparently, according to Linda, who I absolutely believe, said that she turned to her and say, how dare you say that to me. What I went through is so much worse than what you went through.

So I don't believe that that was what she was saying when she knew there wouldn't be evidence of it. It's all pretty gross. But it has to be said that amongst all this deception, Tanya Head was living the lie to the absolute full and getting some pretty good results for the survivors. She worked tirelessly to get the survivors' recognition,

campaign for more resources and more support, and she was really bloody good at it. Much better, unfortunately, than everybody else in the group. Probably because they were all fucking traumatised. And she's not. In fact, it was thanks to Tanya Head that the survivors got their own display in the visitor centre at the World Trade Centre.

That's fucking wild. Something they had wanted for so long. A full four years after the attacks, Tanya had brought their narrative into the official fold. But, with every positive, seemingly selfless step forward for the survivors, be in no mistake, Danny got something for herself too. Recognition. Which was always, really, I think, her ultimate goal.

I don't see how it can have been anything else. No, we'll talk about her motive, like motives later, because we'll have a little look at, like, her childhood and things like that. But, yeah, she's very good at it. She does a very good job. and some of the survivors even say, even after we found out she had been lying about everything, I wasn't that mad,

because she did so much for us as a cause, so much for us as a community, as a group of people. So as the Tribute Centre was opened on the fourth anniversary of the attack, Tanya was invited along with the other survivors to be a part of the big day. She was, after all the person who had caught them, their exhibit. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, New York Governor, George Pataki and the mayor at the time of the attacks Rudy Giuliani were all there. And there was Tanya

in all the videos, all the pictures you can see her standing there right alongside all of them, front and bloody centre. After that, along with the other survivors from the network, Tanya began to lead tours around the tribute at the World Trade Centre. She talked of the unimaginable horror and total destruction of that day and how she'd survived in the face of immense adversity. She spoke about her grief and her loss, how much the city had suffered, but she always maintained that New Yorkers could all come together to find hope and to move on.

And this gained her a lot of respect, a respect that Tanya absolutely reveled in, I think what she's done, obviously, if you take the ethics out of it, what she's done there is quite clever. Because after 9-11, the surge of patriotism was enormous, understandably, specifically being a New Yorker. So now she's got that in her bag as well. Absolutely. She is a lying genius. She really, really is. It's like she's studied for this.

Because you're right, after terrorist attacks, you do have. have that feeling. After the horrible, horrible, disgusting, despicable London bridge attacks that happened here in London. After 7-7, there was this feeling of, you know, as Londoners, we're not going to be scared. There was all these things of like, because the fucking piece of shit that had gone in and killed all those people in bars in London Bridge, people are like, oh, maybe people in London will be scared to go out. Maybe this will hurt the nightlife. Maybe this will destroy these parts of London. And people made a point. Yeah, we're not scared. Of next weekend. No, we're going. We're not scared.

and she capitalises on that. She pulls every little string and she's so bloody good at it. But there was one thing that Tanya loved more than anything else. Attention from the media. All along, Tanya had manipulated her story for her own notoriety.

And like we said, she was really, really good at it, spinning her dramatic narrative to journalists all the while ensuring that her story was the most tragic above all others. And this ensured Tanya a place in the history books. She even bragged to the other survivors when her picture appeared in the papers. There was something that she was clearly very proud of when she got.

And soon, Tanya heard would hit the limelight jackpot. When on the 7th of September 2006, her incredible escape from the towers was written up as a heroic story in a long form, feel-good piece in the New York Daily News. It was the five-year anniversary of the attacks, and people wanted to see how a survivor had put her broken life back together.

But, like Icarus, Tanya would soon find herself with some pretty melty wings. Because this article sparked the interest of another publication, The New York Times. The New York Times had been hearing the name Tanya Head for quite a while. the members of the Survivor Network kept mentioning that she'd be the perfect person to also focus their anniversary piece on

and this is really sad because the New York Times had reached out to people within the Survivors Network and all of them had declined the offer to be the person that they focused their profile on because they said Tanya's story is better Tanya's been through worse, you have to speak to her, don't speak to me. So over and over again, the journalist at the New York Times heard the same thing, speak to Tanya. Survivors insisted that the New York Times

wouldn't be able to tell the full story without contacting Tanya Head directly. It was almost as if nobody else thought that their story matched up to Tanya's, because that is what she had made them believe. No story was quite as dramatic or had quite so many, let's face it, paper-shift-in details. The man with the ring, he's dying. Wells, the hero that everybody knows about. her fiance not making it out alive

it's got it all but despite all of that probably because of I think in some time because it's too good it's too good something didn't sit right

with the New York Times journalists and look I don't want to take anything away from the journalist that broke this story but I'm like all it needed was the tiniest little scratch she wasn't even in the

fucking country. Well, you know, in the advent of caliphate, I think we can agree that the New York Times do miss some things sometimes. Yeah, and this was back when they were actually doing proper journalism. Brookmanie, I still love you. Anyway, it turned out that back in 2002, the New York Times had interviewed all 19 people who were on or above the floors. where the plane's actually hit.

And Tanya Head's name was not on that list. Actually, there was no trace of her from 2001 at all. So they got in touch with the woman herself, and at first, Tanya appeared more than happy to talk to them. But the Times found that they really struggled to lock down any actual concrete information with Tanya. So the journalist continued to research and fact-check her story independently. They contacted the other survivors to understand exactly what Tanya had told them.

And immediately, they could see there was a total lack of consistency. Her story had morphed again and again with each retelling from person to person, the details shifted and nothing added up. There were just too many holes. Though the survivors had no idea why at the time, it was clear that Tanya was petrified of what the New York Times would write. She would cry and she would say that she didn't understand why they were asking her so many questions.

And many survivors sympathised. They were outraged on Tanya's behalf. But they softly encouraged her to keep talking. Angelo Gugliamo is a documentary filmmaker and author who was quite close to Tanya at the time and we've got him here for you speaking to NPR about how the revelations spilled out. What was going on behind the scenes was significant for all of us and eye-opening. You know, it went from, why is the Times harassing her?

Why is this reporter repeatedly asking her questions around the anniversary when she doesn't want to talk to him? To why isn't she answering these questions? It's not like he's asking her questions that haven't been asked of her before. to, oh, oh. That's the moment the penny drops for a lot of people. But before it dropped, Tanya Head had got away with lying, totally unchecked, unchallenged, encouraged for six long years. But finally, the jig was up, and the New York Times broke. the story. The headline read, in a 9-11 survival tale, the pieces just don't fit. The truth

was finally out. But I have to say, the best headline I've seen on this is skies of lies. That is good. That's very good. So all right, let's get to the truth, shall we? Mm-hmm. Here's what we do know. Tanya's real name is Alicia Estever's head. Not Tanya Head. And on September the 11th, 2001, Alicia was not in the World Trade Center.

As we told you at the start, she wasn't even in the United States. She was some 4,000 miles away in Barcelona, Spain. Alicia came from a very wealthy Spanish family. and was attending a Barcelona business school at the time. As soon as the time started digging, the House of Cards almost instantly came tumbling down. Because what I cannot stress enough

is that all of the things about Alicia's life were just so extremely easy to verify. It's just that no one had done it before because why would they? Exactly, that's it. It's, you know, who is going to do that? She's disgusting. But like, who would even, like, if you even had a niggle of doubt, I think what I would do if I had that feeling of like, oh, actually, I would be like, shut up, you horrible piece of shit. How dare you think that of someone who has been through so much?

Absolutely. The newspaper also contacted Merrill Lynch. Because remember, that's the company Alicia said she had been working for at the time. But surprise, surprise, there was no record of a Tanya head or an Alicia head ever having worked. there. The company was completely unable to verify any part of her story. So what about Dave? Her fiancé, as I

told you, he was indeed a real person and he did indeed die on September 11th. But everything else was again very much a lie. The Times contacted Dave's family who said they had absolutely no idea who this Tanya Alicia person was

and they said that Dave wasn't in a relationship with anyone, let alone with her. Yeah. Awkward. Just to hammer this home, it's not like Tanya happened to be in New York and saw the devastation and then sort of attached herself to it. She lived in space.

So to even begin this mind-boggling hoax, she had to board a plane to New York with the express intent of starting a new, new life in the United States of America, specifically as a 9-11 survivor. Yep. I think that is just such an important part of the story to understand. She wasn't there.

She just saw it on the news, thousands and thousands of Mars away, and like a moth to a flame, got on a plane and flew to the US to make up this fucking lie. It's bonkers. So, when and why, personally, did Tanya, Alycia, whatever, when did the fairy queen, hatch this plan? Did she write her first comments in the online group from her flat in Barcelona? And how did it feel when she did that? Did she just want to see what would happen?

I can't imagine even having that beginning of a thought process. Whatever her reasoning, why she did it, doesn't, not doesn't matter, but the story was out. That's the key thing. Very much so. And the New York Times obviously did some digging into her background. And again, this is what we do know about Alicia's childhood and her sort of formative years. She'd grown up, like I said, very rich As part of a very wealthy and very well-connected family in Spain

She was also the youngest and the only girl And friends say she was absolutely spoiled rotten And doted on by her parents She went to the very best country clubs She had her pick of thoroughbred horses There was nothing The little Alicia couldn't have Except maybe what she really truly craved

Perhaps what a lot of teenagers age girls, maybe crave. Romantic attention from the boys. Alicia's friends say that she'd always been a bit heavy, and sometimes the kids had been cruel when she'd been growing up. They say it definitely hurt Alicia, but that she was always still a fun and positive person to be around, though in interviews they do admit that she did lie a lot as a teenager, mainly about secret boyfriends in other towns and other cities that none of them had ever met. And then in 1992, Alyssa, Elyssia's sort of gilded life took a bad turn.

Because the Times also found out that her brother and her father had both been sent to prison back in Spain for fraud. Amazing. When Elyssia was still a teenager. And this situation had, as you can imagine, significantly hurt the family financially and reputational. It's interesting that, like, I accept that, you know, she wasn't getting attention from boys and stuff and that is really painful and like being bullied through being fat etc etc a lot of people can identify with those experiences and a lot of

people have done bad things because of things like that but it's interesting that she's not a nobody in Spain as she gets more and more famous she's really banking on nobody in Spain turning on the TV honestly this is one of the things that are so bizarre about it because yeah you're completely right. She's like, in the upper echelons of Spanish society. And her friends are like, they only found out what she'd been up to when they saw her

fucking New York Times article. Jerry Bogat, the co-founder of the Survivors Network, and Richard Zimbler, an active advocate, were both left after the article was published, feeling totally betrayed. Because there were hundreds

of actual survivors, but there were still those who had a strange sense of loyalty to the woman that they had known to be Tanya Head. A lot of survivors had mixed feelings and some of them even wanted to protect her. They were connected to her.

They'd grieved and grown alongside her. They'd bonded over the years. It would be impossible not to. Not only thinking that you have this shared trauma but, you know, traveling together, touring together, working towards the same thing, serving a purpose higher than yourself.

Healing, peace, patriotism, being a New Yorker, moving on, healing the nation. So, Tanya had done, like, tangibly good things. She'd helped survivors get access to ground zero. She'd given money to the network. She'd raised funds. And she never took a penny for herself. And Jerry Bogatch is a good person to speak to this

because I think some people will be skeptical in the blow. How do you know she never took any money? But she's very, very intimately involved in this network. they're the ones getting the funding and then allocating these resources that is coming in. And Jerry Bogatch, he fucking hates Tanya, right? Because she tries to oust him. She tries to say that he's not, like, working in the best interests of the survivors. He's not aggressive enough.

He's not getting them the recognition and the support that they need. She basically gets them kicked out. It's this fucking network. He founded it. But Jerry still says, I can tell you she never took any money from the network. And I think for some people that might be, like, confusing as well, because they might think there is a more straightforward motive. I don't think the money ever played into it.

She doesn't need money. She needs to be affirmed. Only those who were physically injured or the family members of those who had died could make claims from the Federal Victim Compensation Fund for 9-11. And Tanya never got a penny of that either. She says the story about her arm being blown off, but she can't proof that.

Even if she had applied, she wouldn't have got the money, but she never applies. And she never applies on behalf of Dave. either, because she is bereaved in her, you know. So technically, if she wasn't a big fat fucking liar, she would be entitled to compensation from that fund. Yeah. So there is this feeling amongst some, not all, some survivors,

that whatever Tanya had lied about, which is everything, she'd still done a lot of good for them. Absolutely. And just to hammer home, the fact that I don't think it's about money, is that although she was completely lying about Dave and he wasn't her fiancée slash husband or whatever, there were people who I came across during the research for this who defrauded the victim's compensation fund.

Oh, I'm sure. Who pretended that they had a loved one who had died in there and scammed the fund out of literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if Tanya had wanted to do it, she probably could have. Oh, I have no doubt that she would have been able to write a cracking application. But she didn't care to because it was never really about that. So yes, Tanya. Let's accept that she did good things for the Survivors Network.

But ultimately, it had all been a total farce. Her hoax had lasted for years, and she had taken up so much space, spinning her lies and feeding her insatiable appetite for attention. But, as she said in a phone call to the New York Times after the expose, I've done nothing illegal. And look, I didn't write this in the notes, But I was thinking about it when I was doing this.

She reminds me a bit of Rachel Dollars up. Mm. Right. The woman, if you can't remember, if you guys don't know, she was, of course, the white woman who pretended to be a black woman, who then becomes, like, head of the NAACP and all of this stuff. And she does a lot of good things, but she's lying. I find this worse. I find this worth, personally, then Rachel Dollars are. And I don't know, people have mixed feelings on that.

But a lot of people were like, she did good things. But people were like, she took up space that someone who was actually. a black woman should have been doing. And I guess that's how people might feel about Tanya doing here, but the survivors don't really feel that way. They feel lied to and they feel manipulated and they feel used by her. But it's a tricky one

isn't it? I think it is true. She didn't do anything illegal. But it is hard to pinpoint exactly what Tanya head or Alicia head would have done that warranted some form of punishment, like legal retribution, you know? It's a moral. It's unethical.

But it's not illegal. Yeah, being a piece of shit isn't illegal. And that's something we just have to deal with, unfortunately. Yeah. And because she hadn't done anything illegal, like defrauding people out of money or something like that, for many people, it was really, really difficult to understand her motive. Why? Try to involve yourself in such a tragic event.

For the attention, to feel loved, to feel part of something, to feel special. You hear the other survivors say in interviews, why would she want to be us? But that's the thing. She didn't want to be one of them. No one would. Alessia Head wanted all of the trappings of being a 9-11 survivor, the empathy, the care, the attention, the victimhood,

the status and the reverence that comes through victimhood, all without the trauma. It's the... Ends justify the means for her. and this did just come into my head and I have to say it and I'm really sorry but it's like a really really twisted version of people who go on Love Island

because they want to be famous yeah exactly yeah I really think what she's doing is she's because there you're exploiting your strengths right right yes yeah that's the only difference I would say it's all I really want a sheen brand deal and I'm fit and I'm fit and I'm going to fucking get all the plastic surgery and I'm going to starve myself

and I'm going to hit the gym and I'm going to do all those things and I'm going to get on there and I'm going to fucking graft to get those deal but I'm going to play to my strengths here Tanya Head exploits the victimhood

that comes from this and that's why I compare her to Rachel Dollazole because that's what Rachel Dollazole wanted to do. She wanted to put her position in a place where she felt society would view her as a victim or view her as somebody to be empathised with

to view her as somebody who was like fighting through adversity to get to this position because she didn't feel like she could do that as a white woman and that's why she puts herself in a position where she thinks this is what society sees as a victim and that's what I'm going to push myself as and that's what Tanya Head does because Tanya Head is clearly a very capable, intelligent, well-spoken, articulate woman who could probably if she had set her mind to something that was productive could have probably achieved a hell of a lot in life but she doesn't because what motivates her is the attention. It's the being

part of something. And I also think it is not just wanting to be a part of like the single biggest event that happened in the Western world in the fucking 21st century. It is also that she is the hero. She's not only a survivor, but from within this

network she's also saving all these people. And she's virtuous. And she's overcome. She's a part of something bigger than herself. She's a part of this enormous thing and some small role she plays makes her significant. Yes.

I think when I first read about Tanya, Alicia, whatever, I thought it was a bit Munchausen-y, right? A little bit Munchausenie. And typically we see with people who have Munchausen that typically they were ignored as children. There was maybe like a deficit of attention from a parental figure and that's why they seek it out in the ways that they do. That's not the case with Alicia. She got all the attention in the world when she was growing up, from her parents at least,

right? So I don't know if it was just about the attention. I think it was in a way to feel powerful, to feel like, and, you know, if you read about narcissists, and again, not diagnosing Alicia Head as one, but I think, you know, it probably wouldn't be a million miles off. But it's that feeling to feel like, I am important, I am relevant, and something I have done is changed the course of history, has shifted reality in some way. The world is different because I was here. Yes. And I think that is what motivated. Bates Tanya head.

Sorry, Alyssa head. And can I name an actual survivor? No, I can't. No. Do I know who the head of the NWACP is now? Nope. Nope. Doesn't matter. Fuck.

Not saying it doesn't matter, I'm saying. No, I know, but like I'm the problem, you know? No, you're not. How much will we fucking know? All I'm saying is it's like, it's like when people say, well, nobody knows the victims of these serial killers. They only know the killers. It's because Tanya made herself the most interesting person

in the fucking... Survivors Network. And also, because other survivors weren't trying to make their names big. No, I... So that's why we wouldn't know them. She tried to. She's also not the only one who lied. Another notable liar is stand-up comedian and actor, Steve Ranazizi.

I think that's how you say it. Good. He looks... I didn't recognise the name, but when you see a picture of him, like, yeah, I was like, oh, you. He too claimed that he worked for Merrill Lynch on the 54th floor of the North Tower, so a few floors down from Tanya. But actually, he worked 40 blocks away from the World Trade Centre, and in 2015, his story was too debunked by the New York Times. Yeah. And I think it's probably pretty clear that that guy lied to boost his career. God.

While other 9-11 scammers absolutely did it for money. Like I said, there were people who were absolutely conning the victim's compensation fund for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. But with Alicia, we know it wasn't about the money. It fed something much more primal in her and need to belong to feel important. And like we said, to have that mark left upon the world. Alicia's always kept quiet with regards to her reasoning. So we can only speculate. That's the only avenue we have available.

her friend from the time, Angelo Guillermo, co-wrote a book all about Alyssa's deception. He described how he went to her apartment after the Times article had come out. Because they had been so close, he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, or maybe a chance to explain. And she told him that she would tell him her story one day. But she never has. Instead, she disappeared. Never seen in New York again. No explanation.

No apology. Just a trail of lies in her wake. And because what she had done wasn't a crime, there was essentially no repercussions for Alicia Head. She was swiftly replaced as the president of the Survivor's Network. She disappeared from the group and from all of their lives. Six years after the attack, the exposing of Alicia's betrayal,

reopened old wounds and deepen the trauma for many of the survivors. That's the extra disgusting bit, isn't it? She's not just a liar. She is exploiting the emotions of deeply traumatized people. And it's also putting in place a question mark that never would have existed before. So... Oh, of who else is lying? You're now a 9-11 survivor.

But are you a 8-11 survivor? Really? Are you another one of her? Parking out. As far as we know, Alicia is back in Spain. And there were reports that in 2012 she was sacked from her job at an insurance company because they found out who she was. And some people were like, well, that's not fair. But I was like, I think you have to have a pretty aboveboard, like, credibility rating as a insurance company.

Well, yeah. Someone who's working there. That's the idea. Someone who's working there who's like, defrauded the world with her lives. And in 2021, Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that she is in Spain, living in Barcelona with her mum, who's called Acacia Head. And in the process of refurbishing a shop premises, that's what they were getting up to is their little mummy daughter project in 2021.

If you're in Barcelona, go and have a look. I cannot imagine having to look my mother in the face and say that I had lied about being in 9-11 and I was famous because of it. Fucking hell. I know. To be a fly on the wall of that conversation.

At least she had to do that. That is a small mercy. I mean, obviously her mum made her, so she's not going to be normal. But, like, at least there was, you know, it's like, you're at school and you get in trouble, not you, obviously, but like normal people who do get in trouble at school, I would always be so much more worried about telling my mum. Oh, yeah.

Sit me in detention all day long, mate. Please don't tell my mum. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, the reports of what Tanya has been, sorry, Alicia has been up to since all that, we don't know. There was some, like, reports I saw of the fact that she might have been involved in, like, sanitation services for COVID-19, which, like, was full of fucking scammers. So, like, makes sense that she would have. Yeah. Can wear a mask? No one knows who you are.

So, yeah, don't know. The details are pretty sketchy about that, so don't I? Oh, I bet she's doing something. I'm sure she is. I would love to know. But really as quickly as Alicia Head seemed to propel herself to the front and center of the 9-11 survivor's stories. She melted away again just as fast. With no consequences, no public trial,

she was able to enter herself into the story of the most consequential, vent of the 21st century and then disappear into the smoke poof that's what she did poofed back to Spain it is a remarkable story that has been in my head for so long that I'm so glad we have done it now no me too a bit of me is like if I was the Spanish government I'd be like do you want to come and be a spy because you are really fucking good at this truly truly and again I don't know I don't want to give her too much credit right I think When you do watch those clips, the difference between her and other liars we've come across during the course of making this show is that she is more likable. And like you said, I think that helps her.

I don't want to give her too much credit because, like, the New York Times fan. Her story is full of fucking holes. It's the fact that she was able to hide within an environment in which nobody was scrutinizing her. Yeah. No one was looking for the holes because why would you? You're distracted by all the trauma and the pain. So that's it, guys. That is the story of Tanya Head, Alicia Head.

And I would say, one of the biggest hoaxes of all time because it was attached to, like we said, one of the most consequential events in living memory. And, yeah, basically how she was able to pull it off, why we think she did it. And as for where she is now, I don't know. But that's it. Yeah.

So if you listened to this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, then that's lovely. Thank you very much. But if you would like to watch the video version so that you can see the clips that we played and all the other sort of images and video clips and audio clips that we incorporated, then head on over to the Red Handed YouTube channel where you can do that. And, you know, also look at our lovely faces while we talk about. Yeah. And in the meantime, what would Steve Bouchermy do? Quite. And we will see you next time for another episode of Red Handed.

Goodbye. To listen to shorthand every week, start your seven-day free trial with Wondry Plus, and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in the Wondry app. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part-com. The stories we cover are well researched. Of the 880 men who survived the attack,

around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group. With a touch of humor. Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapist to other years. There's been like eight of them. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. That mother f***er is not real!

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tail of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most known notorious crimes. You should tune in to our podcast. Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.