New York medical examiner’s experience after 9/11

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"I had never seen anything like it," she recalls. "I had seen people killed by subway trains, and speeding cars, run over by trucks, crushed by industrial equipment, fallen from great heights, burned and battered — but never all at the same time."

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The next body bag held only a leg. A piece of black plastic shrapnel resembling the grip of a Glock pistol stuck out from the flesh. Beneath the skin, deep in the muscle, she discovered a fragment of a personal check with a routing number and partially legible name..

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An FBI agent on the scene made a request that was more of an order. "I want any paper with Arabic writing on it," he told the doctors. "Please also let us know as soon as you come across anything that looks (like) a box cutter." Several dozen box cutters piled up before agents told the doctors to focus simply on identification.

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During one typical shift, Melinek's station handled a burly fireman, a young Asian woman and a white man with a shattered face. A woman's hand, bearing a wedding ring, was found deep inside the chest of a man's torso — revealed only by an X-ray.

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But in mid-August 2002, Melinek received a call that new 9/11 remains had been found. Workers had discovered them atop a scaffolding at 90 West St. At the morgue, an anthropologist identified a left hip. Melinek concluded the bone came from one of the planes that hit the WTC. How could anything reach the top of a skyscraper one-fifth of a mile away unless it was traveling high and fast?

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