Morgue's Empty Receiving Room Dims Spirits of One Here to Help

Jimmy Breslin

September 21, 2001

It made sense for the medical examiner's office to call Dr. Skip Sperber, a San Diego dentist and assistant medical examiner, to come in to help identify bodies. Sperber started an identification system used by the federal NCIC. And years ago, Sperber trained at NYU Medical Center.

When Dr. Jeff Berkes, the chief of dentistry at the medical examiner's office, called Sperber in San Diego and asked if he could come in, Sperber said yes as he was packing.

The plane arrived in Newark and his first thrill came when the pilot asked all the people to remain in their seats so a team of doctors and dentists from Los Angeles could get off and head for the World Trade Center.

When he got off the plane he was in a car that was part of a line of cars with a police escort. The doors shut and the train of cars rushed off for New York. Sperber loved it. Hanging from his neck was a big, thick seven-pointed badge from the San Diego medical examiner's office.

He stopped for a sandwich at the medical school cafeteria next door to the morgue and sat with a detective who was in awe of Skip's badge.

"All my life I wanted a seven-pointed badge," the detective said. "I'm going to move to San Diego and get one like that."

Sperber then went to the morgue to start his time in New York. He is nationally known in dental identification, and he was here to put a name on bodies and do so much for families tortured by the unknown.

He arrived here eager for long days of careful work. He is a balding 70-year-old who seems years younger.

There were only two bodies brought into the morgue on that first day.

Over 6,300 were missing, and they had two bodies.

They arrived with the teeth in small bags on the gurney alongside the body.

But the victims were known and the teeth were used only for verification. One person called out the teeth, another wrote it down and a third monitored.

Sperber went into the antemortem section, which takes the things that were known about a victim before he died. People left evidence at the morgue and it was placed in large envelopes and put on Sperber's desk.

The first envelope he opened had a color picture of a group of men at the bar. One head had a circle drawn around it. There was nothing else. Here was the missing guy. You find him.

At least the guy in the photo was smiling. There might be a moment when a blow-up of the teeth could tell you something.

There was a picture of a ring. Not unique, just a signet ring. It was unconnected; the ring came with no finger.

"My specialty for the day is films from dentists," Skip said.

There are three areas for identifying bodies, DNA, fingerprints and dental. Sperber was suspicious of DNA because the bodies that might be in the wreckage are decomposing past the point where DNA can be used.

"There are 32 teeth, but most wisdom teeth are gone," he was saying. "Each tooth has five surfaces. The facial, which is on the outside; the lingual, which is anything against the tongue; the mesial or front, the word anterior is the synonym; the distal or posterior; and the chewing surface, or occlusal. I developed a code for the NCIC which had a number for silver filling, a composite filling, a crown gold and a code for bridges and empty spaces. I also have one for orthodontia work, which is new in many parts of the country."

He took the names of missing people and called their dentists and asked for dental x-rays.