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
A handheld camera wobbles and zooms in on Mark Hofmann sitting on the floor of his 1985 living room, bouncing a baby on his knee as he watches a news story about himself. We hear the voice of longtime Utah TV news anchor Randall Carlisle delivering the headline, “the police theory that Mark Hofmann was forging documents was a real surprise to the community of scholars and collectors who worked with Hofmann.”
The Netflix documentary series
Murder Among the Mormons includes the scene from one of Hofmann’s many home videos. The three-part series reached the top 10 on Netflix this week. Through interviews and news reports, the documentary unfolds the rise of Hofmann as a prolific purveyor of rare historical documents, the subsequent bombing that killed two people and his ultimate exposure as a forger and fraudster.
Richard Turley was brought in to supervise the Church History Department in 1986. At the time, the Church was heavily involved in the investigation of a forger by the name of Mark Hofmann. Turley had graduated from Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School and his legal training proved to be effective in guiding the department through that period of the Church’s history.
In 1992, Turley wrote a book,
Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, and he was recently interviewed for a Netflix documentary on Hofmann,
Murder Among the Mormons. The documentary, currently in Netflix’s Top 10, has been reviewed this week by everyone from
Former LDS Church Historian Dean Larsen dies at 92
(Tribune file photo) Dean Larsen speaks in General Conference in 1987. | Updated: March 4, 2021, 3:33 p.m.
On a dark October day in 1985, Dean Larsen, official historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called seven employees into his office to issue them a warning: Be careful on your way home.
Larsen’s team of Mormon history specialists had just learned that Mark Hofmann, who was known at the time only as a rare-document dealer, had been seriously injured in a car bombing and, since they were involved in acquiring some of those items, they might be in danger, too.
How an accidental historian won over critics and shed light on two of Mormonismâs darkest hours
(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Richard Turley holds one of Joseph Smith s personal documents during a news conference to announce a release in the Joseph Smith Papers project in 2013. Turley recently retired. | Updated: March 4, 2021, 3:33 p.m.
It was 1986, a dark time for Mormon historians.
Just months earlier, infamous document collector Mark Hofmann had forged his way into the market for historical pieces relating to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints â even fooling church President Spencer W. Kimball and future President Gordon B. Hinckley, with his supposedly fabulous finds â and then killing two innocent members to cover his double-dealing and deceit.