Sister of famous 9/11 Falling Man shares truth behind controversial image 25 years after tragedy
Twenty-five years after one of the most haunting images of 9/11 was captured, the sister of the man widely believed to be pictured has opened up about the pain — and the faith — that has carried her family through it.
The photograph, taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew at 9:41am and 15 seconds on September 11, 2001, shows a man falling head-first from the World Trade Center, seemingly at peace in his final moments.
It became known as 'Falling Man', an image so controversial that many newspapers, including the New York Times, pulled it from circulation within days of publishing it after readers said it was too painful to look at.
No official list of those who jumped from the towers that day was ever compiled, with New York's Chief Medical Examiner classing all deaths as homicides.
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Estimates of how many people jumped range from around 50 to more than 200, over a 90-minute window, with almost no photographic record of who they were.
Who is the man in the 'Falling Man' photograph?
The search for the man's identity ran for years.
A Canadian journalist first linked the image to Norberto Hernandez, a pastry chef at the Windows on the World restaurant, after his sister recognised the clothing.
However, Hernandez's devout Catholic family rejected the theory, insisting he would never have jumped.
It was Esquire writer Tom Junod who reopened the investigation, discovering that Drew's camera had actually captured a sequence of 12 frames.
In later shots, the man's shirt blew open to reveal a distinctive orange T-shirt underneath, a detail that ruled out Hernandez, who didn't own one.
Junod instead identified the most likely match as Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old sound engineer at Windows on the World, who stood 6ft 5in tall, wore black high-top shoes, and was known to wear an orange T-shirt beneath his work uniform.
Briley's widow packed away his clothes not long after his death, meaning it's never been possible to confirm what he wore that morning.
Now 72, Briley's sister Gwen Briley-Strand still watches the anniversary coverage every year.
'There are times when it feels like 25 years but, then again, there are times when it feels like yesterday,' she told the Daily Mail. 'It's a wave of grief. Some years are better than others.'
Why does Gwen Briley-Strand believe her brother's spirit was 'caught'?
Briley-Strand said her brother, who had asthma, had been ordained a deacon just six months before his death and grew up playing gospel piano.
He'd spent the week before 9/11 on holiday in Florida with her and her husband, joining the trip at the last minute, the final time she saw him.
She said she doesn't believe faith condemns those who jumped, rejecting the idea held by some religious families that it amounted to suicide.
"I believe that all those individuals that jumped were caught. Their spirits were caught," she said, adding that she thinks of her brother as representing the roughly 3,000 people who died that day.
Briley was the middle of five siblings, one of whom, Alex Briley, was an original member of Village People.
The photograph itself is now reportedly held in the private collection of Sir Elton John, who has previously called it ‘one of the most perfect photographs ever taken.’
Thomas Bamford