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Dr. Judy Melinek is an American pathologist of Jewish descent who practiced in Manhattan, New York. It was to her facility (forensic medicine) that the remains of the WTC victims were brought
The doctor was overwhelmed by the sights she encountered at work. “The stench of jet fuel was so strong that it made me dizzy. Only by looking at the contents of the open bag could I tell that this man had been crushed, burned, fallen from a height and severed with great force. I have seen people killed by subway trains, speeding cars, run over by trucks, crushed by heavy machinery, thrown from a height, burned and beaten – but never with all the injuries at once,” she recounted.
Most of the bags of remains contained only small pieces of flesh: a femur, a foot, a finger with a ring. “We were lucky if we got a piece of skin, because we could at least guess the race of the victim”
The quotes come from the book by Dr. Judy Melinek and TJ Mitchell “The Body Does Not Lie. 262 Bodies. Confessions of a Forensic Physician”, published by Filia Publishing House.
Dr. Judy Melinek walked briskly down 30th Street in Manhattan, New York, rushing to work. An American Airlines plane flew overhead. She looked up, curious about the jet engines, which she felt were too loud. It was flying low, too low, as if just above the roofs of skyscrapers, but the pathologist’s attention was quickly drawn to the beautiful blue sky. This was going to be a good day, she thought.
A few seconds later, the plane she saw crashed into the North Tower. It was September 11, 2011.
“The sound of bodies hitting the ground echoed off the buildings, one after another”
“We accept the rule of thumb,” Dr. Melinek was told by her superior. A thumb? “When you get a piece larger than a thumb, it will be assigned a number. If you get something smaller but identifiable — for example, a fingertip with intact fingerprints or a tooth with a filling — you will also assign it a DM number.” [ang. Disaster Manhattan]” — added the doctor.
The pathologist didn’t know what to think. The files that landed on her desk had labels starting with that grim prefix, many with six digits after DM01. “Do we really expect to get 100,000 bodies?” she asked her colleague. “No. But 100,000 body parts is quite possible,” she heard. It quickly turned out that there was not an ounce of exaggeration in that.
Dr. Judy Melinek worked at the New York City medical examiner’s office closest to the Lower Manhattan area where the tragedy occurred. She and 29 other doctors spent eight months identifying the remains and collecting evidence of their mass murder. “The experience changed me forever,” she says.
The first casualty Melinek saw in person was her own boss, the chief medical examiner of New York City. Dr. Charles Hirsch had gone to the crash site just after the plane hit the first tower. He was talking to the fire captain as it collapsed. He was knocked down by the blast wave and debris from the building.
“He told me that when he went there, he witnessed something he had never seen in his career. People were jumping or falling out of buildings. They were falling endlessly, somersaulting in the air. They hit the pavement with a loud bang — very loud — and bounced and fell again. … the sound of bodies hitting the ground echoed off the buildings, one after another, endlessly.” Dr. Hirsch added that the tower collapsed unexpectedly and that “in the ruins he saw severed limbs, body parts flying everywhere.”
Dr. Melinek was petrified. It was hard to imagine what awaited them. All they could do was focus on the task at hand. And it was clear: we were not trying to determine the cause and manner of death, we were to identify the remains. “Find something that would be useful in forensic dentistry, send the body for X-ray. You have a lot of bones here, so the radiologist may find some old injuries and places after surgical intervention. (…) Try to do everything in your power,” she heard.
Also read the account of the distinguished British forensic physician Dr. Richard Shepherd from his visit to the ruins of the World Trade Center: “I sniffed. The smell”… Pathologist tells what he saw in New York after the September 11 attacks
Various objects were embedded in the bodies of the victims. “I’ve never seen anything like this”
Her first remains were identified by the identification DM01-000041.
“I had never seen anything like it. The body was crushed. The major organs had been eviscerated, some were still attached to blood vessels and connective tissue, others were gone. The torso had been severed below the navel. The remains were completely black—burned and covered in soot. The head… the head didn’t really look like a head except it had hair and was attached to the neck. The stench of jet fuel was so strong it made my head spin. Only by looking at the contents of the open bag could I tell that this man had been crushed, burned, fallen from a height, and severed with great force. I’ve seen people killed by subway trains, run over by cars, crushed by heavy machinery, thrown from a height, burned, beaten—but never with all the injuries at once.”
Dr. Melinek was overwhelmed, though she quickly realized that the “smashed-in head and torso” were among the most complete remains she had ever worked with. In the next bags were a pelvis, a femur, “some muscles not attached to anything,” feet with only one sneaker, a forearm and the hand of a woman with a perfect French manicure. “We were lucky if we got a piece of skin, because we could at least guess the race of the victim,” she said.
Among the remains was a torn left leg. Dr. Melinek noted what material the piece of pants was made of, then began examining the limb. She froze. “I came across something that made me unable to look away. Under the skin was a piece of a bank check, along with an account number and a partially legible name. It was embedded deep in the muscle tissue.” Right next to it was a black plastic shard that looked like the handle of a gun. “This was only the second body part I had dealt with after the disaster, and I had had enough,” the doctor recalls.
Read an excerpt from Dr. Judy Melinek’s book “The Body Doesn’t Lie…”: Forensic Doctor: Families Often Ask If Their Loved One Suffered When They Died. “Sometimes I Lie” [FRAGMENT KSIĄŻKI]
The remains were taken to the forensic medicine facility in bags, where parts of different bodies were mixed together. The doctors’ task was to separate them and assign them appropriate case numbers. The stench of gasoline wafted from each one. Later, trucks with semi-trailers arrived. “What started with ambulances bringing individual bags of bodies has now taken on an industrial scale. I had a fleeting panic attack and almost burst into tears,” said Dr. Melinek. Her first shift after the disaster lasted 19 hours.
In total, the pathologist and her team spent eight months identifying the victims of the World Trade Center. She admits that she does not know how many pieces of debris passed through her hands.
“Officially, I had 598 cases starting with the number DM01. This makes sense: we received 19,956 pieces of victims’ bodies, 30 forensic doctors worked on the disaster. About 600 cases per person. We tried to rationalize our work, thinking of the victims as numbers, remains, specimens.”
In the year after the disaster, the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner issued 2,733 death certificates, 1,344 by court order and 1,389 based on the remains identified by Dr. Melinek’s team.
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