Twenty years later, more than 1,000 victims of the hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center have yet to be identified. But in a New York lab, a team is still avidly working to identify the remains, with technological progress on its side. Day in, day out, they repeat the same protocol dozens of times. At first, they examine a bone fragment found in the wreckage of the Twin Towers. It has yet to be matched to DNA. Cut and ground to a fine dust, the remains are then mixed with two chemical products that can expose and then extract DNA. But success is not guaranteed.
This week, the remains of two people who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack at the World Trade Center were positively identified as officials continued the difficult and heart-wrenching task of returning victims to their families.
The announcement came days before the 20th anniversary of an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people when hijacked commercial jets flew into the twin towers, struck the Pentagon and crashed into a Pennsylvania meadow.
“No matter how much time passes since September 11, 2001, we will never forget, and we pledge to use all the tools at our disposal to make sure all those who were lost can be reunited with their families,” said Dr. Barbara A. Sampson, the chief medical examiner of the City of New York.
Technicians in the medical examiner’s office have been working for years to match thousands of body fragments recovered from the Trade Center rubble with known victims, but haven’t been able to extract useable DNA in many cases.
The identifications announced Tuesday were the first since October 2019. One set of remains was linked to Dorothy Morgan, of Hempstead, New York. Morgan, a broker for Marsh & McLennan, became the 1,646th person to be linked to a set of remains using the latest DNA technology.
Officials also matched remains recovered in 2001, 2002 and 2006 to a single victim, whose family asked that his name be withheld.
Of the people who died at the Trade Center, officials said 1,106 have not had their remains, if found, identified.
The forensic examiner’s office holds about 17,000 samples, but none for about 100 victims, which makes it a vain effort to pursue identification for those remains. A very precise procedure allows relatives to decide if and how they will be informed of the identification of the loved one they lost. “When you’re notified, it brings you back to that day, the horrific way that they died,” said Mary Fetchet, who lost her 24-year-old son Brad when the towers that once dotted New York’s skyline came crashing down. “But it also gives you some solace that you’re able to give your loved one a proper burial.” Fetchet co-founded Voices of September 11th, a group that helps address the long-term needs of those impacted by 9/11 and other tragedies.
In Manhattan, Desire is the only original member of the forensic team still working on the project. “This has defined my career,” he said, a twinkle in his eye as he speaks of new technologies he’s impatient to use to test the remains. “We’re very close with the families and that’s uncommon for forensic scientists. We’re all trained to be impartial, to be unbiased, to not get emotional. But the World Trade Center is different.” In 2001, the head of the forensic office, Charles Hirsch, understood that time would be an ally in the effort to identify the remains, and he ordered that all the remains be conserved. Teams from all over the world — from Argentina to South Africa — now come to New York to learn from the team.
When meeting with families of the victims, Desire said the team talks “about the future, what we’re working on right now that helps making more identifications.” Those who today serve as experts in his lab “were probably in elementary or grade school at the time” of the attacks, Desire said with a smile. “But they see how important it is.”
Desire, the manager of the World Trade Center DNA Identification Team, said during a virtual press conference Wednesday that he is hopeful that recent advances in DNA extraction and sequencing will result in more identifications.
Some of the remains may never be identified, he said.
“There are some individuals that have been recovered that we haven’t been able to generate DNA profiles from,” Desire said. “Just because you can physically hold a sample in your hand or see it in front of you doesn’t mean that the DNA is intact.”
