Customer Reviews

Victims: THE LDS CHURCH AND THE MARK HOFMANN CASE

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This is one of several books written in the wake of the murders and forgeries committed by Mark Hofmann in the early 1980s. Hofmann forged hundreds of documents, but it his forgeries affecting Mormon history is the focus of this work. Several of these forgeries went to the heart of Mormon origins, and were done in an apparent effort to embarrass The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In financial trouble, Hofmann murdered Steven Christensen and Kathleen Sheets to delay discovery of his duplicity.

Turley begins his account by reviewing the canonical account of the Church's origins and a history of other prominent forgeries intended to discredit the Church. Turley then goes over the history of the Hofmann case. An appendix lists all known documents acquired by the Church from Hofmann. Unlike other writers, he had access to a wealth of Church documents. The result is a well-documented account presenting the Church's side of the story. Though he is hardly objective in his account, he avoids the sensationalism characteristic of the so-called true crime novel. His tone is mainly that of a scholarly historian.

The Hofmann case is extremely complicated, involving Church officials, Mormon historians, document dealers, journalists, law enforcement officers, attorneys, and others. Turley attempted to keep the major characters in focus, but the reader is still liable to get lost. I found myself going back over previous material several times to keep everything straight. Fortunately, this book contains an index.

Complicating things further, Turley often digresses from the narrative. Sometimes, the digressions are faith-promoting stories more suited to Church magazines. In others, they seem like personal attacks against real or perceived enemies of the Church. Turley also occasionally pauses to score an apologetic point. Turley should have omitted these things entirely or relegated all of this to the notes. This material is not very appropriate to what is supposed to be a scholarly history.

Hofmann said he was not afraid of being caught by divine inspiration (316). Some people have raised the question of why the Church's "prophets, seers, and revelators" did not detect Hofmann's forgeries. To his credit, Turley does not attempt to answer this question. While this is perhaps an interesting theological question, it would be out of place to try to answer it in a historical work.

This book exists in relationship to other books on the Hofmann case. Turley has relegated most of the direct interaction to the notes. Discerning Turley's intent concerning these books is not easy without reading them. It seems clear he wants to refute the work of Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith (The Mormon Murders [New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988]). Other sources tell me this work is most distorted account of the Hofmann case. Richard Lindsey's A Gathering of Saints (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) is not mentioned as often. Turley may be correcting misconceptions, but does not accuse Lindsey of willful distortion.

Though Turley perhaps comments on Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts' Salamander (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988) the most, the relationship is harder to discern. Some Latter- day Saints portray Signature Books as an anti-Mormon press, but Turley is rarely dismissive of the book. At times, he may be trying to refute it. Sometimes he treats it as though its perceived misconceptions were due to lack of information available to him. At other times, he accepts its information at face value. It will be interesting to see if and how the second edition of Salamander deals with Victims.

The weaknesses aside, Turley has given us a well-balanced account of the Hofmann case. What it loses in complexity is more than made up for by its thoroughness. It is remarkably free from speculation, and highly recommended for those looking for a book placing the focus of the Hofmann case there it belongs: on Hofmann's victims.

Richard Turley, managing director of the LDS Church Historical Department has pieced together as no one else has (or possibly could) events leading up to the senseless Salt Lake City bombing deaths of Steven Christensen and Kathleen Sheets in 1985. Mark Hofmann, master forger, document dealer (and document thief) was behind the murders and was apprehended only after he accidentally set off a third bomb intended for someone else, nearly killing himself in the process.

Besides providing full documentation of the involvement of LDS church authorities in document deals with Mark Hofmann, Turley renders an invaluable service to historians, document dealers and genealogy buffs by listing (pp. 346-394) all materials--from a bogus 1844 Presidential Campaign token for Joseph Smith, to affidavits, letters, journals, legal documents, and printed banknotes--known to have been handled by Hofmann during his short-lived career. Some of the legal documents have been returned to their original repositories (such as the Hancock County courthouse in Carthage, IL) from which they were stolen by Hofmann and his associates during the 1970s. Even a cursory reading of the entries will send chills down the spine of any student of early Mormonism. And now it appears that Hofmann's forgeries are becoming collectibles...

Turley's book should be read only after you have enjoyed the more accessible (and slightly less scholarly) Salamander by Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts, first published in 1988.

I thought Turley did a great job of researching and reporting this story. The footnotes often compare what has been previously published about the Mark Hofmann case with the facts Turley has laid out. His view comes from the inside of the LDS church history department where he has access to the documents in question and the people involved.

This was the only book on this subject I could find after viewing an A&E documentary on the subject. I was intrigued by the Grisham-like plot which was actually real-life! Mr Turley presents a useful history of the Church, followed by a fairly dry, detailed history of the events leading up to the bombings and the subsequent trial. Since Turley is an LDS member, I imagine his presentation of the facts is deliberately Church-neutral. Certainly he carefully avoids some of the sensational possibilties, but on balance I feel that even recognizing the above comments, this is a useful view of the events. Any perceptive reader will actually spot some minor inconsistencies and also some not so insignificant unanswered questions. In many ways this makes the book all the more interesting. Now if I could just find a copy of 'Salamander' by Sillitoe et al that doesn't have cracked ink and a missing last page .......

Unless you know a lot about Mormon history, and about the Hoffman bombings, this book can only confuse. It's poorly written, a long recitation of facts and supposed facts. It reads like an attempt to defend the Mormon church, rather than provide any history or narrative. It's unfortunate, because it's certainly a fascinating subject.

After reading this, the only thing I wanted to do was re-read A Gathering of Saints, Robert Lindsey's book about the same period.

turley discredits himself and the church by dancing around the main question. I think that question is/should be " how could this happen in an organization supposedly headed by people who are inspired? How could they use money people sacrifice to donate for their God, (which I always was told was a sacred trust), and spend it for false documents? Why does the church refuse to allow access to the (other) documents it does possess (Taylor revelation, others)? WHY?

This is a fine and careful account of a very difficult and complex subject. Much better than the several more lurid books out there on the market. Incidentally, if the reviewer below thinks that inspired people cannot be deceived and believes that the biblical Joshua was an inspired man, he should have a look at Exodus 9.

Turley's book is the official public Mormon version of the sordid story of Mark Hofmann's brilliant double cross forgeries. To read balanced accounts, check out Salamander and, more recently, The Poet and the Murderer.

When reading an LDS version of this story, you must remember that Gordon Hinckley, eventually elevated to Prophet, earned his chops as Hofmann's bag man. That is to say, he spearheaded the Church's effort to purchase forgeries they thought were authentic, because if they were it would discredit the Church. Let me try that again: Hofmann was not selling believable forgeries that strengthened the Church, he was selling documents they thought were real, documents that revealed the sordid origins of their organization.

What Hofmann did was horrible, characteristic, and even predictable. He chose his target brilliantly. And Turley's other moment of fame is his denunciation of Jon Kracauer's "anti-Mormon" Under the Banner of Heaven, the "anti-Mormonism" of which consists in telling "faith-damaging truths." It's hard to feel sympathy for an organization so transparently built on lies that it will pay millions to suppress forged "truth."

The first reviewer to this book is probably robert lindsey himself, or at least some one who's trying to slyly sway the opinion of some unsuspecting shopper toward the 'anti' end of the spectrum.