THE hunt for survivors in the rubble of the New York World Trade Center has
turned into a homicide investigation of America鈥檚 largest crime scene. It鈥檚 an
investigation that will take months if not years to complete.
鈥淏odies are going to be coming up a little bit at a time, not a thousand
bodies at a time,鈥� Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York
State Police, told 快猫短视频. 鈥淏odies will still be there, probably, come
颁丑谤颈蝉迟尘补蝉.鈥�
Many will never be found, raising the troubling prospect that the world will
begin to weary of this colossal forensic project鈥攁nd perhaps even question
its value鈥攍ong before it can be completed.
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But completed it must be, investigators insist. Thousands of families need to
know for sure whether their missing relative was a victim of the terrorist
attacks: for emotional reasons, and also to settle practical matters such as
insurance and inheritance claims. And investigators need forensic evidence to
prove that those accused of carrying out the attacks were actually present so
they can build a case against their associates and paymasters.
But the scale of the task is unprecedented. The twin towers collapsed into a
million tonnes of rubble just nine storeys high. Hundreds of workers are now
sifting through the debris by hand. If it weren鈥檛 for the horror, it would be
almost like an archaeological dig, says Murray Marks, a forensic anthropologist
from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
Natural disasters such as earthquakes generally leave the bodies of their
victims largely intact. The wreckage from most aircraft crashes is usually easy
to identify and passenger lists help to confirm the victims. This time, the
investigators are having to try and put names to tiny fragments, perhaps even a
single tooth.
When searchers find any human remains, they are shipped in refrigerated
trucks to the medical examiner鈥檚 office in midtown Manhattan鈥攖he largest
forensic lab in the US鈥攆or identification.
There, hundreds of pathologists, radiologists, anthropologists, dentists,
fingerprint experts and other specialists will sort through upwards of an
estimated 500,000 tissue samples and body parts in an effort to identify the
remains of nearly 6500 people believed killed in the attack. The grim task could
take millions of hours of lab work, experts say. As 快猫短视频 went
to press, the roll of identified dead stands at just 194, while 67 wait for
identification.
Wherever possible, fingerprints, dental records, photographs, descriptions of
identifying marks such as tattoos or scars, and personal items such as rings
will be used. But they may not be enough to identify many of the dead. DNA
analysis may be the only way to account for everyone, say officials.
Even this will be beset with problems. Those missing in New York came from
more than 100 countries. As well as the thousands of workers, there were
probably hundreds of tourists. Relatives are now giving samples of their own
DNA, or the presumed victim鈥檚 toothbrush, razor or comb鈥攁nything that
could be used to make a genetic match.
Linking a recovered sample to a particular person is still fraught with
difficulty, however. Cross-referencing all the data will be a mammoth task. And
samples gathered from the scene will have to be carefully examined for
contamination. 鈥淭here was likely much commingling of remains,鈥� says Baden.
The high temperatures of a fire following a plane crash can also break DNA
molecules apart. And as tissue decays in the coming weeks, the DNA will degrade,
making identification even more difficult.
The task may not be quite as hard at the Pentagon, as many of the people who
work there are service personnel. Every branch of the military maintains a
record of its employees鈥� DNA, says Mark Blair, who heads the mortuary at Dover
Air Force Base in Delaware. 鈥淲e are fortunate because we have a known universe
at the Pentagon.鈥�
In New York, however, many bodies may never be recovered. Some are thought to
have been completely incinerated in the intense blaze after the two plane
crashes.
The FBI also faces a monumental task. Its goal is to identify those
responsible for the atrocities and build a case against them. FBI crime scene
specialists are quite literally down on their hands and knees collecting pieces
of the destroyed commercial jets and other evidence.
The New York debris is being trucked from the pit at ground zero at a rate of
a dozen dump trucks an hour. Already 40,000 tonnes have been hauled out to a
1000-hectare landfill site on Staten Island called Fresh Kills (to the Dutch
settlers who named the area, this meant 鈥渇resh stream鈥�). Similar efforts are
under way at the Pentagon and at the field in Somerset county, Pennsylvania,
where the fourth hijacked airliner crashed.
So far, workers have found the passport of one of the suspected hijackers on
American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the towers. At the
Somerset site, they found a cigarette lighter with a concealed three-inch knife,
believed to belong to one of the hijackers on board United Airlines Flight
93.
But that may not be enough to fight a court case. 鈥淣o matter what, you still
do the obvious: ID the victims and then look at the wreckage to try and piece
together the events,鈥� says Marks.
鈥淭he crime scene is like an archaeological site. You only have one chance to
take it apart and get information from it. Once it鈥檚 destroyed you can鈥檛 go
back,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 also ballistic evidence to collect, namely the
辫濒补苍别蝉.鈥�
The FBI still hopes that the planes鈥� black boxes will reveal clues to their
final moments, when the hijackers took over the controls and wreaked their
havoc. But none has yet been recovered from the World Trade Center rubble. Other
flight recorders were too damaged to be of any use.
Scraps of paper, documents, clothing and chunks of building deemed relevant
are all being tagged and stored as evidence. 鈥淲ith all the technology and
everything we have, we have to imagine there are men and women going through one
piece of paper at a time, one bucket of material at a time, sifting through
screens, trying to separate the evidence from the body parts,鈥� says Marks.
They are spurred on by the hope that, years from now, the evidence they
collect will help bring some justice to bear on the horrific acts of 11 September.
