Murder Among the Mormons (2021) s01e01 Episode Script

1
Can I ask a favor?
Don't make me answer that.
Don't make me answer that.
Let somebody else do it.
I don't wanna make a hero out of him.
Because he was fantastic.
No one has come close to doing
what he has done.
Officer?
-One male fatality.
The calm of Salt Lake City, Utah,
was rocked today by two booby-trap bombs
that left two people dead.
a morning of fear and death.
The first explosion ripped through
a downtown office building, killing a man.
The second explosion outside
a Holladay home claimed another life.
There was dark talk involving religious
documents, hired professional killers.
A Watergate-style cover-up,
and one of the wealthiest,
if not most wealthy,
church in America involved,
the Mormon Church.
There is a common thread
that seems to connect all the victims.
A mysterious Salamander letter.
The Salamander letter challenges
the Mormon Church's account
of its own origin.
The bombing's impact has drawn the Church
Murder among the Mormons.
What I love the most
about treasure stories,
they're always about lost treasures,
you know?
Whether we're looking for Atlantis
or the Titanic or whatever,
there's a lot of treasure out there.
But the thing is, treasure stories
always have the same ending.
The treasure is temporarily found.
But then some calamity happens,
and the treasure's lost again.
You know,
the old airplane pilot joke about,
"Ladies and gentlemen,
we're landing in Salt Lake City.
Set your watch back ten years."
It's an old chestnut.
-It's a very conservative community.
The state of Utah has long been
the home of the Mormons.
Mormons are members
of a worldwide church,
headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
We'd like you to meet the Mormons.
Mormonism is relatively young.
It was founded only 150 years ago
by Joseph Smith.
In 1829, a young man named Joseph Smith
translated a set of gold plates
to which he was directed by an angel,
into a volume called "The Book of Mormon."
This is the true story
of Joseph Smith's valiant mission
in bringing forth "The Book of Mormon."
I am a messenger
sent from the presence of God.
My name is Moroni.
There is a book deposited,
written upon gold plates.
Joseph Smith formed a church
called The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints,
abbreviated to "LDS."
Translate these ancient writings
and bring them forth to the world.
The real treasure
is not the gold in those plates,
but what's written on them.
The LDS Church believes it has
a divine mandate to preserve its history.
For Latter-Day Saints, the history
is integral with the faith itself.
Joseph? Is this where you saw
Heavenly Father and Jesus?
Yes, Lucy.
This is the very place.
Early Mormonism is full of treasure tales,
and it really carried over
into the '70s and '80s.
You've got a growing LDS religion
and a growing market for Mormon artifacts.
So the Mormon people have always
had a propensity
to seek those kind of treasures out.
It's a thinking man's game,
dealers who know history well enough
to purchase old books and pieces of paper
and sell them for a profit.
There are only a handful of men
who've acted as dealers
for these pieces of high-prized history.
Shannon Flynn's one of them.
There's a certain amount
of detective work.
There's a certain amount of excitement,
high stakes, valuable pieces.
I had taken an interest
in LDS Church doctrine,
probably since those late teenage years.
I remember clearly
the first collectible item I bought.
It was a third edition of a pamphlet
by B.H. Roberts.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I paid $10 for it.
But I was interested in the history,
and in the Salt Lake area,
it was centered mainly on bookstores.
And that kind of became
the Mormon history coffeehouse,
if you want to think of it in those terms.
You would go, meet people.
"Hey, come over here.
Let me show you this.
Let's see that book."
And it was at that time
that I was introduced to Mark Hofmann.
And I was very excited to meet Mark.
He was
In the Mormon document world,
he was a rock star.
Mark Hofmann,
a student at Utah State University,
found the document.
It appears to be
the earliest Mormon document
and the earliest Joseph Smith holograph.
Also, I think it's exciting
just to think that
apparently, this piece of paper was copied
by Joseph Smith's own hand,
the characters were, right from
the gold plates that were right there.
It's covered
with carefully drawn symbols.
On the back,
a statement signed by Joseph Smith.
"These characters were diligently copied
by my own hand from the plates of gold."
Well, I feel pretty lucky.
Mark bought an old Bible
from a man in Salt Lake.
The man said he'd purchased the Bible
from the granddaughter
of Joseph Smith's sister.
Uh, Dorie walked in.
She just got home from work.
He had this Bible,
and I started flipping through the pages.
And there was this part
that was folded up and had
this sticky gum on the end of it.
I think it was black,
and I called to him, saying,
"There's something in here."
She was there when I finally
succeeded in prying off the top page
that revealed a folded piece of paper.
Well, the Anthon Transcript.
Things in that document
validated The Book of Mormon
and Joseph Smith
And it was thrilling.
That's when he said
he wanted to do this as his job.
He said, "I'm gonna be going
into the document business.
Is that okay with you?"
The LDS Church and its members
are world-renowned
for their zeal in collecting
historical documents.
Dozens of researchers and collectors
are committed to finding
tidbits from the past.
That Joseph Smith's first encounter
with the Divine
was his experience with the coming forth
of the Book of Mormon.
At the time, my particular interest
was the origins of Mormonism.
And the first time
I heard about Mark Hofmann
would have been seeing the picture of Mark
surrounded by major figures
of the Mormon hierarchy.
Here they are, gathered to see
what this young man has found.
The Anthon Transcript discovery
was widely publicized
and brought Mark Hofmann into contact
with top leaders in the Mormon Church.
Mark wanted to be
the ultimate document dealer,
and so, Mark would ask me
to do the genealogical research,
where we would research the descendants
of certain mission presidents
and see if they had any of these
family documents or books on hand.
I was so enthusiastic,
and it just started
snowballing at that point.
A 137-year-old letter
was found and proved authentic
by a Mormon Church historian.
The document was found by Mark Hofmann.
I'd never seen anybody come up with
the material that Mark was coming up with.
The first time I actually read the letter,
I think I about fell off the chair
I was sitting in.
The letter is from Lucy Mack Smith,
mother of the Church's first prophet
and president, Joseph Smith.
He'd track
old letters down by postage stamps,
wax seals, and all that.
He always had some inside track
on how he was getting things.
Part of the collection
I bought
a lot of them over the years.
There haven't been a lot
of dealers in this kind of thing before.
It was almost like a new era
for Mormon collectibles.
The buying and selling of Mormon documents
has attracted so much attention lately,
they're commanding top dollar.
It's become a lucrative business
because many new items
come from a period of Mormon history
for which very little is known.
Mark would travel to different places,
including New York City,
and discovered a number of things.
Hofmann's dealings soon branched out
from selling only Mormon-related documents
to letters and signatures
by some of the most prominent names
in American history.
It certainly smacks of Indiana Jones.
He didn't look the part.
He looked like a nerd, and he was a nerd.
He was able to remember minute,
who-could-give-a-care details
that somewhere along the line
would make a lot of difference.
We had a friendship
that extended to his wife
and our families.
One of the times I was there,
we played Celestial Pursuit,
Trivial Pursuit for Mormons.
One by one, Mark sat there
with the cards, every one right.
Never missed one.
And so, I started working
on document deals for him.
It was like I was given the opportunity
to play along Michael Jordan,
or, um, Brett Favre or Ryne Sandberg.
I worked in the genealogical archive
doing research
on the beginnings of Mormonism
and contemporaries of Joseph Smith,
people like Martin Harris,
David Whitmer
Back then, I spent a lot of my time
in the historical archives,
uh, researching documents and working
for the LDS Church security department.
I'd come across a book.
Um, how can I put it?
It became a lightning rod
for a number of general authorities
because they felt that
that material was damaging to the Church,
and they were concerned
that I would publish it.
I was called in by my supervisors,
and was terminated.
And so the Church is
in kind of an ironic situation.
On the one hand,
they are driven by history,
and they want to preserve documents.
Their appreciation for the builders
of the past will be enhanced.
But on the other hand,
what do you do with documents
that have the potential
of destroying someone's faith?
I remember it specifically
because it was my birthday,
December 27th, 1983.
Mark said, "Come here.
I'm gonna show you something
that no one has seen."
He takes out of his briefcase
the Salamander letter.
"That was in the box
where the gold plates were."
What?
What?
Wow.
And he says,
"We don't have any photographs of this.
Can you photograph it?"
And so I was the first person
to take those photographs,
and he was keeping it
under tremendous secrecy.
I was one of a select group, this big
that was privy to the bombshells.
But that was his world,
and there was a reason for it,
because everybody did that
to a certain extent.
They would never reveal
where they were getting
their best materials.
So that world,
it was not that odd to keep secrets.
Throned on the mountain's crest
In robes of statehood dressed ♪
Utah, we love thee! ♪
-Rod Decker, KUTV News.
Thank you, Rod.
That's a nice way to end the news, right?
I've been a journalist
in Utah for 45 years.
Among the people who are interested
in Mormon documents and Mormon history
If you look at the '80s,
Mark Hofmann
found document after document,
and he made a huge reputation for himself.
Then one of the documents he had found
was called the White Salamander letter.
It was a letter from Martin Harris,
an important man in early Mormonism,
and the letter said
that Joseph Smith had told him
that Joseph Smith
was led to the Golden Plates
by a white salamander.
This contradicted the Church version
of what had happened
and struck deeply at Mormon belief.
This new Salamander letter
gave a far different story
of the Church's earliest roots
and took that context
of Christian familiar terms, like angels
My name is Moroni.
and twisted them towards
a kind of folk magic context.
And the contents of the Salamander letter
got a lot of attention from scholars,
who argued about it and began to say,
"Wait a minute.
Is the history that we learned about this
from Joseph Smith not correct?"
Now, the LDS Church does, in fact,
keep documents from the public,
so some people say
that the LDS Church hides its history.
One of Mark's concerns was that the Church
would try to hide documents
that proved embarrassing to them,
and I think that's why you find him
giving copies of the documents
to other people.
I remember one day,
Mark Hofmann approached me
with the Salamander letter.
And I remember that,
as I read it, I said,
"Have you talked
to Steve Christensen yet?"
Okay, and you're a collector
of this kind of thing.
Well, uh, actually not.
-I collect a lot of books
Mm-hmm.
and the way I became aware
of the document
was through, uh, Brent Metcalfe
Steve had a genuine interest
in Church history,
and while he loved the Church,
he also felt that there was a need
for intellectual transparency
when it came to the history of the Church.
I know when Steve first saw
the Salamander letter,
he recognized there were some issues
in there that were very much, um
controversial to many members
of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints.
His first concern was,
number one, is this authentic?
A few select individuals
actually read the contents of the letter,
and look at the handwriting,
uh, early in '84.
I received
the authentication reports back
uh
shortly thereafter, uh,
made the purchase of the letter
from Hofmann
I remember
going with Mark to Steve's office,
and the price that they negotiated
was $40,000 for the document.
So at that point, the Salamander letter
began to create some real concerns
on the part of, particularly,
President Gordon B. Hinckley.
When we are called before the bar of God
to give an accounting of our performance
Hinckley released
the letter with a disclaimer.
He said, "We'll have to accept,
for the time being,
the scientific evaluations
of the examiners,
but that does not mean
that it could not have been
a forgery from that time period,
that was created for the purposes
of hurting the Church."
I think it unlikely that any of us will be
commended for wearing out our lives
in an effort to find
some morsel of history,
incomplete in its context,
to cast doubt
on the integrity of this work.
When the Salamander letter got publicized,
and newspaper stories were written on it,
it just changed everything.
The letter generated a lot of controversy,
some saying it alters
traditional views of Mormon history.
Others say it merely sheds new light
and doesn't change a thing.
The Church is not
eager to retell its story,
but I think the story
is gradually going to be altered
in light of new evidence.
The Salamander letter
challenges the Mormon Church's account
of its own origins.
It sent historians scurrying
to reinterpret the Mormon past.
Instead of God and angels,
now it's salamanders and magic.
It's as if someone came up with
a document in which Moses said,
"I got the Ten Commandments
from the ghost of Elvis Presley."
The letter accuses Smith
of dealing in folk magic
and treasure hunting.
This Mormonism,
it's an outgrowth of magic.
It's just boogeldy-boogeldy.
Religion sometimes breeds
amongst people some extremes.
It was a striking blow
at the belief in the Church.
Mormon leaders came under fire
from critics
when the Salamander letter came to light
The Church is not in a crisis of faith.
We do not feel
whatever the commentaries may be,
that the Church's foundations
are in any way being battered or crumbled.
I love the gospel with all my heart
Steve began to recognize
that document dealing
wasn't just a gentle pastime
for those
who have a passing interest in history.
Do you still have the letter?
No, I donated the letter
to the LDS Church,
which had really
been the plan for some time.
Those documents are reportedly
in the possession of the Church Archives.
Examination by historians
outside the Church is forbidden.
At that point,
Steve Christensen donated
the Salamander letter to the Church,
and in a letter that he wrote
to President Gordon B. Hinckley,
one of the things he said was,
"It appears
that dealing in Mormon documents
-can be a dangerous business."
I think that's what I need.
-Okay.
I came to Utah
and joined a bowling league.
And one of the bowlers there
brought out a tool chest of coins.
My eyes got that big.
I bought it,
and it got me started in coins.
And Mark Hofmann saw that I was
interested in Mormon-related money items.
So he was coming in
all the time with new items.
The notoriety
of the Salamander letter
has increased the odds that even more
of these rare Mormon documents
might soon be found.
Dealers and collectors
are especially conscious
of the possibility
of finding these rare Mormon papers.
Knowledgeable dealers believe
unfound LDS documents
may number in the hundreds
or even thousands.
One day, Mark comes into my store
and says he's located
a large collection in New York City
that is by far
the largest, uh, Mormon money
and, uh, documents of the Church
in existence.
And he says, "They've contacted me
and are interested in selling it."
Mark says,
"I don't have the money to buy it.
Would you help finance the item?"
And I say, "Well, how much is it?"
And he says, "$185,000."
And I had credit with the bank,
so I gave the money in an advance to Mark.
Stories got around
that Mark is offering this collection.
I remember talkin' with him.
"What's in the collection?"
"It's got five little diaries.
They're written between 1831 and '38."
It became the McLellin Collection.
Well, the McLellin Collection.
There was a letter in there
of potentially a devastating nature.
A letter that was written
by Joseph Smith's wife,
which detailed that it was, in fact,
Joseph Smith's older brother
who first met Moroni,
lifted the stone, saw the gold plates.
And after the Salamander letter
had significant impact for the Church,
the McLellin Collection
was potentially devastating.
Devastating.
When Mark was marketing
the McLellin Collection,
he talked about it with Steve Christensen,
who was representing
the Church's interest at that time,
and hearing about this, began to think,
"Well, the Church ought to own that."
Steve Christensen had sort of been put
in charge from someone in the LDS Church,
and he was gonna go with Mark
and get the McLellin Collection.
Mark took it
through Steven Christensen
directly to the LDS Church,
and they're gonna buy it for $300,000.
And meanwhile,
I should say that I had guaranteed
to not mention this to anybody.
He told me, on this collection,
that the Church
didn't want it to be exposed
until they could go through
the entire collection
and find out what it's about
before it was released to the public.
You know, secrets just can't be kept.
Every--
Well, there's an old story.
If-- The only way to keep a secret
between two people is to kill one of 'em.
It's kind of true.
There's an emergency
in the Church building
on the corner of Main
An APB He's been cut.
-and Third South.
231, we've got an echo.
Let's notify homicide.
We have one male fatality
It's the kind of terror
that so often
grips other parts of the world.
But today, the violence we associate
with the Middle East or Northern Ireland
struck tragically along the Wasatch Front.
All of a sudden, we heard a boom.
It shook the building.
And there was debris
out in the hallway, cans.
Looked like a wastebasket.
The bomb went off in the east side
of the Judge Building shortly after eight.
The office building
was already full of workers.
I was sitting up in my bed,
uh, watching TV,
and I got a call from Curt Bench.
-I was driving to work downtown
and I always listened to the news.
still searching through the debris,
waiting for the victim's body
to be brought out of the Judge Building.
The newscaster said that
there had been an explosion downtown,
and that a man had been killed.
And I only knew one person
that worked in the Judge Building.
It was all over the news.
Every network station
was running it at that point.
a powerful blast rocked
the sixth floor
of the Judge Building in Salt Lake.
Police believe
it was a sophisticated bomb.
blown the door off the hinges,
thrown shrapnel
Here's the secretary that found a box
addressed to our victim.
And, uh, then I got
a call from a reporter, and, uh
He said, um
"What can you tell me
about Steve Christensen
now that he's died?"
In downtown Salt Lake,
a local financial consultant,
Steven F. Christensen,
died in that explosion.
Witnesses say
he had stopped to pick up a package
in the doorway of his office
when the booby trap went off.
A search dog from the airport was
brought in to look for more explosives.
So far, no other bombs have been found.
The morning of October 15th,
Steve and I decided we were gonna
get together at eight o'clock.
at the Judge Building.
I called Steve to tell him
I was running ten minutes late,
because I had stopped
to get these documents,
and I'd be walkin' down.
Uh, the phone rang and rang,
and I just got our answering machine.
Hello. You've reached
the offices of Steve Christensen.
And as I'm walking down,
I see police and firetrucks
right out in front of the Judge Building.
Literally, as I walked in the building,
I walked in the same time
that the property manager
was also walking in,
and we ran up the stairs together.
And I'll never forget looking down
at the hall to our office,
and our door was totally
blown away.
There was no door.
There were Tab cans.
There was debris all over in the hallway,
and it just was unbelievable to me.
And I'll never forget the building
manager turning to me and saying,
"What in the hell type of business
were you guys running?"
The Sheriff's Department
reports another explosion
at a home on Naniloa Drive
in Holladay within the past hour.
County Sheriff is now
investigating the possibility
that this second explosion, once again,
could be linked to this morning's bomb
at the Judge Building downtown.
Police say both bombs were
triggered by an electrical timing device
and were the work
of professional assassins.
Yes. It was quite loud, a big pop, bang.
The first victim
was Steve Christensen.
The second was the wife
of one of Christensen's
former business associates.
Kathy Sheets died by the blast,
apparently intended for her husband, Gary.
My mind was just racing
with what I just experienced.
I looked over in the corner of my eye.
There's my former partner and boss,
Gary Sheets, just standing there,
wondering what's going on.
The connection
between Christensen and Sheets.
Both served as officers
in a financial consulting company
The bomb was apparently
meant for Gary Sheets,
but the killer missed his mark,
and Sheets' wife Kathy
Kathy Sheets died instantly
when she picked up a bomb
placed on a wooden walk.
Police say the device was equal in power
to two sticks of dynamite.
The headlines were
Salt Lake City was like Beirut, Lebanon.
It's like, "What on Earth's going on?"
And panic began to ensue
because one bomb is an anomaly.
Two bombs suggests a serial killer.
If there were two bombs,
there could be three, four, five,
or a dozen or more.
A secretary at the Salt Lake Tribune
received a call that said
the bomber wasn't finished.
"I suggest you listen carefully.
There's four more bombs
from here to South Temple."
It was very disturbing and frightening,
and there was
all kinds of speculation going on.
If there is a reason for today's madness,
the answer probably lies
buried in the business records
of Christensen and Sheets.
theories revolved
around high finance
and big losses in the CFS company.
There was dark talk
of disgruntled investors,
hired professional killers,
and Las Vegas connections.
Sheets helped
bombing victim Steve Christensen
finance the purchase and study
of the so-called Salamander letter
before it was turned over
to the Mormon Church.
My feeling is that
some disgruntled investor
somewhere hired someone to do this.
We didn't know
who the targets were going to be next,
if there was anybody
that was gonna be next.
Chief Willoughby has been meeting
the past hour with other officials,
and we're going to go to him
right now for this briefing.
At this moment,
we have a task force put together
because, uh, we definitely feel
that there is a direct tie
between both of the bombings here
in Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City.
There are two areas
that we're centering our efforts on,
and one is the financial dealings,
uh, both Mr. Sheets
and Mr. Christensen were involved in.
The other motive, uh,
we're getting information on
has to do
with the White Salamander letter, uh,
which is now in the possession
of the LDS Church.
Hold on.
Now, my mind immediately
started turning elsewhere.
This has something to do
with that crazy document deal
that Steve was dealing with.
Welcome now to Primetime Access.
I'm Bruce Lindsay.
On this day of extraordinary news
in Salt Lake City,
we're going to devote
most of the rest of this hour
to questions emerging from the murders.
The violence began
as downtown was opening for business.
A morning of fear and death
for much of the Wasatch Front.
an anonymous caller warned
there were even more bombs
in surrounding buildings.
Police say that that call
could have been a copycat prank,
but the department was taking no chances
at that point.
I would, uh, work with Mark,
and it was always on Wednesday afternoon.
And we would just meet at Walden Book.
That was our spot.
But on October 16th,
I didn't go up that day.
Uh, I tried to get ahold of Mark,
but I couldn't reach him.
I guess he was
running around town that day.
But I did run into Curt Bench, I think,
and Curt told me that, uh,
he had talked to Mark or something,
and he also made it sound
like Mark was, uh
really nervous.
Okay?
Really nervous.
An associate of Christensen said,
"We're filled with absolute terror."
The houses were cordoned off,
families evacuated,
and dogs brought in to sniff for bombs.
None were found.
I called Mark,
and I warned Mark
and told him that he ought to get
his family out of their house.
Mark tells me,
"Christensen has been killed.
Kathy Sheets has been killed.
I don't know what is happening here.
Your life may be in danger.
You need to leave the house."
We don't know if the attacks had
something to do with religion or business
or even possibly both
We knew that the people involved
in the Mormon document business
could be potential targets.
And Mark did tell me
that he had concerns
about the McLellin Collection.
People had heard things about it,
and it was becoming
more of a controversial subject.
Lawmen in Salt Lake City
are going all out now
to come up with the "whys" in the tragedy.
They have come up
with some startling information.
It now turns out
that there's another collection
of early Mormon documents
that are reputed to be far more explosive.
They're the McLellin Collection.
Books, diaries, and revelations
from the era of Joseph Smith.
One of the would-be buyers
turns out to have been
bombing victim Steve Christensen.
LDS officials
have yet to confirm or deny reports
that Gordon B. Hinckley
had agreed to buy the documents,
which are believed to contain
controversial information
about the founding of the Mormon Church.
Alvin Rust says the LDS Church had agreed
to pay $300,000 for the collection.
Who at the Church had agreed
to purchase these for $300,000?
It was, uh, Gordon B. Hinckley.
I get on the phone to call the prophet
of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints.
The man that took the call says,
"What is it about?"
And I said,
"It's about the McLellin Collection."
He says, "Yeah, you and Hofmann
were to bring that right now."
A Church spokesman confirms
that Hofmann met with LDS apostles
on Tuesday afternoon,
just hours after the first bomb
killed Steven Christensen.
He said he wanted to donate
the collection to the Church.
There was no discussion
of our purchasing it.
He says,
"We've got people here right now
waiting for the McLellin Collection,
to examine it.
They want to purchase it for the Church."
Hofmann was to turn over
the collection to Christensen
the morning Christensen was killed.
Hofmann didn't show
for the 10:00 a.m. appointment,
but called and asked to meet
at 2:00 p.m.
Sources tell Channel 5
Hofmann had at least two meetings
set up to peddle the papers.
signature and have it
witnessed, or something like that.
Yeah, I can tell you also that, uh,
the LDS Church is interested in it also.
Yeah, well,
that may tend to complicate things.
They've already acquired,
in fact, uh, some other pieces
they got from me,
-but they don't have this one yet.
-Mm-hmm.
I don't know
what they're interested in it for,
if they just want to lock it up or
I can't imagine them publishing it
or anything.
Well, be hard to say.
Yeah.
-Um
Shannon Flynn is believed
to have been working with Hofmann
on the sale of those papers.
I don't know.
He had an appointment
at two o'clock with an attorney
that represented
a well-to-do Church member
that was going to buy
that McLellin Collection,
give Mark the money,
and kind of keep it for the Church.
And then the shock came.
We saw the explosion,
and the window in the back
flew up in the air.
Was it loud? Yeah.
It shook this whole building, right here.
I drove out to Mark's house
because we had set up a lunch.
Went and knocked on his door.
No one answered.
No one was home.
And, while I was there,
there's news of another bombing coming in.
A bomb was placed
under the seat of a sports car
It's a car that's been bombed.
It's a Toyota MR2.
All three explosions
may be connected to a controversy.
I mean, I immediately said,
"That's Mark Hofmann's car."
he's pretty banged up.
He was missing some fingers
that I could see,
had a hole kind of on top of his head,
had a hole in one of his legs.
I remember distinctly
that I had to pull over my car,
and slamming my hand
against the steering wheel
and saying aloud,
"Why didn't you listen to me?
Why didn't you listen to me?"
When officers searched
Hofmann's car,
they found a collection believed to be
early Mormon historical documents.
They're known as the McLellin Collection.
I remember
running out the door as fast as I could,
driving up to the police line,
and just
jumping out of my car and leaving it
in the middle of the street,
and running over to an officer
who was standing there,
and saying, "Excuse me,
but I think I know whose car that is."
Mark Hofmann was trying to sell
historical Mormon documents.
The original appointment
included Steven Christensen.
He said, "What's your name?"
And I said, "Brent Metcalfe."
And he said,
"I want you to come with me right now."
And he tells me,
"We have reason to believe
that somebody may be trying to kill you."
I get a call
from a gentleman who said,
"Randy, you need to take
your family and leave.
We're gonna have bomb dogs
and people come over
and actually go through your home."
I'm now looking underneath my car.
I mean
And this is where my mind was.
I mean, you didn't dare trust anything.
Our lives had been
totally, uh, torn apart.
They informed me
that I was in extreme danger
and that my family and I
should take every precaution.
"Please take cover.
Call your wife immediately,
and be very careful right now.
We don't know what's going on."
I was at my mother's house,
and a phone call came in
that said Mark had been hurt in a car,
with a car bomb.
And I immediately started shaking.
My sister drove me down
'cause I couldn't drive.
I was too upset.
So she drove me down to the hospital.
I went into the hospital,
told them I was Mark's wife.
Um
He was on a table in a gown.
He had glass all over his face.
None of it made sense to me.
Why would these people want to
Why would they wanna kill Steve or Kathy?
Why would anybody wanna kill them?
It didn't make sense to me.
Why would they wanna kill them?
It just didn't-didn't make sense.
Throughout this day,
Salt Lake lawmen rushed to check
several bomb threats
and suspicious situations.
Even tonight, it has extended
to the heart of our city.
Temple Square is at this moment
under lockdown.
Everyone on the square,
including the Mormon Youth Symphony,
was evacuated after
what was believed to be a bomb threat.
Canine units were called in
to patrol the grounds.
At the Mormon Church
for a prophet ♪
To guide us in these latter days ♪
I didn't think the Mormon
document world was a dangerous business.
I thought it was an exhilarating business,
but there was definitely an underbelly
-to Mormon document dealing.
More than any crimes in memory,
these bombings
have given rise to speculation,
theories, and public guessing.
Security has been beefed up,
and bomb searches carried out.
The university's archives have
Some documents vanished or disappeared.
Uh, we don't really know
what might have happened to them.
Whoever had committed these murders,
they're somehow related
to these Mormon documents.
Police are refusing to comment
on reports that Hofmann had other letters
believed to be
even more damaging to the Church
At this time, I will not comment on that.
That's still part of the investigation.
And a killer is still on the loose.
Most likely, it was somebody who was LDS,
who knew the details
of what we were doing.
Ties to murder and intrigues
have given the Mormon Church
the kind of attention it doesn't want.
It could have been
someone who had a loved one,
who had a crisis of faith
as a result of all of this.
To have the Church
involved in the acquisition
of a collection at this time
would simply fuel speculation
that the Church was trying to acquire it
in order to suppress it.
They wanted
to inflict damage and harm.
A Mormon Church official
said there was, quote,
"Nothing sinister in the Church's efforts
to acquire historical documents
from Mark Hofmann."
Hofmann was hospitalized
It seemed clear to me
this was retaliatory.
We thank thee, O God
For a prophet ♪
To guide us in these latter days ♪
We thank thee for sending the gospel ♪
To lighten our minds with its rays ♪