The Woman Who Wasn't There

A depressing but necessary reminder that you can't blindly trust anybody. That there are many truly vile people in this world, many hiding in sheep's clothing. It seems to be a theme that women who don't get enough attention in real life, instead of working on themselves, sometimes resort to awful things to get attention - watch the TV reality show Catfish for many examples. Albeit, this is an extreme case. This is a person with no conscience, no moral compass, who preyed upon people going through unspeakable grief, and manipulated their grief to her advantage. Awful, despicable human being. She needs to be tracked down and locked up for the rest of her days. Or better yet, locked in a room for five minutes with the people she has victimized and exploited.

Pretending that you survived one of the most horrific days in history, American or world, just for the sake of getting attention is horrible! This woman obviously has a pathological problem with lying!

In my VERY humble opinion, this woman was/is not evil. Her mental illness was not even examined a little bit in this piece. Which for me at least, left a gaping hole. One or two interviews with mental health professionals to explain this "phenomenon" would have been helpful.

Also -- more fingers should have been pointed at journalists early on not doing their jobs. As a life-long (now retired) journalist, one or two phone calls early on would have exposed her lies early on. Did no one think to verify what hospital reattached her arm, or verified her Harvard degree, or her employment with Merrill Lynch? Wow...somebody was really asleep at the wheel.

This can't have been her first and only depravity. Nor probably her last...

Was to help the Survivor´s network exactly the way she did but WITHOUT LIES!! She was capable, she acomplished a lot of things for the group and if she had been honest from the begining, people would have loved her even more! People liked her and missed her after she disappear!!!! She screwed up big time by lying.