Identifying victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks remains a top priority for officials.
And as recently as 2021, a victim has been identified using DNA from an old toothbrush.
When hijacked planes crashed into New York City's World Trade Center towers on September 11th, 2001,
the world changed forever. Of the 2,753 people who were killed in the towers,
403 were New York City firefighters, police officers and Port Authority officers. There
were at least 220 more people killed when another plane crashed near the Pentagon.
As reported by Science Direct, the temperature inside the towers reached up to 1000 °C,
melting metal and reducing many of the bodies completely to ash. According to New Scientist,
more than 21,800 body parts, along with skin and bone fragments were recovered
from the rubble –- some of them years after the towers fell — but it's impossible to tell
how many bodies those fragments belong to. By 2011, a decade after the attack,
only 1,632 of the 2,753 victims had been identified. Though DNA profiling
has continued to evolve since then, the remains have also continued to deteriorate.
While traditional DNA analysis technology is very good at creating a DNA profile from human remains,
the skin and bone remains from the World Trade Center attack provided only partial
or degraded profiles. But since the attack, new DNA technology has helped identify more victims.
"When we do identify them it really does, it really does, very, uh, very special."
Even with the new techniques available, CNN reported that by October 2019, only 1,645,
or 60-percent, of the World Trade Center victims had been positively identified. While the medical
examiner's office still has the partial remains of many other people who were killed that day,
identifying them has remained difficult. Some of the last remains identified included a 43-year-old
woman whose name was not released. In 2013 she was identified as "based on DNA testing
of debris," as reported by New York 1. The same year, the medical examiner's
office also identified victim No. 1,637, New York City firefighter Lt. Jeffrey P. Walz.
Between 2017 and 2019, the medical examiner's office was able to identify several other victims
through the DNA retesting of remains, according to CNN. And just before the 20th anniversary of
the attacks in September 2021, the medical examiner's office confirmed they had been
able to identify the 1,646th and 1,647th victims using new DNA forensic technology. As of today,
more than 1,100 victims, or 40-percent of those who died in the towers, have yet to
be identified. The forensic scientists working tirelessly to retest the body parts recovered
are currently testing "bone fragments the size of a Tic Tac," according to NPR.
Although it's been two decades since 9/11,
Newsweek writes that identifying victims remains a top priority for officials. Most recently,
the remains of Scott Michael Johnson and Dorothy Morgan were identified in 2018 and 2021 using DNA
from their old toothbrushes. CNN reports that another victim was identified in 2019. However,
the man's name was not publicly released, per the family's wishes. In 2021, NBC New York explained
that another man was identified along with Morgan. His name was also withheld from the public.
According to People, Johnson was working on the 89th floor of the South Tower as a
security analyst at the time of his death. The then 26-year-old was from Montclair, New Jersey.
According to NJ.com, his mother, Ann Johnson, said 2001 was a fantastic year for her family
until 9/11. She waited for her son to call to say he had made it but he never did. His remains were
identified in the summer of 2018 but Ann said it did little to ease the pain of losing her son.
As for Dorothy Morgan, she was a 47-year-old mother that worked on the 94th floor of the
North Tower. Defying her daughter Nykiah's expectations, Morgan was identified in
September 2021. Nykiah stated that her mother was remarkable and grieves that she never got
to meet her second grandchild. The Guardian writes that investigators will continue to
extend the limits of DNA to identify as many victims as they possibly can.