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Murder Among the Mormons

Elizah Huge

Respect All, Fear None
Contributor
Anyone watching this on Netflix?

Some extremely interesting information in the first episode alone. Former Jazz President Randy Rigby is a big part of the first episode.

Would love to discuss this if anyone else is watching or watched it.
 
Anyone watching this on Netflix?

Some extremely interesting information in the first episode alone. Former Jazz President Randy Rigby is a big part of the first episode.

Would love to discuss this if anyone else is watching or watched it.
I haven't watched it yet, but I will!

I really want an updated take on all that as I remember it vividly from my childhood. As I remember it, it was massive validation for my parents that leaving the LDS church had been the right move as this entire incident is, as I remember it, pretty damning for tip of the top of church leadership. Anyway, I want to start watching first because this is something that happened when I was very young and I want to see how it plays on Netflix and how it jives with my recollection.

P.S. I remember my parents getting a copy of "Tracking the White Salamander" which was not a professionally published book, at least as far as their copy went. It was almost like an underground thing in Utah that gave the "real" dirt on what went down.
 
I haven't watched it yet, but I will!

I really want an updated take on all that as I remember it vividly from my childhood. As I remember it, it was massive validation for my parents that leaving the LDS church had been the right move as this entire incident is, as I remember it, pretty damning for tip of the top of church leadership. Anyway, I want to start watching first because this is something that happened when I was very young and I want to see how it plays on Netflix and how it jives with my recollection.

P.S. I remember my parents getting a copy of "Tracking the White Salamander" which was not a professionally published book, at least as far as their copy went. It was almost like an underground thing in Utah that gave the "real" dirt on what went down.

That is extremely interesting! I would love to hear how it matches up with what you remember.

I never heard about this so it has piqued my interest. I grew up LDS because my parents are members of the LDS church and forced me to go while I lived in their house.

As soon as I turned 18 I moved out and got my own place and haven’t been to any church since. Being forced to go to church when you don’t want to can have a very negative affect on you mentally. On top of not believing in it at all and the ridiculousness of it all is not a great mix.
 
I am going to watch this
 
I was surprised to see Randy Rigby. One thing that often doesn't get mentioned is that Steve Christensen (one of the victims) was Mr. Mac's (the suit guy) son. One of Steve Christensen's sons served in my mission a few years before I did, and was still pretty close with our neighbor (who had joined the church after living next door to the missionaries), so had heard a lot about this.
 
So what is the general story, I guess that isn't enough for me to prompt my memory.

Edit: Never mind I googled it. It is the Mark Hofmann bombings.

I will tell you the mormon explanation for the document side of this. It is the fact that the church is still run by human beings, and as human beings they want validation, as we all do. So when something like this comes up the human side will want find something to believe in it. Same goes for the opponents of the church. They are excited to see things proven wrong. So even when the documents were shown to be false, simply the fact that the leadership of the church become so interested in the documents which are shown to be forgeries cause people to point to that as the unassailable evidence the church is a fraud, since they were duped, but in the end everyone was duped. And since the church is still run by humans, they are subject to dupery (is that a word?) like everyone else is. So the church stance most often is that the divine nature of the church and its mission is not changed simply because the leadership occasionally fall to normal human temptations, as humans are wont to do. And God planned for all this as he knew he was entrusting his church to mere humans, and so the flaws of the latter are accounted for in the teachings and governance of the organization.

One way to look at this is that our system of government in America is great, and resilient, and overall generally effective in maintaining our unique democracy. Revered by many, if not most. Recently we had members of that leadership go astray, and support someone who didn't uphold the values we all associate with our republic. They even defended a group that stormed the capitol and ended in deaths there. Does this mean that the entire institution is now "false" and needs to be torn down? Do we need to help people escape America since the leadership is shown to be fallible? No, the organization can weather this storm, and in the end the ship will be righted.

The mormons view this much the same way. The base organization is good and right, even when the people in it are behaving, well, like humans.

In a nut shell anyway.
 
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So what is the general story, I guess that isn't enough for me to prompt my memory.
A master of forgeries forges documents about the church that even the best can't detect as forgeries. Then when he realizes that his documents are bringing unwanted scrutiny upon him he decides try to suppress his own documents by using bombs to blow people up and murders a couple of people. And also blows himself up with his own bomb by accident.

One of the documents he created contradicted the teaching of the church about how joseph smith found and translated the book of mormon. His self created document said that a salamander transformer into a spirit and then gave him a seer stone or something. The documents were so well done that some church leaders actually started using them as doctrine.



At least that's what I think it's about. I could be wrong though as I haven't watched it yet.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using JazzFanz mobile app
 
A master of forgeries forges documents about the church that even the best can't detect as forgeries. Then when he realizes that his documents are bringing unwanted scrutiny upon him he decides try to suppress his own documents by using bombs to blow people up and murders a couple of people. And also blows himself up with his own bomb by accident.

One of the documents he created contradicted the teaching of the church about how joseph smith found and translated the book of mormon. His self created document said that a salamander transformer into a spirit and then gave him a seer stone or something. The documents were so well done that some church leaders actually started using them as doctrine.



At least that's what I think it's about. I could be wrong though as I haven't watched it yet.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using JazzFanz mobile app
Yeah, I edited my post when I saw it was the Hofmann bombings.
 
I watched the first episode. It was more of an overview and timeline of events. Looking forward to the next two episodes. Hopefully they do a deep dive into how he was able to pull off such convincing forgeries.
 
I watched the first episode. It was more of an overview and timeline of events. Looking forward to the next two episodes. Hopefully they do a deep dive into how he was able to pull off such convincing forgeries.
According to a few reviews I read that is the bigger focus of the thing. I am going to watch it over the weekend probably. Sounds interesting.
 
I was aware of the White Salamander Letter before I watched this doc. But I hadn’t ever heard the full plot.
This is definitely a must-see for anyone with a Utah and/or Mormon background.
 
Good doc.
Rigby ftw
I’ll admit, he looked a bit different, and somehow sounded smarter (or less clueless), and like someone you’d take seriously, much more so than anything I ever heard came out of his mouth or body language during his entire Jazz tenure.
 
I’ll admit, he looked a bit different, and somehow sounded smarter (or less clueless), and like someone you’d take seriously, much more so than anything I ever heard came out of his mouth or body language during his entire Jazz tenure.
Honestly, since it could’ve been him that picked up the package—and now that I know he’s lived his life knowing just that—I’ve started feeling bad about all my Rigby jokes.
 
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So what is the general story, I guess that isn't enough for me to prompt my memory.

Edit: Never mind I googled it. It is the Mark Hofmann bombings.

I will tell you the mormon explanation for the document side of this. It is the fact that the church is still run by human beings, and as human beings they want validation, as we all do. So when something like this comes up the human side will want find something to believe in it. Same goes for the opponents of the church. They are excited to see things proven wrong. So even when the documents were shown to be false, simply the fact that the leadership of the church become so interested in the documents which are shown to be forgeries cause people to point to that as the unassailable evidence the church is a fraud, since they were duped, but in the end everyone was duped. And since the church is still run by humans, they are subject to dupery (is that a word?) like everyone else is. So the church stance most often is that the divine nature of the church and its mission is not changed simply because the leadership occasionally fall to normal human temptations, as humans are wont to do. And God planned for all this as he knew he was entrusting his church to mere humans, and so the flaws of the latter are accounted for in the teachings and governance of the organization.

One way to look at this is that our system of government in America is great, and resilient, and overall generally effective in maintaining our unique democracy. Revered by many, if not most. Recently we had members of that leadership go astray, and support someone who didn't uphold the values we all associate with our republic. They even defended a group that stormed the capitol and ended in deaths there. Does this mean that the entire institution is now "false" and needs to be torn down? Do we need to help people escape America since the leadership is shown to be fallible? No, the organization can weather this storm, and in the end the ship will be righted.

The mormons view this much the same way. The base organization is good and right, even when the people in it are behaving, well, like humans.

In a nut shell anyway.

I wasn't really aware of things at the time, but from what I've read and thought about it since, that seems like a really accurate description.
 
Interestingly, half of the episodes are directed by Jared Hess, the Napoleon Dynamite super and director.
 
Ok just finished the first episode. I thought it was really well done! Looking forward to the rest.
 
Dude was a master forger at least at the time. Crazy how good he was at mimicking hand writing.
 
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