So we've already told you the story was fake, but the next question is, how fake? Was she in the building, but just didn't have as close a call as she claimed? Was the wedding ring thing fabricated? Well, a quick phone call, the kind of thing one does when fact-checking, would have revealed she didn't even work at Merrill Lynch. It also would have revealed she wasn't even in New York that day.
Hell, she wasn't even in the country.
Oh, and when someone finally asked, "Dave's" surviving family said they had never heard of her.
Her story had more holes in it than the jungle in Predator, and it's not like she invented concocting fake 9/11 stories to get attention. Still, when a victim crawls from the rubble of our country's worst disaster with a dead fiance, it's a very risky move calling bullshit. So, nobody did.
Damon D'Amato/Wiki Commons
Plus, no one wanted to be seen demanding "the truth about what happened on 9/11."
So how long did it take anyone to look into her story? Oh, only about six years. Before that, she literally became the president of the aforementioned World Trade Center Survivors' Network, which we're sure does great work but, you know, it has certain membership requirements. The New York Times finally started looking into it in 2007 and found out that she was just one of those serial liars -- she also didn't have the degree from Harvard she had claimed, and had not in fact defeated Jean-Claude Van Damme in an underground fighting tournament in 1996 (the fight was a draw).