[imagesource: Netflix]

Mark Hofmann is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished forgers in history.

He is especially noted for his creation of documents related to the origin story of the Latter-day Saints (LDS), or Mormon Church.

The most notorious of his forgeries was the White Salamander Letter.

It presented a view of LDS founder Joseph Smith’s life that was deeply at odds with the commonly accepted version of the early progression of the church that he established.

In the original telling, Smith recovered ‘golden plates’ from which he translated the Book of Mormon. In Hofmann’s version, he had been practising “money digging” through magical practices. It also replaced the angel that supposedly appeared to Smith with a white salamander.

This caused much debate in the Mormon community.

Then three bombs were detonated, killing two people and leaving one injured.

Murder Among the Mormons, a new true-crime documentary coming to Netflix, takes a deep dive into all of this.

Here’s Rolling Stone with a summary:

The three-part series explores the history of the Mormon community in Utah and the role that the infamous White Salamander Letter played in the bombings.

The injured victim of the bombing, Mark Hofmann, was a renowned collector of rare documents including the letter, worth a collective total of $1,5 million.

Collector of rare documents? With the info that you have on hand, you already know that this is going to be a wild ride.

Check out the trailer:

Catch it on Netflix from March 3.

[source:rollingstone]