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Re: archives mystery needed



> The Salt Lake City murders were done by forger Mark Hoffman, a Mormon lad
> disgruntled, in part, with the church and his dad. One of my favorite
> books of all times is "A Gathering of Saints" about this crime. In short,
> he set bomb packages, killing two people, one of whom was not the intended
> victim, but the spouse. And he engineered a similar bomb explosion, in his
> car, to make him appear as the next victim of this unknown killer.

I've never read A GATHERING OF SAINTS, but I'll agree with
Sharon up to the last sentence; the story I always heard about this
is that he had another bomb that he was taking over to the LDS
church office building but dropped it getting out of his car, setting it
off accidentally (they were motion-triggered).  Since he lost a
couple of fingers and was pretty badly injured by the blast (they
were deadly bombs, with nails and other anti-personnel features),
I've never heard that he did it on purpose.  He was parked at the
then-Deseret Gym, now the site of the Supernacle, only a block
from the LDS church HQ, when that happened.

This all happened just when I had been in Special Collections for
about a year or two, so we were right in the midst of it.  The FBI
subpoenaed our reading room registration book, interviewed the
staff, and on and on.  It was quite the introduction to the archives
world.

I was also curious about Sharon's comment on the book cover for
GATHERING...  so I walked down the hall and got it; can't say it
seems any great shakes, to tell the truth, just the spires of the
Mormon temple downtown in silouhette.  Maybe she had a different
edition.   I was also thinking that book was the Mormon apologia
written a few years later, but that's VICTIMS, by Randy Turley.


Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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