Exactly How Many Victims Perished?

By Melissa August, Elizabeth L. Bland, Heather Won Tesoriero

As of last Friday, more than six weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center, the New York police department had put the official number of dead or missing at 4,136. But such news organizations as the New York Times, the Associated Press and USA Today, which have been keeping their own tallies of twin towers victims, disagreed--by a matter of more than 1,100. According to the Times, the total figure came to about 2,950, including official lists of victims among Cantor Fitzgerald employees (657), diners and staff at Windows on the World (167), fire fighters (343), police (23) and passengers on both flights (157). The number also encompassed as many as 545 other victims and those unofficially reported by smaller World Trade Center companies. The seemingly comprehensive tally, as well as those by the Associated Press (2,625) and USA Today (2,680), was still 28% lower than the N.Y.P.D.'s official count. "There is no discrepancy," contends deputy commissioner Thomas Antenen. "Our number is a work in progress and is being refined on a daily basis. I can't account for other people's numbers." He added, "This is not a process that can be done just by working with lists," referring to the media's use of victim lists, and said that "no one else has the information we have." The N.Y.P.D.'s figure--constantly in flux as 200 detectives clear name duplications, uncover fraudulent listings and confirm that people feared to be missing are actually not--has already shrunk by 2,100 since initial reports. Says Antenen: "The list will come down a great number, but no one knows that number at this moment."

--Reported by Sora Song/New York City

With reporting by Sora Song/New York City