“Welcome Back, Kotter” premiered on this day in 1975. The half-hour sitcom starred Gabe Kaplan as Gabe Kotter, who returns to Brooklyn.

The post September 9: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

Mark Desire, the director of forensic biology at the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), has countless stories to tell from working with 9/11 victims’ families.

In one such story from this year, Desire said the mother of a female victim — who was in her 30s and died in the South Tower of the World Trade Center — asked him if he thought he would be able to identify her daughter’s remains before she herself passed on.

“She came and said, ‘Mark, I’m getting up there. I don’t have much time left. Do you think you’ll find my daughter before I pass?’” Desire told amNewYork in an interview. 

Desire said that while he could not predict what would happen, he could commit to continuing to work on identifying the 40% of 9/11 victims in the OCME repository whose remains are still unidentified a quarter century after the tragedy.

“She understood,” he said. “And she said, ‘Well, can you promise that after I die, if I can’t hold her before … Can you bury her next to me?’”

Desire said her story is just one example of the many that have driven him and his team to tirelessly pursue identifying all of the 2,753 victims who died in the Twin Towers, which were brought down when terrorists deliberately crashed two commercial airplanes into them on Sept. 11, 2001.

Over the years, Desire and his team have successfully identified 1,651 victims, 60% of those who died at the World Trade Center site, and have recovered nearly 22,000 remains, 14,968 (68%) of which it has linked to specific victims — according to OCME data.

However, even with all of that progress, OCME is still working to give the victims’ families, who have not yet been identified, closure by identifying their remains. The unidentified remains are currently stored in a repository inside the 9/11 Memorial and Museum that is managed by OCME.

Keeping a promise to 9/11 victims’ families a quarter-century later

While Desire has been working on 9/11 identifications ever since the morning of the attacks, he said that he is the only one left of his original team.

“All of the team members that are working on this now, many were in diapers back in 2001. I don’t think some weren’t even born; they were kids,” Desire told amNewYork in an interview. “But to be able to work on this, they feel as honored and humbled as I do.”

But even with all of the years that have passed and an entirely new team, Desire said his office’s commitment to identifying every single victim is as great today as it was in September 2001. Oh 

“That promise we made 25 years ago, that’s a promise kept,” he said. “We have not turned our backs on this, on those families.”

Once they have made a positive identification, OCME turns the remains over to the victim’s family, according to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office. Desire said that in lieu of remains, his office has at times returned personal items used for DNA testing to families, such as a firefighter’s boots or helmet, for them to bury in the meantime.

It has taken 25 years to identify just over half of World Trade Center victims’ remains, Desire said, because of the extensive damage the human matter underwent during the attacks. The jet fuel, scorching inferno, water used to extinguish the fires, and chemicals from the buildings were among a mix of elements that severely damaged victims’ DNA, he said.

“The fires down there, the water to put out the fires that destroys DNA,” Desire said. “Sunlight destroys DNA. Mold, bacteria, the chemicals in those buildings — it was all there. And every single one of those things make our job almost impossible at times because of the limits of technology.”

Charles Wolf, whose wife Katherine was killed on 9/11, said he does not believe his wife will ever be identified because she worked on a floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower that was hit by the plane.

“There’s nothing of my wife ever found because the first plane hit her office directly at 450 miles an hour,” he said. “I don’t think anybody was found in that area.”

While he does not think OCME will ever be able to ID his wife, he would be “shattered” if it somehow did.

But OCME has not let the challenges of working with such badly damaged DNA samples stop it, Desire said.

Instead, Desire’s office has developed and sought out new scientific methods and technology that have helped it identify remains it previously could not. He said that often means his team tries to identify the same remains repeatedly over several years, sometimes as many as ten times, until it is able to push the science to a point that yields a positive result.

“Our team, their job is to make identifications, but also when it cannot develop a better technique, push forensics, push the science in the future, whether it’s through our own research and development or it’s a technique that’s out there, we bring it to New York City, and we try it out on World Trade Center to see if it can make these IDs.”

For instance, OCME has used a variety of identification methods over the years besides DNA, including dental X-rays, photos, fingerprints, and personal effects.

This year, for the first time, Desire’s team made an ID using a technique called forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG). The method combines DNA testing with genealogical research to narrow down whom a DNA sample could belong to in a family tree when the office does not already have a reference sample.

“We brought in genealogy in the cases where we have DNA that’s not matching who is this person’s family?” Desire said. “So genealogy will give us some leads on, hey, it may have come from this family tree. And that way we can narrow it down. Or we can reach out to the family and get a reference sample today from a family member and allow us to make that ID 25 years later.”

The victim they identified only as a woman who was killed at the World Trade Center site on 9/11, with other details withheld at the request of her family, according to the mayor’s office.

Monika Iken-Murphy, whose husband Michael Iken a bond broker who was killed in the World Trade Center’s South Tower, said she’s holding out hope that the FIGG can help identify him. She said that Michael never knew who his father, so there is a possibility that the genealogy research could turn up relatives they don’t know who can help identify his remains.

“I’m hoping maybe that happens because back then we didn’t have ancestry, obviously,” Iken-Murphy said. “We have his mother’s DNA. We have his DNA. You never know.”

But she said that even if her husband’s remains are identified, she would prefer for them to stay inside the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

“Even if he were to be found, I’m keeping him there,” she said. “I want to remember him as a whole person.”