The woman who convinced New York she survived the Twin Towers

Countries & Cities · Published 12 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: For years, Alicia Esteve Head was a fixture in 9/11 memorial circles. As the president of a major survivors' network, she shared harrowing tales of escaping the South Tower. But behind the scars and the tragic stories lay a carefully constructed fiction that fooled even the most prominent leaders.

Under the pseudonym Tania Head, the Spanish businesswoman rose to prominence within the World Trade Center Survivors' Network. She claimed to have escaped the South Tower's 78th floor after United Airlines Flight 175 struck the building, an escape that would have made her one of only 19 survivors at or above the impact point. Her narrative was bolstered by physical evidence: a badly scarred arm that appeared to bear burns from the attack.

Head's influence extended to the highest levels of New York society. While guiding visitors at the Tribute WTC Centre in 2005, she appeared in photos with individuals including Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She even claimed to have been rescued by the heroic Welles Crowther, a detail that resonated deeply with the public and the media.

The deception unraveled in September 2007 when The New York Times investigated her credentials. The investigation found no record of her claimed degrees from Harvard or Stanford, nor any record of her employment at Merrill Lynch. Simultaneously, her past in Barcelona emerged; she had been enrolled in a master's program at ESADE during the attacks and had told classmates her arm injury resulted from an accident, not the towers.

The fallout was significant. The Survivors' Network removed her from her leadership role by late September 2007. While an anonymous email in 2008 falsely claimed she had died by suicide, she was later spotted in New York in 2011. Her career in Spain eventually suffered as well, leading to her dismissal from an insurance company in 2012 after her deception was discovered.

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