Remains of 1,111 victims still not identified after 20 years
Mourning families left in limbo as biggest forensic examination in US history drags into a third decade
THE FAMILIES of 9/11 victims have criticised the pace of the New York medical examiners’ efforts to identify remains of the missing, with nearly 40 per cent of those killed still unaccounted for.
As Americans today commemorate 20 years since the terrorist attacks, some 1,111 of the 2,977 who died on Sept 11, 2001, are still unidentified.
“As far as I can tell they are identifying about one person every year or so,” said Sally Regenhard, whose son was the youngest firefighter killed that day. “At this rate, it will be 1,000 years before we have answers. So many have already died waiting.”
Shifting through the charred debris for traces of the missing has been the largest and most complex forensic investigation in US history.
What was recovered from Ground Zero was mostly tiny bone fragments degraded by jet fuel from the hijacked planes and other chemicals released from the collapsed buildings.
When the Medical Examiner’s Office in Manhattan began its work, it gave its word to the families to do “whatever it takes for as long as it takes”.
And while testing has continued over the decades, the dedicated team has thinned to just four people and progress has ground to a near-complete stop since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Examiner’s Office announced the identification of two new victims this week. Before that, however, the last big breakthrough was back in 2018, which saw staff using new testing methods to identify Scott Michael Johnson, a 26-year-old financial worker, who worked on the 89th floor of the South Tower.
Mrs Regenhard is among those still waiting for answers.
How did her son, Christian, die? Where did he die? And where is his body?
Christian had only six weeks on the job when he was sent to the site. Just 28, he was the youngest of the 343 firefighters killed.
She has nothing to remember him by now but fading photographs and a handful of mementos he brought back from his travels in Latin America. No grave, no body, not even a single speck of remains.
“If there is no evidence that a person has died, then is there evidence that they ever lived?” Mrs Regenhard finds herself asking.
‘No one called to tell me what happened to him. I still do not know where he was, what he was sent to do’
She never did learn any more from the station about which building he had been assigned to, or whether he had even been in the towers at the time.
None of Engine Company 279’s firefighters made it home to help fill in the blanks.
“No one called me to tell me what happened to him,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“To this day, I still do not know where he was, what he was sent to do.”
Mrs Regenhard gave the chief medical examiner her son’s toothbrush and razor blade years ago in the hope that they would find a DNA match with any of their 22,000 fragments. They never did.
Over the years, the minute particles have been tested and retested – some up to 20 times – in an excruciatingly laborious process. Bone is one of the toughest materials from which to extract DNA.
Mark Desire, the agency’s assistant director of forensic biology, said roughly 150 DNA profiles are made each year, but most end up matching previously identified 9/11 victims, while others draw no matches in the database.
He warned that the prospect of positively identifying every last victim is impossible.
The family of Lieut Jim Mccaffrey, of New York City Fire Department (FDNY), also gave the agency the toothbrush of his brother-in-law Orio Palmer, a firefighter, who is among those whose body was never recovered. Lieut Mccaffrey searched for weeks through the rubble, finding wallets, scraps of police uniforms and firefighters’ “turnout gear” that helped identify a number of missing servicemen, but nothing of Orio’s.
Battalion Chief Palmer’s wife, Debbie, made the decision to stop waiting for the call from the Medical Examiner’s Office. She buried a vial of her husband’s blood, which had been taken by his station for testing some months before his death, in a burial plot in Long Island.
“It gave us a small bit of comfort,” she said.
Unlike the Regenhard family, the Mccaffreys know exactly where Orio was when he died. They have audio of his final minutes from recorded radio communication. The 45-year-old was the first rescuer to make it up to the 78th floor of the North Tower. The sight of a firefighter all the way up at the point of impact gave the injured a few minutes’ of hope.
But that’s not true for everyone. Some have made peace with not knowing, others are plagued by the grief that comes with uncertainty.
“The event itself can never really be put to rest because there will always be remains that can’t be identified,” said Jay Aronson, author of Who Owns The Dead?: The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero. “There’s almost this sort of a very American belief that technology will eventually solve all of our problems.”
The medical examiner’s work has also placed an enormous financial and emotional burden on New York City. “I don’t think that any medical examiner will make the same promise in the future,” Mr Aronson said.
Mrs Regenhard’s grief lives close to the surface, coming up for air every time she wonders what Christian would be doing in that moment if he was alive, what her gifted, adventurous only son’s life might have turned out like. Each passing year should have become easier, but it hasn’t.
The families have also been made to wait for the men who plotted and executed the attacks to be brought to justice. When they gather to honour those killed today, a grim shadow will lurk over proceedings – its mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has yet to be tried and convicted for the heinous crime.
“We will never stop speaking of the 1,100 missing,” Mrs Regenhard said.
“People always ask what will give the families closure, but there is no such thing as closure with something like this.”
‘People ask what will give the families closure, but there is no such thing as closure with something like this’
‘The event itself can never really be put to rest because there will always be remains that can’t be identified. There’s this very American belief that technology will solve all our problems’