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Have you all watched this Netflix Docu-series? What are your thoughts? DW and I did watch it. I had read Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders years ago but the entire story was new to DW. https://www.amazon.com/Salamander-Story-Mormon-Forgery-Murders/dp/1560852003 Murder Among The Mormons tells a portion of the events while leaving many other things out. It glosses over many details of document deals between the church or church intermediaries and Hoffman or Hoffman intermediaries. It also barely touches upon church history and why these documents would be faith promoting or faith damaging. I believe it does this partially for time constraints and partially for audience awareness. In any storytelling, there are things that advance the story and things that slow the story down. Many scenes that ultimately get deleted from movies are ones that just do not do enough to advance the story. I believe that these documents deals involving a larger cast of characters fit into that category. Too many people to introduce and expect the audience to keep straight. And why should they really care if some guys is selling early Mormon documents (both favorable and damaging to the prevailing church history narrative) and the church is buying them? Who is the intended audience for this Docu-series and how much do they already know about LDS church history? Martin-Harris, Lucy Mack Smith, William McLellin, Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Charles Anthon, Spencer Kimball, Gordon Hinckley, Mark Hoffman, Brent Ashworth, Lyn Jacobs, Steve Christensen, Hugh Pinnock, Alvin Rust and many many more! Does the audience need a spreadsheet to keep them all straight???
For this reason, I believe the creators opted for a shorter and more streamlined telling of the events. It is a murder mystery with an interesting forgery cover-up motive.
I believe that the Docu-series treated the church quite well considering the subject matter. Both of the creators were raised LDS and I do not believe that they had any desire to make a church exposé.
I found a pretty decent summary of the document deals that Murder Among the Mormons glosses over in an old 1987 LA times article. It does a fine job of describing how the documents Hoffman was “discovering” were impacting the church and altering the church history narrative. I believe that what the church was facing in these document “discoveries” was a precursor to the founding of the internet and the easy accessibility of non-correlated church history information.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-29-tm-788-story.html I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to watch Netflix after that Cuties scandal. It’s apparently still on there under its French title. I watched it and found very interesting. I had heard about the salamander letter before, but never knew the story behind it. It was a very good watch. I binge watched over the weekend. I recall the incidents when they occurred and I was a fairly new member of the church. As a true believer at the time I thought the whole white salamander thing was weird but it did not affect my testimony. I also recall most members I knew questioned the authenticity of the letter or poo-pooed the idea. Decades later and having studied church history, I still think it’s weird but then again I think think there’s lots of other weird stuff with the church, church history, and general mysticism of the time. The Smith family was into mysticism, but probably not a great deal more than their neighbors and friends. Having been somewhat aware of the happenings, I was really not aware of many details or players. I think the documentary was OK in filling in some of those details but agree that it doesn’t seem to be comprehensive. I thought it interesting Hoffman himself declined to be interviewed, and I think Hoffman was a genius. I also think the documentary treated the church pretty fairly, especially considering this was before the internet age.
I’m not sure how interested non-members are in the story as it relates to the church, but true crime stories seem to be popular now and it does fill that bill.
I came across this article about what some historians think of the documentary in the Deseret News: https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/3/9/22315949/murder-among-the-mormons-netflix-review-reaction-mark-hofmann-latter-day-saint-history-scholars ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/3/9/22315949/murder-among-the-mormons-netflix-review-reaction-mark-hofmann-latter-day-saint-history-scholars One concept that I always keep in mind when reflecting on these events is that Mark Hofmann is a man who made a name for himself by fraud, extortion, and murder. He often gets a sort of hero’s welcome among former LDS, maybe because he is perceived as sticking it to the man… who knows? Nothing in this thread, for sure, but I do see it from time to time among the disaffected. The man gets no sympathy or kinship from me. What he did was wrong with a capital WR.
I’m just going to bring out a couple of past comments:
Regarding Mark Hofmann:
On Own Now wrote:
He is a murderer who took the lives of two innocent people for nothing more than to take attention off of his already-felony schemes. Those are facts he has admitted to. I try not to be black & white about much, but that’s a line that I cannot straddle. The murders far outweigh any other aspect of his crimes and the murders were about self preservation; nothing to do with the Church.My heart goes out to the families of Steven Christensen and Kathy Sheets.
Regarding the Church’s motives of “hiding” the contents of these documents:
On Own Now wrote:
I will say that if we take the Salamander Letter as a case study, it is somewhat illuminating. The pop culture view of the SL is that the Church purchased it in an attempt to keep it hidden, and there will always will be people that assume this. However, it’s objectively not true. Mark Hofmann tried to sell the letter to the Church via collector Lyn Jacobs, but the Church declined. Jacobs then turned to other potential buyers and was able to convince Steven Christensen (later, a murder victim of Mark Hofmann) to buy it, and subsequently, Christensen gifted it to the Church. During the entire process of the Church’s forensic analysis of the document, its contents were known and published in the local press.Another interesting and related item is the Joseph Smith III blessing, also a Hofmann forgery. Again, conspiracy theorists believe that the Church purchased this document to suppress it, because it was potentially damaging to the Church (it purported to be a blessing by JS to JSIII, declaring the latter to be the successor for leadership of the Church). The Church did purchase it, but at the time, it was a bidding war between the LDS and RLDS Churches, and they both had facsimiles of the blessing, so there was no way that the Church could ‘destroy’ it in order not to let out the contents.
And just to put my own personal touch on these, at the time and as an all-in believer, I knew about and knew the contents of the two above-mentioned letters before they were debunked, so if the Church was trying to “hide” them, they did a pretty poor job of it.
The part of this story I never understood was the bombings. Forgery is common and, convincing forgery less common, but it normally doesn’t end up like this. SamBee wrote:
The part of this story I never understood was the bombings. Forgery is common and, convincing forgery less common, but it normally doesn’t end up like this.
The murders were, at least in part, an attempt to cover up the deception of the forgeries and eliminate possible witnesses. In bombing his own car it seems Hoffman was attempting suicide but probably making it look like an additional homicide.
On Own Now wrote:
One concept that I always keep in mind when reflecting on these events is that Mark Hofmann is a man who made a name for himself by fraud, extortion, and murder. He often gets a sort of hero’s welcome among former LDS, maybe because he is perceived as sticking it to the man… who knows? Nothing in this thread, for sure, but I do see it from time to time among the disaffected.
I wasn’t really aware of this until the documentary, and then some further reading, but I think an interesting aspect of the whole thing is that the Tanners – the ultimate anti-Mormons – seem to have been some of the first to question and disbelieve some of these things. They were in fact known for publishing expose type documents. Hoffman could have been seen as someone who would bolster their efforts, and I think tearing down the church was his motivation. However, it appears the Tanners did only want to deal with truth in their efforts.
DarkJedi wrote:
SamBee wrote:
The part of this story I never understood was the bombings. Forgery is common and, convincing forgery less common, but it normally doesn’t end up like this.
The murders were, at least in part, an attempt to cover up the deception of the forgeries and eliminate possible witnesses. In bombing his own car it seems Hoffman was attempting suicide but probably making it look like an additional homicide.
Mark Hoffman seems to be both very smart, very very dumb, and also lacked any sort of guilt, remorse, or empathy for those that he hurt/killed. I believe that it takes a certain amount of boldness/lack of restraint to attempt the forgeries that he did. I can’t help but think that if he would have just set his sights lower he could have continued indefinitely without getting caught. Fame is not your friend when doing something illegal. Why did he spend the money in such a profligate manner? Why did he attempt to forge ever more impressive and far fetched items? (With the Mclellin Collection he had promised multiple diaries and other papers that he just did not have the time to produce. He had also received loans from two different buyers for the purchase of this collection [essentially selling the collection that he did not yet have – twice] and then spent all the money [over $350k]. These buyers eventually demanded either the Mclellin collection or a refund and Hoffman had neither to provide.) I believe that the same lack of restraint that allowed him to become a forger also prevented him from pumping the breaks as the schemes grew in size and complexity. From what I can tell, the murders/bombings were just one more scheme to cover for his other somewhat unraveling schemes.
In Hoffman’s testimony he stated that the bomb that killed Kathy Sheets did not need to go off for it to achieve his purposes. He said that he gave it a 50/50 chance of detonating. He also said that it did not matter who might have found the second package, a dog, a child, or anyone else. Reading between the lines, I believe he meant that a child’s life is no more valuable than a dog’s life. He had a callous disregard for human life.
I watched the (3) episodes & the issues that struck me were: You can be:
– raised in the church by faithful parents.
– be an Eagle Scout.
– serve a full time mission.
– be sealed in the temple.
The truth is there are no guarantees you will live a moral life.
You can still be a murderer. How can anyone justify taking another persons life like he did?
It blows my little mind.
The other thing I ask myself is: if he didn’t have these various accomplishments, would he have
gained access to the 1st Presidency like he did? If he were a non-member I suspect the answer
would be no.
I know Mark Hofmann said he was trying to commit suicide, but police evidence indicates otherwise. I’m working on a new interview with Brent Ashworth, and he cites police evidence that Mark bumped the gear shift while trying to move the bomb into the back seat. Apparently evidence is pretty clear Mark accidentally set off the bomb. Brent said it would have required remorse for Mark to commit suicide, and Mark has none. gospeltangents wrote:
I know Mark Hofmann said he was trying to commit suicide, but police evidence indicates otherwise. I’m working on a new interview with Brent Ashworth, and he cites police evidence that Mark bumped the gear shift while trying to move the bomb into the back seat. Apparently evidence is pretty clear Mark accidentally set off the bomb. Brent said it would have required remorse for Mark to commit suicide, and Mark has none.
Yes, I remember reading in the book that the bomb that injured Mark Hoffman was detonated accidentally and that we do not know who the intended recipient might have been (and given Mark’s general desire to distract from his intended target in the first bombing – Mark might not have known or cared who the third victim might have turned out to be). I believe the Docu-series went with the cleaner and less murky attempted suicide narrative for storytelling purposes. I suppose if I were attempting to commit suicide by bombing, I would take extra steps to help ensure a quick death – whereas it seems that Mark Hoffman escaped with relatively light injuries.
You make good points GT and Roy. If Hoffman did really want to kill himself he could have sat on the bomb. Being the psychopath he seems to be, it is plausible he had a third intended (or apparently unintended) victim. It would also seem plausible that he was trying to make himself appear to be a victim, thus distracting from himself as the perpetrator.
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