9/11: Reflections

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[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_03] I'm Anya Kane, and today we're going to reflect on our own personal experiences of 9-11.

[00:03:56] [SPEAKER_01] Content warning. This episode contains discussion of murder and the effects of terrorism.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_03] All right. So we have been doing some coverage of 9-11, the 9-11 attacks, thanks to Kevin's very diligent, very in-depth research, which I'm super proud of. So well done, Kevin. But this is a very heavy topic, and we thought it might be interesting to share with you just what our experiences were on those days.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_03] I think it's important for people to talk about this because we're increasingly seeing the next generation of people who don't remember 9-11 at all. They don't have a memory of it, and it's an important piece of United States history. And I think by everyone documenting it and passing it on to relatives, you know, we're kind of memorializing it in a certain way.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_03] We've certainly gotten a lot of emails and messages from all of you lovely listeners explaining your own 9-11 experiences and what it was like for you that day and how you learned and where you were when you heard about it. And I just think it's like we were all watching history unfold, and it's important to document that. So we really appreciate everyone who sent us your experiences. Feel free to email that to us.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_03] Feel free to post it in our Facebook group, the Murder Sheet Discussion Group. And, yeah, let's kind of keep that going because I think it's an important part of kind of, I don't know, memorializing history.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_01] And before we get into it, I'd also like to say that it's our plan to continue doing some coverage of 9-11. There were some interviews I wanted to do that got rescheduled, and it's just such an enormous topic with so many angles on it that I really do think deserve attention.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01] So just because this week of episodes is over and the anniversary is over doesn't mean our coverage is over and expect for us to come back to it from time to time.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_03] Because I will tell you this, and I didn't really fully understand this until Kevin started digging into it, but there are sort of lingering questions and mysteries, I think, that remain despite it being so heavily covered.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_02] So I think that is the thrust of what we're going to be doing going forward. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_01] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_03] And this is 9-11 Reflections.

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_01] I'd like to start with your story, Anya, for a couple of reasons, one of which is you were a child at the time, as we will talk about. So unlike me, you were not experiencing this as an adult. And you also have kind of a unique perspective because you actually lived in what is, maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit, but you were living in a suburb of New York City.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_03] That is correct. No, it is a suburb of New York City. And it's very much something where I live. So I'll just say where I'm from. So I'm from Westchester County and specifically the very small village of Bronxville, New York. It's a square mile. So it's a small it's it's, you know, it's a place where a lot of people who live there are commuting into New York City every day.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_03] That's where they work. And specifically my town or my village had a lot of people. A lot of my peers, parents worked in finance, worked on Wall Street, worked for some of the big banks. So, you know, that was something that was very much part of the culture growing up, that people, you know, were connected to that world in some fashion.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_03] And so, you know, that obviously is important because the World Trade Center, you know, the name of it indicates, you know, there were financial institutions there. There were banks. There were different companies. So when 9-11 happened, there were a number of people from Bronxville killed. There were a number of people from Westchester in general killed and sort of their names are out there. They've been memorialized.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_03] But there was also a lot of fear, I think, in my community when this first happened of like, you know, oh, gosh, do I know anyone who is in those towers? So, yeah. So, yeah. So that that so I'll go back. I was seven years old when this happened. I feel in some ways. It's odd because I feel like I'm.

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_03] Like one of the youngest people, like my people who are like that age when this happened, like we're some of the youngest people to remember it at all. But I don't feel like I had the full emotional reckoning with what happened until years later. And I think it's because I was so young and I recognized that this was awful. But in some ways it didn't hit me as much.

[00:10:09] [SPEAKER_03] And that's because my parents, understandably, were not like, you know, like they they were shielding me and my sisters from this to an extent. Like we're not going to watch the most horrifying bits of footage on the news because they didn't want us to be frightened or traumatized in any way. But they did talk to us about it. And, you know, they talked about it as you would to a child of like some bad people.

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_03] Took over planes and flew them into towers and a lot of people were hurt and people lost their lives and a lot of people were very heroic trying to save the day. So it's not like they like didn't tell us about 9-11 and also for reasons I'll get into my memories of that day in a moment. But we are I already knew about it because it kind of got out at school.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_03] But it was one of those things they weren't trying to like, you know, show us stuff that would be not appropriate for like seeing at that age. I later on made it sort of a tradition for myself to go on like from teenage years onwards, even through college and afterwards, I would go on YouTube and watch footage. I would watch the news clips. I would watch the footage that was out there.

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_03] I'd watch I'd listen to the victim audio calls from the planes and the towers and whatnot. So like I was kind of going in there and looking at it as an adult. But as a kid, it's just never like I don't know. I'll get into it. So I was seven years old. I was excited because my mom was heavily pregnant with my youngest sister who was born that November.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_03] And I had two other existing younger sisters, one of whom doesn't remember this at all because she wasn't even two when this happened. And then the other one who was in kindergarten. I think she remembers aspects of it, but I'd have to ask her. But I was in second grade. I was in Mrs. Grogan's class. Loved Mrs. Grogan. We were that was one of those classes, at least in our school, you do first and second grade with the same teachers.

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_03] So we were like, you know, it was a good squad and I was I don't know. I mean, this is going to sound kind of embarrassing, Kevin, because I feel like it kind of predicts my future career as a true crime podcaster. Where, you know, oftentimes it's fair to say that true crime podcasters, you know, just say things and they don't know what they're talking about. And that's what I was doing on this day, because I remember somehow I don't think Mrs. Grogan told us,

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_03] but somehow our class knew that a plane had gone into the World Trade Center. I don't know how we knew that. I don't know, like, whether that was something that was passed around in the hallway and someone overheard it and brought it back. I just don't know. But I remember vividly being in that class. And I remember we had this like like easel with this like big pad of paper on it that they'd like, you know, write on and draw on.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_03] And I remember kind of standing near that and kind of like being, you know, I this is just my personality. I remember telling them, don't worry, guys, like I'm sure it was just an accident and and whatnot. And I remember one of the boys saying something like to the effect of like, no, they don't think it's an accident. And I think I'd been vaguely aware that there had been some kind of like wasn't there a minor plane crash that happened before this?

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_01] I don't recall.

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_03] I think there had been something I so I maybe was extrapolating that. But for some reason, I was really confident that it was just an accident. I was telling people that, you know, seven year old Anya. I don't know what I was thinking. Very confident about something I knew nothing about, obviously. And yeah. And just over the course of the day, I remember my teacher who is like this really like great teacher. But she was like. She didn't cry or anything like that, but like she was just very reserved and kind of like I remember thinking she looked very stern.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_03] And I think she was just trying to hold it together for the class so that she wouldn't be putting her emotions out there on us. But I imagine that was extremely difficult. And there was a lot of concern. I learned later that, you know, because they didn't know the extent of everything and because they didn't necessarily know where everyone worked, that they were concerned a lot of kids had lost parents.

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_03] And that ended up not really happening because I guess just the luck of the draw, the firms that were affected. It wasn't necessarily a lot of overlap, although I believe there was some. But people were, you know, people were very. I remember that I just remember noticing my teacher and being like, oh, gosh, you know, like like maybe this is pretty.

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_03] A big deal. And then I remember also thinking and kind of telling people like, well, if there's a big accident, it'll be OK because my dad's a doctor and he'll help those people. Because I knew my dad worked in New York City at a hospital, which was nowhere near lower Manhattan, by the way. But, you know, I knew he worked there. I knew he was a physician. And I was like, he's just going to, you know, he's going to fix them right up. Don't worry about it.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_03] Like, I had a very like Pollyanna-ish view of this whole thing of like, it's probably an accident and whoever got hurt, my dad's going to fix it. I guess maybe I was a pretty naive seven year old. I don't I don't know if that is an unusual level of naivete for a seven year old to have. But I remember I was just like, I'm not too worried about it. And then when like later on. It was on the news constantly, it was in our newspapers constantly.

[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_03] And I remember my parents, I think, did talk to us a little bit about like some bad people did this. And I was very, you know, I was upset about that. But I think one thing I've reflected on in recent times is that I, I guess I always kind of thought, wow, yeah, it didn't really hit me emotionally until later. Like, I don't remember crying. I talked to my mom recently and she said me and my sister when she picked us up from school, like we were pretty normal, you know.

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_03] And it was like it didn't hit me emotionally until later, as I mentioned. But when I look back, there was something about it that I think did really bother me and like I think gave me a lot of sleepless nights and anxiety because I remember being very scared in the days after. 9-11. I knew they were searching for people in the rubble, in the wreckage at Ground Zero.

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_03] And I guess I thought that they thought that those people were alive. And now looking back, they were doing body recovery, right? They were going through and trying to find human remains. But maybe through the news, maybe I picked it up wrong or maybe I just didn't understand. I thought they were pulling living people out for days.

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_03] And I remember being really anxious about like I was concerned like, oh, like they. I had this fear, this totally irrational fear that they were going to pave over the site without making sure all the people were out. And that I just kept envisioning people in these little. I don't know, like bubbles or kind of little pockets of air underground stuck with it paved over on top.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_03] And I remember being really horrified by that. And I remember even I don't know. I don't know what adult I asked this to, but I asked somebody like, are they going to like are they going to make sure. You know, like that everybody's out because I was just so worried they were going to leave somebody behind and they'd be stuck down there. And they were, you know, I think they were probably like, Anya, all those people have already gone to heaven or something. But I, yeah, I just it was very.

[00:18:12] [SPEAKER_03] It's like I it's like I wasn't reacting to it in like a normal, like rational way of like this is horrible. All these people have died. But it's like my seven year old brain processed it in a weird way to like get this weird claustrophobic fear of like, oh, my gosh, I've seen pictures of ground zero and it's absolutely horrifying. It looks like hell on earth. What if people are stuck in there? Like that was what I was worried about, even though like that wasn't really a thing. It's like I think I was processing it, the emotions of it and the fear of it in such a way.

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[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_03] And then ironically, it kind of came full circle because when I became an adult, I moved back to New York. And I would also commute to New York City to work when I was working at Insider. And for a long time, our workplace was in the Flatiron District, which is kind of like more in the middle of Manhattan.

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_03] And then eventually, tax enticements induced us to go down and move down to the Financial District. The Financial District is, of course, where this all happened. That's where the towers came down. And we moved into an office at One Liberty Plaza that was a stone's throw away from where the towers were. And it was so close that we were apparently like, I think we may have been the building where they had a Brooks Brothers that operated as a field morgue. If not that, we were right near it.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_03] Like, the whole place would have been covered in dust and all of the debris all those years ago. But we worked down there. So being down there then really kind of gave me a renewed kind of interest in really kind of looking at this. And I think after college, after starting to work there, after we moved down there, I really was kind of looking into it a lot more because I could very much relate to it.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_03] And I remember there was, you know, there was discussion of like, oh, are we going to move up really high in a skyscraper? And I remember just thinking, I really hope we don't because I've always been a bit frightened about that. The idea that you could be stuck up somewhere and not able to get down. Fortunately, we were on the eighth floor. So it wasn't it wasn't too bad. But, yeah, it was it was odd being in that area in New York City. The Dutch built that kind of lower part. And so all the roads are really wild.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_03] And, you know, it's not on a grid like the rest of New York City. And, you know, sometimes I would get lost in the beginning and I would just find myself at the big reflect in the pools that they have. That's the memorial. And it was always very sad. I confess I was. I didn't I never went to the museum and I kind of regret that because it sounds like it's a really good museum and I should have wanted to learn more.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_03] But just something about it, just the idea that everyday people can suddenly find themselves in hell and that there's no help for them is something that lingers with me and breaks my heart. But the helplessness of it, the helplessness of being stuck in a tower, the helplessness of being in your office and suddenly can't get out and it's on fire.

[00:26:05] [SPEAKER_03] The helplessness about being on a plane while lunatics seek to fly it into a building and cause more deaths. That is something I really still struggle with and really gets to me. And it makes me angry and it makes me really sad. So, yeah, that was my whole rambling thing. Not a very interesting story, but I think kids a little bit younger than me, people a little bit younger than me don't remember this at all.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_03] Like I said, my sister, I think she was five. She remembers, I think, parts of it, but not as much as me. And as you can tell, I don't have a ton of vivid memories. I do have memories of the day, but it's not the same. I think it's so important for us to teach the younger generations about what this meant, how it changed our world, why it's such a big deal.

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_03] And, you know, why we need to remember what these people went through, because we need to recognize that, you know, being from a certain country or whatever, it doesn't insulate you from absolute abject horror and suffering. And any of this can happen. And it's important to deal with terroristic threats as a result of it.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_01] So my experience is a little bit different. I was older. I had just gotten out of law school and I was waiting to start work. I had recently moved to an apartment by myself in Indianapolis, but I didn't know anybody. I don't have work at that particular time. I'm a little bored.

[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_01] My mother, living in Columbus, Indiana, about an hour south of Indianapolis, got a summons for jury duty, which I believe required her to report to the courthouse in Bartholomew County at like 9 a.m. on September 11th. And I said, well, I'll go down and I'll give you moral support because that can be a confusing process. She didn't ask me to do that. I'm not sure she even wanted me to.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_01] Just a combination of being a little bored, not knowing anyone in Indianapolis. And also I had the idea that just going to court as much as I could and seeing how things function there would be good. So I hop in the car and I'm driving down to Bartholomew County and I have a news radio station on.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_01] And, you know, about a quarter to nine. There is a report. A plane has hit the World Trade Center. And I don't know if they described it badly or if I just didn't understand the description.

[00:28:55] [SPEAKER_01] I think one thing that's also important to realize is when something completely different happens, that can be hard for your mind to grasp. I think you try to relate it to things that have happened before. And so when I heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, I didn't understand the gravity of it. And my mind went to two different incidents.

[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_01] One was something that happened just a few weeks earlier. I think it's largely been forgotten. But some idiot in a drone parachute sort of situation. It ended up all entangled on the Statue of Liberty.

[00:29:41] [SPEAKER_01] And the other thing that my mind went to was an incident that I believe happened back in 1994, where a person piloting a small plane, a Cessna, crashed on the grounds of the White House. And it killed him. I don't think there were any other casualties. And so my mind was this was probably some really tiny plane being flown by someone who didn't know what they were doing.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_01] And whatever damage there may be to the building is probably going to be relatively minimal. Maybe my mind also went to the 1993 attack of the World Trade Center. So this is what I'm thinking as I'm driving in the car. And then I'm a little bit late to the courthouse.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_01] And as I'm pulling into the courthouse, they have someone on the phone they're talking to who who witnessed this this plane crash. And he's talking about what he saw. And as he's talking, he saw they start saying, oh, my God, oh, my God. Something the equivalent of it's happened again. And that's when the second plane hit.

[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_01] And when that happened, I had to get into the courthouse to meet my mother. But I realized, OK, I was wrong about this. This clearly isn't an accident. You don't have a situation where two planes just coincidentally happen to separately crash into buildings right next to each other. This is clearly a terrorist situation. And it's a lot more serious than I thought.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_01] Then I have to get out of the car, which I do. And I go into the courthouse. And the courtroom is closed. And there's a lot of people milling around outside the courtroom. And what had happened is the defendant in this particular case had arrived to the courthouse and had seen all the attorneys.

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_01] And he knew there was a panel of jurors gathering to decide his fate. And sometimes when that happens and people see that, they think, oh, maybe I don't want this after all. And so there was some last minute flurry and last minute plea bargain was struck. And I remember as that was going on and I'm just milling out there with these people.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_01] There are people there who have heard about what happened in New York, people who haven't heard about it. None of us really understands what's going on. And it's also strange to realize that this was an era that Anya never existed in because it was an era where there were no smartphones. We weren't always connected.

[00:32:38] [SPEAKER_03] That's not quite true.

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_01] But we weren't always connected to the Internet. So if you weren't in front of a radio or a television, you had no contact with the outside world. So we had no idea what was happening in New York. We were just standing waiting in this courtroom or outside the courtroom, actually. So that's taken care of. My mother comes out and we go outside.

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_01] And this is a memory that's very vivid in my mind. Outside the courthouse in Columbus, there's a memorial to people from Bartholomew County who have died in various wars. And I remember standing in the midst of that memorial talking with my mother.

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_01] She called her mother, my grandmother, who's like giving us more news about it and just getting some more information about what happened in the midst of this memorial is something that's always stayed with me. And I remember going back with my mother to her house, my old house, the house that I was raised in and turning on the television and then really starting to get caught up.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_01] And one thing that always happens when there is an event of this magnitude is there was a rush to get information out. And a lot of times that information may not be accurate. I remember a lot of the early reporting had bad information. I remember hearing to my horror and estimate that perhaps 20,000 people had been killed.

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_01] I remember hearing, oh, there's a bomb that went off of the State Department. Oh, there's smoke coming from the Capitol building. I remember all sorts of crazy things being said and just being confused and hoping that a lot of these details were not true and that they were not. And I also remember that day by the time I got to a television, flight 93 had already gone down.

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_01] So the plane crashes were over. But I didn't know that. And it just felt like things just kept on happening and happening. And it was overwhelming. It was a challenge to sort out good information from bad in those hours immediately afterwards. I should also say I think it hit my father kind of hard. I come from a family of firefighters.

[00:35:22] [SPEAKER_01] And my grandfather founded the fire department in Columbus. My father was a part of that fire department. He also frequently went to New York and knew some of the firefighters there. So I think it hit him kind of hard. I hung out there for the day.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_01] And then the end of the day after dinner, I remember driving back up to Indianapolis where I didn't know anybody at the time. And I remember it being dark and quiet and just walking up to the steps of my apartment, just feeling overwhelmed with sadness.

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_02] It was, I mean, that's just so horrible. I'm almost glad I was younger then because I feel like the weight of what you must have realized about all those people is so heavy.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_03] I often think about your dad. Your dad will like watch like, like I guess there's like YouTube videos and live streams of like the FDNY, the fire department in New York City, like fighting fires and stuff. And yeah, you know, you're right. He like he did go to New York City for a lot of trainings. I know my great uncle was in the FDNY. He was out of I think he was retired by the time that this happened.

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_03] But just all of these people who sacrificed everything to try to get others out of those buildings is, you know, civilians and and first responders, whether it's police or firefighters. It's just it's hard to wrap your head around.

[00:37:07] [SPEAKER_01] And I remember it was also kind of the start of, for lack of a better term, are called the ADHD isation of our media, because before this, if you were watching television news, it would often be just a person talking. And maybe there'd be something at the bottom of the screen. But there was so much information to get out that when after this happened, you'd see the person talking. There would be streams of information at the bottom of the screen.

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_01] It'd be a stream of information on the side of the stream screen. And it was if they were just trying to pack as much information into the television screen as they could.

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_03] It's like they have like a breaking news alert and like stuff like that. Yeah. And, you know, which sometimes it feels like they misuse that in a situation like 9-11 or a massive terror attack. You can certainly understand. And maybe that's helpful. But sometimes like there's stuff happening. It's like, did this really warrant like 9-11 style coverage? But I think, yeah, I remember like the year this happened, I always. I was an anxious kid, you know, I am an anxious adult.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_03] In case anyone hasn't noticed. But I started having like pretty serious insomnia issues this year, that year, 2001 going into 2002. And I think I don't blame that on 9-11. I think there was just, you know, I was anxious. And I was at that age where you start to kind of think about things more, I guess. I just had a lot of free-flowing anxiety.

[00:38:45] [SPEAKER_03] It wasn't about anything bad in particular that happened. It was just like innate, you know, having trouble processing the world in some ways. And I mean, now I've now I mean, I've since been diagnosed with ADHD since you mentioned the ADHD style news coverage. So maybe it was part of that. But I've always wondered, like, I never really connected it with that happening the same year as 9-11. But then I'm like, I do remember like lying in bed thinking about these people underground.

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_03] And I'm sure that didn't help, but I don't think it was the main cause. And, you know, I don't know. Do you remember a lot of other like moments in history where you can kind of say this is exact. I know exactly where I was when that's when this happened.

[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_01] I think there's always a few moments that are so significant historically. They stick with you forever. Another one that comes to mind is when the Challenger exploded in 1986. I was in high school at the time. I remember that.

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_03] Wasn't one of the astronauts supposed to go to your school and for like a talk?

[00:39:48] [SPEAKER_01] Yes, a couple of astronauts were scheduled to come to Columbus, Indiana to give a talk at the high school like a month or so after the completion of that mission. And there was like a sign up sheet for people to go and video record it. And so one of the moments to stick out in my mind is myself and a friend of mine took down those sign up sheets and handed them into the teacher because we realized, obviously, this guy's dead.

[00:40:17] [SPEAKER_01] He's not coming here. And I just remember that was such a sad moment. I think there were actually tears in the eyes of the teacher when we gave him the sign up sheet and he said, thank you. I didn't even think about this.

[00:40:28] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, gosh, that is really sad. Yeah, but this is definitely one of them. I feel like most people in the United States, at least, probably have some sense of where they were and, you know, what was happening that day because it was so momentous. I remember the only one other like situation like this that immediately comes to mind that is some ways related is I remember.

[00:40:56] [SPEAKER_03] I think it was November 13th, 2015. I don't know. This one just whether it was a massive terrorist attack, radical Islamic terrorist attack in Paris. And I remember exactly where I was when that news hit. I was standing on the steps with my with one of the editors I worked with at the student newspaper. And we were talking and I looked at my phone. I was like, oh, my goodness. But this is one of those that predates the information.

[00:41:25] [SPEAKER_03] And you said that I was I never lived in a world without smartphones. That's not true. I was the last generation. I feel like that had flip phones consistently. But I'm very glad I didn't grow up like in that world because I think it's not I think there's a lot of downsides to it. But I vaguely remember the pre times.

[00:41:44] [SPEAKER_01] But as I was as I was thinking back and remembering, you know, getting some information from my grandmother over the phone as I'm standing. It's a war monument. And that part of me saying, well, Kevin, why were you getting information from your grandmother? Why didn't you just go online? And it was just it was a different time.

[00:42:03] [SPEAKER_03] Grandma was a crack researcher.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. No, I mean, it was before time. I just I don't I don't remember my parents telling me about 9-11, though. Like I just I just remember the day. But I imagine they I think they really did try to. You know, insulate us because, you know, I was I was obviously if I was telling everyone it was an accident, I was a pretty, pretty naive.

[00:42:25] [SPEAKER_01] In fairness to you, my initial reaction, as I just said, was I thought it must have been some accident, some commuter flight. I think a lot of people immediately went to that conclusion. This is not something that people would do deliberately. And so there was a period between the first crash and the second crash where a lot of people were either thinking or hoping it was an accident.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. And it just it's just it's it's it's it's changed the world so much. And I think the I think you're you being older when it happened, you probably recognize a lot of the changes in the world that occurred due to 9-11. Whereas I have less of that sense because I was young when it happened and some of those changes may have been lost on me. Things like airport security, things like.

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_03] The war on terror, the ensuing war in Iraq, the ensuing war in Afghanistan, it's like some of those things like I just kind of ended up growing up with largely. And I don't necessarily have as many memories as what it was like before or the optimism of the 1990s or anything like that. I, you know, and then some people were just born like my sister. I mentioned she was born that November. You know, she she never. You know, she she she wouldn't have remembered any of that, obviously.

[00:43:42] [SPEAKER_03] So it is a it is I think for for people who might be like sharing stories with younger people who don't remember or weren't there for that. You know. I think it is important to, like, you know, recognize that this profoundly changed life in America. And I think it changed attitudes. You know, I think. You know, I remember for a while everything was like really patriotic and it was like, let's all come together.

[00:44:08] [SPEAKER_03] Like, I remember, like, we put like an American flag in our car, like hanging from the rearview mirror or something. And like a lot of people were doing stuff like that. And, you know, there was a sense of togetherness immediately after. I remember we had this CD that was like all these artists came together to do like a concert for New York. And it just seemed like there was kind of like let's all come together and support each other. And unfortunately, I don't think that lasts.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_03] I think we're a very divided nation right now. And that's. Makes me sad. But, you know, I guess. Yeah. I'd be curious to hear what other people experienced. I imagine, you know, I imagine some of some of the folks, you know, whether you're in Virginia, New York or or simply, you know, elsewhere in the country. But just watching this unfold, I'm sure a lot of people have those vivid memories.

[00:45:07] [SPEAKER_03] Well, anything else to add?

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_01] I think that's it.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_03] All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. And yeah, please feel free. We're at the Murder Sheet Discussion Group on Facebook. If you're not on Facebook, feel free to send us an email or, you know, whatnot. We'd be curious to get your stories and, you know, let us know what you're doing to kind of commemorate this day. Or if you if you plan to kind of talk about it with any, you know, younger people in your life that you want to kind of share this with.

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_01] Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail.com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

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[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_01] Special thanks to Kevin Greenlee, who composed the music for The Murder Sheet, and who you can find on the web at kevintg.com.

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