NEW YORK — Officials with the medical examiner's office here reached out to Paul Keating's family a few months ago to say they believed a team of forensic scientists had made a breakthrough.
Combing through material collected after the September 11, 2001 terror attack, they had found a DNA match between human remains and Keating's mother, Barbara Keating, who died aboard one of the passenger jets that slammed into the World Trade Center.
On Thursday, the identification was confirmed publicly by the office of NYC's chief medical examiner. "I think it's stunning," Keating told NPR, referring to efforts by the city to help families find closure. "They're doing this for us. They're doing it like they're possessed."
The mayor's office announced that three additional victims of the terror attacks that occurred nearly 24 years ago were identified using information from families and advanced DNA-analysis techniques.
Two names were released publicly: Barbara Keating of Palm Springs, Calif., and Ryan Fitzgerald of Floral Park, N.Y. The remains of another adult woman were also identified, but her name is being withheld at the request of family members.
"Nearly 25 years after the disaster at the World Trade Center, our commitment to identify the missing and return them to their loved ones stands as strong as ever," Dr. Jason Graham, NYC's chief medical examiner, said in a statement.
On Sept. 11, 2001, conspirators from the terrorist group al-Qaida seized control of civilian passenger jets, using them to strike the World Trade Center's twin towers in Manhattan and the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. A fourth plane was headed for Washington, D.C. but crashed near Shanksville, Penn., after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit. In all, nearly three thousand people died that day.
The attacks killed 2,753 in New York City, according to the medical examiner's office. With this week's announcement, 1,653 of those people have now been identified.
"Each new identification testifies to the promise of science and sustained outreach to families despite the passage of time. We continue this work as our way of honoring the lost," Graham said.
Fitzgerald, age 26, was a trader working for a firm in the World Trade Center when the attack occurred. Keating, age 72, was returning home to California after visiting family in Massachusetts.
"Not a day went by for years that [9/11] wasn't part of our lives, we had no choice," Paul Keating said of the aftermath of his mother's loss. "It affected everybody in our family. My two sons were truly affected. They were almost seven and four. They wake up one day and grandmom is dead and bad guys killed her. There's no way my mom would have wanted that for them."
According to Keating, the positive identification of his mother's remains came after earlier discoveries of some of her possessions in the rubble and wreckage left by the disaster.
"They were sifting through all of it and they found a piece of my mom's ATM card that was in her luggage and then it must have been seventeen years later they found part of her hair brush," he said.
"The pain of losing a loved one in the September 11th terror attacks echoes across the decades, but with these three new identifications, we take a step forward in comforting the family members still aching from that day," said NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer who was on duty on 9/11.
Officials say the identification of Fitzgerald, Keating and the unnamed woman were confirmed using DNA testing of remains gathered in 2001 and 2002. So far, roughly 40% of the deceased have been identified.
"In addition to the three new identifications this year, OCME has identified 22 human remains associated with previously identified individuals," the chief medical examiner's office said in a statement.
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