NY
Too good to be true…

"It was like King Kong had come up and basically taken a chunk out of the north tower. Black smoke was billowing out into the blue sky. It was such a contrast, I'll never be able to forget it. I hit the marble wall. When I came to I was in terrible pain, like a million needles were sticking in me at once. I realised that my back and my arm were burning. I couldn't stand. For I while I had heard people around me asking for help, moaning and screaming. I managed to start crawling, over people who were burnt, who had lost body parts and blood. There were piles of people - it was pure carnage.For me, and for New York, 9/11 was our worst day, and also our best day. Because that day the people here really shone through all the tragedy. It's not about the death and destruction for us any more. We didn't have a choice on 9/11 - somebody took that choice for us. But we choose what we do with it now"
Tania Head, survivor, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11

Tania Head has said many other things over the past six years…

That she was a diplomat's daughter…
That she had degrees from Harvard and Stanford…
That she had started out as a management consultant at Andersen Consulting and had worked in Britain, Argentina, France, Singapore and the Netherlands…
That she had met her boyfriend Dave in a fight over a taxi. She tore up his proffered business card in fury but, a month later, they ran into each other again at a business meeting and started to date.
That they had committed themselves to each other in Hawaii but their official wedding was to be held in New York in October 2001. However, they had already begun to live together with their golden retriever, Elvis.
That she was working on the mergers team at the investment bank Merrill Lynch…
That on that morning of 9/11, she was working on the 78th floor of the southern Twin Tower…
That Dave, who worked in the northern one, died in the terrorist attack…
That she felt compelled to escape by her promise to return a wedding band to a victim's wife…
That she was rescued by a citizen hero, Welles Remy Crowther, an equities trader who has been credited with saving several people on the 78th floor.
That when she woke up in the hospital, it was only to hear that Dave, who worked in the northern one, had died in the terrorist attack…

Tania Head gained universal sympathy. She became the president of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network and a tour guide at ground zero through the Tribute World Trade Center Visitor Center.
Tania has spoken to journalists for years and recounted her story hundreds of times among other survivors.
But here we are…
Merrill Lynch confirmed that no one by the name of Tania Head had ever worked on the 78th floor of that company.
The family of the victim who Head claimed was her killed fiancé, or her husband in some versions of the story, and whom the paper identified only by his first name, Dave, to protect his family's privacy, told reporters they had never heard of Head.
Neither Harvard nor Stanford reported having a student named Tania Head.
Tania Head was not in the World Trade Centre on 9/11.

Photo: Michael Bryant/ The Philadelphia Inquirer