FOUR months after terrorists destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, the body of a man believed to have been photographed just before he leapt from the 104th floor of the inferno has been recovered.
The body of Bernard Pietronico, a 39-year-old bond dealer from Cantor FitzGerald, the company that was based on some of the highest floors of the north tower and which took the largest single blow in human casualties, was found last weekend by a firefighter.
The body was discovered as construction workers began moving the last of a million tons of rubble from the Ground Zero site. In keeping with the rituals of New York's firemen, the remains were placed on a stretcher, covered with a blanket, and carried from the ruins as workers stood by in silent salute.
The corpse of a big man weighing 200lb, it was surprisingly, inexplicably, intact. In the makeshift mortuary of tents and trailers behind the coroner's office, identification, using DNA analysis and other techniques, was swift. Within 24 hours the telephone rang at the Pietronico family home.
"I was taken aback. I was very taken aback. To have my brother is a great blessing that we had begun to understand would never come," said Michael Pietronico, the dead man's brother.
Within a few hours, he followed a hearse bearing the remains of his brother to the New York University Hospital building on First Avenue, which houses the office of the medical examiner. Mr Pietronico had come to perform an emotional rite that he had promised the ghost of his brother.
After the hearse had pulled beyond the barriers guarded by police, it stopped. Mr Pietronico stepped from his car and unfurled an American flag. Then he leaned into the hearse and, tears flowing freely, put his arms around the sealed red body bag. He whispered something private and then draped the remains with the Stars and Stripes.
"This is the flag that the mayor and the city gave us, along with an urn filled with ashes from Ground Zero, back in October," said Mr Pietronico. "When we were given the flag, I promised Bernard that, if we ever found him, I would use it to drape him and we would bury him like a hero."
Mr Pietronico was relieved to find the bag heavy, and a certificate reading the corpse had been "whole". He has not been told exactly where his brother was found and is trying to locate the fireman who discovered the remains.
The latest estimates of the number of dead from the towers is 2,893, down from the original fears of as many as 6,000. But Bernard Pietronico is among just 626 certified dead from found remains, and among even fewer whose bodies have been found relatively intact.
There are still 309 listed as missing, while 1,958 have been "certified dead", without a body, under the special arrangement made when it became clear that many of the dead would simply not be found.
In the month before Christmas virtually no remains were found. But then, when demolition workers got close to the bottom of the pit that once formed the foundations, they began uncovering complete bodies. No figures have been issued but at least 15 firefighters have been recovered.
"We had been told that with the intensity of the fire and the scale of the collapse, it would be very unlikely that any remains from the 104th floor would ever be found," said Mr Pietronico. His brother leaves behind a wife, Jackie, and two children, Joseph, 10, and Alexis, 8.
Mr Pietronico described a traditional, extended Italian-American family in New Jersey that had closed ranks around the widow and children. Materially, he said, the family had been well cared for, with money raised by the Red Cross and the Twin Towers Fund going to pay for the children's education and to provide a pension to meet Mrs Pietronico's household expenses.
"My sister-in-law is heartbroken but we are supporting her. The kids are really down and missing their Dad one moment; the next they are just getting on with being children," he said.
Mr Pietronico was given a formal funeral, without a body, under a Roman Catholic dispensation for the victims, back in October. An estimated 1,000 people joined the streets and filled the pews for the ceremony in Newark, where the migrant Pietronicos settled two generations ago.
In another twist, just a few days before the body was discovered, the family got in touch with The Telegraph's photographer, Thomas Dallal, over pictures he had taken on September 11 of victims leaping from the blazing towers. Mr Pietronico recognised one of the figures as his brother, standing just inside a window and apparently talking to a colleague.
"This makes it even more of a miracle. We were looking for something that could bring us closure because, to be honest, a funeral without a body can't do it. We thought we had found a photograph and then, out of the blue, comes the phone call from the medical examiner," said Mr Pietronico.
"We are a family that takes care of its own, and that is what bringing this flag to the morgue is all about. We are bringing my brother home like a hero, with a flag over his body bag, because my brother was a good man and that is what he deserves," he said.
This weekend, in a very private ceremony, there will be a second, simple service for Bernard Pietronico at the chapel of the funeral home. Then the family will gather at the cemetery, knowing that this time they have a body to lay to rest by his grandparents' headstone.
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