9/11 Victim Identified Using New DNA Testing

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NY — When the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, all that was found of a 26-year-old financial analysis who worked in the south tower was his wallet. Now, the agonizing wait for Scott Johnson's family is finally over after advances in DNA testing identified his remains nearly 17 years later.

The city's Medical Examiner used a new testing method that can recover DNA from aged samples and identified Johnson, who worked for investment bank firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, through a bone fragment discovered at the World Trade Center in 2001.

Johnson is the 1,642 person to be identified as a victim of the terror attack with more than 1,100 remains yet to be identified, the newspaper reported. Before Johnson, the last person whose remains were identified was in 2017. Their name was withheld at the family's request.

Forensic experts have been trying to use bits of bone recovered from the debris of the World Trade Center to identify victims with limited success, but new technology is able to remove degraded DNA from the bone and compare it to a database with some 17,000 samples from victims and family members.

The confirmation is a tragic piece of closure for Johnson's family.

“You get pulled right back into it and it also means there’s a finality," his mother, Ann Johnson, told the Times. "Somehow I always thought he would just walk up and say, ‘Here I am. I had amnesia.’”

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