Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders: With a New Afterword [Mass Market Paperback]

Allen Dale Roberts (Author), Linda Sillitoe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1990

Drawing from thousands of pages of police reports, court documents, interviews, letters, and diaries, Sillitoe's and Roberts's narrative cuts through the complexities of this famous crime investigation to deliver a gripping, Capote-esque tale. They embrace the details but lay them out systematically as seen through the eyes of the detectives, victims, and the perpetrator. The darkest secrets unravel gradually allowing the reader fleeting glimpses of the infamous white salamander as it ducks in and out of its fabricator's head. What was the "salamander letter" and why were so many people determined to possess and to conceal it? Why was this one of the most unusual cases in American forensic history? A skilled con artist by anyone's assessment, Mark Hofmann eluded exposure by police and document authenticators the FBI, Library of Congress, the LDS historical department, and polygraph experts until George Throckmorton discovered the telltale microscopic alligatoring that was characteristic of the forgeries. What ensued was a suspense-ridden cat-and-mouse game between seasoned prosecutors and a clever, homicidal criminal. In the end, this story only verifies that some facts are indeed stranger than fiction.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Mark Hofmann, 32, pled guilty to two bombing murders in Salt Lake City in 1985, a case that made national headlines. Apparently a successful rare documents collector and church-going family man, Hofmann was really a skillful forger and con artist. A third bomb accidentally exploded in his car, sending Hofmann to the hospital and his undoing. Many of his forgeries cast doubt on traditional views of early Mormonism and were potentially embarrassing to church leaders who purchased them. The leaders were in contact with Hofmann just prior to the murders, which were an attempt to prevent discovery and financial ruin. Hofmann killed an associate andto divert suspiciona stranger. Both books about this complex and fascinating case are well researched. The Mormon Murders is scathing in its criticism of the Mormon hierarchy for trying to cover up its involvement with Hofmann. The authors, both attorneys, believe that the prosecutor, a Mormon, was pressured to plea bargain in order to avoid a trial. Salamander, published in Salt Lake City by writers familiar with Mormon society, is a more matter-of-fact report, and while it is less dramatic, it is detailed and intelligent. The Mormom Murders may attract more readers, but both books can be recommended. Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The six million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints form a distinct subculture the Mormon historical community. These approximately three thousand people professional historians, trained archivists, and dedicated amateurs devote their lives to uncovering and analyzing the historical documents pertaining to the history of the church. This is no mere academic exercise. Since the Mormons have no "theology," as such, the realm of history has assumed for them a semi-theological role. Indeed, the history of the early church from 1820 to Joseph Smith Jr.'s death in 1844 has become a virtual battleground for those who seek to "prove" or "disprove" Smith's story of visitations from angels, buried in plates of gold, and new revelations from the Lord. Such is the background for Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts' superb narrative of the 1985 Mormon forgery murders. The book focuses on the life of a young man named Mark Hofmann. Reared in a conventional LDS home in the Salt Lake Valley, Hofmann went on a two-year mission to England at age nineteen, where he apparently lost his faith. Upon return, he attended Utah State University with medical school in mind but he was sidetracked by the study of history. Instead of pursuing a Masters or Ph.D., Hofmann became a dealer in historical documents. Soon however, he began forging many of these documents, and he was so skillful that he fooled the top national experts. Hofmann gained his chief fame from his "discovery" of numerous documents pertaining to the early history of Mormonism. The most famous of these was an 1830 letter that spoke of a "white salamander" that guarded the golden plates and forbade Smith from taking them. This letter firmly linked Smith with the world of New England/upstate New York folk magic and directly contravened the established church position on the finding of the golden plates. Professional church historians, such as the respected Leonard J. Arrington, were not especially dismayed by such discoveries, for they had a framework of analysis to place them into. But the non-historically trained high church officials (most of them former businessmen) were petrified. When Hofmann claimed to have unearthed a yet more damaging "McLellin collection," church leader Hugh Pinnock arranged an unsecured $185,000 loan so he could purchase it and keep it from "enemy" hands. Ironically, the pressure to repay this loan pushed the insolvent Hofmann into two murders as a means of diversion; a third bomb (most likely intended for another victim) destroyed his own car and left him severely wounded. After a plea bargain, Hofmann confessed his guilt, and he is currently serving a life sentence in a Utah prison. Sillitoe and Roberts have written a gripping account of the most complex and tawdry event in modern Mormon history. Their analysis is evenhanded and exceptionally well written. In fact, Salamander reads like a murder mystery. Fortunately, it is one. --Ferenc M. Szasz, New Mexico Historical Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 570 pages
• Publisher: Signature Books; 2 edition (January 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941214877
• ISBN-13: 978-0941214872
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #644,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating and compelling book, November 23, 1999

By 

John Seidel (Colorado Springs, Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders: With a New Afterword (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the story of the greatest document forger in history. The LDS Church is only one of many victims of Mark Hoffman. While it primarily involved Mormon historical documents, it also involved the poetry of Emily Dickenson and other historical American documents, especially the Oath of a Freeman.

The book is well written and the story captivating. While some have described Salamander as "Mormon friendly" I would not call it "faith promoting". It provides some insights into Utah culture, politics and religion which in fact overlap quite a bit. What is most extraordinary is that, despite two cold blooded murders, no one, except the police, seemed to want this case to go to trial!

I also read The Mormon Murders : A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death by Gregory W. Smith, Steven W. Naifeh after Salamander. A shame that it is out of print. It takes you deeper into the story and fills in many things missing from Salamander. I would recommend reading Salamander first and then The Mormon Murders.

55 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Inside Story, August 10, 2000

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders: With a New Afterword (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the most reliable book about Mark Hoffman, his forgeries and his murders. It was written by two veteran Utah journalists with intimate knowledge of the Mormon church and Utah culture. They bend over backwards to be fair and objective (two words which have fallen into disuse in the media) but are not afraid to draw the appropriate conclusions. This is one of the most amazing crime stories in American history, and yet it remains little understood and only haphazardly known. Hoffman's forgeries still turn up at auctions of rare documents (most recently, some supposedly lost writings of Emily Dickinson.) Sillitoe and Roberts lucidly lead you through the maze of Hoffman's deception and establish the truth as it is currently understood (although who knows what mind-boggling facts will come to light in the future--Hoffman is on ice in Utah State Prison, still refusing to give up the last details of his crimes.) Not anti-Mormon like "The Mormon Murders" nor a mere parroting of the official church version of events, this is an invaluable work about how Utah and the LDS church really works.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Account of one of the Most Bizarre Crimes in Utah History, August 26, 2005

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders: With a New Afterword (Mass Market Paperback)

"Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders" is a very fine analysis of one of the most bizarre stories in Mormon history. It tells the story of the Salt Lake City bombings on 15 and 16 October 1985 that killed Steven F. Christensen and Kathleen B. Sheets and seriously injured Mark W. Hofmann.

One of the scenarios developed during the period immediately following the deaths of Christensen and Sheets on 15 October, associated the bombings with high finance and the crumbling business empire of J. Gary Sheets, husband of Kathleen and former associate of Christensen. Sheets' business, CFS Financial Corporation, was in a well-publicized nose-dive. His investors and creditors were clamoring for repayment and Sheets was considering bankruptcy. Christensen had left CFS a few months earlier unhappy with the direction Sheets had charted for the company. Could Sheets have planted the bombs to collect insurance money on the victims or to keep them from talking about illicit business dealings? Could disgruntled investors have placed the bombs? No one knew.

If this were true, it bore no relationship to the Mormon church. The monkey-wrench in this scenario was what appeared to be the attempted murder of Hofmann on the morning of 16 October. He was not associated with CFS in any way, but he had a business relationship with Christensen revolving around the discovery and sale of Mormon historical documents. Christensen had purchased from Hofmann the so-called "Salamander Letter" of Martin Harris to W.W. Phelps, which had been unveiled in a circus-like meeting of the Mormon History Association in May 1985. After Hofmann's bombing most of the speculation suggested that the murders were linked to that document and the study of Mormon origins.

Dated 23 October 1830, this letter narrated a strikingly different story of Book of Mormon origins than most were familiar with from the standard faith story. It suggested that Joseph Smith was intimately involved in folk magic (one aspect of which involved a white salamander who guarded the gold plates) and money-digging, and that the Book of Mormon was simply one more instance of these practices. Moreover, the messenger who delivered the plates to Joseph bore little resemblance to the benevolent being traditionally associated with the story. Instead, he was a crusty and malicious spirit who jealously guarded the treasure. The document seemed to hold the potential to destroy the underpinnings of faith for many naive believers.

The "Salamander Letter" appeared to be a connecting link between the victims in this scenario for the bombings. Christensen had acquired this document from Hofmann; Kathleen Sheets' husband, who seemed to have been the real target of the bomb in this scenario, had been a business associate of Christensen.

Most Mormon historians dismissed as absurd charges made by police investigators within a few days after the bombings that Hofmann was the primary suspect in the murders and that he had cold-bloodedly murdered Christensen to cover up illegal business dealings and Sheets to make it look like the killings were CFS-related. His own injuries, they thought, coming a day after the first murders were the result of the accidental detonation of a third bomb intended for yet another victim. Mark Hofmann was the closest thing the Mormon historical community had to a genuine celebrity. As the discoverer of several overwhelmingly important Mormon documents, he was both nationally known and invariably well-liked. It seemed impossible that Hofmann was a forger and con-man par excellence who committed two grisly murders to stave off financial ruin and a public unmasking of his illegal business dealings.

As it turned out, the police were right. Authors Sillitoe and Roberts describe how Hofmann had brutally murdered Christensen and Sheets and had injured himself while handling a third bomb in his car. He had committed murder to mask a complex array of white-collar crimes that extended back to his student days in the late 1970s at Utah State University. These crimes demonstrated a pattern of deceit and manipulation that was impressive in its size, scope, and length of time.

The immediate causes of the murders, according to the authors, revolved around a complicated collection of documents worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the McLellin Collection. William McLellin had been one of the original Twelve Apostles of 1835 but had left the church in 1838. Evidence suggests that he collected considerable material on the development of Mormonism. The McLellin Collection was fabled as a treasure trove of important historical materials, many of them damaging to the church's traditional view of history.

In 1985 Hofmann claimed to have found the collection and borrowed huge sums--a $185,000 signature loan that Hugh Pinnock, a high-Mormon leader, had arranged in one instance--from several different people, each unknown to the other, for the purpose of acquiring it. In effect he sold the same collection to several different people. Hofmann did not produce the collection for any of his investors and during the fall of 1985 increasing pressure was bore on him to repay his creditors or to produce the collection. He staved them off for a time with some very slick tap-dancing and even secured backing for his bank loan by having Pinnock arrange for a wealthy Mormon to buy the collection from Hofmann and donate it to the church. The money obtained from this sale would not only pay back the $185,000 bank note but also provide Hofmann with a tidy profit.

Christensen, who had dealt with Hofmann before, volunteered to serve as a middle man for the movement of the collection from Hofmann to the church. As such he became a key player when Hofmann defaulted on the $185,000 loan and Pinnock asked him to press Hofmann for settlement. Christiansen was persistent and Hofmann was increasingly unable to avoid his probes. The bombing of Christensen would buy him time since his main protagonist would be out the way, Hofmann thought; maybe the church would drop the matter entirely. The bombing of Sheets was a diversion that would make Christensen's murder appear CFS-related.

The authors suggest that the 15 October murders did not dissuade the church from completing the transaction for the McLellin collection. In one of the most satisfying sections in the entire book they describe how Hofmann was informed after the Christensen and Sheets murders, which most people at first thought were CFS-related, that the deal was still on track and Christensen would be replaced by Donald Schmidt, the retired LDS Church Archivist. Desperate action was required, so Hofmann built a third bomb. The victim would be another decoy, this time one associated with Mormon document dealings.

Brent Ashworth, a successful lawyer and businessman who also bought collectible documents, was the ideal target. He and Hofmann had been meeting most Wednesdays in Salt Lake City for years, 16 October was a Wednesday, and he could easily get him to accept a bomb wrapped in a package similar to the first two. Afterward, Hofmann believed, there would be no pressure to proceed with the McLellin deal. This time, theoretically, all of Hofmann's objectives would have been achieved. But Ashworth did not meet him in Salt Lake City on 16 October and the bomb accidentally detonated. Hofmann was seriously injured and the police investigators at the scene quickly found tell-tale clues implicating him in the bombings.

The police pursued the leads discovered at the site of the third bomb to a logical conclusion and built a tremendously convincing circumstantial case against Hofmann. Although it took months, Hofmann was finally charged with the murders and several lesser crimes in February 1986. The evidence presented in the preliminary hearings thoroughly convinced Judge Paul Grant. According to the authors, "At the beginning of the preliminary hearing, Grant had thought perhaps Hofmann was innocent. But by the end, he thought him clearly guilty, a pathological liar with no conscience and no remorse" (p. 454). A plea bargain resulted, with Hofmann pleading guilty to certain of the charges and promising to answer questions about his operations in return for a commitment not to seek the death penalty.

The authors of "Salamander" perform an admirable service by sketching in most of the details of the bombings, the document dealings, and the character of Mark Hofmann. They describe a man who was outwardedly a believing Latter-day Saint but who was motivated in his crimes by a lust for money and an opportunity to embarrass his church. Always gracefully and with a touch of pathos, the authors narrate the complex events leading up to the murders, the peculiar circumstances of the murder investigations, the discovery of the evidence incriminating Hofmann, and the legal fireworks surrounding the case.

A forensic analysis by George J. Throckmorton, the technician who discovered the secret of the Hofmann forgeries, rounds out the volume and conclusively proves the illegitimate origins of 106 documents coming from the dealer, including all of his major finds.