Mark Hofmann
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Mark Hofmann (born December 7, 1954), a disaffected member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was a prolific counterfeiter who murdered two people in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is currently serving a prison sentence at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah. Hofmann is widely regarded as one of the most skilled forgers in history. Hoffman is an Eagle Scout.
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Early life
Although Hofmann claims to have embraced atheism while in his teen years, he was raised in a devout LDS family. His grandmother, Athelia Call, had been the wife of a Mormon polygamist. His family's reluctance to discuss its involvement with plural marriage became an early source of Hofmann's resentment toward Mormonism. Like many young LDS individuals, Hofmann spent two years as Mormon missionary and appeared outwardly devout, but his explorations of Mormon history led him to doubt many of the church's official claims regarding its origins.
Hofmann married Doralee Olds in the Salt Lake Temple in 1979. They divorced in 1988. They have four children.
Hofmann's forgeries
After his mission, Hofmann became a dealer in antique items. Forging and altering coins, books, and historical banknotes to make them more valuable (often by adding signatures), Hofmann worked up to fabricating historically significant documents. He became famous for his "discoveries" of previously unknown documents pertaining to the Latter Day Saint movement and the LDS church.
The first forgery Hofmann sold to the LDS church was the so-called Anthon Transcript. Hofmann claimed he found this document April 1980 pasted between the pages of a 1668 Bible with the apparent signatures of Joseph Smith's great and great-great grandfathers inside. The document seemed especially significant as the transcript that Smith's scribe Martin Harris presented to Charles Anthon, a Columbia University classics professor, in 1828. According to the Joseph Smith-History, the transcript and its bizarre "reformed Egyptian" characters were copied by Smith from the Golden Plates from which he translated the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith-History reports that Anthon thought the esoteric-looking characters were genuinely Egyptian, but wanted access to the original plates. Anthon's recollection of the transcript differed greatly from a purported copy of the transcript possessed by the Community of Christ. Hofmann's version of the transcript seemed like it could be the original because it matched Anthon's description of the paper Martin Harris showed him. A Joseph Smith expert, Dean Jesse, opined that the document's handwriting and signature of Smith appeared genuine. Appraised by the LDS church for USD$25,000, it was purchased on October 13 in exchange for several artifacts the church owned in duplicate including a $5 gold Mormon coin, Deseret banknotes, and a first edition of the Book of Mormon.
On September 4, 1981, Hofmann gave Elder Gordon B. Hinckley another forgery. Supposedly written by Thomas Bullock, Hofmann claimed to have acquired the letter along with the Joseph III blessing, which presented Smith's young son, Joseph Smith III as the most legitimate leader for the LDS church, not Brigham Young . In the forged letter, dated January 27, 1865 and marked "private" and "not sent," Bullock chastises Brigham Young for having all copies of the blessing destroyed. Bullock writes that although he believes Young to be legitimate leader of the LDS church, that he would keep his copy of the blessing. Such a letter would unflatteringly portray Young and by extension the LDS church. Hofmann gave it to Hinckley as a "faithful Mormon," supposedly doing the church a favor. According to Hofmann, Hinckley filed the letter away in a safe in the First Presidency's offices.
The sale of these and other forgeries emboldened Hofmann, and confirmed his earlier conclusions about the LDS church. He thought that when LDS officials "covered up" what might be seen as embarrassing or contradictory documents which they apparently thought were genuine, they were lending credence to the stories. Hofmann also concluded that since LDS officials were apparently fooled by his forgeries, they had no divine prophetic powers.
In this period, Hofmann was continually selling and trading fraudulent documents to the LDS church and many other collectors and historians.
One significant Hofmann forgery arrived at the church via Brent F. Ashworth, an attorney and rare documents collector. The forgery was a letter complete with 1828 Palmyra, New York postmark from Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith's mother. She describes her son's revelations and finding the Gold Plates. However, the interesting part of the letter is a brief description of the Book of Lehi, also known as the lost 116 hand-written pages of the Book of Mormon. Hofmann sold it to Ashworth, and it was announced to the world in a August 23, 1982 joint press conference. In the conference Dean Jesse again asserted that a Hofmann forgery looked authentic, not only for Lucy Smith's handwriting, but also for the period postmark and correct postage.
On October 5, 1982, the LDS church and Ashworth announced another Hofmann forgery, which they thought was genuine: A supposed letter from Martin Harris to Walter Conrad, brother-in-law of Brigham Young. Ashworth felt that this letter, bought nine months earlier, bolstered the Church's move to subtitle the Book of Mormon "Another Testament of Jesus Christ." Hofmann sold the church another similar letter supposedly from David Whitmer, another of the three witnesses, for $10,000 shortly thereafter. Other purported letters sold in excess of $10,000 include a holograph referring to Joseph Smith treasure-seeking for silver (embarrassing to the church) and the supposed 1830 contract between Smith and Egbert B. Grandin for the first print of the Book of Mormon.
Hofmann's most famous Mormon history forgery emerged in 1984. An LDS Bishop, Steven F. Christensen, purchased the so-called Salamander Letter for $40,000 on January 6 after the LDS church and Brent Ashworth turned down more extravagant offers. News of the document was contagious and soon Peggy Fletcher of Sunstone Magazine, and then Richard N. Ostling, the religion editor of Time Magazine, were calling about the letter. The Salamander Letter depicted Joseph Smith as a practitioner of folk magic, and related an account of Smith's obtaining the Golden Plates that was completely different from the commonly accepted version.
In addition to documents from Mormon history, Hofmann also forged a number of other items, including works by Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln. His last announcement was his discovery of a copy of the long-vanished 17th century printed broadside Oath of a Freeman. The Oath, allegedly a printing from the press that traveled to America on the Mayflower, was a Pilgrim constitution, and would have been the oldest document printed in America. To be sold at over $1 million, the Oath was manufactured by Hofmann as an act of desperation. He even produced a second copy of the document of lesser technical quality. Authentication of these prints was underway as Hofmann committed his murders. They would contribute to his eventual discrediting.
Hofmann's murders
Despite the often considerable amounts of money he was making from document sales, Hofmann became embroiled in financial difficulties. In an effort to clear his debts, he attempted to put together a deal involving the sale of "the McLellin collection": an extensive and previously unknown collection of documents purportedly written by William McLellin, an early Mormon apostle who became disaffected with the LDS church. Hofmann was unable to forge the entire collection quickly enough to meet his promises to his intended buyers. In a desperate effort to buy time he began planting bombs in Salt Lake City. On October 15, 1985, the first bomb killed document collector Steven Christensen. Christensen was known as the son of Mac Christiansen who founded the Utah-area Mr Mac clothing stores. Later that same day a second bomb killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of Christensen's employer.
The following day Hofmann became the victim of one of his own bombs. He was severely wounded when it exploded in his car. During the bombing investigation the police discovered incriminating evidence of the forgeries in the basement studio where Hofmann had created them.
Hofmann was arrested for the murders and forgery the following February. He later pled guilty to lesser charges to avoid the death penalty, and was sentenced to life in prison. He has twice attempted suicide in prison.
There has been speculation about the intended target of the third bomb that injured Hofmann, but he has never revealed who it was.
Legacy in document collecting
During his career, Mark Hofmann fooled some very renowned people. Among them was Daniel Lombardo, a curator for a library of material written by Emily Dickinson. Hofmann sold him a "newly discovered" manuscript copy of an unpublished Dickinson poem for $24,000. The document was later determined to be a fake. Lombardo then remarked, "Hofmann was one of the most skilled forgers in this century. The lengths he went to fool all the experts were extraordinary."
Before Hofmann's criminal career was exposed, some of his "discoveries" were also presented to Kenneth Rendell, one of the top document experts in the United States and one of the men responsible for debunking the forged "Hitler Diaries". Like others duped by Hofmann, Rendell, after initially dismissing the documents as forgeries, later pronounced them consistent with their claimed origin.
Nearly all of Hofmann's documents have been determined to be forgeries. Indeed, there is now debate about whether any of them are legitimate, even those widely regarded as genuine.
Among Hofmann's earliest critics were former LDS members Jerald and Sandra Tanner. Though Hofmann's "discoveries" often appeared to bolster the Tanner's own arguments against the church, Jerald had by early 1984 concluded there was significant doubt as to the Salamander Letter's authenticity. By late 1984, Jerald Tanner questioned the authenticity of most, if not all, of Hofmann's "discoveries" based in part on their unproven provenance.
Ironically, Hofmann forgeries are now collector's items themselves.
Reference
- Sillitoe, Linda & Roberts, Allen (1989). Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders, 2nd. ed., Salt Lake City: Signature Books. ISBN 0941214877.
- Turley, Richard E.. Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252018850.
- Lindsey, Robert (1988). A Gathering of Saints: A True Story of Money, Murder, and Deceit, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671651129.
- Dallin H. Oaks (October 1987). Recent Events Involving Church History and Forged Documents. Ensign: p. 63.
External links
- Utah History Encyclopedia — Mark Hofmann
- Findarticles — 1986 Discover article on the "Oath of a Freeman"
Categories: 1954 births | Eagle Scouts | Ex-Mormons | Mormonism | Document forgery | American murderers
