THE identity of the man captured falling from the World Trade Center on 9/11 remained one of the tragedy’s most haunting mysteries for years.
But a tiny clue spotted during the hunt to identify him would eventually point investigators towards one man.
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A distinctive orange T-shirt worn beneath his clothes helped link the mysterious figure to World Trade Center worker Jonathan Briley.
The crucial detail emerged from another photograph taken by Richard Drew moments apart, which showed the man’s outer shirt blowing open to reveal the bright orange top underneath.
Briley, 43, was a sound engineer at Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower.
He is now believed to be the most likely identity of the man immortalised in Drew’s devastating image.
Drew had captured several frames in quick succession as the man plunged from the burning skyscraper on September 11, 2001.
Esquire journalist Tom Junod later investigated the identity of the so-called “Falling Man” and concluded Briley was most likely the person pictured after speaking to Drew and examining the evidence.
Now, 25 years after the terror attacks, Briley’s sister Gwen Briley-Strand, 72, has opened up about the agonising mystery surrounding the photograph.
She admitted the figure bore a striking resemblance to her brother.
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“Truth be told, it did look like him,” she told the Daily Mail.
But Gwen said her family had initially been “very hurt” when Jonathan was suspected to be the man pictured – and she has never fixated on whether it really was him.
She said: “The photograph brought so much pain to so many people when they were trying to figure out who this person was.
“I remember hearing about a family who were deeply religious and, with Catholicism, this man that jumped, that’s suicide and that’s the unforgivable sin.”
But Gwen rejected the idea that those who fell or jumped from the burning towers should be judged for their final moments.
She said: “I don’t believe in an unforgivable sin. God is too benevolent. He’s too wonderful. I think the only unforgivable sin is not to believe in Him.
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“I believe that all those individuals that jumped were caught. Their spirits were caught.”
The haunting photograph became one of the defining images of 9/11, when al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes and killed 2,977 people.
For years, the identity of the Falling Man remained a mystery.
Instead, the figure came to represent those who died that day whose final moments were never known.
Gwen said she no longer looks at the photograph.
Instead, she holds onto memories of one final trip with Jonathan just days before his death.
He made a last-minute decision to join Gwen and her husband on a holiday to Florida the week before the attacks – something she now describes as “a gift of God”.
She said: “We were right there on the ocean and we would get up and have Kahlua and coffee and watch the sunrise. It was really special because he decided to join us at the last minute.”
A quarter of a century later, Gwen still watches anniversary coverage of the attacks every year.
She said: “There are times when it feels like 25 years but, then again, there are times when it feels like yesterday.”
But for Gwen, definitively proving whether her brother was the Falling Man ultimately does not matter.
Instead, she believes “he was a representative of all of those almost 3,000 people that had to go through that horrific day of September 11”.
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Drew’s haunting photograph has since become one of the most recognisable images of the attacks.
A print is held in Sir Elton John’s private photography collection, with the singer describing it as “one of the most perfect photographs ever taken”.