So, I have been reading some publiccations about Mark Hoffman recently,and it seems to say that people arent sure if he was a fraud or not. Meaning that they think that the stuff he sold to the church might have been legit? Whats the real story, not the mormon version, but the real one?

No, they were pretty much all fraudulent, from what I can remember. I read "The Salamander Letter" which is about as middle of the road as you can get, I think. (Not anti or apologetic.)

When the experts examined his stuff, they could tell they were frauds because of how the ink ran and crackled - every single one of the documents that came from him. Pretty tell tale.

There are other books that are more damning - the Mormon Murders - being one that I've heard of.

Happy reading:

http://www.utlm.org/topicalindexb.htm#Hofmann

You know what? We never even heard about the incident up here. I didn't find out about it until many years later and I actually thought the whole story was made up when I read about it.

Same here in southern Alberta...

I stumbled across this, and WOW!!! OMFG

http://www.salamandersociety.com/museum/hofmann/

here it is in full:

The Mark Hoffman File
Inside sources reveal more truth about the symbiotic relationship between a forger and the prophets, seers and revelators who lead the Mormon Church.

From Inside The Church History Department
E-mail correspondence from a past employee of the LDS Church's History department who had personal dealings with Mark Hofmann.

From: TRathbone
To: srclark
Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2000 10:44 PM
Subject: Re: Hofmann

Excerpt of a Letter former ATF Agent:
Re Mark Hoffman investigation:

I just commented how I am reading some material I received from Lavina Fielding of the Mormon Alliance, and how much thinking it has me doing, especially the assertion that one of the church's foundational statements that God would never let the Prophet lead the church astray does not in fact have any scriptural or Gospel basis.

If that is the case, then what it comes down to is the same thing that the church itself teaches before some personalities try to insert themselves as being above question, and that they, not take his place. BUT ...... it is going to be difficult to go to ward conference and sustain the GA's, and even (and maybe especially) the current Prophet, when I am not willing to give them a blank check for trust and respect. There are men back there for whom I have a great deal of contempt. I feel that they have betrayed the Church. But in many ways it is worse than the GA's who have antagonized me so. In stonewalling our or the A. T. F. investigation of the Mark Hoffman bombing.

I wonder how many people see this as I do? Remember that Mark and the GA's were both playing the same game of duplicity and denial. This is standard operating procedure for leadership. Speaking from my experience in and out of leadership positions for the past 25 yrs. I have observed that once one is in a position to view leadership (which is the toughest position in any organization or in the Church) one either sticks with it or leaves.

I have witnessed a few come and go EQP's presidents and bishop's counselors etc. One either puts up with the garbage or one does not. I have witnessed much duplicity and denial in what I have seen in the past 25 yrs. and that is from living in 4 or 5 stakes and 4 or 5 wards. All leadership basically looks and operates the same. Members who are in high positions are protected others and others are not protected. The ones one would supposed to be exed are not and the ones who should not be are.

I could go on but let me point out two examples. One member of my former bishopric would poke anything with a skirt on. Everyone knew it and a number of people complained to the bishop. The Bishop did nothing at the time. After the bishop was released the counselor was released he was exed, then rebaptized about 1 1/2 yrs. later, where the handbook clearly says 7 yrs. for persons in leadership positions. He is still chases skirts nothing has changed.

Then there is my friend who did nothing just wanted to help feed the poor and the Bishop wanted to bring him up on charges of priest-craft and apostasy. The SP intervened and nothing happened. Crazy. The Bishop still caused my friend grief and called his new bishop and told him all sorts of lies and stories.

A few years ago, some members of my ward approached me with the idea of holding a study group. So we started to meet and hold meetings for our study group. The word got around and a few people visited out groups occasionally. The man who became the Bishop visited our meetings a few times and encouraged myself and others to continue. Then when he became Bishop he told us to stop meeting as an independent study group. He wanted to control our group. All of the time he was reporting back our activities to the Stake President. Talk about duplicity and subterfuge. He did his best to divide up the group and pitted personalities against each other. The group eventually fell apart because of his activities. Like outlined above my with my friend who wanted to feed the poor.

Hinckley was the go between who got people to launder the documents by buying them and then donating them to the church for a tax write off. I know this, that Hinkley flew back early from the South African temple dedication to meet with Mark Hofmann about an important matter, The McLellin Collection and other items.

Hinckley wanted to make sure the documents were authentic, before they were released to the public. However things got out of hand because of Mark Hofmann's duplicity, etc. Mark always played both ends against the middle. I would say Mark duped everyone, although he did come up with a few authentic gems. The John Taylor, Nauvoo Diary for one. A family member sold it through Mark to Brent Ashworth. It is real authentic. And some other minor letters, etc.

I believe that Hinckley got caught up in the "fortress protection mentality." He wanted to protect the saints from the blow of new discoveries. "The "Truth" had nothing to do with it. Remember it was Hinckley who talked about the Anthon manuscript and J. S. II blessing in conference. I am sure he would have done the same given the time with the other documents.

I know that Dallin Oaks instructed the GA's not to say anything too revealing to the police. One problem in dealing with Church leadership is the "Lying for the Lord" teaching to protect the Lord's church. There is so much duplicity, subterfuge and smoke screening in the higher ranks it is difficult to see the shore or target through all of the smoke screening.

I have talked to an ATF (Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) agent who was a member, has since become in-active or left the church over the whole affair. He told me that Hinkley and Oaks stonewalled the investigation in a big way.

Oaks instructed the leadership how to answer/handle the questions from the press and the police. This ATF guy was very disappointed in their answers etc. He knew that they knew more than they were telling.

Bell and Farnsworth the main detectives told me I was more corporative with them than anyone in the Church Hierarchy. I was collecting documents to write about William E. McLellin and other early Church Leaders, I had collected a number of letter, and other documents, etc., from published and unpublished sources. I had Xerox copies of his letters in the RLDS archives etc. I had the largest McLellin collection they, the detectives had seen.

Mark Hofmann gave me the willies. Especially after his Sunstone Review interview where he said, "I only do it for the Money." That tipped me off. He found out through mutual friends like Brent Metaclf that I was doing research on D.W. Patten and The Visions D&C sec. 76 and William E. McLellin. Mark through Lynn Jacobs tried to sell me an elders certificate signed by D. W. Patten and Luman Gibbs, instead he sold it to the archives. This document is a forgery. I was a poor college student. He then tried to sell me or told me about a copy of D&C 76 in the archives. I went and check and found out his story was non sense.

He tried to dupe me. I was very suspicious of him and did my best to warn others like David Whittaker and Dean Jessee they did not listen. Oh well sigh.

"So why did not Hinckley and Oaks get the same intuitive feeling?"

I really cannot answer for them only myself. I do not know maybe they did and just and ignored them. They could have been so caught up in protecting the church that they forgot to listen. Or maybe they did not experience it at all.

Like Joseph Campbell points out in his Power of Myth conversations with Bill Moyers. The problems of Priests and "holy man monks", etc. is that they are always fighting and never seeing eye to eye on anything or issue. Yet you get all of the priests from all of the religions together, Catholic, Buddhist, etc., and they get along fine. You get all of the Nuns, Monks from the Catholic and Buddhist and others together and they can relate and get along fine.

The problem in the LDS Church is it combines the two, Some are priests acting as priests to control, etc., some are Spiritual man monks if you will and they profess the spiritual. There is no room for a division between the two in the Church.

Actually my experience has been there are far too many priests in the world and in the Mormon Church than spiritual Monks, Shamans. Etc

What are these?

"Anthon transcript and J. S. II blessing"

Mark Hofmann, however, was guilty of premeditated murder and was lucky to escape being tried for a capital crime.

All of his "major finds" were proven to be manufactured frauds.

There's every likelihood that some of the documents he dealt with were legitimate, he simply traded them as part of his "craft"; two excellent historians I've been in contact with have run afoul of the hellish problems created, and I'm trying to move forward with a project to determine the "authenticity" of one of my ancestor's journals that passed through Markie's hands (another journal of his is widely cited, and is clearly legit).

The three excellent books on the subject are "The Mormon Murders," "A Gathering of the Saints," and "Salamander."

The Anton Manuscript is a forgery of the "characters" that Martin Harris purportedly presented to a scholar to determine if the Book of Mormon was legitimate (Anton later wrote a letter debunking the notion that the characters had any meaning). The Joseph Smith III PH blessing involved church succession...

Three other notable forgeries of his were "The Salamander Letter," "Oath of a Freeman," and an "orginal, lost" poem by Emily Dickinson.

Seriously, conventional wisdom would've pointed anyone to the truth about Hofmann (as it did Gerald Tanner). Any of his finds would've been the "find of a lifetime," and he produced a large number of them.

As Cabbie mentioned, the Tanners suspected Hofmann's docs were phony some time before the church started buying them. Read their narrative, "Tracking the White Salamander" online:

http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/trackingcontents.htm

The Tanners suspected the truth about the documents because they knew the truth about the Church. If one were a believing member of a phony church, especially a member whose social and financial position depended upon said church, one would be less likely to 'discern' the obvious fraud.

THEY ARE ALL FRAUDS. TSCC was so embarrassed. They are supposed to be able to tell frauds since God is talking directly to TBMs. Sandra Tanner at the Utah Lighthouse Ministry has a book or two about it. Read them. They are very interesting.

Mark wants complete privacy, and I respect that. I don't think he will mind me sharing his views on the church leaders though.

Since he worked closely with many GA's, I have asked him if he thinks they really believe the church is true. His view is that they do. He said because their entire lives are wrapped up in church business, and they are surrounded by church "yes" men, he thinks the GA's are true believers. There may be an exception, but overall he thinks almost all GA's are believers.

Mark is an athiest and was at the time he did all the forgeries. He knew there was no such thing as inspiration and he wasn't worried about leaders being able to know his documents were frauds. The leaders were clueless and were only out to protect the image of the church.

One thing that almost changed the church forever; Mark had the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon almost completed. He would have made a fortune selling those to the church, and it would have changed church history forever--had the church ever made those pages public. He was found out before he was able to complete his forgery. Almost...

...in an effort to cover his own sorry ass. Why would you give a sh!t about his privacy?

As for the OP, read A Gathering of Saints by Robert Lindsey, or The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.

yet these guys were embarrassingly clueless.

http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no115.htm

Shoot, make that a whole cup... Having watched Brent Metcalf lose his composure discussing his friend Steve Christensen years after the fact, I'm not inclined to cut him any slack. And the Sheets family didn't live that far from my parents' house. "Visitor" is free to make his choices, however, and I won't pry.

There is, however a very subtle "sociopathic manipulation" he probably created with that "before he was found out" bit of fluff.

He wasn't "found out." He did it to himself, exposing himself to the criminal justice system with acts of delusional and homocidal deviancy.

Once again, sane people don't react well to insanity...

To really understand how good of a forger Mark Hofman is read "The Poet and the Murderer" by Simon Worrall. The poet was Emily Dickenson, and Mark Hofman was so good he even fooled experts at several prominent east coast museums. He could even get the syntax and word usage so close to her writing that no one knew it wasn't real. Mark Hofman was probably the best forger in the business. He not only fooled the Mormon church officials, but he fooled many other experts in their fields. To this day, anything that has been touched by Mark Hofman is not considered genuine because it is so hard to tell with his work. Even genuine historical works have a cloud on them because they came through Mark Hofman.

I read that book, the Poet and the Murderer. It was a free kindle book at the time. Not sure if it still is. It is a great book. I had never realized the extent of his forgeries. I had always thought his forgeries were all mormon related. It seems that anything that has gone through Mark's hands is suspect. One may have bought something entirely legit but if its provenance includes Mark Hoffman at all, it will never be ruled out as a forgery.

True, but not in all instances. Mark Hoffman has become so notorious that an 1830 Book of Mormon signed by Mark Hoffman forging Joseph Smith's name is more valuable than an 1830 Book of Mormon actually signed by Joseph Smith.

I swear, on some level, that little sh_thead wanted to get caught, so he could indeed brag to all the world what a master forger he was. I just finished another book on him, "Salamander" that was so detailed and at times a bit dry, but very chock full of information. On some of his documents, he actually left 'clip marks' from hanging the documents up to dry. Nobody saw those? Also, on some documents, he had ink running in a non-unidirectional method, indicating a fake. I found it all fascinating, but him I found repellent.

this was prosecuted on a local level.


Bombs, deaths.

What about that doesn't SCREAM ATF/Federal jurisdiction?

I can only surmise that ChurchCo thought they could control the locals better than Federal authorities, process.

the VERY LAST thing they wanted was a trial.

The way murder sentencing is done in the Utah 'justice system' is yet another story.

'The Truth shall make you free, but first it'll Really Piss You Off.'

If it had gone to trial, Hinckley would have been forced to testify. This would have revealed him to be a liar. The Church couldn't have this, so brokered the deal to put Hoffman away forever, without a death sentence.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705385950/Mountain-Meadows-Massacre-affidavit-linked-to-Mark-Hofmann.html

In addition to the affidavit that is identified as a "confession" of William Edwards' participation in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, reading between the lines offers some insights into the mindset of LDS historians as they try to downplay the role of Brigham Young in the horror.

Rick Turley notes that historical sources indicate that Edwards' family moved from Salt Lake to Parowan in 1857 or 1858. The affidavit, however, placed him in Cedar City.

Turley, a lawyer who works for the Church history department, is a co-author of "The Mountain Meadows Massacre" and it's clear he's reviewing historical sources that would identify William H. Dame's role in MMM (Dame was the stake president in Parowan). I note the D-News is being utterly dishonest with this statement:

>No one from Parowan participated in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Edwards has been identified by others as an MMM participant, and there are eyewitness accounts that have Dame leaving the killing fields (John D. Lee says he gave the orders to decoy the emigrants from their wagon and murder them, and he was the ranking Nauvoo militia officer in Southern Utah) with 20 "Indians" and a wagon load of the emigrants' belongings.

Will Bagley--whose works also cite the questionable document--and Turley agree here:

Turley said that significance of the affidavit was minor and that it didn't affect interpretation of events. Bagley agrees-- and this is what gives him pause. "The document itself is very standard Mountain Meadows stuff. There's no big surprise in it," Bagley said. "If it was a Hofmann forgery, where's the spice? Where's the salamander? Where's the embarrassing revelation?"

And Will notes wryly a bit further on...

>Bagley, however, is not convinced it is a Hofmann — yet. "I'm not sure the people attributing it to Hofmann are completely disinterested in adding another notch to the great forger's gun," Bagley said with a laugh.

One element that will help separate out Hofmann forgeries from authentic works, in addition to "provenance," is whether they contain information unavailable to Hofmann that can be corroborated elsewhere. That's the avenue we're working on with my great-great grandfather's journal.

Finally, in addition to what Brent Ashworth said, "Hofmann could have merely been attempting to make a collection of documents look more appealing to the historical society," I think it's also reasonable to suggest Hofmann may have been "practicing" with some works. He is doubtless an individual devoid of a conscience, but probably still experienced "occasional attacks of nerves" which would fuel his obsessive attention to details. Such sociopaths are essentially "self validating," and their "payoffs" are rooted in the "adrenalin rush of the game," but in Hofmann's case his grandiosity also entered in, morphing into paranoia and collapsing his house of cards.

My former Bishop was the Judge for the Hoffman trial. They definitely plea bargained to avoid having GA's on the stand.

Yet another Nail in the LDS coffin of 'Truth'.


at the time, I thought/hoped that Hofmann would Completely PULL THE RUG OUT from underneath Mormonism.

Damn.

As damning as the Hofmann affair was to TSCC, I think Hofmann could have done a lot more damage had he played things differently.

If he hadn't killed anyone and got his last forgeries done sooner, he possibly could have kept forging for a few more years, causing more embarrassment for the church. But consider this: what if instead of forging all these documents that were damning to TSCC and its history, he instead forged what seemed to be authentic, scriptural passages that were supposed to be included in the Pearl of Great Price? Or additional verses of the JST? Then if TSCC would have actually printed them in the standard works, Hofmann could have admitted later "Oh, by the way, those scriptures aren't real. I WROTE THEM." If God's prophets and apostles putting totally bogus scriptures in their holy books doesn't shake a TBM's foundation to the core, I'm not sure what would.