Image via Netflix
In 1988, an inmate at a maximum security prison in Utah sent a four-page letter to the state's Board of Pardons and Parole, in an attempt to explain himself and his crimes. "The most important thing in my mind was to keep from being exposed as a fraud in front of my friends and family," Mark Hofmann wrote. "When I say that this was the most important thing, I mean it literally: I felt like I would rather take human life or even my own rather than be exposed."In the next paragraph, Hofmann explained that he'd bought the components to build two pipe bombs "a week or two" before he put them in cardboard boxes and delivered one to a downtown office building, and the other to a local businessman's home. When both devices were detonated on the morning of October 15, 1985, they killed Steven Christensen, a Mormon bishop and document collector, and Kathy Sheets, who was married to Christensen's former boss. Murder Among the Mormons, a new three-part docuseries on Netflix, investigates the bombings and their absolutely gripping backstory, which involves the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the seemingly impossible discovery of dozens of historical documents, and perhaps the most talented forger who has ever lived—or at least who's ever been caught.VICE recently spoke with the series' co-directors, Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) and Tyler Measom (An Honest Liar), about Mark Hofmann, how his crimes affected the Mormon community, and whether it's possible to feel sympathy for a sociopath. (Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)
VICE: I'll admit that this was not a story that I remember hearing as a kid, maybe because I grew up on the east coast. It was all new to me, which made the series even more compelling.
Hess: Yeah, it's one of those stories, just the regional nature of it. At the time, it hit the national news cycle, and people knew about it. But within the community, people didn't really talk about it in the aftermath. There are a lot of surprises and details [in the documentary] and I think that people, even if they know the story, are shocked when they watch the piece.Tyler, I know you're originally from Utah, and some of your previous documentaries have also focused on the Mormon church. Did your history with, and as part of the church, inform your decision to tell this story?
Measom: Yeah, I grew up in Utah, Jared grew up in Idaho and we were both raised Mormon. We knew about it, and it was kind of this mythological story within the state. I was 14 years old when it happened, so it wasn't really something that I glommed onto at the time, but as I got older, the themes of belief and deception were something that really resonated with me. It's also just a hell of a story. I think any filmmaker would be happy to tell it, we just happen to be close enough to the subjects and the story itself that allowed us the opportunity to make this film.Hess: There are endless amounts of stories from people that dealt with Mark, but we just didn't have time for all of them in a three hour series. A few days ago, I was on a walk in my neighborhood and bumped into a neighbor who told me 'Oh yeah, I was the paperboy who delivered the newspaper to the Sheets' family on the morning of the bombings, and I got interviewed by the FBI.' So many people in the community have some kind of connection to the story, I feel like we could've done a 10-part series. Jared, how did you have to change your approach to work on a documentary, compared to working on a feature or a story that you'd actually written?
Hess: First of all, Tyler and I are huge true crime fans. There was so much research we had to do for this, I mean we've spent years just collecting materials. Tyler has gone to the [district attorney's] office and has gone through box after box after box of stuff. We really wanted to tell this story from the perspective of the people who lived it. Everybody experienced something different, and nobody was immune to Mark's deception. But the research was the big thing, just reading all the books and doing a deep dive into this whole world.Talking about the people who lived through it, were you surprised by how deeply hurt Mark's friends and business partners still were, some thirty years after the fact?
Measom: There is still a great deal of pain. The people in this community, I gotta say, are sometimes very trusting—often overly trusting—especially of their own. So I think they threw a lot of their faith into this one person. Despite his claims of such unbelievable finds, they believed him and didn't question him, ever. People lost their money, they lost their faith, and some lost their lives, or their family members did. But I think one thing that still holds is that they trusted him wholeheartedly, and when he betrayed them, that was really hard. That's obvious in some of the interviews in the series. It seemed like some people were still wrestling with what it said about them, that they'd allowed themselves to believe him.
Measom: Yeah, and what it said for their faith and their church, because Mark was part of that in many ways. I will say, we interviewed these individuals for hours, and most human beings aren't used to being listened to for hours on end without somebody responding with their own tale of woe. So when you're asking questions and genuinely listening to the answers, feelings can come out that these people haven't experienced in years, decades or maybe ever. We're on the receiving end of that, almost in a therapeutic manner, and it can be emotionally trying for us as well, to feel the empathy of what that person is going through, or went through at the time.But his forgeries were honestly mindblowing. It was just an astounding pre-internet, analog crime. It's difficult to think about pulling that off now, let alone in the 1980s when you couldn't access information about era-specific inks, document aging processes, and that kind of thing immediately.
Measom: Mark would spend hours upon hours researching his subjects, and his skill as a forger was remarkable. George Washington has the most forged signature in American history. Most people just find old paper and they sign his name, but Mark didn't just sign names. He created letters, entire documents and photographs. He wouldn't just write in [his subject's] handwriting style, he'd write in the lexicon of the times. He'd research how people spoke in 1814, and use that knowledge to make it authentic. In addition to that, he'd use the right ink, the right pen, the right paper and then he'd say he'd 'find their muse.' He spent a couple of hours reading Emily Dickinson poetry, then he 'found her muse,' sat down and wrote an entire poem that fooled Dickinson experts and handwriting experts, before selling for tens of thousands of dollars. He had a gift, and he was able to not only create those documents, but then he'd have this 'aw shucks, look what I found' attitude in selling them. That really was the whole package, as far as deception goes. It's remarkable how he did it.He seemed to enjoy sowing a bit of chaos, especially when it came to religion. It seemed like it ultimately became almost meaningless to him.
Hess: One of the fascinating things about Mark is that, at least within the Latter-day Saints faith, he would find some document that confirmed the faith, promoting history that had always been taught. Then he would discover something that really exploited their deepest fears, and then it was like a ping-pong match, between finds that promoted the testimony of Mormonism and something that was like a skeleton in the closet. He knew how to exploit the wants and the fears, I think, of members of the faith. Measom: He fooled the entire Mormon organization that he, a wolf in sheep's clothing, was trying to infiltrate, and he played the long game. He'd create a document, then four years later, come out with another document that verified that [previous] document. He had this unbelievable need to fool individuals and to gain pleasure in that. But he's also an unreliable narrator. It's hard not to kind of revere his artistry, his craft, and his skill in doing this. If Mark hadn't planted bombs, he'd probably be working for the FBI right now as a top forgery expert. It's hard to balance a reverence for his skill with the horrific things that he did. We tried to make the audience revere him just a touch—but they'd feel guilty for it.The guilt really hits when you listen to the interviews that he did with investigators, when he was so callous and casual about killing two people. Do you think he fits the criteria to be called a sociopath?
Hess: For me, it's just how heartless he was. You know, when he says it didn't matter if the bomb he left in Gary Sheets' driveway killed a child or a dog. That sums him up right there, he just didn't care. Whether that makes him a sociopath or just an evil person...that kind of sums it up right there. Did either of you find yourself feeling sympathetic towards him at all?
Measom: I've researched him like you wouldn't believe. I've ready his journals, his letters, and have done this massive timeline where I've tried to figure out every single day where Mark was. I've written him dozens of letters—hell, I wrote him one last night—but he's never responded. I don't even know if he's read them. But yeah, I do feel a little bit of sympathy for him, in that if he'd gone left instead of right at one moment, he could've used his skills for good. If Mark would've used the same brain, skill set, and creativity to fight crime instead of create it, then there would be a lot less pain and sorrow in the world. I feel bad that, at some point, he chose to go down the wrong path as opposed to the right one.Do you know if he's aware that this documentary has been made?
Measom: Yeah, I suspect he knows and that he's quite proud. In the letter I wrote to him yesterday, I literally said 'Mark, your story will be seen by more people in a week than ever. You will be known throughout the world.' It was a plea for me to try to talk to him, because I'd still love to get an interview with him. It's unlikely that he ever will [talk to anyone], because that's the only power that he has right now. He's the only one who really knows his secrets, and that's the only power he can wield from some small jail cell in the middle of Utah.If you ever did get to speak with him, what's the first thing that you'd ask?
Measom: Oh God, I want to hear the whole story. I just want to hear the whole thing from the beginning. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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VICE: I'll admit that this was not a story that I remember hearing as a kid, maybe because I grew up on the east coast. It was all new to me, which made the series even more compelling.
Hess: Yeah, it's one of those stories, just the regional nature of it. At the time, it hit the national news cycle, and people knew about it. But within the community, people didn't really talk about it in the aftermath. There are a lot of surprises and details [in the documentary] and I think that people, even if they know the story, are shocked when they watch the piece.
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Measom: Yeah, I grew up in Utah, Jared grew up in Idaho and we were both raised Mormon. We knew about it, and it was kind of this mythological story within the state. I was 14 years old when it happened, so it wasn't really something that I glommed onto at the time, but as I got older, the themes of belief and deception were something that really resonated with me. It's also just a hell of a story. I think any filmmaker would be happy to tell it, we just happen to be close enough to the subjects and the story itself that allowed us the opportunity to make this film.Hess: There are endless amounts of stories from people that dealt with Mark, but we just didn't have time for all of them in a three hour series. A few days ago, I was on a walk in my neighborhood and bumped into a neighbor who told me 'Oh yeah, I was the paperboy who delivered the newspaper to the Sheets' family on the morning of the bombings, and I got interviewed by the FBI.' So many people in the community have some kind of connection to the story, I feel like we could've done a 10-part series. Jared, how did you have to change your approach to work on a documentary, compared to working on a feature or a story that you'd actually written?
Hess: First of all, Tyler and I are huge true crime fans. There was so much research we had to do for this, I mean we've spent years just collecting materials. Tyler has gone to the [district attorney's] office and has gone through box after box after box of stuff. We really wanted to tell this story from the perspective of the people who lived it. Everybody experienced something different, and nobody was immune to Mark's deception. But the research was the big thing, just reading all the books and doing a deep dive into this whole world.
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Measom: There is still a great deal of pain. The people in this community, I gotta say, are sometimes very trusting—often overly trusting—especially of their own. So I think they threw a lot of their faith into this one person. Despite his claims of such unbelievable finds, they believed him and didn't question him, ever. People lost their money, they lost their faith, and some lost their lives, or their family members did. But I think one thing that still holds is that they trusted him wholeheartedly, and when he betrayed them, that was really hard. That's obvious in some of the interviews in the series. It seemed like some people were still wrestling with what it said about them, that they'd allowed themselves to believe him.
Measom: Yeah, and what it said for their faith and their church, because Mark was part of that in many ways. I will say, we interviewed these individuals for hours, and most human beings aren't used to being listened to for hours on end without somebody responding with their own tale of woe. So when you're asking questions and genuinely listening to the answers, feelings can come out that these people haven't experienced in years, decades or maybe ever. We're on the receiving end of that, almost in a therapeutic manner, and it can be emotionally trying for us as well, to feel the empathy of what that person is going through, or went through at the time.
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Measom: Mark would spend hours upon hours researching his subjects, and his skill as a forger was remarkable. George Washington has the most forged signature in American history. Most people just find old paper and they sign his name, but Mark didn't just sign names. He created letters, entire documents and photographs. He wouldn't just write in [his subject's] handwriting style, he'd write in the lexicon of the times. He'd research how people spoke in 1814, and use that knowledge to make it authentic. In addition to that, he'd use the right ink, the right pen, the right paper and then he'd say he'd 'find their muse.' He spent a couple of hours reading Emily Dickinson poetry, then he 'found her muse,' sat down and wrote an entire poem that fooled Dickinson experts and handwriting experts, before selling for tens of thousands of dollars. He had a gift, and he was able to not only create those documents, but then he'd have this 'aw shucks, look what I found' attitude in selling them. That really was the whole package, as far as deception goes. It's remarkable how he did it.
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Hess: One of the fascinating things about Mark is that, at least within the Latter-day Saints faith, he would find some document that confirmed the faith, promoting history that had always been taught. Then he would discover something that really exploited their deepest fears, and then it was like a ping-pong match, between finds that promoted the testimony of Mormonism and something that was like a skeleton in the closet. He knew how to exploit the wants and the fears, I think, of members of the faith. Measom: He fooled the entire Mormon organization that he, a wolf in sheep's clothing, was trying to infiltrate, and he played the long game. He'd create a document, then four years later, come out with another document that verified that [previous] document. He had this unbelievable need to fool individuals and to gain pleasure in that. But he's also an unreliable narrator. It's hard not to kind of revere his artistry, his craft, and his skill in doing this. If Mark hadn't planted bombs, he'd probably be working for the FBI right now as a top forgery expert. It's hard to balance a reverence for his skill with the horrific things that he did. We tried to make the audience revere him just a touch—but they'd feel guilty for it.
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Hess: For me, it's just how heartless he was. You know, when he says it didn't matter if the bomb he left in Gary Sheets' driveway killed a child or a dog. That sums him up right there, he just didn't care. Whether that makes him a sociopath or just an evil person...that kind of sums it up right there. Did either of you find yourself feeling sympathetic towards him at all?
Measom: I've researched him like you wouldn't believe. I've ready his journals, his letters, and have done this massive timeline where I've tried to figure out every single day where Mark was. I've written him dozens of letters—hell, I wrote him one last night—but he's never responded. I don't even know if he's read them. But yeah, I do feel a little bit of sympathy for him, in that if he'd gone left instead of right at one moment, he could've used his skills for good. If Mark would've used the same brain, skill set, and creativity to fight crime instead of create it, then there would be a lot less pain and sorrow in the world. I feel bad that, at some point, he chose to go down the wrong path as opposed to the right one.Do you know if he's aware that this documentary has been made?
Measom: Yeah, I suspect he knows and that he's quite proud. In the letter I wrote to him yesterday, I literally said 'Mark, your story will be seen by more people in a week than ever. You will be known throughout the world.' It was a plea for me to try to talk to him, because I'd still love to get an interview with him. It's unlikely that he ever will [talk to anyone], because that's the only power that he has right now. He's the only one who really knows his secrets, and that's the only power he can wield from some small jail cell in the middle of Utah.If you ever did get to speak with him, what's the first thing that you'd ask?
Measom: Oh God, I want to hear the whole story. I just want to hear the whole thing from the beginning. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.