Nuclear DNA testing (along with dental records and
fingerprints) of the remains from the victims aboard
American Airline (AA) Flight 77 and within the Pentagon
was useful for identifying 178 of the 183 victims. Five
missing individuals (four within the Pentagon and one
aboard the airplane) could not be identified due to lack of
biological material from the crash. Five remaining nuclear
STR profiles were obtained from the crash site that did not
match any references for the victims. These profiles were
thought to represent the terrorists aboard the flight. The 40
victims aboard the United Airline (UA) Flight 93 that
crashed near Shanksville, PA, were also identified by
nuclear DNA testing, dental records, and fingerprinting.
Four nonmatching nuclear DNA profiles were also obtained
from the crash site and again tentatively ascribed to the
terrorists.
The DNA results strengthened the hypothesis that two
of the terrorists were brothers, as indicated by other
evidence. Two of the terrorist STR profiles aboard the AA
Flight 77 gave a sibling index greater than 500. To further
test the hypothesis of maternal relatedness, AFDIL
sequenced the HVI and HVII regions of mtDNA for these
individuals. The sequences generated did match in HVI
and HVII, which is consistent with a maternal relationship
between the two men.