- 15 hours ago
Homicide New York Season 3 Episode 5
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TVTranscript
00:00:15These are real experiences, actual detailed events that happened.
00:00:26This is the biggest murder that we had ever caught.
00:00:31Thousands of people were killed in this attack.
00:00:35And we weren't prepared for that.
00:00:37We weren't prepared as human beings.
00:00:40We're not even talking about professions.
00:00:42I didn't feel too much in control like I was when I was doing an investigation.
00:00:47I felt more like I was just trying to survive the day.
00:00:51You find out what you're really made of.
00:00:54You find out what it is to be a team player.
00:00:57You find out who your partner is.
00:00:59You find out how important life is.
00:01:03I think half the city knew somebody or had a relative who died in the Trade Center.
00:01:08But, you know, time has gone by.
00:01:10Some people now, they haven't experienced something like that.
00:01:13They haven't seen what it's like when tragedy really hits.
00:01:18And the whole city came together.
00:01:21It didn't matter what background, what nationality you were.
00:01:25We were all humans that day.
00:01:2925 years later, that will always be the date that divides my life.
00:01:35The world that existed on September 10th, that's gone.
00:01:39It led into 20 years of warfare.
00:01:44My whole world was changed.
00:01:47The whole world was changed.
00:01:55Our job is to make sure you can go home and sleep at night.
00:02:00It's so important for a family to know who murdered their relative.
00:02:05Compassion for the victims, that's the most important thing.
00:02:09I've always liked the peek behind the curtain.
00:02:12What really happened?
00:02:15You want to find out the truth.
00:02:18That's what detectives do.
00:02:20Your instinct is to help people.
00:02:23In New York City, the NYPD.
00:02:29This is it.
00:02:45It was the most amazing thing looking at the towers from down below.
00:02:49You know, especially as a kid.
00:02:50You just go like this.
00:02:52And it just keeps going and going like a stairway to heaven.
00:02:57My Aunt Joanne, she worked in the World Trade Center.
00:03:01She worked in the North Tower, 103rd floor, and then also the 105th floor.
00:03:06She was working for Canada Fitzgerald, a brokerage firm.
00:03:09She started working there when she was 18.
00:03:11She ended up becoming vice president, partner.
00:03:16So Joanne, she was my aunt, but she was more like my sister.
00:03:20Always took care of me.
00:03:21Made sure I wasn't getting into trouble.
00:03:23She was only 13 years older than me.
00:03:26When she first started working there,
00:03:28she brought me to the Trade Center for the first time.
00:03:32As a five-year-old, you know, you get excited about
00:03:36things that you've never seen before.
00:03:38And here I am getting on the elevator,
00:03:41and it was like a rocket ship.
00:03:45You're up there within a couple of minutes,
00:03:47a hundred somewhat stories.
00:03:49Your ears are popping.
00:03:50You get out.
00:03:51And once you stepped up near the windows,
00:03:53it was actually kind of like, ooh.
00:03:56It was a long way down.
00:03:58A hundred and ten floors in each tower.
00:04:01It could be upwards of 50,000 people on any given day.
00:04:05The buildings had their own zip code.
00:04:08That's something that, just think that, you know,
00:04:11wherever you live in the United States,
00:04:13there's an area that has a zip code,
00:04:15and these two buildings had their own zip code.
00:04:17They had designed it to withstand high winds, storms,
00:04:23lightning strikes, planes hitting it.
00:04:25It was perceived to be somewhat indestructible.
00:04:30The bomb killed five and injured more than 1,000 others
00:04:34in the blast that rocked the World Trade Center
00:04:36and sent lower Manhattan into a state of complete chaos.
00:04:39February of 1993, there was a terrorist attack.
00:04:44International terrorists put explosives into a van
00:04:47and parked it into a, you know, subterranean garage.
00:04:50It blew up, but the damage was so minimal.
00:04:54Someone near me was saying,
00:04:56man, these towers are amazing.
00:04:58They can withstand this huge blast.
00:05:00I can't believe it.
00:05:02I never really thought that the Twin Towers
00:05:05were a target of international terrorists until that day.
00:05:09Then I realized that they were a symbol of strength.
00:05:12They were a symbol of pride.
00:05:15Something that, you know,
00:05:16when you flew across the Atlantic Ocean,
00:05:19you could see the Twin Towers.
00:05:22The following year, they put up cement guards
00:05:27so that nobody could get close with a truck
00:05:30or a car filled with any kind of explosive device.
00:05:35Then you felt like, okay, this won't happen again.
00:05:47It was a Tuesday.
00:05:50Beautiful weather.
00:05:53I don't remember seeing a cloud in the sky.
00:05:57And I had to go to court.
00:05:59I was in the anti-crime unit.
00:06:01I was going to trial for a pickpocket case.
00:06:04So I would travel in by ferry.
00:06:09I got off the boat on the Manhattan side.
00:06:12I started walking towards the train station.
00:06:15As I'm walking, only steps away from the ferry,
00:06:19I hear a bunch of explosions.
00:06:23Sounded like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
00:06:25I actually said, what the fuck was that?
00:06:29But I continue to walk, and I get onto the subway
00:06:32towards the courthouses.
00:06:34I had to be there at 9 o'clock.
00:06:38I woke up in the detective storm in the 13th precinct.
00:06:42In the police department, sometimes you don't go home
00:06:44for a couple of days.
00:06:47I signed in, and I remember it was ABC News was on.
00:06:52And I saw that the Twin Towers had been struck by a plane.
00:06:57It sounded like a missile, not an airplane.
00:07:00Then there was a loud explosion.
00:07:04Dispatcher called me and says,
00:07:06it's a small Cessna that just crashed
00:07:09into the World Trade Center.
00:07:11And I can see from the West Side Highway
00:07:14that that was not a small Cessna.
00:07:17That was a big-ass jet.
00:07:24I went into my police mode.
00:07:27I knew that something like that,
00:07:29it was going to be a mass casualty incident.
00:07:33I had just dropped my kids off at PS 116,
00:07:36my two boys, when I heard it come over the radio.
00:07:40A major disaster is occurring in New York City this morning.
00:07:44Being a detective commander in Manhattan,
00:07:48probably the only one in the NYPD that lived in Manhattan,
00:07:51I knew I would be expected to respond.
00:07:53So I went home and changed,
00:07:55probably one of the few people that put a suit on
00:07:57to go respond to the World Trade Center
00:07:59because I got in trouble in May
00:08:01responding to a triple homicide, not wearing a suit.
00:08:07I'm in the 19th precinct,
00:08:09in the patrol borough of Manhattan North.
00:08:11This one was off the charts.
00:08:13So they will mobilize people across New York City
00:08:17to respond to the Trade Center.
00:08:21I was a police officer in the 19th with Pete Pannuccio.
00:08:26The desk is calling for the first one in eight mobilization.
00:08:32Eight officers with a sergeant.
00:08:38Joanne Dowd was with the first group of cops
00:08:41in the 19th precinct that left in a van.
00:08:44All of us were supposed to meet at church in Bessie.
00:08:47I was there with the lieutenant.
00:08:49I says, let's just grab a car.
00:08:51We'll go down there.
00:08:57I'm on the train.
00:08:59I get off at the municipal building,
00:09:01which you always see like on law and order.
00:09:03And as I'm walking towards those iconic pillars,
00:09:08everybody's just like looking up.
00:09:12My eyes go to what they're looking at.
00:09:16And I see that big gaping hole in the North Tower.
00:09:21Those towers were huge.
00:09:23Tens of thousands of people in each building every day.
00:09:25I know so many people up there.
00:09:29Immediately, I call 212-938-5029.
00:09:33Joanne's office number.
00:09:35And I hear beep, beep, beep.
00:09:39It wasn't the typical busy sound.
00:09:41It's like out of service type of beep tone.
00:09:45It's nine o'clock. She should be at work.
00:09:47Now I'm like, oh shit.
00:09:50We gotta get over that.
00:09:52And all of a sudden,
00:09:55that first sound that I thought I heard echo in,
00:09:59I hear it without the echo.
00:10:03It was a big explosion.
00:10:05Boom!
00:10:07And I literally hit the pavement.
00:10:11It was a second fucking plane.
00:10:18We're on the 78th floor of the South Tower.
00:10:21The only reason I'm sitting here right now
00:10:23is because we were standing on the other side of the building
00:10:26from where the plane came in.
00:10:32I wound up face down on the floor.
00:10:35And I had no idea why.
00:10:37Everything went dark.
00:10:41There's people crying and screaming.
00:10:45The woman next to me, who I knew, pushed her a little bit.
00:10:48And I said, are you okay? You okay?
00:10:51And I didn't get any response.
00:10:52So I knew that she was gone.
00:10:54And there's dead people laying all over the place.
00:10:58It was a very ugly, chaotic scene.
00:11:00And nobody knew what was going on.
00:11:03The homicide squad, along with everybody else,
00:11:06was involved in an emergency mobilization down to that area.
00:11:11Two of my partners and I,
00:11:13we were driving lights and sirens from the 13th precinct.
00:11:17The next thing we knew, there was smoke building out of the South Tower.
00:11:22Then you realize that something hit the other tower.
00:11:28Oh, my goodness.
00:11:30Oh, God.
00:11:30There's another one.
00:11:31Oh, my God.
00:11:32My goodness.
00:11:35We all looked at each other in the car and said,
00:11:39this is no fucking accident.
00:11:44First thing that popped into my head is my wife.
00:11:48She was working for a company called Solomon Smith Barney.
00:11:51I knew she was in the city.
00:11:53I also knew that she had a client core that was in one of the trade center buildings.
00:11:59And I knew that she often spent time there.
00:12:03So I was consumed by that.
00:12:07I had a cell phone, which was, you know, like an old fucking flip phone,
00:12:10like a star attack or whatever they were called.
00:12:12And I remembered trying to call her at work, trying to call her cell phone.
00:12:18And I couldn't get through.
00:12:20It was just dead air.
00:12:22There was just like no signal, no nothing.
00:12:28It was mayhem in the city.
00:12:32People are abandoning their vehicles in the middle of intersections.
00:12:38Forget about the damn car. Let's go.
00:12:40We are now trying to get to where we're supposed to be, which is Church and Vesti.
00:12:46And we got to the middle of Maiden Lane and we couldn't move.
00:12:52We left the van and we got out.
00:12:56And we start running towards the World Trade Center.
00:13:02And as we're approaching the towers, we look up and people are hanging out on the girdles.
00:13:13And black smoke is billowing out.
00:13:17People are sending notes down.
00:13:20Help me, I'm on this floor or that floor.
00:13:24It's, you're like, just beyond belief.
00:13:33And your sergeant is going, let's go, keep moving.
00:13:36Let's just keep moving.
00:13:37We have to get to where we have to go.
00:13:39And they will tell us what we have to do.
00:13:45The fire that was happening on the 78th floor was unbelievable.
00:13:51You could hear all this cracking noise and you really didn't know what was going on.
00:13:54But the fire just kept getting worse and worse.
00:13:57Something from the ceiling came down next to my head.
00:14:01And they were like, you got to, Kimmy, I got to get out of here.
00:14:04I got to get up.
00:14:05Thinking to myself, I'm on the 78th floor of a building that's on fire.
00:14:09And I don't know how to get out of here.
00:14:13Your instinct is to help these people who are running at you.
00:14:18So I went to go and my sergeant grabbed me by the nape of the neck and pulled me back.
00:14:26And somebody jumped.
00:14:29And landed in front of me.
00:14:34And killed somebody in front of me.
00:14:38It was brutal.
00:14:40Brutal to watch.
00:14:43That there was nothing we could do.
00:14:48It's not the image as much as it is the sound.
00:14:55Sorry.
00:15:05When a body falls from that great height, it sounds like broken glass.
00:15:17And it is brutalized.
00:15:27I'm a New York City homicide detective.
00:15:29So I've seen death, horrific murder scenes, violence, things like that.
00:15:37One of the most disturbing things that always stayed with me, always stuck with me, is just the fact that
00:15:44these poor people would rather jump to their death than burn alive.
00:15:50It's not much of an option.
00:15:57When I was on the 78th floor, I thought to myself, I have two boys who need me.
00:16:03But I don't know how to get out of here, because there's just too much debris, and you definitely feel
00:16:08the heat.
00:16:09I ran into two women, and these two guys came over, and we found an empty stairwell.
00:16:15We got to about the 75th floor, and there was two New York City firemen who were coming up the
00:16:23stairs.
00:16:23They both had big tanks on their back.
00:16:25They were laden with all this kind of equipment.
00:16:27And we said, you've got to get up to 78 because it's really bad.
00:16:31I remember these guys saying to us, don't worry about us.
00:16:34Just worry about yourselves.
00:16:36Get out of here.
00:16:36We'll take care of what's going on in 78.
00:16:38And it was really kind of an eye-opener to how people think and how first responders really respond to
00:16:45situations like that.
00:16:49The lower Manhattan precincts were already in the buildings, removing people.
00:16:56All the upper Manhattan precincts were with us.
00:16:59We moved to Park Place about a half a block up from the World Trade Center.
00:17:05And they start to assign four to a floor to assist in the evacuation.
00:17:12Going down, we did encounter some debris that we managed to climb over to get to the 40th floor.
00:17:22And there was a police officer in that elevator saying, get in here, get in here, I'll get you out
00:17:27of here.
00:17:29We got down to the first floor and the first floor was just nothing but dust and stuff all over
00:17:34the place.
00:17:35It was just amazing. You can't see anything in front of you.
00:17:39We walked out the door.
00:17:42I really didn't understand what was going on.
00:17:45The best way to describe any of this was chaotic.
00:17:49From a triage standpoint, I guess I looked as bad as anybody.
00:17:53So an officer came along and grabbed me.
00:17:56And I didn't know her.
00:17:58I didn't know anything about her.
00:17:59All I know is that somebody was helping me out.
00:18:01And then somebody was taking my photograph.
00:18:05The police officer took me over to sit me down over on the sidewalk.
00:18:08And that's when they took me to the ambulance.
00:18:11And then she just went back into the building.
00:18:21I drive down to the World Trade Center.
00:18:25When I first show up at the scene, there's a plane engine in the middle of the street.
00:18:30And I thought I'd try to pull a serial number off it, help identify the airplane.
00:18:36Quite frankly, under the stress, I kind of flipped into detective mode when I should have flipped into boss mode.
00:18:43I kind of had to snap myself out of the situation.
00:18:46And I walk over to a temporary headquarters that is across the street from the South Tower to make a
00:18:54call to my higher headquarters.
00:19:00I'm almost to the World Trade Center.
00:19:03I'm standing there by myself.
00:19:05I'm like, what do I do?
00:19:08We never trained for this in the police academy.
00:19:10They never taught us of this.
00:19:12I'm 27 years old.
00:19:15I'm 28.
00:19:16One of the two.
00:19:17I'm still relatively a young kid at the time.
00:19:21What do I do?
00:19:22I'm like, how the fuck am I...
00:19:23How am I getting up there to get her out of there?
00:19:28Since I was young, Joanne was always there.
00:19:32She was proud of my career.
00:19:34She was there when I graduated the police academy.
00:19:38When I brought my first house, she lent me 3,000 bucks.
00:19:42I could always count on her.
00:19:45Now, how the hell am I going to help her?
00:19:50You know, I was looking for that guidance.
00:19:55Eventually, I run into my lieutenant at the time.
00:19:59I'm walking south, so we're in front of the Verizon building, and I'm hearing this rumbling.
00:20:11The cell phones are not working.
00:20:13I'm talking on a landline.
00:20:15The phone starts shaking and going across the table.
00:20:20And I'm thinking it's the subway system.
00:20:24I felt the ground move.
00:20:26The rumble got bigger.
00:20:29We thought it was an explosion.
00:20:30It was that loud.
00:20:32But it was like rolling, like a rolling, loud sound.
00:20:43And I'll see.
00:20:44I'm like the 30th floor down.
00:20:57A couple blocks from the Trade Center, I just saw white smoke billowing from where the South Tower was.
00:21:08And it was coming right towards my partner and I at a rapid pace.
00:21:16Two of us instinctively just looked at each other and started, as we call it, assholes and elbows.
00:21:22And we were hightailing it to safety inside Sims' department store.
00:21:27And my lieutenant, at that very moment, says,
00:21:30fucking run.
00:21:33Get out of here!
00:21:34Go, go, go!
00:21:39And then all of the cops, who were with me, lining up to assist in the evacuation,
00:21:46were coming at me like a herd of bulls.
00:21:50And I face-planted into the sidewalk, and they proceeded to run on me.
00:21:59And, I mean, you can't blame them, I guess.
00:22:03Although I was pissed.
00:22:05I heard my knee pop.
00:22:08My back pop.
00:22:10I was in pain immediately.
00:22:14And I was literally crucified to the sidewalk.
00:22:20I couldn't move.
00:22:23And two guys from the 23rd precinct, who I never got their name.
00:22:29Same thing happened to them.
00:22:32They were like, can you walk?
00:22:33I was like, I could run.
00:22:34Let's go.
00:22:36Come, come on, you guys!
00:22:37We tried to get ahead of the debris, but we couldn't.
00:22:41So we just whipped onto Broadway and knelt down and tried to cover as best we could.
00:22:54We're trying to get into Seven World Trade, which is directly north of the actual Twin Towers themselves.
00:23:01That looked like the safest shelter we could find.
00:23:06The doors were locked.
00:23:08I was actually gonna pull my gun out and start shooting the glass.
00:23:12I did not want to be caught on the street.
00:23:16Somebody pushes the door open from inside, screaming, get in here, get in here.
00:23:22We ran in.
00:23:23You're in basically a glass atrium, two, three stories high.
00:23:28The glass is breaking inside, you know, the front lobby, and the place just instantly fills with dirt and dust.
00:23:39That really was truly the most terrifying moment of my life.
00:23:45And I've been into a couple of hairy things over the course of my career.
00:23:51But all of a sudden you get this realization that I'm gonna die here.
00:24:04It seems like some things slow down while other things speed up.
00:24:08It's amazing what the brain can process.
00:24:11I'm not an overly religious person.
00:24:14But if you think you're gonna die, better square your shit away real fast.
00:24:18And that's what I'm like, this is God.
00:24:23I was 14 years sober at that time.
00:24:27And the thing that popped in my head was, you know what, God?
00:24:30Thank you for the last 14 years.
00:24:34Take care of my family.
00:24:37And I'm like, this is it.
00:24:39You gotta ride this out.
00:24:43The building I'm in starts filling up with what I think is smoke.
00:24:48And I remember from early on in elementary school
00:24:52that when dealing with smoke, you're supposed to get on your hands and knees and crawl.
00:24:56Except this smoke is loaded on the lower end and thinner on the high end.
00:25:03And it has me very confused and questioning
00:25:08everything I learned from Sister Elizabeth at Our Lady of Snows in 1968.
00:25:15It's gone!
00:25:16It's the whole power!
00:25:17It's gone!
00:25:19Holy crap!
00:25:23In several world trade, we didn't get hit with anything.
00:25:27No major debris.
00:25:29You're not dead.
00:25:31Get to work.
00:25:33Be useful.
00:25:36You can barely see inside this building.
00:25:39I have some crappy little flashlight with me.
00:25:42And I hear people yelling up the escalator, so I go up there.
00:25:47And I'm the only guy in uniform there.
00:25:49And this guy, he's a building, I don't know if he was a fire marshal or a security guard.
00:25:54He goes, oh, thank God the cops are here.
00:25:58I'm like...
00:26:00Yeah, the cavalry's arrived, and it's me, and...
00:26:03that's not much.
00:26:07South Tower's collapsed.
00:26:09Now we gotta regroup.
00:26:11We start walking towards the North Tower.
00:26:15I see all the firemen.
00:26:20They're pouring water into their eyes.
00:26:24They're crying.
00:26:28There's regular civilians who happen to escape the building.
00:26:33One guy, I remember, grabbed him, I gave him a big hug.
00:26:36Grown-ass man.
00:26:37Much older than me, probably in his 40s.
00:26:40And he's crying, and...
00:26:43Again, shock.
00:26:45I'm in it.
00:26:46I said, it's gonna be a ride.
00:26:47It's gonna be a ride.
00:26:51The dust settled.
00:26:54And we went to what is now known as Ground Zero,
00:26:57to help expedite any kind of evacuation.
00:27:04And when we got there, it was just not there.
00:27:08There was a shard of the building in the middle of Church and Bessie.
00:27:17The South Tower, even though it's hit second,
00:27:21comes down first, because it was hit at a lower level,
00:27:24which compromised the strength in the building more.
00:27:29After the 93 bombing of the World Trade Center,
00:27:33we received training that a plane could not knock down the tower
00:27:37from the sheer force.
00:27:39But now I'm willing to change my thought process.
00:27:42Get out of the area!
00:27:44The second tower is coming down.
00:27:45They tell you the second tower is coming down?
00:27:46Yes, it's about to collapse.
00:27:47We lined up a bunch of police officers to keep everybody further away from the building.
00:27:52Because it was obvious to me that the second building was gonna come down.
00:27:56We're going! We're going!
00:27:57I see a bunch of EMS.
00:28:00I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
00:28:02He was like, we're gonna go back into the building.
00:28:04I'm like, you're crazy.
00:28:06He goes, no, there's people in there that need to be removed.
00:28:09And I felt like a coward.
00:28:13That I was gonna walk away.
00:28:16So I was like, okay, look, if he's there, I'm not gonna have a fireman embarrass me.
00:28:20So I'm gonna stay.
00:28:21Move it! Come back!
00:28:23The north tower had the antenna on top.
00:28:26And it started to tilt.
00:28:28We started to hear noises.
00:28:30I know I did.
00:28:32It was like creaking.
00:28:36And we're two blocks away.
00:28:40You hear the rumbling.
00:28:43And then that's when the tower starts seeing it fucking drop.
00:28:55The tower's coming down!
00:28:57You're waiting for me! You're waiting for me!
00:28:59You're waiting for me!
00:29:02When that building was coming down, I remember seeing my two boys...
00:29:13...etching me on...
00:29:15...to run as fast as I could...
00:29:19...and to hit the deck.
00:29:23...and I go hide in a curb...
00:29:27...well, 250 pounds of my fat ass...
00:29:30...squeezed into six inches of sidewalk...
00:29:34...to survive this.
00:29:37Remembering my military training, I put my feet towards the explosion.
00:29:43There was like hurricane winds.
00:29:46I look to my right and there's a truck on its side.
00:29:51And then it becomes very dark.
00:29:56I can't see.
00:29:57And everything's extremely quiet.
00:30:02I'm wondering if I'm dead.
00:30:05I'm not feeling any pain.
00:30:10And then, all of a sudden, I could not breathe at all.
00:30:14And I have to...
00:30:16...take my hands and physically go in my mouth...
00:30:19...and rake out...
00:30:21...chunks of cement.
00:30:23And I'm coughing and I'm on my knees.
00:30:26A woman grabbed me.
00:30:29She took me over to a fire hydrant.
00:30:31Cleaned my eyes out.
00:30:32She gives me some water.
00:30:34I could still see her face.
00:30:37Quite frankly, it's one of the more pleasant moments of the day, right?
00:30:40It's somebody coming to help me when I was in need.
00:30:46I was hopeful that Joanne made it out.
00:30:49I was hopeful that the people that she worked with made it out.
00:30:52I was hoping most people made it out.
00:30:56In a state of shock like that...
00:30:58...you're not going to comprehend the magnitude of what you're witnessing.
00:31:06We were in Sam's department store.
00:31:08The people that had been in there shopping had looks of panic on their face.
00:31:13All right, we got to get these people out of here.
00:31:14We got to do something.
00:31:16Whatever was in that smoke, like my eyes were burning.
00:31:20So, we took men's pocket squares that were on a display rack.
00:31:24We wet them and we started handing them out.
00:31:27Everybody, the employees and the people that had been in there,
00:31:29we told them to cover their faces with the pocket squares
00:31:33and try and avoid like breathing in whatever it was.
00:31:39We got everybody single file to walk south towards the water.
00:31:46There were ferries set up and people with private boats
00:31:49and they were taking people to get them off Manhattan.
00:31:54Myself and my partners had no intention of leaving.
00:31:57We were like, you know, what do we do now?
00:32:00I couldn't help but think about my wife again and whether she was safe.
00:32:04And I decided to try her again on my cell phone.
00:32:08And, you know, still it was no luck.
00:32:10I just, I couldn't get through to anybody.
00:32:12I had no signal.
00:32:12Just could not make a call.
00:32:17There was no communications.
00:32:19One tower had the antenna that did most of the broadcasting,
00:32:23most of the cell phones, TV, radio.
00:32:26So we had no communications with other agencies.
00:32:30We do have a point to point communication with the police department.
00:32:36So you can hear transmissions from each other.
00:32:40The command post is north of Vesey Street.
00:32:43Step four.
00:32:44But nothing else.
00:32:46And it is extremely quiet.
00:32:52All you can hear is the fireman's alarms for their oxygen that they wear on their back going off.
00:33:01And it's ever so quiet, but yet deafening in the canyon of what that area of Manhattan is.
00:33:13One of the things I experienced that day that,
00:33:16and looking back on it in retrospect, was loneliness.
00:33:21Being separated from the people I worked with.
00:33:24For a cop, that stinks.
00:33:26In a scene of such calamity.
00:33:31Really, it became like almost an overpowering sense.
00:33:35Because you're just disconnected.
00:33:38I says, all right, well, let me go see if I can find who I'm supposed to be with.
00:33:43I walked past the bar.
00:33:45And it's weird.
00:33:47Thought popped in my head.
00:33:50Nobody would begrudge you if you walked behind the bar and...
00:33:54Grabbed that bottle of Johnny Walker and poured yourself a shot.
00:33:59With the disease of alcoholism.
00:34:03It's just sitting back there saying,
00:34:06A little toot right here wouldn't bother you.
00:34:09These are the conversations going up like my crazy skull.
00:34:12And I'm like...
00:34:14Not today.
00:34:15I got work to do.
00:34:18And...
00:34:18I'm still sober today.
00:34:20I'm coming up on 38 years.
00:34:24I was a one-star chief in charge of Bronx detectives.
00:34:30We go rushing into the city.
00:34:33We got to Trinity and Liberty when the North Tower collapsed.
00:34:39Now, Trinity and Liberty, I realized there's a Burger King right on the corner.
00:34:43So I just took the opportunity to make the Burger King a temporary headquarters.
00:34:50I just started giving out assignments.
00:34:53And we moved out throughout the day.
00:34:56Cops just ran into the city.
00:34:59From Brooklyn.
00:35:01From Upper Manhattan.
00:35:04It was the only time in my entire career where I didn't want to go to work.
00:35:09I wanted to be home for my family.
00:35:12That was my priority.
00:35:14But unfortunately, I had to put that aside and rush from Queens into Manhattan.
00:35:23I was coming from the Bronx.
00:35:25My car was not working that day.
00:35:28And it was crazy because everything was closed.
00:35:30The trains were stopped.
00:35:32Everybody was walking back from Manhattan.
00:35:35I tried to hitchhike into the city, but I couldn't get a ride.
00:35:39So I took a bus on Lexington Avenue and it was packed.
00:35:42And I remember getting off on 21st Street and walking to my precinct.
00:35:47So many people that I knew were missing.
00:35:51No one knew where anyone was.
00:35:56NYPD started doing missing person work.
00:35:59Civilians, first responders.
00:36:02Many of us went on a list of everyone that's missing.
00:36:11We're listening for people who are stuck in the building.
00:36:16Female officer, where are you?
00:36:18What was your last location?
00:36:19I crawled in and out of caverns trying to get to whoever it may be.
00:36:26To the point where my shoes were burned and my arms were burned.
00:36:35There was a concern about how do we manage the amount of people that are missing?
00:36:40How do we verify whether they're missing?
00:36:43How do we know that they're still in the building?
00:36:48I leave the 13th precinct and head south to the World Trade Center area.
00:36:54I went to go see if I could find my neighbor, Bill McGinn, and see if he's okay.
00:37:00Before I left my apartment that day, Bill's wife had knocked on my door.
00:37:05She said Bill was working.
00:37:07She was calling him.
00:37:08There was no response.
00:37:09I said, listen, when I get downtown, I'll see if I find him.
00:37:14We looked around a little bit.
00:37:15I kept asking everybody, hey, anybody see Bill McGinn?
00:37:18You know, he worked in the firehouse on 10th Street in Greenwich.
00:37:22Has anybody seen that company?
00:37:25At one point, I asked one fireman, he went, like, that company is gone.
00:37:33I felt so bad.
00:37:35His daughter, Cordelia, was about six years old, and she had come to my house that morning.
00:37:40She was playing with my son, and at some point she says, oh, my God, I lost my tooth.
00:37:45She lost her first tooth, and she says, I can't until my father comes home so I can show him.
00:37:51Knowing that she wanted to show her father, and knowing that most likely he wasn't going to come home,
00:37:56it really kind of, like, made me feel really sad.
00:38:03We ended up off the FDR drive by the Manhattan Bridge somehow.
00:38:08I remember seeing someone yelling, get back, get back.
00:38:13There's a van on the bridge, they're going to blow the Manhattan Bridge.
00:38:19Panic overcomes everybody, myself, my two partners, and all the people.
00:38:24And I think to myself, I'm like, what the fuck are we running for?
00:38:29Bomb squad went up, and there was no explosives, nothing wrong with the van.
00:38:33It just had been abandoned.
00:38:35But, uh, initially, it made sense because I kept thinking to myself, what next?
00:38:40We were panicked.
00:38:43There were rumors flying left on it.
00:38:46There were, uh, something like eight planes missing.
00:38:50Still I'm accounted for.
00:38:52There were rumors, but then some of these weren't rumors.
00:38:56We found out that the Pentagon got hit.
00:38:59We found out a plane crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
00:39:04With all of these attacks happening in multiple places,
00:39:07we didn't know what these terrorists had planned.
00:39:11We didn't know if they were going to hit the Empire State Building next.
00:39:14We didn't know if the subways were going to be hit.
00:39:16We just knew that today was the day, and it was happening in multiple places.
00:39:25As we're proceeding and continuing to, you know, help and assist people, I still had not spoken to my wife.
00:39:32I make another attempt to call her, and eventually I'm able to get through to the person who we hired
00:39:39for childcare.
00:39:40I just asked her had she heard from my wife, and she said yes, she's on her way, she's in
00:39:46New Jersey.
00:39:48She was okay.
00:39:49So that allowed me to focus a little more, to help render aid and hopefully rescue people that had been
00:39:57caught up inside those towers.
00:40:05At this point, I'm in shock.
00:40:09I am dehydrated, and I was wandering around alone.
00:40:17I walk up to the Woolworth Building, and I happened to see Pete Penuccio, my sergeant from the 19th, who
00:40:27I used to work with on the midnights.
00:40:29And I'm like, somebody I know.
00:40:32And he's like, oh, my God, Joanne, where have you been?
00:40:38To be reunited with a cop in the 19th precinct was a huge relief.
00:40:42She's alive.
00:40:43And we were literally maybe just a block or two away almost the entire time.
00:40:48That's how chaotic this scene was.
00:40:52Because you look like hell.
00:40:55And I was like, you don't look so hot yourself.
00:40:58Joanne was limping badly.
00:41:00When I saw her knee, I'm like, I probably would have been on the floor howling and crying.
00:41:06And she was like, we're good.
00:41:10Let's do what we need to do.
00:41:12I go to the hospital, and we all go to the hospital.
00:41:16And some boss comes by, and he says, we need people on the street leading down 7 World Trade.
00:41:23This thing was in flames.
00:41:28To me, it gave out a death row.
00:41:35We ran.
00:41:43There was this gigantic cloud of dust that just blew straight out across Broadway.
00:41:52And you're like, when does this day end?
00:42:08When I finally got home, I couldn't believe that I was home.
00:42:15My daughter hugged the stuffing out of me and literally said, I knew you were okay.
00:42:23I knew you were okay.
00:42:26And I literally sat in a bathtub, and my 10-year-old bathed me.
00:42:34She was like, I have you.
00:42:38I'm so lucky you came home.
00:42:44My wife and I were both very emotional, and we were, you know, kissing my daughter.
00:42:48And, you know, she slept in the bed with us that night.
00:42:51And such a, like, you know, feeling of, like, almost like a, like, dread or something that had just kind
00:43:00of, like, I shedded at that time.
00:43:02Just being home, being in bed, being with my family.
00:43:06It was just such a relief.
00:43:11I only slept for about maybe an hour.
00:43:13Took a shower, fresh clothes, turned around, and went back to work.
00:43:18They told us to be back in at 4 a.m.
00:43:24As the department organized, everyone got specific instructions.
00:43:29Every detective was utilized somehow, some way, in connection with the World Trade Center.
00:43:39I was working down at the pile.
00:43:44A couple of days in, my commanding officer says to us, all the crime guys, go back to the office,
00:43:51get changed, put on your civilian clothes.
00:43:54You gotta go out there and you're gonna look for looters.
00:43:58And I shook my head no to him.
00:44:00I said, no.
00:44:02I was crying.
00:44:04I was in hysterics.
00:44:05I said, I need to get the fuck back in there.
00:44:08All right?
00:44:08I'm not going out and looking for looters.
00:44:10I don't care.
00:44:12I'm going in there.
00:44:13I'm looking for Joanne.
00:44:14I'm going in there.
00:44:17And then I see my commanding officer and it says,
00:44:20Jo, just go back into the pile.
00:44:23Go there for however long you need, however many days.
00:44:26He goes, just keep in touch.
00:44:28You know, let us know that you're all right.
00:44:33When they tallied and they whittled down that unaccounted for list,
00:44:36we learned that 2,976 civilians, 37 Port Authority police officers, 343 New York City firefighters, and 23 NYPD police
00:44:52officers in and around those towers had died.
00:45:00For me, unfortunately, I knew quite a few of them.
00:45:04One being Moira Smith.
00:45:09And I had just saw her in front of the 13th precinct desk that morning.
00:45:16It just hit home because she was a girl from my old neighborhood.
00:45:19And Moira was the only female police officer that had perished inside.
00:45:26She was a police officer that worked in my precinct.
00:45:30I'm like, what?
00:45:31You know, because I know Moira and she had a little girl.
00:45:34At times, I would see her daughter in the locker room in the police dorm, the female dorm.
00:45:39She was really cute, like little red cheeks.
00:45:43It was very, very hard.
00:45:46We saw a photo in one of the newspapers of Moira rescuing a survivor.
00:45:53Bringing him out of the building.
00:45:58I've never seen a timeframe of when I got admitted to the hospital and when I got downstairs.
00:46:02But it was, I guess, around the time the tower collapsed.
00:46:05So I don't think I had a whole lot of time before I wouldn't have been around.
00:46:10And Officer Smith, I don't know how many people she helped get out of the Trade Center before she helped
00:46:16me.
00:46:18She was true blue to her task as a police officer.
00:46:22And she went back into the danger and tried to rescue more people.
00:46:29As time went along, my family, you know, they all realized that Joanne wasn't coming home.
00:46:35Pretty much lost hope.
00:46:38Reality started to kick in.
00:46:41So they made arrangements with the funeral home.
00:46:46The day that they made these arrangements, I got home from work.
00:46:52The phone was ringing.
00:46:54Brian, your Uncle Mike's on the phone.
00:46:57And I could hear it in his voice.
00:46:59He's a big burly guy.
00:47:01All choked up.
00:47:03He's like, yeah.
00:47:04He goes, alright, anybody call you?
00:47:07I'm like, no, why?
00:47:09He's like, they found Joanne.
00:47:13Oh, fuck.
00:47:17Now she's found.
00:47:20And I'm...
00:47:30And it still hurts to this day.
00:47:37This was at least...
00:47:40knowing.
00:47:42Knowing for sure.
00:47:45Unfortunately, a lot of people haven't found anybody.
00:47:49And maybe never will.
00:47:51We were lucky enough, if you call it that,
00:47:55to be able to get that in the first couple of weeks.
00:47:58Right through here, near the bucket line.
00:48:00Pass back.
00:48:01The last rescue was 27 hours after the collapse.
00:48:07After that, no one.
00:48:09And the rescue mission quickly turned into a recovery mission.
00:48:16At the medical examiner's office, we continued the process of identifying,
00:48:21of labeling, of doing anything we could to get these people back to their families.
00:48:29The bereavement center was very sad.
00:48:32I remember one particular family, they were, like, asking me all kinds of questions, you know,
00:48:36as I'm doing paperwork and taking the toothbrush or the hairbrush and processing it so we can get DNA off
00:48:42of it.
00:48:43That was very heart-wrenching.
00:48:45That was very heart-wrenching, to see the fear in their face and the sadness.
00:48:512,976 civilians were murdered that morning.
00:48:5525 years later, 60% have been identified.
00:49:0140% of the families have nothing to bury.
00:49:04And without answers, you go crazy.
00:49:08One thing about 9-11, it helped me get used to the smell of death.
00:49:13Working in the morgue, I saw so much death.
00:49:17In the beginning, I couldn't even take it. I was, like, gagging.
00:49:20But then after a while, the smell didn't bother me anymore.
00:49:25We had 11 or 12 refrigerated trucks lined up in an empty lot.
00:49:32Some women's group came in and started bringing in flowers,
00:49:36major wreaths to put in front of the trucks to honor the people inside.
00:49:42We covered that whole area in a huge white tent, and that became Memorial Park.
00:49:49People wrote things on the wall.
00:49:53They pinned up pictures.
00:49:57And one such picture was how they used to see a kid that sprawled something,
00:50:01and it said at the top,
00:50:03Mommy.
00:50:05And that was a reminder of who we were looking for.
00:50:13A few months after the attack, they did find my neighbor Bill McGinn.
00:50:17His wife had told me, oh, they recovered him last night.
00:50:21I was at the morgue that day.
00:50:23I remember they brought two firemen, and I didn't know he was one of the people recovered.
00:50:27I found that out later on.
00:50:30One thing I always noticed when it rained, he always left his shoes out of his apartment.
00:50:36It was Bill's shoes, Cordelia's shoes, and Liam's shoes.
00:50:40The kids' shoes were always out.
00:50:43And then one day after 9-11, I came home and it was raining.
00:50:48I see Liam's shoes and Cordelia's shoes, but Bill's shoes aren't there.
00:50:52And then it hit me, I was saying, man, I can't believe that he's gone.
00:50:58Any time a first responder was found, everything would stop.
00:51:05An American flag would be placed over it, and we would all get up and salute as that person would
00:51:12be brought out of ground zero.
00:51:15It, um, it was, bring tears into your eyes.
00:51:29The full recovery effort after 9-11 lasted about nine months, went on till, I believe, May of 2002.
00:51:39I had a tough time.
00:51:41I spend time at work where, like, I can't function.
00:51:45I am, like, crying, and, um, like, in the fetal position, because I'm trying to recount what I did and
00:51:55different things, and, like, that's truly when I became scared.
00:52:02Finally started thinking about the shit that happened, I guess, I don't know.
00:52:08Murder kept going on, right?
00:52:10People kept dying outside the World Trade Center.
00:52:13So we had to maintain a full investigative staff on the streets.
00:52:18It brought back a little bit of normalcy to your everyday routine, but we were not excused from the recovery
00:52:26efforts.
00:52:27At one tour or another, somebody from our squad was assigned to the medical examiner's office,
00:52:33and sometimes two of us were at the recovery efforts at the landfill in Staten Island.
00:52:41Fresh Kills was a retired New York City dump in Staten Island, and they would remove the debris over to
00:52:48there.
00:52:49So that was the Detectives Bureau's responsibility to go through this debris and try to recover body parts or items
00:52:58that belonged to individuals.
00:53:00First they just gave you a rake and said, go through it.
00:53:04If you come up with any idea or what you think is a bone, put it in these buckets.
00:53:10I volunteered to work there, and that was tremendously satisfying because you were hopefully giving some information to some family
00:53:19member somewhere along the line.
00:53:23After a while, they got wise, they started issuing tie-back suits, boots, gloves, and masks as you went through
00:53:31the debris.
00:53:33Unfortunately, that's probably where I get my cancer.
00:53:37I've been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
00:53:40I'm very fortunate. I caught it in the early stages.
00:53:42The majority of the people that work down there end up with some related 9-11 illness.
00:53:52Back in 2021, I got a message on my fucking phone that, you know, I had cancer.
00:53:59It was a urological cancer, very rare, one in four million men get it.
00:54:03I felt sorry for myself for about, you know, maybe 10 minutes, and I went from feeling a little bit
00:54:09like a victim
00:54:10to feeling like I'm ready, man, let's go, let's do this, get this shit out of me, and that was
00:54:17it.
00:54:21I got skin cancer in my face.
00:54:25When I found out, I was scared.
00:54:29To date now, more people have died from 9-11 related illnesses than actually died on the day of the
00:54:38attack,
00:54:39which is extremely alarming.
00:54:43I think that the terrorists wanted initially to take out those towers because of what they symbolized,
00:54:51and I think they got more bang for their buck because the tragedy just keeps going on.
00:55:00We're going 25 years.
00:55:04I have buried at least 50 friends.
00:55:10Friends, not even people I don't know.
00:55:14There's more than that.
00:55:22Oh, my God.
00:55:23Oh, it's all the boys.
00:55:24What's going on here?
00:55:25Good to see you, brother.
00:55:27Hey, son.
00:55:27Are you broke?
00:55:28Not sure.
00:55:31Every single one of us should just talk.
00:55:35Me and Pete talk.
00:55:37Every year we would talk about it.
00:55:39Hello, darling.
00:55:42Relive the hurt.
00:55:43How are you?
00:55:44I'm fine.
00:55:45I'm fine.
00:55:46I'm fine.
00:55:46I'm fine.
00:55:47I'm fine.
00:55:47You look so good.
00:55:48And it helped.
00:55:49It helped until it didn't.
00:55:51And I needed to seek counseling.
00:55:55Wow, look at my hat.
00:55:57How are you feeling?
00:55:58Good up here.
00:56:00Yeah.
00:56:00Yeah, I know.
00:56:01You gotta, you gotta, yeah.
00:56:03The new building is nice.
00:56:04That's the first thing you know.
00:56:05The first time I've been in the new buildings.
00:56:07Really?
00:56:09McLeod.
00:56:10That fucking heck.
00:56:12Leave him alone.
00:56:13Leave my brother alone.
00:56:15Calm down, San champion.
00:56:16Yeah, man.
00:56:20I would wake up with these horrific dreams.
00:56:28That's the worst part.
00:56:30You go to bed and you feel like you're being buried alive.
00:56:35There isn't a cop out there, I'm sure, that doesn't feel the same thing.
00:56:40I nearly had a breakdown.
00:56:42Then the 9-11 Foundation kicked in and said, we got you.
00:56:48We will help you.
00:56:51I could tell you're a little bit like, um...
00:56:53Shaking?
00:56:54Yeah, shaking.
00:56:55It's all right.
00:56:56I was scared.
00:56:57Coming.
00:56:59I'm a big advocate now for guys getting mental health check.
00:57:04Just do it.
00:57:05We have the coverage.
00:57:07Do it.
00:57:08It doesn't hurt to talk.
00:57:13I don't enjoy...
00:57:17...being here at the site.
00:57:20I don't like it up here.
00:57:21I love that I'm with all of you.
00:57:25I feel protected.
00:57:26Because you get it.
00:57:28You know, we know things that no one else on this earth will ever know.
00:57:32And probably never should.
00:57:34Never dealt with it.
00:57:36Me, personally.
00:57:37My daughter wasn't even two yet.
00:57:38She just wanted to know where dad was all the days that I came to work to get the fuck
00:57:43away from these memories.
00:57:45Just to actually not have to relive this shit every fucking day in my life.
00:57:53My life was never the same.
00:57:55Just like a lot of other people.
00:57:59I didn't have any way to identify what I was dealing with.
00:58:04Because I didn't see it.
00:58:06I didn't understand it.
00:58:09It was a horrendous attack on our nation.
00:58:12It's a crime scene.
00:58:13For many months afterwards, it was a graveyard.
00:58:17My mind is racing right now and I'm seeing photos of Pete and Joanne that day.
00:58:23I'm seeing photos of Roger in the Pathmark parking lot pouring water over your head.
00:58:27It's all coming back and it's really difficult to think about it.
00:58:32My place to let it out was the shower.
00:58:36I went in the shower and I cried.
00:58:42And I cried.
00:58:44And I cried.
00:58:46And I never told anybody that.
00:58:50That was how I got it out.
00:58:55Yeah.
00:58:57And when I retired, that's when it hit bang.
00:59:00So hard. Suddenly, who am I?
00:59:02It's not relevant to the world.
00:59:04It does.
00:59:04It does.
00:59:05That's why I stopped drinking too.
00:59:06When you were tired.
00:59:07Well, how did we deal with it?
00:59:08Yeah, drinking.
00:59:08We went to the bar.
00:59:09Yeah.
00:59:10That's how we dealt with them.
00:59:11We talked about it with each other.
00:59:12100%.
00:59:13But now, the guys that are fucking suffering out there from 9-11 and PTSD that they've never dealt with
00:59:20in their careers, you guys in homicides and everyone seeing all the dead bodies, the dead children and all that
00:59:25shit. And you all have it. All of you have it. You gotta deal with this shit because it will
00:59:31fester and you will change as a person.
00:59:33I honestly thank God for this little meeting here. And for all those years, I thought I was the only
00:59:39one that was losing my fucking mind. And I wasn't. And I know it. I'm coming here. I'm sorry. I'm
00:59:50not crying. You're crying.
00:59:55I won't do it for the cameras, but I'll make fun of you later. You gotta dry clean your brain
01:00:01like all of us. You can't keep it in.
01:00:03I feel happy right now just looking at Brian's face. From the minute he started to now, it's like a
01:00:08complete different person.
01:00:09This is a therapy group today.
01:00:11It really is.
01:00:11I mean, look at it.
01:00:12Because it's a comfort zone.
01:00:13It's a comfort zone.
01:00:15We feel comfortable talking to each other. We know, you know, we've chewed some of the same dirt.
01:00:19Yeah.
01:00:20Mental health is just as important as physical health. And now I understand that. But it took me about 19
01:00:29years until I talked to therapists about it. I had to.
01:00:34Because, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a superhero.
01:00:37Part of this is like survivor's remorse. Chief, you were in the Burger King. Tommy, you were there. He was
01:00:42there. Everybody was there.
01:00:43You're saying, why didn't, why didn't it happen to me a little bit? You think about it, you know?
01:00:48We had 23 NYPD officers. We had 37 Port Authority police officers. And we had 343 firemen killed.
01:01:00God gave us memories for a reason. And it's to remember them. Remember what happened. Never forget.
01:01:10In the place where the Twin Towers once stood, we now have the Freedom Tower. I've never seen it from
01:01:18like this, this level either. It's like so majestic. And I'm glad, I'm glad we put it right up their
01:01:25asses. Very happy for that.
01:01:27We're all alive. We're all surviving in one shape or form or another. And I appreciate that they set up
01:01:35the memorial for those memories of the first responders and the civilians and all the citizens from other countries that
01:01:41got killed that day.
01:01:44It is a symbol of strength and resilience that we got knocked down, but we got up as a country,
01:01:52not just the city.
01:01:54The memorial, it's absolutely stunning. The imprint of the buildings with the names and the waterfall.
01:02:04What a beautiful day, right? It is. It is. Not unlike the day.
01:02:15Jimmy Ritchie's right here. He was a cop, too, before. He was a fireman. John Chaparra.
01:02:21You know so many of them, because they were up in South Island, right? Yeah, Jesus Christ, Timmy McSweeney.
01:02:25And then we got Moira.
01:02:30Terrorism is not just one attack. It's a constant state of ruining people's lives with fear, with illness, with mental
01:02:39incapacity.
01:02:47Counter to the evil, there's love, and there's people that really, like, care.
01:02:58Through that tragedy, the country, especially here in New York, everyone came together.
01:03:06It shows me what we're capable of.
01:03:38I just want to introduce them.
01:03:41The danger in New York times are unknown.
01:04:09Transcription by CastingWords
01:04:39Transcription by CastingWords
01:05:07Transcription by CastingWords
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