“Murder among Mormons” unfolds, for the most part, like a simple fuck.
A day later, a bomb exploded in a car parked in downtown Salt Lake City, seriously injuring document dealer Mark Hofmann and initiating an investigation that lasted more than a year.
But the three-part series, which begins airing on Wednesday, March 3 on Netflix, is not just another true crime tale, as the story is closely intertwined with Utah culture and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. of the Last Days.
“It’s a story that happened in a relatively small town where a human could use culture to perpetrate his crimes,” said filmmaker Tyler Measom.
Decades later, the bombings and their later history hang over Salt Lake City and the LDS church as a dark legend.
“I think this story, even now, still bothers a lot of people,” said filmmaker Jared Hess. “And they really don’t know what happened. They think some bad things happened, possibly in terms of their faith, but they don’t really know. “
Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite”) partnered with Measom (“An Honest Liar”) as executive directors / producers of the documentary, which they built as a mystery, though it was solved in 1987 and a quick Google search or in the archives of The Salt Lake Tribune will tell you the details. (Warning: Vintage spoilers in front.)
But they are convinced that most people, even in Utah, do not know what really happened.
“I’m frankly surprised at how few people know even in this state,” said Measom, who estimated that 10% of the people he told about the documentary while working on it knew the story. “So I think when he comes out, there will be a Utah surprised.”
“We live in this strange semi-mythological space,” Hess said. “… And it was an isolated regional story. It ran the news cycle nationwide and then it came and went.”
The narrative strives “to keep as many secrets as we can, whenever we can,” Measom said. “We try to tell the story in the way it was revealed to the people who lived it.”
“And then when they fired the bombs, it really put the viewer in the position of how these people lived it in 1985,” Hess added.
(Photo from Tribune file) Mark W. Hofmann, left, and LDS church leaders N. Eldon Tanner, Spencer W. Kimball, Marion G. Romney, Boyd K. Packer, and Gordon B. Hinckley examine the transcription by Anthony on April 22, 1980.
Explaining the salamander
One of the main challenges of “Murder among Mormons” is that most Netflix viewers aren’t Latter-day Saints and don’t know much about the church or the culture around it, which is integral to the mystery of historical documents. . linked to the bombings.
“The comments we kept getting from people” who saw the first cuts from the documentary “was,“ I don’t know anything about Mormonism. I need more, ”Hess said.
The filmmakers had to “educate viewers about the founding principles of the faith and the original stories of Mormonism, enough to understand that when the Salamander letter came to light, how is it really fully explained? a different story. ”
The letter was intended to reveal that a magical salamander guided church founder Joseph Smith to the golden plaques that faithful members of the church believe were translated into the Book of Mormon.
It is a striking contrast to the orthodox account of the faith, which says that the angel Moroni appeared to Smith and led him to the golden plates.
For many spectators, both inside and outside the church, the story of the salamander will be difficult to wrap around them. To give viewers context, the documentary includes excerpts from old church films – incredibly cheesy by 2021 standards – about the official version of Smith’s First Vision.
Hess and Measom wanted to “make sure we were communicating enough information [viewers] I could understand what an interruption Salamandra’s letter had within the community, ”Hess said.
“You pass terms known as God and the angels to popular magic and salamanders,” he said. “I think for faithful Christians it’s a big leap.”
Hofmann claimed that he had found the Salamander Letter and then sold it to Christensen, a faithful saint of the last days who planned to give it to the church.
Explore faith, motives, and deceptions
Measom and Hess, who live in Utah, acknowledge that anything that touches the LDS church will be sensitive. And “Murder among Mormons” is not just about church members, but also high-ranking leaders.
Gordon B. Hinckley, who was the church’s second First Presidency counselor at the time, and became church president in 1995, unknowingly bought fake historical documents from Hofmann before the bombings.
A voice is given to those who defend and to those who question the motives of the church; there was the perception that the church was buying controversial documents to hide them.
“I think there will be some preconceived notions about this documentary,” Measom said. “That it is an attack or stain against the church, or that it is a blow to the church. And Jared and I went down that line very carefully. “
(Hess is a member of the LDS church; Measom was appointed a member, but left the church years ago).
“I think the church has been forced over the years to pick up and own its history, no matter what,” Hess said. “And, while talking to people directly involved, they want to get the material and research it to know the context before making it public.
“But from a different perspective, it seems like,‘ Wow, you’re buying things so you can bury this controversial past. Definitely, there are two sides, and we touch them both ”.
But Hess, at least, is not buying dark motives from church leaders. And with documents at the center of this story later exposed as forgeries, he is not influenced by questions about how LDS church leaders like Hinckley, whom faithful church members believe are “prophets, seers, and revealers, ”they could have been deceived.
“The church is completely vindicated” of any connection to any crime, he points out.
“I think when people find themselves in these very stressful situations where they’re trying to figure out what’s going on, it’s like, people make mistakes,” Hess said. “But in the end, we are all human. We are all vulnerable to deception. ”
Photo from grandstand archive Mark Hofmann being pushed into a wheelchair by his father.
A complicated story in just three hours
The two Utah filmmakers released “Murder Among the Mormons” on Netflix as a six-hour documentary, but were “forced to make some decisions” when Netflix wanted it done in three hours. In the end, that approach “really helped storytelling,” Hess said.
“Murder among Mormons” details how investigators fought odds and “experts,” who turned out to be wrong, to bring Hofmann to justice.
He did not enter prison just after the bombings, which took more than a year. There were several obstacles and in fact almost got out of it.
“The amount of archival material we had after four years of carefully searching was pretty amazing,” Measom said.
There are some gruesome photographs at the crime scene showing the bodies of Christensen and Sheets, which came from the archives of the late Ken Farnsworth, one of the Salt Lake City detectives who investigated the case and kept more than two dozen boxes. of materials.
“I kept it all, every piece of paper,” Measom said. “Every piece I had, every note, every letter I wrote, every call. And I had some photos that had never been seen before. Many of them are horrible and we chose not to include them.
(Photo courtesy of Netflix) Mark Hofmann’s car after a bomb went off.
“This happened right on the street”
The idea for the documentary came up five years ago, when Doug Fabrizio – the host of KUER’s “Radio West” – gave Measom a book about the crimes and suggested he make a film. Measom read it and jumped.
Hess heard about Measom’s plans; the two had lunch; and decided to team up. “The stars lined up,” Measom said.
Hess said he has always been interested in history because he is “a big fan of Mormon history. And this story was so complex and fascinating on so many levels. And tragic. “
And that story still reverberates in Utah, he said. “It really shakes you,” Hess said. “Like,‘ Wow, that happened right on the street. ’You don’t have to look too far before you find someone who has a story directly related to what happened.
“… The other day I met the president of the SLD participation in my neighborhood. And it turned out that it was Holladay’s boy who delivered the newspaper to the Sheets family the morning the bomb was placed. “
It’s also a story a lot of people have tried to tell before that, Measom said. The debris from the bombs “wasn’t even cleaned up at the time Hollywood was swarming, trying to do this project,” Meason said.
“I have a portfolio with literally dozens and dozens of companies trying to make this story, both narrative and documentary, from the 80s to the 90s until now.”
When Hess and Measom started working on their documentary, they didn’t expect it to resonate like it did in 2021.
“There are a lot of issues within history that I think are relevant to the current zeitgeist,” Hess said with a laugh, “just as it relates to misinformation. And again, I think anyone is vulnerable to deception.” .