Talk:Mark Hofmann

message: While serving my mission, I came across a copy of BYU magazine that discussed how Hofmann produced his documents and how they fooled so many experts.  I found it fascinating.  Anyone have access to material that discusses this aspect of his work? — Frecklefoot | Talk 21:19, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that you read the book "The Poet and the Murderer".  It focuses in great detail on how he created many of his forgeries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.164.55.187 (talk • contribs) 17:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also read The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith -- an exhaustive and very well written book about the forgeries and murders.  The forensic documents examiners emerge as among the true heroes in the investigation. Z Wylld 20:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Those are good recommendations, Z Wylld, ironically I just added those books to the page. I would however add that while I like "The Mormon Murders", the book is somewhat sensationalized. I think that if you want to read a more accurate account of the case, Robert Lindsey's "A Gathering of Saints..." would be more appropriate. I would avoid any of the Mormon "point of view"  publications(i.e., Salamander, Victims, etc...), which are heavily biased. Simon Worrall's "The Poet and the Murderer" is an excellent study of the forgeries and the Hofmann case as a whole. (JT Mac 08:55, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Techniques, technical data

message: * Added info gleaned from the TV Series Mastermind on Court TV Andy5421 13:25, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  More info 

message: would it be unreasonable to add as trivia that he possibly inspired the law and order criminal intent episode titled 'the saint' (which ironically, I've just found out is being rescreened locally tonight) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.84.83.158 (talk) 09:30, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue of trivia sections are dealt with at the guidelines TRIVIA. Basically, such sections are unencyclopedic and trivial, and as an article develops, any relevant "in pop culture" material should be incorporated into the main body of the article. This article has seen a lot of attention from various editors, so some of the pop culture material has been incorporated into the "legacy" section or elsewhere, while some of it has been removed as unimportant or unverified.--Cúchullain t/c 13:01, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  trivia? 

message: The claim that the McLellin collection was found in Texas seems to have been added by a computer at BYU on the 5th of August 2006.  It is inaccurate.  The LDS church bought it in 1908 and lost it in its archives.  It was rediscovered during the Hofmann investigation as reveal in Turley’s book Victims.  The McLellin Collection may deserve to have its own page.--Fmatmi (talk) 23:04, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To the (partial) contrary, see the introduction to the Signature Books version here.  It seems clear that whatever McLellin Papers were previously owned by the Church were deliberately hidden rather than "lost in the archives."--John Foxe (talk) 14:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Point 1:  I agree with “whatever the McLellin Papers [Collection] were”.  One could argue that whatever was discovered in Texas is part of the collection.  However, it is not a large enough portion of what was discovered to represent THE collection.  The actual journals themselves were found in Church archives.  If the article stated that THE collection was discovered in Church archives, it would not be inaccurate.  However, to state that THE Collection was found in Texas is inaccurate.  The article could state that the bulk of the collection was found in Church archives with small parts found Texas.   However, I have witnessed Wikipedia articles where editors bicker about words like ‘bulk’, ‘mostly’, ‘small’ as all being subjective points of view.  The more objective and accurate statement for the article would be to state that, First the Traughber notes about McLellin were discovered in Texas and later the actual McLellin journals and writings were discovered in Church archives.--Fmatmi (talk) 03:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Point 2:  I definitely agree that the correct assessment is “deliberately hidden” and not “lost in the archives”.  However, be forewarn that the Mormon apologists on Wikipedia will react vigorously to any such wording.  “its existence was lost in the archives” was my poor attempt at neutrality and gives the assumption of innocence in the absence of a smoking gun (which for an apologist is nothing short of a notarized confession).  I have not found a neutral way of stating this …..   “went missing” doesn’t quite work.  How about, “institutionally forgotten”?  For example, “The McLellin Collection was institutionally forgotten in Church archives until the collection's existence was rediscovered in Church archives as a consequence of the Hofmann investigation”.--Fmatmi (talk) 03:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have a problem with your analysis. But as it stands it's simply an opinion that needs citation to an authority saying that the description of Lindsey, the intro to the Signature Books edition, etc. is not completely accurate.--John Foxe (talk) 09:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Point 1:  This is yet another proof that conversations on Wikipedia are futile.  I clearly provided such a citation as a counter point to the Lindsey citation (see –page 213 of Victims cited above). The original link that I provided in December clarified even more, but it appears to currently be a dead link. --Fmatmi (talk) 04:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Point 2: The Signature Books intro does not give many specifics, so there isn’t much to refute.  It makes no mention of the Journals.  The library itself refers to the papers as the John L. Traugher Papers and states “Of interest are materials written by William E. McLellin”.  Pages 248-250 of Victims describes in detail how the actual journals were rediscovered in the Church archives.  I believe this summary linked here was provided by the Tanners--Fmatmi (talk) 04:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Point 3: Right back at you.  Your analysis of “deliberately hidden” is “simply an opinion that needs citation to an authority”.  No where does the Signature Books intro say this.  Being an introduction it makes no mention of the details of what happen between the 1908 acquisition and the 1994 announcement.--Fmatmi (talk) 04:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Point 4:  This is a discussion page so I really do not need to cite anything (though I have cited plenty).--Fmatmi (talk) 04:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

text: An excerpt of the newly published Signature Books book is found here  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fmatmi (talk • contribs) 05:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was unclear.  I only meant that if you were going to modify the article, you needed to provide citation to an authority--which you've done.  I have no problem with your changes except in terms of literary style.  But then the whole article needs a rewrite on those grounds.--John Foxe (talk) 10:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  McLellin collection 

message: While the Tanners did question the salamander letter's authenticity, I think it's a stretch to say they were critics of Hofmann himself.  Their publications reproduced many of Hofmann's claims; for example, his claim to have purchased the McLellin collection.  I've therefore narrowed the language dealing with the Tanners' skepticism and moved it into the section discussing the salamander letter.Mgy401 1912 (talk) 01:38, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but I've reduced the verbiage for stylistic reasons.--John Foxe (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Tanners 

message: While Hofmann claimed that the explosion that injured him was a suicide attempt, this claim should be taken with a grain of salt.  He may have made the bomb for other purposes, and merely mishandled it. (See Lindsey on this point.) I have therefore inserted the word “alleged” in
:Mark Hofmann accidentally destroyed the use of his forging hand during an alleged 1987 suicide attempt,
(and of course restored the moveable ‘n’ to “an”). —SlamDiego←T 21:17, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The suicide attempt in question was after conviction, with sleeping pills not the bomb.--John Foxe (talk) 21:20, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay.  My apologies. —SlamDiego←T 23:59, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem. The more I thought about it, the more reasonable your misunderstanding seemed; so I've added a quotation from Worrall to the footnote in an attempt to clarify the phrase.--John Foxe (talk) 13:46, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suicide attempt? 

message: Under the heading, Other Mormon Forgeries, it says that Gordon B. Hinckley was the leader of the church. He was not the president of the church at the time. Spencer W. Kimball was. Shoreu (talk) 03:32, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The phrase describing Hinckley is not "president" or "leader of the church" but "de facto head," which is true.--John Foxe (talk) 14:31, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if he was the was the de facto head at the time, then you're saying that the de facto head could have a leader in the same organization. Shoreu (talk) 23:08, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Right. Spencer W. Kimball was leader de jure. John Foxe (talk) 01:15, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error 

message: I would be curious to know just how much money he owed to people/how much debt he was in (seeing as this was apparently a/the major reason why he started murdering).  Also, who did he owe the money to???  Banks???  Mormons???  Thanks in advance to anybody that knows.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.142.17 (talk) 22:26, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Robert Lindsay, in 1985 Hofmann owed more than $415,000 (roughly $750,000 today) just to an investment group headed by Thomas Wilding.  He owed more money to the First Interstate Bank, coin dealer Alvin Rust, and the family from whom he was buying a $550,000 house.  A lot of his creditors were Mormons, but then of course, he was living in Salt Lake City as well as dealing in Mormon documents.--John Foxe (talk) 10:44, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: How much money did he owe?, and to whom did he owe it???

message: Let me deconstruct this edit:
"Prior to Lindsey's melodramatic description in his 1988 book"
:It's POV for you to say "melodramatic description." A cited authority could use those words but not one of us.--John Foxe (talk) 20:25, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Too many unessential words to be included in an article about Mark Hofmann. That's why the footnote was invented.--John Foxe (talk) 20:25, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

text: The only important idea here is that Oaks disputes the notion that the Church is restricting access to its archives. But because Oaks' opinion is not authoritative—that is, it is both "promotional" and non-peer-reviewed—it's only worthy of inclusion in a footnote as an apologetic offering of the LDS Church.--John Foxe (talk) 20:25, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Sah65|Sah65]]'s paragraph  

message: I'm assuming that Sah65 also made nine anonymous changes on August 22. I've reverted them and then added back some material from Turley.  Reasons for making changes should be described in edit summaries—of which anonymous gave none; it's polite to discuss major changes on the discussion page first; and it's considered bad form to use both a user name and an IP address to edit the same article.
I should also note at this point that although Richard Turley has written a peer-reviewed book about the Hofmann case published by the University of Illinois, he is a lawyer and the Assistant LDS Church Historian.  So if his take on the subject differs markedly from other sources, we will have to mention that he writes from an LDS POV.--John Foxe (talk) 11:51, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sah65(?) changes based on Turley 

message: According to a Deseret News article just posted today;
SALT LAKE CITY — For the past 27 years, historians have identified William Edwards as a participant in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. But forensic document examiners now say the 1924 affidavit that implicated Edwards is a forgery linked to convicted bomber Mark Hofmann.
The affidavit was part of a collection of documents acquired in 1983 by the Utah Division of State History. It purported to be a notarized affidavit of Edwards — a confession of sorts. Edwards allegedly stated in the affidavit that in Sept. 1857 he "accompanied about 30 men and older boys to Mountain Meadows where, we were told, an Indian massacre of an emigrant train had been consummated, and our services needed to bury the dead."
Philip F. Notarianni, state history director, said the affidavit was acquired either from Hofmann directly or from Lyn Jacobs who often represented Hofmann. It was sold or traded to the society with letters from historian Charles Kelly, a legal document signed by the outlaw Matt Warner, a document signed by Brigham Young and papers of the first non-Mormon mayor of Salt Lake City, Montgomery Scott.
Well,
It looks like a number of anti-Mormon writers are going to have to revise their books one more time.
Canadiandy1 (talk) 20:33, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I included a mention of this in a new paragraph about continuing Hofmann forgery discoveries.  I agree that this may require revision to some histories, but probably not very much.  As far as I have read, the forged affidavit doesn't make any controversial claims about the massacre or mention conspiracies or Brigham Young.  Also, this has been used pro-Mormon historians, including Massacre at Mountain Meadows, published in 2008 (see SLTrib article).  ——Rich jj (talk) 19:00, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  New evidence Forgery on Mountain Meadows Massacre attributed to Hofmann 

message: I was checking up on an unrelated news article when I spotted this. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52289687-75/hofmann-church-lds-recording.html.csp
Apparently Mark Hofmann recorded his own 1981 phone call that attempted to scam an LDS church though this article does not say what happened as a result of that forged document nor the scam attempt.
Also - are pictures one of which is a Utah State Prison fingerprint card for Mark Hofmann that shows the missing middle finger of his right hand. I know there was speculation which hand had been damaged in the explosion.  In the spot where that fingerprint should go is a note "Missing 2 joints" and also the note "Middle right finger missing." Oddly, while there is a fair amount of identifying information on the card they do not include his date of birth. The fingerprint card is signed "Mark W. H--Marc Kupper|talk" - is that a forgery? :-) --Marc Kupper|talk 20:15, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. I've added that information and a link to footnote 18 of the article.--John Foxe (talk) 20:38, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tape recording of attempt to sell an LDS document 

message: Given that we have an image of one of Hoffmann's forgeries in this article, and that this image was recently moved to Wikimedia Commons, is there any concern about the copyright status of the document depicted? The author of that material (Hofmann) is still living, and so presumably he could hold the copyright over the material. I don't know if forgeries (after they are exposed as such) are covered by copyright law; do we have an issue we need to be concerned about here? -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 19:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good question. I did a quick search of the document Copyright Law of the United States and didn't pull any results for forgery or forgeries. Forged pulled one unrelated result. I have no idea. Would the document perhaps fall under a fair use policy?~Adjwilley (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: He sold them to the mormon church, so he couldn't claim copyright over it. If anything, WP:MCQ is probably the correct place to discuss it. tedder (talk) 19:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct that he may have sold them to the LDS church, the problem is there is no evidence that the LDS Church or Mark Hoffman have released the image to the Public Domain.  The uploader clearly is not the copyright holder, therefore the image is not tagged properly (ie PD-self).  I have marked the image in commons as "No evidence of permission" and the image here as "Possible Un-free".  I will change the tag to the appropriate Fair-use tag, once the uploader gets a chance to comment, so I don't see the image getting deleted.--ARTEST4ECHO (talk/contribs) 19:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: A thank you to User:Trödel for fiuguring out the correct licensing.  While it wouldn't work on all "forgeries" it dose in this case.  Since it was first "published" in 1980 and the work was created without notice and without registration within 5 years of publication, the  dose apply in this case.--ARTEST4ECHO (talk/contribs) 14:17, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright on forgeries 

message: Can the infobox entry be amended so it is clear the dates 1979-1987 refer to the marriage to Doralee Olds "Dorie" Hofmann.
:See if you like what I've done to the infobox reference.--John Foxe (talk) 14:10, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Clearer now. Jackiespeel (talk) 09:25, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marriage 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 5 external links on Mark Hofmann. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100206195544/http://meridianmagazine.com/critics/081106sal.html to http://www.meridianmagazine.com/critics/081106sal.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080205124630/http://library.dixie.edu/info/Collections/truth/truth.htm to http://library.dixie.edu/info/Collections/truth/truth.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140310033033/http://signaturebooks.com/2010/07/the-william-e-mclellin-papers/ to http://signaturebooks.com/2010/07/the-william-e-mclellin-papers/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140403044421/http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/mormon_forgeries/index.html to http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/mormon_forgeries/index.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110930054604/http://media.bonnint.net/slc/2489/248933/24893332.pdf to http://media.bonnint.net/slc/2489/248933/24893332.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:26, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article says nothing about Hofmann's occupation prior to producing master forgeries. How did he support his family, how did he develop his forgery skills, and how did he learn how to make effective bombs? — BarrelProof (talk) 18:01, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The article notes that Hofmann became a rare book dealer almost immediately after getting married; and at least according to Hofmann, he had been forging and blowing things up since high school. John Foxe (talk) 19:49, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The article says he "dropped out of school and went into business as a dealer in rare books," but seems to say this happened after he created and sold a convincing forgery of the "Anthon Transcript". Before then it says only that he "enjoyed investigating bookshops and buying early Mormon material", but none of that seems to really explain how he learned how to make convincing forgeries. I would have guessed that becoming skilled in forgery would take a much more extensive amount of learning and training in the art. — BarrelProof (talk) 05:08, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pre-forgery background 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
* 
Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:23, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion