The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [126]
“But Bucholtz wasn’t your only interview, right?” Dunaway skillfully shifted the focus of the discussion. “You also interviewed a well-known skeptic.”
“That’s right,” Ferrar said, picking up Dunaway’s segue. “I also interviewed Dr. Marco Gabrielli, a professor of chemistry on the faculty of the University of Bologna. Gabrielli has made a career debunking religious and other paranormal phenomena. He’s best at exposing frauds, like statues of Jesus that appear to cry tears of blood, when all that’s involved is filling a porous cavity in the statue’s head with a liquid solution that looks like blood. Here’s what Professor Gabrielli told us.”
Another split screen showed Ferrar in the television studio in Rome interviewing Gabrielli in his office in Bologna.
“It was classic misdirection,” Gabrielli said on camera. “Every magician in the world since before the time of Houdini knows their illusions depend on creating a diversion that distracts the attention of the audience. That burst of light that blinded all of us in the Chapel of the Shroud was one of the best I’ve ever seen. We were all thrown into confusion, even me. Who knows what really happened? Sure, it looks like Father Bartholomew and Anne Cassidy vaporized into pure energy and disappeared through the Shroud, but can you prove to me there wasn’t a trap door in that room that allowed them to escape without any supernatural effects whatsoever?”
“So you disagree with Dr. Bucholtz, then.” Ferrar pressed the chemist. “You don’t think we witnessed any ‘event horizon’ or ‘passing into another dimension’? Nothing supernatural as far as you’re concerned, is that right?”
“Right.” Gabrielli said without any hesitation whatsoever. “Magicians have been making people disappear for generations. Usually they use a curtain, or they have a person go into some sort of a cabinet or box before the magician makes them disappear. But I have to admit that a blinding flash of light is every bit as good as any physical apparatus magicians have designed over the decades to pull off their disappearing tricks.”
“Are you trying to duplicate the illusion right now?” Ferrar asked.
“Absolutely,” Gabrielli said. “And I am pretty well along the way to figuring it out. My only questions now are who was paying Father Bartholomew and Anne Cassidy for pulling off this trick, and how much money did they walk away with? I also wouldn’t mind tracking them down so I could prove to the world they are frauds. That should be pretty obvious after I find out where they went to spend their money.”
“Well, that should settle it, don’t you think?” Dunaway asked Ferrar as the camera returned to the New York studio.
“It might,” Ferrar said, “except for one thing.”
“What’s that?” Dunaway asked, looking surprised.
“We’ve managed to find a picture of Anne Bartholomew, Father Bartholomew’s mother,” Ferrar said as the picture went up on the television screen. “When we set that photo side by side with the recent photos of Anne Cassidy, the woman who came on the scene as Father Paul Bartholomew’s half sister, the two women look exactly alike.”
The photo of Anne Cassidy came on the screen next to the old photo of Anne Bartholomew, the mother of Father Bartholomew, and the resemblance was obvious.
“So, to find out for sure if Anne Bartholomew and Anne Cassidy are the same person, we consulted an expert in face-recognition software,” Ferrar said. “Michael Winters, in Concord, New Hampshire. Winters is founder and CEO of a company that works with casinos to find card counters and cheats even when they try to disguise their facial appearance.”
“Very interesting,” Dunaway said, now looking intrigued. “What did you find out?”
“Here’s a clip from the special,” Ferrar said. “I interviewed Winters in his home office by remote video this morning.”
The split screen came up on camera again. Ferrar in the New York studio was talking with Winters at his computer in his New Hampshire office.
“So, if you are following me,” Winters said in the clip Ferrar had chosen for the promo