Coming Soon, the Mormon Murders

On the morning of Oct. 15, 1985, two bombs claimed the lives of a Salt Lake City businessman and a devout Mormon housewife. Rumors of corporate fraud, death squads and religious wars swept the city as police geared up for the largest criminal investigation in the history of Utah.

--From the introduction to the book “A Gathering of Saints”

The Apostles of the Mormon Church, from within the fastness of Utah’s marble-draped Temple Square, are casting wary eyes toward Hollywood, hoping for the best but fearing the worst from a trio of productions built around the notorious so-called Mormon Murders.

As Salt Lake City already raged in controversy over two new and explosive books on the scandal, the projects began scrambling after the writers’ strike and roaring toward production--an ABC documentary, a CBS miniseries and a 20th Century Fox feature film.

Most sources within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints interviewed by Calendar acknowledged that their hierarchy is bristling over the very existence of the projects. Consider the background:

The bomb blasts in 1985 killed Kathy Sheets, wife of one of the Mormon community’s most successful businessmen, and his partner, financial whiz Steve Christensen. Two days later, Mark Hofmann, a church member noted for tracing long-lost writings of church founders, was seriously injured in a similar explosion. Both Christensen and Hofmann had contacts in the “Mormon Underground,” a group that investigated and questioned church history. Sheets’ husband had helped Christensen finance such inquiries; all three men were devout Mormons.

Or so it appeared. Hofmann, it was later discovered, had become deeply disillusioned with Mormonism as a teen-ager, but was unable to express his doubts to his Mormon fundamentalist father or his church community. Hofmann became a master forger, duping experts with his faked “early church documents” that struck at the very tenets of Mormon beliefs. Church officials have acknowledged paying huge sums to Hofmann for the incriminating documents to keep them from becoming public--in essence, a blackmail scheme.

But when his scam was threatened with exposure, Hofmann--by his own confession--planned the murders to draw suspicion away from himself (his own injuries may have been accidental when he dropped a bomb). According to two books on the case, the church hierarchy allegedly tried to dampen the subsequent investigation into church involvement, even to supress evidence. Police, politicians, church members and criminal suspects became entangled in a mystery that rocked Mormon-dominated Utah, a state settled by church leader Brigham Young, and the national Mormon community.

Despite the troublesome aspect of religious controversy, at least three screen projects are moving forward:

First out of the gate will be the Stephen J. Cannell Productions’ documentary, which will serve as the pilot for an ABC magazine series to be called “Scandals.” Cameras are set to roll in Salt Lake City shortly with an air date of mid-November.

Next up is “The Mormon Murders,” an $8-million, four-hour miniseries from Zev Braun Productions-New World Pictures. It is set to start filming in Utah the second week in January. It will be based partially upon the Steven Naifeh-Gregory White Smith book of the same name from Widenfield and Nicholson Publishers, New York.

The Fox film, “A Gathering of Saints,” is based on the Robert Lindsey book from Simon and Schuster. Being produced for the studio by veteran Laurence Mark, the film may begin shooting in late spring or early summer.

In the script by Tom Rickman (“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” the upcoming Jessica Lange film “Everybody’s All American”), the mixture of gullibility, fractured theology and scarred church history looks to be of equal importance with the depiction of the murders themselves. Rickman found himself fascinated by Hofmann’s attempts to, in effect, rewrite Mormon history: “Lindsey’s book is so rich in details of both the murder investigation and the story of the forgeries, and I hope to use both of these elements to depict the forger and his church.”

One of the more explosive elements of the case was Hofmann’s masterpiece of forgery, the “White Salamander Letter,” in which Hofmann substituted a devilish white salamander for the traditional divine angel as the messenger from Christ to Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Mormon brass seemed so uncertain of their historical origins that they almost stumbled over themselves trying to buy the document.

Quite naturally, Mormon authorities have taken a guarded attitude to the film projects. “We are aware of them and are watching very carefully,” said Richard P. Lindsay, director of communications for the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. “But it sounds like a return to the ‘Mormon bashing’ themes of the 1800s when the church was pilloried for sedition and anarchy.”

Other sources within the Mormon media establishment, which includes a newspaper and KLS, the CBS affiliate in Salt Lake, said the church already has begun a battle against what it believes is the most serious attack against the church since the polygamy controversy at the turn of the century.

“I would not be surprised to see Mormon pressure against various network sponsors,” said author Lindsey. “I know this has happened before when the church was outraged against an offensive segment of ’60 Minutes.’ ”

A longtime reporter at Salt Lake’s Mormon-owned Deseret News dismissed such drastic measures. “The church leaders are smart enough to know that such ‘banned in Boston’ tactics will only make the miniseries and the film all that more alluring--for Mormons and non-Mormons.” The journalist asked to remain anonymous for “obvious reasons.”

Church leaders, Utah officials and the men who prosecuted the murders agreed that the Naifeh-Smith book may have poisoned the waters for the Hollywood projects. In the book, now a runaway best seller in the state, the authors accuse the church of obstructing justice and of allowing a cold blooded murderer to escape the death penalty.

“The title alone, ‘The Mormon Murders--A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit and Death,’ tells you enough,” said Mormon Communications director Lindsay, one of the most powerful men in the far-flung devoted of about 4 million.

The church has embarked on a massive study of the books and news articles in an attempt to assemble a master list of errors, misquotes and exaggerations. “Our response to all the allegations made against the church will be made public in about 60 days,” Lindsay said.

The proposed miniseries has generated special fear and loathing--fear of the global consequences of a billion-viewer audience and loathing for the book that spawned it. Lindsay characterized it as “written with such a venom and such a bias that it is an insult to fair-minded Americans.”

The church already expressed its distaste by banning “Mormon Murders” from its own Deseret Bookstore while placing rather substantial orders for “Gathering of Saints.” (Although the Brigham Young University Bookstore in Provo carries both.)

Naifeh and Smith, both Harvard educated lawyers, said they interviewed more than 170 people and worked two years to fashion their portrait of an allegedly greedy, grasping and dishonest church leadership that, they say, severely obstructed justice by forcing prosecutors to accept a “sweetheart deal plea bargain.”

In the agreement, Hofmann was allowed to plead guilty to one capital homicide without the death penalty and two first degree frauds. He was sentenced to 15 years to life; the Utah Parole Board increased that punishment to life without possibility of parole.

“Mormon Murders” is also full of disgust for church control of Utah and rampant with nastiness toward the basic tenants of the religion--a message that has been pounded home by a combative press tour by the authors.

When Naifeh appeared at an annual symposium on Mormon affairs in Utah, Salt Lake’s U.S. attorney, Brent Ward, one of the book’s principal targets, leaped to his feet and screamed at the author, “I feel like the victim of a hit and run accident--felled by two Harvard hit men.” TV cameras captured the normally staid Ward as he lunged from the crowd toward the author.

Ward, along with Salt Lake County prosecutor Robert Stott, were characterized in the book as legal stooges for the church--the bag men who made certain that Mark Hofmann never went on trial. “Ward failed to file federal charges, and Stott, as county prosecutor, drug his feet until the last minute, making sure the case never came to trial,” said Naifeh.

U.S. Attorney Ward was still simmering over the book when interviewed by Calendar the other day. “This thing is really more like a historical novel than a work of journalism,” he said. “These guys fried me over my so-called political and religious ambitions. But I never heard of a prosecutor making political hay over not filing a case. Actually, I would love to have sunk my teeth into it, but, in order to do so, I would have botched up the state’s murder case.”

He’s even more stung by the Naifeh-Smith claim that he “didn’t think Mark Hofmann did it.” Said Ward, “I always thought he did it--from the very beginning. Ask my wife.”

He continued, “This is a vicious exploitation of the situation here to make a fast buck. But maybe those guys are right. This is a story of greed-- their greed.”

Stott, the man who engineered the plea bargain, was equally upset: “The Mormon Church had no role in the plea bargain. That book is a fantasy.”

Even county investigator Michael George, a non-Mormon, described the book as “a novel. It is unfair to call this nonfiction.”

But Naifeh welcomes the criticism: “The Mormon Church obstructed justice, and we told about it. Our book is argument enough for the separation of church and state; it may make it impossible for the Mormons to ever do this again.”

Sources at CBS and New World Pictures indicate that this slant, which so concerned the religious leadership, has been all but jettisoned by the producers.

Actually, the church was treated benignly by London screenwriter Derek Marlowe’s script. In a phone interview from Britain, Marlowe, author of “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles” and the upcoming “Jack the Ripper,” said that he hasn’t laid down the “law against the Mormon church. I don’t believe the church was guilty of complicity; they were guilty of falling for the ingenuousness of Mark Hofmann.”

Executive producer Zev Braun agreed: “The church was very much a victim. We have no intention of attacking that religion.”

But he didn’t disavow the book. “We simply concentrated on the murders and the subsequent investigation.” Producer James Keach said the real villain was a “dirty, murdering little bastard named Mark Hofmann. The church offers a panoramic background.”

Braun described the basic approach as “whodunit--prove it!”

In Salt Lake City, at least, the furor over the Naifeh-Smith book has all but buried Robert Lindsey’s elegantly written “Gathering of Saints,” perhaps the more balanced and dramatic of the two books.

“I went to Salt Lake City a month after the bombings to do a story for the New York Times Magazine,” said Lindsey, former West Coast bureau chief for the Times. “At that point, nobody was saying anything publicly. And there was a lot of tension surrounding the case.”

When he left to write the newspaper piece, Lindsey wasn’t thinking of a book. “Then Fox decided to buy the rights to my article, which they optioned, and hired me as a consultant. I owed Simon and Schuster a third book (following “The Falcon and the Snowman” and “Flight of the Falcon”). So I went ahead with the book.”

When the galleys of both books began circulating throughout Utah last May, one group of church scholars claimed to have found 150 errors in “Mormon Murders” but quibbled over but a half dozen points in “Gathering of Saints.”

A third book on the subject, “Salamander” by Utah authors--and Mormon church members--Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts, supposedly has so few errors that even the Apostles found themselves pleased (the scholarly book, much less sensational than the others, also is easiest on the church).

Published by the Mormon-oriented Signature Books of Salt Lake and weighing in at almost 600 pages, it even won faint praise from church spokesman Lindsay. “I can’t say I agree with the conclusions,” he said. “But it is hard to fault the research.”

“Salamander” peaked in sales before the other two books came out and failed to achieve national prominence. “We always knew that there would be other authors coming in,” said Sillitoe, alluding to the early start she and her co-author had on their book. “But we had the luxury of time and familiarity. We could step back and look at the culture.”

Braun told Calendar that he was considering optioning the third book for use as reference for the CBS miniseries.

Hollywood was rather slow on the option uptake. Other than a few nibbles for Mark Hofmann’s life story, producers dismissed the scandal at first as too parochial and confusing--enmeshed as it was in a forest of forged documents and obscure Mormon folklore. When author Lindsey arrived, he found that “hardly anybody was concerned with rights.”

Then Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Jones’ series, “Salamander,” ran on successive Sundays in the Times Sunday Magazine, setting off a storm.

Producers, directors and screenwriters descended on the Valley of the Great Salt Lake like waves of carpetbaggers. Homicide detectives and prosecutors were wined, dined and romanced. Suddenly, sources wanted to be paid. “These guys all thought they had won the lottery,” said Lindsey. “I told them point blank that I never pay. This disappointed all of them and shocked some of them.” He just smiled and waited for the furor to die down.

Eventually, city homicide detectives Ken Farnsworth and Jim Bell, who cracked the case, were offered about $100,000 each, they said. By then, they had both joined with seven other investigators and prosecutors in an unusual grass roots cartel to control the rights.

Hollywood had a choice; either buy all their stories or none. Orange County attorney Mark Rader was called in to handle the deal.

“They wanted their investigation portrayed in an honest and forthright manner,” said Rader, who negotiated a similar deal for cops involved in the Hillside Strangler case. After turning down one offer “because the producers wanted to change the story,” the packet of rights sold to producer James Keach for $315,000, or $35,000 for each of the men.

Rader was astounded. “I thought the package would go for $75,000 or $100,000 max.”

There were so many producers bidding on the rights that the cartel, led by Farnsworth, narrowed the field to half a dozen who were virtually “auditioned” by the nine police officers, who asked to see lists of credits and even looked at films produced by the aspirants. “They put me in a hotel conference room and grilled me for three hours,” said Keach. “They asked me about the films I had made and about my general philosophy before telling me that I was the right man for them.”

Soon after the deal, Arthur Axelman of the William Morris Agency, negotiated a deal, which paired the Keach project with the Zev Braun-CBS deal. Braun already had agreed to pay Naifeh and Smith $100,000 for the rights to the book. The rights to Jones’ “Salamander” article had also been bought by Keach and associate Diana Greenwood.

Thus, several of the men found themselves lumped in with a book they detested. Despite their deal with Rader and Keach, some of them wonder if they will have any real impact on the miniseries. “First you have control over a case, and then the authors come and take it all over,” said county investigator Michael George. “You just have to sit back and pray that they do a good job.”

Lindsey’s $300,000 deal with Fox was far less complicated. Having refused to pay for information, the author secured interviews with all the principles anyway. At this point, Fox has purchased no individual rights, and has no plans to do so.