April 16th, 1981. Geraldo Rivera for Eyewitness News brings us an investigation into the religious relic many believe Jesus was buried in.
“In 1978, a group of 30 respected scientists…was given access to the shroud for intensive investigation….the report is going to cause an uproar.”
We begin in the old city of Jerusalem, at the very spot where Jesus Christ was condemned to death. Around the 1300s, the Shroud of Turin was put on public display for the first time by the descendants of a medieval knight who allegedly brought this holy relic back from the crusades. After a traditional history of the object we move on to the technical details and laboratory work, could the mythology be true? Nuclear scientists, chemists and more talk about the processes undertaken to find out what’s real and what’s not. After two and half years of intense, expensive research, the scientists are sure this shroud is no forgery.
Images of the shroud are shown throughout this segment, and it continues to be venerated as a holy item of the Christian world in 2026.
This day, Geraldo’s television history.