What the examiners noticed first, after putting his documents under ultraviolet light, was a blue hazing effect and ink that ran in one direction. [41], The events were a part of the series, City Confidential in the 1998 episode, "Faith and Foul Play in Salt Lake City". Mark Hofmann had both a Jekyll and a Hyde inside him, but outwardly he had only one persona: polite young man. In 1980, Hofmann claimed that he had found a 17th-century King James Bible with a folded paper gummed inside. Utah entrepreneur whose wife was killed by infamous bomber Mark Hofmann All four of Mark Hofmanns children prefer to stay away from the media and the spotlight. A visibly shaken Hofmann paid the Tanners a personal visit. After all, Dorie still supported him, unable to believe that he was a cold-blooded killer. Today, Hofmann is serving a life sentence in prison in Utah. Police then began investigating Hofmann himself as a suspect, and, in one moment at the hospital, she looked up to see detectives on the TV screen going through "my messy house.". Youre so perpetually awful that I avoid reading comments on this very well written blog because I know you will always be at the top. Within the hour the board, citing Hofmann's "callous disregard for human life", decided that he would indeed spend the remainder of his "natural life in prison". He was almost successful; and he was successful in undermining the church prophets and leaders by convincing them his forgery was truthful. She felt she received a divine message: "It will be all right.". He sounded just as boyishly earnest when lying to the media about discovering valuable historic Mormon documents as he did when confessing to the police that he committed fraud and double murder in the 1980s. Dorie Olds is the ex-wife of Mormon bomber Mark Hofmann, who killed two people on Oct. 15, 1985. "Only to the extent that I truly love myself can I truly love another.". 5. ChurchBeat: A Latter-day Saint apostle's response to Mark Hofmann Steven Christensen was the son of a locally prominent clothier, On the afternoon following the bombings, Hofmann met with LDS Church apostle, "The massive overdose of antidepressants he took soon after Dorie Olds filed for divorce [in 1987] left him lying unconscious for twelve hours on his prison cot with his right arm trapped under him. I felt like that was the end, Hofmann wrote. [23]:13234, Despite the considerable amounts of money Hofmann had made from document sales, he was deeply in debt, in part because of his increasingly lavish lifestyle and his purchases of genuine first-edition books. Thanks, Rebecca: An interesting story, this. Hofmann is serving a life sentence for two murders and other crimes that are explored in the Netflix docuseries Murder Among The Mormons. Though she occasionally felt a vague unease about her husband's work, she acknowledges she asked few questions about his business. And ffffft, Shannon Flynn said, that thing just aged 100 years in 10 minutes. Hofmann also aged his documents by ironing them and letting weevils munch on them. A young entrepreneur sets out to earn some money and discovers the value of a dollar (and of dirt)! On one side was Terri Christensen, widow of the businessman, who was murdered Oct. 15, 1985. Only his listed aliases point to his criminal past. [8]:42 He expected the church to "buy the blessing on the spot and bury it. Curt Bench, owner of Benchmark Books and a rare-book and document collector, concurs. Tales of Hofmann: Forgeries, deceit continue to intrigue 20 years later, Murder Among the Mormons: Jared Hess explains his turn to true crime for Netflix series, Looking back at the Mark Hofmann bombings and his life of deceit, in the letter, he traces his interest in deception, the prison moved Hofmann out of maximum security in Draper. Joseph Smith, who founded the religion in 1823, discovered the gold plates translated into the Book of Mormon in Manchester, New York. This is gross. Olds quit school to support her husband, who claimed he was a pre-med student. Mark Hofmann: The true story of bomber from Murder Among the Mormons At the time, Hofmann was a well-known figure in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he would soon become known to a much wider audience as a murderer in the Mormon church. Sep 1, 2016 - Jan 31, 2019. If youre here curious about the same, weve got you covered. He was arrested for the bombings three months later, and in 1987 pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, one count of theft by deception and one count of fraud. The discovery helped solve the case. The Savior was victimized. Collection: Photograph of the Mark Hofmann family | BYU Library According to Lindsey, the Hofmann affair emboldened many scholars to penetrate deeper into Mormon history that its most conservative leaders wanted left unexplored, and that church leaders were unlikely to be able to fully contain the fires of intellectual curiosity that Hofmann helped fan. The second bomb intended for Gary Sheets that his wife, Kathleen Sheets, picked up instead was a pure diversion.. Money was not the object.. .Officers and a dog check a parking lot during the Tuesday, Oct. 18, 1985, funeral of Kathy Sheets, who died in bomb blast. [5]:243, After Hofmann returned from his mission, he enrolled as a pre-med major at Utah State University. It recites Hofmanns story and the adverse impact his forgeries have had on the church. Finally, after consulting with Ph.D. chemists and trying formula after formula, (Salt Lake City forensic examiner George) Throckmorton was at a toy store one day buying a present. [1][2][3][4] When his schemes began to unravel, he constructed bombs to murder three people in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dirt Cheap. On October 15, 1985, he first killed document collector Steven Christensen (as well as injuring a secretary in the leg with shrapnel). The youngest was born after Mark had been charged and arrested with fraud, theft, and murder. It is not the first time the Church has found itself in such a position. After completing two years at Dixie in St. George, in fall 1978, Olds went to study nutrition at Utah State University, where Mark Hofmann lived in an apartment above hers. Hofmann spends his days behind bars in the state-of-the-art Ironwood unit, a facility remodeled with new safety features unveiled in 2017. [5]:55 According to Hofmann, while still a teenage coin collector, he forged a rare mint mark on a dime and was told by an organization of coin collectors that it was genuine. In October 1985 it seemed like everything started to collapse around me, Hofmann wrote in the letter. Their first romantic date was in April 1979, their engagement was in July and by September they were married. She found the going rocky as a single mother. False assumptions inspired by Hofmann documents or citations that eventually lead back to his fabricated evidence still distort some depictions of Latter-day Saint history, according to the church. They could have died just as easily in a car accident. A trip to Manchester, England, first got Mark interested in Mormon documents. When Olds awoke that morning, she says, her husband was already dressed and, strangely, in the backyard, wearing his green Olympus High letter jacket. "I had to learn that I had value, a right to choose for myself what I felt to be right, and that my voice should be heard. They also found the engraving plant where the forged plate for Oath of a Freeman was made. When she arrived, his parents were already there. The most important thing in my mind was to keep from being exposed as a fraud in front of my friends and family, Hofmann wrote. Olds went into the hallway for a moment of prayerful silence. After Mark Hofmann married Doralee Dorie Olds on September 14, 1979, whom he first met while attending the Utah State University, they began a life together. Mark Hofmann was born in 1954 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Lucille (ne Sears) and William Hofmann (19281993). [11] When McLellin was visited by this same Joseph Smith III, McLellin asserted: Emma Smith told him [McLellin] that Joseph was both a polygamist and an adulterer. [m] In an effort to clear his debts, he attempted to broker a sale of the "McLellin collection" a supposedly extensive group of documents written by William E. McLellin, an early Mormon apostle who eventually broke with the LDS Church. Boy you are embarrassing yourself here. Mark and Doralee Hofmann attend board of pardons hearing in this undated photo. 1988 letter to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. Dr. Hoffman's role is to accelerate and improve all types of research at the Children's Mercy Research Institute through resources such as data, applications and technology. [5]:7071, Hofmann promptly dropped out of school and went into business as a dealer in rare books. A colleague has written a piece on what Latter-day Saint history experts thought of "Murder Among the Mormons." The 48-year-old man serving as president of the Philippines Iloilo Mission died on Tuesday. Slowly, though, Olds developed a few close friendships, a deep mysticism and a knack for analysis and therapy. [5]:95,98, In addition to documents from Mormon history, Hofmann also forged and sold signatures of many famous non-Mormons, including George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Boone, John Brown, Andrew Jackson, Mark Twain, Nathan Hale, John Hancock, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, John Milton, Paul Revere, Myles Standish, and Button Gwinnett, whose signature was the rarest, and therefore the most valuable, of any signer of the Declaration of Independence. "It is where she always wanted to be," McNeil says, "but didn't know it was possible.". While there, she heard that her husband was wounded and rushed to the hospital after a bomb went off in his car. There was "no sign, no indication, no materials around" that would give her a clue about his crimes, she says. Undercurrents On the surface, Dorie Olds' childhood in Salt Lake City's Sugar House neighborhood seemed fairly typical for Utah Mormons. 'Murder Among the Mormons' review: Forgery scandal turns fatal on As the witness detailed her experience of finding Steve Christensen,. If You Come to Earth. The Anthon discovery created a stir in the Mormon historical community, and Hofmann told his wife he was quitting school to collect rare documents full time. He started collecting coins when he was 12 and soon figured out ways to fool other collectors by altering coins to make them appear more desirable. In the picture are Mark and Doralee Hoffman and their children--Michael (3 1/2 years), Karen (2 years), and Lisa (3 months). "[i], Perhaps the most famous of Hofmann's Mormon forgeries, the Salamander letter, appeared in 1984. [a][5]:41[6] He was a below-average high school student, but had many hobbies including stage magic, electronics, chemistry, and stamp and coin collecting. He served as a historical researcher for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1997, the Forensic Files episode Postal Mortem told the story of how Mark used ancient ink recipes and other trickery to create forgeries like the White Salamander Letter which retold Mormon history in a way that rattled the church and then killed two people so he could evade suspicion and continue to bilk collectors. Fooling people gave me a sense of power and superiority.. ), Thats all for this week. He also forged an 1830 letter from Martin Harris known as the Salamander Letter which described Joseph Smith being involved in folk magic. One of Utah's most infamous criminals kissed his children while they slept in their bedrooms the night before he donned a letterman's jacket and carried a package into the Judge Building in downtown Salt Lake City and took the elevator to the sixth floor. Mark Hofmann - Wikipedia Olds, meanwhile, was the dutiful wife, caring for their home and growing family at that time a son and two daughters. RR, Watch theForensic Filesepisode onYouTubeorAmazon Prime. Perhaps that is what he wanted to do and to get rich at the same time.". Here are seven facts from the series, which was co-produced by Joe Berlinger (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich): 1. Writer: Alice & johanna 2. Watch for it next week at @RDispatches, along with recaps of each of the three episodes. Twice a week, she went to see her husband in prison once alone and once with their kids. ", Olds wanted to start healing other people, says longtime friend Sylvia Gregerson, who met the bomber's wife after the crimes, "to try and heal herself.". Three years later, Time had written about a more bizarre Hofmann find a letter written by Smiths close friend Martin Harris. According to the Ostlings, "The church publicized some of the acquisitions; it orchestrated public relations for some that were known to be sensitive; others it acquired secretly and suppressed."[g][14]. Now, Netflix is getting in on the act. Mark Hofmann was the mastermind behind deadly bombings that served as the focal point of the new Netflix docuseries, "Murder Among the Mormons." Hofmann excitedly identified it as a copy of the so-called "Anthon Transcript," with hieroglyphic markings that LDS Church founder Joseph Smith said he copied from gold plates in the 1820s. Yet, she says it was for their own good. One CAN criticize people who arent white without being racist, but youre demonstrating to everyone that is not what you are doing. Hofmann, 66, has revealed little about himself in the more than three decades since he started serving a life sentence at the Utah State Prison in 1987. His forging hand was thereby permanently disabled. For example, for the first time in my life I took an interest in reading the obituaries. [18][j] Document expert Kenneth W. Rendell later said that while there was "the absence of any indication of forgery in the letter itself, there was also no evidence that it was genuine. and I a black woman am saying you a white man are racist. Au contraire: I, a white man, say that you, a black woman, are racist. His behavior in prison did not throw up red flags, prison spokesman Steve Gehrke told Fox 13, but they had plans to keep tabs on Hofmann at the lower security facility. [s], Hofmann, Utah Department of Corrections offender number 41235, was originally incarcerated at Utah State Prison in Draper. My name is Mark Hoffmann, but some folks know me as "Hoffmann" or "Hoffy". I hold no such belief and have not expressed such explicitly nor implicitly. The change was part a routine housing evaluation . Hofmann, for a while, shared a cell with another infamous Utah killer, Dan Lafferty, a religious zealot convicted of murdering his sister-in-law and her infant daughter in 1984. All we know of Marks son and three daughters is that they have grown up without their biological father in their lives. Eventually, though, as she couldnt handle everything by herself, Dorie had to farm the youngest ones to relatives. By Peggy Fletcher Stack The Salt Lake Tribune. The most important thing to him was to keep from being exposed as a fraud in front of his family and friends. The renovation included new safety and security additions that were planned for Utahs new state prison at the time, according to the Utah Department of Corrections. Such self-awareness is far from where she began. Mark Hofmann Today: Where Is the Murder Among the Mormons Subject Now in 2021? He promised investors high returns on their investments in rare documents but took their money to repay earlier investors. [5]:11819, After the letter had been purchased for the church and became public knowledge, LDS Church apostle Dallin H. Oaks asserted to Mormon educators that the words "white salamander" could be reconciled with Smith's Angel Moroni because, in the 1820s, the word salamander might also refer to a mythical being thought to be able to live in fire, and a "being that is able to live in fire is a good approximation of the description Joseph Smith gave of the Angel Moroni. Catch the stream. [5]:56 He later told prosecutors that he had lost his faith in the LDS Church and become an atheist around age 14. That night I also chickened out of the suicide attempt and made the final selection who my victims would be.. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on December 7, 1954, Mark William Hofmann was the second of three children and the only son in a strict and religious household. I should have figured that out thanks for the tip-off! The body of Kathleen Webb Sheets is taken from her home. I say its racist = its racist doesnt wash (yet) however much some of the more deranged in society might prefer it. At that time, they were all five and under. The first bomb exploded a few minutes after 8 a.m. on Oct. 15, 1985, killing Steve Christensen when he reached down to pick up a package in front of his office in the Judge Building. For years, it turned out, Hofmann had been producing phony signatures and documents and photos and coins, successfully convincing handwriting experts and forgery detection machines that all of it was authentic. ", She had no idea, she says, that her husband had been forging documents and counterfeiting coins since he was a teen, maybe younger. Across the aisle was a pregnant Dorie Olds, then-wife of Mark Hofmann, the LDS forger who was accused of the heinous act. He was revived, but not before spending twelve hours lying on his right arm and blocking its circulation, thus causing muscle atrophy. "If I had awakened earlier, I might have ended up dead.". Mark Hofmann Injuries in the Bombing: Is He Still Alive? - Heavy.com He estimated that he forged hundreds of documents with at least 86 signatures. I felt like I would rather take human life or even my own life rather than to be exposed, Hofmann wrote. A trip to Manchester, England, first got Mark interested in Mormon documents. The victims, Steve Christensen and housewife Kathy Sheets, were killed October 15, 1985, with separate pipe bombs. The church acquired several documents from Hofmann. He notably published the saga "the kingdom of fire" from 2013 to 2018, as well as several science. She was killed Oct. 15, 1985, by a bomb in Holladay. As the familys primary caregiver, Dorie didnt want their lives to be anything but stereotypical, so she tried maintaining that as much as possible. But she couldn't accept the idea that the man who had fathered her children and shared her life could have killed so coldbloodedly. Olds' life, too, had exploded with her husband's bombs, shattered like shards of glass. Who is Mark Hofmann? "[5]:75 When the archivist balked at the price, Hofmann offered it to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church; now known as the Community of Christ), which had always claimed that the line of succession had been bestowed on Smith's descendants but had never had written proof. Who is Mark Hofmann's ex-wife Doralee Olds Hofmann? - The Sun From 1980 to October 1985, forgeries were almost his exclusive source of income, Hofmann wrote. "It was possible, George thought, that Hofmann could have destroyed Mormonism. 2. ", 'Mark Hofmann was unquestionably the most skilled forger this country has ever seen,' said Charles Hamilton, a New York document dealer who is widely regarded as the nation's pre-eminent detector of forged documents. $17.09. Here you have a nice plea bargain. Attorney Ron Yengich,left, confers with Mark Hofmann in 1987. The fact you think racism is literally only the dictionary definition is lord, man, its super embarrassing for you. He forged a blessing Joseph Smith purportedly gave to his son Joseph SmithIII designating him as his fathers successor. Over seven to twelve thousand . Dr. Mark C. Hoffman is a Family Medicine Doctor in Poulsbo, WA. Murder Among the Mormons, a true crime docuseries about the Hofmann forgeries and bombings, was released on Netflix March 3. The body of Steven Christensen is removed from the Judge Building in Salt Lake City in October 1986. 4 Doralee Olds Hofmann Credit: Youtube/Gospel Tangents Who is Mark Hofmann's ex-wife Doralee Olds Hofmann? [5]:260,27071,27475 Investigators also found that a poem used to authenticate the handwriting in the Salamander Letter had been forged by Hofmann and inserted in a Book of Common Prayer once owned by Martin Harris. Hofmann drove to Logan early the next morning to buy parts for a third bomb. Ive only watched it three times, so far. As the witness detailed her experience of finding Steve Christensen, lying in the hallway, emitting moaning sounds like a little child crying, his wife began to weep quietly. The hardest mystery to crack was the ink. News accounts reported the night of the murders that an eyewitness had a good look at the person who delivered the Christensen bomb, including a description of the letter jacket Hofmann wore. The forger is portrayed by Stephen Colbert. by Mark Hoffmann Hardcover. For the time being, of course. Hofmann had become an atheist when he was 14, and had been creating successful forgeries even longer. For a time, she grew her own food and tried her hand at selling magnetic beds. Find Dr. Hoffman's phone number, address, insurance information, hospital affiliations and more. Hofmanns forgeries were intended to embarrass The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in hopes of extorting the church for money to keep the fake documents private. [5]:298 Salt Lake County District Attorney's investigator Michael George believed that, after Hofmann had successfully forged the blessing, his ultimate goal was to create the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon, which he could have filled with inconsistencies and errors, sell them "to the church to be hidden away" and then as he had done often with embarrassing documents "make sure its contents were made public. Document examiner George Throckmorton analyzed several Hofmann documents that had previously been deemed authentic and determined they were forgeries. Hofmann also traded in many legitimate historical documents acquired from rare book sellers and collectors. [5]:6566 The document seemed to be the transcript that Smith's scribe Martin Harris had presented to Charles Anthon, a Columbia classics professor, in 1828. Mark Hofmann, a reputed trader of documents and artifacts within the church, turned out to be the one whod planted the bombs in an attempt to hide his forgeries. Although Mark was secretly agnostic and betrayed his church, he was wearing a Mormon temple garment when he accidentally bombed his own car. "[9]:514. She continued to visit him twice a week in prison, once alone and once with her children. Hofmann had been kept at the maximum security facility in part because of his notoriety, but security issues waned along with his infamy over the years. Mark Hoffman told himself what he was about to do was for their good. Also go through your whole vomit word cloud and pick out the dog whistles. But to prove forgery they had to be able to duplicate these subtle mistakes. All she knows is that she wants a new soccer ball that costs $24.95. He was smart and interesting, and they enjoyed long conversations. I felt I would rather take human life or even my own life rather than to be exposed.. She spoke for 25 minutes without notes, telling her story to many who didn't know anything about it. The kind of argument, indeed, that you say above you dont like. Hofmann's crimes are fictionalized in the episode "The Saint", Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2004). Mark Hofmann: 7 Fast Facts - Forensic Files Now
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