Mark Hofmann - Murders

Murders

Despite the considerable amounts of money Hofmann had made from document sales, he was deeply in debt, in part because of his increasingly lavish lifestyle and his purchases of genuine first-edition books. In an effort to clear his debts, he attempted to broker a sale of the "McLellin collection”—a supposedly extensive group of documents written by William E. M'Lellin, an early Mormon apostle who eventually broke with the LDS church. Hofmann hinted that the McLellin collection would provide revelations unfavorable to the LDS church. Unfortunately for Hofmann, he had no idea where the McLellin collection was, nor did he have the time to forge a suitably large group of documents. Those to whom Hofmann had promised documents or repayments of debts began to hound him, and the sale of the "Oath of a Freeman" was delayed by questions about its authenticity.

In a desperate effort to buy more time, Hofmann began constructing bombs. On October 15, 1985, he first killed document collector Steven Christensen, the son of a locally prominent clothier, Mac Christensen. Later the same day, a second bomb killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of Christensen's former employer. As Hofmann had intended, police initially suspected that the bombings were related to the impending collapse of an investment business of which Kathy Sheets' husband, J. Gary Sheets, was the principal and Christensen his protégé. The following day, Hofmann himself was severely injured when a bomb exploded in his car. Although police quickly focused on Hofmann as the suspect in the bombings, some of Hofmann's business associates went into hiding, fearing they might also become victims.