Seattle couple filmed the Twin Towers from 50 yards away on 9/11. Their tape became key evidence in terror trials. Now they’re telling the full story

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Seattle radio host Tami Michaels and her husband Guy Rosbrook were asleep on the 35th floor of the Millennium Hilton in lower Manhattan, directly across Church Street from the World Trade Center.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower.

“A ripping in the sky” is how Tami describes the sound that woke them. Guy’s first thought was a bomb, like the one that hit the Trade Center in 1993. Tami told him to grab the camcorder, a new one they’d brought on the trip but hadn’t even turned on yet. He peeled off the shrink wrap and started recording.

What they captured over the next several hours became federal evidence used in the prosecution of convicted 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. The tape later circulated publicly through Freedom of Information Act requests, released without the family’s consent. They’ve never sold it.

Now, 25 years to the day after the attacks, their full story is being told in “Across the Street,” a KIRO Newsradio documentary premiering today on MyNorthwest and YouTube. Guy Rosbrook, who has barely spoken publicly about that morning in a quarter century, is sharing his account for the first time.

What the camcorder captured from across the street

The tape begins two to three minutes after the first impact. The North Tower fills the frame from their hotel window, smoke pouring from the upper floors. Within minutes, people begin falling from the building.

For roughly two and a half minutes, neither Tami nor Guy consciously registers what they’re seeing. Then Tami’s voice, on the tape:

“There’s a person, Guy! There’s people falling out! That was a person!”

Two days earlier, the couple had gone up to Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower. Salsa music was playing. They danced. Tami leaned against a window and looked straight down.

Now she was looking across at people on ledges above that same floor. In the documentary, she describes watching one man in particular.

“He’s always stayed with me, because I stayed with him,” Tami said. “I thought, ‘You’re not alone. You don’t realize this. There’s somebody far away from you who never prays, who is praying for you.’ I’ve named him. I’ve named him Michael. And I just feel like, when he and I get to the other side, I want to be able to tell him: ‘You may not have known it, but I was there for you.'”

She made the sign of the cross for him, though she’s Jewish.

“I wanted to pray not my prayer, but his prayer,” she said. “So I did. I made the sign of the cross. Badly, I’m sure.”

Tami left a voicemail for a radio news assignment editor in Seattle, then called in live. Her voice is on the tape:

“I’m sorry, I’m a little shaky. This is simply the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Tami said. “If people do anything, say prayers for the people in the building, because people are falling to their deaths, jumping from the flames. Yes, right in front of me”

The second plane hit 50 yards from their window

At 9:03 a.m., United Flight 175 hit the South Tower, roughly 50 to 60 yards from their window. The concussion threw Guy across the room. The camera stopped. His neck was broken, though he wouldn’t know it for hours.

The hotel’s PA system ordered an evacuation. Tami wanted to leave. Guy, who had been in Somalia shortly before the events depicted in “Black Hawk Down,” argued they were safer on the 35th floor than in a crowd on the street.

His voice, on the tape: “You wait for people to congregate in areas. That’s where you strike again. I don’t think we’re any safer down on the ground.”

They stayed.

A Seattle daughter’s goodbye call on September 11

Around 9:15 a.m. Eastern, Tami called their daughter Amanda, then 20 years old and living in Seattle. She told her where the will was. She told her to take care of her younger sister. She told her to take care of the dogs, including Emily, a little wiener dog who, as Tami put it, “bites everybody.”

What she didn’t tell her, as she explains in the documentary: “That it was going to be okay. Because I really didn’t know how it would be. I didn’t want to lie to her.”

Amanda, in the documentary, describes the moment the call became real.

“She wanted to get some points across: where the will was, to promise to take care of my sister. But that didn’t register until she said, ‘And can you take care of my little dog Emily?’ And I was like, ‘Whoa. Hold on a second. This is serious,'” she said.

The towers collapsed after their phone call. Not knowing what else to do, Amanda went to her shift at an espresso stand. Hours later, she learned her parents were alive.

“Once you know they’re okay, then you can let yourself cry,” Amanda said.

Both towers collapsed around them

At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower collapsed toward the hotel. Tami ran for the door. Guy grabbed her, pulled her under a desk, and covered her body with his. The room went black. The camera was off.

At 10:28 a.m., the North Tower came down. Moments later, in the darkness, Tami’s voice: “God, personally, we are so blessed. Thank you, God. We’re still alive.”

Then came smoke, pouring through the room’s vents. A beam from the South Tower had started a fire around the hotel’s eighth floor. Guy, in the documentary, describes that moment as the one that still haunts him.

“I had talked Tami into staying multiple times, that we were safer there, and we had watched dozens of people jump from the towers,” Guy said. “We were on the 35th floor, and I talked her into staying, and I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Because it wasn’t just my life. I was risking my wife’s life.”

They put wet towels over their heads and walked down 35 flights through black smoke, talking about their koi pond back home to stay calm. They emerged into a blown-out lobby filled with ash and debris. They were the last two people in the building.

Outside, a car exploded nearby, flash-burning Tami’s face. All around them: the chirping of PASS alarms, the personal alert devices worn by firefighters. The sound of dozens of them going off at once, everywhere, in the dust.

After the towers fell

A hospital turned them away, triaging for a wave of mass casualties. A stranger invited them into her home. Guy asked for a beer.

The next day, they walked back to Ground Zero after dark. Their hotel had 1,500 blown-out windows. St. Paul’s Chapel, the little church right next door, didn’t have a single cracked pane. Guy describes it in the documentary as a moment when he felt something larger than the destruction around him.

“It felt like I felt God’s presence, even though there was this horrible event, done by people with free will,” Guy said. “But I felt like God was still there, and He was somebody to turn to.”

The tape became key evidence in 9/11 terror trials

KIRO Newsradio’s Charlie Harger first received the tape in confidence in 2005 and produced a radio documentary about it. He has carried this story for 21 years. “Across the Street” marks the first time the Rosbrooks have told their full account on camera.

A few years ago, Tami took the stand at the federal trial of Moussaoui in Alexandria, Virginia. As she left, she stopped and stared him down while U.S. Marshals rose from their seats.

In a separate visit to Guantanamo Bay for pretrial hearings, the courtroom cleared during a break. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has confessed to masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks, was on one side of the bulletproof glass. Tami was on the other.

“They have a total stare-down,” Guy said in the documentary. “Tami is just staring him down with daggers, and saying: ‘I’m on this side of the window. You’re on that side.’ That’s my wife.”

A military judge set Mohammed’s trial for June 5, 2028. Prosecutors have indicated one of the Rosbrooks is expected to testify. As the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks today, this Seattle couple’s story remains unfinished.

Watch “Across the Street”

The documentary premieres today, September 11, 2026, the 25th anniversary of the attacks, on MyNorthwest and on KIRO Newsradio’s YouTube channel.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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