Joe Blozis and the World’s Largest Homicide Scene
The rescues are the part of September 11 everyone knows. What came after is the part almost nobody talks about: when the fires were still burning, Ground Zero became a crime scene; the largest homicide scene in the world, and somebody had to work it.
That somebody included Joe Blozis. The retired NYPD Detective Sergeant had just finished an 18-hour shift with the Crime Scene Unit when the call came on the morning of September 11, 2001. In the first episode of our three-part series from the POAM podcast archives, recorded when Joe spoke at our Annual Convention in Grand Rapids, he takes us inside the investigation that followed.
The Investigation Nobody Saw
For eight months, through May 2002, Joe and his colleagues processed the scene, recovering, documenting, and preserving evidence and remains under conditions no crime scene detective had ever trained for. “There is nothing written in books on how to proceed,” he says in the episode. “No protocols, no nothing. But I know we gave every ounce of strength that we had.”
The episode is full of details you won’t hear anywhere else, including the flat tire his crime scene team discovered as they rolled out of Queens that morning. A shop a block away “fixed that car as if we were in a NASCAR race,” Joe recalls and he believes the three or four minutes that flat cost them may be the reason he’s alive. His team reached Lower Manhattan just after the towers came down.
Closure That Is Still Arriving
The work didn’t end when the site closed. Remains are still being tested, and as DNA technology advances — Joe notes it can now read “10 skin cells that you can’t even see” – identifications continue, bringing closure to families a quarter century later. It started with detectives who refused to treat any victim as a number. As Joe puts it: “You’re not a badge number. You’re not a social security number. Somebody out there loves you. You’re a person.”
Parts 2 and 3: FDNY firefighter Tim Brown’s story, and Joe and Tim in conversation together will follow over the next two weeks. Read the full series announcement here.
Never forget.