Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / 9 11 Never Forget - 1,100 Victims STILL UNIDENTIFIED

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9 11 Never Forget - 1,100 Victims STILL UNIDENTIFIED · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: There's a term that I've heard over the years and
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: it kind of I think that it encapsulates maybe a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: perception of people or a single person by what others
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: are viewing. And maybe out of context, who really knows,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: but that term itself is referred to as hollow eye.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: And I think the physical description that you would see
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: is probably kind of like dark circles. The eyes become
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: rather sunken in appearance. I think I've experienced it personally,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: you know, because if you've read my memoir, you know,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I talk about the really dark road I went down
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: but there's a group of people who I'm friends with
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: that I've known for a long long time from all
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: over the country actually that I saw in several of
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: them this presentation of this hollow eyed appearance and what
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: caused it well it follows in the wake Of 9-11.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Something that I think that. We can now say that.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Looking back on the history of our country. There's everything
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: before 9-11. And then there is everything certainly. After.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: 9-11.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: We're rolling into the 25th. Anniversary. Of arguably one of
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: the darkest days. In the history of our country. But
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: there is a group of people. I want to focus
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: on today. And that's those that worked so diligently to recover, identify,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and maybe help finally put to rest those that died
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: that day. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I've hesitated wanting to talk about this every year. You know,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I don't, I'm not one to watch the memorial services,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: you know, where they ring the bell and they call
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the names. I just, it's too freaking sad for me.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I just, I can't do it. It, and I know
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: that it's important that, that these victims be remembered and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: their families be remembered. I think more importantly now, because
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: you know, these, We've got children out there now that
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: never knew their parents. We've got people that have lost
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: their soulmates to this tragedy. And the horror, none of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: us can identify with. I mean, we really can't. I
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: take exception with anybody that ever says, I know how
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: you feel. No, you don't. No, you don't. You don't know.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: And I fought that as a death investigator. And that's
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: something that's really... Kind of a weird thing when you
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: go out to make a death notification. And I've made
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of death notifications in person. And I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: tried really hard to never utter those words, you know,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: where somebody will say, I don't know what to do.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: This is so soul crushing. I have no idea. And
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to say, yeah, I understand the way you feel. No,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I don't. Even though I stood over the body maybe
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: just an hour before, before I came to their home,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I'm a total stranger. I don't know how they feel.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: And I think that that's something we need to keep
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: in mind here, you know, now 25 years down the road.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, we all know how it impacted us.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: We know because it was an attack that was played
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: out in front of the world on TV. Because, you know, Joe,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I was on the air. I was doing a radio show.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And the world changed. Media changed that day. The way
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: we cover things changed. You know, all of a sudden
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: you realize that before 9-11, Not every radio station in
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: America had a television in the studio. You had computers,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: but you didn't want to distract the guys. You know,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: they got people on the air. But after 9-11, you
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: had to have them because you needed this constant information.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: I was on for 36 hours straight when it first happened.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: And got a break for six hours and went right
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: back because we were networking. You know, we were networking
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: stations because we had to pool talent to cover. People
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: forget that in the wake of 9-11, what our country
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: was like. It was... You know, as we were getting
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: over the attacks and getting over what we were being told,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: and we're not even going to go down the theories today, guys,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: just so you're clear. And I told Joe this when
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: we talked about doing this show. I said, I'm glad
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: we're going to be able to actually address the victims
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: in the Twin Towers. That's really what we're going to
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: focus on here. Doesn't matter how you think the buildings
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: came down, whether you think that, you know, the only
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: thing I think we can really come to grips with
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: is there were nearly 3,000 people that died that day
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: that went to work and didn't go home. And again,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: all the theories cast aside for this show, how in
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: the world, Joseph Scott Morgan, can you identify a human
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: being so that their family, because if you remember, remember
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the pictures on the walls? This is my loved one.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I haven't heard, where are they? I just- Can you
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: find me their ring, their glasses, their suit, their tie?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Give me something just that I can hold on to
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: because I got nothing. And when you were telling me
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: the truth about this, I had no idea. Yeah. I'm
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: glad you told me ahead of time.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I had an interesting moment this past weekend. And, and,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that was out of pocket for
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: a little bit. I was in New York. I was
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: shooting a television program and, we'll talk about at a
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: later date, but that's neither here nor there. But they
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: put me up in this fancy schmancy hotel, right? And
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: right next to the UN. I've never had this perspective before.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I'd never seen the UN
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: and I've been to other parts of Manhattan. I'd never
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: been down in this area. Some people told me it's
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: kind of the forgotten area. And it was lovely. When
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I looked out the window, Dave, and this is the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: reason I'm telling you this. When I looked out the window,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I was on the 31st floor of this hotel. I
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: had a view of both the Chrysler building and the
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Empire State Building. And even at 31 feet, I could
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: appreciate when you're in them, for those that have never
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: been to Manhattan and have hotel, that kind of perspective
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: where you can look out. And there's a lot of
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: people that haven't been to Manhattan. And I'm very fortunate
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: that I've had the opportunity to do this. But you
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: look out there, and first off, it's like that. I mean,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: it's just teaming with people and you've got these buildings
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: kind of crushed in on top of one another, you know,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: it gives me anxiety to think about it. But you
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: begin to, dimensionally, you begin to appreciate height, right? And
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I kind of sat there, you know, in that window,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: there was a window seat actually. And I kind of
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: sat there and I looked out and I could see
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the day changing, you know, I arrived in bright, brilliant daylight.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And then you see The sunset and you see the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: lights come up in the town and in the city,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: you know, and you get this perspective. And I couldn't
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: help but think about the Twin Towers and the height
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and just the size, the enormous size of these structures.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: For most people, they can't really conceptualize it unless you've
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: been there.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: So what you're saying is you woke up. In a
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: city that never sleeps?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: That never sleeps.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: You felt like you were king of the hill? Top
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: of the heap?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Nice for you.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: That's exactly how I felt.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, is that when you start looking
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: at what took place on 9-11, the whole story has
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: been hijacked. But when you get down to the nitty
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: gritty of what took place that day, these two buildings
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: came down.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: They did.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: And inside those two buildings were thousands of Americans, just
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: like you and me, and non-Americans.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: There were people of every race, religion, everything was in
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: that building. Yeah. And they, some got out, some fought
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: their way out. Some were heroically pulled out, you know,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: by others who went back.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Some of the people in the building heroically pulled coworkers out, you.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Know, right.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: It's hard to measure.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, the reason we were talking about
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: doing this is because in the last days, four more
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: people were identified. And I asked Joe, I said, I,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that was still happening. I thought we had,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I thought it was done. I thought everybody had been
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: accounted for and identified and families, you know, had to,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: it's been 25 years, Joe. I just thought this was done.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: And now I find out that is not.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Well, let me lay this on you because a lot
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of people don't realize this. The OCME, which is the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for New York, they
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: have complete and total jurisdiction over this now. And they
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: have what's referred to, and I'm going to get this wrong,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: so please forgive me. But in advance, let me see
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: if I can recall it off the top of my head.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: It's the 9-11... repository for human remains, or it's the
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: nomenclature or something like that. Dave, it's actually on site.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: No.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's on site there. They've got the stuff collected.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And they are still actively working on it. working these
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: unidentified cases because there's a lot of them, I mean,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that they don't have. And this is, it's so arguably,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: let's see, brother. Arguably, I'd have to say that this
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: is probably one of the most more complex undertakings just
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: from a forensics perspective. And keep in mind, y'all, this
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: is a forensics program, not a political program. And so
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: we're talking about this from the perspective of, the boots
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: on the ground, the people that work this.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Hey, Joe, explain how they got there. Can you do
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: this for me? Because I don't understand how, because you
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: were in Atlanta at the time when this happened, right?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I was, yeah. Okay, how is it, and by the way,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: the math, 2,753 victims in the Twin Towers.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: They have identified 1,653. That leaves 1,100 people, 40% of
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: the victims- who died in the Twin Towers on 9-11
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: have yet to be identified. 40%, friends. Yeah, we hear
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: the bell ring and the name called out, but their
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: family doesn't have anything of them yet. So the work continues.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: But I don't understand how people in Atlanta that work
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: in forensics and identifying, you know, and doing death investigations,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: how does a group from Atlanta end up in New
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: York City? I mean, don't they have people in New
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: York City that do this?
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they do. And we're, you know, we're located everywhere,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: but this is kind of how it happened. For those
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: of you that are not, all of our friends out
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: there that are not familiar, I urge you to go visit,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: just put in this term, it's DMORT, okay? It's Disaster
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Mortuary Operational Response Team. So the, our nation is divided
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: into regions for DMORT. So it's regionalized. It's a voluntary
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: organization that you can join. But in the event that
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: a team gets spun up, they're automatically federalized. So they
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: fall under the auspices of Homeland Security. For a while,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I think that they did public health. And what these
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: teams consist of is... They have the ability to deploy
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: anywhere in the United States. And they can show up,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and these teams are made up of forensic pathologists, medical
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: legal death investigators like myself, x-ray techs, dentists, dental technicians, morticians,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: funeral directors, let's see, counselors. I know I'm missing. There's
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a whole wide group of these people. And so you're
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: broken into these teams. You meet frequently to do training.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: And so when something like this happens, they will spin
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: up a region, all right? So the way I've understood
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: it is that there's a region that encompasses the New
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: York area, right? Tri-state area up there. But the team
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: down in the southeast are the ones that got spun
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: up because they knew that that they did understand this,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that the team from the Northeast, they're going to know
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: people that probably died. And if you can avoid that,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: it's a good thing in the sense that you're going
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to be able to function without having some kind of
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: emotional attachment. Not to say that the people down in
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the Southeast are some kind of automaton that just walk
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: around and they don't have any compassion. That's not what
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: we're talking about.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: No, it's SOP with government relations. You know what, Joe,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, when they had to
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: send National Guard troops in to, you know, martial law
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: had to restore, they didn't send in National Guard troops
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: from Louisiana. They sent them in from Arkansas or Oklahoma
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: because they didn't want a neighbor having to point a
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: gun God love them. I got video of that. But
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: you didn't want that happening on, you know, with friends.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: So same thing here. It's standard purpose.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: And by the way, DMORC got spun up for Katrina.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, I bet.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And there have been any number of instances where this
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: has happened. So they can go in and soup to nuts.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: They have a team already established. So if you've got
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: like a mass fatality event and it can even range
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to like a really big plane crash, flood, natural disaster event.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Lord help us if there's ever some kind of attack,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: another attack on America on any level where there's a
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: major loss of life instance. One of the things that
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: regular civilians are not equipped to do is, what do
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: we do? I mean, and I'm not trying to be
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: callous by saying this. You look around and you say,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: we're washing bodies. Yep. We're washing bodies. What are we
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: going to do? So back to your original question. Yeah,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, we have DMORT. members that are part of,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: at the time, it was Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: These folks had volunteered, had several friends that deployed. And
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the reason I mentioned the kind of the hollowed-eyed look
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: is that, brother, I got to tell you, man, when
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: these folks cycled back and came back to their regular
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: work-a-day You know, at the medical examiner's office, like that's
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a work a day life. First off, the stories they
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: were telling us, we couldn't fathom the scale of what
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: they were talking about. But, you know, something had changed.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, it had really, there was an appreciable change. And,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: you know, from my perspective, you know, when I saw them,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: they didn't react. They didn't speak. the way they used to,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: you can tell that this, you know, and it was,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: it was a real punch in the gut for them
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: in the sense of what they had, what burden they
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: had to bear when they were there. And keep in
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: mind these, these long deployments like this.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: How long, how long are you talking about, Joe?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, months, months. I had one colleague that deployed then redeployed.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: And I think that that's, that was a bad decision
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: on my, on my, if I could counsel, go back
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: in time and counsel that friend, I'd say, don't do this.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: You know, you've done enough at this point in time. Uh,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and you know, when I remember thinking, because I was
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: just about to join DMORT right before this happened. And, um,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I was a senior investigator and I had to,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you know, you got an office that you have to manage.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: You have to manage shifts and all this stuff. And,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: you know, people, just because there is like a mass
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: event somewhere else doesn't mean that people stop dying. You know,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: it's a 365-day, you know, job. You know, you still
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: have to tend to the cases that you're having to work.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: But for New York, imagine this now. If you really
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: want to bake your brain Even though this happened in
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: New York, do you think homicides stopped happening? Do you
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: think suicides stopped happening? Motor vehicle accidents, natural deaths?
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Did you know they had to set up a separate
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: session number registry from what the standard day-to-day case numbers were?
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So they had to have a separate log of all
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: of these. And just so that everyone out there understands this,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: These weren't just everyday cases that they were dealing with.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: This was a mass homicide. Brother, you told me about
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: your experience that morning. Can I tell you mine real quick?
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: What happened to me?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: It was kind of weird. It was one of these,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and everybody's got one of these stories. Not necessarily. exactly
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: like yours or not exactly like mine, but everybody has
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: their own story. I was on nights at the time.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: So I can't remember if we were on 10 hour
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: shifts or eight hours. We may have been on 10
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: hour shifts. So that meant that I would get to work.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I would get to work at, I'd come in at
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: like nine 30 Eastern. And I think I would generally
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: be walking out the door just after seven, maybe or 7.30,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: because you have, it's like nursing. If you've ever been
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: in a hospital and you're trying to get the nurse
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: at shift change, they're doing a report. There's a report
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: that you have to hand patients off. Same way with death.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: You know, we would have cases that would roll in
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: during the night and you don't know what the status is.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: So you go and you talk to your colleagues that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: are leaving you and all that sort of stuff. Well,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that night, it was very quiet. Nothing happened that I
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: remember from that time, starting on the evening of the 10th,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: all the way through my shift, wee hours of the 11th, right?
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: And my normal trek, I'm ready to bounce out. I
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: got my keys. I'm heading out the door and I'm
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: going to go home. And for those of you, and
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I've talked about this before, humans are not meant to
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: work overnight. It's not something that comes naturally. And even,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I don't care what kind of drugs you take, Ambien
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: or whatever, you know, some doctor gives you, you never
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: get good rest. So, and Kimmy, who's my caretaker, She
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: knew that about me, you know, because I'd be wrecked
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: when I get home. I'd be wrecked when I'd wake up.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: But so I go home and immediately I get my pajamas.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I go to bed. You know, I really do. I'm
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: not one of these that's going to linger around because
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I'm so it's a 10 hour shift. You're already exhausted anyway.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I lay down and the way and Noah was had
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: just been born because he was born in July. All right.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Now we're in September. And she had a thing about watching,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I think it was HLN in the morning with Robin Mead.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if Robin was on at that
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: time or not, but that's in the Wayback Machine, isn't it? Anyway,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: she had gotten up. She was tending to Noah. And
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I had just gone to bed. Well, what she tells
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: me later is that she saw it happen on television.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I think her mother or sister called. And she turns
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: on the TV. and it's watching it happen. And I
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: might be making this a bit more theatrical than I should,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: but it's like, for a moment, because she knows what
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: my job is like, because she lives it with me
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: day in and day out, she kind of turned and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: looked toward the bedroom, and she's related this to me
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and said, I'm going to let him sleep. So, she did,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and she left the house with Noah. So he wouldn't
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: be squalling, you know, and she went about Doing her thing.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And the phone woke me up. We still had a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: landline in the house. And it was probably about four
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon. And it was one of Kim's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: best friends. And she says, how are you doing? I
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: was asleep until the phone rang. And she's like, no,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: how are you doing? I was like, I'm doing fine. Why?
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: She's like, you don't know, do you? I was like,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: know what? She says, you're not aware of what's happened
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: in New York? It's like, no. She says, you need
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to turn on television. And she hung up. And so
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I'm there in the house by myself. I turn on
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the television and I'm just like, I can't believe it.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: So I immediately called the office. And they said, you
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: need to come into the office as soon as you can.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Bring a change of clothes with you. And it was,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I wound up being at the office like three hours later.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And we, for I think either three weeks or a month,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: We went on 12-hour shifts, six days a week. Because, again,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: this goes back to not knowing what happened or what
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: was going to happen. I mean, the streets were all
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: locked down. The city was dead. I mean, there was
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: nothing going on. You know what I'm saying? You know,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the streets were, like, vacant. I don't know if you
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: recall this geographically for you, but in Atlanta, it was
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: just like ghost town, man.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: It was like everywhere.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, it was like, and what was really
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: weird is that where we lived, where we lived at
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the town south of Atlanta, we were in the flight
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: path of Hartsfield.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: And so if you just take it for granted, busiest
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: airport in the world, you take it for granted that,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you know, you're going to have nothing in the air.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Everything's grounded.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: It was just this, it's this weird thing, you know,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: kind of weird moment.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: The thing is, I wondered how many people saw UFOs
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: during those days after 9-11 because there was no air traffic.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: None whatsoever.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, there had to have been a bunch, right?
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: But, you know, the thing is that while we were
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: wondering what's happening next, if you remember, I mean, it
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: was that was the whole thing. Everybody's waiting and watching.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: And it became another unrelated random incident. That was what
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: happened in the coming weeks after 9-11. As we were
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: watching the recovery efforts, you know, we slowly got back
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: to a way of living.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: The American flags were out all over the place and
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: people were talking about, you know, we got to do something.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: But life did resume getting back to normal. And that's
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: when all of a sudden we had the bus attacks
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: and we same memo, same everything. But no, we were
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: told these are unrelated. So we don't really even know
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: what all really transpired in the aftermath. But getting back
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: to this, Joe. On 9-11, 2,700 plus people died in
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: those buildings. And even now, 25 years later, 40% have
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: not been identified. We just had four identified in the
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: last weeks. And I didn't even know that was a thing.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: I felt horrible when you told me this. I did.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I thought, what kind of claw am I to not
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: think that You mentioned at the top, there are children
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: alive today born after 9-11 who lost a family member,
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: lost a parent. And their parents might not be identified yet.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, think about that your entire life and you
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: don't know. You don't have that one thing that you
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: could touch and say, my dad touched this. You know,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: my mom had this. There are still, that's going on now.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: But I have to ask you, Joe, where do you start?
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: You've got to get the you know, we've had this
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: horrible event take place. We've got to clean it up.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: We know that the Twin Towers fell inside and down
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: several stories.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: And the fires burned for months at incredible heat levels.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Bodies in a in a crematorium have to be under
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: 1800 degree heat for three hours. Isn't that what it is?
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Eighteen. Well, I think it's like fourteen hundred
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: or above and a lot of it depends on the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: size of the remains that you're talking about. But here's
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the difference between, you know, kind of the because I've
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: had I've had people say, you know, it's like a crematory.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: It's not necessarily the same thing. And here's why. Because
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: you had these kind of patchwork of fires that were
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: all around the place. You'd have some that would go
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: out and then reignite. And that was one of the other,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: you know, issues that had come up over a period
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: of time.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: They would put out of the fire and it would just,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: or it would.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Start in another place. So you would have this kind
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: of smoldering that was going on. You had a, it
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: was a very dynamic kind of environment. Um, you had,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: you know, all manner of, of debris that were down
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: in this pit and it was a pit and they
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: were clearing it off too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and initially
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: you've got, you've got the living commingled with the dead, right?
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: And there, there were all the stories at that, you know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: back during that time of people that were, you could
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: hear the muffled screams and all these sorts of things,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: you know, and famously you had some of the brave,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: brave firefighters and, and police officers that were caught up
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: in this as well. And they, you know, they were
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: there when, when these things collapsed. And so you, you know,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you'd hear the radio crackle or something, or you could
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: hear the radio crackle. Um, there's been stories of phone ringings,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: you know, phones ringing and all those sorts of things.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: And eventually all this stuff dies out. And then you're
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: left with this big pile of debris because we're talking
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: about steel, you know, we're steel and I don't know,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: computer paper and desk and everything else, you know, that,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: that literally came tumbling down. And I'm glad I'd like
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: to go back just for a moment. And so that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: folks understand that there was, there's a subway stop, you know,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: A whole plaza beneath the surface of this thing. And
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: we have to also go back to, was it 95,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I think, where the first attempt at this, where there
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: was a bombing, you know, where it came into the
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: parking garage. And that, you know, that was a very
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: devastating event. It was almost like a foreshadowing.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Killed 112 people.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a foreshadowing.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they put the they put the truck with the
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: bomb stuff right next to the presidential limo that was
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: parked in that place for when the president went to
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: New York City. They kept it stacked because it's supposed
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: to be a safe place, right?
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, but, you know, you look back
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: on it and I know that we can all Monday
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: morning quarterback and whatnot. But the reality is, is that
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Monday morning quarterbacking aside, is that what are you what
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: are you going to do at this moment? And you
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: hear this, it's almost cliche, you know, but. After the
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: rescue part of this is over, you're talking about a
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: crime scene and a recovery at that moment in time, okay?
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: And that's where this really gets very granular because, you know,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: in public safety, we always have, we always, what do
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: they call it? I'm going to get it wrong, but
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: you always do this kind of gameplay, you know, where
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: if you're part of an emergency management, group and you're
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: trying to, you know, kind of play these things out
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: in your mind, you know, what could happen? Who in
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: the hell would, who in their wildest, you know, hallucinations
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: would come up and say, yeah, well, we're going to
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: have both these structures, both, not one, both. collapse, go
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: down into a hole and be stacked like this.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: If anybody came up with that scenario for training in
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: the 18 months leading up to those attacks, I hope
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: they're in prison right now being eaten by rats.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you got the hole, you've got the melting,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: you've got fires going on for months on end. But Joe,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: I remember seeing the trucks taking away stuff. They were
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: taking all of this stuff out. I mean, some of
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: it was still smoldering. And they were taking it. So
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: were they not scooping up human remains in.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: It was all commingled.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This is, this is not something that happens in
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: a vacuum.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Did not occur to them.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's not something that happens in a vacuum with you.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: You could have like, and I've heard people talk about
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: this that are in the field and they would talk
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: about the things that they observed where you could have
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: a bit of twisted metal and, They might be able
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: to make out the detail in a bit of human
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: anatomy to try to be as respectful as I can
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: at this moment contained within this twisted debris. And when
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the debris makes it out, because they had like a
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: major collection spot out there. There was a landfill that
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: they went to that it was sequestered from everything else.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: So you had teams of people that were out there
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and they would flag something like if you had volunteer workers,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: that if they came across anything, and this works a lot,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: like we do this in forensic anthropology, where if you've
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: got cops or investigators that are crawling on their hands
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and knees at what you think is a skeletal deposition,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: they'll raise their hand and everybody will freeze where they're at.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And they'll call the forensic anthropologist over or somebody like me,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: an MDI, or, you know, maybe you're not going to
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: have pathologists out there most of the time. and you
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: flag it. Okay. You put a flight, literally put a
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: flag in the ground right there. And that's kind of
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: the way that you would have to have to work this.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: And this is, Hey, let me tell you something else.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: This is dangerous work because you could, and there were
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: people that you could really get hurt, you know, dealing
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: with this debris because we're talking about sharp jagged edges.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: We're talking about metallic bodies and in stone, all kinds
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: of things that, that are, you know, that are going
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: on that you can see with the unaided eye. Not
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: to mention, and God bless the people right now that
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: are dealing with these issues, that all that crap that
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: they inhaled out there is taking lives still to this day. And,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: you know, these things were built years and years ago.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: You can only imagine what was contained within here. And
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: all the stuff is smoldering. They're, you know, breathing it in.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: And so they're having to focus out there in this
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: debris field and pick these little bits up. Well, how
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: do you go about doing that? Well, it's a massive
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzle where you have to be able to grid
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the stuff off and say, okay, this is, you know,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: deposit number 1A that we're bringing out here. And can
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: you tell me where it came from? Well, no, we
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: actually can't. If you want to know about the structure,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: all we know is that the big pile that was here,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: we kind of cut this area out and here you
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: have it. It's not like you can say, well, yeah,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: this was, you know, on the 30th floor. Yeah, this
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: is the section from the 30th floor. How do you
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: know that? How do you know it? Because everything's falling
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: through the air. So it's all getting commingled and churned.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: That's another reason, like, that's just one of the many
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: reasons it makes it very difficult to identify bodies and
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: why you still have bodies that are unidentified. And back to,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: you know, you had mentioned this thing about the crematory.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Here's one of the things that you're faced with with this.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: This is not like an intense fire. It would have
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: been initially, but it's not like it's an intense fire
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: that's burning to the point where, you know, you're kind
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: of like this. Think crock pot. It's the way I've
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: had to describe it. So you've got human remains that
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: are now subsurface or that are layered in this huge
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: debris field. And because of the ongoing reigniting of fires
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and the just the humidity and everything else that's coming along,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: these remains, this tissue is degrading all the time. And,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you know, one of my colleagues had actually spoken to
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: this because they were talking about walking in, you become
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: not callous, but it just becomes day-to-day life where you
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: walk in and you show up at the field, you know,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: at the debris field itself and the recovery part of it.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: And you just smell decomp everywhere. It's there. And it's
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: part and parcel of what you're having to deal with
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: every day. And then you have the issues with vermin, rats,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: these sorts of things that are everywhere. And rats don't discriminate.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: If there's something that they can fortify themselves on, to
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: put it politely, they're going to do it. So you
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: never know what you're going to come across, you know,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: in any of these in this environment. And, you know,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: when when you're working this thing out and trying to
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: gameplay it out in your mind, this is not something
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: that it's like it's on the radar, you know. And
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: so these people that were in charge, I'm talking about fire, police, obviously,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: both Port Authority and NYPD, the FBI that shows up.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And of course, OCME, because everybody's eyes, you know, instantaneously,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: we've got dead bodies. We're looking at OCME. You know,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: OCME has to send up a flare at this point
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: in time, say, DMORT, we need you. You know, out
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: of every other event, you know, New York is famous
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: for saying, we take care of it here in the city.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: We can handle anything. Well, this is something that they
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: necessarily could not handle by themselves. And you see this
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: huge concentration, not just, not just in in the sense
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that it was the bodies, but all the other things
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: that arose that you could never anticipate. But still to
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: this day, it's a major mystery that we don't have
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: everybody identified that went down that day. And I've got
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: to tell you, friends, I don't know that we ever will.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Music And an interesting little aside, Dave, I've got to
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: tell you, let me ask you something. You've seen Wolverine
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: work boots before, right? You know, Wolverine, you know, people
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: all over the place where I'm, they want them for
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: years and years and go to store. They're out. I
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: had one of my friends that told me and, and
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I found this fascinating. It makes me want to go
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: out and buy. It always has made me want to
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: go out and buy Wolverine work boots. After I heard
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the story, Wolverine, The company itself, allegedly, now I didn't
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: see it happen, they pulled up with semi-trailers. And if
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: you're working on the site, they were just giving boots
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: in your size. And one of the reasons that had
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: to happen was the fact that this debris field was
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: so treacherous that you would go through a pair. Can
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: you imagine this? I mean, I've got a pair of
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: work boots in my closet, right? And it's like, I've
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: had these work boots for a long time. Can you imagine?
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: shredding your shoes to the point where they're not functional.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You have to have something else on your feet because,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you know, you can get tetanus out there for all
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, you have to have something that's
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: got steel toe in it, steel shank. And Wolverine was
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: there and they were like, we don't care. We don't
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: care how much it costs or, you know, here's some boots,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: you know, and you had that happening a lot, you know,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: back then. I think about how like really united we
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: were during that period of time. I don't care what
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: it costs. You let me know, We're going to provide
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: it for you. We're going to make it happen. You know,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: and it really was that was a demonstration of the
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: best of what we are, I think, as Americans.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: You know, you were talking a minute ago about you
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: compared what would be found at the bottom of the
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: hole as being a crockpot. It reminded me of something
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: that was called Operation Gamora. It happened during World War II,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: and it was the bombing of Hamburg, where it was
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: an RAF-led raid, and it was a fire raid, basically.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Firebombing.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Firebombing. And they firebombed Hamburg over a four-day, five-day period
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: of time. And it was so bad that 30,000 to
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: 40,000 casualties and most were vaporized by the fire. But
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: they had bomb shelters. And that was one of the
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: things they were going into these bomb shelters and they
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: didn't couldn't find anybody. It was just this green type
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: of goo. And they realized that the heat from the fires,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: that it was melted people. And that's all I could
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: think of in a comparative way. And it's shocking that
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: that's what some of our brothers and sisters were working in.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are people today that have not gotten
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: over the things they saw that day. I'm not comparing
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: that to the people who are. I'm just saying there
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: were a lot of people impacted by that day. And
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: I'm shocked that now 40 percent of the people who
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: died that day haven't been identified. That's just shocking to me.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: So I've got to ask you about this because, Joe,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: there was this running list as we were talking about
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: doing this. Odontology.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Fingerprints. genetic genealogy. All of these things are things
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: that we talk about on this show on a regular
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: basis when you're identifying a person to get a positive identity.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: And it's one of the most important things we've done
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: shows about people being misidentified. And now we're talking about
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: 1100 people who haven't been identified. Joe, where do you start?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: How do you do it? Well, first off, you take
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: it in a very broad sense. And I'm talking about
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: In those days, you know, during that period of time,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: you know, a quarter of a century. Can you imagine?
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I'm saying a quarter of a century. I can't believe that. So,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: you know, the obvious, the first suspects back then that
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: you're thinking about, I want the teeth. And, you know,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: there's a photo that I'm quite fond of. I actually
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: show it in my class when I do my section
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: on forensic odontology. That's one of the last images that
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I show in the class on that particular lecture. And
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: it is for forensic odontologists. And they're in scrub suits.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: They're in scrub suits and they're wearing jackets over the
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: scrub suits. Like you can tell it's cold out and
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: they've got masks on and they're all dentists and they're
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: standing on the top of the debris field. And it's
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: one of the most surreal kind of things. I'm not
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: saying that they're like the Marines on Mount Suribachi, but
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's, you know, back then, you know,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: you had these forensic odontologists who were you know, probably
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: used to working bite mark cases and human identification cases
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: one at a time. And here you are, and you
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: can kind of see it in their eyes. You know, they're,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: you know, what they're kind of faced with. I can't
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: imagine they had enough time to step outside and take
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: that photo, but I'm very fond of that image because
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: it kind of encapsulates some things, you know, when you
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: begin to think about the forensics and the utility of it.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So the teeth would be the first thing that you would,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: that you would want to look to because here, here's what,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: here's what, you know, there would be a large statistically
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: significant group of people that, you know, that are supposed
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: to be in the buildings. Right. So, and you had
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and this was quite a poignant, um, uh,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: remembrance for me day where, you know, you had these
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: people saying, I haven't seen, you know, I'm brother. I
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: haven't seen my sister, my wife, my husband, whatever the
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: case might be, but you, you have a group of
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: knowns statistically, um, where, okay, we know that these people
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: worked at Morgan Stanley or wherever it is that they worked, right?
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: They were supposed to be at work at this time.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: We haven't found them. Okay. Investigatively, that's a major bit
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: of information because if I can identify the people that
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: were working in the building, not like literally identify, but
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: identify who should be there, I can go to families
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: and say, okay, who's the dentist? And Remember how I
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: talked about they had kind of had to separate these
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: dead from the rest of the dead? You had teams
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: of people that were doing nothing but this. Let that
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: sink in. You had teams of people that were doing
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: nothing but acquiring medical and dental records. That's all they did.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: All right. And trying to hunt these things down and
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: then create a database based upon that or utilizing that.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: And so you have these established anti-mortem records. So go
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: back to the debris field, out to the landfill, and
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: any kind of tissue that you can recover, starting with teeth,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: because you're going to have fractured jaws. You're going to
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: have bits of jaws that have been just pulverized and
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: then have been degraded as a result of decomposition. And
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: you might just have, like, the backside, the backside of
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a right, the right aspect of the jaw, right? It
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: might have a molar and it might have the spot
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: where there had been a wisdom tooth, which is significant
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: because if you have a spot where there was a
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: wisdom tooth, now it's absent, you can include that person
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: in the group of people that have had wisdom teeth
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: extracted because that's a question we would ask family. Do
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: they have all of their teeth? What's the status of
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: their teeth? Well, I remember, you know, Uncle Fred had
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: his wisdom teeth extracted. Well, now he goes into the
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: pot with the teeth, with the jaws that have no
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: wisdom teeth.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: So it really becomes a mathematical problem of breaking it down.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah, it is.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: That makes sense. Okay. Yeah.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And so that's how you work it out relative to
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the odontology part, which is merely teeth. I didn't fail
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to mention the anthropologists because with anthropologists, they're looking at
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: the totality of all the skeletal remains, which at first,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: there wouldn't have been a lot of skeletal remains. But
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: as the weeks tick off, now you've got skeletal remains.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: So what are you looking for for that? Well, now,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: and most of these skeletons are not going to be intact.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: They're going to be pulpified as well. But if you can...
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: get a partially intact skeleton, then you can do, you
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: can actually apply the metrics relative to stature, all right?
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: You can do metrics relative to race, to sex, all
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: these sorts of things if you can compile it. So
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that's another section of people that are working there. The
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: forensic anthropologist can actually look and see, well, this fracture
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that I'm seeing right here in, say, this right femur
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: is related to this event. However, if you go inferior
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: to that fracture line, there is a previously healed fracture
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: here in the femur. So you know that that's an
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: anti-mortem trait that you can go back to and say, oh, okay, gotcha.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: This person had a fractured leg. So who among all
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: these thousands of people has had a fractured right femur? Well,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, mathematically, because I'm glad you used
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: that term, you're eliminating, you're kind of checking the boxes.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Do you see how tedious this gets? Really, really quick.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: But what do you do when you've got just a piece, Joe?
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, just this. I mean, at a certain point,
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: you're not even looking for flesh anymore. It's gone. Now
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: you've got a bone fragment. Is that why we still
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: have 1,100 people that haven't been identified? Because it really
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: does get down to that.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Well, you've got these bodies that are so fragmented. And
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: early on, Okay. So early on, you may have had
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: fresher tissue. Now, if you did have fresher tissue, you
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: capture that tissue and you freeze it quickly. Because if
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you can, you can sequence that for DNA. Okay. And
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: now back then in 2001, did we have, you know,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: investigative genetic genealogy? No, we didn't. It wasn't even on
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the horizon yet uh not in the not in the
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: sense that the probability that it would happen may have
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: been you know percolating in people's brains but we didn't
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: have it at that point in time now we have
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: the ability to go back in any of those tissue
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: remnants that were salvaged that can and that's why you've
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: seen like you said it was four i think before.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Recently right yeah recently yeah.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah recently where you can get these tagged out so
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: that's that's quite significant and it's.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: And Just so you know, Joe, when I first saw that,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: I actually until you told me different, I thought that
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: was the last four people to be identified that now
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: we could put a bow on it, that everyone was identified.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: That's what I took away from the headline I saw.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: And that's why when you were like, no, we need
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: to talk about this. What are you talking about? We
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: just got the last four identified. Can't believe it took
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: 25 years. And then you're going, no. That's been the
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: foremost recent. We've still got 40% of the total that's
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: not been resolved yet. And it's going to continue because
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: of the fact that we have made these inroads with
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: genetic genealogy and building out families of it. At some point, Joe,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: there's got to be a point of diminishing return with
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: what you can get from this.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. And the longer we go out in time,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: the more degraded stuff becomes. Now, the one hope I have,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: going back to teeth, are the teeth. And I've always
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: described to my classes, I may have talked about this
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: on body bags as well, but if you think about
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: bone and DNA, bone holds on to DNA like if
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: you have a leather briefcase. Teeth for DNA or like
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: a titanium briefcase. Okay, bone's great. Who wouldn't like a nice,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: leather briefcase? I'd rather have a titanium one, right? It's
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: going to be safer. So the teeth that they've collected
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: that are, you know, they can perhaps get into those,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and unlock that that source of DNA so
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: that they can profile it out and begin to use,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: you know, forensic genetic genealogy. you know, lay these out. Look,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: at the end, listen, this is what it all comes
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: down to. Right now, right in my humble opinion, in
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: being a retired death investigator, right now you're working for
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the families. Okay? That's what you're doing. This is your
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: purpose right now. You're not trying to solve anything. You know,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: these are all homicide victims. And they died from various things. Okay?
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: And I can get into that, but These are all
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: homicide victims. I don't care what you tell me. You'll
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: never convince me otherwise. Even the firefighters that went in there,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the police officers that were in there, the
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: EMTs that were in there, if they died as a
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: result of this, this is a homicide. Okay. So with
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: these bits that we have remaining for all those kids
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: out there that You know, saw daddy the night before,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: mom the night before, and then they didn't come back
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: home forever and ever. And they still have these monumental questions,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: you know, what happened to them? Even if you can
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: find one bit, tiny bit of biological sample that you
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: can run a profile on, that might help some people
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: sleep easier at night. And from a broader perspective, it
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: will help us because as we know, we don't use
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the word closure, right, on body bags. It will be
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: the end of a chapter. But from my perspective in
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: my field, okay, I don't know that there has ever
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: been a more seminal moment for us in practice that
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: kind of changed the way that we do things and
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the way we look at things, the way we consider
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: the possibilities of what could happen. You know, you talked
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: about Hamburg a few months ago, and I remember the
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: stories about those people that were essentially incinerated in this
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: fallout shelters or the, you know, the bomb shelters. They
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: learned those lessons then about, you know, what do you
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: do to try to handle all of these bodies? Unfortunately,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: as humans, We are cursed. We are cursed to always
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: relive the past and the future. It's always been that way.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: It always will be that way. I'm trying not to
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: be as cynical as it might sound, but we must
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: take away lessons from those days. And I think that
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: we have, certainly in my field. So to all my
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: friends that were there, a tip of the cap to you.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: I pray for your peace. I pray that you will
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: find peace and know that what you did, what you sacrificed,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: is certainly by this old man, is never going to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: be forgotten. Because I cannot even begin to fathom the
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: things that you had to bear witness to. Because I
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: can say, I don't understand what you've seen. I don't
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: know what you think, but I do know this. I
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: will pray for you daily, hoping for your peace. I'm
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Back.