Who They Were : Inside the World Trade Center DNA Story: the Unprecedented Effort to Identify the Missing

by Robert C. Shaler

• ISBN13: 9780743275200
• ISBN10: 0743275209
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-01
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

Contents

Preface

Part I Chaos and Uncertainty

1 September 11, 2001

2 Why Me?

3 Gearing Up

4 A Strategy Emerges

5 All Those Bones

6 Phase I: DNA Testing

7 The Most Critical of Tools

8 The Summit Meet

Author Biography

Robert C. Shaler was the director of the Forensic Biology Department of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City from 1990 until his retirement in 2005. He is currently professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and director of the Forensic Science Program at Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

PREFACE	VII
PART I CHAOS AND UNCERTAINTY
1 SEPTEMBER 11, 2001	3	(19)
2 WHY ME?	22	(10)
3 GEARING UP	32	(15)
4 A STRATEGY EMERGES	47	(13)
5 ALL THOSE BONES	60	(6)
6 PHASE I: DNA TESTING	66	(12)
7 THE MOST CRITICAL OF TOOLS	78	(16)
8 THE SUMMIT MEETING	94	(6)
9 AN ALTERNATE TEST	100	(8)
10 A REMARKABLE WOMAN	108	(4)
11 THE KINSHIP PANEL	112	(12)
12 THE "BIG MINI"	124	(6)
13 AN ALTERNATIVE ARRIVES ON THE SCENE	130	(6)
14 THEIR LIVES MATTERED	136	(7)
15 AN IMPORTANT ROLE FOR METADATA	143	(12)
16 AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 587	155	(9)
17 EMPHASIS	164	(5)
PART II MORE THAN SCIENCE
18 2002: A NEW YEAR	169	(13)
19 FRUSTRATIONS	182	(8)
20 A CORNER TURNED	190	(14)
21 RUNNING OUT OF IDENTIFICATIONS	204	(12)
22 THE END-BUT NOT FINISHED	216	(9)
23 A POLICY CHANGE AND A FUNERAL	225	(13)
24 THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY	238	(6)
25 2003: THE FIRST SIX MONTHS	244	(11)
26 FINALLY...SNPs	255	(14)
27 QUALITY ASSURANCE	269	(7)
28 OUT OF THE BOX	276	(19)
PART III WINDING DOWN AND MOVING ON
29 IDENTIFICATIONS: THE THIRD YEAR	295	(4)
30 THE TERRORISTS	299	(3)
31 NOW IT'S OUR TURN	302	(16)
32 WHEN ITS MY TURN	318	(2)
33 STATISTICS	320	(3)
EPILOGUE: DNA MADE THE IDENTIFICATION	323	(4)
PHOTO SECTION	327	(10)
CAST OF CHARACTERS	337	(8)
GLOSSARY	345	(10)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	355	(2)
INDEX	357

Excerpts

Preface New York City has been host to a number of the nation's historic mass-fatality events, some of which have led to new legislation or to sweeping social change. In 1904, the steamer the General Slocum was making its annual three-hour excursion from the pier at East Third Street to Long Island. At the Hell Gate, a turbulent and treacherous part of the East River, the steamer caught fire and sank, officially killing 1,021 and perhaps as many bodies were never recovered. David Von Drehle's Triangle: The Fire That Changed America tells the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911, which killed 146 people, 123 of whom were women. That tragedy was an eerie prophecy of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, because many jumped to their deaths to avoid being burned.The Triangle fire changed the sweatshop practices of unscrupulous employers, and the General Slocum disaster motivated federal and state regulators to improve the emergency equipment on passenger ships. After the World Trade Center attacks, we witnessed the formation of the Department of Homeland Security and our nation's formal declaration of war against terrorism.This book, however, is not about social change or legislation or even the events of September 11 that changed the course of our nation and its attitude about terrorism. It's about people and identifying the victims of a mass-fatality event, specifically those who perished in the World Trade Center towers. It is not about the heroic work of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, which identified those who died that day in the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, or the one that slammed into the Pentagon. It's about allowing families to move on. Mostly, though, it is the story of unnamed men and women who toiled on behalf of those families.Identifying bodies from mass fatalities in the early twentieth century involved much less precision than it does now. Identifying those lost on the General Slocum was a harrowing experience for relatives who searched through charred remains at the morgue to find their loved ones. Finding loved ones after the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire was no less harsh. Families had to parade past burned and disfigured bodies lying in caskets and attempt to locate their loved ones based almost solely on recognizing familiar physical features, clothing, or jewelry. Today, identifying our loved ones is mostly a scientific endeavor, employing medicine, dentistry, and DNA. It is hoped that our modern practices render the experience less ghoulish from that which families endured in the past.Traditionally, DNA has played a minor to moderate role in the process. In commercial airliner crashes, a manifest of the passengers exists, and the recovered bodies, though many are badly fragmented, are mostly intact. Dental records, fingerprints, and personal effects often suffice to make the majority of the identifications. Routine DNA testing, the kind that all American forensic DNA laboratories perform daily, is mostly used for reassociating fragments to the remains of someone already identified or for identifying remains when other methods fail.The World Trade Center was different. Larger in scope and occurring in two towering public office buildings that also housed a mass-transit hub, the World Trade Center had no official manifest to tell us who or how many were missing. In fact, it took more than two years to obtain a working manifest. There may still be names missing from the list, because we know undocumented immigrants worked there as well.The falling buildings fragmented everything in their wake, most especially the people. The recovery process was prolonged -- nearly nine months -- and the World Trade Center rubble burned at near or higher than cremation temperatures for three months, accelerating the decomposition of the remains and affecting the quality of the DNA. Possibly, too, many