The story follows the rise and fall of Mark Hofmann, a rare document trader from Salt Lake City, Utah, whose specialty was artifacts from the early days of Mormonism. Many of the documents he discovered sparked debate and controversy around Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith Jr., and cast doubts on the validity of his claims of divine revelation. The most damning was the "salamander letter," which suggested that Joseph Smith had changed or made up key parts of his discovery of the Book of Mormon. One of Hofmann's regular buyers was a document collector named Steve Christiansen, who frequently donated his purchases to the Mormon Church.
On October 15, 1985, while Hofmann and Christiansen were about to finalize the sale of the "McLellin Collection" (another set of documents from a prominent early Mormon), Christiansen was killed in a bomb sent to his office. Later that day, Kathy Sheets, wife of Christiansen's former business partner Gary Sheets, was killed by a similar bomb at her home. Hofmann himself was badly wounded by a car bomb that same afternoon. Panic spread through Salt Lake City, especially among those involved in the rare document trade. Hofmann's friend Shannon Flynn was initially believed to be a suspect, but that was a dead end.
As the police investigated further, their eyes soon turned to Hofmann himself. They managed to not only find proof that he built and planted the bombs, but also a motive: he was a Master Forger, and all the rare and amazing documents he found were fakes. There was no McLellin Collection, and he sent the bombs to Christiansen and Sheets in hopes of delaying the sale and buying himself time. Hofmann plead guilty to two counts of murder, as well as additional charges of theft and fraud, and was sentenced to life in prison.
Murder Among the Mormons contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: It's left unclear as to whether the bomb exploding in Mark's car was an attempted suicide, a deliberately self-inflicted attack so the police wouldn't suspect him, or simply an accident while he was trying to decide on the next target.
- Anachronistic Clue: Hofmann's forgeries were so flawless—often using period-accurate paper and postmarks to foil common dating techniques—that the only thing revealing them as artificially aged was the pattern of how the ink crackled as it dried.
- Attention Whore: In his police interrogation, Hofmann claims that he started doing forgeries as a way to get attention.
- Church Militant: Before Hofmann was confirmed as a suspect, one of the running theories investigators had for the bombings was that it was done by a radical Mormon in revenge for revealing documents that harmed the Mormon Church's reputation.
- Conspicuous Consumption: After making lots of money with his forgeries, Hofmann got used to a life of luxury. However, it wasn't sustainable, prompting him to pump out more forgeries to keep paying off his mounting debts.
- Cool Car: Mark Hofmann's metallic blue Toyota MR2
sports car—at least, it was cool by the standards of 1980s Salt Lake City. This later becomes an indicator of Mark's unsustainable lifestyle, revealing how he bought it on a whim using the money from his forgeries. - Crime After Crime: The scope and scale of Hofmann's forgeries expanded throughout the 1980s to encompass general early Americana, including signatures from founding fathers, poems by Emily Dickinson, and a copy of the Oath of a Freedman.
- Crime Reconstruction: The documentary is filled with reenactments of things like Mark forging his letters and testing his bombs, the death of Steve Christiansen, and (a bit more humorously) Mark and Shannon speeding around in a sports car and firing machine guns in the middle of the desert.
- Crisis of Faith: A widespread reaction in the Mormon community following the publication of the salamander letter.
- Exceeded the Goal: Both of Mark's earliest forays into forging were wildly successful, encouraging him to keep at it.
- His first real forgery as a teenager, altering the mint mark on a dime to make it more valuable, was labeled authentic by the US Treasury Department.
- His first forgery of a Mormon document, the Anthon manuscript, was successful enough to where he got to meet with some of the Church's highest echelons of leadership.
- False Prophet:
- Dawn Brodie's 1945 biography No Man Knows My History, which argues Joseph Smith was this, was heavily influential on a teenage Hofmann and led to him privately renouncing Mormonism.
- The goal of several of Hofmann's forgeries, especially the salamander letter, was to imply Joseph Smith was changing his story as he went along.
- Fingore: One of the eyewitnesses to the explosion that injured Hofmann said he saw some of Hofmann's fingers get blown off.
- The Fundamentalist: Hofmann's parents, especially his father William, are portrayed as such. One interviewee claims that William got upset at Mark for letting his kids have books about dinosaurs, since it may lead to them believing in evolution.
- Gun Nut: Because Shannon Flynn knew all the victims, was a fan of magazines like Soldier of Fortune, and owned an unlicensed submachine gun, the police assumed he was this and arrested him as their first suspect.
- Heroic Bystander: After Mark was injured when his car exploded, a bystander rushed over, pulled him from the wreckage, and upon noticing that he was a fellow Mormon, gave him a blessing and "commanded him to live." Shannon Flynn noted the irony of it and compared it to unwittingly blessing Satan.
- Hide the Evidence: Whenever Hofmann found (or more often, forged) a document that cast doubt on the Mormon Church's official narrative, the Church leadership would buy it up with the goal of keeping it locked away.
- It's All My Fault: Brent Metcalfe was the one who introduced Mark Hofmann to Steve Christiansen, causing him to feel partially responsible for Steve's murder.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After his sentencing, Mark Hofmann attempted suicide in prison by overdosing on sleeping pills. He survived, but it caused muscle damage in his right hand, making him incapable of forging a document ever again.
- Magnum Opus: Hofmann's planned magnum opus would have been the lost 116 pages of the Book of Lehi, the most valuable lost text in Mormon history. By previously forging letters from Martin Harris (the transcriber of the 116 pages), he would have laid the groundwork to have his forgeries authenticated by his prior forgeries.
- Master Forger: Mark Hofmann was undeniably one. He fooled countless professionals, including FBI forensic analysts and the National Archives, and it took literal months of examining documents until George Throckmorton and William Flynn could find a single flaw.
- MockGuffin: Hofmann found numerous documents of immense historical value, all of which were revealed to be forged.
- The Anthon manuscript, his first "find," was the letter where Joseph Smith wrote out the characters and symbols he saw on the Golden Plates.
- The "salamander letter" was purportedly written by early Mormon disciple Martin Harris and claimed that Joseph Smith was led to the Golden Plates not by revelation from the angel Moroni, as Mormon hagiographies claim, but by a spirit in the form of a white salamander.
- The Oath of a Freedman was the first written work printed in British North America in 1639. All known copies were lost, until Hofmann "found" one, and its value was estimated at $1.5 million before his fraud was discovered.
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: Discussed. Ken Sanders mentions in the first episode how his least favorite thing about treasure stories is that the fantastical treasure is very briefly had, then lost again forever by the end.
- Once More, with Clarity: The first scene of the series features Shannon Flynn talking about Mark Hofmann's skills, seemingly praising his skill as a document trader. The final scene Bookends it with the full quote, revealing that he's actually talking about Hofmann's skills at deception and manipulation.
- Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: Shannon Flynn eagerly cooperated with the police questioning him for hours on end, only realizing in hindsight that he was a suspect and should have instantly requested a lawyer.
- Plea Bargain: Hofmann faced a litany of charges at the state and federal levels, ranging from fraud to first-degree murder. He ended up doing a plea bargain for two counts of second-degree murder, one count of theft, and one count of fraud. It's unspoken but implied that the Church leadership wanted it wrapped up as quickly as possible instead of going to trial.
- Ponzi: Hofmann's racket is analogized to a Ponzi scheme, constantly using the sale from forged documents to pay off debts or buy legitimate documents to sell to collectors. And just like a conventional Ponzi scheme, it started to fall apart the moment he ran low on money.
- Propping Up Their Patsy: When police initially suspected Hofmann's friend Shannon Flynn of being involved in the bombings, Hofmann was one of the people who spoke out in his defense.
- Revealing Cover Up: Intended to delay the discovery of his crimes, the bombings ended up causing the police investigation that uncovered all of Hofmann's forgeries.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: Hofmann targeted Gary Sheets so that people would suspect the murder of Christiansen was tied to his work with Sheets at the latter's investment business, not because of the McLellin Collection deal.
- Straw Nihilist: Mark Hofmann comes off as one, especially during his interrogation by the police:
- One of the major motivations for forging documents that cast doubt on the Mormon Church was the desire to toy with people's beliefs.
- Per Shannon Flynn, one of Mark's foundational beliefs was that truth is relative, and if everyone accepts that something is true, then who's to say it isn't the truth?
- He says the bomb for Gary Sheets was intended to be a dud, but he didn't care either way whether it exploded or if it killed someone—Gary Sheets, his wife, a random passerby, a kid, a dog...
- Sue Donym: Whenever Mark Hofmann would commission printing plates for some of his forgeries, he'd use the name Mike Hansen.
- Suspicious Missed Messages: During the segment on Christiansen's death in the bombing, recordings on his answering machine from that morning play. It's full of messages from friends and family members, becoming increasingly concerned and frantic as he never responds and they begin to fear the worst.
- Too Good to Be True: It's pointed out that Hofmann's finds went unquestioned for so long because he often sold his victims things that they wanted to be genuine, or gave them a financial stake in the document's value—as he did with Justin Schiller by offering 50% for the sale of Oath of a Freedman.
- Worthless Treasure Twist: Mark Hofmann was sparking a bidding war over the valuable and controversial McLellin Collection... which turned out to never exist, not even as a forged copy.
