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The Fines · Revisionist History

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Not long ago, my producer Lucy Sullivan visited one of
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the largest parks in New York City. Not Central Park.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Not Prospect Park. Fresh Gills Park. On Staten Island. Lucy
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: was there with Ben Nadaf-Haffrey reporting for our latest series,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: The Staten Island Problem. And while she was there, Lucy
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: uncovered a mystery. There was one part of the park,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: one section, that she wasn't allowed to visit.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Because of what's buried there. Today the park is Rolling
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Green Hills, a beautiful and peaceful place. But Fresh Kills,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: as you may know, used to be the world's largest landfill.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Mayor Rudy Giuliani closed it in the 90s, and the
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: last barge sailed to Staten Island in March of 2001.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Or so everyone thought. Six months later, in September of 2001,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: it had to reopen. Fresh Kills became the site of
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: a giant operation to sort through the rubble from the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: 9-11 terrorist attacks. The last thing brought to the landfill
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: was what remained of the Twin Towers and all the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: people who perished there. A giant pile of dirt and dust. Today,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Lucy Sullivan has a story about that pile of dust
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and the battle continued. over where it should go. As
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the saying goes, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: when are we no longer ourselves? When do we become dust?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: It all began with a promise. Here's Lucy.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Charles Hirsch rushed
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: downtown to the site of the Twin Towers. Hirsch was
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: the city's chief medical examiner. He knew his team had
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: to move quickly. they would need to set up a
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: temporary morgue. When the North Tower collapsed, Hirsch was hit
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: with debris and badly injured. Mayor Giuliani spoke to the press.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Dr. Hirsch was injured and had to be treated, but
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: he's organized his office and they are ready to deal
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: with thousands and thousands of bodies if they have to.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Leaving Ground Zero, Hirsch was caked in dust. Later, he
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: reached into his pockets and found fistfuls of it He
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: told the New York Times that's when it dawned on him.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: If concrete was pulverized into dust, it wasn't much of
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: a mystery what might have happened to people. It wouldn't
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: be thousands of bodies, but thousands of body parts.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: So he made a promise.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Charles Hirsch, the medical examiner, says we will never rest
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: until all remains are identified.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: This is Jay Aronson, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: He wrote a book called Who Owns the Dead? The
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: These kinds of issues are a daily occurrence for people
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: in war zones. I wanted to kind of bring that
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: home to Americans. I wanted Americans to understand what people
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: in other parts of the world go through on a
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: regular basis, particularly in conflict zones.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: 9-11 was the first time in modern history that Americans
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: were dealing with this scale of dismemberment on U.S.
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: Soil.
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: And right then, DNA.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: Technology had evolved to be able to identify the dead
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: in a way that was never possible before.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Really in the context of the Balkan Wars, scientists needed
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: to develop ways of dealing with decayed and degraded bone
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: and tissue to match very degraded DNA samples to family samples.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: And so that That early work was really coming to
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: fruition right when 9-11 happened.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: This meant, on the one hand, that there was a
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: chance that anything with a trace of the victims could
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: potentially be identified for families. But it also meant that
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: the promise Charles Hirsch made to identify every remain found
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: and not to rest until they did would lead to
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: big expectations from the public.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: That I think affirms the view in some families' minds
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: that all of the remains are sacred, that the goal
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: isn't just to positively identify in a forensic sense the
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: presence of a particular individual at the site at the
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: time of the attacks, but that there was something sacred
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: about each and every bit of their body, and that
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: all of the bits, all of the pieces that could
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: be associated with a particular person should be returned to
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: that family or should be handled in a particular way.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: There were rumors in those first few days that tens
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: of thousands of people might be missing or dead. Up
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: to 200,000 people visited the World Trade Center complex.
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: Each day, and 50,000 people worked there.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Matthew Horning worked as a database administrator on the 95th
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: floor of the North Tower. He was 26 years old.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: On a hot July day, I drove out to New
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Jersey to speak with his parents.
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: Hello.
• 5:38
  Speaker 7: How are you?
• 5:38
  Speaker 6: I am.
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: Nice to meet you.
• 5:41
  Speaker 7: Thanks for having me.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: His mother, Diane, and I settled onto the couch. His father, Kurt,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: showed me a picture of him. Matthew had light brown
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: hair and a goatee.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: This is why I wear it all.
• 5:52
  Speaker 7: That's a picture of my son.
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: In your wallet.
• 5:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, in my wallet.
• 5:55
  Speaker 8: They carry it all the time.
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: As Diane told me, Matthew was just getting started.
• 6:00
  Speaker 9: Matthew was.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, he.
• 6:07
  Speaker 9: He was wonderful. He had great friends. He was good
• 6:11
  Speaker 9: to me. He was good to the family. He was
• 6:14
  Speaker 9: not flawless. But he didn't think of himself as anything
• 6:18
  Speaker 9: super special. In fact, his email address was IamACog. Because
• 6:23
  Speaker 9: you would ask him, what's your job? He was in IT.
• 6:29
  Speaker 9: What do you do? He says, you know those little
• 6:31
  Speaker 9: pieces that if one kicks off the whole cog, the
• 6:34
  Speaker 9: wheel doesn't turn? I'm one of those. I'm a cog
• 6:37
  Speaker 9: in the wheel.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Diane said Matthew could be funny. He had just started
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: dating a nice girl who he hoped to marry someday.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: He liked to play Dungeons and Dragons with his friends,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: and he wanted to be a fantasy writer. He was
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: signed up to take a writing class on September 12th.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: He lived the way most guys in their late 20s do.
• 6:57
  Speaker 9: As we used to say, he lived in a place
• 6:59
  Speaker 9: that everybody used to want to move out of. And
• 7:03
  Speaker 9: his roommate, you'd go and you'd just go. Okay, is
• 7:06
  Speaker 9: this how I raised you?
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Kurt and Diane Horning reminded me a lot of my
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: own parents. They live in the same house they raised
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: their children in. They've been married for 56 years, and
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: they've lived here for 53 of those. They have another child,
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: a daughter, and grandkids now. In the corner of the room,
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: there's a makeshift memorial to Matthew. Diane took a wooden
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: bowl off of a bookcase and emptied it onto the couch.
• 7:36
  Speaker 9: This is his wallet. His wallet was, these are all
• 7:40
  Speaker 9: the things that were in his wallet. And when they
• 7:47
  Speaker 9: found these things, they sealed them and put them, you know,
• 7:51
  Speaker 9: like they sealed. This was the money that was in
• 7:54
  Speaker 9: his wallet, and it was sealed in this packaging. That
• 7:58
  Speaker 9: was found at Fresh Kills.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: During the sorting operation at Fresh Kills, Victims' families could
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: schedule visits to see what was going on there. Diane
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: doesn't remember when exactly she first visited, but she remembers
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: what she saw. She showed me some pictures she took
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: on one of her trips. This looks like just a
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: crack in the earth and some, like, grass with, like,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: hay maybe?
• 8:22
  Speaker 9: Yep, that was something I put on top of it,
• 8:25
  Speaker 9: but you could see pieces of the fire hose.
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: Oh, wow, yeah, it's like a fire hose in the
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: dirt with some flowers on it.
• 8:31
  Speaker 7: Yep.
• 8:32
  Speaker 9: You could see pieces of the building. You could see this,
• 8:38
  Speaker 9: which was a huge piece of cloth. We found shoes.
• 8:44
  Speaker 9: They said everything to a quarter of an inch has
• 8:46
  Speaker 9: been sifted out. They did not sift down to a quarter.
• 8:53
  Speaker 9: They lied.
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: Diane was shocked.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Fresh Kills was not supposed to look like this.
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: Something didn't seem right to her.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: This was the beginning of a fight for the Hornings,
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: and other families too, over what exactly Charles Hirsch's promise meant,
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: and where the remains of the dead should go. Dennis
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Diggins was the superintendent of the Fresh Kills landfill. He
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: was in charge of overseeing its closure, and then its reopening.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: in the early morning hours of September.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: 12, 2001.
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: So we got the first load out to the Frescoes,
• 9:40
  Speaker 6: I guess around 2 o'clock in the morning. And then
• 9:45
  Speaker 6: I just shot home, and I look like somebody dumped
• 9:50
  Speaker 6: a load of saccharine on my head. So I actually
• 9:53
  Speaker 6: got undressed in the garage and ran into the shower.
• 9:59
  Speaker 6: And then I was back at Frescoes the next morning
• 10:01
  Speaker 6: by 7 o'clock.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Diggins helped manage the cleanup for the sanitation department. City
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: officials started meeting at a school down the street from
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: Ground Zero. It became the de facto command center.
• 10:13
  Speaker 6: You went in and you saw all these top engineers
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: from all over the city sitting on these little seats.
• 10:22
  Speaker 6: They were like kindergarten seats. And you knew once those
• 10:27
  Speaker 6: egos were checked and sitting there, you knew we were
• 10:30
  Speaker 6: going to get through this. Uh, but it was still
• 10:33
  Speaker 6: a daunting experience.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: The world's largest garbage dump was now an active crime scene.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: The sorting and searching operation was all going to take
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: place at Fresh Kills.
• 10:46
  Speaker 6: Which really made the most sense because Fresh Kills is a, uh,
• 10:51
  Speaker 6: it's a city-owned facility. It's secured, it's fenced in, uh,
• 10:57
  Speaker 6: It's a marina loading facility, so if you want to
• 10:59
  Speaker 6: barge material there, you can barge material. And again, we
• 11:04
  Speaker 6: had 170 acres of flat plateau to work off of.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: At first, they were sorting through the material by hand,
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: with shovels and rakes.
• 11:14
  Speaker 5: And by the way, someone I spoke to for.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: This story made clear that material was the best word
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: to use.
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: Not debris, the word I'd been using.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Eventually, they brought in these sifting machines— which could take
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: the material and separate it out through screens to pieces
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: that were a quarter of an inch. That's about half
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: the size of your thumbnail. Everything else that passed through
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: was considered inconsequential dirt and dust.
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: Leftovers.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Whenever human remains were found, and they were found often
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: in those first few months, they were immediately sent to
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: the office of the chief medical examiner.
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: They found lots of personal items too. Wallets, ID cards, watches.
• 11:52
  Speaker 6: The men and women who worked in press kills were
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: never trained for anything like this. Tractor operators who were
• 11:58
  Speaker 6: moving material around in the sorting fields, I mean, they
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: saw human remains on a daily basis. And you would
• 12:06
  Speaker 6: see it as you were walking by. They would walk
• 12:08
  Speaker 6: by with a pail, and you knew what was inside.
• 12:12
  Speaker 6: But I think everybody stepped up and did what they
• 12:16
  Speaker 6: had to do and treated it with the utmost respect.
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: There were certain kinks to work out in the searching process.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: One of them was getting the speed of the sifters right,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: so that people could catch things without getting motion sick.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Another was accounting for the fact that people were working
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: around the clock, 24-7. It didn't take a day off
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: until Thanksgiving of that year. And then there were the seagulls.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: An NYPD official said they knew which piles of material
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: had lots of human remains, because seagulls would circle above,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: and they'd have to fight them off. By July of 2002,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: the city thought the operation at Fresh Kills was finished.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: It ended ahead of schedule and under budget, rare for
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: a government project. All told, they sorted about 1.5 million
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: tons of material from ground zero. That's about 600 Olympic
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: swimming pools worth of stuff. But then there's this fact
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: of the fines. What are the fines?
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: What are the fines?
• 13:16
  Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
• 13:17
  Speaker 6: The fines were the material that came through the sifter.
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: After it was searched out to a quarter of an inch,
• 13:23
  Speaker 6: those fines were then taken. Everything that was landfilled was
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: put into an area of about 45 acres on the
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: western side of the landfill. So that it was determined
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: that at the end of the day, we would be
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: able to cordon off this area that was all World
• 13:43
  Speaker 6: Trade Center material.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: The fines.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: F-I-N-E-S. Unidentified dirt and dust. The last stuff to be
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: left at Fresh Kills. Not garbage, not debris, but nothing
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: to be salvaged, at least from the city's point of view.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Of course, not everyone saw it that way.
• 14:05
  Speaker 9: They treated my son like garbage. This was the largest
• 14:09
  Speaker 9: garbage dump that had been recently closed. So while the
• 14:14
  Speaker 9: people who killed my son I have certainly an animosity
• 14:19
  Speaker 9: for them. I have a huge animosity for the people
• 14:25
  Speaker 9: who were running New York and running our federal government also,
• 14:32
  Speaker 9: who allowed my son to be put in a garbage dump.
• 14:36
  Speaker 9: Now we've got to do this fast, clean it up,
• 14:39
  Speaker 9: and get it out of our sight. Out of sight,
• 14:42
  Speaker 9: out of mind.
• 14:44
  Speaker 8: Out of mind.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: When I went to visit the Hornings in New Jersey,
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: the first thing I noticed was a bumper sticker on
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: their car out front.
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: I had Diane read me what it said.
• 14:55
  Speaker 9: The Fresh Kills garbage dump is no resting place for
• 14:58
  Speaker 9: the WTC 9-11 victims. We need your help.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Before Matthew was killed, Diane said she was not an organizer,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: not especially political. But in the face of insurmountable grief
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: over losing her son in a terrorist attack, she decided
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: to fight the only people she really could.
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: The city of New York. The Hornings had one demand.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Do not leave the remains of our son in the
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: Fresh Kills garbage dump. From their kitchen table, the Hornings
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: started a group called WTC Families for a Proper Burial
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: with others who had lost loved ones. They were fighting
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: to have the finds, that big pile of dust left
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: over from the sorting operation, moved out of the landfill
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: and into a more dignified place. The group met every
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: month at the Union Library in New Jersey. They attended
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: public planning meetings and protested at others.
• 15:51
  Speaker 9: So I became the spokesperson because I wasn't afraid to speak.
• 15:56
  Speaker 9: So you could say, well, we're going to meet the mayor.
• 15:58
  Speaker 9: I don't care. You know, that's okay. I'll talk to anybody.
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: And they did meet the mayor.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: Kurt and Diane told me they had a private, one-on-one
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: meeting with Mayor Bloomberg.
• 16:10
  Speaker 9: He was on his way to a basketball game, so
• 16:12
  Speaker 9: we had to make it fast. And he said, well,
• 16:18
  Speaker 9: I'm giving my body to science, so burial doesn't matter
• 16:21
  Speaker 9: to me. We said, we think that's great. That's your choice.
• 16:27
  Speaker 9: But we need a choice, too. And our choice is
• 16:29
  Speaker 9: to bury our children.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: On May 30, 2002, a ceremony was held at Ground Zero,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: marking the end of the recovery effort there. But then,
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: a couple years later, during a construction project, additional human
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: remains were found across the street from the towers on
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: the roof of the Deutsche Bank building. This kicked off
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: a new effort, which led to the discovery of over
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: a thousand bone fragments, human tissue, and other remains over
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: the next few years. Some were discovered by accident, like
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: when Con Ed workers were digging in a manhole. It
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: was clear that certain areas had been missed. The WTC
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: families group thought there was a chance that things might
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: have been missed at Fresh Kills, too. After all, Diane
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: had taken those pictures of stuff larger than a quarter
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: of an inch, like the fire hose. In 2002, a
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: bill was introduced in the New Jersey legislature that would
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: have required officials to remove the fines from Fresh Kills
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: and place them into containers to be stored at Ground Zero.
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: The bill never really went anywhere. The fines were determined
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: to be somewhere between 360,000 and 480,000 tons.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: If you picture it, that's about one football field in length,
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: piled 200 feet high. Promises were made to the families
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: by city officials, saying that the fines would be dealt
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: with somehow, that they wouldn't be forgotten. But those well-intentioned
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: promises sent the Hornings spinning in circles.
• 17:59
  Speaker 9: They sent us to the coroner's office. He was a
• 18:03
  Speaker 9: wonderful man, by the way. But the person we had
• 18:06
  Speaker 9: to deal with was Barbara Butcher. And then they send
• 18:10
  Speaker 9: us to— Wait, I'm sorry, that was her name?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Her name.
• 18:12
  Speaker 9: And then we go to Fresh Kills and we deal
• 18:14
  Speaker 9: with Dennis Diggins. And there were other names like that.
• 18:18
  Speaker 9: We're going, what is going on here? We felt like
• 18:23
  Speaker 9: we were in a Dickens novel. We really did. And
• 18:28
  Speaker 9: if we didn't laugh, we cried. We laughed a lot.
• 18:32
  Speaker 9: We cried a lot.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Dennis Diggins, the person in charge at Fresh Kills— remembers
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: the last meeting he had with the Hornings in his trailer.
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: It didn't go so well.
• 18:43
  Speaker 6: At one point in one of the meetings, he says, well,
• 18:47
  Speaker 6: who ultimately told you to come and bring this material
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: to Fresh Kells? So I said, well, it was determined
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: by the mayor and the Office of Emergency Management determined
• 18:57
  Speaker 6: that it should come here. So he said, so you
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: just blindly followed orders like Nazis? You just followed orders?
• 19:06
  Speaker 6: And at that point, I just said, listen, this meeting's over.
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: If you're going to equate the work that we're doing
• 19:11
  Speaker 6: here to Nazi Germany, I'm done. I'm not talking to
• 19:15
  Speaker 6: you people anymore.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: The Hornings got some politicians to sign letters of support
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: for their cause.
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: Plans were starting to be made.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: For what the memorial would be, and the city held
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: sessions for the public to attend and share their input.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Diane wanted to make one thing clear. A landfill could
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: never be a memorial in her eyes.
• 19:36
  Speaker 9: I remember going to one of these symposiums, and I
• 19:40
  Speaker 9: took a box, and I put garbage in the box,
• 19:43
  Speaker 9: and then I gift-wrapped it. That old pretty bow and whatever.
• 19:46
  Speaker 9: And then I opened it, and I said, I put
• 19:49
  Speaker 9: it in a pretty box, but it's still garbage.
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: Soon, a judge would weigh in on this fight. That's
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: after the break.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: Around the middle of the 4th century BC, the dog
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: philosopher Diogenes was chatting with friends about what should be
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: done with his body after he died. Here's cultural historian
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Thomas Lequeur.
• 20:12
  Speaker 8: You know, he's called the dog philosopher because dogs live naturally. Diogenes'
• 20:17
  Speaker 8: view of dogs, well, you know, they do all this
• 20:20
  Speaker 8: stuff in public that I'd like to do in public.
• 20:22
  Speaker 8: He was sort of famous in antiquity as being sort
• 20:25
  Speaker 8: of a truth-telling street person.
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: Lequeur is author of the book The Work of the Dead.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: It begins with the story of Diogenes, a man who
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: lived in a barrel on the street and was opposed
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: to all that was decent. He thought that humans should
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: be able to masturbate and defecate in public the same
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: way we eat in public. And so, when Diogenes was
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: talking about what should happen to him after he died,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: he said that he'd like to be thrown over the
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: city walls and disposed of like debris. I'm paraphrasing here,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: but the story goes that his friends pleaded with him,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: saying animals would dismember his body. Diogenes said, okay, then
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: put a stick in my hand so that I can
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: fight them off. His friends said, well, you wouldn't be
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: able to use the stick because you'd be dead.
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: To which Diogenes replied, exactly.
• 21:10
  Speaker 8: Diogenes is... is right in that a human body is
• 21:17
  Speaker 8: in no material way different from an animal body, which
• 21:21
  Speaker 8: get eaten by vultures and dealt with in the ordinary
• 21:24
  Speaker 8: course of ecology. And he's also right that he won't
• 21:29
  Speaker 8: notice it. So it's nothing to him what happens to
• 21:33
  Speaker 8: his body.
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: But of course, Diogenes is very wrong.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: For thousands of years before and for thousands of years after,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: humanity has rejected his logical proposition. Although we know we
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: can't use a stick to fight off vultures when we die,
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: most people would never throw someone out like trash.
• 21:51
  Speaker 8: There are only four ways you could get rid of
• 21:53
  Speaker 8: the dead, right? Air, fire, water, and earth. So you
• 21:57
  Speaker 8: bury them in the earth, you burn them with fire,
• 22:00
  Speaker 8: you throw them in water, or you leave them in
• 22:02
  Speaker 8: the air. So all of these have been done.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: The place of the dead has always mattered. Starting in
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: the 8th century, to be a church was to have
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: the body of a martyr.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: Or a relic from one.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: And the worst fate imaginable for the faithful was to
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: not be buried near them in the churchyard. Then, of course,
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: there's the public cemetery, cremation, open caskets, scattering ashes in
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: the river.
• 22:27
  Speaker 8: The general point is that no one throws them away.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: To Diane and Kurt Horning, it seemed like the city
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: was doing just that, throwing away the remains of their
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: son in a landfill. In the best-case scenario, WTC families
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: wanted the fines taken out of Fresh Kills, moved to
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Ground Zero, and incorporated into the memorial there. If that
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: wasn't possible, WTC families had other suggestions. Governor's Island. Or
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: maybe a section of Fresh Kills that was not on
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: top of garbage. In 2004, the city finally said outright,
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: the fines would not be moved from Fresh Kills. I
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: asked Dennis Diggins about this. To me, it seemed logistically challenging.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: but not totally out of the question to move the
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: finds somewhere else.
• 23:15
  Speaker 7: Was it purely a logistical impossibility to put the finds
• 23:21
  Speaker 7: somewhere else, like to make a cemetery somewhere or to
• 23:24
  Speaker 7: put them in a place that was not Fresh Kills?
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: Like, why was that not possible?
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: Well, at the time, finds were just another product of
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: the material itself. There was never any thought that this
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: material should be brought somewhere else and treated somewhere else.
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: Just didn't enter into the equation.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: Would the fines just look like a pile of dirt
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: to someone who didn't know what they were? Yep. After
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: years of meetings and sessions and bills that went nowhere,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: WTC families for a proper burial sued the city. They
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: hired legendary civil rights attorney Norman Siegel to represent them.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: In August of 2005, they filed their two-count complaint, alleging
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: that leaving the fines and fresh kills violated their 14th
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Amendment right to due process. They claim it also violated
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: New York burial laws, which state that family members have
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: certain property rights when it comes to their dead. At
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: some point, the Hornings reached out to Charles Hirsch, the
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: chief medical examiner. They wanted information about what remains had
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: been found and where. Hirsch sent Diane Horning a letter
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: in response. He wrote, But the problem was, none of
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: the plaintiffs could prove that the ashes of their loved one, specifically,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: was mixed in with that dirt. Nearly three years after
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: litigation began, the judge in the case issued his decision.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: He ruled that the plaintiffs lacked a constitutionally protected right
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: to what amounts to, quote, an unidentifiable.
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: Mass of dirt.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: He wrote, All human remains that could be identified were identified.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: Only dust remains. Almost 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Over 20,000 fragments of human remains were found. families didn't
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: just receive one notification that their loved one was among
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: the dead. Some of them received visit after visit, phone
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: call after phone call, each time a new body part
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: or piece of tissue was identified as a match. But
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: there are still over a thousand people whose remains have
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: never been identified. Charles Hirsch passed away in 2016, but
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: the city is still looking for ways to match the
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: remains they keep to the dead. In 2025, forensic scientists
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: had a breakthrough and identified three new 9-11 victims. DNA
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: matching technology continues to get better. It's possible this process
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: will never end. Diane and Kurt Horning have received a
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: few notifications over the years, small fragments of Matthew. They
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: buried what they were given, but pieces of their son
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: are not enough. Toward the end of our interview, I
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: finally asked Diane a question I'd been wondering since I
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: walked in.
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: I haven't asked about your pin. Tell me about your
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: pin you're wearing.
• 26:44
  Speaker 9: We got these. Somebody wrote, and I wish I could remember.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: It was a picture of the towers with a heart
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: in the background, the same image I'd seen on the
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Hornings car when I was walking up.
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: I assumed she'd put it on because I was coming.
• 26:57
  Speaker 9: I swore I'd wear it every day until he was
• 27:00
  Speaker 9: out of the dump, and he's not out of the dump,
• 27:02
  Speaker 9: so I'm wearing it.
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: You wear it every day?
• 27:04
  Speaker 9: I wear it every day. My husband wears his every day, too.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: The fines are still at Fresh Kills. The city has
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: already begun converting the whole place into a park, and
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: plans are in the works for a 9-11 memorial there.
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: The Hornings say they'll never go.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: The story began with a very well-meaning promise, a commitment
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: to honoring what remained after a massive tragedy, a promise
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: that Charles Hirsch hoped could give comfort to thousands of
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: families who were never going to see the person they
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: loved again. But it was always going to be an
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: impossible promise to fulfill. And I think the reason why
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: can be found in a personal story the cultural historian
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: Thomas Lequeur told me about his father, his grandfather, and
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: maybe himself, too. Lequeur's father, a Jew, had to flee
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Germany in the 1940s. He and his family settled in Virginia.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: He was a doctor, a pathologist. His father thought of
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: the dead how any pathologist would, in a detached, medical way.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: When he died, he was cremated, and his ashes were
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: spread in a flowerbed next to a lake in Virginia.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Ten years later, Lequeur was invited to give a talk
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: in Germany, and his wife suggested that maybe he should
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: take some of his father's ashes with him and spread
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: them over his grandfather's grave in Hamburg.
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: The two were very close, both doctors. One problem.
• 28:34
  Speaker 8: Literally, I had no ashes. What I had was the flowerbed.
• 28:38
  Speaker 8: which had been fertilizing over the years. So there were
• 28:42
  Speaker 8: his ashes, the phosphorus, the nitrogen, and so forth. But
• 28:44
  Speaker 8: there was also the stuff he'd buy at Miracle-Gro or
• 28:47
  Speaker 8: whatever in this bed. I realized that my father would
• 28:51
  Speaker 8: have said this was complete nonsense. My father was a
• 28:55
  Speaker 8: man of science.
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: But LeCoeur did it anyway.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: He traveled with a Ziploc baggie in his carry-on and
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: emptied it onto his grandfather's grave in Hamburg.
• 29:04
  Speaker 8: And I felt this was actually kind of an emotional
• 29:06
  Speaker 8: experience meaningful experience. It felt like I was connecting them again.
• 29:11
  Speaker 8: I felt, you know, I brought them together, you know, and,
• 29:16
  Speaker 8: but if you ask me, what was me, did I
• 29:18
  Speaker 8: think I'm, if you ask me, did you take your
• 29:20
  Speaker 8: dad's ashes and put them on your grandfather's grave? Let's
• 29:24
  Speaker 8: be kidding.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Humans care for the dead. It's what we do, even
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: though we know better. Laqueur borrows a quote from the
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: art critic, David Hickey. calling it a magic we can
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: believe in.
• 29:40
  Speaker 8: In other words, I'm a modern person. I don't believe
• 29:44
  Speaker 8: that any fragment of anyone has any particular relevance. My
• 29:48
  Speaker 8: father's ashes differ in no way from the fertilizer we
• 29:51
  Speaker 8: put in, but I.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Act as if I do.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: At a certain point, things become something else. Alive, dead,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: a body, dust, two buildings, rubble, ashes, miracle grow, a
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: garbage dump, a park.
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: But there's always this period in between. The transition. When
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: two things are true at once.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Provisionist History is produced by me, Lucy Sullivan, with Ben
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: Natafafri and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shikurji.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Fact-checking by Sam Russick.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Original music by Luis Guerra and Stellwagen Symphonette. Mastering by
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Marcelo de Oliveira. Special thanks to Robin Nagel, Marty Ballou,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: and Norman Siegel. And thanks, of course, to Malcolm Gladwell.
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: I'm Lucy Sullivan.