Original subtitles

[whimsical music playing]

[man] 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.

[chuckles] 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.

-[woman] Come on. -[D'Elia] We've got everybody else.

[man] I had worked with Gerry on cases.

Quite a character.

I know what you bought that for, Gerry.

-[D'Elia] For porno. -That's right.

[man] He's brash. He's outspoken.

-But he's gotta practice so he gets good. -[D'Elia] We looked rather professional.

Yes.

He doesn't fit the Salt Lake City mold.

[D'Elia] This is Mike George.

Just about to get some fantastic information.

[George now] 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."

[suspenseful music playing]

[mechanical humming]

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.

-[camera shutter clicking] -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.

[woman] Investigators were gathering evidence

when they got word of the second explosion.

The scene was the Holladay home of Gary Sheets,

a former business associate of Christensen's.

[D'Elia] Within the hour,

there was a call that another bomb had exploded.

I went over, and there's Kathy Sheets lying there.

-[camera shutter clicking] -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 killed.

[ominous music playing]

-[siren wailing] -[helicopter blades whirring]

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.

[man] Mark Hofmann lies in critical condition at LDS Hospital.

Witnesses say his body was badly mangled when his car exploded today.

[man 2] A witness said he rushed to his aid and gave Hofmann 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.

[man 2] Investigators searched Hofmann's bombed-out car,

found documents possibly belonging to Hofmann.

[D'Elia] 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.

[man 1] 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.

[man 2] When officers searched Mark Hofmann's car

and found a collection believed to be early Mormon historical documents.

[woman] They're the McLellin Collection,

books, diaries, revelations from the era of Joseph Smith.

[man 3] 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.

[D'Elia] 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.

[George] 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.

[George] It became apparent that the Church

was hindering our investigation.

[man 1] 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.

-[monitor beeping] -And it could've given a lot of reason

that Mark Hofmann would be murdered over.

[man 2] 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.

[Tanner] 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.

[Tanner] It was a very controlled, religious environment.

[Lucille] This is when Mark got his Eagle Scout award.

We were really proud of him. He was 14 years old.

[William] This is Mesita Pepita Winky.

She was our dog. We had her…

[Lucille] This is Dorie and Mark on their wedding day.

They were married in the Salt Lake Temple.

[Dorie] 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.

[Metcalfe] 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.

[William] 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.

[rain pouring]

[man] 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.

[rain pouring]

[thunder rumbles]

[uneasy music plays]

[Measom] 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.

[suspenseful music playing]

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?"

[typewriter clacking]

[Richard Turley] 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.

[ominous music playing]

-[man 1] Yeah. -[man 2] Yeah.

[man 1] You got copies of the stuff?

-[man 2] What we need. -[D'Elia] We're gonna do the whole thing.

Speak.

We took a conference room over, and we kind of called it the "war room."

-Are you on hold? -I'm on hold.

[D'Elia] 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.

-[woman] How do I shut it off? -[D'Elia] Press the same thing.

[George] 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.

[TV show theme plays]

Brent Metcalfe is a research historian of Mormon documents.

[Metcalfe now] 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.

[man] 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.

[man] Going on to tape number three, side A,

a continuation of Brent Metcalfe's interview.

[woman] This is tape number seven of the interview with Brent Metcalfe.

[man] 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.

[Metcalfe] 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.

[man 1] It's only been a few hours, but what do we know about Flynn?

[man 2] 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.

[interviewer] Explain to me,

you were with him the night before the bombings.

-Was not. -You were not?

[taps chair rhythmically] No. No.

Do you know what Mark was doing the night before the bombings?

No. [ahem]

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.

[D'Elia] 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.

[woman] Flynn's knowledge of the business led investigators to believe

he may be involved in the bombing deaths of two people.

[Flynn] 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.

[man] 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.

[Metcalfe] 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.

[exciting 80's music playing]

[Flynn] 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.

-[exciting '80s music continues] -[engine revs]

[tires squeal]

[Flynn] Mark had purchased a Toyota MR2.

He wanted to go fast in that car

and pushed that thing as fast as it would go.

[tires squeal]

And in those days, I had a real interest in firearms.

Mark gave me the money to purchase an Uzi.

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."

[man] 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 Uzi.

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.

[woman] 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."

[man 1] Flynn is facing a federal charge of possessing an illegal weapon.

[Flynn] 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.

[man 2] Chief Willoughby said he hoped the search of Flynn's storage garage

would reveal the location of where the pipe bombs were made.

Explosives and/or other materials that a bomb could be manufactured from.

[D'Elia] 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 guns, bombs.

[man 1] Flynn is facing a federal charge of possessing an illegal 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…

[Flynn] 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.

[man 2] The search of a locker rented by Flynn, this afternoon,

yielded no further clues.

After a thorough probe,

they found nothing.

[man 3] 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.

[man 4] 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.

-[monitor beeping] -[suspenseful music playing]

[woman] Meanwhile, Hofmann continues to improve slowly at LDS Hospital.

Today, his doctors upgraded his condition from serious to satisfactory.

[D'Elia] Now, by then,

we also have people in the Judge Building who had some impact as witnesses.

[man] 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.

[man] 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.

-[projector whirring] -[somber music playing]

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.

[man] 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.

[somber music continues]

[Dorie] 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.

[woman] I know the faith that family has,

and that is what is gonna get

the family through this.

[church bell tolling]

[woman] 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.

[Mark] What time in the morning is it?

Let's see.

[Dorie] It's 7:30.

[Mark] 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.

-[Mark] Michael. -[Dorie kissing]

[Dorie] 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 kill me. I've no idea.

[baby coos]

[Dorie] 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.

[ominous music plays]

[whistles, clicks]

[Dorie talking indistinctly to baby]

[phone ringing]

Okay. Goodbye.

Two o'clock.

-[D'Elia] He'll make his announcement? -Yeah.

-[suspenseful music playing] -[birds chirping]

[Dorie] 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?

[suspenseful music playing]

[George] 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 executed 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.

[woman] Searchers went through books and manuscripts,

the documents accumulated by the collector suspected of being a murderer.

[D'Elia] Um, I don't believe that we found anything having to do with bombs.

But we did find the green letterman's jacket.

[camera shutter clicks]

[George] 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?"

[woman] 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 bomb 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.

[Decker] 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…

[now] 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.

[engine idling]

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.

[pensive music playing]

[man] 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?"

[Mark] Hi, this is a long-distance call.

Can I please speak with someone

who is in charge of acquiring material for your archives?

[man] New York City in 1984.

A quiet, unimposing Mormon documents collector from Utah

says he found something amazing in this Manhattan bookstore.

[Schiller] 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.

[man] The first document printed in the New World.

[woman] The so-called Oath of a Freeman, discovered by Hofmann,

is purported to be the first printed material in colonial America…

[dramatic music playing]

[Schiller] People had looked for it,

it had been reprinted in textbooks,

but, uh, the original sheet of paper had never been found.

[Mark on the phone] 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.

[woman] This is an original?

-[Mark] Yes, this is an original copy. -[woman] Oh, for heaven's sake.

[Schiller] 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.

[Schiller] 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.

[man] 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.

[car horns honking]

[Flynn] 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.

[whimsical music playing]

[Schiller] 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.

[Flynn] 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."

[imitates gulping] 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.

[chuckles]

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.

[birds chirping]

[Mark] There's Michael and Daddy.

See?

And Mommy over there, taking pictures of ya.

[Dorie] 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.

[Dorie] 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.

[engine revving]

[woman] 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.

[man] Hofmann's finances are murky.

Just this summer, he negotiated to buy a $600,000 house.

The deal fell through.

[phone ringing]

[Dorie] 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.

[male voice] 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." -[knocking softly]

So, what I remember mostly is just the disconnect

between what I was experiencing and what he was telling me.

[knocking softly]

[Mark] I'm gonna get you.

I'm gonna get you. Get you, get you, get you.

[George] 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 murder.

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.

[George] Mark's polygraph was plus 14.

That's the highest number I've ever seen in my career.

[man] 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 murdered,

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.

[Decker] 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."

[man] 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.

[D'Elia] 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.

[woman] Hofmann's family says he has never been in any kind of trouble before.

Hofmann was an Eagle Scout…

[George] We need to look somewhere else.

[William] 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 murderer.

I know he's not a murderer.

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.

[sad music playing]

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.

[George] I was in the war 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 Cocks and Clark Engraving

and the name "Mike Hansen."

I need to figure out who is Mike Hansen.

And I traced it back…

[now] 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.

[D'Elia] Mike is gonna show us the Salamander letter does not fold.

[George] 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 murder.

[suspenseful music playing]

Investigators are now turning to the next big question, why?

The possible answers are sending shock waves through the LDS Church.

[man] 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.

[man] The FBI will attempt to determine if the letter is genuine or a fake.

[George] 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…

[George] 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."

[Throckmorton] 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.

[Throckmorton] 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…

[D'Elia] 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.

[D'Elia] 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.

[William Flynn] 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. [chuckles]

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.

[ominous music playing]

[man] 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…

[Schiller] 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.

[reporter] 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…

[Schiller] 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.

[helicopter blades whirring]

[D'Elia] 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.

[Throckmorton] One of the investigators says,

"We got the report back from the FBI on the Salamander letter.

It's genuine."

[man] The FBI has reportedly concluded there is no reason to believe

that the Salamander letter is a phony.

[George] 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-- [sputters]

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

It was just one more piece of shit that we have to deal with and…

um…

[William Flynn] 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.

[ominous music playing]

[Mark] Let's watch some TV.

[Dorie] 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.

[Dorie] 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…

[Dorie] When the evening news would come,

he absolutely loved…

Loved it.

[man 1] 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.

[Mark] He says, "I recognize one person there on TV."

[Dorie] 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.

[man 2] 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. -[crying]

Why would Hofmann kill business associates and friends?

That's still unknown.

[man] I think, uh…

I don't know what it is they wanna do with the ink.

[man] 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.

[suspenseful music playing]

[George] 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.

[Throckmorton] 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."

[Throckmorton] And we started to see this pattern.

Every single document that Hofmann had handled had that cracked ink.

[ominous music playing]

[George] George and Bill explained to us,

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

That led to other questions.

We had that receipt to Cocks 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."

[man] 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.

[D'Elia] Oh, Markie Poo, if you could only see me now.

[man 1] Moment of truth.

-[man 2] Looks great! -[man 3] Hey!

-[man 1] That looks good. -[men applaud]

[D'Elia] 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…

[clunks]

…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. -[tense music plays]

[woman] Prosecutors say the killer 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.

[Metcalfe] I remember hearing Mark say,

"I hope they catch the bastards that did this."

And it's like, little did I realize

I was sitting next to the bastard that did this.

[man 1] He was juggling two giant deals at the same time,

for the so-called Oath of a Freeman…

[man 2] 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.

[George] At that point,

this whole house of cards that Mark Hofmann had built

began to just completely fall apart.

[up-tempo sinister music playing]