A city medical examiner’s laptop containing 200 to 300 “very sensitive” photographs of body parts from 9/11 and other vi💦ctims is still missing more than six years after it was stolen, The Post has learned.
Frank DePaolo, the ME’s director of spec𓂃ial 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 dropp🐬ed 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 tღhat 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 crimeꦬ victims who m🃏et 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 victi🌃ms 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 kille🐻r, Othniel Askew, were shot dead.
The department memo cite💝s “9/11 material and pictures” on the laptop. Officials refused to elaborate.
After the theft, the ME’s office tightened s🐟ecurity for new laptops, adding systems tꩲo 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 v𒉰ictim.”
He said DePaolo used the laptop to work at home and give lectures on the World T🧜rade Center recovery, and did “nothing wrong.”