1363: Lying for the Lord: The Paul H. Dunn Scandal - Lynn Packer Pt. 5
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2020
⏱️ 204 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Paul H. Dunn is one of the most beloved General Authorities in the history of the Mormon church. His vast popularity was based on his uncanny ability to tell gripping stories in General Conference, in firesides, in over a dozen books, and on cassette tapes about his time as a professional baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals, and about his career as a combat veteran in World War II.
The only problems were:
1) Paul Dunn made up these stories. They were literally untrue.
2) Paul Dunn made a great deal of money, and drew his fame from these false stories.
3) Paul Dunn used his fame/reputation to advance fraudulent business schemes.
Even more disturbing, however, were the lengths and breadths that the Mormon church went to, to suppress, cover-up, and kill this story - using its vast financial and legal resources.
This story only came to light because of one courageous Mormon journalist - Lynn Kenneth Packer - who coincidentally was the nephew of super powerful/influential Mormon apostle Boyd K. Packer.
In the end, Lynn Packer was fired from his job as a BYU professor for his involvement in investigating and breaking the Paul H. Dunn story. And while this story was minimally covered in an Arizona newspaper and in Sunstone magazine at the time, TO THIS DAY Lynn Packer has never been granted an extensive media interview to tell this story.
Until today that is.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, |
| 0:03.7 | John DeLin. It's November 11th, 2020. And we are now on part five of our gripping, |
| 0:10.8 | informative, enlightening series of interviews with legendary Mormon journalist, |
| 0:17.9 | Lynn Packer, nephew of Boyd K. Packer. And now we're kind of here for the main event. |
| 0:23.1 | The main event is to cover what Lynn is perhaps best known for, which is the Paul H. Dunn scandal. |
| 0:30.4 | Lynn Packer spent 15 plus years investigating beloved Mormon General 30 Paul H. Dunn, |
| 0:37.2 | who was so well known and loved for his amazing stories about playing professional baseball |
| 0:43.6 | for the St. Louis Cardinals and for fighting in World War II and having his buddy, |
| 0:47.9 | Diana's arms and telling stories about faith and patriotism, only to find out that Paul H. Dunn |
| 0:54.0 | was making these stories up and making a lot of money out for these stories, |
| 0:58.0 | basing his fame on these stories and even engaging in an affinity fraud where people were |
| 1:03.2 | persuaded to invest in schemes where they lost a lot of money based on Paul H. Dunn's reputation. |
| 1:08.4 | Ultimately, Paul H. Dunn was put on Emeritus status and he's one of the only general |
| 1:12.2 | thirties in the modern era to be prematurely placed on Emeritus status. So it's a really important |
| 1:18.0 | story and it exists only because of Lynn Packer. And what I think is really important about this |
| 1:24.8 | interview is that even though this Paul H. Dunn story, it had a feature in Sentsno Magazine and |
| 1:31.1 | I think this story was covered in the Arizona Republic. To this day, as I understood, this story |
| 1:35.8 | was never really covered in the Deseret News of the Sully Tribune. I want you to correct me if I'm |
| 1:40.7 | wrong, but more importantly, this is the first time anyone's ever granted you an extended full length |
| 1:46.8 | interview to give you the chance to really discuss your investigation, the book, and to have an |
| 1:52.8 | exchange about the details about this story. Now tell me what I've gotten right and wrong in my intro. |
| 1:58.7 | It's correct. This is the first. When I finished the book in about 2015, I |
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