Raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Rebecca Jackson, now 60, was 34 when she impulsively decided to enlist in the Army and ended up at Ft. Carson, near Colorado Springs, as a cook. She converted to Christianity, a religion she said began to appeal to her as a teenager.
In 1990, she was watching a documentary on the shroud when it occurred to her that the image of the man's face looked like her grandfather's. She tracked down Jackson, who had appeared in the film and also lived in Colorado Springs, to talk about her reaction. Their shared interest in the shroud led to a relationship between the soft-spoken academic and the effusive woman, and her religious conversion followed. Together, they give speeches worldwide and run the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado, with their research funded mostly by donations.
Twice a week, John Jackson works with a team of volunteer researchers in his Colorado Springs laboratory. Stretched across one wall is a life-size photo of the shroud; on a table is the Styrofoam figure of a man, dubbed Roger, an approximation of Jesus' body in his tomb. Jackson has conducted research on the shroud's crease marks, image formation and how blood flows from a crucified body, which he studied by suspending his own body from a cross.
Keith Propp, 55, has worked with Jackson for the last 23 years. "It's like we're on an archaeological expedition that's not finished. I'm not sure we'll ever be truly finished," he said. "A lot of the pleasure is in the journey itself."
These days, the journey focuses on the radiocarbon issue -- working to prepare samples for evaluation at Oxford.
"If we get to the point where we believe we have a viable hypothesis that works in the lab, then we have scientific grounds to go to Turin and say, 'Here's what we think has happened to the shroud. These are the effects we need to look for. Can we please have access?' " said Jackson, who does not subscribe to the theory that the tested sample was different than the rest of the shroud.
Though Ramsey, of Oxford, agreed to collaborate, he has said that he doesn't believe contamination would have had much effect. So far, Jackson's initial tests have shown no significant reaction. But the team has yet to reproduce the specific storage conditions of the shroud, Ramsey noted.
Because his laboratory is small, with only one reaction chamber in which to prepare the samples, Jackson said, it could take many months to complete the experiment.
