Inside Mass Fatality Identification: Lessons and Innovations from Forensic Experts

Laura: Well, we really appreciate you guys being here. You just finished a panel and working through a mass fatality. So not an easy topic to talk about. And because not everyone is able to attend every year, we love to do these videos so that people who are interested in coming or are interested in the topic have a chance to learn about what you what you said today. And I hear there were so many questions. So, people are definitely very interested in learning about your expertise. Given your expertise in dealing with mass fatalities and victim identification, could each of you share a particularly challenging case you’ve worked on and what you learned from it? And maybe if it’s okay, we’ll just go around this way.

Kim: Well, I have so many. Since we were looking at different types of modalities, there were wait times for medical records that were, you know, 2 to 3 months. That was challenging. One particular case that we had was very interesting because it started with a mistake that was made at the Family Assistance Center where we had a man that was home alone. He was recovered. His wife and daughter were away. Beautiful STR profile. We thought, “Wow, we have a family reference sample from his daughter. We’re going to get this ID.” She did several interviews with the local newspapers talking about her dad, but they just didn’t match. And we interviewed her again, or the sheriff’s department did, and we found out that she was adopted and that was not picked up. So that made it a challenging case because we couldn’t figure out why this daughter just did not match. But that’s a, you know, a mistake that somebody that didn’t know to ask about being a biological parent rather than an adoptive parent.

Laura: I can imagine that would make it incredibly challenging.

Kim: That happened quite a few times. Yeah. Throughout the incidents.

Laura: After that, you know, talking about learning and going on to the next, you know, event, God forbid. Is there a way to address that?

Kim: Sure. Just in time training. Make sure the people that are getting the samples are asking the correct questions, and they understand DNA. They understand to tell the family that we’re not going to get an ID if you’re not a biological family member. So that that’s something that we learn for the next incident and carried it on into Maui, too. So, the next two we were prepared for that. We weren’t prepared for the okay, now we have this biological thing figured out, but now we’re getting supposed reference samples where the, you know, person taking it didn’t know how to do it, and our swabs were empty. There was nothing on them. So, we’d run them, and it would just be blank. So just in time, training again. You know, you think you’re prepared, and each time you learn something new that you didn’t know for the one before.

Laura: I can imagine that there’s just so many contingencies to think about. It’s almost impossible until.

Kim: You made me pick one.

Laura: I know, I want everyone to pick one, if that’s okay. Okay, Mark.

Mark: For us in New York City, it all began on September 11th, 2001. That was a turning point for the lab and the agency and the city itself on the way things were done. And we’ve worked on… I’ve worked on dozens of mass fatalities since then, whether they were in the city or the state or anywhere in the world. It’s strange, but New York City, to this day, we will still get calls when something big and bad happens someplace, no matter. Can you help? Can we send you samples? Can you send a team here? And I would love to be able to do that. But we’re in a city budget like everyone else. We’re just a municipal… Largest in North America, but we’re just a municipal lab. So generally, what we do is humanitarian efforts. We share protocol. And I’ve always pushed out everything we’ve learned, whether it was collection of remains, processing and generating DNA profiles to of the software that we’ve developed. That was key. Chains of command, working with other agencies, working with nonprofits, all of that. I share it, and the only thing I say is if you figure a way out to make it better, because there have been organizations that have used the World Trade Center protocol on cases where there weren’t a couple thousand, there were a couple hundred thousand deceased. And you can’t work on that and not learn from it.

So, it’s been great with back and forth and us developing and redeveloping our protocol in New York City. But the 9/11 victims, we will never stop working on that. We will always continue to push that science. We’ve made the one ID that we made this year. Well, there were 47 other remains that we’ve also identified, but they were previously ID’d. So, you don’t hear about those. But we’ll continue to push that science into the future, just out of the necessity to make IDs. And one thing that I do with my team that I won’t do with any other division I work with or any other type of case, I have my team, the forensic scientists that work on those bones every day in a room with no windows and just keep going back. And these are kids now. They were in elementary school back in 2001, but I have the families meet them. The families of the victims, which is unheard of for any other kind of case or for a forensic scientist, because I want them to see that people still care. And we gave them tours, we bring them to the lab, and we meet with them. We go to their organization and their events. It’s been a very powerful relationship. They’re supporting us, helping us because we have about 100 of those victims that we don’t have any reference samples for.

So, we’re never going to finish this. I know I tell the team like we’re shooting for the end, but we might not have remains. They may have been pulverized or we might not have a reference sample. But what can we do today to be able to just keep at it in every year, every month that goes by, we’re identifying things that we had no hopes of. The big question, “mark, why haven’t you finished this? Like you’re so lazy. You’re so slow. You should have…” I’m like, we have these remains the guy that we ID this year. 15 times we tried on those remains. They’re just so badly burned that soaked in jet fuel and everything else that we had no hopes of with technology, even from a few years ago. So, you know, that push has been I mean, it’s defined my career. And it was never supposed to be that way. But that led to forming a Missing Persons Unit and forming family assistance centers in New York City. Missing Persons Day was directly from World Trade Center, and it’s helped so many other families outside of that of that project that yeah, I’m proud of it, proud of the team and coming to ISHI and seeing all the former members of that team, the alumni that are here this week, it’s great.

Laura: I mean, wow, I get chills just listening to it and the tenacity to keep pushing forward. But what really strikes me is, you know, meeting the families, you know, it’s really bringing together… There are real people behind all of the things that we’re doing in Doing in forensic science.

Mark: And to this day. We just had the anniversary, and we go down to the Voices of Resilience, their event and the families are there and the hugging and the crying and the shaking and the thanking you when you make an ID, thanking you for bringing our little boy home all these years later. But one of the one of the issues that you do see recently is parents of adult victims. So, the person died in their 30s. Their parents were the one that gave us DNA samples. They’re getting up there, and they’ll tell me, Mark, you know, I’m not going to be around much longer. I’m getting up there. Do you think you’re going to be able to identify…? I want to hold my daughter before I die. Do you think you’re going to be able to identify? I’m like, that’s a complete unknown. I can’t tell you how many who… And they understand. They said, well, we absolutely understand. Will you, if you identify my daughter after I die, will you bury her with me in my in my grave? I’m like, I can do that. Absolutely. That’s taken care of. And have a whole list of all the families, the contacts and their wishes, and we follow that.

Laura: Okay, you can’t make me cry too early in this interview, so I have lots of follow up questions to that. We’ll come back to that for certain. Uh, Julie?

Julie: So, can you repeat the question?

Laura: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I know once we start going around the circle. Don’t worry, don’t worry. We would love to share a particularly challenging case. What you learned from it. Or it can also be about the, you know, the program that you developed and advance of additional events.

Julie: So, unlike my colleagues here, we’ve never responded to a mass fatality event. My role on this panel was kind of the preparedness aspect of it. Building upon the experiences learned and how certain people responded, the challenges that they met, the challenges that they didn’t predict or the, you know, the things no one ever thought ever thought about. Our role has been to share that information that we’ve kind of gathered together to try and be prepared because you aren’t ever really prepared. And I think some of the challenges that we came across were we made a lot of assumptions that there were already pre-existing plans in some aspect for the agency or for the medical examiner or for other entities. I just cold called and said, you know, how do we interact if this were to happen? So that was a challenge, because they hadn’t thought about it, and just getting that conversation started was huge. The other piece was realizing in listening to the types of remains that you could encounter, such as Mark was talking about, that we weren’t prepared to handle remains that were really compromised, and to making sure that we started to look at and implement different technologies that would help us in the event something like this happened. We pray that it won’t ever. But at this point, it looks like it’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.

Laura: Thank you so much. We’ve talked about your program before. So, it’s nice to hear what’s going on now and get a solid update about what’s been learned from everybody else. Adam, how about you?

Adam: So, I actually have trouble thinking about a very particular difficult case. And, one that I remember is that we kept looking for this guy. We had some evidence, and, it came with a list of we’re expecting this and that to be there. It’s from this location, so it makes sense. You want to find those missing persons. I remember one guy was sort of a stubborn in the way of not being found. And you always think it’s the one I missed. So, it’s very frustrating. And you try it again, and maybe another way, and maybe NGS, and then, eventually, I think a couple of weeks after all these efforts would start, he popped up and they found him. Then he popped up again, and then we got more evidence and again, again, we were that guy. So, I don’t know if there’s a take home message here. I wouldn’t say it will always be the case that if you just let go, you’ll find another. But you hope that things can unexpectedly work out.

Laura: And I like the way you talked about trying different avenues to see what might help and looking at different approaches. All right. Everybody touched on it to some degree, but coordination across multiple agencies. You know, what are the key factors for success there? How do you prepare? So, you know all of the many agencies and other people that are going to be touching when this happens, and it happens quickly.

Kim: So, I think the key really, in my experience, has been working together before it happens. Getting to know the other agencies. Really finding out what they do, what they understand, what they don’t understand. How our agency fit into the whole scheme of things. What they expected from us, which may not be realistic. Just having that rapport. Coming to these conferences, meeting people, having that contact. It has paid off so many times as I’ve gone through each one of these incidents. Where I could in Maui, if they needed something, I could contact California and say, “We need this. They don’t have it here. Can you get it to us?” It’s just been so important. And you don’t think about that human aspect of I may need you down the line, or you may need me. You don’t think about that. You’re just talking. But in training, there’s not a lot of training out there, particularly in the medical legal death field where you can just go and learn how to run a mass fatality incident. There’s just not that much out there. So that would be a take home to try and find that training. I’ve gone in and taught some agencies, looked at their mass fatality plans, told them where their holes are, what they’re doing great, and get them to talk to each other like we were talking to each other before. So, I guess that would be the take home from me.

Laura: I think that’s a great takeaway. You know what you learn from colleagues and coming together at different events. Everybody’s from different areas, different countries, and seeing what you can do together. Mark, how about you?

Mark: Yeah. The key is to get protocol, having that plan in writing, publishing it so other people can see it and sharing it. And Julie’s exercises, tabletops, are key to it because not only do you get a chance to see what everyone else is doing and talk about your plan, and maybe someone has some critiques of it. But FaceTime, like one of the problems I run into, I’m the last of the original members of this team and everyone else is gone. Everyone else is either retired or passed away from illness, and the people that I work with now, when we have an explosion or a ferry or even the past with Covid, these are new. And I’m like, we haven’t had these tabletops in a while. I don’t know these people. And they’re looking at me like, what? Are you going to reestablish it? And then time is wasting. One of my most interesting of the tabletops was with the military. The National Guard was a part of it, because it was a particularly big. They don’t usually tell you what the event is until you get there, and you sit around a table and they said, this just happened. Fire department, what are you going to do? You know, it’s within like first 30 seconds, police departments, Port Authority, FBI.

And then we get to the medical examiner’s office, which is us. And then they ask you, you know, we’re getting organized, we’re getting ready, we’re calling team members. But for this particular, this scenario was a seven-kiloton suitcase nuke goes off in Times Square. Levels Midtown Manhattan, and operations were moved to new Jersey in Staten Island. And when they got to the medical examiner’s office, I said, “Well, we’re going to mobilize.” And they were like, ‘Sir, you are in a 15 story glass building next to Times Square. Your entire department has been killed. You are now a ghost. You will not participate.” Just like that in the military. You will not participate in this. And I was like, ‘Do I still get lunch? Can I still have…?” So, I was like, “You’re right, I am in a glass building. I’m on the 13th floor, my office. There is no way I’m surviving that. The building is not going to be there.” I’m like, it’s interesting. I’m kind of like, maybe they can do that on a on a Saturday when no one is working. But that was right. It was real life. And it’s like very shocking when you start to think start to because all day long it could be multiple days. But those, uh, those exercises and the face time is extremely important.

Laura: What an excellent point. I mean, you know, it seems obvious in retrospect, but, you know, if all of your facilities and people are wiped out, what’s plan B? Yeah. Thank you. Julie?

Julie: There’s not too much I can add to this, because I think both those answers really encapsulated a lot that you’ve asked. If there’s only one thing that I can add to that, it is the cadence. It is continuing to practice, continuing to facilitate those discussions with your people. As, like Mark said, you never know which team is going to be there at the time this happens. And so, continuing that conversation, continuing to revisit those plans, are they even relevant any longer? We discovered in the last time we went through them that we don’t even use one of the technologies that we had planned for, so we need to remove that from it being available. So really that cadence, making an effort, making a purposeful effort, which is hard because we’re all so busy, so making that purposeful effort to set aside time to make these discussions happen.

Laura: What an excellent point about the technology. I mean, it’s changing so rapidly, so no pun intended. But that changes every plan that you have. Adam, anything to add? I know we’ve covered a lot, so maybe we’ll go the other direction next time and give you more.

Adam: Actually, I don’t have much, because unlike big guns here, I’m a small screw. I’m an analyst. But, like Julie said, there’s usually no time, and you need to make the time. And I wish this would make it to the higher levels. We don’t have tabletops. We should. I think the military does. They have a little more time on their hands. I know the other agencies I worked with because we work on a daily basis for criminal forensic cases. But, we don’t have much going on in the way of preparedness and scenarios and I think we should.

Laura: Thank you. That’s great. You all touched on this, and this is probably one of the harder things to talk about, but there is a psychological toll, emotional strain. I mean, whether just in preparing for, much less going through, something so horrific. What support systems do you have out there? Do you think should be out there? How do you personally deal with it? What advice can you give in that area? We’ll start with you, Adam.

Adam: All right. I think in those cases, or at least my experience from the October 7th events is that you get a lot of public support and that’s very heartwarming and keeps you going. And you have a sense of duty, but in more practical things that the agency can do, we’ve had some volunteer masseuses, for example, which I understand would not fly here, but I recommend it. And, we’ve had food. We were talking to counselors and, of course, you always feel like I’m busy doing this, and there’s no time, but it is important, I think.

Laura: Thank you. Julie.

Julie: So, I think, we had this question, or we addressed this question during the panel. One of the things that I really appreciate is the attention that this field has brought to vicarious trauma. And so, I think because that topic has become so important and realize that, no, we may not be going out to crime scenes on the regular, we may not be interacting like a first responders. I guess technically we’re one of the last responders because everyone is gone. We are nonetheless affected by the things we see and the things we do, and especially in an event of this magnitude and what you might be seeing on this. So, I really encourage people to look at what their agency has in place. I know our agency has really stepped up they’re ability to have counselors, grief counselors, mental health counselors. We have therapy dogs now that are available to come out. And we also have a protocol for even, you know, simple homicide. Do the, you know, the responding officer or the crime scene personnel or anybody that is in touch with that, do they need some extra counseling and maybe they need to be forced into that? So, you really need to look at the resources you have. And if you don’t have them, it’s important. There are so many publications out there now that you can, you know, influence the higher ups to Adam’s point. Like there are things that you can show that this is a necessary thing for the agencies to implement.

Laura: Absolutely. Thank you. Mark.

Mark: Yeah, I agree 100%. We have a full-time wellness committee for the agency because we do death investigation and autopsies and go to scenes. To have that in place now and go through a mass fatality was so much better off because it’s more of we’re in this together. I did not see that on 9/11. We had nothing in place and there was one morning I’m sitting at my desk, and it was the months after we were full speed ahead and it was really the grind. We had another mass fatality within two months after 9/11 and it was just pounding, relentless, grinding us. And I had one of my younger scientists was going around the lab, and he was used to collect these figurines on his desk, and they were expensive figurines, and he loved them. And he would tell you about each one, and he was giving them away and he put one. He knew that I liked this one. He put on me and I was like, oh, thank you. He said, I want you to have this. And I thought, like, why is he giving these away? And I sort of talked to him like, I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t feel right about this. I don’t know what’s going to this kid goes home. So, I told my boss and we brought him in and I’m like, we need to do something. So, I just contacted NYU, their mental health division, and they were like, absolutely. And I they said, this is how we’re going to do it, though. If you sit down with one person, you know, you’re in New York City, you’re tough.

You don’t need counseling, you don’t. So, we’re going to bring the whole division in and put them in a room. And I’m standing to the side and I’m watching these doctors. And there they were like, amazing at this. They would talk about like, well, for me, (and the doctor would say up on the stage) for me, after 9/11, living in the city, going through this, the smells and yeah, I had like these kinds of thoughts. And those doctors were like, I could see a lot of you shaking your head. And I’m looking out in the audience and nobody was shaking their head. But that doctor did that because people are like, oh, okay, it’s okay to shake my head. And that’s the afternoon break. They’re like, I’m going to break into smaller groups. And then the small groups sitting around in a circle, they got to talk, and they were sharing it. By then, it just opened up. Everybody was sharing and quite a few of them took advantage of the free mental counseling, one on one, with those doctors. And I look back, I’m like, that may have been the most important thing I’ve ever done in like on the World Trade Center. Was that just picking up? Like, who do I who do I call on this? But today we’ve learned from so much and it’s all in place now to help those, you know, because everybody’s different. Everybody takes these things differently. And, you know, no one should bring that home with them, you know, that should stay at work.

Laura: What a what a brilliant strategy by that doctor. But for you to also identify that that meant something. And then the way everyone came together to make it a safe space for everyone to do that. I hope for you and for anyone who is, you know, a leader in this area, you need it just as much as anybody else. So, I hope it stretches all the way to the top.

Mark: People will ask you and I know the team here, like, how do you how do you work on this? How do you see that much or even like your everyday, you know, like your everyday cases because you’ll see thousands, tens of thousands of bodies in your career. And there are just certain things that you never forget. And for me, I always say, the one thing is many of the autopsies and the crime scenes and mass fatalities. Every time that a child is on that slab or like that. I remember every single one of the baby versus, you know, someone that was shot up in a gang fight. It’s just something doesn’t sit well. And that’s sort of my is going to stay with me, you know, for, for my life.

Laura: It’s hard for anyone to imagine what that’s like and support… Can’t have enough of it, I think. Kim, how about you?

Kim: Well, I think I would probably basically say what Mark just said. In our field, we’re expected to deal with grief and work with families and be a really integral part of their grieving process. And so, it’s expected of us, and we’re expected to be strong. So after the first incident, I knew that my staff would not take advantage of the formal pathways that we had for them where they could get some therapy or some help. So, we had the dogs come out, and I think that that was just the most wonderful thing that I did out of that whole thing is scheduling them every week just to sit with the staff that needed it. And they would cycle through, and some of them were coming every week and they really needed it. And then branching off and getting them a somebody to talk to that knew what they were going through, worked in the field and had either become a counselor unofficially or officially, and getting them to talk to someone until they would go into that formal… There’s just some things that, like Mark said, that will trigger you. Like, I don’t get upset about things. It’s just part of what we do and you just kind of accept it. But I do remember one time, and it hit me really hard, was there’s one case where this this man had his daughter in the back of the car, and he was racing. He was he was hopping cars and had a head on collision.

And, the daughter was the same age as my daughter, and they were both in a car seat, and it was the exact same car seat. And the firemen that were out there, I was holding up these two firemen that were just bawling, and I’m just staring at this car seat like, that’s my daughter’s car seat. And that was more upsetting to me than other things that I… Because you make a physical connection or mental connection to it. So yeah, that was just horrible. And those poor firemen, I felt so bad for them, they needed to go to counseling. But that’s just, you know, something that we get used to and you don’t keep… If you’re in charge of one of these things, watch your people. Know when they’re hurting. Know when you need to step in and make sure that they need some help. And it’s okay to need some help. You don’t have to be strong. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with me, Laura. I’m fine. But, you know, when I go to my staff and say, do you need some counseling? Do you think there’s something wrong with me? Yeah. Um, no. Sorry. So, you have to be inventive and find ways for them to connect until they realize maybe it’s not normal to cry while I pet a dog. That’s a sure sign that you probably need to go and do something else. So that that would be my answer, I guess.

Adam: We had a couple of therapists way before that, and we were discussing everyday problems, and sort of a thing that came out is that when you put on scrubs and you’re ready for work, you’re kind of protected, and it’s not the same as seeing things when you’re not expecting them. But then some things find other routes, like if it’s something from your life, like in that instance, your daughter’s car. Et cetera. And it’s kind of, since it’s impossible to predict what you might encounter that’s actually in a way, has sort of a back door to your psyche. It’s kind of important to, as much as possible, not get too involved. If it’s not relevant for the case, maybe don’t look at the deceased. If it’s not relevant, maybe leave it. I think it’s sound advice and actually, like during the October 7th event, you’d be hearing a ton of horrible stories all around, and I made a deliberate attempt to kind of avoid them, which, now that I’m here, maybe I have a poor amount of stories that I can tell, but at least I’m sound, so I would recommend.

Julie: That as a survival mechanism.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I think you have to have that. And the two themes that, you know, strike me, you know, not having experience things like this, you know, watch your people but also yourself. There’s this, and it’s especially I feel in our culture, you have to be strong. You have to just, you know, that’s your job, but it can’t help but stick with you. So not just your people, but yourself, and do whatever you have to do to get the support you need. It’s okay to be vulnerable. So, I love hearing that from you guys. Thank you. It’s a tough question. Let’s move on to the technology and I’ll just let you guys jump in. There have been so many innovations in DNA technology, and it certainly impacts mass fatality incidents. So, if anyone wants to speak to that?

Kim: Well, I think that, you know, in the, the medical legal field, things haven’t changed for a long time. And then when rapid came along, it changed how we could really work with families and get them answers. I mean, not just a yes, I’m going to bring this home for you. I’m going to make this identification. But the legal aspects. You know, these people that that have maybe a husband or wife that is not identified yet, but their income is gone because they’re not working, but they’re not identified. So, you still have to make your mortgage. You still have to do all these things until they’re identified and can continue on. So really bringing that to these families and saying, I’m going to help you quicker than I could have ten years ago has been so wonderful. And really learning about FIGG or IGG or whatever you want to call it, understanding how that works and incorporating it into our world has been just so wonderful.

Laura: Absolutely. I’ve heard many stories as we’ve gone along the last decade and what it can do for people. I mean, we talk a lot about the technology in these videos, but it really is all for the person that you’re serving.

Kim: It comes down to the families. That’s all it is. I mean, put aside whatever you think about technologies, whatever your experience has been, and put yourself in that family’s shoes. And if you can give them a 100% correct ID quicker than you could before, it means the world to them.

Laura: Yeah. Well thank you.

Mark: You have the rapid system. We have the rapid system in New York City. And I brought that for mass fatalities to use during a mass fatality event. And then, might be a year or so that goes by. So, I have to use I have to use this every month. Otherwise, it’s gonna sit on the shelf and no one’s going to know how to use it. So, we started doing regular missing person cases. You know, we have the reference samples, but that’s a great piece of equipment for an average mass fatality like 10 to 20. If you have larger incident, such as a plane crash where there’s fragmentation and you’re talking hundreds of samples, our one piece of equipment is going to be slower than traditional methods because we can process so much through automation. So, either we reach out to vendors and say, “Can I get like a whole bank of these rapids? Then I could set them up.” Or, we’re going to do traditional methods, but maybe a little mixture. I like the idea of the rapid when the family comes to us, because my scientists are also interview specialists, and will sit with the family and collect a DNA sample. And all the other traditional methods: the fingerprints, odontology, visual, if you can do that prior, and you’re sure you have the right answer, particularly with the non-scientific methods, let’s do it. Because the goal is identifying as quickly as possible and returning them to their family. But if I can have someone meet with my team, and as we’re interviewing, (sometimes these interviews take two hours) collect a sample, off the bat, you would explain the DNA process and you have that done.

So now I have a profile and they’re still here, and we already have DNA profiles from the remains because we started those yesterday, I might be able to bring an ME in here so they don’t have to go home and wait for a phone call or a knock at the door. I may be able to do this right here. And we’ve been able to do that in some cases with the smaller ones. But we’re still working out how to make this more efficient and work this into maybe a temporary, more mobile, morgue someplace, because we’re always like a dirty bombs or nerve gas or chemicals. I don’t want those samples brought into the lab. Let’s do all the DNA work. And that’s the other… The postmortem side of it is another area we’re exploring. So, it’s exciting stuff.

You’ve seen the evolution in the last 20 years of DNA and the techniques that we use today for the really old, worst of the worst, World Trade Center samples, we need all hands-on deck. You need NGS. You need a really good kinship program because you’re ready to go back with bone procedures, and the kits we have today, the commercial kits for generating, they’re great. We had to develop our own back in the day, low copy number stuff. We don’t have to do that anymore. We can use just your commercial kits. They’re great for STRs. So, you just watch all this stuff, and most of it just goes right over my head. But I have team members now that that are really into it. I’m like, keep finding those better procedures.

Laura: I love that. Well, the evolution, you know, mixing it together, moving forward. I mean, so many moving parts for you guys.

Kim: One of the things that we did at Family Assistance Center in Maui, is that we put one of the rapid instruments there so the families could actually give samples right there and we could run the sample. We have a dedicated team that all they did was family reference samples, and the family could wait. You want to wait here for two hours? You want to go and have a haircut, because you could get a haircut at the Family Assistance Center. Who knew? You could get food. I mean, there’s all kinds of things that they could get while they were there, and their sample would run and we’d say, profile done. Yeah. You’re good.

Laura: That’s amazing. That’s amazing.

Mark: That’s another thing. Not having to go back to that family and ask for another swab. You know you don’t want to because you call them up or knock at the door.

Laura: Yeah. Would you guys like to weigh in on anything?

Julie: Know your resources, what you have available. So, we have both rapid systems available. We do use it in routine casework, and we also have a plan to make them deployable as Mark was saying. And it’s going to depend on the incident because, as he was pointing out, there is a limit to how many samples you can run. And then knowing, and that’s what we’ve done with our agency, is knowing what our response could be, given the number of like what MCI level it is, how many victims potentially you could have, and knowing when to call in back up because it’s too big for you to do or it’s going to overwhelm your actual laboratory. But in addition to that is looking for additional technologies. I spoke earlier on advancing our bone protocol. We didn’t want to have to bring in liquid nitrogen to help process bones, so we found an alternative from another vendor. So, you know, different things to look at and kind of just keep looking what you might need, what you might need, what is your capacity and identifying that so you can be an informed person when someone calls you and says, okay, I can help you, but here’s the limit of what I can do for you.

Laura: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Adam: So, we like to think of ourselves as a boutique lab, and we have a lot of advanced technologies, and we work in a small lab and work on whatever is needed. And that makes us very special and gifted, but it also makes us not processing large amounts of samples at the same time most of the time, which caught us very unprepared for the October 7th events. So, I’d say the largest change that we saw was in automation, and so much more samples could be processed without error at the same time. And, we don’t have rapid usually. Sometimes we’d get families for normal identification cases if it was saving them a very long trip to the police station. So, we don’t have rapid. Usually other methods suit us fine, but I’m starting to think it would be a very good idea. It would be amazing if you could put a sample on and something else will do all the work without needing you to babysit it while you do other important work, like saving time, paralleling things would be priceless.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And I think that’s important, too. I mean, everybody is working within limitations, you know, a number of staff, where you’re located, budget, until something happens. Sometimes you don’t know what you need until… So, sharing all this knowledge with each other can advance that ahead of time when possible. So, we’re just going to ask a few individual questions, and then we’ll wrap up. Mark, your role in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. We’ve talked a bit about it. I don’t want to make you retread what you’ve already said, but can you discuss a little bit about how it shaped the protocols that you use today, or lessons learned for future? Anything you might not have covered yet?

Mark: A lot about controlling the data. I mean, there was so much. To this day, our World Trade Center DNA databank in New York City is larger than our local DNA index system, which is insane to think about because New York City is a million plus people. But controlling the data, and the programs to integrate it. It used to be that all the departments had their own case numbers and had their own logbooks. And if you wanted to work with pathology versus toxicology versus the evidence unit or anthropology, everybody had their own thing going on. It just got so confusing on a daily basis with just a normal case. So now we have a case management system that was huge that DNA people now have access to. And the medical examiner can see the DNA results. All the reports are in there. You’ve got the work that was done, autopsy results because it may be able to, you know, help the other. So, something as simple as that-not creating a million different databanks. And we still have those in place. And that’s a real nightmare with World Trade Center, because I have programs and sheets that the program that was used to run no longer exists, or Windows doesn’t support it. And now I’m like, what am I supposed to do? And the 6,000 interviews that were done at the time, and 200 pieces of information that were collected from each of the stacks of paper. So, we were always thinking about the LIMS system and going paperless. And that was a big factor for us, because even smaller mass fatalities, just being able to control it and not get held up because of paperwork to release, and it’s a travesty to families, got to wait because of paperwork, or you think there was a mistake, or who did this? So that’s all that part of it, the automation.

I’m very happy with that. And of course, the DNA techniques are always evolving. One thing we did for 9/11 that we probably wouldn’t do on any mass fatalities afterwards, the decision back in 2001 was to… All these remains… We know that a lot of them we’re not going to be able to get DNA from, so let’s preserve them. So, we took all the World Trade Center remains and we freeze dried them. We took all the moisture out and we sealed them. So that factor alone is why I still have a World Trade Center team, and we’re still working on it. Because if we didn’t do that, if we kind of just let them continue to decompose and degrade, there wouldn’t be anything left at this point. Most definitely. So that was just thinking back… Like I never thought 23 years later we’d still be… But that was such the right decision to make because we’re still making IDs and to preserve those. But I don’t think we’ve done that since, because everything has been much smaller and the techniques have gotten faster, and we’ve been able to in less absolute, less fragmentation. I mean, that was a key to 22,000 remains. We have to identify each fragment in order for us to have any chance to identify all the victims.

Laura: But really the forethought, you know, to do that. And then as the technology evolves, I mean, that’s pretty…

Mark: That was the medical examiner. That was the chief. That was Doctor Hirsch. That was an MD. He’s like this DNA stuff. It’s gone. It’s gotten better because we had it… ‘89 we started the DNA lab. So, 2001 we saw how that little ten plus years, how far DNA technology became, he’s like it’s going to continue. We’re going to be doing stuff in 20 years that you see on TV, right? You see like, you know, science fiction and I’m like, yeah, we do. We do stuff today. Like, I never thought this was possible way back when. But you know, that decision to preserve, that was, you know, that was the right decision. Smart man.

Laura: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it’s amazing to share all of this with a wider audience to, like you said, you know, some so many people weren’t actually around. They’ve been born since then and maybe don’t know the impact and what how it changed things.

Adam: One of my ex-colleagues, when I first got into work, she told them how we take for granted things that shouldn’t be. They went to a convention that actually might have been ISHI, and someone was telling that they could produce a DNA profile from maybe touch, like, from the handle of an axe. And they were both amazed. Nowadays it’s expected. And investigators are angry, if you like. But we gave you the evidence. Why can’t you produce a profile? And it doesn’t. It’s hard.

Laura: Yeah, exactly. It’s fascinating. Our last interview was about touch DNA, and it’s just. I mean, it’s mind blowing. There’s just new stuff every moment. You did cover rapid DNA and IGG and how important that was in speeding things along. Anything else you’d like to say along those lines?

Kim: Well, I think that it’s really important when you’re going through these events, as we’ve done over the years and learned, is that you need to think about, you know, every possibility of identification, multiple identifications and different modalities, if you can. I was really big on let’s get as many IDs as we can with as many different types of modalities. And if you if you’re using rapid, that’s wonderful. But if you’re not getting an ID, think about going to genealogy. Don’t use up all your sample. I mean, you may get a beautiful STR profile. I like to say it just lovely. Beautiful. The best. But if you don’t have a family reference sample, it’s not going to do you any good. So, think about that. I mean, if you’re not getting a hit on the ID and there’s nothing wrong with your profile, you might have to switch over and maybe try genealogy. Maybe that’s the DNA for you at this point. So, keep that in mind. But I mean, I just can’t say enough about how this has really helped the medical legal field. I remember sitting in my office calculating how fast I could retire in 2018, when, you know, we didn’t know anything about rapid. We had all these decedents coming in, and only five people had hands. We had all this great fingerprint technology, but it’s not going to help you if nobody has a hand. So, I really thought I need to get out of here. I have messed up. And then rapid came along and we started making IDs, and I stopped thinking about retirement then, but, you know, it’s been really wonderful.

Laura: Thank you. That’s an excellent addition, Julie. Do you want to talk about preparedness? I mean, you know how you came to be in the program and what encouraged that.

Julie: The stories that you’re hearing today and more than the stories, the experiences. So, you can see something on the news and we all just take it as another news story. And then you talk to the individuals, and you hear what they went through, and you self-reflect, and you say, that could be me, and what am I going to do? What am I going to do if there’s an Uvalde school shooting? What would I do in my laboratory? And so just starting those conversations, that’s really where we started. And we honestly, we started this conversation right before the Surfside condo collapse. We had collaborated with Marshall University. We were going to get an intern to help us really kind of just get a bolus of a plan. And we knew it was going to be a constantly evolving. It’s a living plan. And then Surfside happened, and thankfully, we actually had started the rapid journey. So, we had one rapid already installed and functioning. We had two more just sitting in boxes. And Stephanie Stoiloff down in Miami, sent an officer up to pick them up, and we had to unbox them because the boxes wouldn’t fit in the car we put them in.

We literally seat belted them in the back of the car and went down. And then it became even more clear to us that this is something we need to take seriously, because it is a matter of when, not if, this will happen. And it’s hard. And I’ve spoken to the time that it takes out of your day to day. But you know, if not now, when, and you really need to make that time. And what I’ve discovered through this journey with my team is that it’s there’s a willingness and a passion behind this because they see the value. They see everything that’s happening on the news. They hear these talks, and they know it could be them. So, they’re doing this beyond their work day. They’re coming up with their own ideas. And then now I have people from outside the DNA unit. Our quality assurance unit has gotten involved. Some of our fingerprint unit has gotten involved, and they want to… Where am I going to fit into this puzzle, should you need me? So, I think the desire is out there. It just takes that single step to get you started.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. That willingness to get started and find those resources is not always easy, but you got to do it. Adam, you talked a lot about the evolving technology and things being dynamic. Anything more you want to talk about in that area before we wrap?

Adam: I’m not sure it’s applicable for every mass fatality event, but in our case, the work kept changing. We started thinking there’s a certain number of individuals dead and working on that. Then, eventually, as it turned out, it was a much larger amount. So, rather than increase the work accordingly, it increased it incredibly, because we were under the impression that, like, we had to entertain the scenario where an entire family might have been killed and the person that’s supposed to give the reference sample is not going to be able to give that. He’s one of the victims. And if he was identified in any other means other than DNA, we will never have his profile. So rather than just look for individuals that required DNA profiling, everyone had to go through DNA profiling. So, in that instance in our lab, all of a sudden, we really needed a lot more equipment, a lot more reagents. And you’re not prepared for that. I was ordering the amount that I thought might have been sufficient, and now I need a lot more of that.

Then later on, there was a fear that some of the Israelis that we were looking for, the missing Israelis… Like we are going through, and maybe 90% were identified, but we’re still missing maybe 10%, and maybe they are among the dead Gazan militants in October 7th events which weren’t our responsibility strictly. And we couldn’t identify them anyway. We didn’t have the reference samples, but maybe they’re there now. We’re going to look into corpses that are in suboptimal conditions. And now we need to work a lot with bones. We barely did bones up until then. Now we need to order a whole new set of reagents, and our workload just redoubled again. So, it was a very dynamic kind of work. The finish line kept being taken away from us. And maybe it’s something to take into account. I’m sort of asking to be prepared for the unprepared, but it’s a thing that happened and might occur.

Laura: Being prepared for the unprepared. That’s really what the panel and this discussion is about. And that is not easy. Any small piece of parting advice that you would give before we wrap up for you guys that we haven’t covered. Or you’d just like to reiterate for everyone.

Kim: Don’t panic. There’s plenty of people out there that can help, and it’s not as bad as it seems.

Mark: Yeah, this can become the reason. You know, you get involved and you never expect it. But you can get involved in one of these events and it can lead to some… You can get more involved. As a scientist, I never thought on the political side of it, or the management, or the executive, but now you see firsthand that you’re in the trenches. And how do we make this system better? And for me, it just led to so many different things with my career that I never thought would ever happen. You know, a building fell on me, and I got injured and I couldn’t go back to Ground Zero to work. So, they put me to work with families and these DNA technologies. That was a big turning point. So, you never know what’s going to happen. But you go with it. You make the best. And you know, you try your hardest to do your job.

Laura: Absolutely.

Adam: For us, I’d say, we got a ton of volunteers asking to help in all sorts of ways. And, for our lab, we got actual, professional, lab workers who knew the job, the work. They could do PCR as well as I could. Some of them were lab managers. So more than that, it was difficult psychologically to let a lot of new people into your clean forensic lab. But maybe a message here is that it’s possible. Possibly essential? Not possibly. It would have been impossible to do the work without them. So, let those people in if they want to help too. I mean, put your limits. Don’t bring just anyone. But, yeah, you got support and use it.

Laura: I think that’s a theme we’ve definitely seen here. Support and sharing and working together. Yeah. Thank you. Not only for sharing this with us, but for what you all do. It is really remarkable. I know it seems silly to move to this question at this point, but, I know a lot of you have attended before. Some may be new, but it’s our 35th anniversary, and, you know, we just would love to hear what it’s like for you. What brings you back? And, you know, does it help you?

Kim: Well, congratulations. You know what I say to that is there’s not enough medical legal people that come to this. When I ask agencies if they know about it, they don’t. And it’s really important that they learn from other agencies that have a different viewpoint. Like Julie was saying. She answered a question earlier about a missing persons case. She totally looks at something differently than I do. And I didn’t realize that. And when she said it, I thought, “Wow, I didn’t think of it that way.” I think of it in respect to what we do in our field. And it’s a totally different thing. And there are two people here right now because I told them last year, you should go to this and they’re here. And I really think that more medical legal people should come. I think this is a great conference. It’s always at a great venue. The staff are awesome. It’s all well-organized. So that would be my advice to get more people in is maybe open it up to the medical legal agencies, let them know what’s going on. They don’t know.

Laura: Well, thank you for bringing two people in that area. And yeah, we can bring more. But you’re right. Like we need a track that also addresses that. And again, community sharing learning from each other. Thank you.

Mark: It’s stellar conference and organization. And over my 27 years, I’ve been to these all over the world. And this is top tier. And I’ve made so many contacts and developed relationships and don’t very often for me now, like take notes, like this is a good technique and I see some of the… For me, bring it back to my team or I don’t always… Like, every year I’m like, I got to send because we can’t send everybody. I’m like, someone else should go to this and learn what I learned. You know, especially as I’m looking at the end of my career. But ISHI has always been a place where I’ve learned, I’ve developed relationships. And also, I’ve seen a lot, like we call it in New York City, alumni, because there’s probably 50 people here that I’ve worked with over the years that are the 197 DNA crime labs that are in the United States. But one thing that someone pointed out to me, and it was the last time that I spoke here, it was on the on the topic of the psychological effects and counseling. And he said, “You know, I think for you, you’re counseling is the fact that you talk about this and you tell people the story.” When you do, it makes you feel better. And I thought, I’m like, you know what? He’s right. He’s absolutely. And I get put on TV a lot. And I think about that, you know, when I tell that story this time, especially September of the anniversary, it’s sort of like therapy. You get to talk about it and it just kind of, you know, sometimes it gets emotional. And one of the caveats is, I don’t know, I’m probably going to laugh during part of it, you know, cry, get them out. But, you know, it’s definitely for me like being able to talk about that and not just 9/11, but all the other stuff. It’s something that I agree with that what he said the last time I spoke with him like, yeah, you’re right. The counseling for me getting up and talking about the content and sharing it and have people like, that’s such a great…Can I get your card? You know, that just happened just now afterwards. And I know there’s emails waiting for me. And you know, with this team, I know we’ll keep in touch and bounce things off of each other. No doubt. So, thank you.

Laura: No. Thank you. That’s something that I’ve never heard of on any of our videos. And I love that perspective. Yeah, getting a chance to talk about it is counseling as well.

Julie: I’m glad to kind of build upon that. I do see ISHI as a bit of a therapy session because we all come to share things. And when you come to find you have shared experiences, or you’re able to talk about something that was really difficult and get the support of the community, it’s a very valuable experience. But I will say I’m going to steal a phrase that Tom Callaghan said on the opening night. The welcome reception for ISHI 35, which was ISHI is his professional Christmas. And I really enjoyed that, because I look forward to this meeting all year, almost like I do Christmas. And there’s just so much, you know, it’s like family, food, drink, friends, you know, the whole thing comes together. And, when he said that, I was like, wow. How long did you think about that before you said that? But I’m going to steal it because it’s such a wonderful description of what ISHI actually means to me as well. And like Mark said, you can’t send everybody. And I try not to be too selfish with this meeting. So, by participating in panels like this, I’m able to help offset that and send more people to ISHI. And of course, ISHI next year is in Palm Beach. So ISHI 36, is in Palm Beach, which is literally 15 minutes from her laboratory. So, I hope to send almost all of my staff. Someone’s got to stay behind.

Laura: I think that would be fantastic. And yes, I love seeing everyone get together and have a great time. It is so enjoyable for me too. So, what are your thoughts so far?

Adam: So, I think I’m still a bit awestruck. This is a large thing for me. And, so far, I don’t know that many people. I hope to, like, already I met a few. I want to say, next ISHI for sure. It’ll be fun, but the prospects of me being allowed to fly again. It’ll be my turn to sit back, probably for a while. But I hope the ISHI where I will be able to make it, I’ll still meet old friends. Yeah, it’s like this is important. This should definitely be a regular thing for our lab to send people to. There’s always a matter of funds and being able to afford the manpower. But it’s important to stay at the front line of knowledge, to keep up to date to technology. And I hope you’ll see more of us in the future.

Laura: And, you know, if we can help get you on any panels or do some interviews to make it easier, just let me know. We’ll figure it out. We want all of you guys here. Thank you so much for taking this time. We really appreciate it. This is really fantastic.