Written by: Mark Desire, Assistant Director of Forensic Biology, City of New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner
Twenty-five years have passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, yet the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) continues to make identifications and has never turned away from the families of the 2,753 homicide victims. The agency’s enduring commitment to return their loved ones to them has helped define the OCME as the organization it is today.
There are moments that capture the profound significance of this work. When you can hold a fragment of a person who lost their life that morning—someone who, through advances in forensic science, has finally been identified—and return that loved one to their family, the impact is immeasurable. To witness a family crying, shaking, embracing you, and thanking you for bringing their little boy home is deeply powerful. How could you ever walk away from work that means so much to another person?
That commitment remains as strong today as it was in 2001. The next generation of forensic scientists at the OCME, many of whom were children when the Towers fell, are honored
and humbled to contribute to the largest forensic investigation in the history of the United States. They have inherited the same responsibility: to advance the science, challenge its limitations, and make identifications that were once considered impossible.
Forensic science continues to evolve, enabling investigators to resolve cases and provide answers that were previously beyond reach. One of the most consequential decisions made during the World Trade Center investigation was to preserve the human remains recovered from Ground Zero. By removing moisture from the bone, the OCME was able to slow degradation and preserve the material for future testing.
The OCME employed the most advanced techniques available in 2001, while recognizing that the extraordinary conditions surrounding the recovery would ultimately require new approaches. The highly fragmented remains of the victims resulted in the recovery of 21,905 remains. At the same time, virtually every environmental condition at Ground Zero presented a threat to DNA: fire, water used to extinguish the fire, jet fuel, diesel fuel, sunlight, mold, bacteria, chemicals from the buildings, and contaminants in the ground. These factors made the World Trade Center investigation not only the largest forensic investigation in the nation’s history, but also one of its most challenging.
Out of necessity, the OCME began pushing forensic techniques into the future. The guiding principle was simple: if an identification could not be made today, another method would be pursued tomorrow. That philosophy became a daily commitment within the Department of Forensic Biology for the next twenty-five years. Preservation of the remains made that
possible. By limiting further destruction of DNA, the OCME preserved the opportunity to apply emerging technologies and allowed successive generations of forensic scientists to bring new expertise, techniques, and perspectives to the investigation. Without that decision to preserve the remains, the investigation would likely have ended years ago.
Identifications continue to occur each month through advances in bone-extraction methods, DNA amplification techniques, and kinship comparisons. Many of these developments receive little public attention because they involve additional remains belonging to victims who have already been identified. Each represents another piece of a loved one returned to a family. In some cases, hundreds of individual remains belonging to a single victim have been identified through DNA testing.
The most recent identification, an adult female, brought the total number of formally identified victims to 1,654. That identification was supported by forensic investigative
genetic genealogy, a technique that has demonstrated significant success in other types of cases and is now being pursued as an additional tool in the World Trade Center
investigation.
The World Trade Center attacks constituted the largest mass murder in the history of the United States and have resulted in the most complex forensic identification effort ever undertaken. The ability to apply emerging scientific innovations to this work is more than a demonstration of technological progress. It is a continuation of a promise made twenty-five years ago: to never stop searching for answers and to return every loved one to the families who have waited for them.
That promise remains the driving force behind the work today.
It is a day most of us will never forget. We will always remember where we were, what we were doing, or who we were with on September 11, 2001.
20 years later, the team at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) describes their dedication to identifying remains and bringing them home to loved ones. This special video presentation reflects on the enduring strength of that commitment from the earliest days and through the weeks, months and years that followed. Our speakers who witnessed the events at the World Trade Center and their aftermath share how the evolution of DNA analysis technology has helped to identify remains that previously were impossible to identify.