A woman whose husband died in the twin towers has learned years later that her husband wrote a chilling note the day of the attacks. Click below to see a photo of the note and for the story.
“84th floor, West Office, 12 people trapped.”
Those are the seven words Randy Scott scribbled on a scrap of paper on Sept. 11, 2001, after United Airlines Flight 175 struck Two World Trade Center floors away from where Scott was working at Euro Brokers Inc.
The blood-stained note, which drifted to the street from the building’s 84th floor, has brought both pain and insight to Scott’s devestated family, who believed the 48-year-old died instantly, a decade after the Twin Towers fell, the Stamford Advocate reported.
“I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn’t trapped in that building,” Scott’s wife, Denise Scott, told the Advocate from her home in Stamford, Conn. “And then you get this ten years later. It just changes everything.”
Denise learned of her husband’s note in August 2011 when she was contacted by Dr. Barbara Butcher, chief of staff and director of Forensic Investigations at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York.
The 57-year-old said that she immediately asked Dr. Butcher what they had found, knowing that the office contacted families when they found fragments of victims.
‘I spent 10 years hoping that Randy wasn’t trapped in that building,’ Scott’s wife, Denise Scott, says. Now she and her three daughters know the truth. From left, Alexandra, Jessica, Rebecca, Randy, and Denise Scott.
“She said, ‘No, it’s not a fragment. It’s something written’,” Denise said. “And that’s when I just fell apart.”
Someone had found the note on the street amidst the chaos downtown on Sept. 11 and handed it to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York guard, who was just about to alert authorities to the letter when Two World Trade Center came crashing down right before his eyes.
“He went to radio, and the building was gone,” Denise explained. “The building collapsed.”
The scrap of paper eventually passed from the Federal Reserve to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which collaborated with the medical examiner’s office to identify the spot of blood as belonging to Scott.
“The minute I saw it I didn’t need to see the DNA test,” she said. “I saw the handwriting. It’s Randy’s handwriting.”
A note Randy Scott scribbled on a scrap of paper on Sept. 11, 2001, after United Airlines Flight 175 struck Two World Trade Center, landed in the hands of his wife Denise Scott and her daughters Rebecca, center, and Alexandra, right, ten years later.
The letter, which Jan Ramirez, chief curator of the September 11 Museum, calls “exceptionally rare,” will be displayed at the museum.
Denise asked the museum to delay exhibiting the letter until she told her daughters, Alexandra, Jessica and Rebecca, of its existence. Denise said she couldn’t find the right time to tell them until this January, after her own father died.
“I was bawling, because I recognized his handwriting,” Rebecca, 29, said.
Denise and her daughters took a hardhat tour of the museum this March to see where the note will be displayed in a exhibit on the final moments of the World Trade Center.
“It’s so amazing to think that Randy Scott wrote it and it eventually ended up with his wife and three daughters, which is an amazing arc of a day,” Ramirez told the Advocate. “We are incredibly proud to be able to show it and I think it will be one of the most powerful artifacts in the museum.”
Denise said that she is still shocked to this day that the note was able to reach her.
“I’m speechless that they actually were able to identify it,” Denise said. “This note was written on September 11. It came out of a window. People had their hands all over it.”
