10. Phantasm

Jon uses AI to search for Sneha in thousands of 9/11 images.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains graphic depictions of violence that listeners may
find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. January thirty one, two
thousand and eight, nearly two hundred days after Snay had disappeared,
her mom on suit gets an email. She opens it,

(00:23):
reads it, her stomach starts to hurt. Her daughter is
a nine eleven hero. Finally, in a four to one decision,
the New York State Supreme Courts Appellate Division rules that
Snayhow died at the World Trade Center. The court overturns
an earlier decision by Judge Rene Roth, who said the
theory that Snayhow died at the Trade Center was quote

(00:44):
rank speculation with absolutely no foundation in the record. This
court disagrees quote only the rankest speculation leads to any
conclusion other than nine eleven. So this is how it
ends in court, at least, dueling judges a battle of
the speculations, rank speculation that saying How died at the

(01:05):
Trade Center versus rank kissed speculation that any other explanation
makes sense. Maybe this seems like semantics, but really it's
the heart of the show, the heart of this case,
because in the absence of evidence, every single explanation, including
nine eleven, requires speculation. No speculation, no closure, no answers

(01:26):
at all. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Bernard J. Malone wrote, quote,
since it is not known where the decedent spent the
night of September, it requires speculation to say that her
route home took her across or dangerously near the World
Trade Center grounds, or that when the attacks began she

(01:47):
was even in the vicinity of the World Trade Center.
And it is equally probable, in light of evidence concerning
her professional and personal problems, that the decedent died on
or about September eleven one by some other unfortunate fate.

(02:10):
From my Heart Radio, this is missing on nine eleven,
the story of one woman who vanished on the eve
of history and my quest to find her. I'm your host,
John Wallzac. I understand that nine eleven makes intuitive sense.

(02:52):
A comes razor, right, but take emotion out of this case,
take away the desire to manufacture a hero. Does nine
eleven really makes sense? I'd say no, or at the
very least, it's not an instant, irrefutable answer. Look at
the facts. Fact snay has DNA was never recovered. Fact

(03:13):
of civilians at the Trade Center below the impact zones escaped. Fact.
Debris killed very few people before the towers fell. Fact,
there were hundreds of cops, firefighters, and paramedics on site quickly,
within minutes. Snay Ha wasn't needed even if she wanted
to help. Thousands of people with minor injuries flowed out

(03:35):
of the towers into nearby triage areas where she could
have volunteered, where she likely would have been directed by
firefighters and paramedics. Fact. No eyewitnesses saw a petite, beautiful
woman in a brown dress and sandals running into the towers.
Fact no photographs or videos show SNA on nine eleven
at or near the Trade Center. So let's dig deeper,

(03:58):
piece by piece. First, d n A. There are two thousand,
seven hundred and fifty three Trade Center victims have been identified,
mostly by DNA, but also via dental X rays, fingerprints, photos,
personal effects, tattoos, etcetera. For twenty years, the New York
City Office of Chief Medical Examiner or o CME has

(04:19):
led a herculean effort to identify victims. That effort continues today.
Earlier this year, I sat down in Tribeca with Mark
desire the O c m S Assistant Director of Forensic Biology.
On that frigid day January, nearly four thousand Americans died
of COVID, a greater death hole than nine eleven. We

(04:39):
sat with masks on windows, open, cold air flowing in
as dark fell. An interview about one mass casualty event
during another on nine eleven, Mark got to the trade
center right after the planes hit. We pulled right on
the vesse. There's an open spot. We pulled on a
vest which is right in the shadow of the North
tower where debris were falling. We got out of the truck.

(05:00):
It wasn't more than probably five seconds. Victim had fell
right in front of us. You know, I'm not gonna
say jump er. I don't know if they jumped, but
they fell right in front of us. And it was
this part of our job. With one of the dead,
we tagger, we collect a sample. We're sort of We
still had to find our chief. Our chief was down there,
but we got out of that. The fire depart made
sure by screaming at us to get the hell out

(05:21):
of that that circle around the tower, because that's where
all you were. People were being killed, debris and people
falling out of the upper floors were killing those on
the on the streets. So we made her away away
from that. And I remember there was this old fire
chief there. It looked like Sam Elliott if I had
the big mustache and like the leather, and he was
just stare at the top and I'm watching people hitting

(05:45):
the concrete and he's like, they're burning to death up there.
He goes, you you burn to death or you you
jump out and you get at least ten more seconds
of living. I'm like, man, then I knew. I'm like,
this is one of those days that is going to
change your life and career and everything. Mark found his boss, Dr.
Charles Hirsch at the corner of Liberty and West. So
his has his back to the South Tower and I'm

(06:08):
watching people drop and hit and I'm hearing him go
through glass and hitting sounds like Saint Lando on a vehicle.
And there are two people holding hands, and there's and
you look at the ground, there's just the brain ors.
I'm like, wow, this is this is And he had said, Yah,
there's people up to two blocks away. I took about
one step away in the South tower cracked right there

(06:30):
within stone's throw of where we were standing. South Tower
cracked and you just saw that top of the building
and the steel and the fire just right over top
of us. And I'm like, I'm dead. This is how
I'm going to die. Mark ran across West. You really
don't see it in the in that big mushroom, but
there are bullets coming out of that and they were
they're hitting, and I mean shot would be guns. Before

(06:52):
I'm like, oh, that's that's going in. You could feel
them hit your head. So I put my arms up
and I was still trying to run, and it was
almost like a warm like draft and wham that debris
as it came down. You know, realize it comes down.
So if you're running, kind of like pits across the
street and hit right in the ass, right, and he
asked by I could tell as a piece of rebar

(07:14):
and from the X ray the next day, I got hit.
But let's say, let's say in my life that pushed
me the rest of the way into the building. I
didn't make the door the doors right here, but I
went to the window and my arms were already up
from the sting, and so my elbows and my head
also broke the glass I wasn't that far in though.
My bottom of my legs were still hanging out. And

(07:35):
as the debris hit the building and fell, it fell
across my last shattered, shattered my foot. I didn't make
it all the way in. I crawled in. It was
the darkest, quietest time I've very experienced. All that dust
made a pitch black, it softened, there was no sounds.
In a for a second, I'm like, I'm just supposed
to be I'm dead, right, this is like being dead,

(07:56):
completely dark and quiet. I didn't feel it any pain
or I don't even know I was even injured. Then I,
for the first time that morning, I panicked because I
try to do this. I try to go take a
big book. At that point, I was still hold my breath.
I was running, hold my breath. Hit smack glass, holding
my breath, dark, crawl in and I got to take

(08:17):
a big breath after holding your breath for a minute
or so. Oh, and there was no air. There was nothing,
absolutely like like trying to breathe under water. And then
I started panicking, gasping right, I said, hold, so maybe
if I get into the building. I just ran into
the darkness, bumping into stuff as it thust started settling.
Pull my shirt up, I could read a little more.
Come down right, I'm not gonna die. Despite his shattered foot,

(08:41):
Mark had a ton of work to do. He and
the rest of the o CMME team recovered and identified
thousands of bodies and body parts without being too graphic.
Are you talking about bones, teeth, pieces of flesh? What
are you talking when you say human remains beyond the bone?
Every possible thing you can think of. Yeah, there were
um limbs, there were organs, hair, There's a lot of fire,

(09:06):
So tissue, blood, hair is not going to survive the fire.
You're only going to have remains and teeth. Teeth are
the hardest part of your body will survive just about anything.
I've had cremated remains where there was still teeth that
we've been able to generate DNA profiles from. So bone
can survive and and even though the outside of the
bone maybe charred and burn, but the inside might be protected.

(09:28):
So that's where we go where the marrow is to
generate a DNA profile. We've gotten plenty of DNA profile,
especially in two thousand one, from from blood, from from muscle,
you know, from organs, given the brutality of nine eleven,
what Mark and his team accomplished is astounding. What are
things that destroy DNA? Heat and fire, water, sunlight, mold, bacteria,

(09:53):
nasty chemicals like jet fuel, diesel fuel. Everything that destroys
DNA was present at ground zero. So this is the
toughest forensic investigation, the toughest body idea. I've I've had
scientists from all over the world something that have done
like UM some projects you've probably heard about the Iceman
that they found frozen in the bog or some ancient

(10:15):
um neanderthal remains from thousands of years ago, tens of thousands.
That's a pretty tough material. I've brought them in and say, hey,
you've been successful with neanderthal bones and gotten DNA two
thousand year old mummies. We want to learn from you.
And and they look at our samples and they try,
and they're like, this is worse. The world Trade centers
a thousand times harder than than any Wow. Mark's team

(10:38):
also sifted through remains from ancient cemeteries below the trade
center site and thousands of animal bones from destroyed restaurants
and incinerated office bridges, recovering DNA was only half the battle, though.
Mark also needed reference samples to match DNA to victims.
So World Trade Center we have seventeen thousand reference samples,
seventeen thousand toothbrushes and razors and brushes, and samples from

(11:02):
moms and dads and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters.
Seventeen thousand samples, which is are called the anti mortem.
You know, this is stuff from when you were alive.
I have a toothbrush from when Mark was alive. Let's
take DNA from that toothbrush and compared to these remains,
because they might be Mark. Without those reference samples. Without
that anti mortem, you not identify anybody. The post bortom

(11:26):
side is what you take after you die, so you
need to equally important. So we have all this information
from all these thousands of toothbrushes and combs and anything.
Family members brought to us some very interesting things, including
a victim's prayer card, the blood of a victim who
cut himself while working on an aquarium right before nine eleven,

(11:49):
and a thirty three year old umbilical cord, but most
samples came from family members, including Snayhouse parents. Ultimately, Mark's
team identified one thousand, six and forty two out of
two thousand, seven hundred and fifty three victims, but not
snay Haw. Now, let's look at where victims died and

(12:10):
why it matters. In two thousand five, the National Institute
of Standards and Technology or NIST, released a detailed report
on the Trade Center disaster. Jason Avril, a fire protection engineer,
led the team that examined occupant behavior, evacuation, and emergency communications.
So the goals of my project were to understand how, where,

(12:31):
and why the people died or successfully evacuated were their
factors relating to the design and the building, the design
of the ego system that contributed to success your failure.
Jason has not only scientific expertise, but also personal experience
with an air disaster. In his dad, Daniel, died when

(12:54):
US air flight crashed near Pittsburgh. Jason was in college
at the time. That experience guided him during the Trade
Center investigation, especially as the interviewed traumatized survivors and victim
family members. Jason's work and that of hundreds of other
NEST experts led to more than forty building code changes,

(13:14):
things like requiring photo luminescent markington stairs in case the
lights go out to save lives, steering future disasters, Jason's
team found that on nine eleven of civilians below the
impact zones where the planes hit the towers successfully evacuated.
To be clear, the study came out while Snayhouse case

(13:35):
was winding its way through court, before she was an
official victim. It did not include snay and some of
the data is estimated and imprecise, but the overall picture
is clear. One thousand, nine hundred and seventy four civilians
died at or above the points of impact, one, forty
eight died below, twenty four somewhere unspecified, one and forty

(13:56):
seven on the planes, eighteen were bystanders nearby building occupants
killed by debris and or jet fuel, and for seventeen
there was no information. Four d one first responders also
died four hundred and three of whom worked for the NYPD,
f D, n Y or Port Authority, plus two federal employees,
seven hospital employees and or paramedics, and nine volunteers. The

(14:22):
first theory about snay Haa is that she ran into
the towers to help and died, but only two percent
of first responder fatalities were volunteers two percent. The second
is that stay Hall was in the towers for some
other reason, maybe shopping, but only one percent of civilians
below the impact zones died on the third is that

(14:42):
snay Hall was killed by debris or jet fuel while
walking home, but only eighteen victims were bystanders or occupants
of nearby buildings point o o seven percent of nearly
three thousand victims two percent, one percent, point o o
seven percent. So is it possible that Snayhow died while volunteering, shopping,

(15:03):
or walking home. Yes, but it's extremely and demonstrably unlikely.

(15:33):
We've looked at DNA and we're victims. Sighed, what about
just basic logic theory number one? Snayhow ran into the
towers and died on the surface. It clicks, but dig
in and it doesn't make sense. The first firefighters reached
the trade center only four minutes after the first plane.
Hundreds of other firefighters, cops, and paramedics followed quickly. A

(15:57):
civilian doctor without supplies would not have been needed after say,
five to ten minutes, and even if snay Haa was
near the towers and wanted to help, she likely would
have been directed to a nearby triage area or hospital
out of the danger zone, or she could have helped
any of the thousands of people with minor injuries like
lacerations the walking wounded. Most victims had either minor injuries

(16:19):
or they died a few fell in between. The number
of victims in the lobbies alive but unable to walk,
for example, was minimal. Here's the other thing. Seventy three
minutes passed between the first plane strike and the collapse
of the first tower. It's unlikely that snayhow lingered in
the towers or would have been allowed to linger for
up to seventy three minutes as civilians escaped. Theory number

(16:42):
two snayho was shopping in the mall underneath the towers
or on her way to Windows on the World on
top of the North tower when the attacks began. This
doesn't make sense either. Ron told a reporter that he
and snay Haa never went to the trade center, that
she had no reason to be there, and even if
she was shopping in the all, she would have had
ample time to evacuate. In terms of Windows on the World,

(17:04):
snayhouse family posited that she wanted to scope it out
and advanced of a friend's wedding reception. But the wedding
wasn't set to take place until April two thousand two,
seven months later. And if walking home on nine eleven
after a night out, why would stay how log too
heavy shopping bags to the top of a skyscraper without
first stopping at her apartment only nine feet away. Finally,

(17:26):
that presumes she walked home and didn't take a cab.
Theory number three. While walking home, snay Hall was hit
by debris or jet fuel, but out of nearly three
thousand victims, only eighteen were bystanders or occupants of nearby buildings.
Is it possible snay Hall was the nineteenth Yes, but
if debris hit her, it's unlikely she would have laid

(17:48):
in the street until the towers fell. Most victims hit
by debris or jet fuel were pulled off the street
and taken to hospitals. Is it possible that snay Hall
was crossing between the towers through the plaza, not on
the street, at the exact moment the first plane hit again, Yes, technically,
but is it likely Theory number four. On September, attended

(18:11):
a party at a hotel next to the trade center,
presumably the Marriott between the towers, hosted by the city's
South Asian community. She stayed to night, even though she
lived only nine feet away, and died the next day.
This theory was put forth by snayhouse older brother Ashwyn.
I have no idea where he got it. It doesn't
make sense, and I found no evidence of any South

(18:32):
Asian party on a Monday night anywhere in the city,
let alone near or between the towers. Nonetheless, for the
sake of due diligence, I reached out to a woman
named Doreen Dunn, who worked at the Marriott World Trade
Center from until nine eleven. I was an event manager,
so I dealt with meetings, some weddings, you know, conferences,

(18:54):
that kind of thing, and what I did was planned
all the details of the event. Dorene got to work
between seven thirty and eight am on nine eleven. An
hour later, we heard a huge noise, like really loud noise.
Are lights in the office flashed for a second but

(19:14):
came back on and I ran. We had a window.
I was on the third floor. I had a window,
so I looked out on the street and there at
the same time, there was like a ten car accident.
Like then everyone must have heard it and people weren't
paying attention, and all of these cars just hit each other.

(19:35):
And I remember there was a there was construction, and
the construction person he just started picking up his cones
like really quick. So I thought he did something because
I had no idea, you know, that's something that would
ever happened. And then we could see, you know, things
falling from the sky, and we just knew it was

(19:55):
something bad. I asked Dorene what she remembers about September tenth.
Did the hotel host the party for the city South
Asian community. I don't remember really anything going on in
the hotel. Like Monday's were usually because we were a
business hotel, everything would start like on a Tuesday. People,
you know, because most of the time people didn't want

(20:18):
to travel on their personal time, so like a lot
of the groups would arrive on Monday and then their
event would start on Tuesday. So Mondays were kind of
usually a pretty mellow day in my department. But I
don't remember that. So we've looked at DNA where victims

(20:38):
died and logic next eyewitnesses, photos and videos. The first
is easy in twenty years, no one has come forward
to say they remember a petite, beautiful Indian American woman
in a brown dress and sandals running into the towers.
I searched oral histories and spoke to authors, but found nothing.

(20:58):
The second is more complicated. It's been said that nine
eleven was the most photographed event in history, but the
vast majority of photos and videos were captured at a distance.
Street level. Footage taken near the towers is rare. Images
captured inside the towers are extremely rare. I looked at everything.
I crawled into deep corners of the Internet and poured

(21:19):
through out of print books to find any footage of
snay Haw would more or less be to solve this case.
It would prove she was exposed to a specific peril eleven.
I sifted through so many images looking for the woman
in the brown dress. I got motion sick, and maybe
staring at thousands of nine eleven photos while locked away
in an apartment during a pandemic death winter is not,

(21:41):
shall we say, great for one's mental health. Anyway, I
looked and looked, first through public images and videos, and
then I reached out to twenty photographers, amateur and professional,
to see if they would grant me access to their
full archives. Six responded, Two were very helpful, Todd maizel Of,
former photographer for the New York Daily News, and Massy Swalinski,

(22:03):
an amateur photographer. Massiege has never been interviewed by an
American journalist until now. In two thousand one, he lived
in New Jersey. Every day he took a ferry to Manhattan,
where he worked as an I T specialist for Goldman Sachs.
When he got off the ferry, he walked by the
Twin Towers on his way to work on nine eleven.
He carried an early model digital camera, a Cannon power

(22:26):
Shot Pro ninety I s to be exact two point
six megapixels. It was a pretty day and he figured, pay,
I'll snap some photos. At am, Messiege was standing directly
across the street from the Trade Center when he heard
a loud boom. I had no idea, where is this
coming from? What is happening? Google was so saddened. And
then I started to see at West Side Highway, which

(22:51):
actually was, to my surprise, almost empty. I don't know
how it happened, but there was no traffic anymore except
one car. It was passenger car who had tires punctured.
So driver drove very slowly with that noise of flat tires,

(23:16):
but was trying evidently to to drive away from that area.
So the car must have been hit by debris from
the collision. From that accident, a debris was everywhere. Was
a lot was covering west side highway and then all
the streets around. My feeling was, well, what's the tragic

(23:42):
accident happened? Probably a small a plane hit the tower
by an accident. I've never thought at that point that
it is a thirdist attack. So I noticed a fire
from the north tower, and I was on the south side,

(24:05):
so I went closer to the south tower and from
different angles I started to take pictures of the towers
and the smoke from the north tower. And my next

(24:28):
that was to take pictures on the ground. Were not
many people, very few people around. I noticed one of
the cars on fire somehow he is that the attire
was burning a lot of the brier around. I was
really running very quickly around. We fill in the air.

(24:48):
Something unusual happening for the moment. I went even to
this the plaza that used to be between two towers.
This is the area were spear sculpture was back then,
and it was also absolutely empty from the sky was

(25:12):
they were falling the hundreds of different documents paper. It
was like confetti on Broadway on the kindon of Hero.
So just was falling from the sky from that damaged tower.
I didn't see any people escaping from the building. It

(25:34):
was nobody outside. I went back the place I used
to walk before, so I went south next to the
entrance to the tower. So I was between the South
Tower and Deutsche Bank building. And then I stopped after

(25:55):
thinking a group of pictures and I started to look
around what is on the ground, and then from that debris,
I realized that it is not just the debris from
the building. I realized there are parts of the plane, wires,

(26:19):
electronics like part of the computers. I also noticed belongings
of the passengers. I noticed shoes, and the most touching
was to see human flesh, the parts of it and
the fresh blood very everywhere. I was really understanding that

(26:45):
big stragedy happened. But this could not last long for
me to look at this and really take the whole
picture of the strategy, because at that moment I heard
a jet flying very close. I raised my head and

(27:07):
I saw the plane right above my head, and in
a fraction of second when I was looking at it,
I saw that the plane disappeared inside the tower. So
the whole big plane with the wing just got inside
and disappeared. I was standing on the street, like I

(27:30):
mentioned before, It was before the tower and Deutsche Bank building,
and I had no cover. The breeze started to fall
all around, noise of metal with different sounds, and I
just was so scared, so I thought no way to escape.

(27:52):
You know, it's just just the instinct of their direction.
I wanted to be as small as possible to avoid
any hit from the bath, and when this happened, I
was really really scared, and so in a few minutes
I decided to go away from this area because it

(28:13):
was too scary for me. Only one minute after American
eleven hit the North Tower, Messige took his first photo
of the tower on fire. He stood at the intersection
of Liberty and West, two blocks north of Snay House building.
In fact, he would have been very close to the
mystery woman who exited the building. At at eight fifty,

(28:35):
Messige took his first street level photo. Three men are
visible but their blurry. He kept shooting as he crossed
west to Liberty just south of the South Tower, crushed cars, fires, pedestrians,
and disbelief debris everywhere. At Messiege took a photo in
which about twenty people are visible. The closest is a

(28:56):
black woman facing away from the camera. At nine who
united one flew right over Messiege into the South Tower.
He pointed his camera up and snapped an image as
debris rained down on him. He stuck around only a
few more minutes, then walked to his office. Massiege kindly
provided me high resolution copies of every photo he took

(29:17):
on nine eleven, so too did Todd Maizel, who worked
for the New York Daily News for nineteen years. On
nine eleven, Todd followed a police truck speeding down the
West Side Highway toward the towers. At nine oh two am,
he saw a fireball the second plane. He parked at
West End Chambers in the middle of the street, five
blocks north of the Trade Center, grabbed his camera and

(29:39):
sprinted south. I started running down west and I'm seeing
people fleeing from the direction of the World Trade Center.
And then I made a left on to what drew
you to VESI you said you had been drawn to
h I saw plane ponds. I didn't see much going
on straight down on West, so I didn't go that direction.

(30:02):
I just something drew my eye and I said, I'm
going that way. Todd ran around three sides of the
Trades Center complex a left on Vessey, right on Church,
right on Liberty, northeast and south of the towers. The
entire time he shot photos. So when you were circling
the trade Center complex, you didn't see anyone laying in
the streets anyone. Oh no, no, not at that point.

(30:25):
But most of the people that had been removed from
the streets already A long church who was absolutely dead
quiet until I got the Liberty. When I got the Liberty,
I got to the fire house ten and ten, and
the people lying on the ground injured, apparently they had
been heard on the ground. There was fire on the ground,

(30:45):
plain pots, pieces of building all over the place. On
the parking lot right across the street on Liberty and
West Street, a lot. There was big parking lot there.
Some of the cause were burning. A few of the
Cause had pieces of metal that had fallen from the
top of the building and went right into the into
the cars. Then I saw body parts, body parts on

(31:09):
the ground on the most famous one, of course, is
the one I took of the hand. Todd stumbled upon
a severed hand and shot an image of it. I've
seen the photo before, but when I looked at it
again closely, I noticed something new, A small strange rectangle
next to the hand. At first I saw it and
I'm like, what is that? It almost looked like a

(31:31):
dog tag or something. I was like, there's no way
that that's some kind of identification. And then I zoomed
in and I'm like, does that say Hershey's? And it's
just this one single rectangle part of the Hershey's chocolate bar.
That's right, That's right. It gives it some gives a
different sense of humanity, um normalcy that it was going
on prior to the whole horror. Todd shared his photos

(31:56):
with me, hundreds of them, most of which have never
been published date. All the narrative of destruction, both grand
and granular, graphic and compelling, a complete, uninterrupted visceral story.
Look up the burning towers, looked down part of a
plane fuselage. Look up again, a man falling to his death.

(32:16):
Look down again a severed hand. Todd captured history as
it should be captured, in my opinion, in its entirety.
You captured images of body parts, the hand, the severed
hand being the most well known. Why did you choose
to capture those images that were important? They were important
that they to minimize the terror and the horror of

(32:39):
that day would be an injustice to the public. That's it.
That's it in a nutshell, to minimize the horror? Is
this censorship? It's wrong. And the Daily News used that
picture in the paper and they quote a lot of
flak from it until he edited it caused a took

(33:00):
it out in a later edition, but it ran, It
ran the paper. I was shocked when I saw it
that it ran the paper, But I was proud. I
was proud that the Daily News had the guts to
do it, that the editors there said this is a
powerful picture. They understood it. Todd's photos are graphic and upsetting.

(33:23):
By the time I viewed them, I had sifted through
thousands of nine eleven images. I wasn't expecting to feel anything,
but I felt sick. They made me nauseous. Other than
the severed hand, the most disturbing images he captured were
of the death of firefighter Danny. Sir, you saw him
hit and I saw him killed. He was the first
one to die. Did you realize that he had been

(33:44):
hit by a person? No? No, I found out later,
maybe two weeks later. I found out that that he
had actually gotten hit by a person. Uh And because
when what hit him broke upont just a big splot,
but to him it was like a piece of concrete.

(34:05):
They loaded him up on a gurney and they saw
carrying him away. I kind of lost it at that point.
The sky was dead. I just knew it. Um and
I started crying a little bit. And another photographer was there.
I don't know who he was to this day says
to me, try to keep it together, try to keep

(34:26):
it together. And uh so I started shooting again. I
shot a couple of pictures of the Greek church with
the with the burning cowers in the background, and I
looked up and buildings coming towards me. Just the sky
opened up, black pieces of debris. For for one second.
You saw it, and you said, I said, no pictures,

(34:50):
Run run, run, And all I had in my head
was run, run, run, un run. Run, run all the
way into ninety West Street. I dived into the into
the lobby of the building, and I swear to God,
I was midday when that building hit. I hit the ground,
curled up, and the building crashed into the into ninety
West and debris came raining down, and the ceiling collapsed,

(35:15):
wall was collapsing. The whole lobby filled with dust. You
couldn't see a thing. The lights went out. Darkness, darkness,
I remember, darkness and dust, and I just stayed down.
I pulled out a bandanna had with me, I wrapped
around my face, and I said, I gotta get out

(35:36):
of him, gonna die. I started crawling out backwards. After
the South tower fell, Todd in his colleague David Hanshew
took refuge in a Delhi. David's legs were shattered. Todd
shot photos of him on the floor covered in dust.
Then here a raw coming to like a train coming
towards us. The North tower falls. I just curled up

(36:00):
next to a refrigerator in the Delhi and bomb. Debris
was rained down on the front of the building. The
whole facade collapsed. De Bris everywhere turn pitch black, pitch
black dust, and I just waited, and you hear the

(36:22):
firefighters and the cops, and I don't know who it is,
but they were. They're crying and screaming, we're gonna die,
We're gonna die. And then all of a sudden, the
light came through the windows, and I said, we're gonna
live through this one. Only one professional photographer died on
nine eleven, Bill Bigger, who snapped his final frame a

(36:44):
split second before the North Tower collapsed onto him. The
lack of additional casualties speaks in part to how few
photographers got so close to the towers by this point.
I know their names. I've searched their photos looking for
snay Haaw the woman in the brown dress. It might
seem crazy, like a waste of time, but it's worked
at least twice in other cases. In two thousand to

(37:07):
a man named Mike Rambusk found a photo of his
son Luke hanging out of a broken window high in
the North Tower, only fifteen minutes before it fell. And
in a man named Judgson Box found a photo of
his son Gary, a firefighter, running through a tunnel toward
the towers. But to replicate that to find snay haa
manually would take a miracle, so we decided to automate

(37:30):
the process. We partnered with two companies, ai H Tech
and true Face to use cutting edge facial recognition software
to scan nine eleven images forced ha. Here's a i
H tech co founder Ben Sue the AI compute vision Definitely,
we can't help people better uh searching for their loved

(37:50):
ones and hundreds of, not thousands, a hundred thousands of images.
To my knowledge, artificial intelligence has never been used for
something like this to search historical images for a missing person. First,
we scraped all publicly available nine eleven footage that shows
people in or near the towers. Then we contacted twenty photographers,

(38:10):
including Massid Swolinsky and Todd Maizel, to access unpublished images.
We ended up with a hundred gigabytes of footage, one thousand,
three hundred and seventy three photos, seven hundred and nineties
seven videos. We also collected fifty three photos of snay
Haw as reference images. One of the reasons we chose
to work with both ai H Tech and true Face

(38:31):
is that they focus on ethical applications of facial recognition technology,
including the minimization of gender and racial bias. Each company
helped us in different ways. Ai H Tech trained us
to use their software directly, and true Face ran a
search for us. Here's True Face CEO Shawn Moore. We
are a computer vision company that is is fundamentally trying

(38:52):
to teach cameras to see like human beings, so to
ingest a visual field and understand what is familiar and
what is not familiar and if that is familiar, is
it important to me? Can you kind of walk me
through the software just for a great persons like high
level overview of how it works. Yeah. Absolutely. So we
take the person in consideration. So in this case it

(39:13):
was a female, we take the images that we have
of her that we're looking to reference amongst the broader
set of images. So think about it as her profile.
We've got a profile of her that we enroll as
as person one, and then we look at the overall consideration.
I think in this case we we found roughly four
hundred and seventy seven thousand pictures of people are faces
in those images and videos. Four hundred and seventy seven

(39:36):
thousand faces. That doesn't mean four hundred and seventy seven
thousand people because undoubtedly many were duplicates of the same person,
but still that's a ton of faces, and so we're
looking then at does this woman match any of those
faces across the media files, the videos, and the photos.
And the way we do that is we zero in

(39:58):
on every face in every frame. We extract what's called
a biometric temper to facial recognition face template, So think
about it like a fingerprint of your face. It's proprietary
to you. You're the only one that has that. And
then we look at a certain threshold, does the individual
we're looking for face prints matched the face print of

(40:19):
anyone in those four hundred and seventy seven thousand faces,
And so you know, effectively we're programmatically trying to match.
And what we did was we set a high threshold
of of what in our case is a similarity threshold
point six, and we got no matches. And so we
continue to lower that threshold down until we start to
see some matches, knowing that there there could be false

(40:41):
positives that will require human review. And so you know,
as we lower that threshold, we start to see more
more hits, and then we went manually through those hits
and ultimately did not find the person in any of
those images. In the hundred gigs of data we provided
two thousand, one hundred and seventy photos and videos captured
in or near the towers. On nine eleven, True Face

(41:01):
detected four and seventy seven thousand faces, which is impressive
but not Snay has, so we turned to ai H Tech.
Having direct access to their intuitive software allowed us to
fiddle with things like the confidence threshold. Basically, how confident
is the algorithm that two faces belong to the same person.

(41:22):
A H Tech recommended that we start with at least
a seventy percent threshold, high enough to limit false matches,
but low enough to grab frames of anyone who resembled
Snay so we could double check everything manually. Any match
above we found her. Our assistant producer, Chris, first tested
the ai H software at a very low threshold. It

(41:43):
misidentified multiple items like tires as human faces. It even
detected a morphous faces in the billowing smoke, which was eerie,
so we stuck with the recommended minimum. Technically, to test
the epic see of the software, we ran on say

(42:03):
It worked a ton of matches anywhere. From then, Chris
ran all the nine eleven footage we collected. We got
a few hits in the mid seventies, both photos and videos.
The highest was eighty point a woman captured on video
by Luigi cuts Aiga running as the South tower fell.

(42:23):
Definitely not snay ha though. In the end, one hundred
gigs of footage, two thousand one d and seventy photos
and videos to facial recognition programs using cutting Edge AI
no snay ha. So as we consider the likelihood that

(43:05):
snay Haa died on nine eleven at the Trade Center,
this is what we're left with. She's among the forty
of victims whose remains have never been identified. Only one
percent of civilians below the impact zones died. Only two
percent of first responders who died were volunteers. Only point
o o seven percent of victims were civilians killed by

(43:25):
falling debris or jet fuel. A civilian doctor without supplies
likely wasn't needed after the first five to ten minutes,
when hundreds of firefighters, cops, and paramedics arrived. It's unlikely
snay how would have been allowed to linger for up
to seventy three minutes until the first tower collapsed. No
eyewitnesses Saucenah in or near the towers, and we can't

(43:46):
find any photos or videos showing snay on nine eleven.
In an earlier episode, I said, there are four possible
logical explanations as to what could have happened to snay
haa suicide we ruled out foul play, either random or
at the hands of some must Snayha new is unlikely.
Nine eleven seems less likely, and the idea that snay

(44:08):
How ran away is wild. So what then? There are
endless other theories, many of which you've shared with us.
Snay Haw overdosed and whomever she was with panicked and
hit her body. She stayed to night in the towers
with someone. The persons snay House stayed with died on
nine eleven, and that's why they never came forward. There
are so many theories you'll drive yourself crazy, but most

(44:31):
make little, if any sense. None are more likely than
either nine eleven or the idea that Snayha ran away.
After a year obsessed with this case, to me, no
theory makes complete sense, but those who make the most sense.
So how do you prove either first? Nine eleven. The
most concrete way to solve this case would be to

(44:52):
identify Snayhouse DNA, and that is possible. The New York
City O C and ME continues its vital work. It
still has seventh alson two and four unidentified remains, and
in seventeen, eighteen and nineteen it made new identifications. Here's
smart desire we're working on right now. We we spent
some time with the military UH down in Dover, Delaware.

(45:14):
They've got an amazing technique that we're bringing on that
I know is going to make even more I D
s and it's it takes takes some time to validate it,
to make sure it's right and it works properly. Because
some of these remains are very small. We might have
one shot. You've got a tiny little piece of moment
about the size of a tic tac A one shot.
We're gonna pulverize that and try to take DNA out

(45:36):
of it. If we fail, probably not gonna be able
to ever get a DNA profile from It's so it's
very stressful when you're working with these samples. Since this
new technique or new technology that you're taking from the
military in Delaware, can you tell me a little bit
about that. Up until now, you're your your forensic techniques,
you look at on the on the DNA strand, you

(45:59):
look at repeat you and it's of d N A,
a little bits of DNA that are repeated over and
over again. And this is a norm for for all
crime labs in New York City. One of the things
we've been able to do is is take things like
bone and break them down and pulverize them even more
very fine tap powder, more access to the cells. Bone
by itself is the hardest material to work with. Blood

(46:21):
and saliva and hair, that's easy. Bone it's very tough,
very tough to work with, so pulverizing it, taking the
DNA app chemicals extraction, we've improved that process quantitation how
much DNA is present, improve that amplifying it, taking very
small amounts and making more of it in the lab.
A lot of these procedures are for medical research. Some

(46:43):
of the top top medical research labs, we've taken techniques
from them. But now we've got this this technique, this
next generation sequencing it's called and it will look at
every single base or every single chemical on the strand
rather than looking at blocks of it like we do now,
we can look at tiny little sections. And what this
allows us to do is when I had said things

(47:06):
like sunlight and fire destroy DNA. Picture of DNA strand
we've all seen the DNA helix very thin, very fragile.
The sunlight will just break it up into pieces water
or insects or moto bacteria. And if it's broken up
too much, we're not able to count these repeats. But
that next generation sequencing looks at such tiny, small pieces,

(47:27):
you're still able to see that information. So very exciting,
very nerdy stuff, but very exciting. There's also a very
remote possibility that new remains could be recovered from Manhattan
rooftops or sewers. After nine eleven. Authorities swore they examined
everything everywhere multiple times. But in two thousand six, construction
workers found bones on top of the damage Deutsche Bank building.

(47:50):
They were on a rooftop and it had rock ballast.
Some roofs have like stone on them right there, right
do you have this out there have stone on them
to protect for the ailment whatever. And as they were
taking into the construction workers were like, that's not a stone?
What is? And they immediately we always had people on
site and they called the medically examiner uh An M.
L I over and they were like human remains. Halt

(48:15):
halted deconstruction. We brought our team in seve bones. We
found if you held your hands out, most of them
would fit in there. They're very small pieces. For five
years they sat on this roof in the sun and
the rain and the insects and the snow, and UH
brought into my team and said, hey, we just recovered these,

(48:35):
and we had just improved the DNA process again. I'm like, well,
let's use the new procedure. These are really tough samples.
Anytime remains sit out, bone sits out, that just bakes
that the UV rand. These were such small samples. I
didn't have any hopes for any of them. There were
a lot of them, and UH my team went to
work and they came back there like Boss, we got

(48:55):
the I'm like what the new technique. I'm like that
new techniques is awesome. What are the chances that there
are bone fragments on other roofs that have not been discovered?
Twenty years later after that, there was another round of
searching all of the remains at that point. I think

(49:15):
after that there were still some discovered, but these were
remains that were really deep in the ground or some
sowarce systems that kind of got caved in. So we
continue to find some some remains after that, but there
wasn't There wasn't that that many like we saw on
that roof, the small fragments. So is there a chance, sure,

(49:39):
there could be a tiny fragment that somebody overlooked someplace.
Possibly there's a lot of buildings down here that are
kind of close together. You know, those areas were searched
for something that probably hasn't been searching under ears. You
never know it could because there was such a a
large area that that were recovered with remains. I do

(50:00):
also get asked about Fresh Kills. Fresh Kills is the
former Staten Island landfill. We're first responders sifted through one
point a million tons of trade center debris. I get
asked by by victims families do I think as a scientist,
are the remains buried at Fresh Kills? And my answer
is yes, absolutely. Back in two thousand one, two thousand two,

(50:22):
we were technology, we were looking for larger fragments. Could
there be um, you know, something a splinter of bone
buried in the ground up there? Sure? And then the
next question is can you get DNA from with that,
I don't know that. I don't know until you try.
I've had so many samples brought before me. We're gonna like,
you're not getting anything from this. Looking at it like

(50:44):
and sure enough, like Wow, it's amazing. Science is amazing.
The two places where remains could still be located twenty
years later are near ground zero or at Fresh Kills,
where trade center debris is buried in Section one nine,
also known as the West Mound. It's a long shot,
but it's not impossible. For example, surveyors located a piece

(51:05):
of a plane wing between two buildings near ground zero,
and this wasn't some tiny piece four ft wide, five
ft long, two d and fifty pounds. It sat there
for twelve years. As for Fresh Kills, some victim family
members believed that debris wasn't adequately sifted through, or that
some wasn't served at all. There are human remains at

(51:26):
Fresh Kills. No one disputes that. The question is whether
any are identifiable. Probably not, because presumably most are blended
into what's called the finds anything under the sides of
a thumbnail. Here's Jay Aaronson, the author of Who Owns
the dead, the science and politics of death. At ground zero,
there was this material, this kind of very fine material

(51:48):
that was a mix of the stuff that the towers
were built of, you know, you think of dry laws
and then other materials that had sort of been pulverized,
and there was certainly so some charge human remains in
that material as well. Many of the people whose remains
couldn't be found are parts of their bodies were were
actually pulverized or sort of ground up in the heat

(52:12):
and pressure of the explosion of the planes and then
the collapse of the towers into themselves and into the
seven story area under street level, And so there was
really not much that could be done with that material,
so it was it was essentially left that fresh kills
past human remains. There's also the chance that some of
snahs personal belongings pulled from trade center debris could still

(52:35):
be identified her family wonders, specifically about jewelry. According to
the New York Post, as of the NYPD still had
three thousand, four hundred and eighty three unidentified invoices in
storage with one or more personal belongings wallets, keys, clothing, etcetera,
and seventy four included jewelry and or watches. For some reason,

(52:58):
the NYPD has refused to release a catalog of the belongings,
even to victim family members. I filed a record's request
seeking a list, index, and or images of the unidentified
invoices that include jewelry and watches, but the NYPD denied
my request, citing privacy concerns. I appealed the denial. The
NYPD denied my appeal at that point. Well, here's part

(53:21):
of an email I sent. Quote the denial of my
appeal cites privacy concerns and specifically the necessity of quote
extensive redactions insofar as they contain personally identifying information. But
the invoices I'm requesting information about, to my knowledge, concerned
objects for which owners were never identified. So unless the

(53:41):
NYPD was actually able to ide these objects but for
some reason hasn't notified families, or could I d them
but hasn't, I don't understand how the supplies here, and
I don't believe it's irrelevant reason in this case to
deny my appeal. These objects are by their nature unidentified,
and to state that there might be a necessity or
quote extensive redactions insofar as they contain personally identifying information

(54:05):
would indicate that the NYPD could I D the items,
but hasn't. For some reason. After that email, the NYPD
stopped responding in terms of whether or not Snay has
still alive. I had one final idea to use AI
to search for her in billions of photos taken after
nine eleven. I had serious ethical concerns about this, but

(54:28):
like it or not, the technology is available to nearly anyone.
First I reached out to clear View AI, a sketchy
company whose database includes more than three billion images scraped
from public sources, including social media. I didn't want to
work with clear View, but at that point they were
the only company I knew of with such an extensive database,
and I figured, Okay, well, if they solve this case,

(54:50):
if they find Snay haa, it's worth it. But they
never responded. I figured, well that's that. Then, twelve days
before the show premiered, I read a wash Ington Post
article about a different company called pim Eyes, which says
it analyzed more than nine million unique faces via billions
of photos. The company claims that, unlike clear View, it
doesn't scrape social media. Nonetheless, vigilante detectives used it to

(55:15):
track down capital writers. A forty year old German man
uploaded an image taken seventeen years ago and found a
recent YouTube video showing him and another man found a
photo of himself from twenty five years ago. Pim eyes
is a powerful tool, so I used it first. I
tested it on myself. I ran six photos taken between

(55:36):
pim eyes, returned a few images. Only one surprised me, though,
a photo from a concert I attended in New York.
I also tested it by running an image of me
in a mask taken during COVID. It misidentified me as
Billie Eilish, so not perfect. Then I turned to snay Haa.
I ran seven different images of her through pim eyes,

(55:57):
old photos and the age progression photo, showing what she
would look like today. I got back anywhere from thirty
nine to a hundred and sixty one results per image,
but they were all old photos, nothing new or not
snay ha though too made me pause and look very closely,
one from a party in Greece in and one from
a hospital in Italy. Again definitely not snay ha. Though

(56:25):
this case can be solved, I've heard from many of you.
I'm vetting new information, I'll update you in the future.
For now, though, since we can't find snay Ha yet,
I want to use this show to highlight something extremely important.
Mark desire of the o CMI told me he has
forty DNA profiles from nine eleven remains that he can't
match to anyone, meaning forty victims could easily be identified

(56:49):
if their families provided reference samples. There's also a chance
that some of the forty profiles belonged to people never
identified as nine eleven victims, homeless people, undocumented workers, etcetera.
Up Mark encourages anyone who thinks they're missing loved one
might have died on nine eleven to contact the o
c M me. You can call them at two one
two four four seven to zero three zero. That's two

(57:11):
one two four four seven two zero three zero. I'd
like to believe that snay Ha used nine eleven as
covered to escape and is alive somewhere. It's not necessarily
what I believe, it's what I want to believe. That
snay has sent the mysterious postcard saying everyone who knew
me before nine eleven believes I'm dead. You'll recall that

(57:33):
Snayhu was born in Kerala, India. Well a few weeks ago,
a woman named Sajitha, who disappeared eleven years ago, was
found alive in Kerala. Snay House family wants the world
to remember her as an undiluted hero, but after talking
to people who knew snay Ha, I'm not sure that's
how she would want to be remembered. She was beautiful
in her complexity, a fascinating character ups and downs. In

(57:57):
June two thousand one, eighty two days be four eleven,
she spent a night in jail. That night, she meditated
with a woman in her cell. Other nights, including September ten,
she never came home, at least once she returned covered
in paint. Snay Ha volunteered in Harlem helping single mothers.
She liked to dance in chaos. She found peace in

(58:19):
peace chaos. On February one, when nearly two thousand Americans
died from COVID and eighteen inches of snow fell on
New York, I walked through Manhattan to ground zero. I'm
standing right outside the nine eleven Memorial and Museum. Um,
it's gated off and can't go in right now because

(58:39):
we're in the middle of a blizzard one hundred feet
away on panel s sixt six, The name of a Phantom,
the two thousand, seven hundred and fifty first nine eleven victim,
snay Haa and Philip. Next week we're going to release

(59:05):
a special bonus episode. You won't want to miss it,
so keep an eye on our feed. Homework one. Several
listeners pointed out that Casey nice Set before he was
a famous YouTuber, lived on Rector Street near the Trade
Center and shot video on nine eleven as the attacks unfolded.
If someone knows Casey or magically Casey, you hear this,

(59:28):
we'd love to see the full video. Two. If you
hold sway in New York, find out why the NYPD
refuses to release a list, index and or photos of
unidentified nine eleven belongings, even to victim family members. Three
To the folks who declined to speak with me, I'd
still love to speak with you. You can reach us
by phone at one eight three three new Tips that's

(59:49):
one eight three three six, three nine eight four seven
seven again one eight three three six three nine eight
four seven seven, or you can reach us via email
at tips at iHeart media dot com. That's tips t
I p S at iHeart Media dot com. Ben Bollen
is our executive producer, Paul Decan is our supervising producer,

(01:00:11):
Chris Brown is our assistant producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson is
our producer. Sam T. Garden is our research assistant, and
I'm your host and executive producer John Waalzac. Cover art
by Pam Peacock. Special thanks to Tamika Campbell at iHeart
and to Christoph Zapri in New Orleans. Also thank you
to Mark Desire, Jason April, Doreen, Don Messige, Swollinski, Todd Mazel,

(01:00:32):
Ben Sue, Shawn Moore, Jay Aaronson, and ASoP Rock Justice
Burner j Malone voiced by Mike Smith of New Orleans.
A shout out to Paul and Chris, our producers who
helped me report this story on the ground in New
York during the pandemic, which was difficult, And a shout
out to my alma mater, unc Asheville. Facial recognition services
provided by ai H Tech and True Face. Original theme

(01:00:54):
music by ASoP Rock. Check out Asop's website at ASoP
rock dot com. I'd like to dedicate the show to
three women my Grandma who brought me to the Trade
Center when I was eleven and a ground zero when
I was thirteen. My mom and Miss Helen. Miss Helen,
we love you. You bring us joy every day always.
You can find me on Twitter at at john wallzac

(01:01:14):
j O n w A l c z a K.
If you like this show, check out our first season,
Missing in Alaska, about the nineteen seventy two disappearance of
two congressmen. Missing on nine eleven is a co production
of I Heart Radio and Greenfork Media.