He Defrauded the Mormon Church Religiously
(“Postal Mortem,” Forensic Files)
Back in 1985, Mark Hofmann carried out financial crimes that could have landed him in jail for a few month or years.
So he tried to cover them up by committing homicides, which cost him part of his kneecap and all of his freedom.
Hofmann, a dealer in historical documents related to the Mormon faith, decided to get rid of Steve Christensen before he could expose Hofmann as a fraudster selling forgeries.
Diabolical strategy. Then, solely for the purpose of throwing off police, Hofmann murdered a second person. He used the same risky method in both homicides: packages rigged to explode.
The murders and revelations about bogus documents came at a time when the Mormon Church was facing controversy over its new president, an octogenarian named Ezra Taft Benson who had voiced opposition to civil rights and women’s rights.
Although it had nothing to do with Benson, Hofmann, who was born to a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, had become bitter toward the faith and its leaders. His father was reportedly a polygamist, which did not make his mother’s life particularly wonderful.
Hofmann, the subject of the Forensic Files episode “Postal Mortem,” was only 30 years old when he committed the homicides — and is still alive. For this week, I checked into where he is and also did more research on his forgeries.
Collector targeted. I also looked into something Forensic Files never brought up: Who was the intended victim of Hofmann’s third, botched bombing attempt?
So let’s get started on a recap of the episode along with other information drawn from internet research:
On October 15, 1985, a package left outside of Steve Christensen’s office in Salt Lake City, Utah, detonated when he picked it up.
It killed Christensen, a 31-year-old father of four who was a bishop in the Mormon Church and collected historical religious documents as a hobby.
The box, wrapped in brown paper, contained a pipe bomb with some pieces imprinted with the Tandy logo (once more, the Radio Shack brand turns up on Forensic Files). It was a motion-sensitive bomb, meaning that slow-moving mercury triggered the detonation.
Second victim. Two hours after Christensen’s murder, a 51-year-old woman named Kathy Webb Sheets died after picking up a package wrapped in brown paper that was left in her driveway. The box, addressed to her husband, J. Gary Sheets, contained a pipe bomb with a mercury switch and Tandy parts.
J. Gary Sheets and Steve Christensen were both officers in CFA Financial Services, an investment company that lost millions of dollars of clients’ money. Perhaps a former customer was holding a grudge. After the bombing, CFA employees received police protection.
Then, on Oct. 16, 1985, a third explosion occurred, and it blew the case wide open.
Bomber not a loner. The impact of the bomb sent the victim to LDS Hospital with bruises and burns, damaged eardrums, and a severely wounded knee, but he would survive. His name was Mark Hofmann. He served as a historical researcher for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Hofmann was a happily married father of three small children with another one on the way. He delighted in traveling around the world to collect rare copies of children’s books, but he made a living as a seller of historical documents.
He told police he opened the door to his blue sports car, and a bomb that some anonymous evil-doer must have placed inside dropped to the floor and detonated.
But investigators found forensic evidence in the car that contradicted the scenario Hofmann reported. They believed that the bomb went off by accident in his hands — explaining why it blasted off some of his fingertips — as he was placing it on the front seat.
Hot date. Meanwhile, witnesses at the other bombing locations recalled seeing a man in an Olympus High letter jacket carrying a package.
Police found out that, around the time of Christensen’s death, Hofmann had an appointment with Mormon church officials to discuss a six-figure sale of the McLellin Papers — an account of an early Mormon Church member who broke with founder Joseph Smith. (Hofmann’s McLellin documents were fake, and it’s not clear whether any real such papers existed.)
Investigators theorized that Christensen had figured out Hofmann was selling false antiquarian documents, including the “White Salamander Letter,” which Christensen bought for $40,000 and donated to the church. (Christensen’s intentions may have been to “catch and kill” the story — the document, supposedly written by convert Martin Harris in 1830, cast Joseph Smith in a questionable light.)
Hofmann allegedly wanted to get rid of Christensen before he had a chance to raise doubts about his other wares. The con man had reportedly already made $1.5 million off his forgeries during his career and couldn’t afford to ruin a good thing.
Hot plate. Another theory said that Hofmann committed the murders as a way to divert church officials’ attention long enough for him to pull some forged papers together for a sale.
In Hofmann’s apartment, the police found a printing plate used to make counterfeit documents. He owned a letter jacket like the one the witnesses described.
As for the question of who the intended victim of the third bomb was, police suspected it was someone connected with Hofmann’s forged documents — an innocent individual who knew too much, possibly a collector named Brent Ashworth (more on him in a minute).
Menace with a pen. Hofmann ended up pleading guilty to multiple counts of theft by deception and two counts of second-degree murder. He got life in prison.
With Hofmann safely locked away, the church took inventory and compiled a list of 10 Mormonism-related forgeries sold by Hofmann.
Although Hofmann’s animus toward the church allegedly played a role in his crimes, Hofmann didn’t prey upon Mormons alone. He penned convincing signatures of mainstream historical figures including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, John Brown, and Button Gwynette, according to the AP.
He followed a 17th-century recipe for ink to create what he hawked as an original copy of the Oath of a Freeman, a Massachusetts Bay Colony document dating back to 1638.
Hofmann reportedly had no trouble making eye contact while telling lies during sales transactions with clients. The esoteric nature of the business also helped.
“Large portions of the trade of antiquarian documents operate in secrecy,” rare-book dealer Jennifer Larson told the Associated Press in a story dated Oct. 26, 1995. “It is the very aspect of the trade that allowed a forger like Hofmann to succeed.”
From sell to cell. Hoffman took precautions at times. Sometimes he would have friends or associates sell the documents in his place.
He admitted as much as part of his deal with prosecutors to recount his scams — but he would divulge only the forgeries he’d been formally charged with selling.
After an unsuccessful suicide attempt (sleeping pills) by Hofmann in 1998, prison guards found hidden in his mattress a list of 129 additional fraudulent documents he had possessed at one time.
According to specialist George Throckmorton, who appeared on Forensic Files, all documents known to be sold by Hofmann were fake.
Prose and poetry. The aforementioned Brent Ashworth, a lawyer and collector from Provo, paid $400,000 to $500,000 to buy historical Mormon documents from Hofmann. “I was stupid,” Ashworth told the AP in 1995. “I fell right into it. I was a pawn, but I was one of many.”
Ashworth was correct, and Hofmann’s forgeries continued to float around, even after his incarceration. In 1997, a library in Amherst, Massachusetts, forked over $21,000 for what was presented as a newly discovered poem written in Emily Dickinson’s hand — only to find out it was a fake created by Hofmann, according to a Guardian story that refers to Hofmann as “America’s greatest literary forger.”
Today, Mark Hofmann is better-known as inmate No 41235 in the Central Utah Correctional Facility. At one point after his jailing, his lawyers claimed that Hofmann had bombed his own car intentionally, as a suicide attempt because he was overwhelmed with guilt.
Wife survives. That contention didn’t win Hofmann any leniency. He’s been moved to minimum security, but he has no possibility of parole as his sentence stands today.
His crimes also weighed heavily on his wife, Dorie Olds, although she had no role in them. After her husband’s arrest, reporters and TV cameras dogged her, and some of her fellow churchgoers shunned her, according to an interview she gave to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Olds went on to appear in “An Explosive Love,” a 2010 episode of the ID network’s Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry?
She said that the Mormon community eventually opened its arms to her again and she remains devoted to her faith.
The Mormon Church, too, got a reprieve from bad publicity. Ezra Taft Benson remained president until his death in 1994 and is credited with increasing membership by 2.8 million for a total of 8.7 million followers, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Update: You can read about the 2021 documentary Murder Among the Mormons and watch it on Netflix.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi or Amazon Prime
