Chip Minemyer: 'Make sure we never forget': Portage native recounts forensics work to tell story of 9/11, remember those who were lost

Sep. 10—When Michael Hochrein left his hometown of Portage to study anthropology and archaeology at the University of Pittsburgh, he wasn't sure how he would turn that interest into a career.

That was, until a local police department came to the university seeking help with a cold case, and soon a 22-year-old murder was solved.

"I learned that I can take what I had been learning to do and maybe make a living," Hochrein said.

He's done so much more, working on forensics teams at some of the biggest cases handled by the FBI — including the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, and the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City 21 years ago this weekend.

"You never want something like that to occur," Hochrein said, "but it having occurred, it feels good that you were able to help."

Retired from the FBI and living in Portage, Hochrein is an adjunct professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Security at La Roche University in Pittsburgh, and a consultant and instructor with HD Forensics in Erie. He works with the acclaimed forensics department at Mercyhurst University, and has been a guest instructor with the Pennsylvania State Police Camp Cadet Program.

Hochrein was a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1988 to December 2017, and put his background in forensics and archaeology to use as an FBI Evidence Response Team member from 1993 to 2017.

'Always on standby'

He was working at the FBI's St. Louis office on Sept. 11, 2001 — when terrorists hijacked four airplanes, flying two into the World Trade Center towers and one into the Pentagon.

On the fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, passengers and crew fought back, and that plane crashed into a former strip mine in Somerset County.

"You remember where you were and what you were doing when that happened," Hochrein said of 9/11. "I was standing in my supervisor's office, literally watching the TV when the second plane struck the South Tower."

The FBI had formed its Evidence Response Team in 1994 to support forensics investigations occurring on a large scale. The 9/11 attacks fit that bill.

"We were always on standby," Hochrein said.

Fellow Cambria County native and retired FBI agent Vince Pankoke, Hochrein's friend and fellow Pitt alum, described the ERT program this way: "Their mission is to collect crime scene evidence both domestically and abroad, which can range from anything you have seen on many television shows like CSI, but also includes underwater search and hazardous evidence capabilities.

"They often work in conjunction with local, state and other federal agencies in crime scene investigations. With forensic evidence playing such a pivotal role in investigations, their job is of utmost importance to the successful outcome of prosecutions."

Hochrein's team was sent to New York City to help with the World Trade Center investigation. His trip to New York brought him through Pennsylvania.

"I remember being on the Turnpike and driving past the exit you would take to go to Shanksville," he said.

The massive forensics investigation he joined in New York was like nothing seen before, he said.

"There was no logistics plan for if you have an entire city block that gets blown up," Hochrein said.

'Working the pile'

Materials were moved from Ground Zero in Manhattan out to a landfill on Staten Island. Hochrein described the site as more than 150 acres in size, with 25,000 individuals from more than 20 agencies operating in shifts — what Hochstein called "working the pile" — for nearly a year after 9/11. He was there for 2 1/2 weeks.

Dressed in protective suits, masks and booties, they sorted through two million tons of concrete, metal and other items from seven buildings that collapsed after the attacks — brought on trucks or barges — and "literally by hand, sifted through all of this material."

Hochrein said noise cannons were fired periodically to scare off seagulls that would converge upon the landfill — out of fear the birds might carry off important evidence.

He said he worked a 12-hour overnight shift, and still associates certain sensory experiences — work-site lighting, the smell of diesel and burnt plastic, the roar of heavy equipment — with those nights in New York.

"The whole thing was surreal," he said. "I can pass a construction site at night and it entirely comes back."

The magnitude of the job struck Hochrein, he said, when large items were delivered to the site — destroyed police cars, sections of buildings, crushed fire engines.

"It really hits you, and you realize we're so small and this was so big," he said. "I will always remember seeing a large ladder truck that was crumpled up — just amazing."

And small items that were pulled from the debris of those collapsed buildings might mean so much — partial human remains, personal items or mementos — anything that might aid the investigation or help confirm the identity of someone who had perished, and give a family closure.

"I remember a moment when I found a fragment of a human bone," Hochrein said. "We had a forensic anthropologist on the scene who could identify and confirm if it was human. When that happened, it made me understand what it was all about — that I've found something that could be identified, that could be a solution. ... Not everybody was identified. But some of their belongings could be returned to their families."

He added: "It could be very emotional. We were all putting together pieces to help the families, and to help make sure we never forget what happened."

And the 9/11 forensics work has not ended. More families may get that closure in the years ahead.

"To this day, as DNA evolves, as the analysis process evolves, tests they can perform on some of the remains goes on," he said. "The process doesn't stop. It's like remains from the Vietnam War, and occasionally you'll hear that someone has been identified. They've had the remains all along, but they didn't have the technology to do that."

An experience with his work at the Oklahoma City bombing has parallels to efforts to continue telling the story of Flight 93 at the national memorial near Shanksville — where items recovered from the crash site, along with recorded messages passengers and crew left for their loved ones during the hijacked flight, greet those who enter the Visitor Center.

Much like in New York, blast debris in Oklahoma City was transported to another site for forensics crews to sift through the materials.

Hochrein said some of the material he was charged with sorting through came from a day-care center in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building — "children's remains mixed in among their drawings and other items."

He said he returned to that town some years later to testify in an unrelated case, and stopped by the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum — where he saw some artifacts on display, and found himself "walking through there, reliving it — what we were doing to help those families, and then to help build this monument that could keep that incident in people's minds down through the years."

He now shares his stories with forensics students at La Roche University — most of whom were born after the 9/11 attacks.

"When you talk about Sept. 11, some of them look at you like you're an alien," he said. "If you could just bring into the classroom the sights, the sounds, the smells. I don't think they truly grasp just how important this work is and all that happened. It can be frustrating, because you want them to feel your pain and your experiences.

"And then you realize that it has been 20-some years, and it's like, for me, I can't believe it's been that long. That makes it hard to teach. It's like, 'Come on — it was yesterday.' But it wasn't."