549 - Let’s Action! · podcasthero

Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder.

That's Georgia Hardstart.

That's Karen Kilgariff.

And we're here to present to you.

A podcast with five beverages.

See how many we can drink? Go.

Chug. Chug your caffeine.

I have been kind of chugging coffee all day. Then I find myself in kind of a pit of despair. And, you know, like when you're just kind of like, why? And it's like, Because you've only had coffee and it's 4 p.m.

How is it 4 p.m. and I've only had coffee and an Uncrustable? Like this doesn't, this isn't.

Who's keeping track of me? Are you a baby? Why won't anyone keep track of me?

Why can't I nourish myself?

Why does it slip my mind to do the thing I've had to do for 50 plus years in a row? Yeah. Slips my mind. Lunch is a— Showering. Showering's hard. Lunch is harder.

Yeah. I mean, it's just day after day. Like, every day at the end of the day when Vince and I are like, what are we having for dinner? And it's like, we decided yesterday.

Yeah.

We did this.

It's that the rest of the time. Beef stroganoff forever.

I'm so sick of chewing. Like, it's just every day is chewing, you know?

What else sucks?

I think this is called depression.

Or are we just venting it as in our artistic process before we really give people what they need? Because I think it's like, it is important to say, here in Los Angeles, no one can drive. Three different cars tried to kill other cars on my way here. Oh, wow. In a way where the third one, I was like, I got to get off this street. It's just people veering.

And just over there and honking.

I got real angry at a woman on my way here. And I was like, whoa, that was crazy. And I pulled over and took a beta blocker because I was like, that was over the top. Like that wasn't necessary.

Are we checking your levels on those beta blockers? We need to make sure your liver is okay.

Does it fuck up your liver?

Yes. Those are serious fucking drugs. Really?

Oh, well, I stopped drinking so I can do whatever I want to my liver. Now, 74 today, 74 days.

Your liver's like, please, I beg you. If you would just listen.

Oh, my God. No, we're just trying to be relatable. No, that's right. Coffee, snacks, driving.

Coffee, drugs, driving.

But reality is we have private planes that take us to our house and to our office.

Just like a Jenner. That'd be incredible. Where would the commute you would most wish you could get private planed to in Los Angeles?

I want to go to the beach and I won't ever do it. Or like a coast somewhere along there, hiking in Santa Monica Mountains. Like, you just don't do that.

No.

It's a fucking schlep, and it's an angry schlep. Yes, it is.

And when you get there, the elements are against you.

Yeah, because it doesn't—yeah, don't get me.

Okay.

Because it doesn't get— here' s the thing about the West Side.

Let me quote both of your nephews when I say the 101 to the 110 to the 405. To the 134 to the 405. May I just— All of this goes because who cares about Highway Talk?

Right. It's Highway Talk with Karen and Georgia.

With Karen and Georgia.

Oh, my God. Was Car Talk the original podcast?

I think so. Because they had like... They talked to the audience. Yeah. It was real back and forth.

It was like not on video.

That's right. These people. Wait a second. Yeah. We had a lot of great people talking to us about the death of Dolly Parton.

Yeah.

And what it meant to them. But I just wanted to share a couple, because this is actually kind of supposed to be a short episode.

Oh, right. Well, it's a solo. It's a solo episode. You're going to go. I went last week. You're going to go this week.

This is mine. Yeah. But we thought it would be fun just because there were such good comments. Yeah. many, many, many people loved, admired, respected, if not worshipped her.

Absolutely.

But we got some good ones. We boiled them down to these three. Sugar Camp Shop from Instagram wrote, may her memory be a fire lit beneath our asses to do good in the world.

Wow, I love that.

Which is in this world. I love that too. It's very true. Somebody posted something that said, This is a person who broke records in the music industry, like enlisted out.

Yes.

But we're talking about all the good she did for people.

Totally. So amazing.

It's really good. Then Mary Becker from Facebook, she wrote in and said, there were so many things I didn't know. She was one of the producers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Really?

Yes.

Amazing.

Her production company, Sand Dollar, helped out in that, I guess. And then the last one, which we really loved, Von Nar, G-N-A-R on Instagram, wrote, a whole mini-sode of Dolly encounters would be welcomed, please and thank you.

Great idea.

Right?

Do you have a Dolly Parton story? Exactly. Send it to us at MyFavoriteMurder at Gmail. We'll do a mini-sode.

Did Dolly's butterfly bus break down in front of your home? And she had to come in and eat dinner with you and all your cousins.

Did you get one of her baking boxes and, like, you fed your whole family for a week off of it?

Did you get sent a free book once a month for your whole childhood and now because of Dolly Parton you can read books?

Oh, my God. You did that?

Okay.

And we were just talking about her the other day. You just went to Dollywood. I know. It's so crazy.

It couldn't have lasted forever. It lasted so long. She was a star forever. And if you think about her, those pictures of her as a little girl, like her little face. Yeah. Like, she was meant to be a gigantic star from day one.

Totally. Gorgeous, but such a kind spirit and soul.

And smarty.

And so smart.

So smart.

Okay, so we have a podcast network. Just like Dolly Parton had a network. Oh, my God. It's full circle.

We've finally done the thing that we always wanted. Yeah.

It's called Exactly Right Media.

That's right.

Which is such a great name. I'm so glad you came up with that. Like, really, every time I hear it, I'm like, fuck yeah.

It fits.

It does fit.

It's perfect.

It's great that nothing else was available that we thought of before that.

And I know we've talked about this on the show, but we thought of, I would say, 35 different titles before we landed.

That were all taken in some way. I think your sister was like... You either called your sister and said, what about this? And she was like, that's it.

Yes.

Or she suggested it.

I can't remember.

But she remembers.

Laura's behind all of it. Yeah.

It's called Exactly Right Media anyways. And here are some highlights.

If you love the new podcast, Brief Recess, and how can you not? You're going to want to be there for the premiere of The Traitor's New Blood next Thursday, September 17th. So you can watch our own Michael Foote begin his journey. to reality TV stardom.

He's going to be a fucking star, speaking of stars.

He is just the most delightful person. He's like that in real life. He's exactly what you think he's like.

Yeah, he's just like Dolly Parton. I'm just going to do that this entire show.

That's right.

And if you haven't joined the fan call yet, what are you waiting for? Members get every episode of My Favorite Murder ad-free, plus merch discounts, exclusive content, and access to the Murderino Discord. Head to fancult.supercast.com to join, please and thank you.

And in case you missed it, our own Nick Terry is back with a new MFM animated. This one features Trixie, the pantsless, crispy-faced baby doll that was discovered inside the walls of a 100-year-old house.

So good. So good.

You can watch Trixie and the rest of the MFM animated gang over at youtube.com slash exactlyrightmedia. Okay. All right.

So this is a solo. So excited. Sit back. I'm going to get cozy.

Take some sips of water. So this show comes out on September 10th. I saw a TikTok about these heroes from September 11th.

Oh, my God.

And I sent it to Maren, and she looked up. She's like, I love this story so much.

Oh, my God.

So we are approaching the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Jesus. So today I'm going to tell you one of the many incredible stories of heroism that took place on one of the darkest days in American history. It's Tuesday, September 11, 2001. It's a beautiful late summer morning in New York City, and 49-year-old architect Frank DiMartini has just arrived at work.

He's a construction manager for the Port Authority. And that's the entity that manages all of the trains and the harbors and the buses and the bridges and the bus terminals and all the other kind of travel elements that take place between New York and New Jersey. And that is the entity that developed the World Trade Center. Frank's been working for them since just after the 1993 terrorist bombing.

And that happened in one of the World Trade Center's basements. I don't know if you remember that, but it was like, yeah. So Frank was hired then to assess structural damage. It was a temporary gig that it led to a permanent one. Frank's wife, Nicole, saying, quote, he fell in love with the buildings. For him, they represented an incredible human feat.

He was awed by their scale and magnitude, by the innovative design features, and by the efficiency of the use of materials, end quote. Nicole DeMartini is in her early 40s. She's also an architect. And she first met Frank in design school. They had since been married. Now they have two children and a home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. And Nicole works for the engineering company that built the World Trade Center. And her office is in the South Tower on the 35th floor. But this morning, she's with Frank in the North Tower at his office because their commute went quicker than expected. There was light traffic and a seamless drop-off at the kids' school. So they got to work at 8.15. And they're 45 minutes early. You know,

they both start work at 9.

So.

Nicole decides she's going to spend the next half hour with her husband. She'll later say, quote, we were in his office and had a cup of coffee and discussed typical everyday life kind of things. And that's when the plane struck just above us. So it's 8.46 a.m.

On September 11th and a Boeing 767 crashes.

Into the North Tower at floors 93 through 99. This is about 50 feet above where Frank and Nicole are sitting at the time. This is the story of the evacuation of the World Trade Center's North Tower and all the acts of courage and selflessness that saved so many lives that day. And the main sources used today are the book 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn and And the documentary 9-11, Heroes of the 88th Floor.

And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So it's 846. We're in Frank's office. Frank and Nicole hear this huge boom. They feel a jolt. And then they see flames and debris just spilling down the side of the building outside of Frank's office windows. Mm-hmm. then the power cuts out. So they go out into the hallway and that's where everybody is congregating from the 88th floor.

There's about between 30 and 40 people all trying to figure out what's going on, talking to each other. Some people are saying they think a generator exploded on the upper floor or that the North Tower water pump that's known to malfunction is somehow exploded. Some people say it's a bomb, but no one really knows and no one's really panicking.

Yeah.

This building is designed to absorb serious shock, and this group knows that better than most because after that terrorist attack in 1993, they learned it was the heavy smoke that pulled in the emergency stairwells that presented the most danger to evacuee safety, more than actual structural damage. And in the years since 1993, they started having fire drills training employees to gather on their floors— or a couple floors down, depending if theirs is directly affected by something like fire, and to wait for further instructions over the building's emergency intercom system versus just running out and immediately evacuating.

So in these hazy, surreal first moments of the September 11th terrorist attack, many people just wait for those updates. They're just standing around waiting to see. They don't know communications have been completely hobbled by this plane's impact on the building. And so crucial minutes tick by with no word from the building's fire safety directors. They just don't hear anything.

Also, I think all the kids, it's so crazy that someone could be 25 years old and not have experienced 9-11.

Yeah.

You know?

Yes.

But we didn't text message then. No. If we did, it was like very... Basic stuff. Yes.

Alphanumeric.

Yes. It was impossible to test. And you just didn't do it. It just didn't.

It took forever.

And you couldn't get on the internet from your phone.

There was CNN, obviously, breaking news, but it didn't go the way it goes now. Right. It was 25 years ago.

It's so fucking crazy.

It's so surreal. Speaking of those people that weren't around at this time, we have a picture of what the skyline in New York City looked like, especially down there.

Shit, man.

That was the normal skyline for so long.

Yeah.

Crazy. So both of the World Trade Towers had 110 floors. The 88th floor, which is where Frank and Nicole are, is only five floors beneath the impact zone is what they end up calling it, which is everything from the 93rd floor to the 99th floor. So being that close, smoke immediately starts filling the 88th floor. And through the haze, the group can hear someone who's yelling for help. And it turns out 49-year-old Port Authority administrative assistant Elaine Duke, just moments before, when the thousands of gallons of jet fuel ignited in the crash and sent a huge fireball down the elevator shaft, she was standing like steps away from the elevator. And so she was completely engulfed in flames.

Oh, my God.

And she basically, like, Gets away. People run over. They put the flames out with their hands. All of her clothes have been burned off.

Oh, my God.

She's just like was in a fireball essentially and survived. Elaine's colleague, Doreen Smith, later remembers, quote, her hair was still smoking and she was walking around as if she was a zombie. Her clothes were completely blown off and her glasses were blown off, end quote.

Holy shit.

But she is alive. Now, it's been less than five minutes into this disaster, but smoke is building in the air, and the people on the 88th floor are starting to get scared. But before that fear can bubble over into panic of any kind, Frank DiMartini steps forward. His co-worker Joanne Ciccolello will say, quote, Frank just appeared. I'm not even sure where he came from. He seemed to immediately assess what needed to be done. He eased everybody's fears, end quote. But I feel like Frank is a classic civil servant where he's like, he's the guy that has to go in like on the city street and go, here's the problem. How do we fix it?

Yeah.

And those guys are always those guys.

Totally.

Where it's like, don't let people stand around and theorize what they think might have happened. Let's action.

Yeah.

Let's action.

Let's action. Frank Stile. So Frank speaks to the group in a calm, even voice as he shepherds Elaine, who's just been terribly burned. And they actually give her a sweater so that she can, like, have clothes on. It's that bad. His wife, Nicole, and the 30 or so co-workers that are standing around. And he shepherds them into the biggest, least smoky office they can find that's on the southern side of the building because the plane struck the North Face. And when they get in there, Frank asks if anyone else is hurt or if anyone else needs help. And it turns out his own secretary, 56-year-old Judith Reese, she signals she does. She has asthma and she's struggling to breathe. So Frank finds some emergency flashlights

and he hands them out to the group. He has a walkie-talkie on him that he keeps trying to use to communicate with, like, the ground. But all the Port Authority reps are trying to communicate at the same time. And basically, everybody needs medical attention. So many people are radioing in at the same time that no one can get through. Down in the lobby, first responders are flooding into the building. Carrying 60 pounds of equipment on their backs, they begin to work their way up the smoky stairwells.

These stairwells are pitch black. There's no emergency lighting. There's none of the normal things that would be taking place in like a fire in one of the offices or whatever. Those things aren't happening. So the firemen are going up as people are trying to evacuate down all from the same stairs.

In the dark.

In the dark. In the smoke. Meanwhile, fire safety directors are attempting to send evacuation orders throughout the building. But, of course, they're using those same radios and they can't reach anyone. So now Frank sets off with a small team of colleagues to investigate what is actually going on. Among these are two men who are often described as Frank's best friends, engineer Mac Hanna and construction superintendent Pablo Ortiz.

So these guys, they're all around the same age. They're all married with small children, and they all know this building better than almost anybody. And also there's two other men whose movements aren't as well documented, but they should be mentioned, 41-year-old Carlos Da Costa and 34-year-old Pete Negron.

they also step up into this group of let's go out and figure out what's happening. So the 88th floor is 40,000 square feet of office space. That's almost an acre of office space.

That's enormous. Wow.

And so these guys basically move through it as quickly as they can, making sure no one is trapped or stuck somewhere. So they kind of split off some search for staffers who may have been separated from Others go try to figure out what is happening downstairs or what's going on in general. And as they go, the men see the extensive damage that the building has taken, even on that floor. The ceiling above their main hallway has collapsed completely. The walls around the elevators are gone because of that fireball. And a fire is broken out on the northeastern side. And as the fire rages on the floors above, the smoke from those fires pour down and get thicker. This has just been 10 minutes since impact.

Of all the 88 floors exit routes, which used to include the elevators and three centrally located emergency stairwells, only one of those stairwells is now functional. So Frank and the others get back to the larger group and tell them, we can't wait any longer. We have to go down this stairwell. It's the only one we have. So they send everybody over there as fast as they can. And Joanne Ciccolello says, quote, Everyone had total trust in whatever he was telling us to do. We were going to do it because we knew he would get us out safely.

We just knew it.

He's the guy you want.

He's the guy. Should we take a look?

Yeah.

This is Frank Demartini.

Oh, yeah. I'll follow him.

That guy knows where the flashlights are. Yeah. He knows where the correct emergency stairwell is.

Totally. He knows how to use a power tool, but he's also like.

He's doing big picture stuff.

Totally.

And it's the kind of thing where he, the rarest experience of, He went in after the 1993 attacks and knows things that you couldn't have known. So the group, they get over to the stairwell, but they have to climb over mangled building materials and debris to get there. It's not just like we're going to walk across the office.

Elaine and Judith, who are the two people with the most pressing medical issues, are moved to the front of the group. They're being helped out by the colleagues. So this is a long way down to the ground floor.

What's the floor again?

88.

But I've done this in an emergency drill when I worked in an office on the 31st floor. And it fucking took forever. It felt like this is never going to end. Yes. And then it wasn't even an emergency, a real one. Right. So that sounds.

And I would imagine fully lit. Yeah, fully lit. Clear air.

I wasn't freaking the fuck out. Right. Yeah.

So going down from the 88th floor is more than a thousand steps. Of course, I said pitch black, no emergency lighting. Of course, it's filled with smoke. Frank tells Nicole, his wife, quote, I'll be right behind you. But instead, he disappears back onto the 88th floor to join Pablo, Mac, Carlos and Pete, who have all decided they need to do another sweep to make sure that no one is stuck up there before they leave for good. So now it's about 9 a.m. This is 14 minutes after the North Tower is hit, and they finish their search. They head back to the emergency stairwell to start their own descent down and catch up with their group. But as they step into the darkness, they hear banging one flight up. Oh, fuck.

It's right on the other side of the heavy door that opens from the stairwell onto the 89th floor. They try to open it. It's jammed. They go back down to the 88th floor. They come back up with a bunch of tools, hard hats, flashlights. And they start hammering at the sheetrock around the doorframe. On the other side of that door, there are employees trapped on the 89th floor, and those workers have the radio on. So they're actually learning the details of what's going on outside.

And the door is blocked. The only exit door is blocked.

Right. The only stairwell that will get them out. So what they know and what people are starting to learn at this point is that an airplane struck the North Tower and what they believe to be a terrible accident. Everybody at first thinks it's a terrible accident.

This is when my grandma woke me up.

Yeah.

Like something happened.

Yeah. That's when you lived with her? Yeah.

I was 21.

It's so long ago. I know. And yet it truly is like absolutely last week. I know. When you talk about it in this way.

I know.

It was such a weird experience. It's like the world stopped and we all sat there. watching it like roll out second by second.

And it feels like everything since then has been kind of bad too. Like we've all gotten in a lot of trauma from that day that we just have not talked about in the same way COVID I think is someday going to be the same thing where it's like, how has it been this long? Have we even talked about it or gotten over it?

Right.

Not yet.

The trauma piles, they're piling and piling.

Absolutely.

They think that until 9.03 a.m., 17 minutes into the disaster when the second plane hits the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It's now clear that this is a deliberate attack. We're back in the stairwell now, outside of the 89th floor, and Pablo actually manages to pry the door open with a crowbar. The men rush onto the 89th floor. They split up into smaller groups. Unfortunately, this is where we lose any other information about Pete or Carlos. But Frank and Pablo stick together from here on out, and then Mac basically kind of joins them and is in and out and, you know, stays in touch, essentially.

A graphic designer named Thomas Haddad remembers the moment that these men burst into his office. He says, quote, We followed them out to a stairwell door. I was the last one on 89. The two gentlemen from the Port Authority were standing on the landing of the stairs, and everyone else from our group had already started down. The two of them were contemplating following us, and one turned to the other and said, No, let's go up. I think there's more people upstairs.

Oh, my God.

And those two men are Frank DiMartini and Pablo Ortiz. Later, Pablo's ex-wife Maureen will explain in an interview that Pablo is a former Navy SEAL. And she says, quote, I believe that the Vietnam War was the thing that really changed his life. You could just see how hurt he was that he lost so many people. He couldn't help them.

There was no way in which he was going to let anyone around him get hurt this time. Wow.

Yeah.

End quote. So then Nicole Demartini, meanwhile, describes her husband, Frank, as, quote, not an ordinary person. For him to make that choice to go up rather than go down was just really part of his personality. It was in him.

He just had to do it. Like, you want to think you'd be a hero or like a good person in that moment. Not that it's not a good person to run, but I think most of us would run Absolutely.

That's survival instinct.

Yeah. To go in and to try to help people is just.

It's big.

You don't see it because you're not in that situation very often.

Right.

And then when it happens. Right.

Well, and that's the thing of I don't want to give my dad any more credit than he deserves.

Yeah.

But that's the whole job is like they joke around and have fun and make dinners and bullshit. Right. And then they run into burning buildings to save people to get them out.

Totally.

It's wild. And then, of course, we all know what the FDNY did on this day and the sacrifices that they made and how they just, it was like not even a second thought. Right. That's what they're going to do.

Yeah.

So by 9.14 a.m., this is 30 minutes after the impact, Frank and Pablo have made it up to the 90th floor. where they free another group of trapped workers. So they are making it up, and actually there's people that need their help. It's wild. When they climb up the stairwell to the 91st floor, that's just two floors under the impact zone. They find there's no way to get inside.

Now we know that no one above the 91st floor will make it out of that tower that day. In the book 102 Minutes, authors Kevin Flynn and Jim Dwyer write, quote, Above the 91st floor, the stairways were plugged solid to collapse drywall forming an impermeable membrane, a borderline that could not be crossed, even for people on the 92nd and 93rd floors, most of which had not been touched by the plane impact.

Fuck. Oh, my God.

Yeah.

I need another one of those beta blockers.

What's that?

I need another one of those beta blockers. I'm sweating.

We've got to process it, though. You can't beta block your way through the worst thing that ever happened. Truly. Truly. And also there's people, we know people who like lived through it right up close. I mean, like people live through these things. So Frank and Pablo are forced to concede that they can't evacuate anyone further up. So they start looking for those in need on their way back down. Below, their friends and colleagues are still trying to get down the stairs and out of the building. But as they're pushing forward, more people are filtering into the stairwell from the other floors. and firefighters are continually rushing up the stairs past them. So there's bottlenecks. And of course, there's

terrible surprises around every turn. Some floors, there's so much heavy damage, they have to actually get out of the stairwell and cross through office space to go to other stairwells, hoping they will be open. So it's like this one was blocked to here, but now maybe we can go down here. And as they do that, They're crossing office areas that are— some of them are flooded. Some of them are burning. Some have exposed wire popping around. I mean, it's like a bad— it' s a worst-case scenario. So Mack is among this crowd of evacuees because he split off from his friends on the 88th floor because he helped a man named Mo Lipson, who is 89 years old. So he's basically shepherding Mo and making sure that he's got

the help he needs. So now it's 930. Yeah. It's about 45 minutes after the impact. Mac is still making his way downstairs. And so is Judith Reese, Frank's secretary. But because of her asthma and her breathing, she's having a terrible time. Her colleague, Anita Sarpe, says, quote, it was very difficult for her to breathe because of the smoke.

It was very difficult for her to walk. She was very scared. Her face, you could just see she was in pain from the breathing and trying to walk and knowing that she was delaying us from getting downstairs. So the pressure of like holding people up Absolutely. Horrible. But some people from the 88th floor have actually finally made it down to the ground level already, including Elaine Duke, the woman who was critically burned. She's immediately rushed to the hospital. And there they believe her prognosis to be so bad that she's actually given last rites by a priest.

But somehow, miraculously, she recovers. She spends four months in the hospital and then she's released. So she actually makes it through.

That's amazing.

And Frank's wife, Nicole, also makes it outside. But Frank isn't right behind her like he said he would be. And she will later say, quote, Frank was certainly not going to come down with me. He wanted to make sure everybody else was coming down first. I knew he'd be the last person to come down. It was difficult.

God, I bet. Yeah.

And this killed me when I read this line. So Nicole just starts walking toward the Brooklyn Bridge away from the disaster area, which was the footage that we saw like in California of just streams of people on foot crossing the Brooklyn Bridge to get away.

No other option just like to walk towards home-ish.

Right. Or just to walk where other people are.

Right, away.

Just try to get somewhere over there essentially. Moments later at 9.59, the South Tower collapses. Mm-hmm. Oh, God. Nicole says, quote, I could not look back. I could not look back. I heard people around me going, oh, my God, oh, my God, look what happened. People turning around, people looking, and I just could not look. I kept walking.

Yeah, she knows.

I mean, wow.

Yeah, horrifying.

Yeah. For the evacuees still making their way down the North Tower, everything goes from bad to worse now. Hot, debris-filled smoke is rising up in the stairwell. making things even darker, and it's deafeningly loud. Thomas Haddad, who is the graphic designer from the 89th floor, he will say, quote, if you could imagine a sound that's so loud that it's quiet, that's what it was. There was so much sound that you couldn't hear a thing.

Oh. Yeah. I didn't think about that.

Because you're in this reverberating stairwell, and then there's an explosion.

Yeah.

Remaining evacuees are frozen in place for several minutes before they're able to continue down. And Frank's secretary, Judith Reese, is among them. She's already having to stop and rest, but her Port Authority colleague, Jeffrey Gertler, refuses to leave. leave her even as the stairwells thin out more and more people are able to evacuate he's not going down when they get to the 12th floor judith starts to panic right as a group of firefighters appears jeffrey remembers quote they said we're gonna carry her down i said judith we're gonna walk with you don't worry When we get down to street level, I'll be with you. And the fireman who was in charge steps up close to me and says, you don't understand. The building is going

to collapse, and if you don't start down those stairs, I'm going to throw you down those stairs.

Oh, my God.

They knew they were going into a building that was going down. Minutes later, Jeffrey makes it out of the building. He turns and waits to see Judith coming out behind him. Meanwhile, Mac, who's helping 89-year-old Mo get down the stairs, is also still fighting his way outside. At 10.22 a.m., Moe and Mack finally reach the ground level. Mack says, quote, I was carrying Moe out at the time because the lobby itself was completely damaged. All the chandeliers, all the stores in the lobby were completely damaged, and water was almost one foot deep. As soon as I came out of the building, I was shouting at the police on the other side of the West Side Highway, telling them, I am exhausted, I am tired, I am carrying a man.

It is 10.28 a.m.

Then, without fully understanding what's happening around him, Mac feels his feet hit the pavement, and suddenly he's running as fast as he can to escape a tidal wave of debris billowing behind him. The North Tower has now collapsed. Some sources say that Mac and Mo were the last two people to get out of the.

North Tower alive. No way.

But, of course, we can't know that for sure. That's like theory.

Well, because it's so scary that like once you get out of the tower, there's still threat of debris falling on top of you and then the building collapsing like God.

It's so monumental and also just nothing anyone like it's so interesting. his memory of that where it's like suddenly I was running. He's not making decisions. This is his survival instinct entirely.

Right. Because this isn't something that anyone's experienced to this level.

Right. So they know that basically about 3,000 people were killed in the terror attacks of September 11th. And among them are Judith Reese, Carlos da Costa, Pete Negron, Pablo Ortiz, and Frank DiMartini, who are all believed to have died when the North Tower collapsed. Mm-hmm. We know nothing of their final moments except that Pablo and Frank were last seen on the 78th floor attempting to rescue more people.

Oh, my God.

So of those five courageous men from the 88th floor, only Mac Hanna survives. And obviously and of course his life is profoundly changed. Yeah. But in kind of an interesting way, he actually enters the priesthood in 2005.

No way.

And now his father, Mark Hanna, he devotes his life to helping others.

Oh, my God. So here's him. The, like, idea that such a catastrophe could happen and, like, still believe.

Yeah.

And I know it's fucked up to say, but.

No, well, from his perspective, it's like he got out.

He survived. Yeah.

Yeah. And he helped people and he saved people. And it's like, that's what I should be doing.

There's a reason. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

In a 2021 interview, Father Mark Hanna mentions he still hasn't been able to visit the World Trade Center Memorial or anything at Ground Zero. But he does say, quote, I pray to do it before I pass away to honor my friends.

Wow.

And Mo, the old man that Mac evacuated, he survived getting out. He ended up passing away in 2008 at the age of 96.

Wow.

So it's believed that that group of men from the 88th floor saved at least 50 people and maybe as many as 77 people from the upper floors of the North Tower on 9-11. It's also said that their selflessness and courage had an immediate downstream effect on the people that they were evacuating. It set this tone of courage and kindness aside. for everybody making that terrifying descent to the ground level. They offered each other help. They cared for or sat with the injured. People were singing songs to keep everyone's spirits up. When they could hear people trapped behind doors, they did everything they could to get them out. Like, those guys really led by example. And it's all, of course, left the men's loved ones with

very complicated feelings. Nicole says, quote, Oh, God.

Yeah.

That's the thing about guys like that.

Yeah. Like I'm picturing Vince and I'm like, don't do it. Don't be a hero. Come with me. I need you, you know. I know.

But guys like that, they're too attuned to the good of the.

Group and the world. Which is what it is to be human. Yeah.

And it also is kind of like those instincts are developable. Yeah. And I wouldn't know, but it probably feels great to have to develop them. Sure. Because then you're kind of like, well, I'll take care of it or maybe I can take care of it.

Well, I'm sure you have that on some level growing up watching your dad do exactly that as a fireman.

True. But I mean, I'm scared of fire. That's why I lit that bed on fire.

But in general, like, you know, I think I thought you're great in an emergency.

I think I might be. Yeah. And I think that's also the growing up in the 70s where it always was an emergency. So it's like, oh, this.

And like, take care of your fucking self.

Got it. You know what this made me think of also is They're talking about her. She's saying, I sort of knew he didn't make it out. But remember, like, they didn't know if people made it out or not.

Yeah.

Remember, there was all those bulletin boards and all that stuff downtown.

All these missing persons posters that people were putting up of their loved ones as like, and then looking through hospitals to try to identify someone who's unconscious, maybe didn't have their ID on them.

Yeah.

That was so heartbreaking.

Just waiting to see. So for all the people that had this terrible loss. They also had to go through weeks or maybe months of just not knowing. And there's some people who never knew because nobody can account for the missing. It's a lot to think about. So Maureen, who was Pablo's ex-wife, has said something similar about losing Pablo that, quote, we were in denial. We didn't believe that he was dead. I felt proud of him, certainly very proud of him, that he did what he felt he had to do. and miserable and angry at the same time. Yeah. One of the men that Pablo Ortiz saved is Thomas Haddad from the 89th floor. And he said, quote, I can see their faces as if it was yesterday in my mind. They are my heroes. They're the reason

I can continue to have a life of any kind.

Wow.

But Pablo Ortiz's ex-wife, Maureen, also talks about how connected she feels to the 50-plus, maybe even in the 70s, amount of human lives that her husband saved. She adds, quote, they actually had the last moments of his life. To me, I think they each have a part of him living in them. Wow. My kids lost their father, but we became a family, end quote.

Oh, my God.

And that's the story of the men now remembered as the heroes of the 88th floor, Frank DiMartini, Pablo Ortiz, Carlos DaCosta, Pete Negron, and Mac Hanna.

Wow. I had never heard of that.

Me either.

That's amazing.

Isn't that like, in all that darkness, there's a very small silver lining.

I love that because when I see a documentary, another documentary about 9-11, I have the hardest time watching it because it's just so triggering and awful and the memories and then also the mystery around it and the corruption. And it's just so awful. But when there's really lovely stories that come out of it of real human bravery.

Yes.

That's what I want to hear.

Right. It's like those people in that stairwell didn't go out of my way, old lady. Like that is where stuff like that usually happens. And people usually use that as the excuse of, well, there's no women and children first. I had to get out, whatever it is. And it sounds like just the opposite is what was going on in that stairwell.

It's that Mr. Rogers saying, look for the helpers.

Is that right? Yeah.

Well, great job. Good solo episode for the 25th anniversary. The 25th anniversary. You weren't living there then, right?

No. No, no. I was in LA and my sister called and said they attacked the White House and I thought she meant aliens. And the beginning of that day was so mind-blowing to me. And then I was like, oh, wait, what? And then it was like, It was so strangely real. Yeah. Like you could feel all of us adjusting to this new reality.

Totally. When it felt like a movie and then it didn't anymore because it was reality. Yeah.

Wow.

Well, good job.

Thank you.

Good solo.

Thank you. Maybe in the spirit of all of that today, tomorrow, these next couple of days, just try to be the brave one. See what you can do.

I love that. Be nice to people.

Maybe.

No, don't take that out. What would Dolly do?

It was like you hated your own idea. Be nice to people? No.

That's too much.

Don't be crazy.

Yeah, but what would Dolly do?

What would Dolly do? There you go.

Okay.

Here's what we know Dolly would do.

Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an Exactly Right production.

Our managing producer is Molly Smith.

Our consulting producer is Kate Schellenbach.

Our creative lead is Allison Agosti.

Our associate producer is Tessa Hughes, and our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Liana Squalacci.

Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Allie Elkin.

Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com and follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder.

Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Or watch new episodes every week on Netflix. Search for My Favorite Murder, add us to your list, and hit the double thumbs up button. Goodbye.

549 - Let’s Action!

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin