Mark Hofmann spent the first half of the 1980s as a highly successful dealer in early Latter-day Saint documents in Salt Lake City. Letters, blessings, contracts and scraps of scripture came out of his hands and into the vaults of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, private collections and the auction houses. Many of them were his own work. On October 15, 1985, as investors pressed him for money and for a collection of papers that did not exist, Steven Christensen died in Salt Lake City and Kathleen Sheets died in Holladay, a nearby suburb. Hofmann was badly injured in downtown Salt Lake City the next day, and within days the police named him their primary suspect.
Charged in February 1986 with two counts of murder and a long list of fraud counts, he insisted on his innocence through a five-week preliminary hearing. In January 1987 he pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of theft by deception, a bargain that spared him a possible death sentence. A year later he told the Utah Board of Pardons that he had killed the two victims to keep himself from being exposed as a fraud, and the board ordered that he remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Mark William Hofmann was born in Salt Lake City on December 7, 1954. He bought his first piece of Mormon history at the age of twelve, in 1966: a banknote issued by the Kirtland Safety Society. He graduated from Olympus High School in 1973.
By his own later account, Hofmann had lost his faith during his teenage years, and it was in those same years that he began forging, mostly coins. Experiments with altered coins and paper money came before any document. In late 1973 he was called to serve a church mission in the England Southwest Mission, and he left for Britain in January 1974. He later confessed that he was already a nonbeliever when he went.
In 1976 he enrolled at Utah State University in Logan, registering in the pre-medical program. He spent long hours in the university's old library, where a curator in the special collections department took an interest in him. The curator knew nothing of the coin work or of what the young man was learning among the archive's old papers.
In April 1980 Hofmann, still an obscure undergraduate, showed the curator a 1688 Bible. When two pages stuck together were separated, a folded sheet emerged that appeared to be the "Anthon Transcript," a copy of the characters Joseph Smith said he had drawn from the golden plates, which Martin Harris had shown to Charles Anthon in 1828. The original had long been lost. The curator hoped the university would acquire the find, but Hofmann took it to the church, which accepted it on April 22, 1980. In October of that year he traded it to the church for an 1850 gold coin, a first edition of the Book of Mormon and pieces of pioneer currency, together valued at $20,000.
The transcript launched his career. In March 1981 he sold the church a blessing that Joseph Smith was said to have given his son Joseph Smith III, for about $20,000 in trade; the church later traded it to the Reorganized Church for an 1833 Book of Commandments. Letters followed in a steady stream. A letter from Joseph Smith to his wife went to a private collector in 1981 for $6,000. A letter of Lucy Mack Smith, the prophet's mother, came in 1982. A David Whitmer letter went to the church that October for $10,000. In January 1983 the church paid $15,000 for a letter of Joseph Smith to Josiah Stowell dated 1825, and in March $25,000 for the printing contract for the first edition of the Book of Mormon.
The church eventually acquired 48 documents directly from Hofmann. It paid cash for seven of them, a total of $57,100, and received the other 41, less valuable items, by donation or in trade. Hofmann also sold fragments of scripture, Mormon currency notes and a range of smaller items to private buyers and to a Salt Lake City coin dealer who became one of his chief financial backers.
He later told prosecutors that he had set out to create controversy, so that people well beyond the church would take an interest in the papers. Some of what he produced was meant to embarrass church leaders, in the hope that they would pay to keep it private.
The document that made him a public figure surfaced in December 1983, when Hofmann showed a researcher the text of a letter dated 1830 and supposedly written by Martin Harris, one of the earliest supporters of Joseph Smith, to W. W. Phelps. In the letter, the account of how Smith came to the plates turned on a white salamander that changed into a spirit, not an angel.
On January 6, 1984, Hofmann sold the letter to the man who would be the first victim and a business associate. He had asked $50,000 and accepted $40,000, paid over eighteen months. Its new owner led a team of researchers who studied the letter, and two forgery experts examined it and were satisfied. In April 1985 the owner gave the letter to the church, which accepted it on April 18.
The letter was widely published and much argued over. It became one of the two documents on which the theft counts of 1987 would rest.
The scheme that brought him down was a collection of papers that had belonged to William McLellin, an early apostle who left the church. The McLellin papers were said to hold material embarrassing to Joseph Smith. On April 23, 1985, the Salt Lake City coin dealer advanced Hofmann $150,000 to buy the collection; Hofmann later told him he had sold it to the church for $300,000. On June 28 a senior church official helped arrange a $185,000 loan from First Interstate Bank for the McLellin purchase. The collection was imaginary.
By the summer the money was running out faster than it came in. In August Hofmann signed a contract to buy a $550,000 residence, with $195,000 due at closing and three annual payments of the same amount to follow. On September 3 his $185,000 check to First Interstate Bank was returned unpaid. Ten days later he admitted to a group of investors that their money had not bought the items they had paid for. On October 4 he told the church official that he would have to sell the McLellin collection rather than donate it. By October 13 his debts stood at no less than $1.3 million.
The first victim was among the investors pressing him over the McLellin collection. On the day of his death he was due, within two hours, to inspect the McLellin documents.
The first victim died in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, October 15, 1985. He had been born in Salt Lake City in 1954, had led the research on the letter he bought from Hofmann, and had given it to the church six months earlier.
About ninety minutes later the second victim died in Holladay.
On October 16 Hofmann himself was critically injured in downtown Salt Lake City. He survived, and within days he said that he had been a target, not the man responsible.
More than forty local, state and federal investigators worked on the case in the first weeks.
Within days police identified Hofmann as their primary suspect. He was quiet, reserved and well liked, an active church member with a wide circle of admirers, and much of the public doubted the police at first. Investigators linked him to the deaths through evidence gathered in the days after October 16. The question of the documents followed. On October 19 the church announced that the FBI had found no sign of forgery in the Harris letter, and in January 1986 the FBI laboratory in Washington reported that the letter was not a forgery.
In December 1985 two document examiners, one of them working for the Utah Attorney General's office, began examining Hofmann documents held by the church's historical department. A third examination took place at the Utah State Crime Lab in January 1986. In May 1986 one of the examiners announced that he had proof of forgery. The examiner for the Attorney General's office went on to review about 600 Hofmann documents and said he had not seen one that Hofmann had not altered.
On February 4, 1986, Salt Lake County prosecutors charged Hofmann with two counts of murder and 23 counts of theft by deception and communications fraud. He was released on $250,000 bail on February 9.
The preliminary hearing opened on April 14, 1986, and ran for five weeks. As it went on, the prosecution's case appeared increasingly substantial, and Hofmann still maintained his innocence. On May 22 he was bound over for trial on the murder and fraud charges, and on June 6 he pleaded not guilty. The court ruled that he would face five separate trials, the first of them, for murder, set for March 2, 1987. Hofmann himself said afterward that the worst thing the authorities ever did was let him see how the examiners had caught him.
Talks toward a plea began within months of the hearing. On January 7, 1987, the two sides reached agreement, and over that night and the next day Hofmann confessed to the two lead prosecutors.
On January 23, 1987, in court in Salt Lake City, Hofmann pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of October 15, 1985, and to two counts of theft by deception. The theft counts covered his sale of the salamander letter and his sale of the McLellin collection to the Salt Lake City coin dealer. The other 26 counts were dismissed. The deal allowed him to plead guilty to reduced charges in exchange for giving prosecutors interview time, in which he would explain the murders and the documents.
He was sentenced to one term of five years to life and three terms of one to fifteen years. The judge recommended that he remain in prison for the rest of his natural life. He was taken into state custody the same day.
The church issued a statement that its leaders had not been involved in the plea bargaining and had not been consulted about it. It said that, like other collectors, it had relied on competent authorities in acquiring documents and had itself been a victim of the fraud.
Between February 11 and May 27, 1987, Hofmann sat for a series of interviews with the two prosecutors. On July 31 the Salt Lake County Attorney's office released a two-volume transcript of about 600 pages. In it Hofmann confessed that every document listed in the probable cause statement was a forgery. He did not testify in any court.
He told the prosecutors that he had used old ink recipes, taken blank pages from university archives and worked out his own ways of aging paper. He said that he had begun forging in the same teenage years in which he lost his faith. "All of these forgeries were, I believe, strictly financial," he said, though he also admitted that his ego was involved and that he enjoyed being seen as "the great documents sleuth." The confession was not complete, and some of those involved were dissatisfied with how much it left out.
On a court sentence of five years to life, the length of time Hofmann would actually serve lay with the Utah Board of Pardons. He appeared before the board in January 1988.
At the hearing he admitted that he had committed both murders to keep himself from being exposed as a fraud. He said he felt remorse for the families of the victims, not for the victims themselves. The board deliberated for less than an hour and ordered that he remain in prison for life. He had not been given a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, but the board told him he would never leave prison.
Hofmann began his sentence in January 1987 and spent the next twenty-eight years in maximum-security housing. In December 2015, after a routine housing evaluation, the Utah Department of Corrections moved him out of maximum security to another state facility, a change made public in September 2016.
In 2021, at the age of sixty-six, he remained in custody in Utah. He had given no interviews to the press since October 15, 1985.
Hofmann has always described his own injury of October 16, 1985, as a suicide attempt, made because he believed he deserved to die. Authorities did not accept that account; they believed the injury came from an effort to deflect suspicion from himself. No court has ruled on the question.
The full reach of his forgeries is unknown. He admitted forging every document listed in the probable cause statement, and no more than that was ever established in court.
December 7, 1954: Mark William Hofmann is born in Salt Lake City.
1966: At twelve, he buys his first item of Mormon history, a Kirtland Safety Society note.
June 1973: He graduates from Olympus High School.
January 1974: He leaves for a church mission in the England Southwest Mission.
1976: He enrolls at Utah State University.
April 1980: He produces the "Anthon Transcript"; the church accepts it on April 22.
March 2, 1981: The Joseph Smith III blessing is sold to the church.
January 6, 1984: The salamander letter is sold for $40,000.
April 23, 1985: A coin dealer advances him $150,000 for the McLellin collection.
June 28, 1985: A $185,000 bank loan is arranged for the McLellin purchase.
September 3, 1985: His $185,000 check to the bank is returned unpaid.
October 13, 1985: His debts stand at no less than $1.3 million.
October 15, 1985: Two people die, one in Salt Lake City and one in Holladay.
October 16, 1985: Hofmann is critically injured in downtown Salt Lake City and becomes the primary suspect.
February 4, 1986: He is charged with two counts of murder and 23 fraud counts.
February 9, 1986: He is released on $250,000 bail.
April 14, 1986: The preliminary hearing opens.
May 22, 1986: He is bound over for trial.
June 6, 1986: He pleads not guilty.
January 7, 1987: A plea bargain is reached.
January 23, 1987: He pleads guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of theft by deception and is sentenced.
February 11 to May 27, 1987: He is interviewed by prosecutors.
July 31, 1987: A 600-page transcript of his confessions is released.
January 1988: The Utah Board of Pardons orders that he remain in prison for life.
December 2015: He is moved out of maximum-security housing.
2021: He remains in custody in Utah.