'We never recovered him': Quest to identify remains from Ground Zero continues

'We never recovered him': Quest to identify remains from Ground Zero continues

Juliette Scauso was four, the youngest of four children, when her father, firefighter Dennis Scauso, was killed in 9/11

For 25 years, the only physical reminder Juliette Scauso has had from the final day of her father’s life has been his battered firefighter helmet.

Scauso’s father, Dennis — who spent 12 years in a New York City Fire Department (FDNY) hazmat unit — had not originally been scheduled to work on 11 September, 2001, but took the shift for the overtime pay.

The Long Island father of four was believed to have been in the South Tower of the World Trade Center when it came down, the Scauso family was told. His helmet, bearing his badge number, was discovered months later.

“I've spent essentially my entire life knowing my father died, and learning to live with the fact that we never recovered him,” said Scauso, who was four when he died.

Dennis Scauso is among more than 1,000 people killed on September 11 in New York who still have not been identified, according to New York City’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Nearly 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center attacks that day.

Last month, the city revealed the identity of a previously unidentified victim of the terrorist attacks — the 1,654th person — using a newer method known as forensic investigative genetic genealogy, or FIGG.

“There is real promise in using this approach,” said Angela Soler, director of forensic anthropology in the city’s medical examiner office. “There's hope for more families to receive answers, and hopefully we'll be able to test more remains in the future using this technology as well.”

Since 9/11, Soler’s office has worked to identify the remains of the 2,753 victims who died in the World Trade Center. So far, 60 percent of those killed have been identified.

“It’s been one of the most complex identification efforts that I think anybody has ever really experienced,” Soler said.

A number of factors have made the identification effort difficult.

Human remains were damaged in the plane impacts and the fires fueled by jet fuel, leaving the office with only fragments of victims for DNA testing, Soler said.

Scauso also noted that because of the timing of the attacks, many firefighters were in the middle of changing shifts, while others stayed behind to help and grabbed whatever extra equipment they could find. As a result, some first responders recovered were wearing uniforms with other people’s names, making identification harder.

The World Trade Center site also had far more victims than the other 9/11 attack locations.

The remains of five of the 184 people killed when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon were never identified because of similar circumstances. According to the National Park Service, enough remains were recovered to use DNA, dental records and fingerprints to identify all 40 victims aboard United Airlines flight 93, which crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Remains from the World Trade Center have been packaged and sealed to preserve DNA for future testing. In the days after the attacks, people were identified through fingerprints or dental records, but as time passed and those were unavailable, the office turned to DNA. Officials were able to use newer technology to extract DNA and retest the same remains.

“That’s why all these years down the road, we're still getting new identifications, because we're just continuing to retest and retry with every new technology that becomes available,” Soler said.

DNA technology has helped the office identify 1,495 victims since 9/11 — some using DNA alone and others through multiple methods — according to the medical examiner’s office.

Last year, the city said that with DNA help, 24 years later, it had identified three more victims: Ryan Fitzgerald, a 26-year-old currency trader; Babara Keating, a 72-year-old who was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles; and a woman whose family chose to keep her identity private.

Soler said the new FIGG technology relies on whole genome sequencing, which allows investigators to read a person’s entire genetic code. That gives them a better chance of finding matches with more distant relatives of the victim. After those matches are made, the New York Police Department helps locate closer relatives.

New York’s medical examiner office still receives weekly calls from loved ones asking about someone whose remains were never recovered.

Many families have never been able to bury a loved one, though some choose to leave recovered remains at a repository at the 9/11 memorial site in New York. The repository was built into the bedrock of the World Trade Center site and can only be entered by medical examiner staff. A nearby private area, called the reflection room, is available for families to grieve.

“That’s where their loved one was in their last moments, and that’s where they want them to stay”, Soler said.

Some people do not want to be told, perhaps because the confirmation is too painful, said Soler, who helps notify families.

Scauso is one of them. She knows people who, in recent years, received calls saying a relative had finally been identified. The idea of being next is frightening for her family, which has worked hard to keep alive the memory of her father — a jack of all trades and a lover of jazz.

“At this point, an identification wouldn't change the reality of his death. It wouldn't give me back my father, and I don't necessarily want to reopen something that has become part of the way I've learned to live and grieve,” she said. “Especially 25 years later, it's going to open up the wounds again.”

Scauso says her father Dennis’s helmet was the only item recovered, along with his FDNY badge, where he worked for 12 years

But Scauso said the technology matters.

Soler has seen the news bring both relief and sorrow. “It's confirmation of something that they always knew to be true - they knew their loved one died on 9/11, but I think for many families, there's still that question in the back of their mind until the remains are formally identified,” Soler said.

“Maybe they're reliving it a little bit more now, having this new identification. But at the same time, it closes one chapter of their journey after 9/11,” she added.

For Soler — and for some of her current colleagues who were also on the ground during 9/11 — the work is deeply personal. Staff from their office arrived at Ground Zero after the planes struck the towers and were there when the buildings collapsed.

They know it is unlikely they will identify every victim of the New York attacks. In some cases, there may be no remains of a victim at all. Even so, they do not intend to stop.

“As long as there's families looking for answers, we'll continue searching for them,” she said.