Christie Porter

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, finally, the mistakes he made that led to his capture. 

The documentary makers, Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and Tyler Measom (An Honest Liar), interviewed former LDS Church Historian Richard Turley for the true crime series. When I spoke to him following its release Turley described himself as a “fly on the wall” during the Hofmann bombing and forgery investigations. He later wrote a book detailing his observations called Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case. He wrote it, in part, to address the rampant rumors and speculation about the church’s dealings with Hofmann. 

“I basically entered a crime scene,” Turley said of the time he started working in the LDS Church’s history department in 1986, right in the middle of the Hofmann investigation. “The police were looking for a motive for murder.”

The motive became apparent when forensic investigators not only uncovered Hofmann’s forgery of the Salamander Letter and Oath of a Freeman but began to realize just how prolific of a counterfeiter he had been. The turning point came with the so-called McLellin Collection—a collection of writings by early Mormon leader William E. McLellin. McLellin was estranged from the church, and Hofmann claimed the content of the collection would be damning to the faith. (The Salamander Letter, forged by Hofmann, also challenged LDS beliefs—detailing it was a white salamander that led founder Joseph Smith to the gold plates, from which he translated the Book of Mormon, and not an angel.) 

“He spun this tale of a highly expansive McLellin collection with letters from Emma Smith—Joseph Smith’s wife—and other figures related to the church,” Turley said. Hofmann reportedly offered to sell the collection to both Alvin Rust, a collector of rare coins and other artifacts, as well as Steven Christensen, a Salt Lake City businessman who had previously bought and donated the Salamander Letter to the LDS Church. 

But Hofmann ran out of time. “He had created a potential forgery that was so large, he couldn’t carry it out in the time that he had. That’s when he resorted to bombs,” said Turley. The first bomb exploded on Oct. 15, 1985, in the Judge Building in downtown Salt Lake City. The blast killed Christensen, who had received the bomb in a package addressed to him. The second bomb, meant for Christensen’s business partner, Gary Sheets, instead killed his wife, Kathy. The third bomb blew up Hofmann’s own car, along with the unfinished forgery of the McLellin Collection for police to find. 

There’s no telling how many Mark Hofmann forgeries are still out there

The body of Hofmann’s forged work far exceeded the half-finished McLellin collection and the infamous Salamander Letter, doing untold damage not just to the record of Utah and LDS Church history, but American and world history as well. 

“When you’re a historian, you’re gathering pieces of a mosaic and putting it on the wall to see what it becomes,” Turley said. “I think the damage that Hofmann did—using the mosaic metaphor—was akin to taking a whole dump truck of forged pieces and scattering them widely. So the genuine pieces of the past are mixed in with fakes and forgeries.” Those forgeries make it more difficult to form an accurate picture—or mosaic, if you will—of the past. 

“Hofmann forgeries will continue to be discovered,” Turley said. He described a scene at a past annual conference for the Association for Documentary Editing held in Salt Lake City. “Distinguished scholars come to Salt Lake City, assuming the damage is limited to Utah and LDS history,” said Turley. At the end of his presentation, Turley brought up a sheet of signatures forged by Hofmann that was found in his prison mattress. Most of the known Hofmann forgeries could be tied to one of the signatures on that sheet. “As I mentioned those names,” said Turley, “prominent scholars in the audience began to make exclamations and moans and sighs as they realized this wasn’t just a Utah problem, but a problem for American and world history generally.”

Case in point: Turley’s published work on the Hofmann bombings helped one person, in the middle of acquiring an Emily Dickenson piece, discover it to be a Hofmann forgery before it was too late. But, because there is no telling how many Hofmann forgeries are still out there, Turley has a warning for collectors: “Caveat emptor.” Buyer beware. 

“Better do your homework to figure out whose hands it has passed through and where it came from,” said Turley. “And, if you’re going to spend a lot of money, I’d have a document examiner take a look at it before you buy.”  According to Turley, Hofmann was not above adding signatures to authentic documents to increase their value. Anything that passed through Hofmann’s hands should be suspect. 

The secret of Mark Hofmann’s (temporary) success

Beyond being a talented counterfeiter, Hofmann knew how to play people. “Hofmann held himself out as a bit of a bumbling fool,” explains Turley. “The persona was very deliberate on his part. He just didn’t seem smart enough to create these sophisticated things.” 

Hofmann also played on confirmation bias: our tendency to seek out new evidence that confirmed our existing beliefs or theories, Turley says. Hofmann would discover what people hoped to find and, it just so happened, that he might have what they were looking for. “If someone gives you evidence to confirm your existing bias, you accept it uncritically,” explained Turley. “Hofmann played off confirmation bias both for and against the church.”

That’s why Turley recommends a healthy dose of skepticism when confronted with any new information or evidence, especially if it confirms our existing bias. Skepticism has saved Turley before. “I have been the victim of people trying to do another Hofmann, but, due to my experience and skepticism that I have naturally, I’ve been able to stop these schemes before they develop too far.”

The LDS Church has also taken to heart the lessons learned from dealing with Hofmann. “Basically, what happened before I got to the church historic department, people would acquire materials, put them on the shelf and eventually someone would get around to cataloging them.” 

But, this presented a problem if, in the meantime, the only person who knew a specific piece was in the collection, left the department or passed away. Put simply, the church didn’t know what it had, making them easier prey for forgers trying to sell fakes of pieces the church possessed. For instance, in the case of Hoffman’s collection of McLellin writings, a portion of the real writings had been in sitting on a shelf in the church archives all along. 

So, Turley says, the church launched a project to catalog everything in the archives. They also instituted a policy that required the archivist who added material to create a corresponding record entry when they brought it in. 

The church also implemented technology to thwart another of Hofmann’s known techniques: going into libraries, shops or archives and removing or adding items or pages from an existing work. Now, the church archives use a highly sensitive scale that can detect such tampering.

Despite the countermeasures, Turley believes that there could always be another Mark Hofmann. He referenced Michael George, the Salt Lake County investigator on the Hofmann case. “When asked, ‘was Hofmann the greatest forger ever?’ George said, ‘he’s the greatest forger ever caught.’”

While many interviewed for Murder Among the Mormons begrudgingly acknowledged Hofmann’s genius, he still made a number of mistakes that led to his inevitable capture. “He got greedy and in over his head,” Turley says. 

There have already been Mark Hofmann copycats. Turley predicted, “the more people understand about the case and what happened, the more copycats there will be.” Turley said he writes about the Hofmann copycats he has since encountered in the updated second edition of Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case, which is available Friday, March 12, 2021. 

While Turley hailed the Netflix documentary as being able to take a “highly complex and esoteric story and portray it in a style that makes it generally accessible to the public,” he does have some reservations about the surge of attention to the Mark Hofmann case. “My big worry is that there is a tendency among some people to lionize criminals and turn them into folk heroes,” said Turley.  “Because Mark Hofmann displayed a significant amount of skill in forging a broad range of items, there may be some who look at him in a way that may overshadow his psychopathic tendencies. I hope people won’t create a folk hero out of a killer.”

Murder Among the Mormons is available to watch on Netflix. 

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We spoke with Richard Turley on a recent river trip floating the trail of John W. Powell. 

Longtime Utah news anchor Randall Carlisle reflected on covering the Mark Hofmann case. And while you’re here, check out our latest print issue of Salt Lake magazine and the other stories in our Arts & Entertainment section.

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 one of Hofmann’s many home videos. The three-part series reached the top 10 on Netflix this week. Through interviews and news reports, the documentary unfolds the rise of Hofmann as a prolific purveyor of rare historical documents, the subsequent bombing that killed two people and his ultimate exposure as a forger and fraudster. 

In the second episode, Hofmann’s ex-wife Dorie recalls just how much Hofmann loved watching the news and how he reveled in the coverage that centered on him. And, from 1985 through ‘86, there would have been a lot for him to revel in.  

Just after 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 1985, people in Utah would have been arriving at work, reading the paper over breakfast or saying their morning prayers. Then reports broke that a bomb had exploded in the Judge Building in downtown Salt Lake City. The explosion killed businessman Steven Christensen and brought the world to a halt. For hours, it would be all anyone could talk or think about, especially if they had friends or family members in the vicinity of the blast. That is, until another bomb exploded in the Salt Lake City suburbs, killing Kathy Sheets in the blast meant for her husband, Gary. After that, the story dominated conversation and both local and national news coverage for the entirety of the criminal investigation.

The voices of perennial news anchors and reporters in the documentary will be familiar to some. I know Carlisle from our work together in TV news. Before our time as co-workers, he was on the news desk at KUTV  in Salt Lake City. The documentary makers (Jared Hess, who is perhaps best known for his 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite) used ample footage of Carlisle and then co-anchor Michelle King and interviewed their co-worker at the time, reporter Rod Decker. Carlisle had been on the anchor desk for five years when the bombings began. “The newscasts were so much more fluid then,” he remembers. “They had to be because developments were happening so fast.”

“All of our resources were allocated to that,” says Carlisle of the bombings. “The story took so many twists and turns. We were getting so many tips, and we had to follow-up on all of them ”

Reporters and police investigators alike were running down tips about Sheets’ and Christensen’s business dealings. Some linked them to Las Vegas and the mob. “We had to pursue every one of them because, at the time, it all sounded reasonable. And the police were doing the same thing,” says Carlisle. “We got to play detective as well.” 

Journalists also received tips directly from the police. “Whenever the police were questioning a new suspect, someone would leak it to us, so we’d show up and get the shot of this guy walking into the station.” The ever-evolving investigation and constant coverage gave rise to endless speculation. That speculation took an abrupt turn when the third bomb went off. 

“When we learned that the bomb had gone off in Mark Hofmann’s car… that changed everything,” says Carlisle. “It was the turning point for the whole investigation. It caused all of us to reflect instantly and say ‘what does this mean? Where do we go from here?’”

When investigators revealed they had found what appeared to be historic documents related to the LDS church in Hofmann’s car, the focus of the coverage took a turn as well. “We shifted directions toward the church. There was a ton of speculation that the bombing had to do with keeping quiet documents that could hurt the church,” says Carlisle.

He adds they always had to be mindful of how they reported on that thread of the bombing investigation. “We were told to be respectful of the church. Just because someone wants to keep the documents hidden at all costs, that doesn’t mean the church is behind it.”

Richard Turley is a former historian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who also appears in the Netflix documentary. He wrote a book on the Mark Hofmann bombings called Victims: The LDS Church and the Mark Hofmann Case (1992), in part to address the rampant rumor and speculation about the church’s dealings with Hofmann. “When something this sensational occurs, if repeated often enough, that speculation hardens into fact,” says Turley. 

And that’s true still today. He adds, “In today’s world, many people do not scan broadcast or print news, instead they rely heavily on their social media feeds. Over the last few days since the mini-series, we’re seeing a significant number of people who assume nothing has been written about the subject previously. But there is an entire literature about the case, including my book and others. The work of journalists and so forth. Don’t just assume because you haven’t seen it nothing has been done.”

Related Story: Former LDS Church historian on Mark Hofmann copycats

Hofmann had generated news coverage before the bombings as well, particularly when he “discovered” what’s come to be known as the Salamander Letter. When the letter came out, Randall recalls KUTV sent a reporter to upstate New York to cover the origins of the golden plates. Members of the church believe the plates were given to church founder Joseph Smith by an angel, and, from which, Smith translated the Book of Mormon. (The Salamander Letter challenged this version of events, claiming it was a white salamander rather than an angel. Forensic investigators later proved Hofmann forged the letter.) 

In some ways, the coverage of Hofmann demonstrates just how much TV news has changed since 1985. Back then, watching local news stations was the only way the public could stay up-to-date on the bombings and the investigation. Now, a bomb exploding in Salt Lake City, Carlisle says, might not even make national news. “If you had the same story today, people would be following it, but it wouldn’t be on the top of everyone’s minds. It would only occupy the first three or four minutes of an evening newscast.”

Looking back at a career spanning decades on air, Carlisle says that was the best job he ever had in TV news. “We were unraveling a mystery at the same time as the police. For a news person, it was a very exciting time.”

The documentary series on the Mark Hofmann bombings Murder Among the Mormons is available to watch on Netflix.

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We spoke with Richard Turley on a recent river trip floating the trail of John W. Powell. And while you’re here, check out our latest print issue of Salt Lake magazine and the other stories in our Arts & Entertainment section.

Full disclosure: Taylor Swift and I are the same age. This is a fact that has left me to wonder at (1) why I oftentimes felt “too old” for her music and (2) the colossal magnitude of her success. 

Taylor Swift has eight number-one hits. She’s 31st on the list of best-selling music artists of all time and finds herself in-between Bob Segar (#32) and Eminem (#30). She is 25th on the Forbes list of highest-paid celebrities—this time sandwiched by Kevin Durant (#24) and Tiger Woods (#26).  The resulting alchemy of her talent and achievements: Swift’s estimated worth is $365 million.   

All of this begs the question, why would anyone try to take on Taylor Swift in court? Specifically, a start-up theme park in Pleasant Grove?

Evermore Park, LLC v. Taylor Swift and TAS

Evermore Park officially opened its doors in 2018, more than two years before Swift released her album evermore. The park’s complaint against Swift says that an estimated $37 million has been poured into the “creation and promotion of Evermore Park and the EVERMORE trademark,” much of that the personal money of the CEO and Founder Ken Bretschneider. Whether Swift’s team was aware of the park or not, Bretschneider believes her use of the phrase “evermore” to title a record has hobbled that effort.

I visited Evermore Park before the pandemic. Lively actors and detailed, medieval set design work in tandem to immerse visitors in an atmosphere of fantasy, magic and mystery. The park experience provides a little something for everyone, depending on your tolerance for interacting with costumed improvisers. For instance, I spent most of my time drinking hot cider and target shooting with a bow and arrow. This was nothing like my experience listening to the album evermore. I know which “evermore” I would create, given the choice, and consequently forgo Taylor Swift-levels of money and fame. Then again, I am a big ol’ nerd. If you’re like me, you’ve dreamed of living out a real-life version of a fantasy RPG since you were a kid, and there’s only one Evermore that lets you do that. A place for us who would choose lore over folklore.

Related Story: Find Fantasy at Evermore Park

At face value, the crux of the Evermore Park lawsuit seems obvious. The park’s creators have a trademark on the name “evermore,” which should mean Swift doesn’t get to use it, right? Well, not exactly. A quick search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s database shows dozens of evermore-related trademark, from T-Swift’s album to jewelry makers and dried floral arrangements.

I talked to Craig Buschmann, a Salt Lake City attorney who litigates intellectual property, trademark and copyright cases. As he explains it, the core misconception about a trademark is that it protects the actual word. That, Buschmann says, is not what a trademark protects. What is actually protected is the consumer impression of the brand—the brand’s “goodwill.” (Or, the entity’s reputation, if you will.) 

To better understand this idea, think of one of the most recognizable brands in existence: Coca-Cola. The company has trademarked the name as well as the shape of the bottle (what’s called “trade dress”) and built them up to symbolize all of the pleasant feelings you might have toward the product: the taste, the fizz, summertime memories, etc. Those consumer feelings are the “goodwill.” Now, say another company started making something so similar in name and bottle appearance to Coca-Cola that you might not be able to discern the difference. Maybe that second company’s product tastes terrible or they start producing R-rated ad campaigns. Then, as a result, you start associating terrible taste and vulgarity with the actual Coca-Cola, and your goodwill evaporates. The trademark exists so no one can tamper with all the goodwill consumers may have for Coke.

The question then becomes: is it reasonable to assume the consumer could confuse the difference between the two entities involved in the trademark dispute? And does that confusion injure their impression of the brand? If the two parties at odds over this impression can’t work it out, a federal court will decide.

Evermore Park’s trademark infringement complaint against Swift alleges a number of points where consumers might be confused. Primarily, this focuses on “evermore” merchandise. The park has a trademark registration for T-shirts, other clothing items and various tchotchkes. The complaint claims that the evermore shirts T-Swift sells on her online store infringe on the park’s trademark rights, and marketing those products (along with products with “vulgar terms” like Swift’s “fancy s*** mug“) is harming the park’s trademarks. 

The online shopping link to the Swift’s evermore collection was removed after the park sent a cease and desist, but the complaint alleges that the removal does not make up for the losses to the nearly $1 million spent on advertising, securing a web domain name and labor costs, partially because the merchandise (in the land of Swift-ermore) is still available for purchase. 

Swift’s lawyers alluded that the lawsuit is all about money, and they framed the suit as an act of desperation resulting from Evermore Park’s financial woes. As evidence, Swift’s legal eagles hold up a 2020 report by Utah Business that found the park faced “financial ruin,” owing millions of dollars to its construction contractors. Even before Swift’s team filed the countersuit, Evermore Park’s CEO was facing at least five lawsuits from major construction companies according to Utah Business.

Taylor Swift’s Countersuit: TAS Management v. Evermore Park, LLC

The day after Evermore Park filed its trademark infringement complaint, Swift’s legal team says it got a tip from a former volunteer at Evermore Park. The tipper reported that park performers were singing Taylor Swift’s songs without obtaining the right licenses. (The complaint filed by Swift’s management company does not confirm that the source was a Swiftie, but the timing of the tip could suggest the tipper did not agree with the legal actions against Swift, especially given that the illicit performances had allegedly been happening since 2019 and Swift’s fanbase is notoriously protective of their girl. Just look at the replies on ex John Mayer’s new TikTok.)

This tip, wherevermore it originated, has reportedly provided Swift’s team the grounds to countersue Evermore Park, along with multiple letters to the park warning that any such performances constitute copyright infringement. The complaint goes on to say that Evermore Park ignored these written warnings, which date back to 2019, and did not try to obtain the proper licenses until after the park learned of the Swift (very swift) countersuit. Swift’s lawyers claim Evermore Park’s CEO then immediately sought “retroactive” authorization that would cover all public performances since 2019. 

And, point to Team Swift: Yes, copyright infringement is similar to trademark infringement, but it suffers less from a trademark’s hard-to-gauge legal murkiness. 

According to Buschmann, copyright is more narrow. It protects the expression of an idea in a fixed work or body. Plus, it doesn’t have to be multiple unlicensed performances of an entire song to meet the threshold for copyright infringement. Just using a single couplet from a copyrighted song could be called infringement, depending on the context and how credit is given to the artist. The penalties for copyright infringement can also be pretty significant. Just ask Vanilla Ice about sampling the baseline from David Bowie and Queen’s collaboration “Under Pressure” in “Ice Ice Baby” without credit.

Proving copyright infringement gets even easier, especially if you have a video or audio recording of the alleged infringement and/or someone willing to testify to it. After that, once again, the case will be up to a federal court to decide if the parties don’t find a way to settle outside of court first.

Whether either side of the evermore dispute has an open-shut case is up for legal argument, but Swift has the legal team, the money and the dedicated fans required to weather just about any storm. The same cannot be said for a start-up fantasy theme park in Pleasant Grove. While we all love a David and Goliath story, it’s hard to know who to root for when David’s motivations are called into question and the proverbial Goliath made something as good as folklore, a Taylor Swift album that reminded me we’re the same age.

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While you’re here, check out our latest print issue of Salt Lake magazine. You can also read more about our experience at Evermore Park.

The Utah Opera is wrapping up its final streamed production before the return of live audiences on March 25, 2021, with the focus on hope and light. Utah Opera’s Light on the Horizon is about the promise of better days, and it appears those better days are now, rather aptly, on the horizon.

When putting together the program for Light on the Horizon, the company hoped to “cast off 2020 and get people focusing on what’s ahead,”  says Steven Brosvik, the President and CEO of the Utah Opera and Utah Symphony. “It came a little bit from our October opera run, which was very much about people feeling alone and cut off. Now, we need to find ways to make people feel better.”

The streamed program features levity and highlights from both opera and musical theatre—everything from 350-year-old opera to Rodgers and Hammerstein and Sondheim—woven together in an era when singers must stand 20 feet apart, limiting room for the live orchestra, and the audience must watch from home. 

The nevertheless hopeful program is appropriately preceding what many hope is a permanent comeback for live, in-person, performing arts. But, Brosvik confesses, they did not originally plan it that way. “We didn’t know when we did production in January that we’d be able to reopen,” he says. 

“There’s a lot of changes to the repertoire, but not the safety plan,” adds Brosvik, looking ahead to March 25. The Utah Opera and Utah Symphony are reactivating the safety plan they had in place during the Fall, before Salt Lake County closed performing arts venues for audiences on Nov. 23, 2020. 

“I think this is the turning point.”

Steven Brosvik, the President & CEO of Utah symphony | Utah Opera

Almost exactly four months to the day later, audiences will finally be able to return to Salt Lake County performing arts venues (Abravanel Hall, Capitol Theater, Eccles Theatre, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center), albeit wearing masks and spaced apart. 

For Brosvik, it is a return to the way Symphony and Opera are made to be consumed. “What we do is really live. Our musicians are trained for live performances. The pieces are all written to be performed live,” he says. “I know the audience often feels like they’re just sitting out in the silence of the hall and it doesn’t matter if they’re there or not, but it absolutely does. The players really do feel the difference and they feed off of it.”

The reopening of Salt Lake County venues could also signify the comeback many in the performing arts world have been waiting for. “I think this is the turning point,” says Brosvik, looking to the future. “Our audience is also eager for us to get back to what we usually do. Our opportunities are just going to grow. ”  

Those growing opportunities could also include utilizing the comparatively slapdash lessons they’ve learned during the pandemic. “Before, we were planning our repertoire two years out. Now, we’re planning six weeks out. We’ve had to flex different muscles and it’s made us stronger that way,” says Brosvik.

The return of live audiences might not necessarily mean the end for On-Demand performances either. Streaming provided an opportunity for people to watch who have never seen the opera or symphony before.

Brosvik wants to hold onto that new audience, but, he says, finding a balance will take time.  “It’s been really rewarding for us to see new people participate in what we do, but it’s been expensive and a big drain on staff resources. We’d love to find a way to keep some of it going. We never want to replace live, but it could become a supplement to live performances.” 

Utah Symphony announced the upcoming Masterworks programs at Abravanel Hall:

• Marc Albrecht conducts Mahler and R. Strauss – March 25 (10 AM), March 25 & 26 (7:30 PM), March 27 (5:30 PM)
• Domingo Hindoyan conducts Roberto Sierra, Bartok & Mozart 41 – April 8, 9, 10 (7:30 PM)
• Madeline Adkins plays The Lark Ascending – April 22, 23, 24 (7:30 PM)
• Thierry Fischer conducts Bach, Wynton Marsalis, Carter & Wagner – April 29 & 30 (7:30 PM), May 1 (5:30 PM)
• Beethoven 1 & Demarre McGill plays Jolivet – May 20, 21, 22 (7:30 PM)
• Thierry Fischer conducts Jesse Montgomery, Mozart, Schoenberg & Copland – May 27 (10 AM), May 27, 28, 29 (7:30 PM)

In the coming weeks, Utah Opera plans to announce the opera that will welcome returning audiences. They’re also planning the program for the 2021 Deer Valley Music Festival, scheduled for July 2–August 7.

Until then, Light on the Horizon stream will be available on demand until March 14. Tickets are $10 for subscribers and $15 for non-subscribers. For more information, visit the Utah Symphony | Utah Opera streaming page.