Netflix Solemnly Dishes on the Con Man and Bomber
(Murder Among the Mormons, Netflix)
Mark Hofmann had both a Jekyll and a Hyde inside him, but outwardly he had only one persona: polite young man.
He sounded just as boyishly earnest when lying to the media about discovering valuable historic Mormon documents as he did when confessing to the police that he committed fraud and double murder in the 1980s.
Catch the stream. In 1997, the Forensic Files episode “Postal Mortem” told the story of how Mark used ancient ink recipes and other trickery to create forgeries like the White Salamander Letter — which retold Mormon history in a way that rattled the church — and then killed two people so he could evade suspicion and continue to bilk collectors.
Two years ago, ForensicFilesNow.com published a recap and update on the episode.
Now, Netflix is getting in on the act. On March 3, the streaming giant debuted Murder Among the Mormons, a three-part series offering new interviews with victims and their families and more insight into how Mark Hofmann accommodated within his own soul a thieving terrorist and a respected husband and father of four.
Flimflam nonfiction. Here are seven facts from the series, which was co-produced by Joe Berlinger (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich):
1. There was at least one polygamist in the family — Mark’s grandfather.
2. Mark’s parents, Lucille Sears Hofmann and William Hofmann, were horrified that his kids had a storybook with dinosaurs, which they considered too evolution-friendly
3. A trip to Manchester, England, first got Mark interested in Mormon documents. Joseph Smith, who founded the religion in 1823, discovered the gold plates translated into the Book of Mormon in Manchester, New York.
4. Mark made photocopies of the fake documents he created to prevent the church from doing catch-and-kills.
5. He violated his religion’s ban on alcohol at least once — drinking hard liquor with a pal and promptly throwing up.
6. One of his forgeries involved a vacuum cleaner used to suck paint to the back side of a document to mimic what happens naturally over time.
7. Although Mark was secretly agnostic and betrayed his church, he was wearing a Mormon temple garment when he accidentally bombed his own car. (He survived and is still in prison).
You can watch Murder Among the Mormons on Netflix now. Although it’s stopped offering free trial subscriptions, the service has a deal for $8.99 a month with no contract or cancellation fee. (And while you’re on Netflix, you can also stream American Murder: The Family Next Door. I’ve only watched it three times, so far.)
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime
Thanks, Rebecca: An interesting story, this.
But I’ll not be subscribing to Netflix given that Prince Hapless and Migraine are being paid $$$$$$$ by it for their nauseating dross…
Can you translate for me? (The Crown?)
Probably Prince Harry and Megan
I should have figured that out — thanks for the tip-off!
This is gross. He’s made racist comments on here before and you don’t seem to care. Done with this blog.
Frannie, thanks for your message. I never allow blatantly racist comments on my blog. Since it’s not clear why the commenter dislikes the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, I didn’t censor any of it. I like Harry and Meghan, but I’m American and don’t have complicated feelings toward the royal family. Thanks again for writing — I appreciate anything that heightens my awareness.
Rebecca: I should think so! You don’t need to justify why you didn’t ‘cancel’ me (for that’s what you mean, and she wants, by ‘censoring’); on the contrary, she needs to argue her case, which she hasn’t. ‘I say it’s racist’ = it’s racist doesn’t wash (yet) – however much some of the more deranged in society might prefer it. [And in a blog about deadly crime in the USA, a proportion of the perps of which are black, it could get very silly…]
Back to the original subject matter: can anyone seriously be concerned about two $several millionaires recently interviewed about their ‘suffering’ by a $2.7 billionaire?
Far more important than those is the outrageous relative poverty in the US of black people – the astonishing gap between rich and poor – and its vastly deleterious effect on them and in the administration of justice affecting them (a matter the poster in question might care to note I’ve raised several times in my many posts over the last couple of years…)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism
a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
also : behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster this belief: racial discrimination or prejudice
I hold no such belief and have not expressed such explicitly nor implicitly.
Criticism of the words/attitudes of two people, one of whom is white, the other of dual heritage, is not in any way, shape or form necessarily – and not in fact – racist. The ascription of (‘nauseating’) foolishness is not racist: anyone and everyone could be a fool. The dual heritage status of one is entirely incidental to my ascription of it. What you’re implying is the absurdity that any criticism of someone not white is racist: a gross caricature even of identity politics, and a cheapening of criticism of authentic racism, which you should reflect on if you really care about it…
You are racist. You also called a woman who has called herself a black woman a dual race which isn’t a thing. You are diminishing her blackness in order to say you’re talking about two millionaires.
Also go through your whole vomit word cloud and pick out the dog whistles. Bringing in two people who have nothing to do with a man who murdered people to shit on them says more about you than them.
You’ve chased off other people from this blog cause you want to argue everything you don’t agree with (to death) and I a black woman am saying you a white man are racist.
Good luck to you RR. I have enjoyed the ongoing transition of this site but finally said something because I’ve just come to dislike Marcus’ ongoing commentary and urge to mansplain to everyone.
Martin Luther King: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.’ He was right. I am only interested in a person’s character, not their colour, and your being black is of no significance whatsoever to the matter in question, which YOU turned into an ‘identity’ issue, thus self-victimising.
‘You also called a woman who has called herself a black woman a dual race which isn’t a thing.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/47473987
Dual heritage: ‘the fact of having parents from different ethnic or cultural backgrounds’. Mrs M’s mother is black, her father white, hence she is dual heritage, which is not a term of abuse nor incorrect, regardless of whether the subject describes themselves as black or white (or biracial).
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‘and I a black woman am saying you a white man are racist.’ Au contraire: I, a white man, say that you, a black woman, are racist.
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‘you want to argue everything you don’t agree with’ Like a lawyer in court? Well… yes! Disagreement… without tantrum and ‘cancellation’ is what intelligent society does.
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If I am ‘mansplaining’ are you not ‘blacksplaining’?
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Because *both* sides of an argument can deploy the kinds of terms you use to undermine my position, as I demonstrate here they are useless in advancing your argument. Proper disagreement is through proper – that is, substantive – argument, not epithet (racist; mansplaining; vomit work cloud (whatever that is…), etc. The kind of argument, indeed, that you say above you don’t like. QED…
Boy you are embarrassing yourself here. You need to dial this back right now. One CAN criticize people who aren’t white without being racist, but you’re demonstrating to everyone that is not what you are doing. You wouldn’t need to go on these kinds of flip-outs if it weren’t based in racism. The fact you think “racism” is literally only the dictionary definition is… lord, man, it’s super embarrassing for you.
C: ‘It’s super embarrassing’ isn’t an argument but a prejudicial claim. If the dictionary definition of racism’s not what racism is, what is it? What you’re logically implying is precisely what I said was wrong with F’s argument – that racism is what you say it is. It MUST be defined in order to begin a discussion about whether it applies in X situation.
Furthermore, to use F’s argument, that if a black person alleges a white person is racist it must be so (because only black people are ‘entitled’ to make that claim), is itself nonsense ‘cos profoundly racist and a caricature of ‘black rights’.
You’re so perpetually awful that I avoid reading comments on this very well written blog because I know you will always be at the top. Why a racist British guy would troll this site is beyond me. Go do something else with your time.
When I read this article I did not expect to find this in the comments, quite interesting to read.