What Life Is Like Now For Mark Hofmann From Murder Among The Mormons
Netflix has given true crime fans a reason to rejoice: the streaming service released a brand new docuseries called Murder Among the Mormons on March 3, 2021. The three-episode series covers the head-scratching tale about a man who becomes disillusioned with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and uses his disappointment with the church to fuel his love for forgery, according to Deseret News.
The man in question — Salt Lake City, Utah native Mark Hofmann — gained notoriety in the Mormon world in the 1980s after allegedly discovering many "historical documents" that often questioned the church's history. He tricked church officials and historians alike into thinking his precious documents were real and made a decent sum of money selling them. However, Hofmann eventually became stretched too thin, fell into debt, and rather than simply ending his deals with historical document buyers and collectors, he decided to send them homemade bombs that killed two people in October 1985. Hofmann was eventually caught and sentenced to five years to life in prison in 1987 as part of a plea deal, as reported by AP News at the time.
While Hofmann's crimes are not the first thing to come to mind when thinking about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the fabrications have had a lasting impact on the religion, as noted by the "Hofmann Forgeries" section on its official website. So, what is the guy behind so much strife up to more than 30 years later?
Mark Hofmann won't ever see freedom again
Following his conviction, Mark Hofmann was taken to the maximum-security Utah State Prison, per AP News. A year into his sentence in 1988, The Salt Lake Tribune reports, Hofmann wrote a head-turning letter to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, in which he admitted that he was more satisfied with being guilty of murder and attempted suicide (with a third bomb that had gone off in Hofmann's car, according to Deseret News) than for forgery. He also detailed his long-running fascination with forgery and said that "fooling people gave [him] a sense of power and superiority."
Following this letter, as well as a reportedly remorseless in-person testimony for parole, Hofmann was sentenced to life behind bars. However, Hofmann's biggest life change since then occurred in late 2015, when he was transferred to a lower-security prison in Utah, as reported by Deseret News. Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Steve Gehrke confirmed that Hofmann was transferred because he had "virtually no behavioral management issues." Hofmann now has "more access to other inmates" and an extended "recreation time" at the new prison, according to Gehrke.
Hofmann was 66 years old at the time of Murder Among the Mormons' release in 2021 and had been imprisoned for more than three decades.