New technology identifies more victims

THOUGH many of their names appear on memorials across the nation, 40% of those who died in the September 11 terrorist attack at the World Trade Center – more than 1 000 people – have never been officially identified.

They are gone. Their families probably know. But their DNA has not been matched to any of the remains found at Ground Zero or beyond.

As America awakes today to the sombre 20th anniversary of the tragedy, the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner announced on Tuesday that it had formally identified two more people who were killed that day. Researchers hope the new techniques used to identify those two will help them make progress in the remaining cases.

The last identifications made before those announced on Tuesday were in October 2019; the pace slowed to a crawl after the hundreds of identifications in the few years after 2001. New, more sensitive DNA sequencing technology now “promises to result in more new identifications”, the medical examiner’s office said in a statement.

Dorothy Morgan of Hempstead, New York, is the 1 646th person to be identified. The family of the other person identified requested his name be withheld.

Morgan’s daughter, Nykiah Morgan, told NBC New York that though she had recognised her mother was gone, she was shocked to hear officials had identified her remains. Some part of her hadn’t let go of the possibility of her mother still being out there somewhere, she told the station.

“Maybe she had amnesia. Maybe she’s out living a whole different life, and she’s happy,” she said.

Dorothy Morgan worked for an insurance company, and would have been 67 this year.

Her name is etched on the 9/11 memorial in New York City.

Her identity was confirmed after testing remains recovered in 2001. The unnamed man’s identity was confirmed through testing remains recovered across several years: 2001, 2002 and 2006, the medical examiner's office said.

All remains have been tested at this point, and scientists are now reexamining bone fragments using new, pioneering technology.

“We continue to push the science out of necessity to make more identifications,” said Mark Desire, manager of the World Trade Center DNA Identification Team, which is part of the medical examiner’s office, in a statement.

“The commitment today is as strong as it was in 2001,” he said.

Next generation sequencing, which is also used by the US military, is now being employed to help verify more World Trade Center victims. Researchers said this method allows them to test samples previously considered too far degraded to be useful.

Initially, scientists had more than 22000 remains to examine, ranging from more complete bodies to tiny fragments of bone. Victims’ families provided about 17000 reference DNA samples for comparison, officials said, including toothbrushes, razors and saliva samples from children and siblings.

Researchers said at a Wednesday news conference that they had about 30 sets of remains with DNA profiles that did not match any of those reference samples.

“At this present time, we have no way of identifying those individuals,” said DNA scientist and lab supervisor Carl Gajewski.

This could be because families did not provide reference DNA samples, Gajewski said. Separately, some families have also requested to not be notified if their loved ones’ remains are positively identified.

A private repository of unidentified and unclaimed remains is held at the National September 11 Memorial complex and is maintained by the medical examiner’s office.

The endeavour of identifying the remaining victims of September 11 is the “largest and most complex forensic investigation in the history of the US,” the medical examiner’s office said.

In a virtual news conference on Wednesday, Desire said despite advances in technology, some of the remains would probably never be identified.