A Dealer of Bogus Mormon Documents Just Might Be the Devil (‘Murder Among the Mormons,’ Netflix, and ‘Postal Mortem,’ Forensic Files)
When Mark Hofmann delivered the bombs that killed two people and rattled all of Salt Lake City, he didn’t bother to disguise himself.
Mark Hofmann, far right, in court
Instead, he wore his own green varsity jacket and rode the elevator with two strangers — who remembered him — in the Judge Building, where he placed a box outside of Steve Christensen’s office. Although Hofmann used darkness as a cover when he left a similar parcel at the home of the Sheets family, he drove his tan minivan, which a neighbor recalled seeing there.
Full-time faker. The oversights were a departure from the deviousness Hofmann had been honing since adolescence, according to the 2021 Netflix miniseries Murder Among the Mormons. (Forensic Files covered the case in 1997.)
At 14, he began altering collectible coins to make them more valuable. By his 20s, he was earning five-figure sums for documents he attributed to Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Jack London. And Hofmann, who grew up in a strict Mormon family, acquired a reputation as the “Indiana Jones” of discovering antique writings important to his church, which has its headquarters in Salt Lake City.
But nearly everything that Hoffman sold was forged or faked. He used ancient ink recipes and oxidation-hastening methods to fool authenticators. He concocted imaginative stories to surprise and alarm those faithful to the Church of the Latter-Day Saints.
Foundation shaker. According to the three-part Netflix offering, Hofmann resented the restrictions of his upbringing and delighted in challenging his religion’s most sacred narrative — that in 1823, an angel named Moroni led Joseph Smith to buried golden plates that would form the basis of the Book of Mormon.
Perhaps in an effort to catch and kill, Mormon collector Steve Christensen paid $40,000 for an instrument that Hofmann called the White Salamander Letter, which said that a talking amphibian, not a winged messenger from God, led Smith to the plates.
For the church, the story was as devastating as “Moses saying, ‘I got the 10 Commandments from the ghost of Elvis Presley,’” according to Murder Among the Mormons, which was co-produced by Joe Berlinger (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich).
Bid to throw off cops. Hofmann went even bigger with his next phony offering, a set of diaries and papers titled the McLellin Collection. They included a claim that Smith’s brother was actually the one who discovered the gold plates.
Worried that Christensen was catching on to his deceptions, Hofmann murdered him with the exploding package. To throw off investigators, he planted the bomb that killed schoolteacher Kathy Sheets. Her husband, Gary, and Christensen operated a troubled financial company, and Hofmann hoped investigators would suspect a disgruntled investor as the culprit for both homicides.
Hofmann’s plan was working out nicely until he accidentally set off a bomb in his own sports car and police scrutiny uncovered evidence of his scams.
Youthful laddie. With interviews of Mormon historians from the 1980s interspersed with interviews of the same people today — minus their aviator frames and fluffy hair — Murder Among the Mormons portrays the shattered innocence Hofmann inflicted with his duplicity.
The series also includes audio from the boyish-voiced earnest-sounding killer‘s full confession to police in 1987. But even then, Hofmann wasn’t done with his scheming.
Here’s that story preceded by three other examples of his deviousness:
1.He made his wife into an inadvertent accomplice. Hofmann planted a phony version of the Anthon Document — which contained characters that Joseph Smith transcribed from the gold plates — in a bible he gave to his wife, so she would “discover” it, thus adding heart-warming allure to the backstory he gave investors. He also turned the family home into a crime scene by keeping a locked laboratory with all the tools of his forgery trade. “He fooled me every day,” said Doralee “Dorie” Hofmann, a former teacher who gave up her career to raise her kids. Although Dorie considered her husband a good provider, it’s not clear whether she knew Hofmann spent a bundle on fancy dinners with associates and enjoyed a binge-drinking session during a business trip. — or whether or not he let Dorie drive the blue Toyota MR2 he enjoyed showboating around town.
2.He fooled the FBI and the Library of Congress Hofmann summoned all his tricks to create a forged copy of a real document bearing the Oath of the Freeman, a pledge taken by new members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 1600s. To imitate ink seepage that takes place over centuries, he used a vacuum cleaner to suck the pigment to the back side of the paper. Because of the Oath of the Freeman’s significance as the first printed document in the Colonies, the FBI and Library of Congress examined Hofmann’s copy. They declared it genuine. He planned to sell it for $1.5 million but never got a chance.
3. By the time the police gave him his first lie detector test, he was a pro Apparently, even as a child Hofmann had an inkling he’d face off with a polygraph someday. In his teens, he began practicing methods for beating the machine. When the Salt Lake City police gave him a lie detector test in the wake of the bombings, Hofmann scored +13. (A negative score suggests deception and anything greater than zero indicates truthfulness.)
4.Just because Hofmann ultimately confessed and said he deserved incarceration didn’t mean he felt remorse He admitted to investigators that not only did he enjoy the power trip of fooling collectors and Mormon officials but also that he felt zero sympathy for his homicide victims because dead people don’t suffer. And once in prison, Hofmann began secretly plotting the homicides of members of the pardons boards as well as George Throckmorton, the forensic document expert who figured out Hofmann’s Oath of a Freeman was a fake. Fortunately, Hofmann never carried out those murders, and the mild-mannered but unrelenting Throckmorton is alive and included in the Netflix series. (The 67-year-old Hofmann, better known today as No. 41235 at the Central Utah Correctional Facility, declined to appear.)
Along with his deviousness, Hoffman did display some humility, albeit in a back-handed way. He told an interviewer that his forgeries seemed ingenious only because document experts inflated his talents to save face for failing to put him out of business sooner.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
P.S. If you watch the Forensic Files version of Mark Hofmann’s story on YouTube (link above), you’ll bump up against an “inappropriate or offensive to some audiences” warning — probably because the episode includes a graphic black & white photo of the murder scene.
Netflix Solemnly Dishes on the Con Man and Bomber (Murder Among the Mormons, Netflix)
Mark Hofmann looking uncharacteristically scruffy in an early mugshot
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 Mormonson 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
If Forensic Files got an annual performance review, it would always exceed expectations in telling a story in 22 minutes without making viewers feel cheated — but at the same time leaving them interested in finding out more.
Kathleen Peterson
Forensic Files produced “A Novel Idea” back in 2006, but any murder story that includes well-educated mansion owners plus a cheerful male escort on the witness stand is sure to be revisited many times.
Pop-culture phenom. Over the years, Dateline has continually covered the case of how writer Michael Peterson’s wife, Kathleen, ended up dead at the base of a staircase in their 14-room house. The NBC series most recently broadcast an update of “Down the Back Staircase” in 2017.
But public interest in the case didn’t really explode until the following year, when Netflix expanded and updated a documentary by French director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade to create a 13-part bingefest called The Staircase.
For this week, I looked into what’s happened to Michael Peterson since the Netflix series ended in 2018 and whether a theory that a rogue owl played a role in Kathleen’s death ever got any traction. But first, here’s a recap of “A Novel Idea” along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Full house. Michael Ivor Peterson graduated from Duke University, where he was editor of the school newspaper, then joined the Marines and earned silver and bronze stars for service in Vietnam.
As a young man, he divided his time between North Carolina and Germany. He and his first wife, schoolteacher Patricia Sue Peterson, had sons Todd and Clayton — then acquired two daughters, Margaret and Martha, when the couple’s friend Liz McKee Ratliff died. Ratliff had assigned Michael as guardian of her kids and left him her entire estate.
Michael later became a novelist, weaving his real-life experiences in the military into the plots of his books.
He and Patricia split up, and he began a relationship with his neighbor Kathleen Hunt Atwater in Durham, North Carolina, in 1992.
Brainy bunch. Kathleen Hunt grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and was so bright that she took advanced Latin classes at a nearby college while still in McCaskey High School, according to the Lancaster New Era newspaper. She graduated first in her class.
She was the first woman accepted into Duke University’s school of engineering. At the time of her death, she was a vice president at Nortel Networks at the company’s Research Triangle Park offices. She had a net worth of around $2 million, according to Forensic Files.
By the time Michael and Kathleen became a couple, his two daughters and Kathleen’s daughter from her first marriage, Caitlin Atwater, were already good friends.
Michael and Kathleen Peterson’s former house at 1810 Cedar Street is worth $1.7 million, according to Zillow. It has a fancy winding staircase in addition to the set of back stairs where Kathleen Peterson met her end.
Hosts with the most. Michael and Kathleen married in 1997. By then, one of Michael’s books, A Time for War, had made its way onto the New York Times bestseller list and generated enough cash to pay for the Colonial Revival-style house containing the now-famous staircase.
The couple combined their families into one household in the 5-bedroom 5½-bath abode in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Durham.
By all reports, Michael and Kathleen enjoyed a close, happy marriage and were sought-after guests on the local social scene. The New York Timeswould later describe Michael as having a “theatrical personality.” Kathleen was a live wire, too. The couple threw dinner parties for dozens of friends at their spread, which included a swimming pool with decorative fountains.
Horrifying discovery. But Michael hit a rough patch when he decided to run for mayor of Durham. It came out that a leg injury he said happened during battle actually came from a car accident. He lost the election.
Still, there was no serious drama until Dec. 9, 2001, when Michael Peterson made a desperate 911 call to report his wife had fallen down the stairs but was still breathing.
Kathleen was dead by the time first responders got there.
Michael said he and Kathleen were relaxing by their pool, and she went inside to work on the computer. He stayed outside to smoke for 45 minutes or so and found her at the bottom of the stairs when he came back in.
Charnel house. She had been drinking and was wearing floppy shoes, so she probably tripped, Michael told police.
But there was one circumstance that Michael Peterson couldn’t explain away.
The accident scene was a bloodbath — inconsistent with a tumble down the stairs. Homicide detectives were called to the Peterson residence.
Caitlin Atwater initially acted as the family spokesperson, but she ultimately broke with her stepsisters and stepbrothers
They noted that Michael was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Investigators later brought in a forensic meteorologist who determined it was 51 to 55 degrees outside that night, a little too cold for beach clothes, which made investigators question whether he was really at the pool when Kathleen fell.
Son uncooperative. That part of the prosecution’s case doesn’t seem impressive. Everyone knows at least one wacky guy who wears shorts in cold weather. (And those investigators must have had money to burn — they could have looked online or asked an autistic savant to recall the temperature that evening.)
But other evidence pointed convincingly to Michael’s guilt. Paramedics said that Kathleen’s blood had congealed, suggesting she died hours before he called 911.
Todd Peterson, 25, was at the house when the police came but refused to talk to them, according to Forensic Files.
And it looked as though someone had tried to clean up blood from the wall near the stairs.
Not inebriated. The police found blood splatter between the legs of Michael’s shorts and his bloody footprint on Kathleen’s clothes, which suggested he was standing over her and beating her.
Although testing would later confirm that Kathleen had some alcohol in her system, it was nowhere near the stagger and face-plant level.
Oh, and one more little thing: Investigators found thousands of gay male porn images and hookup conversations on Michael’s computer.
Male escort Brent Wolgamott, aka Brad, was hardly a hostile witness
Email trail. In one of his messages, Michael wrote that he was happily married to a “dynamite” wife but that he was “very” bisexual. Other online correspondence allegedly proved he was trying to hook up with men on the side, including a chipper prostitute called Brad.
Prosecutors would later contend that Kathleen stumbled upon the trove of photos and messages while using Michael’s computer — she had left her own machine at work that day. She confronted Michael about cheating on her, there was an argument, and he beat her to death with a fireplace implement, they alleged. He made a futile attempt to get rid of blood evidence and then called 911, the prosecution contended.
According to Power, Privilege, and Justice, which produced a 2004 episode about the case titled “Murder He Wrote,” Peterson went upstairs to work on the computer while police were still on the murder scene. Perhaps he was trying to delete some files.
Insurance jackpot. In addition to the salacious activity, investigators discovered evidence of financial woes in the family. Michael hadn’t generated any income in two years, and Kathleen was the mainstay.
The couple had three daughters in college and credit card debt of $142,000. The value of Kathleen’s Nortel stock had dropped from more than $2 million at its peak to $50,000.
But Kathleen had life insurance worth $1.2 million to $1.8 million, with Michael as the beneficiary.
Then, yet another bombshell came up. Investigators found out how Liz Ratliff, Margaret and Martha’s mother, died.
On Nov. 25, 1985, when Michael was living in Germany and married to his first wife, Ratliff turned up dead at the bottom of a staircase — just as Kathleen Peterson did 16 years later.
Missing murder weapon. Previously, Michael had told people Liz Ratliff died from a brain hemorrhage, never mentioning a fall on the stairs, according an interview with Kathleen Peterson’s sister, Candace Zamperini, on Power, Privilege, and Justice.
The authorities exhumed Liz Ratliff’s body in 2003 and discovered multiple scalp lacerations, similar to those found on Kathleen Peterson.
Elizabeth Ratliff died the same way Kathleen Peterson did
Ultimately, no charges involving Ratliff were brought, but North Carolina used the information about her death to strengthen the Kathleen Peterson case, which lacked a murder weapon. Police believed it was a fireplace blow poke that someone took outside to hide, leaving bloodstains on the door.
Nonetheless, all five of Michael’s children believed in his innocence at first. Caitlin Atwater, Katherine’s daughter from her first marriage, later switched sides.
Call-guy talks. Friends of Liz Ratliff, who lived on the same German military base as Michael and his first wife, testified about the bloodiness of the scene of her demise. A medical examiner testified that Ratliff’s cause of death was homicide via blunt force trauma.
And as if the trial needed more sordidness, Brad the hooker was called to the stand, where he congenially answered the prosecutor’s questions about his services. They ranged from simple companionship to “just about anything under the sun” sexually.
The defense, led by David Rudolf — the same lawyer who represented NFL player Rae Carruth in his murder trial — had some impressive courtroom drama to offer, too. Forensic expert Henry Lee gave a live in-court splatter demonstration to refute some of the blood evidence against Michael.
Team Michael also furnished a fireplace blow poke they said they found in the house. It had cobwebs on it but no blood, which appeared to snuff out the prosecution’s theory that the implement acted as the murder weapon.
He’s a SHU-in. Michael claimed that Kathleen had been suffering from blackouts due to stress. Nortel had forced her to lay off some well-liked employees, according to an AP account from May 22, 2002. Kathleen worried that she would lose her own $145,000-a-year job amid the downsizing, the AP reported.
Nonetheless, in the end, there was just too much evidence against Michael Peterson. His 2003 trial ended in a first-degree murder conviction and a sentence of life without parole.
Off he went to North Carolina’s Correctional Facility in Nash.
Corrections officers at the prison didn’t always find him as charming as his old dinner party friends did, and he earned some time in solitary for mouthing off, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.
Tide turns. A 2009 motion for a new trial based on the owl attack theory was unsuccessful.
Then, after serving eight years in prison, Michael got a huge break.
Michael Peterson and Kathleen Hunt long before they met
He won the right to a new trial after authorities discovered that “expert” prosecution witness Saami Shaibani had misrepresented his own professional credentials. And the happy hustler was off the table too — the seizure of Peterson’s computer messages was ruled unlawful, so Brad couldn’t testify again. Plus the death of Liz Ratliff in Germany was deemed inadmissible.
Irresistible deal. North Carolina released Michael Peterson on bond in 2011.
In 2017, the then-73-year-old avoided a second trial by taking an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter in return for six years of house arrest.
But there was no 9,429-square-foot palatial home with a redwood-paneled author’s study for Michael to return to. The family had sold the Cedar Street showplace, reportedly the largest house in Durham. Michael moved into a two-bedroom condo, according to reporting from Cosmopolitanon June 11, 2018.
Marked man. So what about the owl? The Cosmopolitan story includes information from ornithology experts who believe a barred owl could have tangled its claws in Kathleen’s hair and made the gashes in her head that prosecutors alleged came from a metal implement. Kathleen might have fallen down the stairs while struggling to extricate herself from the bird of prey’s talons, they opined.
Nonetheless, Michael Peterson’s lawyers never brought up the owl theory in the courtroom — it was too bizarre and potentially fodder for, well, hoots of laughter.
Instead, Michael laid the blame for his murder conviction on humans. The police were out to get him because he criticized them in columns he wrote for the Herald-Sun before Kathleen’s death, he told Dateline.
Time for a tome. So what’s happened to Michael Peterson since the 2018 Netflix series turned his story into an international entertainment sensation?
In April 2019, an extensive News & Observer story by Andrew Carter reported that Michael had written an e-book titled Behind the Staircase to exonerate himself, with any profits going toward charity. If Michael received any money for the literary effort, it would have to go toward a $25 million award Caitlin Atwater won against him, he said.
Michael also told the News & Observer that well-to-do friends from his and Kathleen’s napkin-ring and place-card days had deserted him. He did find himself a post-lockup girlfriend, however, in one of the editors of The Staircase. The couple lived together for a time after his release, he said.
Dr. Phil interviews Michael Peterson in 2019
Sociological errands. Also in 2019, Michael Peterson made a two-part appearance on Dr. Phil. Although skeptical, the TV psychologist gave Michael a chance to defend himself.
Michael told Dr. Phil McGraw that medical reports confirmed Liz Ratliff died of a stroke. He also explained that after Kathleen’s death, he engaged legal help immediately — a move that raised suspicion at the time — only because his son insisted upon it, calling in Michael’s lawyer brother, Bill Peterson.
A video accompanying the in-depth News & Observer piece gave Michael an opportunity to talk about his everyday post-prison life. He mentioned receiving a chilly reception from the primarily white upper middle class shoppers at Whole Foods. But at Target, a less affluent, more diverse crowd welcomes him because they know firsthand how unfair the law can be, he said.
Margaret, Martha, Todd, and Clayton also believe the justice system failed their father. Although I tend to agree with the prosecution that Michael Peterson is responsible for Kathleen Peterson’s and Liz Ratliff’s deaths, it’s still sweet to see the loyalty of his children and their willingness to accept him as he is.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
The Latestonthe Con Man and His Victims (Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, Netflix)
These days, when I’m not rewatching Forensic Files on TV, I’m restreaming Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened on my MacBook.
Happier times: Fyre investor Carola Jain, Billy McFarland, Jason Bell (not involved with Fyre), and Ja Rule
You can see the Netflix Fyre documentary half a dozen times and pick up something new every time.
Blue-eyed bandit. The 97-minute original production tells the excruciating story of a music festival founder who believed that a high-profile social media campaign would magically compensate for severe unpreparedness and underfunding.
Billy McFarland promised ticket buyers private-jet transportation, ahi sliders, luxurious villas on a nirvana-like private island in the Bahamas, and performances by 10 major recording artists.
The Fyre Festival failed on all accounts.
Most of the well-to-do millennials who spent upward of $4,000 per person to experience a luxurious bacchanalia ended up receiving no-frills flights, sleeping on rain-soaked mattresses in FEMA tents on a gravelly construction site, scrounging for food, and listening to excuses from McFarland instead of performances by Blink-182 and Tyga.
Infernal mess. In a way, even the locale for the festival didn’t exist. McFarland said he had purchased Pablo Escobar’s island, where organizers shot a promotional video featuring such supermodels as Emily Ratajkowski and Hailey Baldwin — who then publicized the upcoming event via Instagram — but the sale never actually happened.
The organizers then arranged to have the festival on Great Exuma, a Bahamian island that isn’t private, so they photoshopped out parts that weren’t.
Before Fyre, McFarland, then 25, probably imagined himself as the next under-30 entrepreneur headed for the Forbes 400 list.
Note the FEMA tents on the Netflix film promo
Card game. Described as charming, intelligent, and persuasive, the towering and slightly tubby New Jersey native first made a name for himself by establishing Magnises, a credit card whose fee included perks like discounted Beyoncé tickets and social events at a Manhattan townhouse.
That venture, targeted at millennials, got off to an impressive start, then fizzled after not delivering on promises. But it didn’t get enough bad press to cloud McFarland’s image as a young visionary.
It was the Fyre Festival flameout that exposed McFarland as a fraud for all the world to see. Virtually every major news media outlet covered the April 2017 disaster.
Schadenfreude samba. The public delighted in watching video footage of privileged 26-year-old attendees having to practically beg just for drinkable water.
“Every time a rich kid gets scammed, an angel gets its wings,” tweeted @snarkycindy, one of many Fyre detractors.
Fyre: The Greatest Pary That Never Happened offers a look at the timeline of the disaster and the financial dealings behind it.
The chronology actually starts before Fyre became synonymous with a fiasco in the tropics. McFarland and Ja Rule created the Fyre brand as an app for anyone who wanted to book musical talent — the “Uber of entertainment.”
Naysayers shrugged off. The Fyre Festival was intended as a vehicle to promote the Fyre app. McFarland’s company, Fyre Media, planned the event.
For the most part, Ja Rule came off as an innocent dupe who believed McFarland’s assurances that he could assemble infrastructure for a new music festival in just four months.
With publicity like this, what could possibly go wrong?
Others, like consultants Marc Weinstein and Keith van der Linde — both featured in on-camera interviews in the Netflix documentary — were either rebuffed or fired when they warned McFarland that his brainchild was looking less like a hedonistic fantasy and more like a dream about having final exams when you haven’t gone to class all semester.
Locals stiffed.Fyre recounts how McFarland lied on financial statements, paid some vendors via a Ponzi-like scheme, and cheated others.
It’s sad to hear Bahamian catering contractor Maryann Rolle talk about losing $50,000 because of Fyre.
The most upsetting part of the saga is that some or all of the Bahamian construction workers who labored under the hot sun for Fyre didn’t get paid.
Still, the documentary leaves open the possibility that McFarland was just a dishonest but well-intentioned kid who got in over his head and lied out of desperation.
William tell. That is, until the last 15 minutes, which shows footage of McFarland gleefully perpetrating a new con — selling phony tickets to events like the Met Gala — while he was free on bail after the FBI arrested him over Fyre offenses.
He attempted some semi-honest hustling, too. According to the LA Times, McFarland told Fyre director Chris Smith he would appear on camera for a $125,000 fee, but the filmmakers declined because “it wasn’t right for him to benefit when other people had been hurt by his actions.”
Prosecutors said that McFarland cheated 80 investors out of $26 million. Victims of the Fyre fraud filed a $100 million class-action lawsuit against McFarland and Ja Rule.
From sell to cell. McFarland pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud related to Fyre in 2017. The following year, he pleaded guilty to additional wire fraud charges plus bank fraud and making false statements to a federal law enforcement agent regarding his fake-ticket business, NYC VIP Access.
In October of 2018, a federal judge sentenced McFarland to six years in prison.
Here’s an update on McFarland as well as others depicted on the documentary:
Billy McFarland
• BILLY McFARLAND, now 27, resides in the Federal Correctional Institution at Otisville, a medium-security penitentiary known for housing white collar criminals. The Orange County, New York, facility offers bocce ball, horseshoes, handball and tennis courts, a baseball field, and cardio equipment. Otisville has a satellite camp for minimum security inmates.
In May 2019, New York magazine reported that McFarland has started a memoir, “Promythus: The God of Fyre,” to explain his side of the story, which he was planning to self-publish. McFarland’s girlfriend, Russian model Anastasia Eremenko, was coordinating the effort.
McFarland has said he’d like to use the proceeds toward the $26 million in restitution he’s been ordered to pay.
As far as McFarland’s quality of life today, it’s not clear whether he lives in minimum security or medium security in Otisville. He’s inmate No. 91186-054, in case that’s a clue to anyone.
From the list of commissary items, it looks as though McFarland has access to more and better food than the festival attendees did.
The Otisville website lists his release date as September 1, 2023.
There have been reports that McFarland wants to try for another Fyre Festival when he gets out.
Update to the update: McFarland may have his bocce balls taken away. On Sept. 24, 2019, the Daily Beast reported that he violated Otisville’s rules by obtaining a recording device and he will likely be sent to a less-luxe higher-security prison, according to the story, which cited two unnamed sources.
• JA RULE didn’t face SEC charges over the Fyre Festival. He has started his own talent-booking business, ICONN, which offers access to such luminaries as Ashanti, DJ Connor Cruise, Alexander Great, Nazanin Mandi, and Ja Rule himself.
Maryann Rolle
• MARYANN ROLLE, the cheated owner of Exuma Point Bar and Grille, tallied up $231,000 in donations from a GoFundMe campaign set up after she appeared in Fyre. According to Marie Claire, Rolle had made 1,000 meals a day for workers connected with the festival and housed some attendees in villas she and her husband own. (The $50,000 loss she mentioned in the documentary went toward paying extra food service workers hired for the festival, but her total losses were in the six-figure range, Marie Claire reported.)
In January 2019, Maryann Rolle announced her intention to share the crowdfunding windfall with other locals who worked on the Fyre Festival, according to Bahamian newspaper Tribune 242.
In May 2019, the Daily Mail reported that Pamela Carter, the friend who set up the GoFundMe account for Rolle, attempted to steal half the proceeds.
When she’s not grappling with dubious characters, it sounds as though Rolle knows how to have a good time. She’s a singer and songwriter and her husband, Elvis, is a dancer.
• GRANT MARGOLIN, the Fyre marketing executive who viewers may remember as the guy who said he wanted a “big, big, big, big, big bonfire,” was apparently no innocent victim. He settled SEC charges that he “induced investors to entrust him with tens of millions of dollars by fraudulently inflating key operational [and] financial metrics.” Margolin avoided jail time but had to agree to not serve as a company director or officer for seven years and pay a $35,000 penalty.
• ANDY KING, the gray-haired event planner who appeared on camera in Fyre, told Vulture in February that he had received offers to star in his own reality TV series.
Marc Weinstein
• MARC WEINSTEIN, the young Sacha Baron Cohen lookalike who warned McFarland he needed to abandon the notion that Fyre was a luxury festival and uninvite some of the social media influencers who had been promised free housing, started an LA-area venture capital company called Wave Financial in 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile.
I had no luck finding an epilogue for Keith van der Linde, the pilot whose practical advice about capacity and logistics was ignored. A different Keith van der Linde (there are a few out there) seems amused about being mistaken for him by online researchers.
Hulu has also produced its own documentary about the debacle, Fyre Fraud, which features a post-disaster interview with a slimmed-down McFarland as well as input from his girlfriend. It’s not as absorbing as Netflix’s offering but is definitely worth a watch or two, and you can take advantage of Hulu’s free one-week trial offer.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
Watch Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened on Netflix. Watch Fyre Fraud on Hulu.
Each of 40 chapters is a blog post — plus new research. Book in stores or online
For this week, I sailed through a second viewing of the entire seven-part series about the link between Sister Cathy Cesnik’s 1969 murder and sexual abuse at a girls parochial school in Baltimore.
The goal was to look for some joy in the disturbing series. And it does exist — in seeing the survivors finally get a chance to meet one another.
Justice denied. For the most part, the girls, now women in their 60s, had kept secret the ritualized sex crimes allegedly orchestrated by Archbishop Keough High School’s chaplain, Father Joseph Maskell. They never had an opportunity to empathize with one another in high school, when their ordeals began.
And they got no comfort from the criminal justice system. Maskell never paid for his offenses, nor did the other alleged perpetrators, including Father Neil Magnus, gynecologist Christian Richter, and at least two police officers.
Both of the priests and the doctor are long dead. No one has identified the police officers by name.
Another of the suspects, a local reprobate named Edgar Davidson, submitted to an interview for the cameras. Although unaffiliated with Maskell professionally, he somehow gained his acquaintanceship and may have committed at least one rape under his supervision.
But Davidson seemed far removed from his former self — the smirking young man with lush coiffed hair who cruised around middle schools and tried to entice girls into a stolen red sports car.
Archbishop Keough High, a site of the alleged abuse, changed names in 1988 and closed in 2017
So close. The now-elderly Davidson mentioned not driving anymore, presumably due to DUIs or poverty. His health looked so tenuous that one wonders whether he could survive a trial, if there is one, which seems doubtful.
And unfortunately, the statute of limitations for bringing a civil action against the church and school — for enabling and covering up the abuse — expired. A push to extend the limits via Bill 642, first introduced by Maryland House of Delegates Rep. C. T. Wilson in 2003, was unsuccessful initially.
The documentary showed abuse survivors Teresa Lancaster and Jean Wehner testifying before a sympathetic panel in the Maryland General Assembly.
Suppression trap. Lancaster explained why victims of sexual abuse sometimes take decades to tell authorities. “I was 40 years old when I came forward,” she said. “It took me that long to focus on my life and make something of myself.”
Proponents made a case for waiving the statute of limitations in part because memories of assaults can take decades to resurface, thus making them new allegations.
Wilson, himself a survivor of rapes committed by his adoptive father, testified as well about the need to extend the statute of limitations. “The problem with this is suppression,” he said. “You learn to live with the lie as a child, so you can certainly live with it as an adult.”
David Lorenz, another survivor of abuse (it’s not clear whether it’s related to the archdiocese) told the panel:
“Everyone has a secret. Stand up here and admit it to everybody, because that’s what you’re asking me to do. You’re asking people to take the deepest darkest secret they have and stand up in front of a jury and tell them.”
Survivor shaming. Kevin Murphy, a lawyer for the Maryland Catholic Conference, argued against the bill. He pointed to a “weakness of human memory” that could put accused “citizens” at risk.
He also asserted that allowing victims more time to come forward would give the sex criminals more time and opportunity to abuse additional victims.
Allison D’Allesandro, the Archdiocesan Director of Child and Youth Protection, offered up the same argument:
“The reality is that the perpetrator often remains in a position of close access to children until an allegation is reported to the civil authorities and the employer.”
For the sixth time, the bill died. State Senate President Mike Miller and Judiciary Chair Joe Vallario refused to let it come up for a vote.
Earlier victim. “I thought my colleagues would get behind me [after I testified]. I had no idea the battle I was in for,” Wilson said during a WBAL Radio interview. “When I realized it wasn’t even coming up for a vote, it was very painful…it was very humiliating.”
But The Keepers manages an ending that, while not exactly happy, offers some hope and yet another bit of joy.
Joseph Maskell circa 1969
First, the survivors learn of documentation of Maskell’s having abused a schoolboy named Charles Franz before the priest ever arrived at Archbishop Keough High School.
A 1967 complaint made by Franz’s mother to the archdiocese resulted in Maskell’s transfer from his job as associate pastor at Saint Clement Church to his post as a chaplain and guidance counselor at Archbishop Keough High.
The episode all but proved that the church had covered up the abuse committed by Maskell — allegations that would have helped substantiate Jean Wehner and Teresa Lancaster’s stories.
It also invalidated the church representatives’ argument that reporting sex crimes early is certain to prevent new ones from taking place.
At the end of the series, the producers show Jean Wehner’s cathartic reaction when she learns that archdiocese officials allegedly tried to buy Charles Franz’s silence (he declined) after she and Lancaster initiated legal action in the 1990s over Maskell’s abuse.
There’s more. And a nice post-documentary epilogue: C.T. Wilson managed to resurrect Bill 642. Once it finally came up for a vote, the Maryland House and Senate gave it a unanimous yes.
While the new rules still aren’t inclusive to all survivors, they give those sexually abused as minors the right to pursue damages — from individual offenders as well as organizations that allowed abuses to continue — up until 20 years after they reach majority age.
The old law set the time span at seven years so, for example, a little girl abused when she was a minor would have only until age 25 to sue for damages. Now, the law gives her up until age 38.
(The maximum amount of damages recoverable from offending organizations appears to have remained the same, at $800,000.)
Maryland’s C.T. Wilson
It’s official. The new law also enables victims to sue up until three years after a defendant is “convicted of a crime relating to alleged incident or incidents.”
On April 4, 2017, the day that Governor Larry Hogan signed Bill 642, he also approved six other pieces of legislation, including one outlawing fracking in the state. Sounds like an all-around good date in Maryland history.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
P.S. Thanks to Crime Traveller editor Fiona Guy for including True Crime Truant in her site’s 50 Best Crime Blogs and Websites feature.
This week, I’d like to start a little sabbatical from Forensic Files and discuss the new Netflix series The Keepers, a seven-part documentary about a nun’s murder in Maryland in 1969.
The crime went unsolved for decades — and apparently not because the culprit was some kind of lone maniac who slipped in and out of the area around Baltimore.
That and many other aspects surrounding the homicide come as surprises.
Ad hoc sleuths. Usually any violent crime against a clergy member would mean harnessing maximum police manpower for as long it takes to track down the fiend — the people demand it.
But public sentiment lost out in regard to Sister Cathy Cesnik’s murder. The case went cold. A retired Baltimore police officer interviewed on camera for the series unapologetically said that there were lots of murders in the region every year and this one didn’t merit special attention.
Another unexpected element: The nun’s former students — rather than journalists or detectives — spearheaded the investigation that ultimately turned up the most relevant evidence. It was fun to meet the onetime Catholic schoolgirls taught to respect authority without question, who are now in their 60s and aggressive in their own styles.
Sister Cathy Cesnik shortly before her death
Resident evil. Finally, as we learn as the series progresses, although the crime was most likely tied to sexual abuse taking place at Archbishop Keough High, the all-girls Catholic school where Sister Cathy taught English, the collusion that hindered justice went beyond the church hierarchy.
It allegedly involved police, at least one unaffiliated low-life from the community, and even a local gynecologist.
Actually, one more surprise that I’m not sure how to phrase the right way but will try: The 26-year-old nun at the center of the tragedy was by all accounts warm, gentle, empathetic, and a bit of a rebel.
No stereotype. Not that there’s any shortage of nuns with such positive traits, to be sure: It’s just that on an anecdotal basis, one tends to hear more about sisters who hit children with wooden implements, frightened them with visions of the inferno, etc.
The Keepers has plenty of other compelling plot twists, and it portrays the richness and complexity of the lives of the survivors both within and outside of the late-1960s time capsule.
I did a two-day binge-watch of the entire series, directed by Ryan White, and intend to see it again and write a bit more about it next week. Until then, cheers. — RR
A 50-Year-Old Columbine (Tower, directed by Keith Maitland)
Just for this week, I’d like to take a detour from Forensic Files to talk about a new documentary that’s now available on Netflix: Tower.
The movie re-creates a 1966 University of Texas mass murder that somehow — sandwiched between the more-lurid horrors of Richard Speck and the Manson family — got lost in America’s collective memory bank.
Charles Whitman in a widely circulated yearbook photo
On August 1 of that year, a former Marine named Charles Whitman packed up his own personal arsenal, rode the elevator to the 27th floor of the school’s centrally located clock tower, and began shooting at people on the campus below.
Situated within the structure’s walled wraparound observatory deck, the 6-foot-tall blond sniper seemed to have found an invulnerable spot from which to execute strangers in a rain of bullets for an hour and a half.
He hit 46 men and women and at least one child. Sixteen died.
At the time, of course, the massacre made headlines around the world and terrified Americans. (And elicited a prescient opinion piece from Walter Cronkite, which the film shows.) But the horrific saga was referenced only lightly in popular culture over the subsequent years.
A brief mention of the Texas tragedy in a 2012 Mad Men episode, “Signal 30,” is the only one I can recall seeing on TV.
Perhaps the public forgot about the nightmare-by-daylight because Whitman died at the scene on the afternoon of his crime, eliminating the need for any courtroom drama.
Kathy Leissner, seen here as a bride, was murdered by husband Charles Whitman
And because the engineering student had murdered his mother and his wife the previous day, there were no prominent female relatives to publicly agonize over how their devoted blue-eyed young man had turned into a deranged executioner.
Tower spends very little time giving background information about Whitman and instead tells the story of the victims and rescuers — via an unorthodox method.
The filmmakers re-created them with an animation technique called rotoscoping and had actors provide their voices. At first, I had trouble getting used to this unusual storytelling element (especially because one of the rotoscoped police officers looked and sounded a little too much like Matthew McConaughey), but after about 15 minutes, I was fully invested.
The ordeal of a pregnant student named Claire Wilson James, who was shot and immobilized during the attack, is the emotional centerpiece of the drama.
But I don’t want to spoil any more of the movie’s revelations for those who will get a chance to see it.
Whitman said he killed his mother, Margaret, to end her pain
One thing not included in the film is the fact that the 25-year-old Whitman sensed he was coming unhinged a few months before the tragedy.
“Whitman was intelligent enough to realize he had problems, so he went to a psychiatrist,” author Jay Robert Nash wrote in his true-crime encyclopedia Bloodletters & Badmen (M. Evans and Company, 1973).
Dr. Maurice Heatly later said that Whitman suffered from rage related to his parents’ breakup; his father had badly abused his mother during the marriage. Whitman also revealed to the doctor that he had thoughts of shooting people with a deer rifle from the clock tower.
In those pre-Columbine days, however, the confession apparently wasn’t enough of a red flag to trigger preventative action.
The UT tower stands 307 feet tall. Paul Cret designed the structure, finished in 1937
I hope that Tower, directed by Keith Maitland and produced by Meredith Vieira reaches the wide audience it deserves.
The movie had me spellbound for 96 minutes, the same amount of time it took Charles Whitman to traumatize a nation unused to mass shootings. — RR
