Mark Hofmann: The Mormon Murderer | 182

Mark Hofmann, a lifelong Mormon, skyrockets to local fame by uncovering “historical” documents that challenge core LDS Church narratives. He sells the documents to the church, claiming he’s protecting it from scandal—but the truth is much darker. The documents are forgeries, and Mark is a closet atheist and master con artist. And when his double life is about to be exposed, he takes drastic measures to protect his secrets. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Hagi?

  Audible subscribers can listen to all our episodes of Scamfluencers ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.

• 0:08Scaachi Koul?

  A heads up to our listeners. This story includes a brief mention of suicide. Please listen with care.

• 0:20Scaachi Koul?

  Sarah, have you been watching all the Mormons in our pop culture lately? Like, I'm sure you're watching Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, right? Well, of course, Salt Lake City, I mean, Jen Shaw. And yes, I definitely am very fascinated by this rise of Mormonism in pop culture. I am watching all of it, and I think what I love the most is how they're always fighting while holding like a 90-ounce cup of soda. They drink so much soda in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives because they have that thing, swig, that I'm like, are they just constantly like burping and gassy and like? I think they're just vibrating. It's just, it must be crazy, right? Well, I ask because I'm about to tell you about another story that made headlines

• 1:04Scaachi Koul?

  all over the world about the Mormon church, when one of its members made his crisis of faith everyone else's problem.

• 1:14Scaachi Koul?

  On January 6, 1984, days before his 30th birthday, Steve Christensen is about to buy himself a big present. Steve lives in a suburb of Salt Lake City. He's got a broad frame and thick, dark brown hair that hangs over his forehead. He's a financial consultant, a father of three, and a Mormon bishop who collects documents and rare books related to the church. And today, he's about to buy one of the rarest, most important church documents in the world. The document is known as the Salamander Letter. It was supposedly written by an early member of the church, and it totally upends the church's origin story. According to Mormon doctrine, the angel Mormon led the prophet Joseph Smith to a box of

• 1:56Scaachi Koul?

  golden plates engraved with a new book of the Bible, the Book of Mormon. But this letter tells a different story. It claims it wasn't an angel at all. It was a white salamander. Mormonism, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has long pushed to be recognized as a legitimate branch of Christianity. But practically since the Church's founding, critics have accused Joseph Smith of practicing pagan folk magic. In Smith's time, salamanders were considered creatures with magical powers. So if he was guided by a salamander instead of an angel, it would be a huge revelation, one that would fuel critics and undercut the Church's ties to mainstream Christianity. Sarah, can you read this quote from a Mormon history expert

• 2:40Scaachi Koul?

  explaining the significance of this find?

• 2:42Sarah Hagi?

  Yes. The expert says, "It's as if someone came up with a document in which Moses said, 'I got the Ten Commandments from the ghost of Elvis Presley.'" You know, when you put it that way, it's kind of like, "God can do anything, why not?" You know?

• 2:59Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah. The document almost strains belief. But Steve has good reason to think it's real. It was discovered by famed rare document collector Mark Hoffman. Mark has been a major figure in the Mormon history world over the last few years, ever since he discovered a seminal religious text written by the founder of the LDS Church. He's seen as a kind of Indiana Jones, but for Mormon stuff. Mark offered to sell the Salamander Letter to the Church, but its contents are so explosive, the Church doesn't want to be seen as having anything to do with it. That's where Steve comes in. Steve has done well for himself. He's almost a millionaire, and he deals in rare books and documents often. His personal library is nearly 13,000 volumes.

• 3:44Scaachi Koul?

  So Church officials asked if he would buy the Salamander Letter and donate it to the Church. This way, the Church can own the document without officially acquiring it or appearing to endorse what it says. Steve agrees right away, with one condition: Mark can't tell anyone about the letter's contents. Mark agrees, and Steve buys it for $40,000 or more than $125,000 today.

• 4:10Scaachi Koul?

  But what Steve doesn't know is that Mark is less salamander and more snake. Because the letter is a fake. Mark forged it in his basement. And now Steve is caught up in Mark's elaborate forgery scheme. And as their business relationship deepens, he's about to get pulled into another con: a Ponzi scheme. When the truth about Mark starts to come out, it'll lead to betrayal, broken faith, and eventually deadly violence.

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• 6:17Scaachi Koul?

  From Wondery, I'm Sachi Cole.

• 6:19Sarah Hagi?

  And I'm Sarah Haggie.

• 6:20Scaachi Koul?

  And this is Scamfluencers.

• 6:30Scaachi Koul?

  Mark Hoffman was born into the Mormon church and became a local celebrity in Utah for uncovering historical documents about the church's early days. He sold some of these potentially scandalous documents back to the church, framing it as a way to protect the faith from damaging revelations. On the surface, he appeared to be a Latter Day Saints success story, a devoted family man with close ties to church leadership. But underneath, Mark was something else entirely, a closet atheist with a knack for forgery. He faked dozens of documents that cast out on the very origins of Mormonism, raking in millions of dollars that funded his decidedly non-Mormon double life of debauchery and indulgence. But when his scheme starts to unravel,

• 7:13Scaachi Koul?

  Mark will protect his lies in the most drastic and deadly way possible. This is Mark Hoffman, the Mormon murderer.

• 7:25Scaachi Koul?

  By the time Mark is born in 1954, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is growing rapidly, and the church has been making a lot of changes in an effort to go more mainstream. Mark's parents are super devout and stellar examples of the new Mormonism. But by the late '60s, teenage Mark has a crisis of faith. He learns that his mother was a product of a polygamous marriage that took place after the church banned the practice. His grandfather got permission to take a second wife because his first wife couldn't have children. Some of Mark's relatives dispute how much of a secret this was inside the family, but young Mark sees it as a symbol of the church's hypocrisy. Mark confronts his father, who tells him he just needs to have faith in the church's teachings.

• 8:10Scaachi Koul?

  But Mark has also been reading about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. And by the time he's 14, he identifies as an atheist, though nobody in his family knows.

• 8:21Sarah Hagi?

  I figured that would be kind of something you can't talk about in a very religious family, especially back then. Of course, no one would know he's an atheist, right?

• 8:30Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah. I also feel like being a teenager and having an atheist phase is just part of it.

• 8:35Sarah Hagi?

  Yes, big time.

• 8:36Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah. And another thing that Mark gets into in his teen years is magic. Other hobbies include chemistry, electronics, and stamp and coin collecting. When he's around 15, he learns a skill called electroplating, which is basically using electric current to add fake markings to metal. With the right tools, things like alligator clips, a battery, and a container of acid, he can add markings that make ordinary coins look rare and valuable. Mark takes one of these forged coins to a dealer, who says it's worth thousands of dollars, if it's real. The dealer is skeptical. He doesn't believe a teenager could possibly have such an expensive item. But when the dealer asks the US Treasury to authenticate

• 9:18Scaachi Koul?

  it, they confirm the coin is genuine. Mark is elated and validated. Sarah, can you read what he says about this years later?

• 9:27Sarah Hagi?

  He writes, "My rationalization was that if the Treasury Department pronounces it genuine, that it is genuine by definition." I mean, yeah, sure, if you're lying to someone and they believe it, does that make the lie true? I don't really know.

• 9:42Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, well, Mark has managed to create his own reality, and he's gotten others to believe in it. Or at least, that's the story he tells about it. We don't know what's actually true. But it's clear that Mark gets a thrill out of this sort of manipulation. Later, in a letter to his sentencing board, Mark writes, "As far back as I can remember, I have liked to impress people through my deception. In fact, some of my earliest memories are of doing magic and car tricks. Fooling people gave me a sense of power and superiority." Forging old coins is only the beginning. Soon, Mark won't just be tricking collectors, he'll be rewriting history itself.

• 10:24Scaachi Koul?

  It's 1974, and Mark is walking the streets of Bristol, England, spreading the good news about the Book of Mormon. He's 19 years old and on an overseas mission, a traditional rite of passage for young Mormon men. Mark is still an atheist, but his family doesn't know that, and he doesn't want to disappoint them. So he's still going along with their expectations and those of his community. Mark's faith doesn't grow during his mission, but his interest in the history of the Church does. It was common practice for missionaries to hunt for anti-Mormon materials and remove them, sometimes replacing them with the Book of Mormon. But when Mark looks around libraries and rare bookstores in the UK, he's amazed by what he finds. Mormon missionaries arrived in northern England

• 11:08Scaachi Koul?

  shortly after the Church was founded and left artifacts behind with information about its early history. Mark finds documents that contradict Mormon teachings, like a critical biography of Joseph Smith. He starts seeking out more documents that question the Church's narratives and stashes them in a box under his bed.

• 11:27Scaachi Koul?

  Mark returns from his mission in 1976. At this point, his family expects big things from him. They even dream that, one day, he could join the small, elite circle of men who basically run the Church's affairs. Mark enrolls at Utah State University as a pre-med student. Shortly afterward, he meets a popular, stylish classmate named Judy. They quickly get serious, and, less than a year later, Mark proposes. Once Judy accepts, Mark starts sharing his real feelings about the Church with her. Judy later tells investigators that Mark confessed he was an atheist and said he wanted all Mormons to know that they are being misled, that there is no God. Mark is devastated when Judy says that she doesn't agree.

• 12:11Scaachi Koul?

  She returns the ring, saying she knows the marriage wouldn't last. Mark continues to struggle with his lack of faith. And over Easter weekend in 1979, he gets into an argument with his mom. He criticizes the church for burying historical documents that could be embarrassing. His mom disagrees. If there are documents that could shake someone's faith, she doesn't think they should be made public. In response, Mark writes an essay in the form of a letter to his mom. Can you read how he ends the essay?

• 12:40Sarah Hagi?

  Yes, he writes, "Why should I be inquisitive and doubting at the university and not at church? The individual's conscience and the weight of authority or public opinion are thus pitted against each other so that the individual either denies them to himself at the expense of personal honesty, or hides them from others and lives in two worlds." To me, what he's saying is that he's in university and he's taught to be thinking critically about the world. But then there's this other world of the church where you're expected to just accept what you're told. And I do understand that, and I think it is a very common crisis of faith for younger people or people who are kind of entering the real world when they grew up very religious.

• 13:24Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, it feels right on schedule. And Mark wrestles with admitting that he's an atheist, disappointing his parents and effectively blowing up his life, or trying to live in two worlds. Just a few months later, he makes his choice. Mark marries a devout Mormon woman named Dora Lee Olds. Dora Lee, who goes by Dory, is a home economics student with dark blonde hair who just turned 22. Mark's parents love her. To them, she's the perfect wife for a man on track to become a leader in the church. And Mark has learned from his mistakes. He never tells Dory about his real beliefs. Dory quits school to pay their bills and have children while Mark keeps studying.

• 14:05Scaachi Koul?

  After all, he'll need a good job to support a big Mormon family. But secretly, Mark has another plan, and it's not becoming a doctor. Mark starts forging old Mormon money. He figures out the right ink recipes and learns how to oxidize and age the paper bills so they look authentic. It's the natural evolution of his teenage coin scam. About a year later, he's ready to pivot to a new con: fabricating documents. Mark's about to go all in on forgery and make good on his dream of shaking the faith of the church itself.

• 14:42Scaachi Koul?

  It's late at night, and Mark is holed up in a room he keeps Dory locked out of. He's hard at work forging documents. It turns out that Mark's childhood love of chemistry was perfect preparation for his con. Mark mixes his own ink from old recipes he finds in the library, and uses heat and chemicals to speed up natural oxidation processes. He makes an old-fashioned quill pen using a turkey feather and a razor blade. And he runs a vacuum cleaner over his documents, transferring the ink to the underside of the page, making it look like it's settled there over hundreds of years.

• 15:17Sarah Hagi?

  I'm kind of tickled by this because I feel like in our stories, there are so many episodes where we deal with people who are trying to make something look old, like a document, look old. And they usually just literally do the tea bags and paper thing.

• 15:32Scaachi Koul?

  I was gonna say.

• 15:33Sarah Hagi?

  That you do when you're a child.

• 15:34Scaachi Koul?

  It's the same thing we were doing when we were making old maps, yeah.

• 15:37Sarah Hagi?

  This is a little bit more sophisticated. They're usually not thinking about the natural oxidation process.

• 15:42Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, a new strategy for sure. A few months after his wedding, Mark makes his first major play by forging a document called the Anthon Transcript. It's a copy Joseph Smith supposedly made of the original hieroglyphics found in the Book of Mormon. According to church lore, the copy was shown to a Columbia Classics professor named Charles Anthon back in the 1820s. And it's been lost for over a century, until now. We actually have a picture of the document Mark fabricated. Sarah, can you describe it?

• 16:11Sarah Hagi?

  Yes. So this is a black and white, I guess, like photocopy or image of it. And it looks ancient for sure. The text, I don't know how to even describe it, but it looks like-

• 16:23Scaachi Koul?

  It's hieroglyphics.

• 16:24Sarah Hagi?

  Yeah, it looks like Mormon hieroglyphs. If I saw this, I would think like someone going through something is writing secret messages from a paranoid delusion.

• 16:35Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Sarah Hagi?

  But if someone told me it was ancient, I'd be like, sure, I've never seen anything like this, and it looks old as hell.

• 16:42Scaachi Koul?

  It's a believable forgery. And once the document is done, Mark uses a sticky black thumb to place it inside the pages of an old King James Bible. Then he meets with a curator of rare documents at Utah State University. The curator offers him five grand, which tells Mark that this forgery is good enough to make him some real money. Mark takes his fake Anthon Transcript to the church's historical department so an in-house handwriting expert can analyze it. Three days later, he receives good news. They've concluded that the document is real. Mark is brought to the office of the three highest leaders of the Church to tell them what he found. They understand the significance. These hieroglyphs are supposedly the actual markings on the gold plates Joseph Smith

• 17:27Scaachi Koul?

  discovered. If they can be translated by modern scholars, it would prove the validity of the Mormon Church's origin story for good. Six days later, the Church makes a formal announcement that the anthon transcript has been found. Overnight, Mark becomes a Mormon celebrity. Here he is in a TV interview, talking about his big find.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  It appears to be the earliest Mormon document and the earliest Joseph Smith hologram. Also, I think it's exciting just to think that apparently this piece of paper was copied by Joseph Smith's own hand.

• 18:01Sarah Hagi?

  I mean, this is all happening really fast. I would think it would take a lot longer and a lot more verification for this to become a news story in the center of their religious world. Like, Utah is the center of Mormonism. And it was that easy? I'm a bit shocked by that. I feel like there's a level of almost like wishful thinking happening here where they're foregoing really looking into how valid this is and going about this very quickly and making announcements really quickly because they kind of want it to be true, almost.

• 18:38Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, they're too excited to properly vet this. The Church rewards him with a first edition copy of the Book of Mormon and several rare coins. Mark tells his parents he's abandoning medical school. He wants to make a career out of dealing in rare documents. Mark can hardly believe how quickly his life has changed. Or maybe he can. After all, the anthon transcript is actually his handiwork. Mark found a way to fake old documents so believably, even actual professional historians can't tell. And because he made the audacious choice to forge one of the Church's most high-profile documents, he's gained their trust. Now, he can focus on his two favorite things: deceiving people and undermining the origin

• 19:23Scaachi Koul?

  story of the Church of Latter-day Saints. Throughout the early 80s, Mark becomes a big name amongst Mormon history buffs. These are professionals and amateurs, believers and skeptics, who meet up in local bookstores to discuss their shared interest in church history. They call themselves the Mormon Underground. Two of these enthusiasts are Gerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah historians in their early 50s who both come from prominent Mormon families. Sandra is literally descended from Brigham Young, but by this point, they both left the church. They now run a Mormon skeptical bookstore out of the foyer of their house in Salt Lake City.

• 20:05Scaachi Koul?

  Gerald and Sandra have watched with amazement as Mark found document after document, including ones that actually undermined church doctrine. One even suggests that church leadership should have passed to Joseph Smith's son rather than the church's recognized successor, Brigham Young. Gerald and Sandra have no reason to question Mark's string of incredible discoveries. He claims to be the world's only full-time collector of Mormon documents, which means he can spend long hours going through public records, perusing rare bookstores, and even going door to door in rural Utah to hunt down his finds. Sure, he's cagey about his sources, but that's not unusual in the world of rare documents. And Gerald, Sandra, and the rest of the Mormon Underground want to believe that all of his finds are real.

• 20:52Sarah Hagi?

  I feel like this is such a common theme when someone has fake documents or created a fake source of history-changing information. Like, we saw it with the guy in the Hitler diaries, where there are these people who should know better because they dedicate their lives to facts and figuring out what is real, what isn't. But they always shut their brains off when they want something to be real so badly. It's so interesting to see people shut themselves off just to think something's real, which is kind of what he hates about religion.

• 21:23Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, it's true. Mark is, at his core, a huge hypocrite. And in November of 1983, Gerald and Sandra hear about the White Salamander Letter, the document we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, which claims that a white salamander led Joseph Smith to the Golden Plates. At first, they're really excited. Earlier that year, they published a book supporting the longstanding theory that Joseph Smith and his family were into folk magic and the occult. So the White Salamander Letter should be huge for them. But as Gerald digs into the letter, he can't shake the feeling that something is off. First, he notices that the Salamander Letter is suspiciously similar to other early Mormon documents.

• 22:06Scaachi Koul?

  And it doesn't really sound like the guy who supposedly wrote it. So he starts to wonder. What if Mark has been forging documents to try to shape the narrative of Latter Day Saints history?

• 22:18Sarah Hagi?

  I mean, yeah. You're on to something. He kind of is. I'm glad that someone is opening their eyes at least a little bit.

• 22:26Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, huge relief. In August of 1984, Gerald publishes a pamphlet that questions the Salamander Letter and all of Mark's finds. Sandra isn't totally convinced, but she wants to support her husband. So she joins him at a Mormon Theological Symposium, where they distribute the pamphlet. And at least one of the other attendees is pretty unhappy to see them: Mark. The next day, Mark shows up at their house. Sandra's home, so she sits down with him. And he's upset. Mark says he can't share the source of the Salamander Letter because he's already sold it to Steve and promised to keep it a secret. He tells Sandra he can understand doubt from the Church, but not from critics like them. Sandra later says that Mark gets so worked up,

• 23:11Scaachi Koul?

  he's almost in tears.

• 23:13Sarah Hagi?

  I could see how this performance would work. Mark probably is genuinely emotional, just not for the reasons they think, because he really wants him to believe this, because, again, he's trying to undermine the Church. But I think this is one of those things where, like, their instincts should take over what they see in front of them. I think if you do have doubts about something like this, it's worth exploring until the end, right?

• 23:40Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, I think so. Mark's frustration actually makes Sandra more convinced that the letter is real. But Gerald stands firm. And he does manage to draw some attention to his concerns. His pamphlet gets press coverage in The Los Angeles Times, as well as an influential Utah paper called The Desiree News. But people close ranks around Mark, defending the authenticity of his documents. A couple of months later, church elders warned that Mormons should stay away from doing historical research that could threaten people's faith, essentially validating the letter. And a couple of months after that, physical testing also seems to confirm that the letter is real. Gerald should be relieved, thrilled even. But he can't let go of his doubts. And soon enough,

• 24:25Scaachi Koul?

  he'll be glad that they only got one visit from Mark Hoffman.

• 24:35Speaker 06

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• 26:13Scaachi Koul?

  In April 1985, the Church publishes the Salamander Letter. They acknowledge that it seems authentic, but argue it could have been forged back in the 1830s to discredit the Church. By this point, Mark has become one of the most important dealers of Mormon documents in the world. But he isn't just focused on Church history. He's also fabricating secular items, including documents he claims were written by George Washington, Betsy Ross, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens. His work is so convincing that one of his fakes, a supposedly undiscovered poem by Emily Dickinson, actually gets published and analyzed by literary scholars. Mark makes frequent trips to New York to sell his pieces and acquire more rare books and documents.

• 26:58Scaachi Koul?

  But he's also living a double life in the Big Apple. At home in Utah, Mark appears to be an observant Mormon who doesn't drink alcohol or coffee. But when he's on the road, he pounds glass after glass of whiskey. To a lot of outsiders, this is pretty tame stuff. But for a Mormon, it's downright scandalous. And while Mark is off drinking and dealing, he expects Dory to manage their home and take care of their three small children. At this point, Mark is pulling in six figures by forging documents. At least, that's what he says later. But he's also found another way to make money. Mark knows plenty of collectors willing to pay a premium for rare documents. But it's expensive to buy these documents in the first place.

• 27:42Scaachi Koul?

  So Mark starts recruiting investors. He tells them that if they pony up some cash, he can acquire documents, flip them, and cut them in on the profits. In some cases, he promises investors special perks, like first dibs on other rare documents he finds. But in reality, it's a classic Ponzi scheme. He uses their money to pay other investors and then spends whatever's left over.

• 28:07Sarah Hagi?

  You know, it is pretty innovative to add a Ponzi scheme when you already have like a whole forgery operation. I don't know, it really is adding a pretty crazy layer to all this.

• 28:20Scaachi Koul?

  Uh, yeah, sounds about right for our show. Well, Mark blows hundreds of thousands of dollars on trips to the East Coast and fancy toys like a home video camera and a hot tub. And when it's time to buy a new car, Dory wants to get a minivan to accommodate their growing family. But Mark wants a flashy sports car, so he buys both. And he promises Dory that they'll move into a huge, half a million dollar house with a swimming pool, tennis court, and a guest house in a ritzy Salt Lake City suburb. But his big ticket items are rare books, real ones. He pays more than six grand for a first edition of The Lord of the Rings, which is about $19,000 today. He also builds an impressive collection of rare children's books for his kids.

• 29:06Scaachi Koul?

  Mark's spending is totally out of control, so it's no surprise that by the spring of 1985, he's running out of cash. When Dory asks for money to buy groceries, he says no, and tells her to dig into the emergency food supplies in the basement. Mark is in a tough situation, but he has a solution. A forgery so valuable, it can make all his financial problems go away. By this point, Mark is more than a million dollars in debt. Desperate for cash, Mark decides to forge something even more ancient than the founding of Mormonism. He goes all the way back to 1639, when the very first printing press in the British colonies was established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The first document produced there

• 29:51Scaachi Koul?

  was called The Oath of a Freeman. It's a landmark text about religious and political freedom, and it's probably the most famous missing document in US colonial history. Only about 50 copies were ever printed, and none have been found. Until now. Mark claims he found it in a rare bookstore in New York and bought it for just 25 bucks. To get away with something this brazen, Mark has to invest in new tools. He orders special printing plates from a local printing shop, and it pays off because Mark hooks a huge buyer, the Library of Congress. But the Library of Congress balks at Mark's asking price of $1.5 million, and the deal stalls.

• 30:34Sarah Hagi?

  It is totally batshit that now the Library of Congress is involved in this somehow, even if the deal does stall.

• 30:43Scaachi Koul?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:44Sarah Hagi?

  That it got to that level is just, ugh, God, this guy.

• 30:49Scaachi Koul?

  Stressful, isn't it? Well, luckily, the oath of a freeman isn't his only forgery Hail Mary. He tells church leaders he's come across a trove of documents from William McClellan. McClellan was an early follower of Joseph Smith, who eventually broke with the church. When he left, he took tons of secret documents with him. This cache of anti-Mormon goods is known as the McClellan Collection, and it would be Mark's most dangerous find yet. Mark says the collection includes a letter from Joseph Smith's wife that contradicts Joseph's account of being visited by God three years before an angel revealed the golden plates. If the letter exists, it would massively complicate the church's origin story.

• 31:30Scaachi Koul?

  The church naturally wants to see these documents and control what happens to them. Mark is betting they'll snap up the McClellan Collection to avoid a wave of negative publicity. It turns out he's right. Steve even steps in to help make it happen. In June 1985, at Steve's urging, a church elder helps Mark get a bank loan of $185,000 to acquire the collection, and the church agrees to buy it from him for the same amount. But Mark is double-dipping. He's already gotten another dealer to give him $150,000 to buy the collection. But months pass, and Mark can't come up with the goods. His ambition got the better of him. Even someone as skilled as he is

• 32:12Scaachi Koul?

  can't produce this many authentic-looking documents this quickly.

• 32:18Sarah Hagi?

  It seems like he's really letting go here. He's spending a lot of money. He's overpromising and spiraling in this way because there was a time where he was making sure they seemed really authentic. To me, it just shows how delusional he is that he just can't keep up with his own grandeur in a way.

• 32:37Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, he's getting sloppy, and he's starting to panic. His creditors want their money, and the world of Mormon document collectors is small and tight-knit. So he knows it's only a matter of time before the wrong people talk to each other and find out that he's been conning them. Finally, in early October 1985, six months after announcing that he'd found the McClellan collection, Mark's finances catch up with him. The check to pay up on his church-backed loan bounces. Steve keeps pressing Mark to show him the collection so the church can close the deal. And he warns Mark that if he doesn't deliver the documents, he could face criminal charges for defrauding the church. Steve sets a deadline. On October 15, 1985,

• 33:21Scaachi Koul?

  Mark has to finally hand over the McClellan collection. Mark freaks out. If he shows up empty-handed, his reputation, his business, and his standing in the community will be ruined. So Mark takes a drastic step to buy himself more time, one which will cause tragedy for everyone involved.

• 33:42Scaachi Koul?

  It's the night before Mark is supposed to hand over the McClellan documents. But Mark isn't creating last-minute forgeries. Instead, he's working on a pair of pipe bombs. He built them with parts he picked up at Radio Shack. He's already built a test bomb, driving 20 minutes outside of the city to detonate it. So he knows they will work. After assembling the bombs, Mark put them in packages addressed to Steve and Steve's business partner, Gary Sheets. Then, a little before 3:00 in the morning, he drives to Gary's house and puts one of the bombs outside of his garage.

• 34:18Scaachi Koul?

  When he gets home, his daughter is crying. Dory finds him and asks him to take care of her so she can go back to bed. A few hours later, he heads to downtown Salt Lake City, where he places the other bomb outside of Steve's office. Mark has two goals: to stop Steve from discovering his scam and exposing his forgeries, and to throw police off of his trail. He hopes it'll look like someone is targeting the financial company that Steve and Gary run, which has been struggling. Mark is willing to kill innocent people to cover up his fraud. But he settled on using bombs because this way, he doesn't have to come face-to-face with any of his victims.

• 34:57Sarah Hagi?

  I didn't see this going from forgeries being potentially exposed to the only solution being like, I just have to bomb. It is such a jump and I can't really get a proper grasp on his mind, like how it works and what he thinks is normal.

• 35:19Scaachi Koul?

  It's a wild, wild leap. At 8:00 AM, Steve arrives at the office and picks up the package, detonating the bomb. He is killed instantly. Nearly two hours later, Gary's wife, Kathy, picks up the package addressed to her husband. It explodes, killing her in the driveway. This is a huge, local news story. And Mark assumes that with Steve gone, the church will delay any discussion of the McClellan papers. But he's done too good a job of throwing people off of his scent. Since the church doesn't see Steve's death as related to the documents, they simply find another Mormon leader to handle the deal and reschedule the McClellan handoff for the following day.

• 36:02Scaachi Koul?

  Mark is back where he started before committing murder. And now, he'll have to come up with the goods or face the music. So he comes up with a frantic new plan, which is about to blow up in his own face. The day after the bombings, Mark's wife, Dory, is shocked, sad, and afraid. She's worried the killer is still at large. There have been more bomb threats called in, and Salt Lake City is full of frightening rumors about religious death squads and mafia assassins. Some people have even fled the city. Then, Mark calls and tells Dory that she and the kids are in danger. They need to go to her mom's house. Later, she gets another call. A third bomb went off.

• 36:46Scaachi Koul?

  This one was in Mark's car, and he's severely injured. Horrified, Dory rushes to the hospital. And Mark is lying on a hospital bed, wearing a gown, and his face is covered in glass. He's getting x-rays and a CAT scan, and he's lost some hearing in one ear. Dory can't believe what's happening. Why would anyone want to hurt her husband? Then, the situation goes from scary to strange. A police officer approaches her and asks for a key to their house and the alarm codes. They have a warrant to search the home because Mark is now a suspect in the murders. Dory's mind is racing. She doesn't understand how that could be possible.

• 37:28Scaachi Koul?

  The officers ask her if Mark was home the night before the first two bombs went off, and she says yes. She remembers finding Mark in the middle of the night and asking him to tend to their daughter. And he was home when the bombs went off. Later that night, she sits in the hospital and watches on the news as the cops search her house. She cringes as she realizes that she didn't even finish cleaning and she forgot to close the dishwasher. Somehow, things get worse. When Mark's parents show up at the hospital, they tell Dory that the bombing is somehow her fault. Then, Mark's dad says that if Mark is guilty, he has to confess and agree to be executed. According to an ancient Mormon doctrine, some crimes are so awful that the blood of

• 38:11Scaachi Koul?

  the guilty party must be spilled for them to join their families in Mormon heaven. The modern-day church has disavowed the doctrine, known as blood atonement, but Mark's dad believes in it. Dory's world is turning completely upside down.

• 38:27Sarah Hagi?

  It's really telling of where his mind is that, like, he remains in the church that he actively undermines secretly, does all these things that are against the church to make money, but also is so scared of the consequences of people figuring him out that he's willing to kill. At that point, leave. I just feel like it's such a weird jump.

• 38:50Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, he really is acting as if he's trapped, but he could have left. And now, Mark swears he isn't guilty, but the police investigation sure seems to point to him. Dory learns that a witness saw someone at Steve's office building the morning of the bombing, carrying a package with Steve's name on it and wearing a green high school letterman jacket. When the police search Dory and Mark's house, they find a similar jacket, and they find bomb-making materials in Mark's car. When Mark gets out of the hospital, Dory is happy to have him home, but she can't shake the feeling that something is off. When they watch the evening news, Mark doesn't seem horrified by the media naming him as a suspect in the bombings. Instead, he seems excited to see his face on TV.

• 39:35Sarah Hagi?

  You know, I feel like I started out kind of understanding Mark's initial feeling, but seeing how far this has gone where like, he's a suspect here and there's no real reaction, like, there's no indication here that he feels like he's gotten too far, to me is so scary.

• 39:54Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, it's all really uncomfortable to think about. Dory understands that the evidence is circumstantial and the cops don't have enough to make an arrest. They also don't have a motive, and Mark passed a lie detector test. But when a new investigator comes on the case, Dory and the world are about to learn about Mark's forgeries, and how far he's willing to go to cover them up.

• 40:21Scaachi Koul?

  It's a few weeks after the bombings, and George Throckmorton is sitting in a recliner in his Salt Lake City living room, poring over a copy of the Salamander Letter. George is in his early 40s, tall and thin with close-cropped gray hair and a mustache. He's a forensic document examiner with the Utah Attorney General's Office. He's not officially working on Mark's case, but like everyone in Utah, he's been following the story closely, especially since everyone involved was buying and selling rare documents. The police investigation into Mark seems to have stalled. The cops can't figure out the motive, but George is pretty sure he knows what happened. He's also Mormon, and he recently asked a church historian to let him review some of the historical artifacts they got from Mark.

• 41:06Scaachi Koul?

  After spending a few hours with the material, he's even more convinced about his theory: Mark sent the bombs to cover up the fact that he was forging documents. Most of the Mormon document-collecting world believed the East Coast experts who reported that Mark's finds were genuine. But George is shocked to learn that these "experts" don't actually have a background in forensic science. They're historians, and he doesn't trust their conclusions.

• 41:34Sarah Hagi?

  I think this is the part of the story where someone using real logic enters and is like, "Wait a second, you're foregoing this very crucial step? Like, you need a background in forensic science to do forensic work?"

• 41:48Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, when someone with a level head shows up, that's usually not great for any of our scammers. Well, George calls the district attorney, who invites him to formally join the investigation. He and his partner begin examining Mark's papers, and they notice something. All of the documents he sold have ink that appears cracked. Other documents from that time period don't. George isn't a chemist, so he can't explain why this is happening. And it isn't necessarily evidence of forgery, but he knows that this can't just be a coincidence. In February of 1986, Mark is finally arrested for the bombings on the strength of other evidence. But the cops still need a motive.

• 42:29Scaachi Koul?

  So as the investigators build their case, George approaches the task of exposing Mark's forgeries with the same level of technical obsession Mark used to produce them. When they went through Mark's belongings, the police found a book called "Great Forgers and Famous Fakes." The book contained a recipe for iron gallatonic ink, the kind that would have been used in 18th and 19th century documents. But the chemicals mentioned in the recipe were pretty obscure. Things like gum arabic, roman vitriol, and green copper az. Then, in November 1986, about a year after the bombing, George gets lucky. While Christmas shopping, he notices a toy chemistry set,

• 43:09Scaachi Koul?

  complete with instructions and all of the ingredients needed to make this old-fashioned ink. Later on, he found out that Mark got these same chemicals at a toy store. And amazingly, this homemade ink was good enough to fool even the FBI's lab.

• 43:26Sarah Hagi?

  Wow, that is such a stroke of luck to just be able to see that, like to put that together when buying Christmas gifts for your kids.

• 43:35Scaachi Koul?

  It's pretty impressive if you gotta give it to them. While George and his team use the ink recipe, and lo and behold, it cracks. After solving the mystery of the cracked ink, George identifies one more smoking gun. Mark got lazy and didn't make his own plates to print The Oath of a Freeman. Instead, he had them made at a print shop under an alias, which later gets linked back to him. George ultimately concludes that Mark forged about a quarter of the documents he sold, and possibly even more. Up until now, Mark has maintained his innocence, but with the results of George's investigation, he and his lawyers are in a tough spot. So on January 23rd, 1987, Mark walks up to a federal courtroom in Salt Lake City

• 44:19Scaachi Koul?

  wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit and his 80s-style glasses. When a reporter asks how he's feeling, Mark says, "Obviously, I feel sorry for what happened. Obviously, I feel worse for my family. But I think we'll all live through it all, right?"

• 44:35Scaachi Koul?

  Inside, more than 20 members of the victims' families gather around the jury box. Mark had agreed to take a plea bargain, admitting to two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of theft by deception. The prosecution dropped 26 other felony charges. Mark chooses not to make any comments at the hearing. He was supposed to get a chance to say goodbye to his family, but at the last minute, he requests not to face them and asks to be taken directly into custody. His lawyer hands letters of apology to the victims' families. In exchange for avoiding the death penalty, Mark agrees to tell prosecutors how and why he killed Steve and Kathy. But for someone like Mark, a confession might just be one more chance to do what he does best: manipulate everyone around him.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat and Fish are back for a whole lot of wonderfully whimsical fun. What happens when you switch bodies with your best friend? Discover a caveman frozen in ice? Or make an alien so angry he threatens to destroy the planet? Find out in season two of the Cat in the Hat podcast. The Cat and Fish are traveling the world in the great catastrophic cacophony cruiser, meeting genies, clown professors, cave trolls, and extraordinary characters along the way. With clever wordplay, imaginative rhymes, original songs, and stories celebrating curiosity, empathy, and creative problem solving, every adventure brings something new to discover. It's a world of wonderful

• 46:10Speaker 02

  words, big imaginations, and plenty of heart for the whole family. Listen to the Cat in the Hat podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all 20 episodes early and ad-free right now.

• 46:26Sarah Hagi?

  I'm Gemma Whelan, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we tell the story of the original femme fatale, The Spy Who Was Mata Hari. A famous dancer turned World War I secret agent, accused of seducing Allied officers to uncover their plans. But was she a temptress or a scapegoat for French failures? Follow The Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who Was Mata Hari, early and ad-free on Audible.

• 47:04Scaachi Koul?

  Mark spends the spring of 1987 in Utah State Prison. And while he's there, he sits down for a series of interviews with prosecutors as a part of his plea deal. These conversations cover a ton of ground, from his early coin forgeries as a teenager, to losing his faith, to his thought process plotting the murders. Mark tells prosecutors that he intentionally blew himself up with the car bomb in a failed suicide attempt. He says he put some of the fake McClellan papers in the car so people would think that the collection had been destroyed along with him, even though it never existed in the first place. But even now, Mark is still lying. Later, investigators say that he was trying to deliver the bomb

• 47:46Scaachi Koul?

  in his car to a third victim, another Mormon document collector, but he accidentally set it off instead.

• 47:54Sarah Hagi?

  That's such a desperate lie to pretend you were trying to commit suicide and instead destroyed all your documents. He knows that this stuff can be recovered in some form. Like, you know, it just doesn't make any sense.

• 48:06Scaachi Koul?

  No, it's just a really bad plan. About a year later, in January 1988, Mark is set to have his state mandated sentencing hearing before the Board of Pardons. So he writes down his explanations and reasonings in a letter. He claims he committed murder to protect his family because he was desperate to keep his lies from coming out and negatively impacting them. But while he's trying to appear sympathetic, Mark's letter does not help his case. Because in it, he also describes the pleasure he takes in fooling people and the sense of power it gives him. The parole board upholds Mark's sentence of life behind bars. And outside the prison walls, the most intimate victim of his betrayals is left to pick up the pieces.

• 48:52Scaachi Koul?

  Dory has a hard time after the bombings. She gave birth to her fourth child with Mark before he was sentenced. And people in their community take Mark's crimes out on her. She loses friends and her kids are bullied at school. One of her local church leaders won't even shake her hand. At first, Dory believed Mark was innocent and stood by her husband. She held hands with him in court, visited him in prison, and brought the kids to see their dad. But before long, she accepts the truth. In August 1988, a few months after the parole hearing, she files for divorce. After that, she struggles to raise four children on her own. Mark left her with a million dollars of debt. She loses her house, and eventually, things get so difficult,

• 49:36Scaachi Koul?

  she sends her kids to live with relatives.

• 49:40Sarah Hagi?

  That is so sad. And that he never set it up that she wouldn't be in debt is also just so telling of how evil and careless he is.

• 49:50Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, this is like some of the worst of what Mark has done. And Dory doesn't speak to Mark after the divorce is finalized, which means she's left to follow the news like everyone else. She reads that he tried to kill himself through drug overdoses in 1988 and 1990. Mark also sends letters from prison threatening to kill George and members of the Board of Pardons and parole. Over the years, Dory pulls herself back together. She spends decades processing what her husband did and learns to stick up for herself. In the process, she gets help from a surprising source. In 2015 years after the bombings, her son is planning to go on his own overseas Mormon mission. Dory struggles to cover the costs, but when Steve's father, who owns a clothing store,

• 50:35Scaachi Koul?

  hears about her money problems, he provides Dory's son with free suits. Meanwhile, more and more information comes out about Mark's crimes. His fake Emily Dickinson poem isn't discovered until 12 years after the bombings. Hundreds of his fakes are still out there, and experts say that some may never be detected. In 2009, a collector finds a real McClellan notebook. It contains criticism of the church, but nothing as earth-shattering as what Mark promised.

• 51:06Scaachi Koul?

  In 2021, 36 years after the bombings, Dory is finally ready to talk about her ex-husband. She's in her 60s, and her blonde hair is streaked with gray, and she's sitting down for an interview for a Netflix documentary called Murder Among the Mormons. As Dory speaks to the filmmakers, you can see that she's a different person than the compliant young wife that she was in the 1980s. Back then, she didn't know what her husband was up to in the locked room he forbade her from entering. Now, Dory is outspoken and clear-eyed. She works as a life coach and hypnotherapist, helping other women work through their trauma. Like many in the Mormon community, Dory is learning to forgive, but she'll never forget.

• 51:55Scaachi Koul?

  Sarah, I know you're a woman of God. You must have a lot of thoughts about all of this.

• 51:59Sarah Hagi?

  I do. You know, I think it's really interesting how this started with a crisis of faith. That's like really, I think, relatable for anyone who has grown up religious. It's very common and understandable. I feel like I just can't let go of how far it went just because he didn't believe in Mormonism, right?

• 52:20Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Sarah Hagi?

  Like, how close he stayed to the church itself. It's so confusing.

• 52:25Scaachi Koul?

  I feel like Mark's story is quintessentially about somebody's terror at stepping out. Because like, okay, so he says that he's figured it out. Mormonism is a lie, whatever, fine. Instead of just leaving and accepting the risk, you know, accepting that you're going to have conflict with your family and with your community. It's not going to be the same. You're going to be sort of viewed as a disappointment. Instead, his plan was to make everybody who loved him and who he loved feel stupid by tricking them into thinking that he had stuff that wasn't real. Him being able to like laugh behind their backs, like all the way into brutal violence, like the worst possible decision you could make.

• 53:07Scaachi Koul?

  It's such a story of cowardice, like he's so weak.

• 53:11Sarah Hagi?

  Yeah, and also so sinister to believe that he is so above all of these people in every way and that they're all idiots and he's the only smart one. Religious trauma aside, he behaved in such an evil and manipulative way. It also had nothing to do with changing or holding the Mormon faith or the institution of it accountable for anything real. It was more just his angst directed towards how he grew up. It's not like he was like, oh, better rights, better this, better like.

• 53:43Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Sarah Hagi?

  It had nothing to do with improving anyone's life, but for him to take advantage of people he found too stupid.

• 53:50Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, he just wanted to make everybody feel stupid for his own gain. It's also interesting to think about just how angry he continued to be, like writing letters to the parole board, threatening them, leaving his wife in so much debt. You know, not being present for their kids, presumably. He did a lot of awful, awful, awful stuff, but that is like high on my list, that poor woman.

• 54:16Sarah Hagi?

  You know, I think in a lot of situations, you're really, you know, did the spouse know, did this person know? But I feel like she probably was raised to kind of honor and believe her husband above anything else, right? So it's not like it would have been really easy for her to question anything.

• 54:34Scaachi Koul?

  I think that's also true. True of like how the church responded to all of this. Like the scam got this far because there were people in power who really wanted to keep this. You know, like Steve and the Mormon church wanted to protect the legacy of the church. And then the people who verified the documents, they wanted the documents to be true. Everybody had a vested interest in maintaining these lies.

• 54:54Sarah Hagi?

  Yeah, and everyone had their own motive as well, where it was like more about what was, again, good for them, rather than all these people who were influenced by them.

• 55:05Scaachi Koul?

  You know what, Sarah, here's what I'm gonna say. I think a lot of children of immigrants, a lot of children of people of color, children in families, in non-dominant religions, let's say, I think we learned how to have a double life, to go to temple with our families.

• 55:20Sarah Hagi?

  That part.

• 55:20Scaachi Koul?

  And still be able to like do whatever we want.

• 55:23Sarah Hagi?

  Oh, my God.

• 55:24Scaachi Koul?

  On a Saturday night. And if this guy could have just fucking figured that out, his life would be different.

• 55:29Sarah Hagi?

  That is so funny.

• 55:32Scaachi Koul?

  But you know what I did? I took my makeup to school and I put it on at school and I took it off before we went to temple that night to do puja, because I understood that I needed to live like that. And that was his issue.

• 55:43Sarah Hagi?

  Thank you so much for saying that.

• 55:45Scaachi Koul?

  You're welcome.

• 55:46Sarah Hagi?

  Because, yes, everyone figures it out, whether they continue figuring it out or they kind of just have a teenage phase, whatever it is.

• 55:54Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah, just have a double life, grow up.

• 55:56Sarah Hagi?

  Everyone knows how to be like, listen, mom and dad don't understand. I'm just gonna test the waters here. And you gotta get creative. And I don't mean that kind of creative.

• 56:04Scaachi Koul?

  No, no, no, no, this is the problem. Listen, if you are listening to this and you are having conflict with your family about something very fundamental and you don't know how to create a comparable double life, just find the nearest brown girl and she'll help you. It's like not that hard. We've been doing it for a really long time.

• 56:22Sarah Hagi?

  I mean, what else can I even say? That is really the exact point.

• 56:26Scaachi Koul?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Scaachi Koul?

  Follow Scamfluencers on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Scamfluencers ad-free by joining Audible. This is Mark Hoffman, The Mormon Murderer. I'm Scaachi Cole.

• 56:43Sarah Hagi?

  And I'm Sarah Haggie. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at [email protected]. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were the Netflix documentary Murder Among the Mormons, interviews with Dory, George, and Mark's cousins on the Gospel Tangents podcast, and the books The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death by Stephen Nye-Fay and Gregory White Smith, and Robert Lindsay's A Gathering of Saints.

• 57:14Scaachi Koul?

  Susie Armitage wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Scaachi Cole and Sarah Haggie. Eric Thurm is our story editor. Fact checking by Kalina Newman. Sound design by James Morgan. Additional audio assistance provided by Augustine Lim. Our music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Freeze on Sync. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Our senior managing producer is Callum Pluse. Janine Cornolo and Stephanie Jens are our development producers. Our associate producer is Charlotte Miller. Our producer is Julie McGruder. Our senior producers are Sarah Enney and Ginny Bloom. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marshall Louie, and Erin O'Flaherty for Wondery.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Ghosts aren't real. At least, that's what journalist Tristan Redmond always believed. Sure, odd things happen in his childhood bedroom, but ultimately, he shrugged them off. Until he discovered that he wasn't alone, that everyone who lived thereafter him also had bizarre experiences they couldn't explain. And it gets even weirder. It just so happens that his wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door. Is this ghost somehow connected to her murder? He decides to go where no son-in-law should, digging up a cold case and asking questions that nobody wants answered. Like, could his wife's great-grandfather have gotten away with the perfect crime? This is a podcast about family secrets,

• 58:41Speaker 04

  overwhelming coincidence, and the things that come back to haunt us. For the best bingeable series like Ghost Story, listen to the Audible True Crime Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can get all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.