Tania Head: The 9/11 Survivor Who Wasn't There

In this episode of The Compendium, we uncover the crazy story of Tania Head: the 9/11 survivor who wasn’t there. Once considered a symbol of resilience, Tania captivated the world with her vivid, heartbreaking details of her escape from the South Tower and the tragic loss of her fiancé. But years later, the shocking truth emerged that Tania was lying.

Today we will share how her lies deceived survivors, brought her fame, and raised questions about pathological liars and the need for connection. From the man in the red bandana to her rise as a leader of a 9/11 support group, this story is as baffling as it is heartbreaking.

We give you just the Compendium, but if you want more, here are our resources:

• The Woman Who Wasn’t There (2012) - by Angelo Guglielmo
• The 9/11 Faker Documentary - by Angelo Guglielmo
• David Dunlap Exposé - The Times
• Welles Crowther and the Red Bandana - Website
• Psychology of Pseudologia Fantastica - Wikipedia

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Credits:

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro and Outro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland by Aleksey Chistilin
• All the Latest Things Intro: Clowns by Giulio Fazio

Chapters

• 0:00 Sneak Peak
• 0:48 Welcome to The Compendium
• 6:01 Tania Head: The 9/11 Survivor Who Wasn't There
• 1:04:12 Outro

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: She also says that every year on the anniversary of the attack, she drops a yellow taxi toy cab in the reflection pool at ground zero to commemorate Dave and to remind him that she still loved him. 

[00:00:12] And here's the wild part, like Dave is a real person. But he never knew Tanya so every year there's poor Dave in the afterlife scratching his head saying why can't I remember this bitch?

[00:00:48] Welcome to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. A weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. We explore stories from the darker corners of [00:01:00] true crime, the annuls of your old unread history books, and the who's who of extraordinary people.

[00:01:05] I'm your Ringmaster this week, Kyle Recy. 

[00:01:08] Adam Cox: And I'm your circus stripper for this week, Adam Cox. 

[00:01:12] Kyle Risi: How's that going to go down with the kids? It's an adult circus. Actually Talking about adult circuses, I was going to buy Phoebe, our friend Phoebe, a children's book that I came across called Ben's Big Load.

[00:01:28] And basically Ben has his big truck and it's got this big giant white load on the back of it And he's desperate to empty it and no one will take his load.

[00:01:40] Eventually he does find a guy up in the mountains. Oh yeah. And it's a guy. Ralph, yeah. He's basically the guy who likes to close the fridge with his hips. And yeah, he takes his load. 

[00:01:50] Adam Cox: Right. Um, I'm guessing it's a book of just a lot of innuendo, right?

[00:01:54] Kyle Risi: A lot of innuendo you could read it to a kid and it would just go straight over their head. Except on the last [00:02:00] page when there's a giant penis. Yeah. 

[00:02:02] Do you know how, like, Spotify do their rapt round about the new year, right? Well, Tesco's, our supermarket, I started doing one as well. Have you seen this? 

[00:02:12] Adam Cox: Like all your club card points, where they go on? 

[00:02:14] Kyle Risi: Exactly, and what your top three most purchased items, what your meal deal of choice is, and how that compares to the general public.

[00:02:21] I found ours. 

[00:02:22] Adam Cox: What is it? 

[00:02:23] Kyle Risi: Let's, let me quiz you, what's the third most purchased item?

[00:02:27] Adam Cox: God, I mean, milk's on there every week. Mm. You'd be wrong. Um. 

[00:02:32] Kyle Risi: Tomatoes? Mm mm. I've got the props here. The props. Item number three, and of course, our listeners can't see this, so you're gonna have to describe it. 

[00:02:42] Adam Cox: Well, it's a tuna tuna. It's a tuna tuna, basically. I'm assuming they're including, like, four tins in one pack? Probably not. It's just tuna. Okay. 

[00:02:53] Kyle Risi: Okay. Item number two. Do you want to have a guess? 

[00:02:55] Adam Cox: Okay. Um, I still think it's milk, but I'm guessing it's not milk. It's not [00:03:00] milk. Two faced. Nope.

[00:03:02] Kyle Risi: You won't be surprised by this. I hate the fact that you buy this. Because you always open up five in one go. 

[00:03:08] Adam Cox: Oh, haha, Protein Yoghurt. 

[00:03:10] Kyle Risi: Protein Yoghurt. 

[00:03:11] Adam Cox: Okay, yeah, that makes sense. 

[00:03:12] Kyle Risi: Okay, so we're gonna come to number one, and I don't know how I feel about this. 

[00:03:16] Adam Cox: What do you reckon? It's gotta be, um, bloody Snacker Jacks because that was on the list a lot last year. No. Avocados? Nope. I have no idea. Here we go.

[00:03:26] Kyle Risi: What the 

[00:03:30] Adam Cox: fuck? Onions? Onions? I mean, yeah, sometimes I will buy like three at a time and then I realize I've got three in the cupboard. 

[00:03:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's the number one item. 

[00:03:37] Adam Cox: Wow. 

[00:03:38] Kyle Risi: But there is a whole subreddit, called Tesco, where people have been sharing their most purchased items. And I was actually like humbly, proud of. Our top three items. 

[00:03:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. Then none of them are like sweets or anything like that. 

[00:03:51] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Adam, the things that are on people's lists are just outrageous. This person's number one purchase item was a two liter bottle of Coke.

[00:03:59] Adam Cox: [00:04:00] Ew. 

[00:04:00] Kyle Risi: 362 bottles of Coke that they bought in a year. That's crazy. And then the second one was. And then number three was a 1. 75 liter bottle of coke. So they alternated between the big bottle and the small bottle. And then we're sitting here with bloody a can of tuna, fromage frais and a bloody white onion. 

[00:04:21] Adam Cox: To be fair, I could make a meal with that and high in protein. That's true. And a little bit oniony. Aren't you proud of that? I am, I eat all those things. 

[00:04:29] Kyle Risi: We do eat all those things, but onion's just weird. I guess it's just in so many things. But when you look at the categories of what we bought. Number one category was salads and antipasties. Then we had dairy, which is the second biggest category, then frozen vegetables, and then just fresh vegetables was the fourth category. And these are all things I'm really proud of. 

[00:04:49] Adam Cox: Well, I'm the one that does the shop. So I should be proud of that. And you're pretty much you're gloating to the rest of the listeners going, Hey, we're healthy. Are you? 

[00:04:58] Kyle Risi: But I didn't even realize what I thought we were [00:05:00] really unhealthy. But then we also see our meal deals. And there was two meal deals on there. Your meal deal was clearly a chicken sandwich. Two eggs. Chicken triple. No, it's not eggs. Well, I mean it was chicken, sandwich, eggs, and a bottle of water.

[00:05:16] And mine was a salad, a pasta salad, two eggs, and a bottle of water. I never buy eggs. That must be yours. It must be mine then, yeah. Maybe it's me who's alternating. Crazy. 

[00:05:26] Adam Cox: Anyway, Adam. This has almost become All The Latest Things, Karl.

[00:05:30] Careful. 

[00:05:30] Kyle Risi: Freaks. This is just a reminder that All The Latest Things is now its own episode. If you've been wondering why you haven't heard one in a while, That's the reason. And now you can listen to all the latest things free on Patreon. Just sign up as a free member after you finish this episode. And don't forget, signing up also gives you early access to next week's episode a full seven days before anyone else.

[00:05:51] If you've managed to devour all of our free content and are craving more, you can become a certified freak to unlock all of our upcoming episodes.

[00:05:59] And please [00:06:00] don't forget, leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. Your support really helps us reach more freaks of the show.

[00:06:06] But Adam, today's compendium, we are diving into an assembly of stories that show how compassion can both be our strength and our vulnerability. 

[00:06:16] Adam Cox: Um Yeah, I've got nothing. 

[00:06:19] Kyle Risi: This week I'm actually going to be telling you a story about a woman called Tanya who miraculously survived the 9 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York back in 2001.

[00:06:30] And her story ended up shining out amongst all the other survival stories because of her vivid recounting of how she barely escaped from the South Tower, but also she lost a fiancé who was in the North Tower as well. 

[00:06:44] Now, her story was by far the most traumatic because of this, it was easy for her to emerge as the most triumphant and resilient symbols of what it meant to be a 9 11 survivor in fact, she was considered a hero because at the time [00:07:00] they weren't getting what they needed in terms of like support and stuff for the fact that they lost their family members. 

[00:07:06] But then in 2007. It was revealed that she had actually never been to the World Trade Center and that her whole story was a complete fat lie. 

[00:07:17] Adam Cox: Hang on, what? So, she got all this support, and all this coverage. Yeah. Only for six, so six or seven years later, they then found out actually she'd been lying the whole time.

[00:07:29] Kyle Risi: She was lying the whole time. 

[00:07:31] Adam Cox: So was she benefiting from this? Was she getting money? What was going through her head? 

[00:07:34] Kyle Risi: Adam, she wasn't actually making any money from this, if anything, it just seems to have been about her building these human connections for the first time in her life and then getting high as a consequence from the fame and the recognition that she got from that in return. 

[00:07:50] And obviously, while Tanya earns a spot amongst our female scammers that we've tackled in the past, her story is really tricky and really different to [00:08:00] kind of any other scammer story that we've come across because she wasn't really looking to profit from it.

[00:08:06] Adam Cox: Yeah, but obviously we'll get into it, but I just feel like that was a disastrous event, which, it changed the world. And it sounds like if she's lowly or just trying to make friendships and connections, then there's other ways of doing that.

[00:08:19] Kyle Risi: True. And I've got a few explanations that we'll get on to later on as to what her motivations might have been. But today I'm going to be telling you the story of Tanya Head, the woman who was never there.

[00:08:29] So her story is a really tricky one to navigate because she did bring a lot of good to the survivors network but it's also bad because everything good that she did was pretty much built on this cruel lie.

[00:08:39] Tanya did eventually grow to genuinely believe her own lies. She had fabricated the truth in such vivid detail that she immersed herself in it And the condition that psychologists say she had was something called like Pseudologica Fantastica Where a person's pathological lies end up blurring that sense of reality as they keep repeating it [00:09:00] time and time again.

[00:09:01] But essentially our story starts about 18 months after the September 11th attacks on a Yahoo forum when a group was formed called the World Trade Center United Family Group. and It was formed by the families and the survivors affected by the events of 9 11 as a way to provide mutual support and comfort to family members dealing with loss and also on top of that to share information about recovery efforts, victim identification and various memorial plans that were kind of. been undertaken at the time across the United States. 

[00:09:31] But most importantly, this group was set up to advocate for the interests of the victims of the families in the aftermath of the attack, which, believe it or not, had to really scream just to be heard because they just weren't getting what they needed from the authorities.

[00:09:47] in 2003 a woman called Tanya joined the group and posted a thread sharing her story. At first, her story was pretty vague, initially it said that she was in the South Tower and that she had managed to [00:10:00] escape somehow. But as vague as it was, As this first initial post was, it instantly attracted a lot of welcoming messages and sympathy from other members, and this was enough to encourage her to continue to post more and more, drip feeding in more about her story . Slowly From there, her story started to become increasingly more detailed, talking about how she had to climb over people's dismembered body parts, and at one point physically climbing over a pile of dead bodies.

[00:10:26] I mean, why would you make that up? That's what's crazy here, like we now know. That this is a bullshit story. So when you hear this, you go, why would you say stuff like that? 

[00:10:36] Adam Cox: Yeah. In some ways, it's interesting that you told us up front because you could have led me on. And then I've been like, what?

[00:10:41] Kyle Risi: Well, I initially wanted to frame Tanya's lie as this massive twist in the story, revealing that it was all a lie later on but the thing is in order for me to do that I would have need to have kind of recounted her exact story, which I realized I just wasn't comfortable giving what she had actually said any meaningful air time especially knowing that it was all nonsense. 

[00:10:58] Adam Cox: I'm guessing, has she [00:11:00] used, because she wasn't in the tower, pieces of other people's information and stories to kind of almost, yeah, build her own story. 

[00:11:07] Kyle Risi: 100%. This is the thing, she's a massive storytopper and she's constantly A B testing her story as well. A B testing. 

[00:11:13] Seriously, that's it. And the thing is though, it becomes very clear that amongst all the other survival stories in the group, her story was the most extreme compared to anything else that anyone else had shared. So she was slowly kind of embellishing her story to kind of polish it up as time went on.

[00:11:29] Basically, this is what she said. 

[00:11:30] She said that on the day of the 9 11 attack, she was working in the South Tower on the 78th floor for a company called Merrill Lynch, when all of a sudden she heard a noise of the first plane hitting the North Tower.

[00:11:41] As she looked out the window, she saw flames, of course, erupting from the building. In that moment, she immediately thought, of a fiance who was in the North Tower and started counting the floors from the top down to see if he was on one of the effective floors. She knew pretty quickly he was on one of the floors that the plane had hit.

[00:11:58] She says that As she was coming to [00:12:00] terms with this, someone started screaming that there was another plane coming and then, before she knew it, there was a massive explosion she said all she remembers is being flung through the air, the air being sucked out of her lungs, and then hitting a marble wall. When she then came around, her back and her arms were on fire, Which she then goes into detail describing how she could smell her own skin cooking. 

[00:12:24] Adam Cox: So I wasn't quite sure when you say on fire as in like, you know, when your muscles are on fire, but no, she was burning. 

[00:12:29] Kyle Risi: She was literally burning, yeah. She then goes on to say that a man wearing a red bandana, whose name will later be identified as welles crowled her, extinguished the flames on her, hugged her, told her to stay awake, and then went off to find a fireman who could then carry her to safety. 

[00:12:44] Adam Cox: Was he a real person 

[00:12:45] Kyle Risi: Yes. Okay. He is a real person, put a pin in him, because he's very important to the story. 

[00:12:51] Now, eventually, a fireman does find her. He takes her in his arms. As he's doing that, a dying man reaches out to her and begs her to take his wedding ring and give [00:13:00] it back to his wife. She takes the ring and then the fireman takes her downstairs where he manages to roll her underneath a firetruck just as the South Tower collapses. 

[00:13:10] Adam Cox: So what floor was she on? 78th floor. 78th floor. And do you know what, uh, floor the plane hit on the South Tower? 

[00:13:19] Kyle Risi: I'm not quite sure. We know that other people did escape because we know that 18 other people did escape from, from that region. Wow. Okay. 

[00:13:26] She says that following this she passes out and she wakes up six days later in a hospital bed where she's told that her fiancé Dave had just died in the collapse of the North Tower.

[00:13:37] So fucking heartbreaking man. But we also know this is not true. 

[00:13:41] I know, because I almost got wrapped up in it in terms of her, like, this being her story, but the thing is, this is someone else's story, if that makes sense.

[00:13:48] So she then goes on at length about how she was left, completely breath and rendered totally immobile by what had happened, not wanting to live anymore. This went on until Thanksgiving when she started to question why God had [00:14:00] allowed her to survive when so many others had died .

[00:14:03] Eventually, she says that she comes to the realisation that the reason why God has saved her was so that she could go off and help other people. So when she gets out of hospital, she has this whole renewed kind of sense of hope for her life moving forward.

[00:14:17] She returns the wedding ring to the widow of the man who had given it to her. And she says that's when she found and joined the World Trade Center United Family Group. She says it wasn't to get any attention or sympathy for herself. Instead, it was to graciously help other people piece back together their lives in the same way that she had started to do. 

[00:14:34] Adam Cox: Mhm. Can I ask a question? Sure. Did she, has she ever experienced any tragedy in her life which is what this, I don't know, spurred her to this kind of form?

[00:14:46] Kyle Risi: It's an interesting question. She does have some kind of scourge on her arm and her back. How she got that, we don't know. And that did make me question whether or not something bad did happen to her because she certainly wasn't in the [00:15:00] South Tower when it collapsed. So maybe something had happened in her childhood. 

[00:15:03] Adam Cox: So I'm just trying to think why she would join this if she did have very good intentions to help people and just connect with people that were suffering. Maybe she went through some kind of trauma herself, is what I'm thinking.

[00:15:14] Kyle Risi: Possibly. But there's no indication that she did. And the thing is, though, with this story, I can't quite tell if it sounds fake because I know it's fake. people hearing the story and the incredible detail that she goes into, they believe it and they were extremely moved by it. And I guess it's because no one would ever think someone would be so bold to lie about something so devastating, especially in the big way that she did. Do you know what I mean? 

[00:15:36] Adam Cox: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 

[00:15:38] Kyle Risi: So as the story starts striking a chord within the group, she garners like this immense amount of sympathy. She gets underway becoming kind of this pillar of support within this little tiny community and people end up really, really loving her.

[00:15:52] And she did truly inspire many people to pick up the pieces of their lives and look forward, spending countless hours listening and comforting people. She would [00:16:00] strongly just emphasize what it meant to be a survivor, like leading by her example.

[00:16:04] Adam Cox: It's really weird because I'm kind of like, oh, that's really good of her, even though she got like a positive reaction. if she was trying to console me. 

[00:16:11] Kyle Risi: Yep. 

[00:16:12] Adam Cox: And then I found this out. Yeah, you'd be devastated. I think I would be devastated. But I guess I've I've kind of, she's helped me get better. Yep. But I'm going to be like, hang on a minute, and I question everything.

[00:16:22] Kyle Risi: But at the same time, remember, she's also acting like this emotional vampire, draining as much into the air she could for her own supposed suffering whenever kind of the opportunity arose. Her offering of support within the group was extremely conditional. Her dynamic was built on offering comfort and encouragement, but only if there was this kind of reciprocal outpouring of sympathy to her in return.

[00:16:42] So whenever she didn't get that, she would then try to embellish her story just a little bit, adding a new dramatic twist to try and overshadow other people's experiences, trying to make their story seem a little bit inferior to hers. She's a classic story topper, and we all know people like that, do you know what I mean? 

[00:16:58] Adam Cox: They're like, oh I can better [00:17:00] that story. 

[00:17:00] Kyle Risi: Exactly, and if that didn't work, which was rare, she would occasionally lash out at people, forcefully reminding them that what she had gone through was far more traumatic than anything any of them could ever imagine.

[00:17:12] Adam Cox: All right, back in your box, Tanya.

[00:17:14] Kyle Risi: Even though she tells everyone that she's working full time. In reality, she wasn't working at all. She was literally just spending her entire day completely immersed in this group.

[00:17:22] Her involvement became something more tangible when she starts organizing in person gatherings. And At these in person meetings, they would sit like in a circle, not too dissimilar to like an AA meeting and they would take turns sharing.

[00:17:35] But when it was Tanya's turn, her contributions would often feature these total meltdowns, with her acting out these vivid flashbacks. And I know this is meant to be a tragic setting, but I can't help giggle at that image of her delivering this really over the top dramatic monologue, just like you might see from someone like a GCSE drama. 

[00:17:54] Adam Cox: Yeah, or it reminds me, that's probably, it's not the same, but it almost feels like a bit of a. [00:18:00] Character from a Little Britain or sketch show, someone that always wants to have the attention on her. That's kind of what I'm picturing here. Take the story outside of it, you've got someone who's just quite self absorbed. 

[00:18:12] Kyle Risi: Really, like a Marjorie Dawes. Yeah, 

[00:18:14] Adam Cox: exactly, yeah. 

[00:18:15] Kyle Risi: But obviously to the people that are in that room at that time, they're probably like, they're just like, you're so brave. Exactly. Eventually though her story is brought to the attention of a guy called Jerry, I 

[00:18:27] Adam Cox: mean, why start pronouncing names 

[00:18:28] correctly 

[00:18:29] Kyle Risi: now? I know, right? But basically he survived the North Tower and, he was actually a founder of another online support group called the World Trade Center Survivors Network, which at the time had around about 500 members. So, he reaches out to Tanya, they arrange to meet, and just like everyone else, he feels this immense amount of sympathy towards her. 

[00:18:47] In retrospect, though, he does admit that he does have a few doubts. Especially after she shows him the scars on her back and her arms. Like, to him, they just didn't really look like burn [00:19:00] scars at all. 

[00:19:00] But of course, he takes her word for it. After all, no one really knows. Like I said, would imagine anyone would make this stuff up, but then also put themselves in the center of this community, primed for, potentially being exposed almost every single day.

[00:19:16] Adam Cox: Yeah, it's just, even though you might have your doubts, or you think maybe the story is embellished. I don't think you'd ever question her to that degree. 

[00:19:23] Kyle Risi: But at the same time, no one wants to be their dick, right? That questions a 9 11 survivor. 

[00:19:28] Adam Cox: That lost her husband or fiance. 

[00:19:29] Kyle Risi: Exactly. 

[00:19:30] So the two of them, they become really close friends. He's incredibly protective of her because obviously he's, by this point, seen firsthand the horrific flashbacks and the emotional meltdowns that she would have. While at the same time, still appearing to force herself to show this incredible degree of strength and support to other people.

[00:19:49] Eventually Jerry started to recognize the impact that Tanya was having, not only in supporting the other members of the group but also in raising awareness as an activist. So he [00:20:00] decides to invite her to form a sort of bridge between their two networks where she agrees to take on a more prominent role of support.

[00:20:06] And thanks to her and her story, the network starts holding bigger and bigger more frequent in person meetings, and in a relatively short period of time the network just doubles in size. So they are genuinely helping a lot of people. 

[00:20:17] And Tanya smashes it. She truly embodies what it meant to be a 9 11 survivor, a widow and an activist. So she's like a triple threat. She exudes this charm, this positivity about her. She has this really enduring kind of Spanish accent. And despite obviously her supposed trauma, She seems to ease people's suffering, as long as, of course, as we know, it didn't eclipse her own, which, to be honest, it didn't happen very often. 

[00:20:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, I can imagine, again, shouldn't joke, I imagine being at a meeting and then someone obviously reveals, some new information and then she's like, and then there was this dog, which I picked up and rescued.

[00:20:53] Oh god. So I was like, oh, I need to beat them. 

[00:20:56] Kyle Risi: She does lie about a dog. Does [00:21:00] she? I'll get on to that in a minute. One of her earliest achievements was getting the survivors network officially recognized as a legal entity She also manages to secure a bunch of state funding even more poignantly She organizes a visit to ground zero for all the members like giving them finally their first chance to actually grieve at the original site of 9 11. And like I said, objectively, she does a lot of good. She donates a ton of her own money, proving obviously she wasn't profiting in any way. 

[00:21:28] That's what makes the story so complicated, While the foundation of her life was built on a lie, fraud or not, Tanya was objectively a force for good despite bleeding people for attention. 

[00:21:39] Now, a really big part of her story was of course that she had lost her fiancé Dave in the North Tower. This part of her story really feels like it's just been lifted straight out of a romantic comedy.

[00:21:49] Basically, She says they met one night outside the World Trade Center when he actually stole her cab. Apparently she was furious at him, but he just kept flirting, insisting they go out on a [00:22:00] date.

[00:22:00] She finally agrees. And from there they fall in love, move in together, and eventually they elope to Hawaii. 

[00:22:06] Tanya claims that she came home one evening, From a really stressful day at work to find a trail of rose petals leading to the kitchen. At the other end of it was Dave standing there in a coconut bra, dancing the hula. And then he presented her with two tickets to Maui for the very next day. 

[00:22:22] When they arrived, apparently her parents were supposedly waiting for them. Dave had flown them in from Canada, so weirdly his parents didn't come.

[00:22:30] Tanya says that when they got to the hotel room there was a beautiful white dress that was waiting there for her already tailored to her exact measurements. Ultimately, without going into too much detail, the entire story culminates in a surprise civil ceremony on the beach in a circle of white orchids on this Hawaiian island.

[00:22:49] Adam Cox: Do you know what this reminds me of? What is it? You know when Ross and Rachel 

[00:22:54] Kyle Risi: Yes! Yes! Where Stevie Wonder was sang as she walked down the [00:23:00] aisle? And the photographer was Annie Liniewicz? 

[00:23:03] Adam Cox: Who didn't put film in the camera. 

[00:23:04] Kyle Risi: Would you believe she didn't put any film in the camera? It does, that's what I mean. It sounds like it's litter from a romantic comedy. 

[00:23:11] Adam Cox: Yeah, she's a little bit, I just don't know. I'm a little bit worried about her health. 

[00:23:16] Kyle Risi: She says that the next day, they then called all their friends to tell them that they had got mow eed.

[00:23:20] Adam Cox: Oh, God. 

[00:23:21] Kyle Risi: But because of course, it was a surprise ceremony, Dave hadn't actually applied for a marriage license, because doing so would have spoiled the surprise. So technically, they weren't legally married. However, They were planning on getting married on the 12th of October 2001, just one month. after September the 11th. 

[00:23:40] Adam Cox: Well, that's somewhat convenient. 

[00:23:42] Kyle Risi: This part of a story featuring Dave is like the cherry on her Sunday, you know, like people were incredibly sympathetic towards her. She painted this picture of this unbelievably romantic love story with an equally romantic and caring guy only to have it all ripped away from her in like [00:24:00] a blink of an eye.

[00:24:00] So you can totally see how people would feel a lot of overwhelming empathy towards someone Like that. 

[00:24:07] Adam Cox: Yeah, what I think frustrates me is this story is Obviously, it's quite elaborate in a way, but then there are going to be other people that would have lost their loved ones and who would actually have been in love and they might have confided, they might have, like, supported her because they're like, oh, I want to support you because you're supporting so many other people.

[00:24:26] So all this attention that she got, I don't care that she helped others, that's the bit that just doesn't, you can still help other people without having to lie. 

[00:24:34] Kyle Risi: And also, what of a trailer as well? Like, you are at your Most broken, and someone is also sharing their heartbreaking story, and you have to muster everything inside of you to also kind of reciprocate that sympathy for them as well, for nothing, because it wasn't even real.

[00:24:51] Adam Cox: And yeah, when actually you probably do want to be a bit self absorbed and just be about yourself. 

[00:24:59] Kyle Risi: [00:25:00] What's crazy is that, because of course they weren't married, she then tells people that her lawyer then arranged for a judge to perform a posthumous wedding for them. and So the day that she signs that paperwork she became both a wife and a widow all on the same day. So it's like, poor tragic me. 

[00:25:16] Adam Cox: Can that even happen? 

[00:25:17] Kyle Risi: No, it can't. But people don't know that, right? They're so preoccupied with their own lives at this moment in time, their own grief. Yeah, like she would need to prove that there was an intent to get married. How is she going to do that?

[00:25:30] Adam Cox: They don't want to hand out like post Thomas Hummus. Both hummus.

[00:25:35] Kyle Risi: Post, post hummus. 

[00:25:36] Adam Cox: Yeah, like they sometimes do that for Oscars, right? Like awards. This isn't an Oscar, darling. Although maybe you should get one. 

[00:25:43] Kyle Risi: She also says that every year on the anniversary of the attack, she drops a yellow taxi toy cab in the reflection pool at ground zero to commemorate Dave and to remind him that she still loved him. 

[00:25:54] And here's the wild part, like Dave is a real person. He genuinely Existed [00:26:00] he worked in the 100th floor of the World Trade Center, and he did tragically die on September 11th But he never knew Tanya so every year there's poor Dave in the afterlife scratching his head saying why can't I remember this bitch?

[00:26:13] Adam Cox: So how has she got his I mean, I guess maybe you would be able to find people's names 

[00:26:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah, just look them up. There's going to be tributes, there's going to be family members sharing pictures of the people, there's going to be articles about people, all she needed to do is just take a pic. 

[00:26:26] Adam Cox: I'm feeling less sympathy towards her right now.

[00:26:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's the cruelest part of her story, right? 

[00:26:30] Adam Cox: Mm. 

[00:26:30] Kyle Risi: As the years went on, Tanya keeps adding more and more embellishments to her story. At this point, she was basically just A B testing a story for that maximum impact. She starts telling people that on the morning of September 11th she actually got a call from Dave in the North Tower asking if she wanted to meet up for coffee on the ground floor.

[00:26:45] She of course said that she couldn't because she had a meeting and then of course at 8 46 a. m the first plane hit the tower and Tanya's like, if only I'd said yes we'd both have been down on the street and he would have survived. 

[00:26:58] She also starts telling [00:27:00] people that she had lost her wedding ring during the escape. But then Tiffany's had reached out to her and offered to replace it free of charge. So one of her favourite things to do was just go around flashing this ring, proudly telling people that it was a gift from Tiffany's. 

[00:27:12] Adam Cox: Oh my Okay, yeah. 

[00:27:14] Kyle Risi: And then, she starts telling people that just a few weeks after the attacks, her brother had tragically died on the same day that his wife had given birth to their son. And because they knew how much Dave had meant to Tanya, they decided to name their baby Dave.

[00:27:30] Adam Cox: Okay, so, so her new nephew is called Dave. But I'm guessing she doesn't have a nephew. 

[00:27:37] Kyle Risi: No, she does have two brothers. 

[00:27:39] Adam Cox: And do they know what's going on? Because I imagine one of them getting contacted like, I didn't die. I'm still alive. 

[00:27:44] Kyle Risi: I'm still alive. What are you talking about? I'm right here. What's funny to me is that Nobody ever questions her. And the problem with Tanya is that she is this chronic storytopper. and If you've ever known someone with this kind of compulsion, then you know that their lies always tend to be made up on the spot in direct response to what [00:28:00] someone else has said. Right? 

[00:28:01] So if you're one of those type of liars, then you're constantly playing this dangerous game because you could say something that ends up backing you into a corner. so a good example of this is when someone tells her about their dog and then on the spot she just invents a dog called Elvis and talks about how outrageously funny and cute he is.

[00:28:17] And she does this all the time. But it's like, geez, Tanya, this is not a competition. And then there's Tanya, they're just going, well, certainly not a close one. Just making up all this bullshit. 

[00:28:26] Adam Cox: It reminds me of like a child, like when you're at school and you do kind of lie a bit as a kid and go like, yeah, I've got all the power rangers or whatever it might be. Is that a lie that you told? Yeah, when I only had two. But that's the kind of thing you do at that age to fit in or whatever and, you know. 

[00:28:42] Kyle Risi: She's just someone who just never grew out of it, basically. Of course, later, that same person, who she told the story about Elvis to, comes and visits her, and they're like, Where's Elvis?

[00:28:53] And Tanya's like, Who? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the, the, the housekeeper's taking him for a walk. Right. So, like, that's another example of how she's [00:29:00] such a storytopper, and because she tells these stories in the moment, impulsively, she ends up backing herself into a corner. 

[00:29:07] Adam Cox: Now she's got a housekeeper. Now she's got to pretend the house is clean. I think she did actually have a housekeeper. 

[00:29:12] Kyle Risi: On two occasions, once in 2004 and again in August 2005, Tanya tells people that she's going to help with the tsunami relief in Thailand and then later with Hurricane Katrina but she doesn't. She just disappears. It's likely that she headed to California or Spain to stay with family, but she says this to reinforce this image of herself as a saintly selfless person. She really gets off on just being told how like incredible she is, which is really sad.

[00:29:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, because I thought it sounded like she wanted to help these people in a weird way, but she doesn't. 

[00:29:47] Kyle Risi: She just wants an easy ride though. 

[00:29:48] Adam Cox: Yeah, and like now she's got to do like another good cause. Yeah. 

[00:29:53] Kyle Risi: So one of her favourite moves is when she's recounting her bullshit story, she would just like start crying out of nowhere, knowing people would just [00:30:00] rally around her to comfort her. 

[00:30:01] And then she'll say things like, why me? Why did I survive? Other people had children and families. I didn't. And then she'll pull that classic fishing line of like, what makes me so special? And then they'll start telling her how amazing she is and how she's fulfilling this higher purpose, helping others, and she just fucking loves it. She really gets off on this. 

[00:30:21] And I guess the people that she surrounds herself with at the time were all still dealing with their own grief. So they weren't really in a position to call her out on her lies. Plus, nobody expects, again, like you keep saying, someone to lie so completely and committedly about something like this. You know what I mean? 

[00:30:38] A good example of this is when a fellow survivor called Brad, who became curious to know a little bit more about Dave. Like he really wanted to kind of see what Dave looked like, especially since Tanya had never really shown anyone a picture of him. Like a lot of the other family members would carry a photograph of their loved ones in their pocket or their purse. But Tanya never did this. 

[00:30:56] So it got Brad to wondering, so he started doing a little bit of digging [00:31:00] and very quickly he found Dave. There were lots of articles and tributes from family and friends written about him online.

[00:31:07] Curiously though, not one of them mentioned a fiance and certainly none of them mentioned someone called Tanya. And There were again plenty of pictures of Dave with friends and family but not a single one with him and Tanya like the love of his life, and remember according to her Everyone in their lives knew that they were married.

[00:31:25] Adam Cox: But no, no, no, they were MOW ied. 

[00:31:27] Kyle Risi: Of course. So he starts reflecting on some of the stories that Tanya had told, and he noticed that she would often flip flop between calling Dave her fiancé and her husband. Of course, remember this isn't really a smoking gun, but he just felt like he had stumbled on something just a little bit shady, but He didn't want to be that dickhead who 11 survivor, so he just keeps it to himself.

[00:31:49] Adam Cox: Mmm. Go and be the dickhead. 

[00:31:52] Kyle Risi: Tanya was smart enough to never actually share her story directly with anyone who was in a position to be skeptical about her story. She never spoke directly to journalists, [00:32:00] and this wasn't the first time out of a lack of trying. Journalists heard her story from other survivors, and so they were desperate to meet with her, but every time a request came in, she always maintained that she just wasn't strong enough to recount her story.

[00:32:11] Really? Really, Tanya? The thing is that this is really smart, because, she knew by saying this, journalists weren't about to push a 9 11 survivor into speaking.

[00:32:20] Adam Cox: If I was in her support group, I'd be like, really? You tell us every week. 

[00:32:23] Kyle Risi: I 

[00:32:24] Adam Cox: know. Every week. 

[00:32:25] Kyle Risi: So she ends up employing a lot of tools to keep her lies from being revealed. But in spite of this, journalists work as best as they can with her secondhand accounts of her story that they hear from other members 

[00:32:34] Adam Cox: right?

[00:32:34] is it taking away attention from actual genuine heartbreaking stories? Yes! And people rescuing and whatever it might be. It's just like, I don't know. I, yeah. 

[00:32:45] Kyle Risi: I mean, you could argue, do the survivors want the attention in the equal way that she's been getting it? 

[00:32:50] Adam Cox: I wouldn't have thought so. No. I can't imagine any of them really want the attention. Much attention. So I don't know if people are talking about it and thinking and generating awareness [00:33:00] Then do it for those actually need help and funding for that 

[00:33:02] Kyle Risi: And again, this is the thing though. She is willing to garner all the attention. It does bring a lot of positive attention for these survivor groups. They do do a lot of good. They do get a headway. So again, there's a lot of people are torn by this because yes, without Tanya. They wouldn't have been the successful network. They wouldn't have raised as much money. They wouldn't have been the activist group that she made them become. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's so tricky. 

[00:33:28] But the thing is though, as time goes on, Tanya does start to get a taste for power and she becomes determined to take total control of the survivors network.

[00:33:37] At this point, the network had a fairly flat structure. So it was just a few members serving on the board of directors. Tanya starts clashing more and more with Jerry over how the network was being run.

[00:33:47] So she starts quietly planting a few seeds of doubt about his decision making amongst the other members. And then Once that sentiment towards Jerry reaches peak, she then presents a list of grievances against him to the wider [00:34:00] group. Everyone ends up agreeing, Jerry is forced to resign, and he is kicked out of the group altogether.

[00:34:05] And the Immediately following this, Tanya then implements a brand new structure, appointing herself as the president with total control of the network. And this is where that idea of Tanya being a force for good, despite her lies, is starting to fall apart because now she was actively causing actual harm.

[00:34:23] Jerry, remember, he was an actual 9 11 survivor. He found this network through this desire to have a purpose in this world following what had happened to him Tanya took it all away from him, causing a whole new kind of trauma for him. 

[00:34:37] Adam Cox: Yeah, because, if this is helping him deal with things and move on. Then what's he doing now? 

[00:34:43] Kyle Risi: Not a lot.

[00:34:44] Yeah. Anyway, now seems like a perfect time to take a quick break. And when we come back, Tanya's lines are going to start spiralling out of control and the devastating impact its going to have for those around her.

[00:34:56] Okay, Adam, we're back. [00:35:00] Tanya. 

[00:35:00] Adam Cox: How does it all fall apart? Like Jenga. Like Jenga. I just know we're just whipping out those pieces and it's gonna all come tumbling down. 

[00:35:08] Kyle Risi: So, Tanya is now in complete control of the Survivors Network. She's ousted poor Jerry. He's coming to terms with what's happened and he has no purpose in this life. 

[00:35:18] Tanya is chosen to lead the first ever tour of the ground zero memorial site when it's opened. Of course this was going to be a massive deal so naturally the media were curious about who she was and they started hearing snippets of her story and before long journalists were essentially clamoring over themselves to speak with her.

[00:35:35] So It starts becoming harder and harder for her to deflect these journalists. Like before her excuse was that she wasn't strong enough. While that worked behind a keyboard, journalists were now approaching her in real life.

[00:35:45] So Tanya any time she needed to get out of a tricky situation with journalists all she needed to do was fake a panic attack or start crying and shaking and then the other members of the group would instantly just rally around her and just get her the hell out of [00:36:00] there. 

[00:36:00] And Tanya's main friend in all of this was another member of the network called Linda who had seen more of these breakdowns than anyone One day Tanya told Linda that her therapist had recommended that she start doing this exercise called flooding which is basically like an exposure therapy, have you heard of this before?

[00:36:20] No. Basically, this involves Tanya recording herself telling her story in graphic, horrific detail and then replaying it over and over in order to help her come to terms with that trauma. But of course, she needed someone to bleed sympathy out of, so she asked Linda to sit with her, supporting her through recording the entire tape and then sitting with her even more as she replayed the tape over and over again.

[00:36:48] Adam Cox: Is this actually a tactic? 

[00:36:50] Kyle Risi: It is, but this is just basically something that she's read online. 

[00:36:54] Adam Cox: Right. And is Linda a survivor? 

[00:36:56] Kyle Risi: She is. Yeah, so she's 

[00:36:58] Adam Cox: got her own trauma. That's [00:37:00] absolutely horrendous. 

[00:37:01] Kyle Risi: And this was gruesome. She talks about seeing her own secretary decapitated by a flying piece of sheet metal.

[00:37:07] That's new. 

[00:37:08] She talks about smelling people burning alive. People who were too badly injured to move or do anything about it in order to save themselves. And also she describes the sounds of the people around her just screaming in agony and it honestly sounds like hell. And for months Linda just sat by her side watching Tanya relive this over and over.

[00:37:28] And I know I giggle there but it's because I'm nervous because it's just so horrific. It becomes this really traumatizing experience. Thing for Linda in return to the point where she eventually has to tell Linda that as much as she loves her She just can't do this anymore because she started having these recurring nightmares and it was now starting to affect her own life She's a 9 11 survivor in her own, right?

[00:37:48] Adam Cox: I completely agree I don't know how Linda was able to even go through that in the first place and I'm betting that of all the people That are angry at her. I imagine Linda's one of them. 

[00:37:59] Kyle Risi: when [00:38:00] Linda tells Tanya that she can't do this anymore, Tanya just absolutely loses it. She starts screaming at her, telling her that she's selfish, accusing her of being a disloyal friend. She shouts at her. She says like, you don't realise that my trauma is so much worse than yours.

[00:38:13] Adam Cox: Does she actually use those 

[00:38:14] Kyle Risi: words? Yeah. Wow. She calls her a terrible person, yet despite all of this, Linda sticks with her throughout it all. 

[00:38:20] Adam Cox: Ditch her Linda. 

[00:38:21] Kyle Risi: So it's around about this time, during these recordings, that Tanya starts embellishing her story a bit more, Now, it featured a mysterious man wearing a red bandana, who will be mentioned in the very beginning. According to her, he was the one who actually put out the flames when she was on fire. Apparently he hugged her, told her to stay awake and then ran off to find a fireman to carry her to safety. 

[00:38:41] Among the stories from actual survivors, many had spoken about this man with a red bandana, who would help them to safety, he would then repeatedly run back into the tower, rescue someone else, until basically he died.

[00:38:53] Adam Cox: Really, so that's a true story, this guy. 

[00:38:55] Kyle Risi: He was a real guy, yeah. 

[00:38:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:38:56] Kyle Risi: Of course, for a couple of years. Nobody actually knew his identity, [00:39:00] but there was a lot of kind of intrigue around who he was. As a result, he became one of the biggest heroes to emerge from the attacks. And it said that he saved an estimated 18 people before he was eventually killed. Based on this intrigue, Tanya made sure to weave him into her own story

[00:39:16] Adam Cox: I guess it helps give some credibility or weave her way into, yeah, all those survivor stories. Yeah. 

[00:39:23] Kyle Risi: Wow. Eventually, it is discovered that his name was Wells Crowther. He was an equities trader on the 104th floor of the South Tower. And when he was finally identified, his family were really keen to connect with other survivors, Of course, Tanya was claiming that she was one of them. 

[00:39:37] Adam Cox: Yeah, she was first in line. 

[00:39:40] Kyle Risi: Well, Actually, that's the thing, though. At first, she was really resistant saying that In her experience, whenever she met with other families of the victims, she could sense this resentment towards her for surviving when their loved ones hadn't. 

[00:39:51] Isn't that sick? 

[00:39:53] Adam Cox: I don't know. Maybe some people hold resentment at the end of the day. But it's not true though, that's the thing. 

[00:39:58] Kyle Risi: Like if she was an actual survivor, [00:40:00] I would get it. 

[00:40:00] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:40:01] Kyle Risi: but the thing is though, that part of her story doesn't have maximum impact. So she later changes it saying that it was too cruel for her to burden the families with the horrors of what she had witnessed and that it was better that she just shoulder the burden herself. Oh God. And again, this is an example of her A B testing a story, and this works because this just makes her seem like more of a hero.

[00:40:22] Wow, finally, she does agree to meet with the Crowthers. Naturally, they're extremely generous, especially considering obviously her initial reluctance. As a gift, they give her a red bandana and then she sat down with them over a meal. She looked them all directly in the eye and then told them a completely fabricated story about how Wells had saved her. Her life. 

[00:40:43] It's sick. She told them that she had kept the jacket that he had used to put out the flames on her back and that she planned to cut out a piece of the burned fabric. She was going to mount on a piece of Perspex and promised that she would send it to them.

[00:40:55] She also says that she had a framed photograph of him in every [00:41:00] single room of her house so that she could always feel safe by looking directly into his eyes. 

[00:41:05] Adam Cox: Oh no, that, I've had enough of this woman. Who's pulling the rug out? Because. She needs her comeuppance.

[00:41:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah, she does. She needs her comeuppance. Of course, naturally, the family are going to be really moved by this, right? And they were. So much so that they asked if she was willing to share her story at an unveiling of a memorial statue in his honour. 

[00:41:26] Naturally, she agrees. She goes home. She writes this huge, elaborate, heartfelt speech describing like this completely fictional kind of experience.

[00:41:36] Then, on the day of the memorial, I guess she realised that she couldn't actually bring herself to stoop that low. So at the last minute, she fakes a panic attack and she convinces Linda to get up and read the speech for her. 

[00:41:48] Adam Cox: have no words. 

[00:41:51] Kyle Risi: Mental. Following the speech, this was enough for a New York Times reporter called David Dunlap to want to find out more about this amazing woman who had not only [00:42:00] survived, but was thriving and doing so much to help other survivors in this incredible network. David, of course, he reaches out to Tanya.

[00:42:08] At first, she agrees to speak with him, assuming the piece would focus on the group as a whole. She figured that she would basically just be able to blend in the background. But when she realizes that the main focus. Was going to be on her? She worries that this could potentially bring some unwanted scrutiny towards her and she starts coming up with all these different excuses to avoid talking to him.

[00:42:29] Naturally, David's a journalist, He smells a rat straight away. Why is this woman? all of a sudden reluctant. As a result, Tanya gets some of the other members of the group to call him up and tell him to just drop the story.

[00:42:40] But this only again, heightens his suspicions. So while he had them on the phone, he gathered as much information about Tanya as he possibly could from them. 

[00:42:47] They too began to grow suspicious for a start. Why was Tanya so desperate to avoid him after all? She'd always been more than willing to share their story with them, right?

[00:42:58] Why was a [00:43:00] journalist any different? When they questioned her, she said that the Memorial for Wales had just started to trigger her PTSD. So she was sensing basically that the walls are now closing in on her. 

[00:43:11] Adam Cox: Yeah. And now she's like, oh no, I I'm having a panic attack.

[00:43:13] Kyle Risi: This is when Tanya told Linda that her brother had just died from cancer and that she needed to go to California to be with her family. In reality, she was simply trying to lay low until David gave up, but of course, David wasn't going to let this drop.

[00:43:27] So with the little information that he did manage to pry out of the other members he began fact checking her story. He discovers that even though Tanya tells everyone that she graduated from Harvard and Stanford, There was never a record of her ever attending either university.

[00:43:42] Adam Cox: Okay. Strike number one. Why would you ever say that you graduated from Harvard? 

[00:43:46] Kyle Risi: Next, claimed that she was working for Merrill Lynch in the South Tower at the time of the attack. But again, with very little effort, David finds out that not only was this untrue, but Merrill Lynch didn't even have an office in either [00:44:00] the North or the South Tower at the time. 

[00:44:02] Adam Cox: That's some really poor research there, Tanya. 

[00:44:04] Kyle Risi: But the thing is that what's wild to me is that this actually shows how misinformation can deeply influence our collective memory. Because I distinctly remember hearing that a lot of Merrill Lynch employees died in the collapse of the towers. And I know that I'm not alone in this. So it's kind of the sort of Mandela effect. This is like a psychological phenomenon where a large group of people collectively misremember. This a specific detail about an event. 

[00:44:27] Adam Cox: I guess I would just assumed because it's just a big financial institution in the towers 

[00:44:32] Kyle Risi: Well, actually it's a little more complicated than that. Tanya isn't actually the only person to have lied about being a 9 11 survivor There's a bunch of people out there.

[00:44:42] There was this guy called Steve Rannazzisi. He's basically a TV actor and a comedian and for years he was telling people that he was working for Merrill Lynch in the World Trade Center and he'd narrowly escaped with his life and his story was extremely public, but eventually in 2015 someone pointed out that Merrill Lynch didn't even have an office in the World Trade [00:45:00] Center.

[00:45:00] It seems the reason why many people remember this detail about Merrill Lynch is because fraudsters were unknowingly piggybacking off each other's stories. That's hilarious. So these details then end up embedding themselves into the mainstream until they feel like facts. 

[00:45:15] So it makes you wonder. Whose lie came first? Did Tanya hear Steve's account and borrow from him or was it the other way around? 

[00:45:22] Adam Cox: Yeah, what did Merrill Lynch say about us? I know! I 

[00:45:25] Kyle Risi: know! I don't think they ever came forward. Like, oh, did we have an office in the South Tower? Steve, did we have an office in the South Tower?

[00:45:31] Did we? Oh, oh, you don't know? Brad? Oh, we did. Oh, because you heard it from Steve Razzanesi. Oh, okay. Oh, and Tanya Head? Oh, she was one of our employees. Great, yeah, we must have done. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:45:42] Adam Cox: Why would there be people who make up that? Yeah, that's just weird, isn't it? 

[00:45:44] Kyle Risi: It's so messed up. So while Tanya is away, Linda does her best to try and deflect Dave's questions, but eventually it gets to the point where she just Can't do it anymore.

[00:45:55] She begs Tanya just to provide just some kind of proof, anything that she was actually [00:46:00] there. She suggests that maybe Tanya shared the name of the woman whose wedding ring she supposedly returned, or reveal the name of the fireman who rolled her under the truck, right? A lot of people connected with their rescuers in the aftermath. She didn't seem to know these people's names. But every time this came up, Tanya just reacts in the same way. She spirals into this panic attack just to try and avoid answering any questions. So it becomes very clear that Tanya's reluctance to speak to the media might be because she's hiding something?

[00:46:28] Adam Cox: Her pants are on fire. 

[00:46:30] Kyle Risi: Yes! So to get around this, she starts telling everyone that it's because she isn't a US citizen and worries that talking to journalists might lead to her deportation if the truth ever came out.

[00:46:41] Adam Cox: It's not under Trump at this point in time. 

[00:46:43] Kyle Risi: I mean, she is a Spanish citizen. I think that she's just there on like maybe a visa. Oh, okay. Yeah, maybe a tourist visa that she has to maybe renew every 90 days. It probably explains why she said that she went off to, um, Hurricane Katrina or to the tsunami relief.

[00:46:59] She's probably going back to the US. [00:47:00] back to Spain and then coming back into the country because you have to leave after like 90 days or something like that. 

[00:47:04] Adam Cox: Yeah, but then you can't return for like a good number of days afterwards. No, 

[00:47:06] Kyle Risi: I think you can. Okay. You just have to leave the country then come back.

[00:47:09] Adam Cox: Okay. 

[00:47:10] Kyle Risi: So thinking that she's helping, Tanya's friend Janice Suggests meeting with her lawyer to explore legal options for protection just in case kind of immigration come after her of course. She's now backed herself into a corner So she can't exactly say no because that's gonna seem really shady as hell, right? Like you're so worried about being deported. Why won't you come speak to this lawyer? It's free.

[00:47:30] Adam Cox: Yeah, and this is just, this must be wasting just a lot of her time. Because she must have better things to do. 

[00:47:36] Kyle Risi: No. 

[00:47:36] Adam Cox: No, I guess not, actually, you're right. No, she doesn't have 

[00:47:38] Kyle Risi: a job. 

[00:47:38] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:47:39] Kyle Risi: So Janice takes Tanya to see a lawyer. And while Janice waits outside, this lawyer, within two hours, unpicks every single one of Tanya's lies. Just like that. Amazing. 

[00:47:50] Eventually, the lawyer calls Janice in and says, look, here's the thing. She never worked for Merrill Lynch. She never met this guy called Dave. Her name [00:48:00] isn't even Tanya. What? Meet Alicia.

[00:48:03] And she's never ever set foot in the World Trade Center towers apart from visiting Ground Zero. 

[00:48:09] Adam Cox: Wow. 

[00:48:10] Kyle Risi: Just like that. 

[00:48:11] Adam Cox: And Janice is like, yeah, he's good. He's a good lawyer. 

[00:48:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I think it might be a woman. 

[00:48:16] Adam Cox: She's a good lawyer. Sorry, I was thinking of Harvey from The Suits. It's because we've 

[00:48:21] Kyle Risi: been watching it on loop for the 

[00:48:22] Adam Cox: last four weeks.

[00:48:23] I shouldn't assume, my bad. 

[00:48:25] Kyle Risi: And then what do you think happens next? 

[00:48:27] Adam Cox: Um, I reckon Janice is gonna go tell all of her friends. 

[00:48:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah, Adam, they just leave. Tanya is in a complete state of shock that all her lies, of course, have now been exposed. Janice, meanwhile, completely silent. Her mind is just racing. She's trying to process everything that she just learned and they just walk and they walk and they walk and eventually they reach a point where they have to part ways and Tanya is like, okay, thanks Janice. Um, this is my stop. And she heads off home. 

[00:48:53] Adam Cox: Did she not like protest and say like, no, no, no, it did happen. This, this, that and the other. Nope. Doesn't seem like it. 

[00:48:59] Kyle Risi: Of course, [00:49:00] Janice, she's furious. So along with Linda, they start contacting all the members of the survivor network to let them all know that Tanya is a fraud. And many of them don't believe it. After all, she's helped so many of these people piece their lives back together.

[00:49:11] Right? She means a lot to these people and I suppose they're a bit like Janice when she first heard like she's just replaying everything in her head like coming to terms with what just happened like it takes a while 

[00:49:22] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:49:23] Kyle Risi: So eventually the board holds a vote and Tanya is kicked out of the Survivors Network that very same day. 

[00:49:28] And in a way, I'm actually kind of glad that someone from the inside of the group uncovered all of this rather than it being splashed across the press. Like these are vulnerable people, Adam, and I think it would have been a much bigger blow to the network if the press had broken that story before they had a chance to grapple. with what had happened because what a massive betrayal. 

[00:49:46] So, of course, It doesn't take long for the media to get wind of this revelation. The very next day, the Times breaks the story and she becomes a global headline. It turns out that Tanya's real name is alicia Stevehead [00:50:00] and she grew up in Barcelona in a very, very wealthy family like the type that send their kids to finishing schools in Switzerland.

[00:50:07] The family's hobbies included things like playing tennis, playing polo, which explains how she was able to donate so much of her own money to the network. 

[00:50:13] And why she didn't need to work. Yeah. For the last six years she's been telling everyone that she worked full time. But in truth, she wasn't even eligible to work in the United States at all. That's what I was 

[00:50:22] Adam Cox: thinking, like, yeah, if she's only there on like a part time visa. 

[00:50:25] Kyle Risi: A bit like, anna Delvey. Because she had to leave the country every 90 

[00:50:29] Adam Cox: days. Was she even in America at the time of 9 

[00:50:32] Kyle Risi: 11? 

[00:50:32] Nope.

[00:50:36] She didn't arrive in New York until 2003. 

[00:50:40] Adam Cox: Has anyone interviewed her in terms of why? Why did you do it? 

[00:50:44] Kyle Risi: Well, we're 

[00:50:44] Adam Cox: going to come on to that. Okay. The answer is no.

[00:50:50] Kyle Risi: Damn it. Of course the press managed to track down a bunch of her old friends and they all describe Alicia as very much the person that Tanya was pretending to be. Very generous, very funny, extremely [00:51:00] likable. But they also said that she was always a compulsive liar. You know, the kind of teenage stuff kids do.

[00:51:07] They recall her telling stories like, I've got this boyfriend and he's so handsome and he really wants to marry me. But then I've got this other boyfriend and he's so rich and he wants to marry me too. Like, what's a girl to do, you know? Like, 

[00:51:19] Adam Cox: rolling their eyes like, all right, Alicia.

[00:51:21] Kyle Risi: That's the thing though. Many of them learned that from very early on not to waste their time calling her out on her lies because she would just go through this really exhaustive process of trying to convince you that she was telling the truth. And if that didn't work, she would then get aggressive. So over time, they just became conditioned to just smile and nod and let the lies just wash over them.

[00:51:40] Adam Cox: And they should have probably just cut her out. 

[00:51:42] Kyle Risi: The world also learned that as a teenager she participated in an exchange program to the USA where she basically falls in love with the country and this is when she decides that this is where she wanted to live. 

[00:51:54] They also learned that in the late 1990s her father and her brother got caught up in this huge political [00:52:00] scandal back in Spain involving dodgy deals resulting in them basically stealing their 24 million euros from the government.

[00:52:06] At the time, of course, this attracted a huge amount of negative press for their family. And so Alicia, along with her other members of the family, They decide to lay low and they start cutting ties with all of their friends, that takes us to essentially 2003 when she completely vanishes from her old life and we know that this is when she goes to the USA and begins building this new life as Tanya and soon after this she stumbles upon these 9 11 support groups.

[00:52:32] She does as much research about the members and their backstories as she can, and she just becomes seduced by this overwhelming sympathy and sense of community they appear to be getting. 

[00:52:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, I wonder if it's just something that just build up and up and up. I wonder when she went into this, didn't envisage being like the leader of this network or whatever it might be.

[00:52:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah, no, I don't think anyone does, right? Because you're literally putting yourself in the lion's den and you only put yourself in the lion's den if [00:53:00] what's in the center of that Den is something that you really really want. 

[00:53:03] Adam Cox: Yeah, she's just I don't know, toying with the idea. Mm hmm. Kind of, I don't know, daydreaming, whatever it might be. Yeah, and then she just starts to appreciate this attention. 

[00:53:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah And of course from there tanya crafts her own elaborate tale which becomes essentially her ticket into these communities And I think this tells us something about her motivation like she craved acceptance and love, which she fully leans into, assuming that no one would ever unpick her lies, right?

[00:53:27] Because these are vulnerable people. For six years, no one ever questioned it. It was someone outside of the group that knew better, that basically exposed her. 

[00:53:34] Adam Cox: But then if her friends growing up didn't really challenge her, or had stopped challenging her, had she just thought that she could get away with it?

[00:53:40] Kyle Risi: Possibly, like a sort of arrogance, right? Yeah. Sort of confidence. So again, I'm feeling very Natalie and Rulid. 

[00:53:48] Adam Cox: Yeah, me too. You 

[00:53:49] Kyle Risi: know? 

[00:53:50] Adam Cox: Actually, no. I'm not torn. Why? No, I think she's done bad. I don't care how much good she's done. Someone else that was involved could have done equally as much [00:54:00] as good if they were given the chance. 

[00:54:01] Kyle Risi: Yes. But, what she does is terrible. It's unimaginable. It's cruel. She's preying on the vulnerabilities of others, but at the same time, she is also incredibly lonely and desperate for connection as well, so. Do you not feel sympathy on that side of things? I'm playing devil's advocate here. 

[00:54:16] Adam Cox: I don't know if I do. I feel like I say, there's so many other things you can go and do communities you can join. This isn't one that you go and try and push your way into the limelight. This is like one of the biggest and worst things to ever happen.

[00:54:29] Kyle Risi: No. Interesting. So while I was researching this, I came across some really interesting observations from people online suggesting that someone like Tanya showing up was almost inevitable. given how 9 11 has essentially become its own industry. 

[00:54:42] they basically say In the aftermath of 9 11, you now have things like the TSA. You have this increased demand for security technologies, like there's changes in legislation that have reshaped the way that people communicate and do business across the world, but closer to home at ground zero. You see these regular anniversaries and these monuments that [00:55:00] attract ticketed sales, there are countless books and there's documentaries and there's films being produced about this event, right?

[00:55:06] So if you look at it through that lens, it's almost inevitable that chances like Tanya would be drawn to this. Don't get me wrong. It's disgusting. Does this help us understand a bit more about her mindset and her motivations? 

[00:55:18] Another way to look at it is that some survivors describe 9 11 as like this sort of religion. Survivors and victims victims families have come to hold the sacred status in American society, almost like modern day kind of saints, if you will. For Tanya, her story allowed her to claim one of these revered positions amongst them.

[00:55:39] So as a survivor, people look at her like, Wow, you've really been through it, right? You are one of those symbols of our country's most desperate moments and you were at the center of that. And of course in the aftermath of the attacks, this also gave rise to support groups that in many ways resemble religious communities, offering identity, purpose, a sense of [00:56:00] belonging as a survivor, much like a church, right? 

[00:56:03] And then of course you've got all the ground. Then there's all the rituals tied to 9 11. 11 remembrance. Ground Zero has become kind of sacred temple where people can come together bound by their horrific experience. And I'm not saying this excuses her actions, but this might shed some light on her motivations as to why she decided to do this, right?

[00:56:22] Adam Cox: don't know if I agree. I don't know if we know enough about who she really is to know her full motivation. Like, is there actually something, sadder at play in terms of her mental state? Or is it just someone that was jumping on the bandwagon, like some of these other survivors, just wanting to be a part of history? I don't know. 

[00:56:40] Kyle Risi: I completely agree there. There has to be some kind of. mental thing going on I'm not necessarily saying like I agree with any of those two assertions I'm just telling you what other people have said online because they're also trying to grapple with this thing that's very confusing, right? People can't really understand where she's coming from or [00:57:00] why she would want to do this. 

[00:57:00] Adam Cox: I think it's because it is, it almost feels alien to a lot of people. It's really hard to probably relate or resonate with how she's feeling or whatever. 

[00:57:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah, we're just desperately trying to understand basically.

[00:57:12] Adam Cox: Yeah, I think that's it and I think that's why it's really confusing. Difficult, just to know why I should even do all this. 

[00:57:19] But I guess someone that is wealthy, that has all this time, but maybe feels not connected, has felt the need to always come up with stories to fit in this, that and the other, possibly explains a bit, but I don't know, I feel like The amount that she lied, and the length she went to, surely she must have, at one point gone, Hmm, have I taken this too far?

[00:57:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so the story's out, the world knows, she's a global headline. 

[00:57:45] There is this documentary filmmaker and also a 9 11 survivor. His name is Angelo. Now, he was very close to Tanya. In fact, A while before her lies were exposed it was Tanya who was pushing him forward with making [00:58:00] this documentary and for ages he was struggling to kind of secure funding eventually Tanya decided to step in and commission him saying that she will pay him whatever he needs right.

[00:58:09] It's through this project that Angelo's documentary ends up having all this incredible footage of her looking directly into the camera spilling all of these lies. And the only reason she agreed to let him film her in the first place was because she believed that she could control the edit since she was the one commissioning it.

[00:58:27] Adam Cox: But I'm guessing obviously once this comes out, she doesn't, or she can't. 

[00:58:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so the documentary hasn't been made just yet, right? Her story has just come out. They've already recorded a lot of the footage for this documentary. On the day that the story breaks in the Times, Angelo visits Tanya.

[00:58:42] He's the only person that she's willing to even speak to. She's of course, devastated, completely shaken. And Angelo tells her that he wants to give her a chance to tell her story, her real story, not the fabricated one that she'd shared during their initial filming. And she agrees. She says she [00:59:00] absolutely will, but just not today.

[00:59:01] I'm too upset. Then, just like that. She disappears. Back to Spain? Probably back to Spain. Yeah, she completely abandons her apartment in New York and all of her belongings. And after that, she ends up sending a bunch of emails to the other members of the group from a Spanish email account.

[00:59:18] And it just contains one word, and that is the word Arlo. So she's clearly hoping to get them to start speaking to her again so that she can start manipulating them, essentially. Unfortunately, they all decide that the best thing for us to do is just block the shit out of her. Yeah, mark her spam. Yeah, mark her spam, which I think is the right call.

[00:59:36] Then, when nobody falls for that, she starts sending really abusive messages saying shame on you for not forgiving Tanya after everything that she's done for you. 

[00:59:45] Then a message comes through saying, Tanya has killed herself because you abandoned her and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

[00:59:53] Adam Cox: Well one, Tanya isn't real, and assuming she's referring to this metaphorical person. Alicia. Yeah. 

[00:59:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. In the [01:00:00] documentary there is a real mix of emotions from people. Like some people have this sense of compassion for her while others are just filled with complete and utter hate and contempt for what she did.

[01:00:10] But they do agree, either strongly or loosely, that she did bring something into their lives that was positive. So it's such a crazy story, it's so tricky. I suppose to someone on the outside, they might be able to acknowledge the good that she did despite the awful lies, but to someone on the inside, an actual 9 11 survivor, who at their most vulnerable, having someone fabricate lies and capitalize on one of the worst experiences that they've gone through in their entire lives. So for those that hate her, honestly, I don't really blame them. 

[01:00:45] Adam Cox: Yeah, I think the closer you got to her, Yeah. and experienced her, I think the more angry you would be. 

[01:00:50] Kyle Risi: That's right. Yeah. The closer, there's a perfect way of summarising it, the closer you were to her, the worse it was. The further away, you can probably kind of see some wiggle room.

[01:00:59] Yeah, you haven't [01:01:00] been betrayed yourself. So if you want to know more I will link to David Dunlap's expose that was initially released back in 2017. I'll also link to the 2008 documentary The 9 11 Faker which is also on YouTube. I'll also link to some of Angelo's work. So he's done two things, he's written a book in 2012 called The Woman Who Wasn't There along with of course that infamous documentary where he recorded some of that great footage of her literally lying to us on camera.

[01:01:29] Adam Cox: How is he allowed to release that? I guess 

[01:01:32] Kyle Risi: we should go to sue for defamation.

[01:01:34] And the thing is, though, that documentary is just amazing. The ending is very good because in the last shot of the documentary, Angelo, by coincidence, spots Tanya in Midtown in 2011, just after the 10th anniversary, so of course she obviously couldn't resist attending. He approaches her with a camera and she just ends up chasing him off.

[01:01:56] So the very final shot of the documentary is her wiggling [01:02:00] her finger at the camera looking very aggressive. So what's really interesting is that it's that one single moment that glimpse of the real Tanya like the veneer is slipped. Yeah, really brilliant way of ending it. 

[01:02:12] After Angelo's documentary came out in 2012 an insurance company in spain issued a press release saying that Alicia Head had been let go, so it looks like she won't be escaping from her past anytime soon. 

[01:02:25] And Adam, that's all we know. No one's seen her. We don't know where she is. She's probably living in Spain somewhere. Like, she's probably not going to come back into New York anytime soon. She does seem to be coming here for some anniversaries, but she's certainly not living here. 

[01:02:39] Adam Cox: You say here, we're not in New York. 

[01:02:41] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah, sorry. In the United States.

[01:02:43] Adam Cox: Wow, you just wanted to make yourself a part of the story. it's a home away from home. 

[01:02:47] Kyle Risi: And that is the story of Tanya Head, the woman who wasn't there. 

[01:02:52] Adam Cox: But never existed. Yeah. In the first place. I can't believe I didn't even know about this beforehand. I feel like I should have known about this. [01:03:00] Wow. 

[01:03:00] Kyle Risi: What did you learn today? 

[01:03:01] Adam Cox: I learnt that if I had some money, I could literally create my own character and write myself into history before being chased out of it. 

[01:03:11] Kyle Risi: Don't do that. Shall we run the outro of this week? 

[01:03:15] Adam Cox: Let's do it. 

[01:03:16] Kyle Risi: And that wraps up another journey into the fascinating and intriguing on the Commendium.

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[01:03:44] New episodes drop every Tuesday, and until then, remember, trust is precious, but so is the pursuit of truth. 

[01:03:51] See you next time. 

[01:03:52] See ya. [01:04:00]