The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death

[ConcernedCanuk]

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The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death By Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith





Book overview
Examines a series of 1985 car-bomb murders that set off an investigation that uncovered a movement to sell documents purported to discredit the Mormon Church's founding revelations

http://books.google.ca/books?id=9XhS1tnYM2AC&q=the+mormon+murders&dq=the+mormon+murders&cd=1

Interesting, and captivating book, well written.

For more on Mark Hofmann, the forger involved,

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann

[aquart]

1. Loved this book.

True crime and twisted. The details are amazing.

[grantcart]

2. This is a very important case

When Hofmann sold his forgeries the Church aranged to buy them - without any question of authentication.

Is is obvious that they did so because they felt that they were the actual documents that have been long rumored in the Mormon Church to have existed. This is especially true of the "Salamander Letter" that is purported to show Smith using black magic before he 'discovered the tablets'.

If you were to take any similar document to a real Church - something on Luther, Calvin or Peter, to the Lutherans, Presbyterians or Catholics for example, they would say go ahead and publish it.

What finally brought Hofmann down was the volume of material that they were willing to buy was so great that he couldn't keep up with producing them with old paper and inks, he simply couldn't match production with demand.

His solution was to throw some bombs at the patsies that the President's office had put him in touch with to handle the financing of purchsing, get this, a multi volume diary that would expose all of the lies of the Mormon Church. The Churh was willing to pay, sight unseen.

(for the record I am a descendent of the second longest serving President of the Mormon Church, the first Mayor of SLC and a distant cousin of Senator Bennett. No one in our extended family has maintained any ties with the LDS based in part of the same kind of cynicism that many who, like Hofmann, descend from Mormon roots with family stories of Mormon deception being handed down by family elders.