Two more victims of 9/11 are ID'd by NYC's chief medical examiner through new DNA technique

The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner said Friday it used new DNA techniques to identify the remains of two more victims from the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

Because of family requests for confidentiality the names of the two victims — one a man and one a woman — were not released but were referred to simply as the 1,648th and 1,649th persons to be identified over two decades of investigation with DNA and other forensic techniques.

A total of 2,753 persons died in the attack on the World Trade Center and the latest identifications mean that the remains of just over 60% of the victims have been confirmed.

“We hope these new identifications can bring some measure of comfort to the families of these victims and the ongoing efforts by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner attest to the city’s unwavering commitment to reunite all the World Trade Center victims with their loved ones,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a joint statement put out with the city’s chief medical examiner Dr. Jason Graham.

“Faced with the largest and most complex forensic investigation in the history of our country, we stand undaunted in our mission to use the latest advances in science to serve this promise,” said Graham.

Officials said the latest identifications were made in part through the use of Next Generation Sequencing — also known as NGS — a technology used successfully by the U.S. military to identify the dead from the Korean and Vietnam Wars whose remains were seriously degraded and couldn’t be identified with conventional DNA techniques.

“NGS was vital,” said Mark Desire, an official at the OCME, of the latest World Trade Center discoveries.

NGS, which is also utilized in the area of medical research, was also used in tandem with other DNA methods to make the latest World Trade Center identifications, said a spokeswoman for Graham. Scientists with the medical examiner's office have been using NGS for the last year, mostly to confirm the identities of previously identified victims.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.