Mark Hofmann’s notorious and deadly legacy will always be inextricably tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the impact of his machinations spread far outside of Utah and the church. The new documentary about the case,
Murder Among the Mormons, was one of the most-watched shows on Netflix the week it dropped. The three-part series explores how Hofmann fooled a nationwide community of scholars, investigators and collectors, the bombings that killed two people and, finally, the mistakes he made that led to his capture.
The documentary makers, Jared Hess (
Napoleon Dynamite) and Tyler Measom (
An Honest Liar), interviewed former LDS Church Historian Richard Turley for the true crime series. When I spoke to him following its release Turley described himself as a “fly on the wall” during the Hofmann bombing and forgery investigations. He later wrote a book detailing his observations called