There’s a new entry in the popular true crime segment, “Murder Among the Mormons.” It’s a three-part documentary that opened on Netflix last week. It tells the story of how Mark Hofmann, a young Mormon collector and seller of LDS historical documents, became perhaps the most skilled forger of historical documents in American history. The prime targets of his schemes were other Mormon collectors, including the LDS Church. When a big ticket scheme involving “the McLellin collection” started to unravel in October 1985 and threatened to expose Hofmann, he turned to murder, planting two bombs in Salt Lake City which killed two people.
Shortly thereafter, a third bomb exploded in Hofmann’s car as he was unloading it for placement somewhere in downtown Salt Lake City. Hofmann himself was badly injured. Law enforcement quickly figured out that Hofmann had not discovered but had forged many of the documents he had sold. In January 1987 he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and a variety of other crimes associated with his forgery schemes. There was no trial. Hofmann and prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain deal. He remains in prison in Utah.
That’s the first story. There are several book-length treatments of the whole affair where you can read all the details. There is Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders, by Linda Stillitoe and Allen Roberts, first published in 1988 by Signature Books. A second excellent treatment is Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, by Richard E. Turley, published by the University of Illinois Press in 1992.
The Second Story
Apart from the first story, the true crime story, there is a second story about the role of the LDS Church in the events before and after Hofmann’s arrest and conviction. Call it a sinister church story, a genre you are no doubt familiar with from Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code and its sequels. One aspect of this second story is that LDS leadership approved the purchase of several documents from Hofmann without recognizing that the documents were forgeries. That is rather unsettling to some mainstream Mormons who attribute spiritual superpowers to LDS leaders, or at least to the President of the Church. Another aspect of the second story is that the content of some of the forged documents (initially accepted as authentic by most people, including several experts) provided details and episodes that were inconsistent with standard LDS accounts of Mormon origins. The documents suggested there was more magic than religion in the early Mormon story.
A final aspect of this second story was the idea that the Church may have acquired some documents from Hofmann (either directly or from third parties who purchased them, then gifted them to the Church) not for the purpose of displaying them or making them available to scholars but, instead, to bury them in some vault or archive, never to be seen again. Think of the closing scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. That is a controversial claim and there is evidence on both sides. You’ll have to read one of the books listed above and come to your own conclusion. The second story, about the role of the Church, is much more interesting than the first story, the true crime story. The Netflix documentary gets plenty of mileage from the second story.
The Third Story
Yes, there’s a third story. How did you come to learn of these events? You certainly didn’t hear about it in Sunday School. If you lived in the Salt Lake City area in the mid-1980s, you might have lived those events in real time or seen television coverage on local TV stations. If you lived anywhere else in the United States in the mid-1980s, you might have read a story or two in your local newspaper (to younger readers: newspapers are large ink-on-paper devices that people used to read to obtain information about daily events before there were cell phones and the Internet). If you weren’t old enough in the mid-1980s to read or care about Mormon history, where did you learn about the Hofmann forgeries and the Church’s role? I was around and interested but happened to be overseas at the time and did not hear a thing about the whole affair until months afterwards. Later, I read the Salamander book listed above. I’m sure the whole affair was more traumatic for those in the Salt Lake area who lived the events in real time and who possibly felt personally at risk.
Of course, there are many Mormons who are living this third story right now, as they view the Netflix series or hear about it from a friend or coworker. I got one of these from a friend earlier this week who was getting needled by non-LDS coworkers. “Hey Dave, what’s the deal with this Salamander Letter?” The only way to answer that is to tell what I called “the first story.” But it’s not like there’s a satisfying short answer for someone who isn’t already familiar with the details. First you tell about the document and why it was interesting. Then you explain it was actually a forged document. But that some of the details in the forged document were disturbingly plausible. Then you explain there were a lot of other forged LDS historical documents, and how the forger made a lot of money selling them to LDS collectors, including the Church. Then you have to sort of explain why LDS collectors, including LDS leaders, were willing to pay thousands of dollars for these forged documents. Were they gullible, or just caught off their guard? And it just keeps going. Every answer raises two more questions. Before you know it, you’re talking about treasure spirits and peep stones and D. Michael Quinn’s 1987 book Early Mormonism and the Magical Worldview.
Conclusion
One last item. The Church had some advance notice that the Netflix series was coming. In response, an essay was recently posted at LDS.org that provides some details on the whole affair, titled “Hofmann forgeries.” It’s squirreled away in the History Topics section, with no mention of it or link provided on the LDS home page. If you don’t already know it’s there, you probably won’t find it. It’s actually a very good summary, and no doubt carries added credibility for puzzled friends or family members because it’s at LDS.org. It does sort of slide over some details. For example, “[Hofmann] also forged an 1830 letter from Martin Harris (known as the “salamander letter”), which described Joseph Smith being involved in folk-magic practices.” Yes, the letter was forged, but he didn’t just make up the idea that Joseph was involved in folk magic. That was part of the con. The whole idea of passing off a recently created document as an authentically ancient document goes well beyond the Mark Hoffman episode. Christian history is full of this sort of thing (for starters, see Donation of Constantine). The Christian Bible is full of this sort of thing (for starters, see the Book of Daniel). Mormon history is full of this sort of thing.
As a conclusion, I’ll bet some readers have a very interesting third story to tell. Where did you first hear the story of the Mormon murders and the forged documents? If you have read one of the books or just watched the Netflix series, what do you think of the Church’s involvement? Did it lead to more transparency and more access to historical documents held by the Church? Or did it have the opposite effect, at least for a generation?
Wheat & Tares 
I remember an episode of a show on a cable channel (either A&E or the History Channel) on the Hoffman forgeries and murders in the mid 90s. Maybe History’s Mysteries? If it was the History Channel, it would have been long before it went full-on “ALIENS!!!” I remember my dad was flipping channels, saw a picture of the SLC temple and naturally stopped to see what it was. We watched a few minutes, then he changed the channel and told me this was not a big deal to the membership at the time. Maybe it wasn’t, because we never lived in the Mormon corridor.
The story of the murders (by bombs wrapped in brown parcels) made national news, which is how I heard of it living back in Pennsylvania where I grew up. This was in 1985, and the Unibomber had been committing these types of murders from 1981-1984, so there was some sense that it was all kind of related, although not the same killer–maybe a copycat. I didn’t really understand the forgery aspect until I got out to BYU in 1986, and then I heard all about the salamander letter, which I thought was an interesting story. I considered myself an atheist at the time, so I really didn’t have a dog in the fight, but I thought it was perfectly plausible that the Church would buy the letter to bury it, not knowing whether it was authentic or not, but if they knew it was authentic somehow, then burying it would be dishonest and damning of the faith narrative.
In the series, when Hofmann is quoted as saying he originally thought to make it a toad that talked to Joseph Smith, then he changed it to a white salamander to “spice it up,” all I could think was that he had a sense of humor about what he was doing, even though he was a sociopath. I also wondered after watching the docuseries what influence his orthodox upbringing had. He was clearly a closeted atheist since a very young age, but he went through all the Mormon markers anyway, staying in the closet about his non-belief. Essentially, even aside from the forgeries (which he started at age 8 by altering coins!) his whole life as a Mormon was a deliberate deception. That’s got to have downstream impacts on a person’s psyche. While some Mormon families work that way, the one place I can think of where you really have to hide your unbelief currently, or risk losing everything, is BYU. That wasn’t always the case, but it certainly is now, and the consequences are dire (lost tuition investment, etc) if you openly claim that you don’t believe. How many people’s minds and hearts are we twisting in dysfunctional ways by requiring them to live a lie?
The Mark Hoffman story is old enough now to be considered Church history. And like most other Church history, you will find critics on one side, apologists on the other, and many folks in between who don’t care. I’ll ignore that third group since they aren’t very interesting and I’ll focus on the other two.
Critics (progressive Mormons, x-Mormons, non-members) view the Hoffman story as one in which Church authorities behaved in a way that would suggest there was something to hide. And why would they hide these documents? Because they highlighted Joseph Smith’s involvement in folk magic (well documented). This inconvenient truth isn’t part of the official narrative so the Church needed to “get rid” of potential evidence. I think it’s very telling that Church leaders would consider the Salamander Letter and other items to be potentially true. What does that say about their view of JS’s links to magic?
Apologists seem to not mind the Hoffman story because they are able to place all the blame for the events on Hoffman himself. After all, he was a criminal who tried to rip off the Church. Apologists are totally focused on Hoffman and in this story, they don’t want to talk at all about the power of discernment. The power of discernment is a topic that apologists would usually be very comfortable discussing. Furthermore, apologists enjoy linking Hoffman to progressives within the Church History Department who vouched for Hoffman. On the other hand, they don’t seem inclined at all to give credit to the Tanners (well know Church critics) for recognizing before everyone else that the Hoffman docs were bogus.
So like a lot of things, we see what we want to see. I see further evidence that the Brethren know that Joseph Smith was heavily involved with folks magic and that the power of discernment among Church leaders is totally lacking. But I guess some of you simply see the evil of a forger and thief and murderer.
I moved back to Utah in mid-1985 before this all happened. I was 37 years old and, for example, had already read Jerald & Sandra Tanner’s *Mormonism – Shadow or Reality* (published in 1972) and had read about the story of Helmuth Huebener, etc., along with the routine LDS menu. I was an RM, temple married (although not raised in a necessarily LDS loving family). My wife and I worked in Salt Lake, commuted there together and lived in Layton. We had four children. I worked in the Federal Building. On October 15, 1985, a Tuesday, we went to work as we did the next day, Wednesday, and usually every weekday. Of course the bombings were broadcast all over in the news, and we listened and knew what had been reported.
On our commute on the 16th, we exited I-15 at Beck Street and then turned onto Victory Road, which took us past the Utah Capitol. We continued on down to Main Street right past where the bomb in Hofmann’s car exploded.
I have read *Salamander: The Story . . .*, watched the Netflix series, watched and read comments on the Facebook watch sponsored by Sunstone and Lindsay Hansen Park, etc.
I believe that the Church should have been and should be fully transparent when it comes to all such matters. It has not been nor is it now. I believe the Hofmann episode and its history all added to and add to the increasing necessity for transparency, although, sadly, not profoundly.
This so-called documentary represents the worst of what modern Hollywood has to offer. It is very disappointing that Hess is involved in this fiasco.
The modern entertainment industry has an open and stated agenda of glorifying violence and promoting wanton sexuality. Part of this agenda includes an attempt to destroy religion and traditional marriage
Modern Hollywood portrays marriage as a burdensome institution to be scorned and ridiculed. Indeed, Hollywood treats marriage as something to be avoided at all costs.
This so-called documentary sensationalizes the violence committed by Hofmann. It also pokes fun and religion in general to show that Hofmann’s marriage was a farce.
I urge all responsibility parents to avoid this fiasco. I for one will be boycotting it.
Sadly this is a self inflicted would that came from the leadership allowing the members to believe that the Q15 have a nonstop communication going on with God and God constantly keeping everything in check.
Had we not allowed this myth to persist, we could have easily explained away that our leadership consists of men who at times are inspired by God but aren’t switched on 100% of the time. So yes, a forger could trick them because they’re men.
Regarding the burying of documents in a vault, while I believe 100% that this was on the agenda (see the history of the first version of the First Vision and how it was hidden), because things didn’t get that far, there’s still room for doubt.
Anyone who disagrees and says that Leadership has taken an active effort to dispel this myth… please tell me the last time anyone from the top issued any clarification. I’m not aware of it and I’d love to have it on hand so I can share it with others.
john charity spring: i keep looking for a follow-up from you indicating that you were just trolling us
John Charity Spring: I’m with josh h. You must be joking. You make ridiculous claims about the “agenda” of a documentary you then state you haven’t seen! And your assessment is way off base to boot. The documentary isn’t a vilification of marriage on any level. On the contrary, the families, Hofmann’s ex-wife and Christensen’s widow in particular, come across as very sympathetic and having normal, positive marriages and families. In the case of Hofmann’s family, the videos showing the family together highlight how pathological he was. EVERY documentary about pathological liars / serial killers looks like this. Their lives are all about deceiving people. That’s not an indictment of marriage or puppy dogs or rainbows. It’s an indictment of SERIAL KILLERS.
My wife and I just watched all three parts of the documentary the other night. We felt that Jared Hess did an excellent job of telling the story and kept it quite balanced overall. We were going to BYU in that era and this gave us a chance to discuss what memories we had of interviews, newscasts, etc. Always fun to see the mullet hair style of the 80s. I was impressed with just how much video footage they were able to integrate into the three parts.
I noticed there wasn’t much discussion if any on the role that Elder Oaks and Elder Pinnock played regarding the First Interstate loan they were facilitating for Hoffman or any other financial arrangements. That part is still fuzzy to me. I was also curious why nothing seemed to show up in the Sandra Tanner interview clips regarding how the Tanners ironically felt that the white salamander letter was a fake even though it would have played to their advantage. The documentary gave me a much broader empathy for the families impacted by tragic loss of life and the damage Mark Hoffman caused with his own little family.
My main memory I have of the whole affair is being in the second semester (summer of 1985) of a church history course when our BYU religion professor came in to class with a copy of the letter and read it out loud to us. Since it wasn’t known to be a forgery yet, he helped our class of somewhat naive undergraduates, come to grips (at least to a small degree) with the role that folk magic played in the resurrection.
Currently, I’m reading Turley’s book Victims and am starting to better appreciate the tight spot President Hinckley must have found himself in. I will have to give him the benefit of the doubt on this and assume that he was doing his best to fulfill the mandate of keeping a history of the Church and not just burying the history. I was interested in how the Reorganized Church incorporated the Joseph Smith III blessing forgery into their own canon of scriptures, only to find out later it was fraudulent and had to pull it back out. I had no idea there were over 40 documents involved that our church either purchased or was gifted.
Those are my takeaways so far, but a quick question for anyone: Do we have a more pinpointed estimate on when the “Hoffman Forgeries” entry showed up in our Gospel Library (Church History Topics). Was it days, weeks, or months ago?
Thanks Dave B for getting the discussion off and running. I always appreciate your essays and great questions you pose at the bottom.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Angela C said, “the one place I can think of where you really have to hide your unbelief currently, or risk losing everything, is BYU.” Some universities, you go to find yourself. But you go to BYU to hide yourself.
John Charity Spring said, “This so-called documentary sensationalizes the violence committed by Hofmann.” You can’t tell the story without featuring some of the violence. But I think they tried not to make Hofmann a hero or to sensationalize the violence. I think they did sensationalize the “sinister church” aspect of the story. But hey, it’s Hollywood. On balance, they did a decent job telling the story. And it’s a story worth telling.
Andy said, “Sadly this is a self inflicted would that came from the leadership allowing the members to believe that the Q15 have a nonstop communication going on with God and God constantly keeping everything in check.” They’re human and they can make mistakes. That shouldn’t be so hard for them to say and it shouldn’t be so hard for members to accept.
My tiny little personal sidelight to the Hoffman forgeries, and insight that I gained into others who were involved:
In the mid-1980s I had a professional connection with Dean Jessee, who was in charge of the Joseph Smith papers project. Dean had started this project a few years before that, and he had just published “The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith”, which was kind of a “greatest hits” of the JS documents (at least as seen in the mid-1980s, and which included the Salamander letter).
When I got married, Dean gave me a copy of the PWJS as a wedding present. When I sheepishly told him a week or so later that I already had a copy, he said with a grin, “Oh, no problem. Just take it back to the BYU Bookstore and ask for a refund. If they ask why, just tell them that the book is “defective”, since it has forgeries from Mark Hoffman in there.”
And of course Dean Jessee had been the one who had initially verified these Hoffman documents, based on handwriting analysis. I really appreciated the fact that he was able to see his limited understanding and to be humble about this. It would be nice if *others* could have taken a cue from him.
A year or so after this, I was talking with another researcher at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute of Church History at BYU, who had also been quite involved in early LDS documents. By this time , Hoffman had already confessed to everything. But this researcher told me that he *still* had a hard time believing that these were forgeries. It just didn’t make sense — Hoffman was just too good.
I read “Salamander,” by Sillitoe and Roberts, “The Mormon Murders,” by Naifeh, and “A Gathering of Saints,” by Lindsey when they were first published in the late 1980s and I still have them in my library. I was fascinated by the subject. Still am. (By the way, the Shannon Flynn interviews are priceless. Without him, this just a ho-hum documentary; interesting but not compelling.)
I heard about the bombings at work. I shared an office with Steven Christensen’s sister-in-law, so it was pretty upsetting for us all.
I thought the series was well done. I hadn’t seen much of the news footage. I had heard what a brilliant forger Hoffman was – the depiction/description of some of his techniques was very interesting to me.
I didn’t remember how young he was – probably because he is older than me and I was just 25 at the time. I also didn’t realize he had access to the “vaults”.
I was pretty young, and I vaguely remember hearing about bombings, but, perhaps similar to Angela, I linked them in my head to the unabomber. I had this notion in my head that package bombs were just going to happen every few years, and seemed to happen more in Utah than elsewhere. I had no knowledge of the Salamander letter or other forgeries until…
I heard about the salamander letter while serving a mission, but not in connection with the bombings as far as I can remember. We didn’t have Internet to look these things up. So the Salamander story was presented as a “don’t ever give up on your testimony “ morality tale. The logic went like this:
– Hofmann forged the letter
– Experts concluded it was legit, including experts from BYU
– Someone else proved the letter to be a forgery
– If the someone else had never come along, the documents could still be considered legit
– ergo, it is foolish to lose your testimony because of experts who can be proven wrong later.
Needless to say, I don’t like that line of thinking.
@Rockwell bingo. It’s just used as a cautionary tale not to trust science or history over The Brethren (umm, even though their powers of discernment apparently were no more sufficient than the science).
Greed, hatred, and delusion sums up the documentary. Nothing new here.
I finally watched this. The third episode was definitely the most interesting. I think it was quite generous to the Church – really did not pursue a “cover up” theme. This was about Hoffman, not the Church.
I was too young to remember this happening but I did love all the 80’s footage and seeing all the Utah newscasters I grew up watching back when people watched the local news every evening.
I was in high school when it happened. I had forgotten the unabomber was active at the same time. I was just reminded in an interview that Ted Bundy was also on the loose. What a crazy time.