The results of our enquiry can be summed up in one clear proposition: Three samples of uncertain origin and dating from mediaeval times were passed to the laboratories of Arizona, Oxford and Zurich, ostensibly as the “Shroud of Turin”, for them to be dated by using accelerator mass spectrometers.

PREPARATION

     In order to substitute these samples for those of the Holy Shroud removed in the sacristy of Turin on 21 April 1988, Tite had made an active search for a mediaeval cloth which resembled the Holy Shroud as closely as possible, as evidenced by his letter to Jacques Évin dated 12 February 1988 (below). He did this in secret, as proved by his letter written in March for the review Nature and published in April by way of a “protocol”, a letter in which there is no mention of this double¹. This secret search for an unprovided sample is enough by itself to prove fraudulent intent. In the end, Tite was unable to find what he was looking for, because the weave of the Holy Shroud is unknown among linen cloths from the Middle Ages. Nowhere in the world do we find a similar herringbone pattern, a linen three by one twill, before the 16th century².

     It was therefore necessary to resort to another kind of substitution, this time arranged in conjunction with the laboratories.

REMOVAL OF THE SAMPLE

     On 21 April 1988, Signor Giovanni Riggi cut a large piece of cloth weighing 500 mg from the Holy Shroud. He then trimmed 200 mg of its outer edge, leaving a strip measuring 81 mm x 16 mm. In desperation, he then cut this into two unequal parts, one of which provided the three samples. However, these needed to be supplemented with a fragment taken from the other part, thus creating one sample in two pieces³.

     Then Michael Tite retired into a room with Cardinal Ballestrero and his scientific counsellor, Luigi Gonella, in order to insert into the three steel tubes marked n^o 1 the four fragments of the Shroud which were intended for the three laboratories: Arizona (A1), Oxford (O1) and Zurich (Z1). Into the three n^o 2 tubes he inserted a mediaeval cloth dating from the 11^th-12^th century. Into the three n^o 3 tubes, under the false label «linen associated with the mummy of Cleopatra», he placed samples of the “double” of the Holy Shroud taken from the reserves of the Victoria and Albert Museum: three perfectly clean and equal rectangles cut from a strip of 7 x 1 cm belonging to a cloth from the 14^th-15^th century.

The British Museum
Research Laboratory

Dr J Évin
Radiocarbon Laboratory
Villeurbanne, France.

Our reference: MST/IMP
London, 12 February 1988

Dear Dr Évin,

     Thank you very much for your most helpful and encouraging letter of 8 February.

     Certainly, limiting the number of laboratories involved in dating the Shroud makes my task somewhat easier (my emphasis!).

     I would certainly very much welcome any assistance that you can give in obtaining a mediaeval control sample, which is as similar as possible in terms of weave and colour as the the Shroud (again I emphasise this search for a double, for a twin Holy Shroud!) since at present, I am not certain whether the British Museum will be able to provide such a sample (fancy that! and why?)

     Firstly, therefore, to answer your specific questions:

     1. The total sample would need to be 6 sq cms, (i.e. about 120 mg.)

     2. The material of the sample should be linen. I enclose a photocopy of some photographs which give some indication of the weave of the Shroud (again, I emphasise).

     3. We are looking for a sample which dates from the 13th or the 14th century AD, preferably the latter (I emphasise again).

     4. The historical precision should obviously be as good as possible, but one would certainly consider (?) samples with an age range of fifty to a hundred years (everything is so strange in this letter that again I must emphasise these mysterious words).

     5. There is no need for the sample to come from a well known piece of textile.

     6. I suppose that I could come to France to collect the samples. The idea certainly appeals to me. But I do not really think this would be necessary (given the risk of calling attention to myself... and to the double!). It would probably be satisfactory to use the postal service (incognito consignment).

     7. I think that one would want to include the name of the museum that provided the sample in the final publication, if this was at all possible (here we have the alibi).

     On the basis of these answers, it would seem that your third suggestion as a source of possible material, that is the Cluny Museum in Paris, would be most suitable. I have therefore written a letter to Mme Joubert-Caillet – copy enclosed – asking her if she would be able and willing to help in this matter.

     Again, thank you very much indeed for your kind offer of assistance, which is very much appreciated. As you say, I hope that the project will give us an opportunity to meet again.

     With best wishes, Your sincerely,

Signed: M S Tite.          

     Finally, each laboratory received a piece of the “fourth sample” contributed by Gabriel Vial. He had forcibly placed this in Tite’s hands, but as Tite had failed to obtain it in time and in secret, he no longer wanted anything to do with it. Nevertheless, he had to divide it into three parts and place these in each of the three brown envelopes.

TRIPLE SUBSTITUTION

     It had been agreed that the three laboratories would work without consulting each other. But they had a “coordinator”, the unique and sovereign master of the game, Mr Tite! With Tite acting as a go-between, consultation was assured and was actively pursued...

     It was Arizona which started the game off. Having returned to Tucson, Douglas Donahue and Paul Damon held a secret meeting in their laboratory on Sunday 24 April, no other witnesses being present; they opened tubes 1 and 3, and proceeded with the agreed substitution: they extracted the Holy Shroud, in two pieces, from tube 1; they took a souvenir photograph (fig. 24); and, in place of the Holy Shroud, they inserted the sample taken from tube 3 said to be from the “mummy of Cleopatra”, but which was in fact a piece of mediaeval cloth from the 14^th-15^th century, taken from the Bock Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The substitution was easy; all it required was a simple exchange. The larger of the two pieces of the Holy Shroud, the one weighing 40 mg, was placed in tube 3, and the smaller one weighing 14 mg was kept in reserve.

     They replaced the seals. From that moment, had everything had gone smoothly, the fraud would have remained undetectable. But the numbers spoke! What am I saying? They cried out the truth!

     And the first thing they proclaimed, loud and clear, was the date of the Holy Shroud! For in 1987 Tite, using the classical method, had dated a small heap of rags belonging to the mummy of a certain Cleopatra who had died at the age of eleven, in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD), a mummy which was exhibited among the Egyptian Antiquities of the British Museum. Curiously, this dating does not form the object of any written account. The only time the result is mentioned is in the Nature report concerning the Holy Shroud dating, where it is referred to as “sample 3”: 110 BC - 75 AD. One need only compare this date range with the sample 3 results  found in table 3 of the Nature report to note a surprising gap of more than a century between the “mummy of Cleopatra” of 1987 and that of 1988. No test can accept such a divergence, and we must ask how one can pass from 110 BC - 100 AD to 11 - 64 AD! There is only one explanation: under the label “mummy of Cleopatra” hides the Holy Shroud of Jesus Christ, purchased brand new in Jerusalem on 3 April 30.

     And what about cloth sample 1? Between Friday 6 May and Wednesday 8 June 1988, the laboratory of Arizona carried out its analysis and immediately sent the results to Tite². For sample 1 there were two calendar ranges, of which one, 1359-1378, at a 68% confidence level, was clearly too modern for the “Holy Shroud”: such a date range could only make the whole world suspect that sample 1, despite its label, was not the Holy Shroud, since we know that it was exhibited and venerated at Lirey from 1350!

     From this we can judge just how exasperated the honourable Dr Tite must have felt when these results reached him in the first two weeks of June 1988. And just how did he invite the laboratory of Zurich to adjust their measurements? The secrecy with which Wölfli surrounds his calculations prevents us from finding out. But, why exactly is there so much mystery about it all? Such secrecy is already by itself an overwhelming argument for indicting him. 

     In any case, Wölfli in his turn went into action in June, spreading his measurements «over a period of about a month», says the Nature report. Let us suppose that this was between 15 June and 15 July and that he obtained the results expected by Tite: two of his five radiocarbon dates still define a possible calendar range from the end of the 14^th century, worryingly for Tite, but the three others tally perfectly with the end of the 13^th century³.

     How Wölfli managed to align his figures with the 13^th century is easy to guess when we observe how Zurich's five results lead to a mean which is astonishingly close to that which this same laboratory obtained for sample 4:

     It is surely not rash to think that Wölfli made use of threads from sample 4, removed by Vial from the cope of Saint Louis d’Anjou, to make sample 1 appear older than it really was¹.

     It remained to confirm the means obtained from the Arizona-Zurich double act and to tip their dates decisively in the direction of the 13^th-14^th century. It was at this point that Tite sent in the guards: the Oxford laboratory proceeded to measure twelve subsamples in two days, on 20 and 21 July. However, this did not prevent Dr Hedges and Prof Hall from signing the scientific account published by Nature where one reads that each laboratory spread its measurements «over a period of about a month».

     Why lie? And above all, why did they wait until the end of July before they made their measurements, leaving it until after the two other laboratories had completed theirs and sent their results to Dr Tite? And why this sudden precipitation: three means in two days? Could it be sabotage? No! It was all part of the “co-ordination” process.

     The report passed to Dr Tite, which Dr Hedges communicated to us in great confidence, does not allow one to follow the calculations which lead to the three values in Nature’s table 1 (supra, p. 36). But one need only transfer them to the calibration curve to see that they “fall” very precisely, with no deviation to left or right, within the date range of sample 4 (Eng CRC n^o 238, p. 26, fig. 41).

     How do we explain this? It appears that the substitute from the Bock collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum had been incorrectly dated by the “historical evidence” and Arizona’s measurements tended to make it too “modern”. So, in order to age it, Teddy Hall made use of threads from sample 4, that precious and truly providential cope of Saint Louis, for which Tucson had come up with measurements matching the historical dates of the saint, a bishop at the age of twenty-two and dead at the age of twenty-three (1296-1297).

     The proof? One of the graphite targets made by Prof Hall on 13 July 1988 from the threads of the cope of Saint Louis d’Anjou, coded 1166-1, is missing from the table – a very secret table! – of the measurements carried out on 20 and 21 July. Who used it and for what purpose? «... elementary, my dear Watson!»

TABLE OF MANIPULATIONS