Who is Mark Hofmann? Forger fooled Mormon church by making fake documents, killed those who tried to expose him
Mark Hofmann was not only the most accomplished forgers and counterfeiters of all time, and was also willing to become a notorious murderer to keep his forgeries from being discovered.
'Murder Among the Mormons,' which will be released March 3, shows the story of Hofmann, who fabricated a number of early Mormon documents designed to embarrass The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints including the Anthon Transcript, which seemed to contain Egyptian characters Joseph Smith had copied from the gold plates, and the famous Salamander Letter, which presented a narrative of Joseph Smith’s discovery of the gold plates and description of an angel that appeared to him as a white salamander.
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Despite making $800,000 in cash and $200,000 in trade for his forgeries, Hofmann incurred half-a-million dollars in debt by the fall of 1985. At the same time, he was facing immense pressure from Steven Christensen, a Mormon bishop and document collector, who threatened to expose him as a fraud unless he delivered a collection of letters purportedly written by a 19th-century church apostle-turned-critic by October of that year – something Hofmann knew he needed at least a few months to forge.
Hofmann takes 'drastic' measures
As a result, Hofmann resorted to "drastic" measures to make sure that the attention is diverted from him. On October 15, 1985, Hofmann delivered a homemade nail-filled pipe bomb to Steve Christensen's office. Christensen was killed when he reached down to pick up the package in front of his office in the Judge Building. Another bomb was delivered to the home of Christensen's former business associate, Gary Sheets, which killed his wife, Kathleen Sheets. There was a third bomb the following day through which Hofmann, then a minor celebrity among Latter-day Saint historians and collectors, tried to take his own life in his car and was gravely injured in the process.
In January 1987, Hofmann pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated murder. By agreeing to give interviews to prosecutors that dealt mostly with his forgery techniques and his knowledge of Mormon history, Hofmann avoided the death penalty.
'Power' in fooling others
Expressing no remorse for his victims at his parole hearing a year later, Hofmann said that "toying" with people's religious beliefs was "experimentation ... to see why they believe what they do." He was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison, without the possibility of parole. Hofmann, 66, remains housed at the Utah State Prison in Draper.
In his 1988 letter to the parole board, he began with, "These are some of my thoughts concerning my crimes and how I became what I am." Hofmann said he experienced a childhood delight in fooling others with card tricks and magic which led him to become an expert forger. "As far back as I can remember I have liked to impress people through my deceptions," Hofmann wrote. "Fooling people gave me a sense of power and superiority. I believe this is what led to my forging activities. I figured out some crude ways to fool other collectors by altering coins to make them appear more desirable. By the time I was 14, I had developed a forgery technique, which I felt was undetectable. I exuded (sic) in impressing other collectors and dealers with my rare coins."
What led Hofmann to send bombs?
Although in his "life of crime," he had "learned to live with the inherent stress, guilt and fears through rationalization and hypnosis" in October 1985, "it seemed like everything started to collapse around me," Hofmann wrote. "I could not come up with the money to pay off investors to keep from being exposed as a fraud." However, he has initially not planned it out. "At the time I was not even sure who the victim(s) would be, only that drastic measures were called for," he wrote. "My original intention was suicide with another killing or killings as a diversion."
The elaborate plot was to save his skin. "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. "When I say this was the most important thing I mean it literally. I felt I would rather take human life or even my own life rather than to be exposed."