Airing tonight on the Oxygen channel 8:00 ET.

Documentary detailing the event from 1985.

I've heard the story before, but this is a new documentary, so will be seeing it with fresh eyes for the retelling of the account.

A Mormon forgery that fooled the Mormon leaders all the way to the top ... the Salamander letter ... and other religious artifacts that Hoffman had claimed to be authentic.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2019 08:41PM by Amyjo.

Sandra Tanner is one of the people being interviewed for tonight's documentary.

Awesome choice !!!!

:D



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2019 08:42PM by Amyjo.

where the combined inspiration and powers of discernment of the official "prophet" and the entire First Presidency proved to be one hamburger, 15 french fries and one toy short of a happy meal.

Or to be less metaphorical, their combined inspiration and powers of discernment turned out to be less than that of the average entry-level employee at Booger King on her first day. (At least a newbie employee would probably say: "I don't know if this is real or not.")

Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom.

For what I paid in tithing in one month, they could have bought 12 “Magic 8 Balls” and gotten better results than their discernment.

At least with divination using goat entrails, there probably would have been a 50% chance of getting a good answer.

But the thing about the Hoffman affair for me is that it's pretty close to 100% proof that the top guys really do know that the whole edifice is based on fraudulent nonsense and fake revelations produced by a con-artist.

It is precisely because they privately know this while publicly pretending otherwise that they overreacted to what Hoffman showed them. In their eagerness to take control of the problematic documents so that they could hide them from the members, they overlooked the possibility that the documents could be fake. Apparently, they never even considered that possibility seriously. Their secret contempt for Joseph Smith was apparently even greater than any kind of negative view of Joseph Smith that Jerald Tanner may have had. That's why Jerald was able to take a more objective look at the documents.

The explanation given for that by one of those being interviewed was that "Mormons wouldn't lie about something like that," sort of thing. They weren't prepared for someone like a Mark Hofmann, who'd grown up a poster boy Mormon kid, and poker faced sociopath.

His own wife didn't believe he was capable of what he'd been accused of until well into the trial when she finally started to see the real Mark Hofmann once the evidence became too compelling for her to ignore. She was his most ardent supporter up until then.

His sentence? Five years to life in Utah Correctional Facilities. Although it's really a life sentence because he'll never get out.

Mormons including their leaders were too trusting for the Mark Hofmanns within their ranks. Look at Paul H. Dunn. He was another wolf in sheep's clothing that got away for years with his lies and serial lies. Wonder what else he got away with we'll never know? He was a charmer, like the master manipulator that he was.

Mark Hofmann was in it for the money. Pure greed. He was a spendthrift by all accounts. He lived lavishly. Bought a sports car with some of his ill gotten money, and was buying a nice house in downtown Salt Lake City at the time of the bombings. His mistake in his oh so careful planning was in thinking he was too smart to get caught. Like so many con artists before him, that was his downfall.

Most con artists don't become violent enough to murder. He was afraid of being exposed by one of his victims which led to the unthinkable act/s of homicide - but as one of the interviewees said last night on the show:

"The murderer *is* the *real* Mark Hofmann." That is who he is and was. It was there all along. The man really is diabolical. No emotion. No remorse. No feelings for his misdeeds other than he was caught. A truly evil person.

Mark was buying or trying to buy a home in Holladay, on the road that runs between Holladay Blvd and Walker Lane (name eludes me at the moment), not in downtown SLC. Super high rent district.....

Cottonwood Lane. Very expensive houses and horse property.

Is that right?

When I visited there in SLC last week with one of my children, I visited the childhood home where my family lived at when my only sister was born and died. I found the address from the obituary that family search dot org had sent me on her birthday this past spring. Since I didn't remember where the place was when we were kids, now I had a physical address to go check it out while I was visiting in SLC.

So off I went in my rental car and it was in the suburb of Holladay. When we were children our little home was on a country lot with another house on a hilly slope slightly above ours - which was downslope from the roadway and the driveway lane.

Today the houses that used to be there are long gone. In their place are a couple apartment buildings (maybe co-ops,) and another row of townhomes next to it. It was a double country lot when I was a child. So it's been developed - but now even those apartments are older looking and somewhat run down IMO. But still in a very pricey neighborhood by SLC stds.

Back then a family of modest means could afford to live there. I know because ours did. I don't know what working class families do today.

My half-nephew, now retired and just moved from Murray back to Idaho told me that only rich investors are buying up SLC properties because the middle class can no longer afford to.

Their son and DIL are living in the home where he and his wife raised their family there in Murray so they have a roof over their heads. They sold them their home for a sweetheart deal. Only if you have family willing and able to do that, it is very hard to get a leg up in that market.

Their other son is a hospital administrator in SLC and able to afford to rent. Or they'd be helping him as well.

I noted that the Holladay exit is also very close to Westminster College exit for SLC. My mother having attended Westminster as a young woman fresh out of high school would have been familiar with that area of the city (Westminster is also near the present area of Sugar House, a trendy area for up and coming younger generation.) I'm guessing it was then too, perhaps, when my mother knew the area from her time there as a young woman.

Which may be a reason why she chose to live there with my dad and our family when we were small children.

Oh, cool. Maybe my grandmother was acquainted with that area then. She was an avid antique collector. She loved to hunt in the Salt Lake markets for antique furniture finds and wherever she was visiting. She hailed from Ogden. Some of her favorite haunts for antiquing were New Orleans and San Francisco. :)

When she passed away in '92, my aunts and uncle took what was left of her spoils after they divided them up among themselves (and my mom,) and sold them off at auction in San Francisco where they probably got more of a markup than had they sold them off closer to where my grandmother lived in Utah.

She had some rare finds. She could have been a museum curator. She knew the history of almost every piece she collected, and loved to educate her grandchildren when we inquired about some of her lovely finds.

She didn't have an education beyond high school, other than she was self-taught. But was a highly cultured and refined person. I miss her so much. She was the matriarchal rock in our family up until she died.

Cu-mm-on now, you're not suppose to criticize these guys - even if its true.

The other reason why the church went to such lengths to buy up the Mark Hofmann forgeries before they knew they were forgeries was so it could bury them inside the Granite Mountain Records Vault.

They did not want any of that information getting out to the general lay members of the church membership. Heaven forbid they find out, they would be mortified!

If it were true.

Probably true.

Anything that does not fit their revisionist history is not helpful. Into the vault it goes.

That's probably why there are now security guards at the entrance of the vault and no one is allowed entrance without express permission from the grand poobahs. It says in the CES Letter that just a few hours after the murders, Hoffman met with Dallin Oaks. Boy, I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall for that!

Two con men meeting eye to eye. Except with Oaks he lacks the poker face that Hofmann eluded his captors with before the murders.

Oaks has a glint in his eyes that gives him away. Like Dunn, he is a deceiver. A wolf among wolves in sheepskin.

> Oaks has a glint in his
> eyes that gives him away.


Obviously not everyone has your training!

I don't trust Oaks at all. Just the looks of him gives me the eeby jeebies. Like Nelson, he has that snakeskin oil salesman look about him.

A salamander look-in-waiting for his prey. They share that in common. The more time they've spent together their persona has become intertwined.