Mark Hofmann Case News Today

Mark Hofmann’s notorious and deadly legacy will always be inextricably tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the impact of his machinations spread far outside of Utah and the church. The new documentary about the case, Murder Among the Mormons, was one of the most-watched shows on Netflix the week it dropped. The three-part series explores how Hofmann fooled a nationwide community of scholars, investigators and collectors, the bombings that killed two people and, final...

A handheld camera wobbles and zooms in on Mark Hofmann sitting on the floor of his 1985 living room, bouncing a baby on his knee as he watches a news story about himself. We hear the voice of longtime Utah TV news anchor Randall Carlisle delivering the headline, “the police theory that Mark Hofmann was forging documents was a real surprise to the community of scholars and collectors who worked with Hofmann.” The Netflix documentary series Murder Among the Mormons includes the scene from on...

Richard Turley was brought in to supervise the Church History Department in 1986. At the time, the Church was heavily involved in the investigation of a forger by the name of Mark Hofmann. Turley had graduated from Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School and his legal training proved to be effective in guiding the department through that period of the Church’s history.  In 1992, Turley wrote a book, Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, and he was recently inter...

Former LDS Church Historian Dean Larsen dies at 92 (Tribune file photo) Dean Larsen speaks in General Conference in 1987. | Updated: March 4, 2021, 3:33 p.m. On a dark October day in 1985, Dean Larsen, official historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called seven employees into his office to issue them a warning: Be careful on your way home. Larsen’s team of Mormon history specialists had just learned that Mark Hofmann, who was known at the time only as a rare-document ...

How an accidental historian won over critics and shed light on two of Mormonism’s darkest hours (Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Richard Turley holds one of Joseph Smiths personal documents during a news conference to announce a release in the "Joseph Smith Papers" project in 2013. Turley recently retired. | Updated: March 4, 2021, 3:33 p.m. It was 1986, a dark time for Mormon historians. Just months earlier, infamous document collector Mark Hofmann had forged his way into the market ...

Deseret News Share this story Ravell Call, Deseret News . Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox weekly. Netflix is about to release a new, three-part true crime documentary about the 1985 Mark Hofmann forgeries and murders provocatively titled “Murder Among the Mormons.” The series about the chaos created in Salt Lake City by Hofmann’s fake documents and packaged bombs will begin streaming March 3, according to The Hollywood Reporter. A master forger, Hofmann is serving a life s...