Claim: In the wake of the assault on the World Trade Center towers, a bound pair of hands was found atop one of the neighboring buildings.
Status: Undetermined.
Origins: On 11 September 2001, at
impact.
Unless and until the black boxes and voice recorders from these doomed flights are recovered, we will likely never know more than the barest of details about how the hijacks of these two planes were carried out or what the last moments of the people aboard were truly like. (Not that anyone really expects to recover those items — the intense heat raised by the jet fuel-assisted fire would have destroyed the recorders.) What little is known has come from sketchy and possibly not reliable reports about the actions of American Airlines
Information (especially reliable information) is very hard to come by and likely will remain so until more pieces of the planes can be recovered. But some gruesome finds have already been reported: Investigators retrieved a pair of severed hands bound together with plastic handcuffs from the World Trade Center debris, police sources said on
Plastic handcuffs, often known as "Flex-Cuffs," are widely used by law enforcement agencies, particularly during large-scale protests. In recent years, airlines began to carry plastic handcuffs as a way to restrain disruptive passengers.1
Police sources said the severed hands were found on the roof of a building near the collapse site. The hands were cataloged Friday at the medical examiner's office at
Another rescue worker reportedly found the body of a flight attendant in the debris of the fallen towers, her hands bound.
Barbara "fallen angels" Mikkelson
Last updated: 8 March 2008
Sources: