Sunday, February 21, 2021

Shroud of Turin News, December 2020

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Previous: November 2020] [Next: January 2021]

This is the December 2020 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. It was originally the December 2020-January 2021 issue but this post on only one December 2020 article about Gary Vikan has grown so long that I will instead post a January 2021 issue. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. The articles' words are bold to distinguish them from mine.


News:
"‘It has all the twists and turns of a classic detective story’ – unwrapping the Turin Shroud," Apollo - The International Arts Magazine, Anthony Cutler, 12 December 2020. ... In his first

[Above: "The Holy Shroud (c. 1540),

[Above (enlarge): "The Holy Shroud" by Giovanni Battista della Rovere (1561-1627) in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin, Italy[4].]

chapter, Vikan, `[a] towering figure in the art world' according to the publisher's blurb, This is hype. According to Vikan's own website he was primarily the director of an art museum in Baltimore (not New York, Paris or London!):

"Gary Vikan was Director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore from 1994 to 2013; from 1985 to 1994, he was the museum's Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Medieval Art. Before coming to Baltimore, Vikan was Senior Associate at Harvard's Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. A native of Minnesota, he received his B.A. from Carleton College and his Ph.D. from Princeton University; he is a graduate of the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors and the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program. An internationally known medieval scholar ..."[2]
See my previous posts on Vikan: 21Jun20, 24Jul20, 14Oct20a & 14Oct20b.

describes how nearly 40 years ago he came across a facsimile of the Turin Shroud advertised (for $12) in a copy of the National Enquirer ... At that time, as well as long before and afterwards, he saw his real job as being that of whistle-blower where fakes were concerned. ... then and later at the Walters Art Museum, where he became the director, he pursued his passion for hoaxes, lecturing and writing about the subject of this book's title. ... As a trained historian of Byzantine art Vikan uncovers the Orthodox origins and artistic expressions of the idea of a holy image before turning to what was literally the invention of the shroud in medieval Lirey, today a hamlet of some 89 people a few miles south of Troyes, the capital of Champagne Since Vikan is an art historian and has for many years been "lecturing and writing about the subject of this book's title." i.e. "The Holy Shroud," he must know that Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory's Prof. Christopher Ramsey admitted in 2008, "There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates [1260-1390] allow":

"There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow and so further research is certainly needed. It is important that ... experts assess and reinterpret some of the other evidence. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the Shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information"[3].
And so Vikan must know that among that "lot of other evidence" is the the Pray Codex which is dated 1192-95, at least 157 years before the latest date, 1352, that Vikan claims the Shroud was created[4]. Yet there are "eight [and by my count twelve] telling correspondences

between the Shroud and the drawings on a single page [above[5] of the Pray Codex"[6]! See 14Oct20c. But Vikan misleads his readers by not mentioning the Pray Codex in his book!

Vikan, "a trained historian of Byzantine art" (see above), further misleads his readers by also not mentioning in his book the miniature in 11th-12th century Madrid manuscript of John Skylitzes (c.1040–1101), depicting the transfer of the Image of Edessa/Shroud from Edessa to Constantinople in 944[7].

[Above (enlarge)[8]: 11th-12th century depiction of the transfer of the Image of Edessa, behind the face image of which is the full-length Shroud [see "944a"], from Edessa (left) to Constantinople (right) via Byzantine general John Kourkouas (fl. 915–946) to Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos (r. 919–944) in 944 [see "944b"]

The Madrid manuscript was produced in the 12th century but its 574 miniatures may be copies of earlier Byzantine images[9]. The above miniature among those 574 proves beyond reasonable doubt that by the 12th century it was known that behind the face of the Image of Edessa/Mandylion was the full-length Shroud[10]! And that the arrival in Constantinople of the Image of Edessa/Mandylion from Edessa on 15 August 944[11] was the arrival in Constantinople of the Shroud[12]! That means the Image of Edessa/Shroud in Constantinople in 944 was more than three centuries before the earliest 1260 radiocarbon date of the Shroud[12] and before that it was continuously in Edessa since 544 [see "544"]. This is 408 and 808 years respectively before the latest date, 1352, that Vikan claims the Shroud was created [see above]!

... With lots of help from his scientific friends In Vikan's book his "scientific friends" are an obscure father and daughter, Robert W. Morton and Rebecca J. Hoppe[13], both of whom are chemists (I have found only personal links to them but I will respect their privacy and not use them). Morton is "Mostly self-taught," a "Phillips 66 chemist," who "Phillips had hired ... straight out of college" (and therefore has held no academic position) and is "a compulsive inventor and backyard experimenter"[14]. Evidently knowing nothing about the Shroud, from a "television documentary" they decided that the image on the Shroud was made with iron gall ink:

"Fast forward to an evening in November 2005. Bob Morton and his teenage daughter Rebecca happened upon a television documentary on the Shroud of Turin that was devoted, as they all are, to the mystery of how the image was created ... During a commercial break in the show, Bob explained to his daughter the background of the Archimedes Palimpsest and the chemistry behind iron gall ink; how it oxidizes from black to brown to sepia if it is not sealed with gum arabic (tree sap). When the show returned, Rebecca had a simple but brilliant flash of insight: Perhaps there is nothing at all unusual, much less miraculous, about the image on the shroud; perhaps it was made with the same familiar materials as the script and diagrams of the Archimedes Palimpsest and of virtually all medieval manuscripts: namely, iron gall ink. That would explain why the sepia tones of the Archimedes text and those of the Man of the Shroud are so much alike"[15].
Morton contacted Vikan and sent him this grotesque image of his

(Morton's) face [Above (enlarge)[16].], formed using tannic acid and iron sulfate on a damp cloth (see below). So great was Vikan's need to disbelieve in the Shroud, that astonishingly for an art historian, he called Morton's grossly distorted face print, "shroudlike" and he "was convinced" (but Morton wasn't-see below):

"After a few more experiments, Bob sent a shroudlike print of his face. But for its roundness and spiky short hair, it could be almost mistaken for the face on the shroud. With that I was convinced"[17].

Several points: • Compare Morton's grotesque wrap-around distorted ("roundness"!) face imprint (above) with Secondo Pia's 1898 negative photograph of the Shroud face [Right (enlarge)[18]], a copy of which is on page 108G of Vikan's book. Clearly the Shroud image was not formed using Morton's technique.

• Morton's `replication' of the Shroud is only a face. It does not follow that the same technique could produce the Shroud's double-body image[19].

• There is no image under the blood on the Shroud, so a forger would have to apply the blood first and then form the image around it [see 05Nov17]. But Vikan, although he mentions the Shroudman's blood in his book (pp. 16-17, 80), he doesn't say how it would have been applied to Morton's `shroud'.

• Morton himself doesn't claim that the Shroud was created using his iron and tannic acid technique:

"Chemist Robert Morton explained at a Good Friday seminar at the Walters Art Museum's Graham Auditorium how a realistic shroud could be made using common scribe's chemicals available throughout human history. Morton prepared linen cloth with an iron solution, and then brought the coloration out with tannic acids -- revealing images of his wife, and his daughter's boyfriend similar to the faint negative image on the shroud. `The more pressure you put on it, the tannic acid moves around on the cloth so you get more reaction,' Morton said. In his `shroud of Leo' his bluetick hound, Morton said the pressure sensitivity revealed the eyeball and cornea under Leo's closed eyelid. He did not, however, make any claim about whether those methods were used in the shroud housed in Turin, Italy. `I'm a chemist, I make observations,' Morton said. `We don't have an opinion, we speak of possibilities.'" (my emphasis)[20].
• Morton's claim that the Shroud's image is comprised of iron-based ink doesn't fit the evidence discovered by STURP that, "there was no difference in iron content between image and non-image areas" and "the tiny amount of iron on the Shroud was too faint to be visible to the naked eye":
"Morton and Vikan are ignorant of the fact that STURP found in the 1970s that the iron on the Shroud was mixed with strontium and calcium and uniformly distributed, except for the blood areas, and therefore derived from the ancient process of retting flax in natural bodies of wate. And that there was no difference in iron content between image and non-image areas, proving that the image was not the result of the iron. Moreover, the tiny amount of iron on the Shroud was too faint to be visible to the naked eye. Only the blood areas showed more iron, but that is because blood's hemoglobin contains iron. So Vikan's `iron gall ink' forgery explanation of the Shroud's image (pp.88-89, 95, 158, 167, 176) is utterly and completely wrong![24Jul20] (footnotes omitted)

Vikan explains why the nails appear on the image to be driven through Jesus's wrists rather than the palms of the hands (the flesh would tear and the body drop to the ground); Vikan didn't explain it - he correctly acknowledged that it was Pierre Barbet (1884–1961) the chief surgeon at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Paris who discovered that:

"Wilson, for his part, gives the account of a French doctor and part-time sindonologists named Pierre Barbet, who in the thirties conducted a series of experiments with cadavers. He discovered that the human body cannot be supported on a cross by nails through the palms of the hands; the nails must be driven through the wrists, since the flesh of the hands will simply rip away and the body will fall to the ground. In medieval art, the nails of the Crucifixion are invariably set in the palms of Christ's hands. Crucifixion was abolished in the 4th century by Emperor Constantine. So how did the person who created the Man of the Shroud come up with that realistic crucifixion iconography?"[21].
That was on pages 33-34. Immediately before on pages 32-33 Vikan reveals that he became "an atheist at age thirteen" and was "a Midwestern [Lutheran] kid who had turned against his God":
"This made me wonder: Am I trustworthy? Should shroud enthusiasts trust a Minnesota Lutheran who quietly became an atheist at age thirteen? Was my skepticism born of the dispassionate thinking of a DO [Dumbarton Oaks] scholar or of the resentment of a Midwestern kid who had turned against his God? And wasn't I thinking teleologically as well, but as a `sindonoclast,' with the opposite foregone conclusion?"[22].
For Vikan, an atheist, it is a "foregone conclusion" that there is no God, therefore Christianity is false and the Shroud must be a "hoax." Then there would be no need to fairly consider the evidence for the Shroud being Jesus' burial sheet. And in fact that is what Vikan admits:
"Was I persuaded, even for a moment, by Ian Wilson? No, since for me, the rules of forgery detection are like the rules detectives follow in solving a murder: No amount of seemingly positive evidence in support of the accused can offset that damning, incontrovertible 1 percent that is revealing of guilt"[23].
Leaving aside that any detective who operated the way that Vikan does with the Shroud would be fired, or even jailed, Vikan shows that he is "invincibly ignorant" towards the Shroud's authenticity:
"There does remain, nonetheless, a cast of mind which seems peculiarly closed to evidence. When confronted with such a mind, one feels helpless, for no amount of evidence seems to be clinching. Frequently the facts are simply ignored or brushed aside as somehow deceptive, and the principles [e.g. atheism] are reaffirmed in unshakable conviction. One seems confronted with what has been called `invincible ignorance.'" (my emphasis)[24]

he also attributes the excessively long arms suggested by the shroud ... to the artist's wish to cover Christ's groin. This is false. As Ian Wilson, who is about the same height of the man on the Shroud, showed by posing for artist Isabel Piczek (1927-2016) in a

[Above (enlarge): Ian Wilson posing for artist Isabel Piczek in a similar bent knees crucifixion position, fixed by rigor mortis, as the man on the Shroud[25] (see below).]

similar crucified and fixed by rigor mortis position as the man on the

[Above: "G. Ricci, `Crucifixion,' sculpture in wood according to research carried out on the Holy Shroud"[26]. Italian artist Giulio Ricci (1913-95) reconstructed from the Shroud image the shape of the man's body, fixed in rigor mortis on a cross, at the moment of his death. The rigor of the man's arms above his head was later broken at the shoulders to bring them within the Shroud[27].]

Shroud, and as can be seen above, Wilson's hands easily covered his genitals!

In short, the Turin Shroud is a contrivance, a work of art, not something `made without hands', as the Byzantines conceived of their most holy icons ... If the Shroud is a work of medieval art, how come no modern artist (including Morton and Hoppe) can relicate even its face, let alone its double full-length body?

Such credence is of course remote from the concerns of those who have essayed several mistaken efforts to carbon-date the shroud, I don't understand what this means and I can't see it in Vikan's book.

and the loonies who to this day constitute STURP (the Shroud of Turin Research Project) ... STURP hasn't existed since the 1990s[28]. And far from being "loonies" STURP members were drawn from prestigious USA scientific organisations[29].

and publish a journal in the effort to make their case. STURP didn't "publish a journal" but published their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals[30]. Which is more than can be said for Morton and Hoppe's `shroud' face!

For my money, Vikan's book, unfurling this famous cloth with its accreted myth, is one of the most stimulating things I have read on the shroud ... "For the time will come when they will ... heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears" (2 Timothy 4:3)!

It has all the twists and turns of a classic detective story, illuminated by Vikan's intelligence and willingness to admit – to us and to himself – where over the years his hypotheses have been wrong, and what to do to check and correct them.Good! Then Vikan should correct Morton and Hoppe's absurd

[Above (enlarge)[31]: Extract from Shroud Scope of a close-up positive photograph of the Shroud man's mouth area. As can be seen, under the skin of the man's upper and lower lips are at least 4 pairs of upper and lower teeth with a bite line between them.]

claim [see 24Jul20] that the xray images of the Shroudman's teeth (see above and 16Sep18 & 20Apr17) are "likely folds in the fabric":

"The eerie presence of what look like teeth (in fact, they're likely folds in the fabric) coupled with faint, forward looking eyes (these in multiple, from multiple contact exposures) make the picture appear like an early, soft X-ray radiograph"[32]

The Holy Shroud is a work of empiricism in the service of both art and faith. As such it is very much a book for our times. The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death by Gary Vikan is published by Pegasus Books. See all the above that "a work of empiricism" Vikan's book most definitely is not! It is a work of anti-Christianity by which Vikan seeks (unsuccessfully) to self-justify his decision "at age thirteen" to "turn... against his God" (see above)!

Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. "About Gary Vikan," 2020. [return]
3. Ramsey, C.B., 2008, "The Shroud of Turin," Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, March. Last modified 17 July 2009. [return]
4. Vikan, G., 2020, "The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death," Pegasus Books: New York NY, pp.xv, 134. [return]
5. Berkovits, I., 1969, "Illuminated Manuscripts in Hungary, XI-XVI Centuries," Horn, Z., transl., West, A., rev., Irish University Press: Shannon, Ireland, pl. III. [return]
6. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.180. [return]
7. Wilson, I., 1990, "Correspondence," BSTS Newsletter, No. 25, April/May, pp.10-12, 10; Scavone, D.C., "The History of the Turin Shroud to the 14th C.," in Berard, A., ed., 1991, "History, Science, Theology and the Shroud," Symposium Proceedings, St. Louis Missouri, June 22-23, 1991, The Man in the Shroud Committee of Amarillo, Texas: Amarillo TX, pp.171-204, 193-194; Scavone, D.C., "Underscoring the Highly Significant Historical Research of the Shroud," in Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition, pp.xxvi-xxvii; Piana, A., 2007, "The Shroud's `Missing Years'," BSTS Newsletter, No. 66. December, pp.9-25,28-31; Fanti, G. & Malfi, P., 2015, "The Shroud of Turin: First Century after Christ!," Pan Stanford: Singapore, pp.54-55. [return]
8. "File:Surrender of the Mandylion to the Byzantines.jpg," in "Chronography of John Skylitzes, cod. Vitr. 26-2, folio 131a, Madrid National Library, Wikimedia Commons, 20 December 2012. [return]
9. "Madrid Skylitzes," Wikipedia, 16 November 2020. [return]
10. Scavone, 1991, p.194; Scavone, 2006, pp.xxvi-xxvii. [return]
11. "944: Byzantine Empire," Wikipedia, 26 November 2020. [return]
12. de Wesselow, 2012, p.183. [return]
13. Vikan, 2020, pp.v, 86-87. [return]
14. Vikan, 2020, p.86. [return]
15. Vikan, 2020, p.87. [return]
16. Vikan, 2020, p.108M. [return]
17. Vikan, 2020, p.89. [return]
18. "Holy Face of Jesus," Wikipedia, 16 February 2021. [return]
19. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.122. [return]
20. Hille, K., 2007, "Demonstration calls shroud into question," Washington Examiner, 7 April. [return]
21. Vikan, 2020, pp.33-34. [return]
22. Vikan, 2020, p.32. [return]
23. Vikan, 2020, p.33. [return]
24. Fearnside, W.W. & Holther, W.B., 1959, "Fallacy the Counterfeit of Argument," Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs NJ, 25th printing, p.113. [return]
25. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.50. [return]
26. Ricci, G., 1978, "The Way of the Cross in the Light of the Holy Shroud," Center for the Study of the Passion of Christ and the Holy Shroud: Milwaukee WI, Second edition, Reprinted, 1982, p.61. [return]
27. Bucklin, R., 1970, "The Legal and Medical Aspects of the Trial and Death of Christ," Medicine, Science and the Law, January; Meacham, W., 1983, "The Authentication of the Turin Shroud: An Issue in Archaeological Epistemology," Current Anthropology, Vol. 24, No. 3, June, pp.283-311, 284; Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY, p.80; Zugibe, F.T., 1988, "The Cross and the Shroud: A Medical Enquiry into the Crucifixion," [1982], Paragon House: New York NY, Revised edition, p.132; Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.65; de Wesselow, 2012, p.146 [return]
28. Meacham, W., 2005, "The Rape of the Turin Shroud: How Christianity's Most Precious Relic was Wrongly Condemned and Violated," Lulu Press: Morrisville NC, p.150; Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, p.261. [return]
29. "Shroud of Turin Research Project," Wikipedia, 18 January 2021. [return]
30. Schwortz, B.M., 1996, "STURP's Published Papers," Shroud.com; de Wesselow, 2012, p.22. [return]
31. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002 Face Only Vertical," Sindonology.org. [return]
32. Vikan, 2020, p.171. [return]

Posted: 21 February 2021. Updated: 26 March 2021.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Evidence in Timothy Linick's autopsy report that he was murdered disguised as suicide!

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

Further to my previous post, "Telephone Calls to Tucson about the Suicide of Timothy Linick," this is the thirteenth and final installment (which is just a general tidying up of loose ends, albeit unfinished) of my presentation of the evidence in Timothy Linick's autopsy report [Page 1 Right[2]], that he was murdered disguised as suicide!

Joe Marino has placed the full autopsy report on his website at: http://newvistas.homestead.com/Linick_autopsy_report_1989.pdf

Here is my summary reconstruction of Linick's murder by the KGB, made to look like suicide [links to be added]: • Timothy Linick, • under the influence of sleeping medication, • was overpowered by two strong male KGB agents while asleep in his bed (not necessarily in his home because he was separated from his wife and young son). • The two men tied Linick's left hand, presumably to his bed, with black adhesive tape. • While the second man held Linick, • a gun (it didn't have to be Linick's because Arizona has no gun registration), fitted with a removable silencer, was a gun forced into Linick's right hand by the first man, so that Linick's fingerprints would be on the gun. • The gun, in Linick's right hand, was forced by the first man up to the right side of Linick's head. • The first man forced Linick's finger to pull the trigger. • Linick was killed instantly by the bullet passing through his brain. • The first man removed the silencer from the gun, leaving it in Linick's right hand. • The hand of the first man which had held the gun to Linick's head would have been splashed by some of the blood from the entrance wound (as Linick's right hand holding the gun was), • so he wiped the blood off his hand with a tissue, placed it in Linick's left hand and closed it over the tissue. • The second man undid the black adhesive tape tieing Linick's left hand to the bed but left some attached to Linick's palm and index finger (as it was presumably dark in the early morning with no light on).

According to my hacker theory[3]: • Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory physicist Timothy W. Linick (1946-89)[4]; • working for the KGB[5]; • wrote a program which converted the radiocarbon date of samples from the first-century Shroud of Turin to a combined average across three laboratories of 1260-1390, the mid-point of which was 1325 ±65[6], only ~30 years before the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history at Lirey, France, in c. 1355[7]. • After installing his program on Arizona laboratory's AMS computer[8]; • Linick then passed it to the KGB to have it installed on Zurich and Oxford laboratories' identical AMS computers[9]. • The KGB used one of its hackers, West German Karl Koch (1965-89), to install Linick's program on Zurich and Oxford's AMS computers[10]. • In mid-1987 West German hacker Markus Hess, was arrested for hacking into USA military and commercial installations[11]. • In early 1988, Koch and Hans Heinrich Huebner, members of the same German hacker ring as Hess[12], took advantage of an amnesty for espionage in West German law and confessed their hacking for the KGB to the West German authorities[13]. • Koch, a recovering drug addict, became a Christian and started talking about his hacking of the Shroud's radiocarbon dating[14]. • On 23 May 1989, Koch went missing from his Hanover workplace[15]. • On 1 June 1989 a burnt body, murdered made to look like suicide, was discovered on the edge of a forest outside Hanover with Koch's work vehicle nearby[16]. • On 3 June 1989 the West German police publicly identified the body as Koch's. • The next day, 4 June 1989, Timothy Linick's body was discovered in Tucson, Arizona[17], also murdered made to look like suicide[18]!

Below is page 2 of Linick's autopsy report, performed on 5 June 1989 by Dr Bruce Parks, then Deputy Medical Examiner, Pima County, Arizona (which includes Tucson). An anonymous commenter under

[Above: Page 2 of Linick's autopsy report, finding that Linick "died of a gunshot wound of the head" and he had a "Clinical history of depression"[19].]

this post, commented on on 6 February) that Dr Parks is now "a Forensic Pathology Specialist in Tucson" at the "University Medical Center ... Tucson." I found Dr Parks' email address and emailed him that same day, questions [see my comment below] about his autopsy of Linick and if he has a copy of the police report he could email me. I would be surprised if Dr Parks does remember what he did on 5 June 1989 (nearly 32 years ago) but I am hoping that Linick's death might have seemed unusual to him and/or he might have records of it, including the police report.

But even if Dr Parks doesn't reply to my email, and even if he does reply but doesn't remember the circumstances surrounding Linick's death, there is the evidence of: 1) Arizona laboratory leader Paul Damon (1921-2005)'s `Freudian slip' that Linick "possibly committed suicide":

"PD: Because he had problems and he possibly committed suicide, that is how it happened. We have no doubts about it, his family has no doubts about it. He had threatened. I guess people couldn't think that he ... I see your point, you want a murder or something, well that's ... " (my emphasis)[20];
2) French scholar Claude de Cointet's question about the "Masons ... killing people ... disguised in [as] suicide"; and 3) Damon's repeated evasiveness in not answering de Cointet's simple questions about how did Linick commit suicide; that there must have been doubt at the time that Linick committed suicide and was murdered made to look like suicide!

Page 3 of Linick's autopsy report below, states that Linick "apparently

[Above: Page 3 of Linick's autopsy report, citing the "Cicumstances of death" and "Identification"[21].]

shot himself in the head." Clearly that means there was, and is, doubt as to whether Linick committed suicide or was murdered. Shooting a person in the head and making it look like suicide would seem to be a relatively easy way to `get away with murder'. Two or three men could overpower the victim, place a gun at his head and pull the trigger. There is "a scientific literature" devoted to determining whether a fatal gunshot wound to the head was suicide or murder. Linick's half-brother Anthony Linick emailed me in 2016 that, "I don't know if there was a suicide note or not"[22], which I presumed meant that Linick left no suicide note, as Anthony would surely know if he had. Especially since Anthony phoned Linick's mother (not Anthony's) "every few months ... from this point [June 1989] until her death in 1993"[23]. The 4th of June 1989 was a Sunday and Linick's body was pronounced dead by a police officer at 2014 hours (8:14pm). See page 4 below where Linick seems to have been in his sleeping clothes.

Page 4 of Linick's autopsy report below revealed that his body was only

[Above: Page 4 of Linick's autopsy report[24], that Linick was only "partially clad"; "The [brown paper] bag of the right hand is stained with blood"; "Over the dorsolateral [upper side] right forearm is faint purple-yellow ... contusion"; Linick was only "167.6 cm (66 inches) or 5ft 6in tall and wighed only "61.4 kg (135 pounds)"; "rigor is well-developed" and his "body is cool.]

"partially clad" in a "pair of ... short pants" and a "short sleeved shirt" with no underwear. So it seems that Linick was in his sleeping clothes. If Linick was murdered then presumbly he was overpowered (see above that Linick was a small man) when asleep and either killed in his bed or taken somewhere where the sound of the gunshot couldn't be heard. Linick "was separated from his wife"[25] so he may have been living where there were no near neighbours. Since abducting Linick would run the very real risk of being seen by near neighbours, especially if Linick was struggling and calling for help, as he likely would have, I assume that there were no near neighbours and Linick was overpowered while asleep (see future page 10 that he had taken sleeping medication) and killed in his bed.

"Clenched within the left hand is a blood stained white tissue" (see above). This the strongest item of evidence that Linick was murdered in a simulated suicide by forcing his right hand to grip a gun (it didn't have to be Linick's[26]), put it against Linick's right temple (see page 6) and pull the trigger. The murderer's hand forcing Linick' hand to hold the gun would have been stained with Linick's blood, as the paper bag over Linick's right hand was (see above). The murderer would have to wipe the blood off his hand, most likely with a disposable tissue. But he couldn't take the tissue with him in case he was found with it; he couldn't throw the tissue in a bin because police might find it; he couldn't flush it down the toilet because his fingerprints would be on the cistern and traces of blood might remain in the toilet's water. The ready solution would be to put the bloodstained tissue in Linick's left hand, close it around the tissue, and hope that the police wouldn't ask how it got there! But how did Linick's blood get on the tissue? It had to be a lot of blood to stain a tissue. Yet there is no mention in the autopsy report of another source of blood on Linick's body, and there would have been if there was.

The autopsy report mentions (above) a "faint purple-yellow" and therefore over a week old[27] small "3.5 x 2.5 contusion." So it would certainly have mentioned a source of recent blood large enough to stain a tissue if there had been one. The only source of blood therefore on the tissue would have been from Linick's right hand or his head. But Linick would have been killed instantly by the bullet passing through his brain - see "Exit Wound" page 5 (below), so he could not have wiped his hand or head with a tissue. If Linick's left hand had been holding a tissue against where the bullet's exit would be to soak up the blood, an exit impact strong enough to stain the tissue with blood would have blown the tissue away and injured his left hand. Otherwise there is the unlikelihood of Linick's left hand being closed around a tissue, him shooting himself fatally in the head and his left hand remaining closed around the tissue. Presumably the shock to Linick's nervous system would have been so great that his hand would have opened and not closed again.

Page 5 of the autopsy report under "Extremities" mentions that "a

[Above: Page 5 of Linick's autopsy report.]

black material is focally over the palm of the left hand especially over the left index finger"[28]. The report doesn't say what this "black material" was, but clearly it wasn't a bandage covering a wound or supporting a fracture, because the autopsy report would have mentioned it (indeed page 8 says, "No skeletal abnormalities are appreciated"). And the fact that it remained in place on the palm and index finger all through Linick's body being put in a body bag and placed on an autopsy cart (see page 4) can only mean it was stuck on. And if so, it was a remnant of black adhesive tape that had been used to tie Linick's hands, presumably to his bed, to make it easier to force Linick to hold a gun to his head and pull the trigger in a murder disguised as suicide! Under "GUNSHOT WOUND (above), the descriptions of the "Entrance Wound" and "Exit Wound" (and below) "Wound Track") make it clear that Linick would have died instantly.

Page 6 of the autopsy report under "Wound Track" further makes it clear that Linick would have been killed instantly by the bullet which passed through both the "right temporoparietal lobe" and the "left

[Above: Page 6 of Linick's autopsy report describing the bullet's "Wound Track"[29].]

[Above: "Brain lobes - Mayo Clinic"[30] showing the left "temporal lobe" and the left "parietal lobe" so presumably "temporoparietal lobe" is the area between and including the temporal and the parietal lobes.]

temporoparietal lobe" and exited the left skull."

Skipping over uninteresting pages 7 to 9 (see the full report), to the last

page 10 of Linick's autopsy report [Above[31].] As can be seen, under "Urine TLC Results," Linick's urine contained traces of trazodone which is "an antidepressant medication ... used to treat major depressive disorder ..."[32]. This indicates that Linick was being treated for his depression, which would have reduced the risk of him committing suicide[33]. Linick's urine also contained traces of benzodiazepines which are minor tranquillisers to relieve stress and anxiety and to help people sleep[34]. Likely it was the benzodiazepine diazepam (Valium)[35]. Linick might have been too drugged to fully realise what was happening. The diphenhydramine in Linick's urine is an antihistamine used to relieve symptoms of allergy, hay fever, and the common cold[36].

Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Bates, A.L., 2021, "AUTOPSY Timothy Linick," DOC012721.pdf, pp.1-10, 1, in email 27 January 2021, 10:35 AM, from Amber L. Bates, Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, Tucson, AZ, by "Fw: AUTOPSY Timothy Linick," email from Joe Marino, 27 January 2021, 11:45 pm. [return]
3. 24May14, 23Jul15. [return]
4. Jull, A.J.T. & Suess, H.E., 1989, "Timothy W. Linick," Radiocarbon, Vol 31, No 2. [return]
5. 24May14; 03Jun14; 21Jul14. [return]
6. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, p.264; Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, p.7; Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition, pp.168-169; Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, pp.60-61; de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.172. [return]
7. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.91; Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA, pp.13-15; Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, pp.180-181; Wilson, 1998, p.111; Ruffin, C.B., 1999, "The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN, p.64; Oxley, 2010, pp.4, 48, 51; Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, pp.222-224; de Wesselow, 2012, p.14. [return]
8. 03Jun14; 24Jun14; 15Jul18; 13Dec14; 22Feb16. [return]
9. 13Jun14; 05Jul14; 11Feb15. [return]
10. 03Jun14, 24Jun14. [return]
11. 21Jul14. [return]
12. 03Jun14; 21Jul14. [return]
13. 21Jul14, 13Dec14, 17May15. [return]
14. Reference(s) to be provided. [return]
15. Reference(s) to be provided. [return]
16. Reference(s) to be provided. [return]
17. Reference(s) to be provided. [return]
18. Reference(s) to be provided. [return]
19. Bates, 2021, p.2. [return]
20. Marino, J.G., 2020, "Transcript of phone call about Timothy Linick," 23 October 2020, 8:16 pm. [return]
21. Bates, 2021, p.3. [return]
22. 22Feb16. [return]
23. 30Dec15. [return]
24. Bates, 2021, p.4. [return]
25. 09Jan21. [return]
26. "Gun laws in Arizona," Wikipedia, 20 January 2021. [return]
27. Timmons, J., 2019, "The Colorful Stages of Bruises: What’s Going on in There?," Healthline, 8 March. [return]
28. Bates, 2021, p.5. [return]
29. Bates, 2021, p.6. [return]
30. "Brain lobes," Mayo Clinic, 2021. [return]
31. Bates, 2021, p.10. [return]
32. "Trazodone," Wikipedia, 5 February 2021. [return]
33. Rihmer, Z., 2020, "Can better recognition and treatment of depression reduce suicide rates? A brief review," European Psychiatry, Vol. 16, No. 7, 16 April. [return]
34. "Benzodiazepines," Alcohol and Drug Foundation, 6 October 2020. [return]
35. "Benzodiazepine," Wikipedia, 31 January 2021. [return]
36. "Diphenhydramine," Wikipedia, 9 February 2021. [return]

Posted: 3 February 2021. Updated: 19 February 2021.