"They said 'rotten luck' or something, filled me in on the gossip, and monitored the progress of my 'bacon strips' (skin grafts) with interest.". But behind the front offices is a huge, hangar-like warehouse where recovered personal possessions are photographed, identified, and stored. Anyone who has watched much television or movies should be well aware of the idea of someone faking his own death. These are human beings we are talking about!! VideoThe man facing 291 years in jail, Stanley embarks on a whirlwind tour VideoStanley embarks on a whirlwind tour. Even before his mother's body had been identified from Indonesia's Lion Air plane crash, Bias Ramadhan had calls from eight separate law firms offering to sue on his behalf for millions of dollars. The need for specialists became more urgent, and Kenyon went global. A text Kenyon recommends team members refer to during responses. When is Eurovision and how do you get tickets? "My first thoughts were, 'Wow what a fantastic tale they're going to have when they come back!'" "Being an engineer, I like to have everything in order.". In a rather unpleasant way, in more modern cases where decomposition is a factor, a common feature of the decomposition process actually aids in fingerprinting victims. Mementos that hes given me from places hes been, which I always carry. It depends on the details of the accident that caused the crash. Very informative and interesting article. They sign a paper that says something to the effect of I am John Doe, [insert relationship to victim], and swear under penalty of perjury and possibly other crimes that the body in question is [insert name of the victim].. Mainly it was this fascinating exploration.". I think of the heaps of shoes displayed at Auschwitz, and I have the feeling that even if I didnt know what had happened to these things, I would know that they were attached to tragedy. But beyond the military, theres a big business for companies like Kenyon, both because of their expertise and because it can be helpful to have a team on the scene with no political affiliation. When she turned on the TV later and saw that his plane had plunged into the ocean, she knew. From the front the office is ordinary, a Brutalist concrete block indistinguishable from the offices that surround it. But the memories Jensen has collected will continue to haunt and help him. she says. The ABC has sought comment from Mr Girardi and his lawyers, but so far has had no response. Heres how he became the best at the worst job in the world. They do have one trait in common: They are extremely empathetic, while still being able to maintain an emotional distance from the victims. Wedding ring, braceletsJones and Jensen both wear woven bracelets they gave each otherspecial things. Then, they didnt have the aid of DNA identification. Contrary to what one sees on television, the process of final identification in most cases is not done by a computer. In perfect order on metal shelves circling the warehouse are tools that speak to the myriad tasks Kenyon performs when pressed into service. But then, Jensen remembers, she wasnt sure. They are well protected against trauma and will resist all but the most prolonged fuel-fed post-crash fires. To the untested eye, there was nothing of value to be foundthe flight data recorder had already been retrieved, and it was clear there were no survivors. It also points out why a wise investigator will try to back up a visual identification with scientific methods, especially if there is more than one victim involved or where the case is likely to attract a lot of media attention. As one might imagine, aircraft crash victims frequently are not visually identifiable. Read about our approach to external linking. Reading the accident report and discussing things with Harriet have helped settle Graham's mind. Jensen remembers her looking to him next. Jan. 17, 2007 -- This report originally aired on November 3, 2006. He thinks of a woman he found dead in the wreckage of the Oklahoma City bombings. The examination of the skeleton and x-rays thereof can also reveal unique findings such as healed fractures, orthopedic implements (rods, plates, screws or artificial joints) or anatomical variations that can help determine identity in a definite manner. Before you get on the plane, start preparations. There is no assumption that families want the items cleaned. This was a family custom; Harriet and her parents would listen to the messages when they returned home after waving the girls off. In the days and weeks after the tragedy, at the height of the families' grief, lawyers began circling and pitching for business. In the recovered suitcase theyd found a pack of orange curlers, like the kind Jensens mother used to wear in the 70s. Powered byWPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress, Airline Globalization's History: Once An Advantage, Now a Threat, Four Engines vs. Two: The Surprising Mathematical Guarantee of Safety. Even before his mother's body had been identified from Indonesia's Lion Air plane crash, Bias Ramadhan had calls from eight separate law firms offering to sue on his behalf for millions of dollars. But hereceived no proper explanation. ", On Mr Ramadhan's recommendation, four other Indonesian families also signed up with Girardi Keese. "I have never stopped feeling the loss, and often very powerfully," she says. She has spent much of the last 49 years in what she describes as a "tunnel" of . You have a pretty hard one going in. Jensen wants so badly to give families a glimmer of hope, but instead he has to deliver the coldest truths. Jensen doesnt have any harrowing rescue stories. The smell of the air, when she walked out on to the tarmac, was exactly as she remembered it from her childhood. The ceiling panels rattle in the rain, but otherwise the space is deathly quiet. Leading the group as it trudged through the undergrowth was Robert Jensen, a tall, mighty man in a white helmet with BOB scrawled in marker on the forehead. Generally, if a plane has to attempt a crash landing it's very advisable to not do it with wings filled with kerosene. Her grandmother received her mothers recovered thingsthe pin from her mothers uniform, and her belly-button ringand it never would have occurred to her not to. Jensen assumed the fishermen had found the suitcase half-opened and had put other passengers things inside. The responsibilities that come with losing a loved one seem like a burden until you cant make them. (1) The post-mortem examination of air-crash victims requires a small but efficient organization to facilitate identification and burial. Before the catalogs of photographs were available online, they were all hard copies, with six or more items on each page. Girardi Keese has been forced into bankruptcy, psychiatrist recently said he has Alzheimer's Disease, Edelson alleges that Girardi is faking incompetence, As Panca boarded her flight, she asked her husband to pray for her. Wreckage is piled at the crash scene of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 near Bishoftu, Ethiopia on March 11 . Days after the crash, almost all the passengers had been positively identified through DNA samples, but none of the recovered tissues were her sons. Once Jensen has an idea of the condition of the bodies, he begins coordinating a morgue. While in some cases, it is easy to do thanks to matching of the fractured ends of bones or lacerations passing through tattoos, this process is helped along by matching the genetic signature of one part to a specific person. In December, Mr Edelson lodged asuit against Mr Girardi, Erika Jayne and the law firm, accusing them of misappropriating money from "the widows and orphans who lost loved ones" in the Lion Air crash in order to fund their "lavish Beverly Hills lifestyles". It takes me an hour to flip through a catalog from a plane crash over a decade ago. The pandemic prevented Graham from attending the funeral of his father, who died in November 2020 at the age of 92, but this summer he was finally able to make the trip back. Often it falls to Jensen to act as a liaison between the families back at the hotel and the workers at the crash site. Harriet has never stopped imagining how different life would have been if Caroline and Debbie hadn't let go of one another after jumping out of the plane. Visual comparison can be done either by using a mirror intra-orally (just like when you go to the dentist), small camera, or in cases where the victim is burned or otherwise massively disfigured, by removing the jaws and examining them. Losing his father brought into sharp focus a need like Harriet's to keep his siblings' memories alive. "It's very hard to listen, but it's also so precious that those voices can be preserved," Harriet says, "and they're entitled to be heard.". 'I left university and adopted my brother and sister', PM to end asylum claims from small boat arrivals, Harry: I always felt different to rest of family, Historic ocean treaty agreed after decade of talks. They hadn't survived. For example, Jensen learned that a set of car keys recovered from the Germanwings crash were from a car sold in Spain, dramatically narrowing the pool of victims to whom they might belong. The associated items will be returned first, and the unassociated items will be photographed and put in an online catalog for families to peruse in case they recognize something. Mr Ramadhan said they also want damages and interest for "prolonged suffering" because of the delay. Caroline was still alive when her father found her, but all of her clothes had been burned off her body, leaving only her shoes. Harriet yearned to understand how Graham had coped, being the one who was left behind, as she was. The company called his mother to ask if shed like them delivered or sent. To those who would argue that there is a low risk of faking ones death in a plane crash or otherwise there being a misunderstanding, consider the case of Marcus Schrenker, who bailed out of his plane in an effort to escape from criminal charges from being a con artist. Id wondered if Jensen might hold some secret to living calmly in the age of terrorism, and thats it: Indulge your practical anxieties; dont waste time on dread. They showed the mother the two passports. Instead, it is left to an examiner carefully comparing various points on the prints derived from the remains versus a set that are known to come from a person suspected to have died. In some cases, a mere luggage tag is all that some people have to hang on to.. "I saw his father's face and I remembered him - a very lovely man," she says. They found they were discussing their innermost feelings in no time. There's no memorial to the 43 people who lost their lives in the VC10 accident though, and sitting in Addis Ababa airport one day, looking out over the runway, Harriet felt overwhelmed by a longing to know what had become of the survivors and relatives and how the crash had affected their lives. His job was done. Plane crashes aren't actually as common as other types of vehicle accidents. "I think that was your sister," he wrote. Snow, Fire and Lights: Photos of the Week, 'Money can't buy you a better cheeseburger', Billionaire Bill Gates talks to Amol Rajan about wealth, conspiracies and controversy, The meteoric rise and dizzying fall of tycoon Arif Naqvi, Inside the factory where supercars are made, Meet the people behind McLaren's latest model, There's something for everyone on BBC iPlayer, The man facing 291 years in jail. Actual laboratory and statistical processes used to obtain results are incredibly complex and continuously evolving. A one-engined light aircraft struck the ground at high terminal velocity, producing a large impact crater. And one of the RAF air crew also wrote to Harriet. Devastation: The woman is so disturbed by seeing people falling from the blitzed plane amid the burning wreckage that she cannot stay and insists on driving away Around them, the burning remains. Harriet has been deeply moved by all of the messages and is grateful for every story shared. The remains Kenyon recovered made it possible to positively identify almost everyone onboard the helicopter, which is a feat in a high-speed crash. But along with all the painful emotions, Harriet also felt close to her sisters, "because that's where we all were last". Hes looking for something of more abstract valuea piece of a person, literal or figurative, that he can bring back to a victims family to say We tried. He knows from experience that when a persons life has been obliterated, even the tiniest shards can bring solace. Jensen tells the story of one woman who lost her daughter on Pan Am Flight 103 in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. As remains and personal effects are being brought in from the crash site, Kenyons are collecting dental and medical records and conducting long interviews with families, seeking any details that might help identify victims. Why are black swans becoming stranded in the ocean off WA? The eldest sister, Jane, had died instantaneously of a ruptured aorta caused by the pressure of the seatbelt on her torso. why do plane crash victims lose clothes. Hed borrowed her mothers suitcase, where she stored her rollers. Often they do: Much of Jensens experience before joining Kenyon in 1998 was in the Army handling mortuary affairs. Jones thinks for a second. Landing. That is the use of the unique pattern of the sinuses in the face to identify a victim. Thats the really hard part. Fingerprints are another common way of identification and have been used for well over a hundred years. After a while, the woman began to appreciate it as a lasting reminder of her daughter. All 72 people on board lost. Before that, carriers got away with fairly haphazard responses. A small plane that crashed in Mozambique in 2013, for instance, required more expansive morgue operations than some larger commercial flights. The best example was the recovery of a forearm and hand from a commercial airline crash into a mountain and glacier in Alaska. As nearly anyone who has watched television in the past few years is aware, every cell in your body contains some form of DNA. Families can even choose not to participate. In most jurisdictions, this is done by showing the family member(s) a photograph of the victim or of the tattoo in question and not, as is commonly shown on television, bringing them to the morgue and pulling back a sheet or curtain to reveal the victim. Passengers enter the rear door of the East African Airlines VC10 at Addis Ababa airport on 18 April 1972, Caroline, Harriet and Jane picnicking in Ethiopia with their mother and Benjy the dog, during the 1972 Easter holidays, Kenneth, Christopher and Graham Townsend in Ethiopia, in late 1971, Both Harriet (pictured) and Graham say grief can be triggered unexpectedly - for example when filling out a form that asks how many siblings they have, Harriet and Honest Joe - Ethiopians called her the little girl on the big white horse, The outline of the VC10 plane, which Graham contributed to his brothers' headstone, has largely worn away, Stanley embarks on a whirlwind tour Video, Sunak's migrant plan and Harry's 'broken home', Everything Everywhere wins big ahead of Oscars, Snow warnings for Scotland and north of England, Inside the enclave surrounded by pro-Russia forces, Pubs to stay open longer over Coronation weekend, Kuenssberg: Sunak can't escape past Tory horrors. A mother and two children were found dead in their second-floor bathroom after the plane exploded. Online Marketing For Your Business why do plane crash victims lose clothes For Harriet - whose parents had to hastily decide where the girls would be buried - this alleviated the guilt she has felt about not being able to visit them more often at the cemetery next to their school. Above and below, Kenyons front offices look like any other office, but theyre organized to efficiently respond to mass death. She wasnt coping, Jensen recalls. The fingers are inked and the prints rolled just like anyone being booked by the police.