Twenty Years Later(20)
“Livia, thanks so much for this,” Avery said as Livia walked up to the bar.
“Are you kidding me? When Avery Mason calls, I’m interested. What are you doing in New York?”
“I’m on summer sabbatical, but when this news broke I knew I had to talk with you to get the details.”
“Happy to help any way I can.”
They sat on adjacent stools and Livia ordered a white wine.
“I’m fascinated with the discovery your office recently made,” Avery said. “I’d love to get some details about it. I’m hoping to feature the process and the discovery on my show in the fall. The timing is eerie.”
“It is,” Livia said. “Twenty years later and we’re still identifying victims from the World Trade Center. It’s mind numbing.”
“I’m curious how that’s even possible. Tell me about it.”
“Well, I obviously wasn’t the ME in New York during 9/11. But I’ve heard stories from folks who were on the frontlines. Some of them are still part of the office today. It was horrific, as you might imagine. When the towers fell, the loss of life was not only tragic, but destructive. Gruesome, even. There were very few fully intact bodies recovered from the rubble. Mostly what was found were body parts. It made identifying the victims a monumental challenge. Many recovered body parts were too badly damaged to match them together, so each one had to be identified. Since many of the bodies were catastrophically burned, the usual methods of identification—finding a tattoo or a birthmark or other distinguishing characteristics—were impossible. Instead, we had to rely on DNA. Dental records helped in some cases. But relying on dental ID and DNA analysis had its limitations. Those methods are reliant on the families delivering dental records and DNA samples of their loved ones to the medical examiner’s office. As we sit here tonight, there are over twenty thousand pieces of remains, mostly bone fragments, that have yet to be identified. We’ve extracted DNA from a portion of those remains but we have nothing to match it to.”
“Because families never provided a reference DNA sample?”
“Correct.”
“And the rest of the twenty thousand remains?”
“Until recently,” Livia said, “we had no way of extracting DNA from them. And remember, we’re talking about thousands of bone fragments. The math is simple. Just fewer than three thousand people died when the towers collapsed. We have over twenty thousand specimens to ID. Many of those specimens belong to the same victim. Occasionally, we extract DNA from bone and realize the remains belong to an already identified victim. We check it off the list and move on. But many of the bone fragments were burned so badly that nearly all of the DNA was destroyed.”
“Until you developed this new technology.”
“Correct. And I wish I could take credit for developing it, but I can’t. I’m only peripherally involved in the identification process. That’s handled by Dr. Arthur Trudeau who, along with his team of scientists and technicians, works tirelessly each day on the 9/11 project.”
“Tell me about the process. Again, I hope to come back later in the summer and formally interview you on camera. Dr. Trudeau, as well.”
Livia nodded. “That could certainly be arranged. I, too, find it fascinating. Here’s how it works. Typically, extracting DNA from bone is straightforward. A scraping is taken from the bone’s surface to obtain bone cells. DNA is then extracted from those cells using EDTA and proteinase K, which are enzymes that break down the cell wall and allow the DNA to spill out. If you want to get into the weeds on the chemistry of how it works, I’m happy to.”
Avery shook her head. “No thanks. We’ll find a way to more easily explain the process when we get to that point. For now, I’ll take your word for it. It’s a simple process if you say so.”
Livia offered a smile. “It’s the classic method, or the gold standard. Performed every day at crime labs across the country. But most of the bone harvested from Ground Zero was too badly burned to extract DNA from the surface. Remember, the jet fuel burned at two thousand degrees for more than one hundred hours. Some of the bodies were likely incinerated completely to ash. But the remains that were found were brought to the New York ME’s office for identification. The remains that could not be immediately identified were stored and preserved for later analysis. That analysis has been ongoing for years and is still happening today, twenty years later. This latest identification came from a new process of pulverizing the bone nearly to ash, and then taking the residue from the innermost aspect of the bone, the area that was furthest from the damaging flames, and extracting DNA from the cells we find there. It’s proven to be quite effective. We’re optimistic that many more IDs will follow.”
“Fascinating,” Avery said. “And the family of the victim who was identified? How is the discovery presented to them?”
“There’s a protocol in place for every family that has provided us with DNA samples. First a phone call is made, and then an in-person visit is scheduled.”
“Do you make the visits?”
“No. That’s left for Dr. Trudeau.”
“The most recent identification. It was of a woman named Victoria Ford,” Avery said. “Can you tell me anything about her or her family?”
“I only know as much as Dr. Trudeau told me. The victim’s parents are no longer living. She was married but had no children. Her husband has remarried, so her sister was the next of kin. That was who Dr. Trudeau met with.”