The Salt Lake City Bombings | The Best There Ever Was

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It's the afternoon of October 16th, 1985.

Mark Hoffman is lying in a hospital bed in downtown Salt Lake City.

Less than an hour ago, he became the third victim in a series of bombings that have confused and terrified locals.

The pipe bomb that exploded in Mark's car blew a hole in his right knee and severed the tip of a finger.

Doctors and nurses are tending to Mark, carefully cutting away his singed and torn clothes and attaching monitors to his body.

From his bed, Mark can hear one of the nurses speaking with his father Bill.

The nurse explains that Mark's condition is serious.

But things look good, she says with a warm smile.

Mark's been incredibly lucky to avoid any serious injuries to his internal organs.

He should live.

Even over the sounds of the hospital, Mark can hear his father's sigh of relief.

Mark wishes he could do the same.

He knows he's not out of the woods yet.

He survived the blast.

Now, he has to worry about what comes next.

Sure enough, a police officer materializes by Mark's bedside just moments later.

The medical staff glance at one another in irritation.

The cop's in the way.

But the police officer doesn't leave Mark's side.

He's got a job to do, too.

Holding Mark's gaze, the officer asks what Mark can remember about the blast.

Still dazed, Mark says he doesn't remember much.

Something fell off the front seat of the car and then everything went dark.

That's all he's got.

The officer takes careful notes and tells Mark that he'll be back if he has any more questions.

But before the cop can leave, Mark begs for his help.

He's scared for his friends, he says, for his colleagues.

Whoever sent these bombs is clearly trying to kill members of the document dealer community.

He stammers out a couple of names to the officer and urges him to contact the men and tell them to get out of town.

It's not safe in Salt Lake City anymore.

But he's lying.

Salt Lake is safe.

Because the person responsible for terrorizing the city is lying in that hospital bed.

And despite Mark Hoffman's best efforts to throw investigators off his trail, the cops already smell this rat.

And soon, they'll have him cornered.

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When the news broke that Mark Hoffman was the third casualty of the Salt Lake City bombings, many of the city's Mormon document dealers were terrified.

The incident seemed like a clear sign that they were all in danger.

But while paranoid saints looked over their shoulders and worried about their friend, that friend moved to the top of the investigator's suspect list.

See, to some of the cops working the case, the latest blast was an indicator that Mark Hoffman was their killer, and he just inadvertently revealed himself.

But the cops needed evidence to support their hunch and prove that Mark was responsible for the brutal deaths of Steve Christensen and Kathy Sheets.

What no one could figure out, though, was what could have driven such a respected member of the LDS community to make and plant two deadly bombs.

And so, detectives started taking a closer look at their prime suspect.

They'd soon find that Mark's past was more complicated than anyone anticipated.

Because Mark Hoffman's crimes started long before he built his first bomb.

Though the truth is, he didn't start his criminal career with the intention to hurt anyone.

In fact, he always figured that he had no real victims.

It's just that things spiraled over the years, and he eventually decided that the easiest way to avoid an embarrassing scandal was a couple of tidy murders.

Clearly, it didn't go as he planned.

This is episode 4 in a four-part series about The Salt Lake City Bombings.

The best of the best.

It's April of 1980, five years before The Salt Lake City Bombings.

25-year-old Mark Hoffman is at home in his basement, putting the finishing touches on a special project.

And this last part is key.

He's trying to make some black glue.

First, he mixes up a small batch of wheat paste, the kind of thing you might use for paper mache.

Then he strikes a match and places it gently in a saucer, watching it burn all the way down.

He does the same thing again and again and again, until he's got a small pile of spent matches.

Picking up a dessert spoon, he grinds the charred matchsticks into ash and tips it all into his paste.

Eventually, he's happy with the color of his concoction.

But it's not sticky enough.

So he opens a pot of everyday craft glue and stirs some into his paste.

After that, it's time to put everything together.

He opens up a 17th century edition of the King James Bible, choosing a page at random.

Then he picks up a yellowed piece of paper.

He's already spent a number of days preparing this document.

Using homemade ink and a fountain pen, he's carefully recreated the Fable Anthem transcript, an important and mysterious artifact from the early days of the Mormon Church.

To Mark's eye, it could be the real deal.

Working from descriptions of what the transcript actually looked like, Mark's painstakingly drawn a collection of symbols from various ancient languages on the yellowed paper.

Then on the reverse side, he's forged the signature of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith.

All that's left now is to create the conditions for it to be found.

So picking up a paintbrush, he dabs some of his matchstick blackened glue on the edges of the folded paper.

Then he slides it into the open Bible, sandwiching it between a couple of pages.

Mark feels a swell of satisfaction.

It's not his first forgery.

He's been conning people since he was a kid when he'd alter coins and pass them off as rare minting mistakes.

But this document is more sophisticated than anything he's done before.

Now he just needs to leave the Bible somewhere for his wife Dory to see.

He's decided that he wants her to find the transcript.

She'll be more inclined to believe it's real that way.

Dory Hoffman becomes the first person Mark fools with his fake anthem transcript.

She won't be the last.

The transcript will be the first big sale of Mark's career, and it'll set him on a new path.

Once the LDS Church's handwriting expert declares his anthem transcript the genuine article, Mark takes the gamble to drop out of college and pursue the life of a document dealer full time.

But he has to be careful.

He can't go discovering history-making documents every week.

That kind of thing would attract the wrong kind of attention.

So he's patient.

He waits almost a year before he reveals his next forgery.

He meets with an official church historian to show him a blessing, supposedly written by the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Unlike his previous forgery, the blessing has the potential to cause a real scandal.

It calls into question the legitimacy of the modern Mormon church.

In the end, Mark sells the blessing to the church for about $20,000 in a hastily constructed deal.

But perhaps more valuable than the money is what Mark learns, that church leadership will work quickly to protect the religion's reputation, as well as that of the Prophet.

It's a lesson he intends to put to use.

It's late 1982 and 27-year-old Mark Hoffman is shut up in his basement workroom once again.

Open in front of him is an 18th century book he's checked out from the University of Utah library.

In his hand, a scalpel.

Turning the book to a page near the end, Mark carefully slices through the antique paper.

When he's done cutting the page free, he's got a blank canvas, authentically aged and ready for his next creation.

That's when his fun really begins.

Drawing on his intricate knowledge of LDS history, Mark writes a letter from Martin Harris, one of the earliest Mormon converts.

It describes Joseph Smith's discovery of the iconic golden plates that are the foundation of the LDS church.

When he gets to the pivotal moment, Mark pauses.

Ordinarily in this story, Smith meets an angel who leads him to the gold plates.

But Mark wants to stir things up, so he decides to insert a white salamander into his church's mythology.

The amphibian guards the plates, according to Mark's letter, making the whole Mormon origin story less godly and more pagan.

To complete the picture, he makes an engraving of an 1830s postmark and stamps it onto the letter, the seal of authenticity.

After he's done, Mark shows the letter to several potential buyers, but no one wants to buy it.

Frustrated but determined to sell the salamander letter, Mark suggests that the church acquire the letter through a proxy, a wealthy saint who will buy the document and donate it.

Enter Steven Christensen.

Like a puppet dancing at the end of Mark's strings, Steve pays 40 grand for the letter.

Then, Steve and the church weather the media storm that stirred up when the news breaks, while Mark sits back, enjoying his success.

For five years, Mark Hoffman masquerades as a dedicated historian who spends his days searching for lost relics.

No one suspects what he's really up to.

In that time, he creates hundreds of forgeries.

Mostly, he sticks to items related to the LDS church, but he occasionally branches out.

He replicates antique banknotes and dabbles in Americana, forging the signatures of people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Billy the Kid and Mark Twain.

Privately, Mark Hoffman feels a thrill every time one of his forgeries passes the authenticity tests.

Renowned experts scrutinize his work and every time they proclaim his creations the real deal.

That's because Mark does the thing properly.

He doesn't just use homemade ink on paper stolen from antique books and call it a day.

One of his favorite techniques is an elaborate agent of his finished documents.

First, he seals the paper in an ordinary glass fish tank with a small transformer from a model train set.

When he runs power to the transformer, it creates ozone within the aquarium, which rapidly ages the document.

He can add a hundred years to his forgeries in just ten minutes.

Once, he even makes up a poem and signs Emily Dickinson's name to it.

The poem perfectly mimics Dickinson's style, is written on the exact kind of paper she worked with, and the handwriting is indistinguishable from genuine examples.

When the Dickinson piece sells, Mark funnels the proceeds into his family's growing collection of first edition children's books.

Five years in, he's spending his money as quickly as he makes it, never dreaming it could all end.

But over time, he gets a little lazy.

He's so confident that he farms out some of the work for his most ambitious forgery yet.

It's in March of 1985 that Mark visits a photo engraving store in downtown Salt Lake City.

Telling them his name is Mike Hanson, he hands over a copy of a document known as the Oath of a Freeman and asks them to make an engraving plate out of it.

The store takes the paper and uses acid to etch the image into metal, which Mark can use as a kind of stamp.

A few days later, Mark pays $34 for the plate and takes it home.

Then, he gets to work.

The engraving is a good start, but Mark's a stickler for details.

He spends the next several days carefully grinding down some of the letters in the plate so that they look like the result of an early printing press that's been shipped across the Atlantic.

For the print itself, he follows a 17th century ink recipe that mixes beeswax, linseed oil and tannic acid.

With all the ingredients prepared, Mark then makes the first document printed in the colonial United States.

At least, that's how he markets the oath to dealers in New York.

But by this stage, Mark's feeling the pinch.

He's deeply in debt to a number of dealers and investors.

Part of this is due to the McClellan Collection, a mysterious trove of letters and diaries collected by an early convert turned critic of the Mormon Church.

Mark claims he's found the collection and has borrowed money from coin dealer Alvin Rust as well as First Interstate Bank in order to buy it.

But of course, Mark hasn't found the McClellan Collection.

And while he has the skill to actually make all of its contents, he doesn't see the point.

He figures that he can string Rust and the bank along until the Oath of a Freeman sells.

It's valuable enough that its sale will easily cover all his debts.

Unfortunately, the oath doesn't sell as quickly as Mark hopes, and that's a problem.

Because Alvin Rust wants his money back, and so does the bank.

Meanwhile, Mark signed a contract to buy a $550,000 house.

He's on the hook for $400,000 to an investment syndicate, he swindled, and the LDS leadership are hounding Mark to give them the McClellan collection.

So by the start of October 1985, Mark feels like he's trapped.

His pride is so wrapped up in his reputation that he doesn't even consider telling people the truth.

He's not worried that people will uncover his forgeries.

That doesn't even cross his mind.

What he can't stomach is admitting that he's not as successful as he's made out.

That's the kind of failure he just won't accept.

On October 4th, 1985, Mark Hoffman tells the LDS Church Leadership that he can't donate the McClellan Collection to their archives as he once promised.

He says he can't afford to just give away such an expensive artifact.

He hopes that this will relieve at least some of the pressure on him.

But the Church Leadership pull out a move from Mark's own playbook.

They suggest that a wealthy saint buy the collection from Mark instead.

And Mark can't think of a reason to say no.

The terms are as follows.

On October 15th, Mark will present the McClellan Collection to Steve Christensen.

He's agreed to inspect the documents and verify their authenticity for the Church.

Then the Church's benefactor will pay Mark $185,000 and everyone will go their separate ways.

The Church has backed Mark into a corner.

He has to give the LDS the McClellan Collection so he can pay back some of his loans.

But he can't hand over something that doesn't exist.

And Mark knows he'll never be able to fabricate a believable collection of antique diaries, letters and contracts in less than two weeks.

A different person might put up their hands and admit defeat, confess their sins and accept the consequences.

But Mark Hoffman doesn't see the virtue in that.

The best solution he can think of is to kill someone.

He figures that if he plays his cards right, he'll cause just enough confusion that all the deals and repayments will be delayed, at least until the oath of a Freeman sells.

With this new way forward, Mark feels more relaxed.

All he has to do now is decide who should die.

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It's just after midnight on October 15th, 1985.

In his basement, 30-year-old Mark Hoffman's holding his breath.

It's been just over a week since he decided that murder was the best way to solve his problems.

And although he's comfortable with the idea of killing someone, he doesn't want to have to look his victims in the eye.

He wants to be far away from them when it happens.

So he's come up with a plan that meets those requirements.

He spent the last few days buying the supplies he needs, spreading the shopping around to cover his tracks.

At a radio shack, he picked up mercury switches and battery holders.

He got two 12-inch lengths of galvanized iron pipe and a box of concrete nails at a hardware store.

Finally, he visited a toy store for a pair of igniters used for model rockets.

It's everything he needs to construct two lethal pipe bombs.

Now, after some initial tests to make sure everything works as intended, he's got just a few more things to wrap up.

The bombs themselves are fairly simple.

He's capped the ends of both pipes, which he's filled with a few ounces of smokeless black gunpowder.

The detonators rely on the mercury switches, so just a slight movement will set them off.

For safety, Mark leaves a pair of wires loose on each bomb.

Until they're connected, the bombs can't detonate.

Still, it's a nerve-wracking night in the basement.

With the basic construction finished, Mark tapes several layers of concrete nails around one of the pipes.

He's read that nails almost guarantee a bomb will be deadly, and he knows that he wants at least one of his devices to kill.

Once he's confident he's done everything right, Mark carefully places each bomb inside a cardboard box.

Until tonight, he wasn't sure who to target.

But now, at the eleventh hour, he's made up his mind.

He addresses one of the boxes, the one that holds the bomb with the nails, to Steven Christensen.

Mark's decided that Steve poses the most immediate threat to him, because he's supposed to verify the contents of the McClellan collection later today.

Mark knows he can't show up to that meeting empty-handed, so Steve has to die.

In Mark's mind, it's his only choice.

But he also knows he can't just kill Steve.

Mark figures he'll be high on the suspect list when Steve dies.

So he needs a second victim, someone to throw people off his scent.

That's why he addresses the second bomb to Gary Sheets, Steve's former boss and mentor at investment firm CFS.

A lot of people have lost money thanks to bad bets at CFS, and Mark hopes that people will believe the bombs are the work of a disgruntled customer.

Now, with his victim selected, it's time to deliver his deadly packages.

It's around 3 a.m.

on October 15th, 1985, when Mark Hoffman pulls up outside of the dark and silent Sheets home in Holiday, eight miles from downtown Salt Lake.

He places the box on the driveway, right by the garage.

Before he leaves, he twists the loose wires together, completing the circuit that arms the bomb.

It doesn't matter to Mark if it actually kills anyone so long as it goes off.

That'll be enough to confuse the police.

A few hours later, Mark arrives at the near deserted judge building in Salt Lake City.

Steve Christensen started his own business a couple of months ago, and is renting a small office on the sixth floor.

Mark leaves the package leaning against Steve's door, which will practically force the businessman to pick it up before he goes inside.

Moments after Mark leaves, a woman who works in the office next to Steve's bends down to pick up the package with a mind to keeping it safe until Steve arrives.

But with her hand just inches from the box, she thinks better of it.

It's a decision that saves her life, because an hour later the box explodes in Steve's arms, killing him.

30 minutes after that, Kathy Sheets dies when she picks up the bomb meant for her husband.

In the chaos that overtakes the city that morning, Mark Hoffman feels a sense of calm come over him.

With Steve out of the picture, he's off the hook.

At least that's what he thinks.

Within hours, LDS church leadership reach out to inform him they still intend to move forward with the sale of the McClellan collection.

They acknowledge that Steve's death is a tragedy, but he's not the only amateur historian with a passion for Mormon documents in the city.

The church already has another man ready to fill in for Steve, and they'd like to continue his plan for tomorrow.

After all his effort, after killing two people, Mark hasn't accomplished his one goal.

He still has to deliver the McClellan collection, but that's fast becoming the least of his problems.

It turns out Mark wasn't careful enough at the judge building that morning.

Several people saw him, and at least one man gives a detailed description to the police.

That night, a sketch that looks kind of like Mark is broadcast on the evening news, along with reports that the suspect wore a green letterman jacket, the kind a high school athlete would wear.

Several people who know Mark see the sketch and feel a tingle down their spine when they hear about the jacket.

Mark was on his high school track team, and he still wears his green letterman to this day.

At least one person reaches out to the police to tell them that the man they're looking for might just be Mark Hoffman.

It's unclear if Mark himself realizes that he's already a suspect in the bombings.

He spends much of that night in his basement building a third bomb.

Who he's building it for, only he knows.

Mark will eventually claim he intended it for himself to die by suicide.

But there's a strong possibility it was intended for Brent Ashworth, one of Mark's regular collectors.

Whoever the intended target, the bomb goes off earlier than Mark planned.

It explodes in the front seat of his car while Mark is parked near a mall on October 16th.

By the time Mark becomes his own third victim, he's already on the investigator's radar.

And the fact that the bomb went off in his own car sends a strong signal that he's the man behind the attacks.

Detectives don't waste any time getting a warrant to search Mark Hoffman's family home.

They don't find any evidence that he built the bombs.

Nor do they find any in his burned out car.

But they do find his green letterman jacket balled up in the corner of a closet.

It's enough for police to announce Mark as their prime suspect just hours after he arrives at the hospital.

Now they just need to prove he's their killer.

They know that without definitive evidence and a clear reason for the attacks, they might not get a conviction.

So while Mark is released from hospital to continue his recovery, detectives start looking into his document deals.

They'll need to find some kind of problem, one big enough to incite murder.

But the problem they find is that there don't seem to be any problems.

The country's biggest names in historic documents and forgery detection have looked over his stuff and they all say the same thing.

These aren't fakes.

But at least one man isn't convinced.

Special Agent George Throckmorton works out of the Utah Attorney General's office.

He's who the AG calls when there are concerns about some kind of document, things like questionable wills and tax statements.

He doesn't typically deal with antiques, but the more he reads about the bombings and about how Mark Hoffman's documents have been vetted, the more curious he becomes.

As a trained expert, Throckmorton knows there's no way to truly prove a document is authentic.

But there are things about very good fakes that the untrained eye can miss.

He wonders if that's what's happening here.

So he makes some calls to ask about the documents.

The salamander letter, he's told, was authenticated because of the paper and ink used and the fact that the handwriting matched other examples from Martin Harris.

But Throckmorton knows that old paper is still available if you know where to look and that anyone can make their own ink from a 19th century recipe.

And copying someone's handwriting is tricky but not impossible if you've got the necessary talent.

With all of that in mind, Throckmorton calls the lead investigators in Salt Lake City to share his concerns.

That's how George Throckmorton ends up inside a makeshift lab inside the LDS office building in downtown Salt Lake.

It's mid-December 1985 when he and another investigator begin their thorough examination of a stack of documents known to have come from Mark Hoffman.

They start by looking at the documents under infrared light, then ultraviolet.

They're searching for anomalies in the paper, like artificial whiteners, which were invented after the dates on the documents and would be a dead giveaway.

They don't find any.

Then, Throckmorton places one of Mark's earliest documents under a microscope.

It's the Joseph Smith blessing he sold at the church in 1981.

At first glance, everything seems unremarkable.

But at 60 times magnification, Throckmorton notices something unusual.

The surface of the ink is cracked, like parched earth or alligator skin.

That's unusual.

Because although aged ink is known to appear crackled when viewed with a microscope, it's usually only obvious at a much higher magnification.

So to see it at such a low level gives both men pause.

When they look at antique documents they know did not come from Mark, there's no crackling visible at that magnification.

It's only present in documents he sold or traded.

Convinced that this is the answer, Throckmorton and his partner set about trying to reproduce the cracking effect on their own.

Then in mid-January 1986, three months after the bombings, they finally do it.

They find the right formula in a book police discovered in Mark's basement study.

This particular recipe calls for the addition of gum arabic.

Once they add that to their mixture, they see instant results.

Their ink crackles just like Mark's.

It's the confirmation they've been waiting for.

Throckmorton can prove the documents are forgeries.

Now the police just need to connect the dots from the forgery scheme to the bombings.

Detectives have spent weeks retracing Mark's footsteps through the document and literary trade markets.

That's how they put together a clearer picture of his financial situation, how much he owes and to whom.

Combined with the forgeries, it's finally starting to look like motive.

A desperate man searching for a way out.

Confident in their case, the cops know that it's time to arrest their killer.

So on February 4th, 1986, 31-year-old Mark Hoffman is picked up and charged with the first degree murders of Stephen Christensen and Kathy Sheets.

For good measure, he's also charged with 23 counts of theft by deception and fraud.

All that's left now is for Mark to have his day in court, unless, that is, he can weasel his way out of it.

It's April 1986, six months since Mark Hoffman used two pipe bombs to murder Steven Christensen and Kathy Sheets.

In a packed Salt Lake City courtroom, Mark and his lawyers sit across from the prosecutors.

It's a preliminary hearing in which the state has to show probable cause.

That is, prove to a judge that there's enough evidence to bring Mark to a full trial.

Behind Mark sits his loyal wife, Dory.

She's shown up for every day of proceedings so far.

The last six months have been hard on Dory.

Journalists on the doorstep, police searching her home, not to mention the money troubles that have come in the wake of her husband's arrest.

But she's thankful for their community.

The saints in their neighborhood have stood by their side and made sure the Hoffmans haven't gone hungry.

It's given Dory the strength she needs to stay true to her husband.

To trust him when he says that he's innocent.

It's a belief she's clung to, even as prosecutors have paraded dozens of witnesses through the courtroom.

Each of them demonstrating in one way or another that Mark Hoffman is a dishonest man.

Today's witness is a clerk from a photo engraving store here in Salt Lake.

Dory listens as the man recounts how a customer named Mike Hanson ordered an engraving plate from the store, a plate that was used to make the oath of a freeman.

Dory almost rolls her eyes.

The prosecutors have alleged that Mike Hanson is an alias Mark used over the years, but she doesn't believe it.

Then the clerk reads out the address that Mike Hanson gave for his order, and Dory audibly gasps.

Except for one number, that's her brother's address.

Dory Hoffman doesn't come to court the next day, and she's not the only one swayed by the mountains of evidence against Mark.

At the end of the 11-day hearing, the judge orders Mark to stand trial as charged, and in Utah, that means he'll be facing the death penalty.

But the prosecutors aren't sure that's the outcome they'll get.

They're certain that they've got the right guy, but they know that this is a complex case for a jury to follow.

It took months for investigators to piece together Mark's crimes, and even with all the information, his motive is still difficult to grasp.

So in December of 1986, both sides meet to negotiate a plea deal.

They agree that Mark will plead guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, and that the prosecutors will recommend a life sentence for one count, and a second sentence of one to fifteen years for the other.

In addition, Mark will meet with the authorities and explain what he did and how.

The authorities will get their man.

Mark will save his neck.

The deal is done.

On January 23, 1987, over a year after the bombings, 32-year-old Mark Hoffman appears in court for a final time.

Dressed in a dark suit, Mark almost fades into the faux wood paneling inside the courtroom.

His lawyers sit at his side.

His family are just behind him.

Every other seat is taken.

It seems like everyone in Salt Lake City is eager to witness the final chapter in the years-long saga.

As the judge reads the charges against Mark and asks how he pleads, Mark answers in a quiet monotone.

Guilty.

The judge explains to Mark that he only has the power to send criminals to jail and make a recommendation about how long they should stay there.

After that, the State's Board of Pardons will decide how much of the sentence Mark serves.

Still, he says he's recommending to the board that Mark should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Then, without bothering to say goodbye to his family, Mark leaves the courtroom and heads for prison.

In the following months, Mark Hoffman meets with the prosecutors to fulfill the terms of his deal.

He answers their questions about his forgeries, explaining in detail how he created them.

He goes on to explain his belief that if an expert pronounces a document genuine and if the owner believes it, then it may as well be genuine.

In that way, he says, the buyers of his artifacts suffered no harm.

The only damage caused by his forgeries was to the reputations of the authenticators who they fooled.

Until he killed two people, of course.

But Mark insists that if the oath of a freeman had sold for a good price, he wouldn't have felt the need to kill anyone.

Then, suddenly, in May 1987, Mark decides that he's done explaining himself to the authorities.

It catches the prosecutors by surprise.

They thought they were building a rapport with Mark.

But he's not happy with his prison quarters and tries to use his cooperation as a bargaining chip for better accommodation.

Unfortunately, the prosecutors have no control over Mark's situation within the prison, so the interviews come to an abrupt end.

Mark's decision to stop talking doesn't impress the Board of Pardons, however.

And his attitude at the hearing in January 1988 doesn't help his case either.

He tells the Board members that by the time he got to the bombings, quote, it was like a game.

And although he genuinely intended to kill Steve Christensen, the second bomb didn't matter as much.

He wasn't concerned who he hurt, whether it be Gary Sheets, a dog or even a child, so long as it fooled investigators.

His callous disregard for who he might have hurt shocks everyone.

After that, it's hardly surprising when the Board of Pardons announces that Mark will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

In his five years as a professional document forger, Mark Hoffman created hundreds of fake artifacts, bringing in what authorities suspect was around $2 million.

And when his scheme finally came undone, Mark wasn't finished, he still had at least one more big con planned.

For years, Mark had been seeding samples of Martin Harris' handwriting throughout the Mormon collector community.

This meant that experts often compared Mark's documents against his own forgeries, assuming they were real things because someone else said so.

That helped authenticate his fakes, but it was also part of a grander plan.

Because in addition to being Joseph Smith's first convert, Harris was also the man who wrote out the very first copy of the Book of Mormon.

The story goes that Smith dictated to Harris from the golden plates, translating the symbols that only Smith could read.

But at one stage, Harris took home the first 116 pages of the manuscript.

No one ever saw them again.

And for years, Mark told people that he was determined to find those lost pages.

In reality, his plan was to forge them from scratch and sell them to the church for millions.

It seems like a tall order, but if anyone could pull it off, it would have been Mark Hoffman.

Even today, he's regarded as one of the best document forgers of all time.

Although in prison, he met with prosecutors repeatedly to explain what he'd done, he left a lot of unanswered questions about the full extent of his crimes.

To this day, the exact number and whereabouts of Mark Hoffman's forgeries remain a mystery.

Not all of his talents lie in mimicry, though.

Since beginning his life behind bars, Mark has turned his hand to poetry.

He once fooled the world with a fake Emily Dickinson piece, but now he puts his own signature to his work.

Occasionally, he mails his poems to family members and friends.

One of the shortest is titled Hallelujah.

Think I each hour as the cop walks by, there but for the grace of God go I.

From Airship, this is episode four of our series on The Salt Lake City Bombings.

On the next episode, I'll be speaking with author and professor of forensic psychology, Katherine Ransome, about Mark Hoffman, criminology and the path from forgery to murder.

We used many different sources while preparing this episode.

A couple we can recommend are A Gathering of Saints, A True Story of Money, Murder and Deceit by Robert Lindsay, and Salamander, The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders by Linda Silito and Alan Roberts, as well as Reporting in Deseret News.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details, and while in some cases we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio Editing by Mohamed Shazib.

Sound Design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan.

Managing Producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham for Airship.