A city medical examiner’s laptop containing 200 to 300 “very sensitive” photographs of body parts from 9/11 and other victims is still missing more than six years after it was stolen, The Post has learned.
Frank DePaolo, the ME’s director of special operations, left the top-secret computer — also containing photos of Staten Island Ferry crash victims, as well as city disaster plans — in his city-issued Chevy Tahoe while attending a meeting downtown in April 2007.
A burglar broke into the SUV and took the laptop as well as two bags that he dropped while pedaling away on a bike.
Four months later, cops busted Jeffrey Davis, 45, using a DNA swab from one dropped bag. But investigators have never recovered the laptop, said Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The possibility that hundreds of morgue photos remain lost angers 9/11 victims’ relatives.
“Who on earth would leave a laptop clearly visible in a car with the most sensitive materials and compromise the dignity and privacy of crime victims who met such a brutal death?” said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son, Christian, died on Sept. 11, 2001.
ME spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said “no identifying information about any victims was on the laptop.”
But a memo by the city Department of Investigation, released to The Post, says the laptop had “pictures and names” of Staten Island Ferry victims and 2003 “pictures of the City Hall shooting” in which City Councilman James Davis and his killer, Othniel Askew, were shot dead.
The department memo cites “9/11 material and pictures” on the laptop. Officials refused to elaborate.
After the theft, the ME’s office tightened security for new laptops, adding systems to locate and remotely delete sensitive data on missing or stolen computers, the department memo says.
When 9/11 relatives first learned about the disturbing theft in The Post, then-Chief ME Charles Hirsch wrote them a letter saying the laptop had “some images of bone fragments but none linked to a named victim.”
He said DePaolo used the laptop to work at home and give lectures on the World Trade Center recovery, and did “nothing wrong.”