Mark Hofmann Case Analysis | Murder Among the Mormons

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the case of mark hoffman he was featured in the netflix docu-series murder among the mormons just a reminder of not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so first a look at the background of mark hoffman i'll move to the timeline of the crimes then offer my analysis mark hoffman was born in salt lake city utah on december 7 1954 his parents were devout followers of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints which i will refer to as lds even though he appeared to be exceptionally intelligent he did not do very well in high school hoffman had many hobbies he was interested in coin collecting stamp collecting chemistry magic and electronics he constructed bombs with his friends which seems pretty unusual by today's standards but it was not completely unheard of during the 60s at one point he was able to modify a dime and give it a rare mint mark a coin collecting organization determined the dime was genuine he had successfully tricked them hoffman would lose faith in lds sometime around the age of 14 due to a discovery he had made he found out that his maternal grandparents had secretly practiced polygamy even after lds officially ended the practice even still at around age 19 he went to serve as a missionary for lds consistent with the church's tradition hoffman performed his missionary work in england it was during this trip that hoffman started taking an interest in the history of lds he went into several bookstores in england and purchased books and documents related to the church he also found material that was critical of lds hoffman returned to the united states and enrolled in college he would marry in 1979 and eventually have four children he started to develop a more serious interest in forgery in 1980 he pretended to find a folded piece of paper in an old king james bible the forgery was supposed to be a transcript of a scribe named martin harris who worked for joseph smith the founder of lds a very important figure in the church often was able to learn martin harris's handwriting from other documents harris had written the forgery was of a document that martin harris had presented to a professor named charles anthon it would become known as the anthon transcript the lds church purchased the document from hoffman for more than twenty thousand dollars lds church leaders felt as though the document supported the legitimacy of their religion hoffman became a dealer of rare books and documents he left college he started forging other documents which were of particular interest to lds he had an amazing ability from the perspective of others at finding these documents that no one else could locate yet many people including document experts kept verifying his forgeries as real this enabled hoffman to continue selling more documents in 1981 often forged a letter which supported the idea that joseph smith selected joseph smith iii rather than brigham young as his successor this was a revelation that would be antagonizing as well as embarrassing to lds information about the document eventually became public and lds and another similar church competed for the document in 1984 hoffman would create his most famous forgery the so-called salamander letter this letter was supposedly written by martin harris and altered a key story in lds history the recovery of gold plates by joseph smith in the lds version of the story joseph smith encounters an angel named moroni in the forgery a white salamander directs smith to the golden plates this caused a lot of consternation in lds it was rewriting their history interestingly critics of lds were the first to declare the white salamander letter a forgery but they were not believed hoffman made his real money from selling forgeries but he also bought and sold authentic documents the real documents bolstered his credibility substantially it only took a few real documents against many forgeries for people to believe his work was legitimate to explain his incredible ability to locate documents no one else could find he pretended to use a variety of techniques he tracked down collectors who were interested in postmarks rather than the contents of letters so the idea is they didn't know what they had they didn't realize it had some value to lds he said he had a network of spies that would point out these rare documents and he had tracked down descendants of early mormons and simply asked them if they had any letters or other documents as hoffman was forging lds documents he also forged many other types arguably the most famous one not related to lds was a one-page printed document from american colonial times it was titled the oath of the freeman this was the first printed document in the colonies none are thought to be in existence as he was negotiating the sale of this document he was also working on another idea something called the mcclellan collection this was going to be the forgery of a large number of documents and it was not going to be something lds would be too happy about so he was going to throw in a few more surprises it has been theorized that this forgery was a prelude to his big move forging the lost 116 pages of the book of mormon this was a document supposedly written by john smith that martin harris lost if hoffman could have produced a convincing forgery of the lost 116 pages it would have been worth millions of dollars successfully forging the mclellan collection would help him to set up the forgery of the lost 116 pages at this point the timeline hoffman is trying to negotiate the sale of the oath of the freeman and the mclelland collection the verification process for the oath of the freeman was taking a long time there were serious doubts about its authenticity the deal was falling through as far as the mclellan collection the problem here was that it did not exist hoffman did not have time to forge that many documents so he couldn't find a real version and he could not forge it in the time frame he had available he was trying to sell something he didn't have access to it was almost like he was trying to streamline how to make money with forgery instead of forging a document and selling it why not just cut out the forgery and go right to the sale it was like forgery free forgery hoffman was having serious financial problems because of his lifestyle and the fact they kept buying expensive first edition books he owed money to a number of people and they were becoming increasingly impatient at one point he was over a million dollars in debt to address his problems often began building bombs a tactic with a fairly low success rate for solving financial problems it mostly solves blowing things up problems which are remarkably uncommon i guess he was going for something like explosive assisted financial remediation the first bomb which detonated on october 15 1985 killed another document collector named stephen christensen and injured a secretary the second one which detonated later on that same day killed a woman named kathy sheets she was the wife of the first victim's former employer on october 16 hoffman detonated a third bomb this time in his car as he was sitting in it however hoffman would survive the investigation revealed a good deal of evidence about his forgery operation just to name a few of their discoveries they found the engraving plant who sold hoffman the forged plate for the oath of the freeman document experts were able to determine many of the documents that hoffman sold were in fact forgeries they found a green jacket which matched one a witness described the witness had seen a man wearing a similar jacket deliver a package to the first bombing victim although he initially maintained his innocence hoffman would eventually admit his guilt hoffman could have received the death penalty if convicted but the prosecutor surprised just about everybody when they offered him a deal five years to life in prison in exchange for a guilty plea and answering all their questions about his crimes technically there was a chance he could be released but that would be up to the parole board they eventually decided he would spend the rest of his life in prison hoffman's wife divorced him in 1987. now moving to my analysis i'm not aware of any mental health information available about hoffman there isn't a lot of information about his potential personality profile either he appeared to have high openness to experience he was creative and intellectually curious his conscientiousness is a bit tricky here he had a good work ethic at the same time he committed crimes and spent too much money there might be both high and low facets on extraversion he was sensation seeking but also worked alone in analytical situations his agreeableness appeared to be low he was not modest he clearly liked causing strife he would say that fooling people gave him a sense of power and superiority he also mentioned how he liked to impress people as far as neuroticism he didn't seem particularly fearful or anxious but he did seem to have difficulty resisting temptation so perhaps he was somewhere around mid-range during the extended interviews that were part of his plea deal and other statements he made to investigators hoffman revealed a number of interesting thoughts i'll go through a few of them here he talked about how planting the bomb that killed kathy sheets was almost a game he didn't care who that bomb killed it simply had to be there to fulfill its purpose not detonate so if no one had died if the bomb had not exploded he would have been fine with that too he seemed confused by all the attention that was paid to the people he had murdered he would say my philosophy is that they're dead they're not suffering i think life is basically worthless they could have died just as easily in a car accident i don't believe in god i don't believe in an afterlife they don't know their debt he discussed how he was proud about some of the forgery techniques he had developed he talked about that coin he modified when he was young saying if people believed it was genuine then it was genuine he wasn't cheating anybody by selling it his attitude reminds me of a well-known narcissistic statement the truth is what you make it i mentioned before that the parole board determined he would spend the rest of his life in prison this was due to his answers to questions during the interviews a four-page letter that he wrote and other statements he made they found he had a callous disregard for human life later hoffman was suspected of trying to arrange to have members of the parole board killed i imagine that didn't weigh in his favor either in prison hoffman attempted to bring an end to his own life he overdosed on a number of antidepressants he collected from other prisoners even though he survived he spent 12 hours on top of his right arm this led to severe muscle atrophy his arm was withered almost to the bone i'm not sure there are many opportunities in prison to create a forgery but many people find that particular injury ironic because he can't use his arm and therefore he can no longer engage in forgery it makes me wonder though did he ever try to forge anything in prison like a get out of jail free card perhaps passing notes is actually quite common in prison he could have caused chaos by forging different notes i imagine the prison guards were more afraid of him getting a hold of a pen and paper than something like a knife hoffman stood out as a criminal for a number of reasons he had a nihilistic worldview which he thought everybody should automatically share like when it didn't make sense to him that anybody would feel sorry for the people he murdered it's amazing to me that he could be confused by that and still have had the ability to fool so many people he was that callous and cold but yet he deceived people for years many people liked him they may have found him a bit peculiar but they certainly never would have thought he was a killer hoffman's forgery abilities were incredible arguably he was one of the best who ever lived but his ability to win people's confidence was phenomenal as well it wasn't just the quality of the forgery it was the way he formed relationships his mannerisms he completely tricked people another aspect of the crime softman committed would be how he used controversy to drive up the prices of his work the white salamander letter being a good example he knew that would aggravate a lot of people he appeared to enjoy making fun of the faith of the lds leadership he wanted their money and he wanted them to be embarrassed it would seem that when he became an atheist at 14 he was not really done with religion maybe he wanted revenge because people tried to teach him a value system which he would later reject huffman would say at one point after he was caught that he wanted to change mormon history hoffman revealed to his wife one time that he had forged a document only to change his story when she reacted negatively it makes me wonder if he was feeling lonely about his crime he couldn't tell anybody about all these amazing forgeries he couldn't share his abilities with other people there was no audience no one to admire him no one to impress among the many items that don't make sense in this case would be hoffman's escalation to murder in order to solve financial problems his forgery crimes were serious but they would not have involved a life sentence he may have been able to admit his fraud and find some degree of compassion from his victims instead he murdered two people one of whom he said he didn't even need to murder in order to fulfill his plan in reality he didn't need to kill either one of them in order to get the effect that he was looking for the first bomb was simply to focus attention on the dealings of that victim the second bomb was a diversion he claimed his motive was a fear of being exposed in that four-page letter i mentioned he wrote that before the bombings he chickened out of an attempt to take his own life i think the lesson learned in this case is about how people come to believe and disbelief many people trusted hoffman even though they knew the math wasn't adding up people noticed that he was having once in a lifetime discoveries every month or even every week how was that possible i think the bottom line is that some people hoffman deceived simply wanted to believe they were excited about his so-called discoveries he was all too eager to play on their unbridled enthusiasm and their disregard for logic those are my thoughts on the mark hoffman case please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

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Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021