Murder Among The Mormons is a Netflix docu-series in the true-crime subgenre that probes the viciousness of the criminal mind. In this case, it looks at the unassuming family man, Mark Hofmann, who led a double life.
In 1985, Salt Lake City, Utah, was rocked by two devastating bombings involving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [LDS] and the potential exchange of documents that would completely rattle the core of the Mormon faith. A third bombing would severely injure Hofmann, a popular dealer in antiques that included documents believed to be among some of the oldest in history, as well as items that had already redefined what people thought about the formation of Mormonism.
The murders shocked the largely religious and close-knit communities, who were caught off-guard when a trove of early Mormon letters and diaries were spotted destroyed in the vehicle of the third victim, Hofmann. In his possession was the infamous White Salamander Letter -- an artefact that threatened the existence of the Mormon church.
With Hofmann in the hospital, investigators and experts in the field of forgery raced against time to uncover the truth about his deception.
Over the course of the series, we are introduced to the origins of the Mormon Church after it has been said that in 1823 Joseph Smith received golden plates from the angel Moroni and translated its inscriptions into English. By 1980, the trading of historical Mormon documents was big business as church officials were always interested in filling in their history.
I found this three 45-minute episode true story -- probably the first thorough inspection into one of the most shocking crimes to have ever occurred in the Mormon community, and the true criminal mastermind behind it all -- to be both engrossing and chillingly captivating.
For me, one of the eye-raising aspects of the story was just how astonishingly naive every document trader -- all members of the LDS church -- were about the Mormon origin story against the fiction that Hofmann was peddling with these forged documents.
We see in the first episode just how far the Mormon Church will go to defend its history, along with every expert involved in the document trade in the 80s.
The audience is given details of the investigation into the three bombings and the extent of Hofmann's crimes -- almost everything he ever dealt with, including evidence that shaped his violent crimes, and of course his passion for becoming a forger that was so good that he could fool the experts.
We also are presented with many of the major characters in the investigation and from Hofmann's world.
While across the board, I unanimously agree on his prowess as a forger, Murder Among The Mormons falters to give us the bigger picture.
While we are offered a glimpse into Hofmann's upbringing, we do not learn why he created forgeries that undermined the authority of the faith in which he was raised. It is presumably an assumption to describe Hofmann as an astonishingly rare person in that his disregard for human life extended not only to his willingness to take it but to something much larger in scope.
In his deranged mind, the man desired to annihilate institutions, not just people whom he looked at as collateral damage.
Whether you look up the case or not, one thing is clear, viewers are instantly drawn into the story because of how situations spiral out of control from the get-go. Just when you think that the buying and selling of historic Mormon documents seem like a pretty straightforward endeavour; and that there should not be a pliable reason to kill over it are we proven wrong.
We are taken into the deranged mind of Hofmann and what ensues from it is complete carnage.
Murder Among The Mormons is an absorbing inspection at some of the inner workings of the Mormon Church, even if the filmmakers were more interested in the story around the document trade here than the church itself. However, the informative docuseries is worth the watch.
Murder Among The Mormons
Starring Dori Hofmann Olds, Shannon Flynn, Brent Metcalfe Now streaming on Netflix
