Word: hofmann
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...next day a third pipe bomb exploded in downtown Salt Lake City. This time, however, the victim survived -- and eventually became the prime suspect in the two murders. Authorities believed Mark Hofmann, a dealer in rare documents, many on early Mormon history, had been injured while setting a bomb in his own car, possibly to direct suspicion away from himself. Last week the 15-month investigation against Hofmann came to a close when he pleaded guilty to reduced charges of second-degree murder in the bombings and to two counts of theft by deception for selling forged or nonexistent documents...
After Salt Lake City Businessman Steven F. Christensen and Housewife Kathleen Sheets were killed by pipe bombs last October, Utah authorities almost immediately named Mark W. Hofmann, a dealer in rare Mormon documents, as their prime suspect. Last week they finally charged Hofmann with the two first-degree murders, as well as 26 other felonies. In building their case, moreover, prosecutors claimed to have not only established a motive for the killings but also to have uncovered a bizarre religious fraud...
...Hofmann, 31, first won attention as broker of the so-called White Salamander Letter, which purportedly traced some of Mormon Founder Joseph Smith's beliefs to folk magic, rather than to divine revelation as the church teaches. Prosecutors claim that the letter and many other documents that Hofmann peddled to the church were forgeries, and that Christensen learned of the scam. Sheets, they believe, was killed in a diversionary effort to connect Christensen with her husband's controversial business dealings. Hofmann, who was injured a day after the slayings in a car bombing that police say was accidental, maintains that...
...exotic, possibility. Christensen and Gary Sheets, both Mormon bishops (local church leaders), were involved in publication of a controversial historical document that challenges the authorized version of the origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1983 Christensen paid a reported $40,000 to Mark Hofmann, 30, a shadowy, highly successful dealer in Mormon documents, for an 1830 manuscript known as the "White Salamander Letter." Written by a disciple of Mormon Founder Joseph Smith, it says Smith's finding of the Book of Mormon came not from an angel of God, as is accepted, but from...
...salamander angle gained credibility the following day when another pipe bomb critically injured Hofmann as he was climbing into his parked car half a block from Salt Lake City's Temple Square. In the Toyota's blackened interior, investigators found pipes and other equipment for bomb manufacture, as well as rare books and valuable documents relating to the Mormon Church. Hofmann, it seemed, had accidentally set off a bomb of his own making. After eight hours of surgery, Hofmann, who was expected to survive, maintained from his hospital bed that he was a target, not an assailant. But police...