‘Reopening old wounds’: When the remains are identified, 20 years later

Last month, two detectives showed up at Nykiah Morgan’s Long Island home. Her son, Dante, called her while she was at work. “They’re here about Grandma,” he said.

Nearly 20 years ago, Dorothy Morgan, Morgan’s mother, disappeared into the rubble of the collapsed towers, like most of the 2,753 ground zero victims on the morning of September 11, 2001. She was working as an insurance broker in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

With no remains, her daughter was never able to give her a proper burial. But now the detectives had arrived with news that the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office had just positively identified Dorothy Morgan through advanced DNA testing. “I didn’t know they were still attempting that after all these years, that it was something that was ongoing,” said Nykiah Morgan, 44, a personal assistant. “At this point, what is it that you’re sifting through?”

For 20 years, the medical examiner’s office has quietly conducted the largest missing persons’ investigation ever undertaken in the nation — testing and retesting the 22,000 body parts painstakingly recovered from wreckage after the attacks. Scientists are still testing the vast inventory of unidentified remains for a genetic connection to the 1,106 victims — roughly 40 per cent of the ground zero death toll — who are still without a match so that their families can reclaim the remains for a proper burial.

Like relatives of most of the other victims, Morgan had submitted a reference sample nearly two decades ago of her mother’s DNA — so long ago, she does not recall what it was. But through new technology, the medical examiner’s office matched her sample to a tiny bone fragment found amid the thousands of remains.

Her mother became the 1,646th World Trade Center victim to be identified through DNA testing. Remarkably, the 1,647th match came days later: A man whose name the agency did not release in accordance with his family’s wishes.

They were the first positive identifications since 2019. Victim identifications come less than once a year today, a far cry from the years immediately following 2001, when there were hundreds of identifications each year.

After all, the collapse and recovery at ground zero was unlike smaller disasters, such as the condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, that killed nearly 100 people in June. There, the authorities were able to use rapid DNA testing and other methods to quickly identify victims.

Scientists are still testing the vast inventory of unidentified remains for a genetic connection to the 1,106 victims