204: Mark Hofmann Part 2 - Issues Raised and Lasting Legacy

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2010

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dan Wotherspoon interviews Allen D. Roberts and Curt Bench about the lasting legacy of Mormon forger, con man, and murderer Mark Hofmann. Exactly twenty-five years ago, on the morning of 15 October 1985, Salt Lake City was rattled—both literally and psychologically—by the explosion of two bombs which each killed a person. The next day brought a third explosion, nearly killing Mark Hofmann, a well-known dealer in Mormon documents. Because of clues at that scene, investigators soon realized that perhaps Hofmann was not so much a third victim but the person actually responsible for all three bombs. In the course of the investigation, the tale of Mark Hofmann as a master forger and con artist began to unfold. In this podcast, we examine the long and complex legacy of these murders and forgeries, as well as their continued reverberations even today. Although it is still unclear if Hofmann’s intent was to bring down Mormonism through creating documents that challenged traditional presentations of early Church origins, he definitely was a serious student of Mormon history and knew where various controversies lay—which he then exploited through the forged letters and documents he produced. This case has also presented challenges to some Latter-day Saints because of Hofmann’s various meetings with Mormon general authorities who failed to detect that he was deceiving them, as well as because of the Church’s practice of sometimes obtaining controversial documents and then suppressing them. Joining Mormon Stories host Dan Wotherspoon to tell the story of these tragic murders and complex issues are two terrific guests: Allen Roberts, who co-authored with Linda Sillitoe the book Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders, which is widely regarded as the most thorough account of the Hofmann saga, and Curt Bench, who at the time of the bombings managed the Fine and Rare Books department of Deseret Book’s flagship store in downtown Salt Lake City in which he dealt regularly with Mark Hofmann and even considered him a friend. Linda, Allen, and Curt all ended up playing important roles in helping investigators ultimately make their case against Hofmann and untangle the threads that had led him to murder.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mormon Stories Podcast is made possible through the financial contributions of its listeners.
0:06.0	To keep it alive and available to future generations, please consider a donation today at MormonStories.org.
0:14.0	So, we kind of told the story the best we could in sort of a roundabout way in the first episode.
0:21.0	And this episode, let's pick up some of those pieces and really talk about where these stories have intersected primarily with Mormonism.
0:29.0	One thing I wanted to bring out and maybe I'll just ask you, Alan, we're going to focus on Mormonism.
0:36.0	But Mark Hoffman's career was in Americana, too, just the whole American history documents.
0:41.0	Who are some of the famous names and signatures and documents that Mark Hoffman, this is just to show people the story?
0:49.0	He's using the names of famous Americans, Betsy Ross, Jack London, Lincoln, people like that.
1:01.0	Daniel Boone.
1:03.0	Sometimes he found a document that was signed, Betsy, it was a letter.
1:09.0	And it was dated 1837 or something and he changed one number, maybe two or three.
1:16.0	And then put Ross at the end of Betsy, and now it's a Betsy Ross.
1:20.0	He got a copy of Call of the Wild and put a inscription in there from Jack London and his dog Buck.
1:28.0	And he wrote a poem.
1:31.0	I think it was an eighth line poem by Emily Dickinson.
1:37.0	And that was good enough poetry to be considered an authentic Dickinson poem.
1:42.0	Now whether he copied it from another time period piece by some less known author is unknown or whether he actually composed the poem, I don't know.
1:51.0	But he was getting into Americana and this author, the Freemade, would have been the, you know, the really famous piece.
2:00.0	And the question is whether he was trying to eventually change American history, whether he would have done what he did with Mormon documents, have sort of innocuous content initially.
2:11.0	And then gradually change our view of the Revolutionary War or how the Declaration of Independence came about, whether these guys were inspired or just greedy or, you know, I don't know about that.
2:23.0	But I think there is some sense that he, he definitely was trying to change perspectives on Mormon history.
2:29.0	And one thing we haven't talked about is the 116 pages of the book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, when he began translated, did an initial set of 116 pages and they were handwritten by his scribes.
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