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On [[16 October]] [[1985]], Hofmann was severely wounded when one of his own bombs exploded in his car. Police suspicion quickly focused on Hofmann, though many of Hofmann's friends, family and his peers in the rare documents trade doubted that Hofmann was a killer. Some of Hofmann's business associates went into hiding, afraid they might be victims of more bombs. |
On [[16 October]] [[1985]], Hofmann was severely wounded when one of his own bombs exploded in his car. Police suspicion quickly focused on Hofmann, though many of Hofmann's friends, family and his peers in the rare documents trade doubted that Hofmann was a killer. Some of Hofmann's business associates went into hiding, afraid they might be victims of more bombs. |
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The |
The ''John L. Traugher Papers''<ref> ''Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case pg. 213.''</ref> containing “materials written by McLellin” [http://www.lib.utah.edu/spc/mss/ms666/666.html] were discovered in Texas by a Salt Lake City reporter, Dawn Tracy, not long after Hofmann was injured.<ref>Robert Lindsey, ''A Gathering of Saints: A true Story of Money Murder and Deceit'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 254-56; [http://www.signaturebooks.com/excerpts/McLellin2.html Introduction to the Signature Books edition of the McLellin Papers].</ref> The documents were interesting—M'Lellin described Joseph Smith "as a corrupt, even murderous dictator who seduced young girls under the guise of divine revelation"—but the documents were not as spectacularly anti-Mormon as Hofmann had implied. More importantly, the owner of the collection had never heard of Hofmann, leading many to suspect that Hofmann had never been in negotiations to purchase the collection.<ref>Robert Lindsey, ''A Gathering of Saints: A true Story of Money Murder and Deceit'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 258.</ref> Unbeknownst to anyone at the time of the bombings, Church archives contained the actual McLellin Journals. They were institutionally forgotten in Church archives until their existence was rediscovered in Church archives as a consequence of the Hofmann investigation<ref> ''Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case pg. 248-250.''</ref>. However, Church leaders did not make investigators aware of the journals rediscovery [http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no83.htm#TURLEY'S%20BOMBSHELL!] |
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During the bombing investigation, police discovered incriminating evidence of the forgeries in the basement studio where Hofmann had created them. He was arrested for the murders and forgery in February [[1986]]. He eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges (second-degree murder and theft-by-deception) to avoid the [[death penalty]] and in January of [[1988]] 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 discussed the issue, other than to make (then retract) a claim that the bomb was a suicide attempt. One possible target is Brent Ashworth (a collector of rare documents). |
During the bombing investigation, police discovered incriminating evidence of the forgeries in the basement studio where Hofmann had created them. He was arrested for the murders and forgery in February [[1986]]. He eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges (second-degree murder and theft-by-deception) to avoid the [[death penalty]] and in January of [[1988]] 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 discussed the issue, other than to make (then retract) a claim that the bomb was a suicide attempt. One possible target is Brent Ashworth (a collector of rare documents). |
Revision as of 05:15, 3 May 2008
Mark William Hofmann (born 7 December 1954) is an American counterfeiter, forger and murderer.
Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished forgers in history,[1][2][3] Hofmann was especially noted for forging documents related to the history of the Latter Day Saint movement. When Hofmann's schemes began to unravel, he used bombs to murder two people in Salt Lake City, Utah. As of 2008, he is serving a prison sentence at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah.
Early life
Hofmann was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and spent two years as an LDS missionary in Bristol, England, where he became intrigued by many of the local antique bookstores in the area. His explorations of Mormon history led him to doubt many of the church's official claims regarding its origins. His family's reluctance to discuss its involvement with plural marriage (his grandmother, Athelia Call, had been a wife of a Mormon polygamist) was an additional source of Hofmann's resentment toward Mormonism.
He married Doralee Olds in 1979. The couple had four children but divorced in 1988.
Hofmann's forgeries
After his LDS mission, Hofmann became a dealer in antique items. Forging and altering coins, books, and historical banknotes to make them appear 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.
Anthon transcript (1828)
The first forgery Hofmann sold to the LDS church was the so-called Anthon Transcript, which Hofmann claimed he had found glued between pages of a 1668 Bible inscribed with the apparent signature of Joseph Smith's great- or great-great-grandfather.[4] The document seemed to be the transcript that Smith's scribe Martin Harris had presented to Charles Anthon, a Columbia classics professor, in 1828. According to the Mormon scripture Joseph Smith—History, the transcript and its unusual “reformed Egyptian” characters were copied by Smith from the Golden Plates from which he translated the Book of Mormon. The Joseph Smith—History reports that Anthon thought the esoteric-looking characters were genuinely Egyptian. Anthon claimed the characters were only crudely copied specimens from several different alphabets.
Hofmann constructed his version to fit Anthon's description, and the document's "discovery" made Hofmann's reputation. Dean Jessee, an editor of Joseph Smith's papers and the "best-known expert on handwriting and old documents" in the Historical Department of the LDS Church, concluded that the document was "a Joseph Smith holograph," and the LDS Church proudly announced the discovery of Anthon Transcript in April 1980 and purchased it from Hofmann.[5] Prominent Mormon apologist Hugh Nibley predicted that the discovery promised "as good a test as we'll ever get of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon" because it might be translated.[6]
Joseph Smith III blessing
On 4 September 1981, Hofmann gave LDS Church leader 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, who was accepted as the leader by the majority of Smith's followers after Smith's murder. In the forged letter, dated 27 January 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 the legitimate leader of the LDS church, 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” ostensibly doing the church a favor. According to Hofmann, Hinckley filed the letter away in a safe in the First Presidency's offices. The letter was later gifted to the RLDS Church.
The sale of these and other forgeries emboldened Hofmann and confirmed his earlier conclusions about the LDS church. He thought that LDS officials would “cover up” what might be seen as embarrassing or contradictory documents which they apparently thought were genuine. Hofmann also concluded that since LDS officials were apparently fooled by his forgeries, they had no divine prophetic powers. Hofmann continued selling and trading fraudulent documents to the LDS church and to collectors and historians.
Lucy Mack Smith letter
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 an 1828 Palmyra, New York, postmark from Lucy Mack Smith, Joseph Smith's mother. Dated 23 January 1829, she describes her son's revelations and finding the Gold Plates, including the lost 116 pages of the Book of Lehi, a document that has been missing since 1828. Hofmann sold it to Ashworth, and it was announced to the world in a 23 August 1982 joint press conference. In the conference, Dean Jessee again asserted that a Hofmann forgery looked authentic not only for Lucy Smith's handwriting but also for the period postmark and correct postage.
Martin Harris letter to Walter Conrad
On 5 October 1982, the LDS church and Ashworth announced another of Hofmann's documents: A supposed letter from Martin Harris to Walter Conrad, brother-in-law of Brigham Young. It was dated 12 January 1873. 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."
David Whitmer letter to Walter Conrad
Hofmann sold the church a similar letter supposedly from David Whitmer, dated 2 April 1873, another of the three witnesses, for $10,000 shortly thereafter.
Josiah Stowell letter (1825)
Other purported letters sold in excess of $10,000 include a holograph referring to Joseph Smith treasure-seeking for silver . It was secretly purchased by Gordon B. Hinckley on behalf of the church from Hofmann on the promise of confidentiality. However, Hofmann would later leak its existence to the press, after which the church released the letter to scholars for study, despite previously denying its possession.[7]
E. B. Grandin contract
This forgery was the supposed 1830 (dated 17 August 1829) contract between Smith and printer Egbert Bratt Grandin for the printing of the first edition of the Book of Mormon.
Two pages of the original Book of Mormon manuscript
The two pages were claimed to be from the original Book of Mormon manuscript written by Oliver Cowdery as dictated by Joseph Smith Jr. The original manuscript of the Book of Mormon was placed in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House in 1841 and was removed in 1882. Water had damaged the manuscript and destroyed everything beyond the book of Helaman. The two pages obtained from Hofmann covered a portion of the book of Helaman and it was noted by the Church that "No text farther along in the original manuscript is known to exist. This leaf is in a remarkable state of preservation, considering that it was positioned low in the water-damaged manuscript."[8]
Martin Harris letter (Salamander letter)
Hofmann's most infamous Mormon history forgery emerged in 1984. An LDS Bishop, Steven F. Christensen, purchased the so-called Salamander Letter for $40,000 on 6 January 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. Containing elements of early anti-Mormon rumors, the Salamander Letter depicts Joseph Smith as a practitioner of folk magic and relates an account of Smith's receiving the Golden Plates that is entirely different from the orthodox version.
In 1984, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, noted critics of the LDS church, became the first to declare the letter a forgery although it, as well as other Hofmann's discoveries, seemed to strengthen the Tanners' arguments against official Mormon history.[9]
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. He announced his final completed forgery, a copy of the long-vanished 17th century printed broadside Oath of a Freeman, in 1985. The Oath, allegedly a printing from the press brought 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 under way as Hofmann committed his murders. They would contribute to his eventual discrediting.
Hofmann's murders and sentencing
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 collection of documents purportedly written by William E. M'Lellin, an early Mormon apostle who later broke with the LDS church and actively worked against them. Hofmann often hinted the M'Lellin collection would provide damning evidence against the claims of early LDS leaders. However, 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 15 October 1985, the first bomb killed document collector Steven Christensen, the son of prominent clothier Mac Christensen, founder of the Utah-area Mr. Mac clothing stores. Later that same day, a second bomb killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of Christensen's former employer. Police initially suspected that the bombings were related to the impending collapse of a business that employed both Christensen and Gary Sheets (Kathy's husband). Hundreds of investors stood to lose sizable sums of money.
On 16 October 1985, Hofmann was severely wounded when one of his own bombs exploded in his car. Police suspicion quickly focused on Hofmann, though many of Hofmann's friends, family and his peers in the rare documents trade doubted that Hofmann was a killer. Some of Hofmann's business associates went into hiding, afraid they might be victims of more bombs.
The John L. Traugher Papers[10] containing “materials written by McLellin” [1] were discovered in Texas by a Salt Lake City reporter, Dawn Tracy, not long after Hofmann was injured.[11] The documents were interesting—M'Lellin described Joseph Smith "as a corrupt, even murderous dictator who seduced young girls under the guise of divine revelation"—but the documents were not as spectacularly anti-Mormon as Hofmann had implied. More importantly, the owner of the collection had never heard of Hofmann, leading many to suspect that Hofmann had never been in negotiations to purchase the collection.[12] Unbeknownst to anyone at the time of the bombings, Church archives contained the actual McLellin Journals. They were institutionally forgotten in Church archives until their existence was rediscovered in Church archives as a consequence of the Hofmann investigation[13]. However, Church leaders did not make investigators aware of the journals rediscovery [2]
During the bombing investigation, police discovered incriminating evidence of the forgeries in the basement studio where Hofmann had created them. He was arrested for the murders and forgery in February 1986. He eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges (second-degree murder and theft-by-deception) to avoid the death penalty and in January of 1988 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 discussed the issue, other than to make (then retract) a claim that the bomb was a suicide attempt. One possible target is Brent Ashworth (a collector of rare documents).
Legacy
Document collecting
During his career, Mark Hofmann fooled some very renowned people. Years after being found guilty of murder, his forgeries continued to cause headaches for collectors of historical documents. Among them was Daniel Lombardo, a curator for a library of material written by Emily Dickinson. In 1997, Lombardo purchased a “newly discovered” manuscript copy of an unpublished Dickinson poem from Sotheby's auction house for $24,000. The document was later determined to be one of Hofmann's many fakes still in circulation. Lombardo 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, and there is now debate about whether any of them are legitimate, even those widely regarded as genuine. Ironically, Hofmann forgeries are now collector's items themselves.
Entertainment
An episode of the television show Law & Order: Criminal Intent is loosely based on forger Mark Hofmann. Appearing in season 3 and titled "The Saint", Stephen Colbert plays the murdering forger.
The documentary television show Masterminds also does a profile of master forger Mark Hofmann, including details on how he was able to fool the Carbon-14 test used on his documents.
A master document forger and '60s radical named "Micah Hoffman" appears in a season 7 episode of The X-Files.
Notes
- ^ "Dealer In Mormon Fraud Called A Master Forger" from The New York Times
- ^ Mark Hofmann from Everything2
- ^ Forging a Collection from University of Delaware Library
- ^ >Robert Lindsey, A Gathering of Saints: A true Story of Money Murder and Deceit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 65-66.
- ^ Robert Lindsey, A Gathering of Saints: A True Story of Money, Murder and Deceit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 68-69. Appraised by the LDS church for $25,000, it was purchased on 13 October 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.
- ^ Robert Lindsey, A Gathering of Saints: A true Story of Money Murder and Deceit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 66-69. Indeed a gifted but eccentric academic, Barry Fell shortly claimed to have decoded the text. (70-71)
- ^ Allan D. Roberts, "The Truth is the Most Important Thing: A Look at Mark W. Hofmann, the Mormon Salamander Man".
- ^ "The Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon". Ensign: 31. Dec. 1983. Retrieved 2007-03-20.
{{cite journal}}
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(help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/trackingreview.htm?FACTNet
- ^ Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case pg. 213.
- ^ Robert Lindsey, A Gathering of Saints: A true Story of Money Murder and Deceit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 254-56; Introduction to the Signature Books edition of the McLellin Papers.
- ^ Robert Lindsey, A Gathering of Saints: A true Story of Money Murder and Deceit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 258.
- ^ Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case pg. 248-250.
References
- "Fraudulent Documents from Forger Mark Hofmann Noted". Ensign. October 1987.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - Lindsey, Robert (1988). A Gathering of Saints: A True Story of Money, Murder, and Deceit. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-65112-9.
- Template:Harvard reference.
- Oaks, Dallin (October 1987). "Recent Events Involving Church History and Forged Documents". Ensign: p. 63.
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has extra text (help) - Template:Harvard reference
- Turley, Richard E (1992). Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01885-0.
- Worrall, Simon (2002). The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery. New York: Dutton Adult Hardcover. ISBN 0-525945-96-2..