01x02 - Episode Two

[bunniefuu]

I moved to Utah around 1974.

I'd been thrown out of college already,

as an undesirable,

with a 0.6 GPA.

And, uh, I moved out here to ski.

And that was just my raison d'être.

It was more like,

I was a skier

that happened to be a lawyer,

as opposed to

a lawyer that happened to ski.

So it's just me

drinking wine in the evening

and having to run in the morning two miles

so I can get to work

and at least be a little bushy-tailed.

Come on.

We've got everybody else.

I had worked with Gerry on cases.

Quite a character.

I know what you bought that for, Gerry.

For porno.

-That's right.

He's brash. He's outspoken.

-But he's gotta practice so he gets good.

We looked rather professional.

Yes.

He doesn't fit the Salt Lake City mold.

This is Mike George.

Just about to get

some fantastic information.

Gerry was on the arson team,

and bombs fell under arson.

And, uh, Monday, Monday evening,

oh, I drank a little bit,

so I'm a little hungover coming into work.

The radio was on,

and I heard that there was a bombing,

and I knew that that was

probably gonna be assigned to me.

Um

One of the things

that I did remember mentioning

is that,

"It's a beautiful day for a bombing."

A lot goes on in the first couple

of hours of the investigation that,

as a prosecutor

that might have to argue the case,

you want to see everything,

get a picture of it.

-Went to the Judge Building.

Doors are blown open,

debris scattered all over the place.

I walked right over to Steve Christensen,

and he was lying there.

His, uh, chest had been ripped apart.

And I just kind of stood there

for a while and took the scene in,

so that it would form

a mental impression for a later date.

Investigators were gathering evidence

when they got word

of the second expl*si*n.

The scene was

the Holladay home of Gary Sheets,

a former business associate

of Christensen's.

Within the hour,

there was a call

that another b*mb had exploded.

I went over,

and there's Kathy Sheets lying there.

-At this stage of the game,

we're worried.

We got somebody running around,

planting bombs.

We don't know who it is,

we have no suspects,

and we were rather worried

that somebody else

might get injured or k*lled.

At the time, I didn't know anything

about the history of, uh, Mormonism.

I didn't know anything

about any Mormon documents.

I knew nothing about what deals

were gonna be going on.

Knew nothing about the Church.

But when Mark Hofmann was bombed,

I learned my Mormon there.

Mark Hofmann lies

in critical condition at LDS Hospital.

Witnesses say his body was badly mangled

when his car exploded today.

A witness said he rushed

to his aid and gave Hofma nn a blessing.

He was wearing the LDS garment,

and, uh, I took out my oil,

uh, consecrated oil

that I usually carry with me,

and I commanded him to live

and that proper medical help

would get to him quickly, which it did.

-You commanded him to live?

-I commanded him to live.

Investigators searched

Hofmann's bombed-out car,

found documents

possibly belonging to Hofmann.

We started getting

into a lot of Mormon documents

going on with Mark Hofmann.

We're starting to learn such things

as there's Salamander letters out there.

Last year, Hofmann sold a document

known as the White Salamander letter,

to the men who were

the apparent targets of the first attack.

The valuable and controversial

letter suggesting that the Mormon Church

was founded on doctrine

delivered by a spirit

in the form of a white salamander.

There was the McLellin Collection.

When officers searched

Mark Hofmann's car

and found a collection believed to be

early Mormon historical documents.

They're the McLellin Collection,

books, diaries, revelations

from the era of Joseph Smith.

They're rumored to concern

the origins of the Mormon Church.

Yes, there are a large number of,

what we feel, very expensive documents

in the automobile and found in the trunk.

That's when we started

realizing that the Church was in play.

And that something's

really, really wrong here.

For the last several months,

Hofmann has been telling associates

that Gordon B. Hinckley, Second Counselor

in the LDS Church's First Presidency,

had agreed to buy the so-called

McLellin papers for $300,000.

One thing appears certain.

Alvin Rust, the man who describes himself

as Mark Hofmann's silent partner,

believed Gordon Hinckley

would be the buyer.

When we interviewed Gordon Hinckley,

I asked him,

"Is there some record you have

of your meetings with Mark Hofmann?"

And he said,

"No, I don't keep anything like that."

Which I found very, very hard to believe.

We have followed the normal,

accepted and professional procedures

employed by collectors generally,

which have been legal

and ethical in every respect

insofar as we have been able to determine.

It became apparent that the Church

was hindering our investigation.

The official Church response said

the Church hasn't suppressed information

but has been open

about its dealings with Hofmann.

President Hinckley said

the Church acquired some 40 documents

through Mark Hofmann since 1980.

Mr. Hofmann indicated he had access

to what he called the McLellin Collection.

People who wanted to protect the Church

didn't want

this document to come to light.

-And it could've given a lot of reason

that Mark Hofmann

would be m*rder*d over.

Mark Hofmann is undergoing

surgery tonight at LDS Hospital.

Police are keeping a close watch.

Welcome to Haus Hofmann.

I'm William Hofmann,

and this is my wife Lucy,

Lucille Sears Hofmann.

We're here tonight to

We're gonna talk a little bit about our

uh, recollections of our life,

and what else?

What's happened to us up to now.

Hope we have a few more years to go.

So let's take off our coat

and get to work.

Mark Hofmann was raised

in a very faithful, devout Mormon home.

In Utah,

the whole culture around him

would have been

everything relating to Mormonism.

Be faithful and true in the gospel.

It was a very controlled,

religious environment.

This is when Mark

got his Eagle Scout award.

We were really proud of him.

He was 14 years old.

This is Mesita Pepita Winky.

She was our dog.

We had her

This is Dorie and Mark

on their wedding day.

They were married in the Salt Lake Temple.

I got married when I was almost 21.

He picked me up.

We drove to the temple.

His family was close.

His dad was really strict.

Being raised LDS

is an interesting experience.

Mark told me about, uh, his father, Bill,

coming over to the home one night

and saw some

children's books on the floor,

and they were books about dinosaurs.

And he became visibly upset

that they would have books

that promoted evolution.

Those were very fundamental core issues,

and that was his dad.

Our Father in Heaven

has much love for us.

We had some beautiful experiences

in our lives.

Mark grew up in a time period

when many young people,

if they differed

from their parents on something,

didn't necessarily show it.

So Mark followed

the normal Latter-Day Saints tradition,

where young men in particular

advocated for the Church

on what was called a mission.

When we are preparing to go on a mission,

and all of us were out,

away from our homes for the first time,

it's a questioning time for everyone.

A lot of the early missionaries

from the Church in the 1800s

had spent time in the Manchester area.

And so there were lots of libraries,

used-book stores,

and it was really a great place

to look for old Mormon literature.

And Mark explained to me

how he was able to walk into a bookstore

and very quickly

identify any books

that were important to him.

He knew what size they were,

what colors they were,

if it was a book that was beat up,

didn't have a cover on it.

And that's where Mark found

many of the old, rare LDS books

that were there.

In England, you could still find

19th-century pamphlets and books

that would be hard to find

in the United States.

And some of the materials that existed

in England attacked the Church.

So Mark began to read

the anti-Mormon publications,

and was beginning to create a narrative

in his mind of the Church and its history

that was different from the tradition.

When Mark explained to me

some of the topics

that he was researching,

he realized there were

a lot of false narratives propagated

by some of the brethren

to hide the truth.

And he was asking me,

"What do you think

about lying for the Lord?"

He kept a box under his bed,

in which he kept materials that were

not necessarily friendly to the Church.

He would tape the box up,

and he would put his signature

across the tape.

He was worried about somebody

opening the box without him knowing it,

and he did that constantly throughout

his mission, sending books like this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got copies of the stuff?

What we need.

We're gonna do the whole thing.

Speak.

We took a conference room over,

and we kind of called it the "w*r room."

-Are you on hold?

-I'm on hold.

God bless America.

It was where we would all kick theories,

evidence amongst each other

and formulate a lot of our decisions

on how we're going to go about things,

who to interview, where to go.

How do I shut it off?

Press the same thing.

Early on in the investigation,

other people that were involved

with the Church,

as well as the document community,

were coming to light,

and all of those people

were potential suspects.

Brent Metcalfe is a research historian

of Mormon documents.

Well, the way that the police put it to me

is everyone's a suspect until they aren't.

And so, of course,

I'm going to be on the list.

I hope you'll forgive me

for asking a very blunt question,

but it's one that needs to be asked.

Did you have anything to do

with the bombings yourself?

Uh, no, uh, that's

That's not a

It's a blunt question,

but one that I've been asked

fairly frequently since all this began.

And, not at all.

Steve Christensen was one of the most

loving people you could ever meet,

and I just can't even imagine

the type of mindset

that would be needed to do the type

of brutal killings that have been done.

-And you don't know who might be involved?

-No, I don't.

This will be a taped conversation

taking place at the office

of the Salt Lake County Attorney.

Interviewee will be Brent Metcalfe.

Early on, I was interviewed

more than you can possibly believe.

Going on to tape number three, side A,

a continuation

of Brent Metcalfe's interview.

This is tape number seven

of the interview with Brent Metcalfe.

Tape number 13

And that's why I had to go in

and take a lie-detector test.

And I passed, of course.

Let's see, who else was there?

People like Al Rust,

who had helped finance

the McLellin Collection.

I thought the Church had it.

They thought I had it.

The police would come in every day

and asked every question from A to Z.

I wasn't aware of it

until I called the LDS Church.

They said they couldn't tell me everything

but shared little things

that they were doing getting evidence.

I didn't even know why.

I think that there were

some of us that they basically

kind of removed from the list.

Shannon wasn't.

Um, Shannon Flynn is in our studio.

Shannon, would you stand up

for a second, please?

Now, you are a close associate

of Mark Hofmann's

and involved

in some of his business dealings.

I have to ask you

the same question I asked Brent.

Are you involved in any way

in the bombings?

In no way whatsoever.

It's only been a few hours,

but what do we know about Flynn?

LDS Church historians say

they never bought anything from Flynn,

but that he was often seen with Hofmann

when Hofmann had business

with Church officials.

Flynn says he was with Hofmann as late as

10:00 p.m. the night before the bombings.

Explain to me,

you were with him

the night before the bombings.

-Was not.

-You were not?

No. No.

Do you know what Mark was doing

the night before the bombings?

No.

When was the last time

you saw Mark prior to the bombings?

Well, my mind's very thin,

but it could have been during the daytime.

But a phone call or see him,

but I don't know.

So that's possible, sure.

Do you have any idea who is involved?

Are Mormon documents in the middle of it?

Personally, I don't think so.

I think this is an exercise in futility

upon the part

of the law enforcement community.

They've spent a large amount of time

investigating an interesting subject,

but one that I don't think necessarily

has anything to do with the murders.

Do you have any idea

who is involved in the bombings?

Behind it?

Well, if I did,

I'd be the first one to tell.

I have no idea.

The problem that I had

with people like Shannon is,

most of these people are gonna

tell you only what they want to tell you.

They're not necessarily going to be

forthright or tell you the truth.

Flynn's knowledge of the business

led investigators to believe

he may be involved

in the bombing deaths of two people.

I was being interviewed

on the Friday night after the bombings,

and I was there for hours.

I was trying to convince them

that I didn't do anything.

Over the last year,

family and friends say

Shannon spent a lot of time

with this man, Mark Hofmann,

collecting and selling

LDS historical documents.

I knew Shannon was very much

into Soldier of Fortune type of things.

And he was very good

with a butterfly knife.

I remember Shannon showing me

how to use one one night.

Uh, but Shannon was probably

one of Mark's closest friends.

And I had a sense that he knew information

about Mark's document dealings and so on

that others of us didn't know.

At that time, I was working

with Mark full time for a living.

I always carried a briefcase in those days

because when he was dealing,

the amounts were in $185,000, $330,000.

We're talking big,

and especially for 1985,

big numbers.

Mark had purchased a Toyota MR2.

He wanted to go fast in that car

and pushed that thing

as fast as it would go.

And in those days,

I had a real interest in firearms.

Mark gave me the money to purchase an U*i.

And that bucker fired full auto.

For two Utah boys,

that's as dangerous

as we've ever been in our lives.

And the police questioned me

quite closely on this lifestyle.

I didn't realize I should have said,

the moment I walked in that door,

"I want an attorney."

The first criminal charge

to emerge from an investigation

into last week's

fatal bombings fell today.

Flynn was charged with possessing

an unregistered firearm today

in federal court.

Police arrested Flynn early Saturday

when a search of his home

turned up an U*i.

He's 27-year-old Shannon Flynn.

Police Chief Bud Willoughby says

the predawn search

of Flynn's home also turned up

some, quote, "incriminating evidence

in the bombings."

I became the number one news item.

Investigators also seized

a book known as The Anarchist Cookbook,

which details, among other things,

how to make homemade bombs.

But Flynn's attorney

said the evidence is circumstantial

and not proof any bombs were made.

They said,

"What do you know about this book?"

I said, "Well, I mean, I've read it."

Flynn is facing a federal charge

of possessing an ill*gal weapon.

This really rang the alarm bells

in that police department that night.

They got the chief of police,

Bud Willoughby, out of bed.

'Cause they'd just found Jack the Ripper.

Chief Willoughby said he hoped

the search of Flynn's storage garage

would reveal the location

of where the pipe bombs were made.

expl*sives and/or other materials

that a b*mb could be manufactured from.

Shannon Flynn

was interesting in the sense that

he came across as a person

who wanted to be something that he wasn't,

in the sense of

uh

James Bond, machine g*ns, bombs.

Flynn is facing a federal charge

of possessing an ill*gal weapon.

He's free on $50,000 bond.

Attorney James Barber

said there is no evidence

Flynn participated

in last week's bombings.

He suspects

Fairly early on in the investigation,

my attorney suggested

that I take a lie detector test.

And it's on a zero-centered scale.

If you score somewhere in the middle,

it's kind of, "We can't tell."

By the time you get to a minus six and up,

definitely untruthful.

Plus six and up, definitely truthful.

I scored a plus 12.

The search of a locker

rented by Flynn, this afternoon,

yielded no further clues.

After a thorough probe,

they found nothing.

What does this mean

for the investigation?

It means we'll just press on

and look for other leads.

That was a problem.

And, um, we didn't know

where to turn at that point.

It's difficult

to encapsulate a case like this

within an hour's worth

of, uh, direct examination on one witness.

It was not a panic,

but it certainly was something where

we did not have enough information

to be able to have a handle on it.

Flynn did say his arrest

arose out of police attempts

to make something break in the case.

I'm just a little pawn in a very big game.

And I just got crushed in the traffic.

Meanwhile, Hofmann continues

to improve slowly at LDS Hospital.

Today, his doctors upgraded his condition

from serious to satisfactory.

Now, by then,

we also have people in the Judge Building

who had some impact as witnesses.

A witness saw a strange man

lingering at the downtown Judge Building

at 6:45 on October 15th.

He could not identify the man.

He was kind of clean-cut.

He had like a high school

athletic jacket on,

without the letter on it.

The actual, uh, fabric

on the jacket was green and

There was a potential witness

talking about a person going up

to see Steve Christensen with a package,

early in the morning,

with a green letterman's jacket.

The man took an elevator upstairs,

but he did not know to which floor.

Just brown wrapping paper,

and up in the left-hand corner

was the name of, "To Steve Christensen."

And this is starting to get around now,

this green letterman's jacket.

Um

I had watched the news,

and I saw where they mentioned,

uh, the person on the elevator

was wearing this green letterman jacket.

And I recognized it

as the same type of jacket that Mark wore.

So we went back to the office

and started making a search warrant

for Mark Hofmann's house.

As the intrigue deepened, the two victims

from Tuesday's bombings were laid to rest.

Kathy Sheets was eulogized

as a compassionate woman

and remembered

for her silent acts of charity.

A thousand people

or more attended the service.

Mrs. Sheets was a graduate

of the University of Utah

and taught school

before becoming a full-time mother.

Friends describe her as fun-loving

with a great sense of humor.

She is survived

by her husband and four children.

After the bombings,

Mark was released from the hospital

and able to come home.

It was a relief to have him home.

I was really happy to have him home.

And the kids were happy.

The neighbors were very supportive.

We had a poster

on our window of our house.

I know the faith that family has,

and that is what is gonna get

the family through this.

To the north in Davis County,

neighbors mourn another victim,

Steve Christensen.

Christensen is survived

by his wife, Terri, and three sons.

Was church interest

part of Steve's motivation?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I'm sure it was.

He was a kind, gentle, uh,

very compassionate person.

He was always thoughtful of other people.

And I don't know of anyone

who didn't love him.

What time in the morning is it?

Let's see.

It's 7:30.

Wow!

So we were sitting around

in our living room,

having that feeling inside me

that everything's gonna be okay,

enjoying being together as a family.

And life would be back to normal.

And, you know,

our little 15 minutes

of fame would be over.

And we'd be back to normal.

It's beyond me

why someone would do what they did.

You know,

leaving bombs for people to pick up.

A kid could pick that up, a toddler,

a friend of one of my kids.

People that do this, uh

I can't comprehend that mind,

why they would do it.

I don't know why anyone would

want to k*ll me. I've no idea.

Talking to Mark,

I knew something was wrong.

But I didn't know what was wrong.

don't have to stand up

It's like something's-something's off.

Okay. Goodbye.

Two o'clock.

He'll make his announcement?

-Yeah.

These two men came in the door, and

I just remember them asking me

Asking me for the keys to the house,

and asking me for the code to the alarm.

Then the police say,

"We need to search your house.

Your husband is a suspect in this."

How could that be?

There were friends of Mark

who had contacted the police

once they learned

of the letterman's jacket.

And we applied for and received

a search warrant for Mark's residence,

which was ex*cuted later that night.

By 6:00, a swarm of city and county

law enforcement officials

were going over the Hofmann home

with a fine-tooth comb.

Do we know what we're really looking for?

Yeah, I know a few things.

I know there's a green letterman's jacket

I'd like to find out if it's there.

I'd like to see if there's

anything relating to bombs.

Searchers went

through books and manuscripts,

the documents accumulated by the collector

suspected of being a m*rder*r.

Um, I don't believe that we found

anything having to do with bombs.

But we did find

the green letterman's jacket.

Well, if it was up to D'Elia,

they would have arrested Mark

the night of the search warrant.

But I kept saying,

"What's your motive?"

For more than three hours,

officers sifted through boxes

and collected evidence they hope to use

in their case against Hofmann.

In all, more than 30 containers

and boxes of evidence were collected,

so much that a truck

had to be called in to haul it away.

Speculation has centered around

whether the man witnesses say they saw

carry the b*mb into the Judge Building

is the same man as Mark Hofmann.

That jacket could have been from anybody

who'd graduated

from Olympus High School.

Could've been purchased

at a second-hand store.

So there were still a lot of questions

that needed to be answered.

The press has rushed

to bring you every development

in an energetic police investigation.

Now, just in time for the evening news,

there is a suspect.

But the rapidity with which

things changed from yesterday

should give us pause tonight.

This isn't a mystery story

with a quick, clear, satisfying ending.

We don't know what happened.

We shouldn't jump to conclusions

They would hope

for a nice clean bombing case,

to find some bombing parts,

to be able to show

where he'd purchased them,

how he had the skill to put them together.

And instead, they found,

uh, Latter-Day Saint history

and documents that only nerds cared about.

There were more documents

than we had anticipated.

We were learning that Mark

had all of these business deals

that needed to be looked at.

The first time

I met Mark would have been 1984.

Mark told me that he was

very well respected by the Mormon Church

for all the documents he was finding.

And at this point,

he had gotten involved with things

which are not Mormon-related.

First editions, history, Americana.

So I said,

"What sort of things are you finding?"

Hi, this is a long-distance call.

Can I please speak with someone

who is in charge

of acquiring material for your archives?

New York City in 1984.

A quiet, unimposing

Mormon documents collector from Utah

says he found something amazing

in this Manhattan bookstore.

He had been to Argosy bookshop

during his trip to New York

and bought a couple of pieces of paper

that interested him.

And one of them

was called The Oath of a Freeman.

The first document

printed in the New World.

The so-called Oath of a Freeman,

discovered by Hofmann,

is purported to be the first

printed material in colonial America

People had looked for it,

it had been reprinted in textbooks,

but, uh, the original sheet of paper

had never been found.

If you'd be interested in it,

around the price that I just quoted,

then I'll-I'll gladly fly out there too

and let you take a look at the original.

This is an original?

Yes, this is an original copy.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

And, so, the next time

he came to New York,

I looked at it, and the paper felt right,

printing looked right.

I said, "It looks remarkable."

In my mind,

this is one of the most important, uh,

historical documents of our country.

One of the things

that we ended up doing with The Oath

was sending it out

to California for a cyclotron test.

Tests are being conducted on a document

to see whether the ink

on that piece of paper is 300 years old.

they bombarded it

with high-velocity protons,

which gives them an accurate analysis

of paper and ink.

I started to realize,

this is going to be

an expensive procedure.

And I was expecting, uh,

maybe a 5% or 10% commission.

But Mark, uh, said,

"Oh, no,

if you could authenticate the document,

we'll be 50% partners,

each of us."

And I was staggered by his generosity.

Marketing The Oath with Hofmann,

attorneys for the gallery,

Schiller and Wapner

Mark and I agreed

on the price of $1.5 million.

But I had to caution everyone,

it's only worth that

if it turns out to be real.

And we're far from that road.

There's a lot of things

that need to be checked and verified,

and this was just the beginning.

In New York, Mark had become

close enough with Justin Schiller

that he always rolled out

the red carpet for him.

And Mark let loose in New York.

He did things

he would never, ever do at home.

Somebody else at the table

was ordering an alcoholic drink,

and then Mark could be coerced,

which I realize

is somewhat against the Mormon creed.

But Mark had told him

it was impossible for him to get drunk.

No, that just

That is not humanly possible.

"Okay, I'm gonna have a double vodka."

He'd pound that thing down.

"Double whiskey. Another one."

And I want to mention,

I did no drinking.

Just watched.

Anyway, within an hour,

15, 16 doubles.

Straight, neat.

Justin Schiller said, "Say you're drunk."

And he said, "No, I'm not."

So he said, "Stand up."

Mark did.

He said, "Walk around this table."

No wobble, no waver.

Nothing.

Now, the back end to that story is,

we finally went up to our room.

He went in the bathroom

and just puked himself green.

This is coming

from a person who never drank.

He grew up Mormon, so it's not normal.

So Mark lived this lifestyle of kinda,

"We'll do some business, flash some cash,

and we'll drink our heads off,

and then we'll sober up and go home."

Back to the regular Mormon life.

There's Michael and Daddy.

See?

And Mommy over there,

taking pictures of ya.

He liked to film the family.

"Yuppie" was the term at that point,

when you had all the techy things

and all the fancy stuff,

and it was a big deal at that point,

in the '80s, to have a camera.

Oh, you took a few steps!

You tried to, anyway.

He would like to take people to dinner,

go to expensive places

-and buy expensive things.

-Uh-oh. You dropped it.

I think part of it was upbringing.

It's LDS culture, you want to look good

for the people around you.

And there was something

with him about status,

and something about having things,

having expensive things,

that was important to him.

In a 1982 interview

with Sunstone magazine,

Hofmann said he was

in the business to make money.

Mark had taken on

a much higher living standard

than he'd known before.

He was flying back and forth

to the East Coast all the time.

He would promise a document to one guy.

He'd get something sold,

pass that money to the other guy.

Hofmann's finances are murky.

Just this summer,

he negotiated to buy a $600,000 house.

The deal fell through.

In early fall of 1985,

there would be feast or famine,

lots of money and then no money.

And I just remember a lot of phone calls.

Please leave a message after the tone.

Then I would tell Mark,

"This person called. They're upset."

"Oh, that's not a big deal.

Oh, they're not a problem.

-Oh, I'll take care of that."

So, what I remember mostly

is just the disconnect

between what I was experiencing

and what he was telling me.

I'm gonna get you.

I'm gonna get you.

Get you, get you, get you.

Mark was in debt to a lot of people.

But Mark Hofmann

had a lot of money out there

that was going to come to him.

Big money.

The Oath of a Freeman

was reportedly going to be sold

for $1.5 million.

So Mark Hofmann had no motive for m*rder.

During the investigation,

there was a polygraph that was released

by Mr. Hofmann's attorney, Ron Yengich.

They don't have sufficient cause

to charge my client

with what they keep saying that he is,

i.e. the prime suspect in the bombings.

But they've got to show the public

they're doing something.

Mark's polygraph was plus 14.

That's the highest number

I've ever seen in my career.

Hofmann's claims of innocence

were documented for the first time

when he passed a lie detector test.

I was just so disappointed

that nothing was coming out

of the investigation.

Based on my personal acquaintance

with Mark

and my experience in knowing him

over the last two years,

I-- I have a great deal of doubt

that, uh, Mark is involved

in any way at this point.

We already had these people m*rder*d,

and yet,

other people's lives were being destroyed,

and reputations being destroyed.

And so, I embraced the notion

that somebody had tried to set Mark up.

I talked to a collector,

one of Hofmann's competitors,

and he said, "I'm not sure Mark did it,

maybe it was an accident.

Maybe there's somebody

out to get document collectors."

Neighbors could not believe

he's a suspect in the bombings.

I can't comprehend

that the Mark that I know

is capable of doing the bombings.

I feel like Mark has been crucified.

I think he's a victim.

So completely out of character

with Mark Hofmann.

The general opinion of the public,

what I got, was,

"You got the wrong guy.

You're lousy prosecutors.

You don't know what you're doing.

You're lousy investigators."

The public has a right to know.

You don't understand how effectively

you can eliminate

the rights of an accused.

Motive is what we needed.

Motive is what we did not have.

Hofmann's family says he has

never been in any kind of trouble before.

Hofmann was an Eagle Scout

We need to look somewhere else.

I think it's come to the point

where they've probably

got to charge him with something,

whether they have something or not.

Mark is definitely not a m*rder*r.

I know he's not a m*rder*r.

From the very beginning,

our prayer and our hope was that

the truth would

Would be known.

Whatever it was

that the truth would come out.

And we-- That's still our prayer.

I got a call.

This is about third or fourth party.

Woman by the name of Becky Cutler Gunn,

used to live by the Hofmanns.

I was in the w*r room seven days a week,

sometimes up to 16 hours a day.

I was not in a place that I wanted to be.

Do we have any idea how much?

But this is a type of case that you had

to cross every "T" and dot every "I."

And so we decided to go through

the evidence one more time.

At the search of Mark Hofmann's house,

there were many, many items

that, at the time,

meant very little to us.

We were looking to find

anything out of the ordinary.

And there was a piece of paper

that had a business called

c*ck and Clark Engraving

and the name "Mike Hansen."

I need to figure out who is Mike Hansen.

And I traced it back

But more importantly,

how is this related to Mark Hofmann?

So we dialed the number and said,

"This is Mike Hansen,

and I need a receipt for my taxes."

And he said,

"Sure, Mr. Hansen, I'll send it to you."

We got the receipt.

It was a plate for Deseret currency,

made up at the engravers,

which was something

that Mark Hofmann was dealing in,

and he could use it

to actually make a forgery.

That turned this investigation

completely around

and completely into a different direction

than we were going.

Mike is gonna show us

the Salamander letter does not fold.

Because if these documents,

like the Salamander letter

or The Oath of a Freeman, were forged,

that's an absolute motive

for Mark Hofmann to commit m*rder.

Investigators are now turning

to the next big question, why?

The possible answers are sending

shock waves through the LDS Church.

Police chief Bud Willoughby

said the Church has been "beaten up on."

And as far as he's concerned,

it's not fair.

We have not discounted forgery involved.

That could very well turn out

to be one of the possible motives

Police are looking at bombings

to cover up an elaborate forgery ring

as a possibility.

Some of these documents,

including the Salamander letter

In another twist to this story,

the LDS Church today announced plans

to let the FBI run authenticity tests

on the Martin Harris

or so-called Salamander letter.

The Church took the Salamander letter,

and they shipped it off to the FBI.

They did make this request

uh, so they could authenticate

the Martin Harris letter

by their own methods,

and we've agreed.

Which was a very big deal

because the Church, at first,

didn't want to get to the bottom of it.

The FBI will attempt to determine

if the letter is genuine or a fake.

We need to investigate these documents.

And in order to do it,

we went out and got

one of the best document examiners,

probably throughout the world.

The reason I got into forensic science is,

I don't deal with people.

And I disassociate myself

as much as possible.

The one thing that I've always done is,

if an attorney hands me a document

and tells me it's genuine,

I go about the examination

trying to prove that it's not.

If somebody tells me a document is forged,

I go about my examination

trying to prove that it's genuine.

Purchase a lot of these documents

And so we invited George

to meet with us.

And he asked me,

"What do you know about the documents?"

And I said,

"All of the experts are telling us

that they're authentic."

Out of curiosity,

I began researching one of the people

that authenticated the Salamander letter.

I still regard it as valid,

for the reason that, uh,

to change my mind at this point

would fly in the face

of the careful work

that was done to authenticate it.

I realized

he was not a document examiner.

He was a historian,

and that made me suspicious.

Now, George Throckmorton

is a good Mormon too.

and we need to get Throckmorton

right on as soon as they get it

From a credibility standpoint of view,

George Throckmorton said,

"I want somebody else in here, too."

Well, one day I was sitting peacefully

at my desk, uh, in Arizona,

at the state crime laboratory,

and the phone rang,

and it was George Throckmorton.

And he said, uh,

"What religion are you, Bill?"

That was a rather unusual intro.

Uh, I said, "Well, I'm kind of

a non-practicing Catholic."

And George Throckmorton said, "Perfect."

I knew how difficult it was

to create a document today

and make it look like it was 15 years old.

In this scenario,

George had said some of these documents

were supposedly 150 years old,

ten times that long.

So I was certain that,

in the case of the Salamander letter,

there would be some flaw.

There would be an anachronism

or an anomaly,

or we would be able to prove

that the writing was forged.

They sat down and really

went to town with these documents.

We went through

how the documents' papers were cut,

how the ink was, how letters folded.

If you can find

that one anachronistic characteristic,

something that says

this paper was manufactured in 1890,

but the date of the document was 1830,

game, set, match. You have it.

-They wanna talk to you.

-I do nothing. I

When Bill first came, he thought

he would be here a week.

As it turns out,

I had grossly underestimated

the amount of time and effort

it was going to take

to show whether these documents

were genuine or not.

This is KSL Television,

Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Oath of a Freeman,

purported to be the first document

printed in early America.

Experts tested The Oath on a space-age

machine called a cyclotron at the

We had The Oath of a Freeman

tested for the paper,

studied by nuclear examination,

and, uh, each of the exams,

it came up with the verification

that the document was correct.

The Oath of a Freeman appears

to have passed a key test of authenticity.

Mark Hofmann shares

ownership of the document,

along with a New York dealer

It was all a very exciting experience,

and we're now a 50% owner.

And the sale

of The Oath of a Freeman was pending.

They were going to take

The Oath of a Freeman

and exhibit it

at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

So this was trouble, obviously.

'Cause it's just

one more piece of evidence

that's just not going our way.

Meanwhile, there was a call from the FBI.

One of the investigators says,

"We got the report back from the FBI

on the Salamander letter.

It's genuine."

The FBI has reportedly

concluded there is no reason to believe

that the Salamander letter is a phony.

The FBI Laboratory

had authenticated the Salamander letter.

We all had a horrible reaction to it.

I mean, it ruined Christmas for us.

It didn't--

In-In the face of it, we just went on.

It was just one more piece of sh*t

that we have to deal with and

um

There came a time in the examination

where I felt it wasn't going to work.

Where we just

weren't going to be able to get

that hard evidence

that we would need to testify to.

Let's watch some TV.

He liked the Dallas show.

I think Mark used the character JR

in Dallas as a role model.

I just want you to know, JR,

I'm gonna nail you.

Haven't you noticed?

You gotta be a man to play in my league.

How bold he was in his actions,

and how he would look good on the outside,

but underneath what he would do to people.

I knew there was a reason

I liked that boy.

He's just about the best liar I ever met.

With the exception of myself, of course.

The police theory that Hofmann was forging

documents comes as a real surprise

to the community

of scholars and collectors

who work with Mark Hofmann

When the evening news would come,

he absolutely loved

Loved it.

Police searched his car and home.

They found old paper and ink

that could've been used

in forging documents.

Hofmann is the prime suspect.

He says,

"I recognize one person there on TV."

They would be talking

about him being a suspect,

about what was happening with him

in the investigation, in the news.

He just

He reveled in that.

Don't cry.

The FBI has reportedly

concluded there is no reason to believe

that the Salamander letter is a phony.

The fact they have not filed today

anything related to the bombings

means they've got a weak case.

-Speculation has centered around motives.

Why would Hofmann k*ll

business associates and friends?

That's still unknown.

I think, uh

I don't know what it is

they wanna do with the ink.

I'm not sure what--

This is printing ink, you understand?

This is carbon-based ink.

You don't wanna mess with the FBI.

And yet, I disagreed with them

on the Salamander letter.

In fact, I was almost a little bit angry.

After examining it

under various degrees of magnification,

under various lighting sources,

from ultraviolet spectrum

to the infrared spectrum,

every way possible,

I was feeling quite comfortable

that something was wrong,

and they should've found it.

George Throckmorton said,

"I'm shocked about how shallow

their analysis has gone.

We need to go further."

After 110 hours of examination

on the documents,

I started noticing that some of the inks

had a cracking effect on the ink itself.

And some of them did not.

And I didn't know why.

In order to test

whether what we were seeing was actually

a real phenomenon or not,

Mr. Throckmorton and I began

to hand one another documents

to look at microscopically.

And we had them separated into two groups.

One of which we know Hofmann had handled,

and the others were documents

we knew had been in the Church

long before Mark Hofmann was even born.

There would either be evidence

of the ink cracking or not.

And depending,

he would say "not Hofmann," or "Hofmann."

And we started to see this pattern.

Every single document that Hofmann

had handled had that cracked ink.

George and Bill explained to us,

"We're looking at ink that's cracked."

That led to other questions.

We had that receipt

to c*ck and Clark Engraving,

in the name of Mike Hansen,

that had been seized

at Mark Hofmann's house.

If Mark Hofmann was a forger,

where else

could he have made printing plates?

-What you got on The Oath

-Paper's probably okay.

that's gonna be the kicker we can

And there were two places,

Utah Engraving and DeBouzek Printing.

Went to DeBouzek

with The Oath of a Freeman.

The printer picked it up,

looked at it, and he said,

"A person by the name of Mike Hansen

asked to have this plate made."

Printing on this portion of the press,

which is called the platen,

and this is where the paper will be put

And he said, "Mr. Hansen paid us in cash.

He was a couple of bucks short.

He had to complete the transaction

with a personal check."

That personal check

was in Mark Hofmann's name.

Oh, Markie Poo,

if you could only see me now.

Moment of truth.

Looks great!

Hey!

That was a big discovery.

This is an absolute forgery.

I think it's time for a beer.

We had come full circle.

There was cracking in the ink.

And the check proved that Mark Hofmann

had used the name Mike Hansen.

And now we found what,

to us, was the Holy Grail.

The Oath of a Freeman

the one document

that Mark Hofmann could use

to buy him out of this entire mess

he had gotten himself into,

-was now a forgery.

Prosecutors say

the k*ller is Mark Hofmann.

He's been accused of massive frauds.

But until today, we did not know

just how much fraud there's been.

Prosecutors say he swindled associates

out of more than half a million dollars.

I looked him in the eye, and he indicated

he hadn't done the bombings.

It hits you hard, really hard.

He's been lying to you.

I remember hearing Mark say,

"I hope they catch

the b*stards that did this."

And it's like, little did I realize

I was sitting next to the b*stard

that did this.

He was juggling

two giant deals at the same time,

for the so-called Oath of a Freeman

The so-called McLellin Collection

Police say the papers don't exist.

No one can say that they've ever seen

the McLellin papers.

The Bureau is charging Mr. Hofmann

in regards to the bombings.

At that point,

this whole house of cards

that Mark Hofmann had built

began to just completely fall apart.