Murder Among the Mormons: True crime docuseries on Netflix probes a case that rocked a church

A little before the halfway point of Part 3 of the new Netflix docuseries Murder Among the Mormons, you realise the full extent of what the criminal mastermind at the centre of the story was going for — and find yourself wishing that he had in fact achieved it. Here’s a brief, spoiler-free recommendation on whether or not you should watch the series: Yes. If that unreserved affirmative hasn’t moved you, we offer a synopsis to whet your interest: Murder Among the Mormons delves — ostensibly — into three bombings that took place in Utah in 1985, killing two and seriously injuring one. The fatal explosives were pipe bombs delivered in packages to their unwitting recipients; the third, non-fatal one was placed under a sports car. The casualties included Steve Christensen, a respected Mormon businessman, and Kathy Sheets, the wife of one of Christensen’s associates (presumably the bomb was meant for her husband, Gary). The injured man was Mark Hofmann, a dealer in Mormon (and other American) historical documents. At the time of the bombing, Christensen and Hofmann had been about to close on a deal for a set of papers known as the McLellan Collection, with a price tag of roughly $300,000. The papers were rumoured to be procured for the Mormon Church aka the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS), to whose history their contents might prove especially contentious. The Church was already shaken by a previous discovery of Hofmann’s, called “the White Salamander letter” — a document that struck at the foundation story of the religion. Mormonism was established when, over the 1820s, the angel Moroni appeared to a young man named Joseph Smith in a vision, and told him of a set of buried golden plates that contained the “everlasting gospel”. The text of these plates, when transcribed by Smith and his associate, became the Book of Mormon, the religious text of the LDS Church. The White Salamander letter, purportedly written by Smith’s scribe, claimed that the founding father had been led to the golden plates not by an angelic vision, but by, well, a white salamander. To what extent might an embattled religious organisation go if their raison d’etre were threatened? And did this have anything to do with the bombings that killed Christensen, Sheets, and severely injured Hofmann? That’s the end of the spoiler-free discussion. Murder Among the Mormons frames itself as a story about buried treasure: a narrative about the thrill of finding treasure, followed by betrayal, and then the treasure being taken away. The keystone of this story is an anecdote about Mark Hofmann as a young boy, out on a treasure hunt with his friends, discovering a jar of coins. It’s an anecdote that has parallels to Joseph Smith’s own story of finding buried treasure. Seeing how closely Hoffman’s career would intertwine with Smith’s and the Church he founded, this parallel seems especially significant. [caption id=“attachment_9401511” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Hofmann (far left) with LDS Church leaders. Still from Murder Among the Mormons[/caption] Hofmann is possibly among the most intriguing personalities you’ll encounter of late in a true crime docuseries, and this includes Tiger King . Raised in a strict, religious household, Hofmann became the “rockstar of the Mormon document world” with a serendipitous discovery, in an old Bible he purchased, of a priceless parchment known as the Anthon Transcript. This was seemingly an original copy, in Joseph Smith’s own hand, of the text from one of the golden plates. Other major discoveries followed — including the infamous White Salamander letter. It wasn’t merely a matter of chance that Hofmann made these discoveries (how much not a matter of chance becomes evident much later); his knowledge of Mormon texts and history was formidable, he knew just what made for the x on a treasure map. In the 1980s, at the time when Hofmann was active, Mormonism was (relatively young for a large-scale organised religion) about 150 years old. There was a deep interest in religious antiquities and historical manuscripts that would buttress the LDS Church’s legacy. An entire set of collectors, dealers and historians were part of the scene. Many of them feature in Murder Among the Mormons, most notably Shannon Flynn, an associate of Hofmann’s; Brent Metcalfe, a historian who introduced Hofmann to Christensen; and Alvin Rust, a currency collector who initially bankrolled Hofmann’s quest for procuring the McLellan Collection. Even without the White Salamander letter, modern-day Mormonism had some distancing to do with several controversial aspects of its past, including the tenet of polygamy (now practiced only by fringe/fundamentalist sects). The Church leadership and community would certainly have balked at some of what Hofmann was uncovering, but these too were part of their still-evolving story. In archival television clippings, you see the incongruous glamour that surrounds these finds, and by extension, the soft-spoken, nerdy Hofmann. Until, of course, like all treasure stories, there is the inevitable betrayal. But Murder Among the Mormons isn’t just a story about buried treasure. If it were, it wouldn’t feel so relevant 35 years after the Utah bombings and 190 years after the founding of the LDS Church.

It’s a story oddly suited for our time: a story about truth, and what constitutes it; belief, and what we’re willing to sacrifice for it.

Hofmann comes across as an individual who grappled with these questions, and the events in Murder Among the Mormons possibly occurred as a result of the answers he decided were the right ones. Rational and disinterested to the point of being cold-blooded, evaluating the worth of a human life as academically as he would that of a document. Most definitely a genius, and quite possibly a psychopath. Amoral. Meticulous in his attention to detail. And boundlessly ambitious. (That moment in Part 3 that we referred to earlier on — had Hofmann carried out his masterplan, it might have delivered the LDS Church a staggering crisis of faith.) Through it all, Murder Among the Mormons is careful to underscore the trail of very real devastation, deceit and ruin Hofmann left in his wake. At the very end though, its (unwilling) admiration for Hofmann’s particular genius becomes quite evident — a man who forged everyone from Mormon religious leaders to George Washington, Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson, whose career as a conman The Washington Post described as “short but dazzling”, and who is acknowledged as “one of the most accomplished forgers in all of history” — a twisted genius, but genius nonetheless. Murder Among the Mormons is now streaming on Netflix. Watch the trailer here —