Nearly 24 years after the September 11 attacks, three more victims of the World Trade Center tragedy have been identified — a heartbreaking yet powerful reminder of the city’s promise to never stop searching for answers for the families left behind.
The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner confirmed the latest identifications this week: Ryan Fitzgerald, 26, of Floral Park, N.Y.; Barbara Keating, 72, of Palm Springs, Calif.; and an adult woman whose family has chosen to keep her name private.
Fitzgerald, a foreign currency trader at Fiduciary Trust Company International, was working in the South Tower when hijackers struck. Keating, a retired nonprofit executive and beloved grandmother, was on American Airlines Flight 11, which was flown into the North Tower. Their remains — along with those of the unnamed woman — were recovered in the months after the attacks, but the extreme damage made it impossible to confirm their identities until now.
The breakthrough came thanks to next-generation sequencing technology — a cutting-edge DNA analysis that can detect genetic material even in the smallest, most damaged samples. Many of these fragments have been tested 10, even 15 times over the years without results, but scientists refused to give up.
“Nearly 25 years after the disaster at the World Trade Center, our commitment to identify the missing and return them to their loved ones stands as strong as ever,”
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jason Graham said in a statement.
“Each new identification testifies to the promise of science and sustained outreach to families despite the passage of time.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams called the announcement “a step forward in comforting the family members still aching from that day,” noting that the pain of September 11 “echoes across the decades.”
For the families, each new identification is deeply emotional. Paul Keating, Barbara’s son, told NPR he was stunned by the ongoing dedication of the city’s forensic teams.
“They’re doing this for us,” he said. “They’re working their ass off 24 years later.”
Paul also shared how his mother’s death changed his family forever.
“Not a day went by for years that [9/11] wasn’t part of our lives,” he recalled. “My two sons were almost seven and four… they wake up one day and grandmom is dead and bad guys killed her.”
Of the 2,753 people killed at the World Trade Center, about 1,100 — roughly 40% — remain unidentified. The OCME stores those remains with the highest level of care in a secure repository beneath the World Trade Center Memorial site. Testing continues weekly, sometimes from pieces as tiny as a Tic Tac.
This is the first time new identifications have been announced since January 2024, when John Ballantine Nivenbecame the 1,650th victim identified.
Forensic teams say they will keep going, no matter how long it takes. As Dr. Graham put it, “We continue this work as our way of honoring the lost.”
