Welcome and Introducing Jared and Tyler

John Dehlin [00:00:00] And today for me is like the super bowl of Mormon podcasting. Mormon Stories podcasting. I was joking with my two guests today that other than like Donny Marie Osmond, the late Paul Dunn, you know, Stephen Barb Young, maybe Dan Reynolds, you know, one of the apostles, these are two dudes that I am just so super excited to have on Mormon Stories podcast. I present to you today Jared Hess and Tyler Meesum, the Donnie and Marie of Ding Dongs.

Tyler Measom [00:00:36] I'm a little bit country, you're a little bit rock and roll.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] These dudes are super cool in their own right. Tyler will be no stranger to you, who have been Mormon Stories fans for years. Tyler's the director of Sons of Perdition, a documentary about the lost boys of the FLDS church. He is the director, writer, whatever, producer of An Honest Liar about the amazing Randy, who really recently passed away. This year he did amazing. An amazing doc on mtv, which we did a little screening for Pre Covid, which was fun. And. And of course he is the co director of the amazing Murder among the Mormons. So, Tyler Meeson, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast.

Tyler Measom [00:01:23] Thanks, John.

Jared Hess [00:01:24] This is my.

Tyler Measom [00:01:24] My third go around, so by this time maybe I'll have the right answers for you.

John Dehlin [00:01:29] That's great to have you. It's an honor. And I've been. I've been kind of cyber buds and occasionally hanging out with with Jared Hess. Jared Hess is probably most known worldwide. He broke onto the scene as the writer, producer, director, etc of Napoleon Dynamite along with his amazing partner, Jerusha Hess. But he's. He's directed many cool films in. In Hollywood, probably too many to mention, but Don Verdine, the one with Jack Black, Nacho Libre, so. And he's doing amazing things on HBO and with Netflix. But he is the co director of this amazing, groundbreaking global phenomenon that is Murder among the Mormons, which is a documentary about Mark Hoffman, bomber and forger Mark Hoffman, Jared Hess, John De Lynn.

Jared Hess [00:02:27] It's an honor to be here. Especially he doesn't tell people that he shoots in an alley. There's like bricks behind us. You know, we're in the streets.

John Dehlin [00:02:37] It's true.

Jared Hess [00:02:38] This is hard.

John Dehlin [00:02:38] These are real bricks. These are real bricks. Just like the Salamander letter was a real letter. So. All right, so I'm just thrilled to have you guys here. We've spent hours with Tyler hearing his story. So Tyler, if you don't mind, I just want to take a couple minutes and Jared, can we begin by just having you tell the audience a little bit? Whatever you want. To tell about your Mormon story. It's not the focus today.

Jared Hess [00:03:04] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] But what do you want to tell about your Mormon story? Just to begin.

Jared Hess [00:03:07] Golly, my Mormon story. Oh, geez. I better turn off my phone.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] That's good. It makes it real. It's keep. We're keeping it real here.

Jared Hess [00:03:13] That was a text from Satan. He's trying to interrupt the conversation. Gosh, my. More so I was, you know, I come from a long line of hearty pioneer stock. Love my, you know, Mormon ancestry and heritage and all that good stuff. My mom and dad were both raised in the church. Have incredible grandparents, you know, my dad, at age, Gosh, in his early 30s, was the Bishop of the Hyde Park Ward in London, where we lived growing up. He passed away shortly thereafter, and then my mom remarried my stepdad. Amazing man who just passed away last year, but raised in the church. I served a mission in Venezuela.

Jared Hess [00:04:04] I got hernias, had to go home. Then I was reassigned to Chicago. So it was a year in Venezuela. You're in Chicago Spanish speaking. Had an amazing experience. Incredible mission presidents. Yeah, just. Just. Yeah. Loved it all. Met my wife Jerusha, at byu. The guy that plays Kip in Napoleon Dynamite. Aaron Rule. I introduced him to his amazing spouse, UKA Rule, and they introduced me to Jerusha when I got home from my mission. So they returned the fave, and. And then Dhrush and I studied film at byu. We wrote Napoleon Dynamite, and then with a bunch of our fellow film students, went up to Idaho for a month and shot it.

Jared Hess [00:04:50] And then I got into Sundance and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and just kind of launched everybody's career that worked on it. We have two biological kids together. That sounds weird. And then two adopted. We have a daughter that is African American that we adopted here in the United States, and then we have a son with down syndrome that we adopted from Bulgaria. So we have this incredibly fun family.

Jared Hess [00:05:20] And what else? Mormon stuff. Gosh. I have a very, I think, affectionate and complex relationship to the faith. And I guess we could talk about that later or whenever. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:05:39] Okay. Well, thanks, Jared. And it's so great. It's so great to have you on. And I just have so much respect for both of you. So, so many things to cover today. And I think what I'd like to begin with is asking each of you about your respective interests and in Mormon history, because I. I sense that this didn't come out of the blue for you guys, that both of you had an interest in Mormon history before you Ever got interested in this film. So you want to go first, Tyler?

Guests' Backgrounds and Mormon Upbringings

Tyler Measom [00:06:12] Well, sure. I mean, yeah. I was raised as a Mormon here in Utah for the most part. Grew up in California. Then like all good Mormon Californians, they gravitate towards Utah at some point. So I grew up in Pleasant Grove.

Tyler Measom [00:06:26] I went on a mission, Missouri Independence. I didn't have hernias, so I stayed in Missouri Independence, mostly Kansas and Nebraska, which wasn't terrible. I learned the language, which was helpful. Later, I then came home. I consequently left the faith after studying and reading and learning a bit more about Mormon history, which was really one of the things that broke the camel's back for me, or the shelf, as it may be.

Tyler Measom [00:06:58] And I think the thing that really hurt me and made it difficult for me to retain my faith was the Book of Abraham. And I read Martha Beck's book, and I remember reading about the Book of Abraham, Pearl of great price. And I literally got this feeling in my stomach of, oh, my goodness, I have been deceived.

Tyler Measom [00:07:23] And because I felt deceived, I deceived others while I was on my mission. And that set me forth on this kind of path of making these stories about deception and about religion and about faith and belief and why we believe certain things. And that was part of Sons of Perdition and part of An Honest Liar and a part of a big part of Murder among the Mormons, which I hear is really good. Have you seen it? I've only been watching Game of Thrones, so I don't.

John Dehlin [00:07:48] Wasn't it, like, top couple movies in the world on Netflix for at least a week or two?

Tyler Measom [00:07:53] Yeah, we held number two for a while anyway. So, of course I have an interest in Mormon history because. And I also have an interest in American history and Western history, and, you know, Mormon history is all of those things. And it's interesting characters and fascinating humans and belief and murder and greed and sex and death and polygamy. I mean, it's all those things.

Tyler Measom [00:08:21] And one of those important and interesting topics was, of course, Mark Hoffman. And so I knew of it somewhat as a growing up. I grew up here in Utah. But I can't say I really, when it happened, knew too much about it or follow it, followed it as much.

Tyler Measom [00:08:38] And then a number of years ago, probably four or five, five years ago, Doug Fabrizio, the host of Radio West. Hi, I'm Doug Fabrizio. Welcome to Radio West. And he gave me a book and said, you should make a documentary about Mark Hoffman. And I read it and I said, oh, My God, of course I should try and make this documentary. And that said, that started the path.

John Dehlin [00:09:05] Yeah. Brilliant. Thanks, Tyler. And. And Jared, when I first met you, I was surprised you're not just, like, you know, study Mormon history kind of in a passe way.

Tyler Measom [00:09:16] You.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] You spent a lot of time at Benchmark Books for years before I ever met you. You were really into Mormon history. If I. If I'm right.

Jared Hess [00:09:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:25] You want to talk about that at

Jared Hess [00:09:26] all or love to bro down with cardi B.

Tyler Measom [00:09:29] Benchmark Books.

Jared Hess [00:09:31] Go splurge on some treats. Yeah, I mean, I just love Mormon history and I, you know. You know, I think it's funny. One of my good friends had started to read Rough Stone Rolling right when it came out and was like, dude,

John Dehlin [00:09:45] you gotta read this.

Jared Hess [00:09:47] And I did. And I was like, man, this is a trip. I'd never heard of any of this stuff. So that just kind of launched me on the quest for Mormon weirdness as it relates to history. And I've just become obsessed with it, I think, for the last 15 years or so. So most of the stuff I buy is really, like, fun fringe Mormon history. I love reading about all the weird groups that broke off and started their own thing. It's endlessly fascinating to me.

Tyler Measom [00:10:19] Yeah, I think you got on a Strangite kick for a while, didn't you?

Jared Hess [00:10:23] Oh, the Strangites.

Tyler Measom [00:10:24] Strangites.

Jared Hess [00:10:25] James Strang. He's a real winner. Love reading about, like, Joseph and the Morris or Joseph Morris and the Morites.

Tyler Measom [00:10:33] That's a good band. Sounds like a. Yeah,'60s pop.

Jared Hess [00:10:37] No, but I mean, just all of it. And I think it's. It's, you know, once you start becoming incredibly entertained with that kind of stuff, it's like the story of Mark Hoffman. There's nothing more complex and interesting and fascinating and weird. And ultimately, it's a story about nerds, right?

John Dehlin [00:10:56] It is.

Jared Hess [00:10:57] That's very.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] Are you guys nerds? Do you think of yourselves?

Tyler Measom [00:11:01] I think Jared's more nerdy than I. Tyler's a hunk. I still hang out that I sit at the jocks table.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] Jared, don't you live in Leonard Arrington's old house? Did I get that right?

Jared Hess [00:11:13] Do.

John Dehlin [00:11:14] That's pretty cool. That's a little nerdy.

Jared Hess [00:11:16] Super nerdy. We still get many mail from the VA to Leonard, and it feels very sacred. So I don't throw it away. I just hang on to it. No, yeah, yeah, we do. We live in Leonard Arrington's old home. And it was funny. Some of the older People that lived next door, I'd be like, tell me stories about Leonard. I want to know about Leonard. And they said that every afternoon he was on his back porch clicking away on a typewriter, just writing his latest masterpiece. So it's kind of cool.

John Dehlin [00:11:47] Dude's a legend.

Jared Hess [00:11:48] Dude's a legend. I keep hoping to find, like, some secret stash of plates or something in the backyard. If I go digging around, he's going to find a treasure, some treasures.

Previous Attempts to Document the Hoffman Case

John Dehlin [00:12:02] Okay, so really quickly. I remember talking to you guys about this at one point, and also maybe an interview recently did. It's not like this story. People haven't tried to tell the story before. Anything you guys want to say on prior attempts to make this documentary? You know, we're talking about.

Tyler Measom [00:12:18] Oh, yeah, you know, as we dug deeper into the film and years later, fast forward years later, I got a big box of materials from Hoffman and, you know, from Ken Farnsworth, one of the detectives. And in there was this folder, and Ken Farnsworth had kept everything from the case. And in there was a folder of all of the movie rights that had been attempted to buy for this film and the documentaries. And I also was able to get a hold of a great deal of Mark Hoffman's mail and letters to him, and a lot of them were, Hollywood, we want to make your movie.

Tyler Measom [00:12:53] We want to tell you movie. Can we interview you? Can we make a documentary? Can we make it? So just the ones I am aware of, there's dozens and dozens. The bombs were barely cleaned up when Hollywood came knocking. In fact, Mark, before he was incarcerated, had mentioned that Hollywood is interested to Shannon, that Hollywood is interested in the movie rights. By the way, if you haven't seen the film yet or the series, you should probably watch it before you listen to this podcast, because spoiler alert. Unlikely that people haven't. But just to let you know, go ahead and watch it and then come back.

Tyler Measom [00:13:31] So, yes, a number of people tried to make this story, and it's a complex difficulty, you know, interesting story. And a few entities had made this story, and most of them were, like, really, really poor in investigation discovery. Really bad. Like TV movies that would come in for a week and they'd interview two or three people, and then they try and tell this insanely complex story with vast, rich history and inside characters. They try to tell it in 30 minutes cheaply. And we watched a number of those, and by and large, they're horrible. Some of them are laughably horrible.

Jared Hess [00:14:08] Well, I thought they were pretty cool. Tyler, if I'm Being honest, some of the recreations were off the charts stellar. Like, the guy playing Hoffman was just like a handsome devil. Like really tall and svelte. He's like, honey, we did it.

John Dehlin [00:14:23] Look what I found.

Jared Hess [00:14:24] I found the Anthon transcript. We did it.

Tyler Measom [00:14:27] They're gonna buy it, honey. Can you believe that? I'll have to dig those up. I should dig those clips up. And they're good.

Jared Hess [00:14:34] We should get them to you.

Tyler Measom [00:14:35] Really great. We aimed high.

Jared Hess [00:14:36] Good. And then the editor is like, oh, boy. Mark just came into some sick cash.

Tyler Measom [00:14:44] So we were lucky not to make those stories. Look, winging a documentary or getting any project off the ground is difficult. It's years. And, you know, even if you're seasoned filmmakers like Jared and I, it's still hard to get it off the ground. And Jared and I spent. Well, we can go into how we kind of knew each other and met our. Our. Our romance story bromance story.

John Dehlin [00:15:12] Go for it.

How Jared and Tyler Came to the Project

Jared Hess [00:15:13] Well, I was working as a camera assistant at byu and Tyler was a very hot director at the time and he was directing a music video for

Tyler Measom [00:15:23] a boy band, a Mormon boy band.

Jared Hess [00:15:25] And I was a. I was the focus puller. So I was the camera assistant. So there were probably a lot of unintentionally out of focus shots that are. That blood is on my hands. I'm sorry if that.

Tyler Measom [00:15:36] So Tyler ruined Jericho Rhodes career.

John Dehlin [00:15:39] So Tyler said, jared, hold my Diet Coke, basically. And you would care. You were a Sherpa. You were.

Tyler Measom [00:15:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:44] You're basically Tyler Sherpa.

Jared Hess [00:15:46] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:48] You've done well since, though, Jared.

Jared Hess [00:15:49] I've done. Done a lot of camera assistant work. Did not transition into other gigs because I was terrible. I was a grip and I pulled a focus on like Drew. And I worked on the singles award films because we were film students at BYU and they didn't have any money. So it's like, who can we train that won't ruin the film? And I mean, if you look at that, there are some horribly out of focus shots that I'm exclusively responsible for.

Tyler Measom [00:16:20] There are some entity people who are just their. Their grips and camera assistants. And that's great. I don't think Jared and I ever fell into that. I gripped for a long time.

Jared Hess [00:16:27] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [00:16:28] And one day I remember I was getting on a plane to LA and I had a girlfriend out there and I was going to see. And we're. We. I saw you. We chatted for a while, then we sat next to each other. And you're like, I'm going to la. I'M doing this stupid little movie that I'm finishing up, and that was of Napoleon Dynamite. And we went to a movie that night. We went and saw Errol Morris, Fog of War.

Jared Hess [00:16:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] Such a good movie.

Tyler Measom [00:16:52] It's such a great movie. And I was dating an actress at that time, and Jared and her Matt. She's just like this comedic actress who was great. So we, we went to, went to movie, I think. And then I think we just kept kind of bumping into each other over the number of years.

Jared Hess [00:17:08] Right, right.

Tyler Measom [00:17:08] And when I had this project, the Hoffman story, and I had done some research and I, I, I said, I'm going to just shoot it. I, I had a break between my MTV film where contracts were taken. I said, to hell with it. I'm just going to go shoot this. So I went and shot Brent Ashworth. I shot like four or five interviews and I raised some Metcalf.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] Metcalf?

Tyler Measom [00:17:27] No, I didn't shoot Metcalf. I shot like, Brent Ashworth. I went out to la. I interviewed Al Rust, Ken Rendell, who actually was not in the film. A guy named Elwyn Doubleday, who sold Mark the letter that supposedly became Salamander Letter. I interviewed a number of people. I said, I'm gonna cut a sizzle. And then from a mutual friend of ours, Duff Rich, I saw him, I bumped into him and I said, I'm doing this. And he goes, oh, my God, you got to talk to Jared. Jared's like obsessed with his story. And so we met for sushi. That's your cue to.

John Dehlin [00:17:57] Oh.

Jared Hess [00:17:57] Oh, geez, the hand.

John Dehlin [00:17:58] Is that the same place I met you for sushi?

Jared Hess [00:18:00] Probably.

John Dehlin [00:18:01] Okay.

Jared Hess [00:18:01] It's real good.

John Dehlin [00:18:02] This is super good.

Jared Hess [00:18:03] Hi, Sushi. Yeah, yeah, we met for sush. And then, yeah, at the end of it, after four tall glasses of Diet Coke, it was like, let's do it. Let's join forces. Let's start writing Hoffman letters together.

Tyler Measom [00:18:22] And then we did that. Hoffman Shannon Flynn handshake hand, the arm clasp. That was it.

Jared Hess [00:18:28] And that was it.

Tyler Measom [00:18:29] But then we, we, we cut the sizzle together and then we just, we took it out. Like, we just took it and we went to LA and we pitched it to every entity, and then we went to New York and we pitched to every entity and we had, we had a great sizzle. And one day I'll let people watch it because it's actually a really good sizzle. And a sizzle is basically a trailer you make that kind of says, this is what the film's going to be. About, and it's essential in today's documentary making world.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] Right.

Tyler Measom [00:18:58] And we got nowhere, we got passes. Everyone turned it down.

Jared Hess [00:19:01] Yeah. It wasn't right. It was weird. Like, the zeitgeist for it was kind of wrong. It was kind of this weird thing. But we kept pushing it and then it's like, oh, the biggest place on the planet wants it. You know, as far as streamers go.

Getting Netflix On Board

Tyler Measom [00:19:14] Even though Netflix turned it down previously, initially.

Jared Hess [00:19:17] But it was, yeah, it was weird. I think, like, the people there at the time were kind of on their way out. Like, when we pitched it, it was like they were already leaving the company to go somewhere else. So it was, it was just weird. The timing wasn't right. And then what made it pop? Well, I think it was just, it's like you only need one home for it. Right. And the BBC heard about it. Tyler, like, pitched it to BBC America,

Tyler Measom [00:19:41] who's a good friend of ours, introduced us to Alejandro Melendez, who's a former Utahan as well. And I believe he's, he's actually a Mormon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he loved the story. He came on.

Jared Hess [00:19:51] Right. And so we partnered with BBC and then went out with it again.

Tyler Measom [00:19:54] And they brought in Joe Berlinger, which is a big deal.

Jared Hess [00:19:57] Totally Joe Berlinger. He directed the Ted Bundy tapes, the Paradise Lost series. I mean, just, just kind of a legend, true crime documentary filmmaker. So he joined the party, vouched for us, and then we went out again and Netflix was like, let's go. And by that time, Netflix had a totally different group of executives. So that, you know, I think that that changed things a little.

Tyler Measom [00:20:21] Yeah, I think true crime was a little more interesting. It was hot at that point.

Jared Hess [00:20:24] So.

Tyler Measom [00:20:25] But we, that was, that was three, three years of us trying to push that boulder up the hill.

John Dehlin [00:20:31] Before you pitched this for three years.

Tyler Measom [00:20:33] We create, we work.

Jared Hess [00:20:35] I would say two years.

Tyler Measom [00:20:36] Oh, yeah.

Jared Hess [00:20:36] Two years of pitching.

John Dehlin [00:20:37] That's so cool.

Tyler Measom [00:20:39] Yeah, it's good.

Jared Hess [00:20:40] You just, you know what? Every film, you just need one home for it. That's all that you need. And some, you know, you'll get passes all over the place, but it just, it needs to connect with, like, one set of people and then you're good.

Tyler Measom [00:20:54] There's a bit of vendetta. I, I, I'm used to getting no's and we're used to no's in this industry. It just happens. And, and, and I kind of relish them in some ways because for, for, for me and, you know, Jared's the same way. Jared like, puts a lot into it. He doesn't. We don't go into anything half ass.

Tyler Measom [00:21:12] But if I'm going to pitch something and if they say no, I just feel like it's on them. Like, I never want to walk out of a pitch and go, I flubbed that. I threw an 85 mile an hour fastball down the middle.

Tyler Measom [00:21:24] I want to say that I did everything I could and if they turned it down, it's because they made a mistake. And so there was this always, like when they passed, I was like, okay, I'm going to keep making this and you're going to watch it and you're going to go, I made a mistake in turning that down. So we were driven to make this story.

John Dehlin [00:21:41] Yeah, I love it. So, Tyler, you may not want to talk about this and you just say, I don't. I have nothing to say about that. But I remember talking to you very, very early on and your goal was to get Mark, but then if you couldn't get Mark, you had some creative ideas of what to do. Now, if you. If you don't want to talk about that, you don't have to. But I wanted to ask you if you wanted to talk about it.

Tyler Measom [00:22:04] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:22:04] Look, look, do you know what I'm talking about?

Tyler Measom [00:22:06] Yeah. And every film goes from such a.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] Some sock puppets.

Tyler Measom [00:22:13] That's actually not a bad idea. The Mark Hoffman saga told two sock puppets.

Jared Hess [00:22:20] Brent, buy this document.

Tyler Measom [00:22:23] Okay, so, no, look, every film goes through various incantations, incarnations. You always want it to be this version, and then it ends up being something else. And I think I'm glad I didn't do it this aspect. But it was very much kind of a. Initially, it was kind of a. A Joseph Smith, Mark Hoffman hybrid where we kind of told the story of Joseph Smith and Mark Hoffman and they almost made appearances, both talking to each other in some aspects and trying to do something very bold and very creative and very unique. And shortly I just learned, like, that's not, you know, there's enough in the Mark Hoffman story because everybody, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:23:06] You probably got sick of people going, make the next going clear. Make the next going clear. You know what I mean? I remember talking to you about that and you're like, that movie's already been done. You know what I mean?

Tyler Measom [00:23:15] Yeah. And look, I don't. The Mark Hoffman story is so much of Mormonism in so many ways. It is the culture of Utah. It is a history of Mormonism. It is greed, it is deceit. It is, you know, the history of America. In many ways, as Mark found, the oath of a free man, it is such this big story that to clutter it anymore and to make it like an X or anti Mormon movie is it would just be betraying the actual reality of what the story is.

John Dehlin [00:23:51] Yeah. And would limit it. Limit the people who know the story, Right?

Tyler Measom [00:23:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jared Hess [00:23:56] And I think it's like you don't want to do the audience's work for them. And anytime that there's such a strong, preachy point of view that's telling the audience exactly what to think, it's so boring. I think people, you know, get tired of being almost talked down to in that respect. So for me, it's like any analogy or any parallels or connections people make, it's like, let the audience do that. Just tell the story as it is. And we, you know, again, we wanted to let people that lived it, that were connected to Mark, that experience this stuff firsthand be able to tell their story.

Jared Hess [00:24:35] And to us that was the most impactful thing. I mean, you know, it's one thing to be able to read about it in a book, but that, you know, to hear and see Brent Metcalf kind of relive and regurgitate these horrific moments that he lived through and hear and see the emotion on his face is like, man. I mean, and for Dory and for Al, Russ, like everybody involved. So that was the intent again, is to like let people tell their story and have us kind of stay out of the way.

Jared Hess [00:25:06] But again, I think people can draw their own connections and parallels that they see without us kind of heavy handed trying to force something down their throats, you know, and, and as far as like an expose or something like that for the church is like, that's so incredibly boring too because nobody outside of Utah or I think even outside of the ex Mormon community even exactly cares about that. Right. It's like they already think, certainly not believing me. Mormons, yeah. It's like the rest of the world already believes that Mormonism is Hogwarts.

Tyler Measom [00:25:37] Right.

Jared Hess [00:25:37] They believe that it's fiction. And so us going like we're gonna go deep into sorcery and the corruption that exists with Hagrid.

Tyler Measom [00:25:45] Let's talk about.

Jared Hess [00:25:47] It's just, it's, it's a waste of time because again, like if you don't believe that religion, you already, you know, you think it's, it's fiction. So any.

John Dehlin [00:25:56] Limit the audience. I was just gonna say I was. Yeah, I was out shoveling in my front yard some dirt Saturday looking For treasure. Yeah. No, and my neighbor, believing. Believing Mormon, right. Comes up to me, and I was on the phone at the time, and I was talking to someone about interviewing you guys, and. And he's like, hey, I heard you talking about Murder among the Mormons. And I'm like, oh, yeah, Believing neighbor. Nice.

Jared Hess [00:26:22] Right, right, right, right.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] Did you see it? He's like, yes, all three hours. I. You know, because I live at Holiday, by the way. Is that Rigabelle, fellas?

Jared Hess [00:26:29] It's where the sheets lived.

John Dehlin [00:26:30] And he's like, oh, I grew up. I grew up on Kentucky Avenue, you know, and I knew these people and. But. But I. He's like. I'm like, well, did you watch it? And he's like, yeah, I loved it. Watch the whole three hours. And all my family did. And I was like, oh, what'd you think? And he's like, I loved it. I thought it was fair. I thought it was. And you know, that was just, for me, confirmation of your strategy. Because if. If. If you make something that create, that offends people, that turns it off, that turns them off, that makes the church want to attack it, that makes the church want to warn everyone not to see it.

Jared Hess [00:27:01] Right. And.

John Dehlin [00:27:02] And that. That is only viewed by a really small niche of people. You've totally failed. Whereas if you do a tasteful, balanced, professional documentary, it becomes the number two movie in the world on Netflix. And I think, you know, for all the ex Mormons that were like, oh, they weren't mean enough, they didn't punch the church enough, I understand the anger, I understand why they wanted that.

Jared Hess [00:27:27] Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [00:27:27] But I think that that showed a lot of wisdom on your guys part to take that approach.

Tyler Measom [00:27:32] Yeah, I mean, ultimately we were true to the story. I mean, it really comes down to that. And, and a lot of people are like, why didn't you tell this story? In this story. And the fact of the matter is, is in many aspects, we kind of did. We had a first cut that was very long.

John Dehlin [00:27:45] You know, you only got three hours right from Netflix.

Tyler Measom [00:27:48] It's less than three hours. So, yeah, you know, and, and we, we. We tried to fit in a lot of things and ultimately it was just like, yawn, this is boring. Let's tell a through line. And documentary is tough because you. If you introduce something early, you have to finish it. You can't just throw something in without a reason. Every scene has to have a beginning, middle, end, and it has to drive the story forward. And if it. If it doesn't, then you're failing and there's so much in there. The most important part about making a film is not what you put in, but what you leave out.

John Dehlin [00:28:18] Yep.

Tyler Measom [00:28:18] And we. A lot of stuff hit the cutting room floor.

John Dehlin [00:28:22] Was it originally six hour conceptualization?

Tyler Measom [00:28:24] We pitched it as we pitched it.

Jared Hess [00:28:26] I mean, there's so much material. It's like, yeah, I mean, so. So initially when we pitched it, it was six one hour episodes and we had more than enough material to be able to sustain that.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] I wonder if Netflix regrets that decision.

Jared Hess [00:28:39] I don't think they do. I. I think people, weirdly, I think people's viewing habits have kind of dictated what their new system of ordering true crime is. And I think stuff that goes into six episodes, people kind of tune out and they. They'll binge three though. So I think that's where it's odd

Tyler Measom [00:28:59] that the amount of reviews and things that we've gotten lately and a lot of them are like, it was too much, it was too long. And I'm like, it's actually not that long. I mean, even though it's three episodes or they're less.

Jared Hess [00:29:09] I could have had six hours or 10.

Tyler Measom [00:29:12] Wasn't enough.

Jared Hess [00:29:13] I mean, it's like all over.

Tyler Measom [00:29:14] But the.

Jared Hess [00:29:15] I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tyler Measom [00:29:16] Just be happy for what it is. And you know, one of our reviews was like, it was, it was too long or too short. I can't decide. I was like that. Literally. That was. That was basically the same quote. I'm like, that sounds perfect. Like, the bed is too hard or too soft. The medium one.

Tyler Measom [00:29:31] So we, we tried to cram a lot in. One of the things we did is we brought in these two editors, brilliant guys, Greg o' Toole and Matt Precop. And Greg I'd worked with on An Honest Liar. And they're non. They know nothing. They're not Mormons. They know. They're California guys. And I said before they came in, I was like, why don't you read a book about it? And both of them were like, I don't want. We don't want to know anything. We just want to come in cold. And so I remember they'd come here and we had a. At my office, we had a wall and it had like all the note cards and Jared and I had laid out all the note cards and it just filled the whole freaking wall of just like every scene. And we pitched it and said this

John Dehlin [00:30:11] and then this and then this and then this.

Tyler Measom [00:30:12] And they just go, that's a lot. That is. You've got like 12 endings. They say, but we gotta talk about Mark Hoffman and Ron Lafferty being prison mates. And they're just like, we can't go that deep. We can't tell that much story. And eventually, of course, they were right, you know, and when you do make a film, you always want to tell this much, and then it always tends to whittle down. And it's better to have more good stories than not enough of. Of course.

Jared Hess [00:30:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:41] Anything you want to add or. No.

Jared Hess [00:30:43] I mean, you know, to me, all the fascinating nuggets were like, me putting my excited, you know, Mormon fringe history. Like, all the details that were always, as Tyler would say, two inside baseball. But it was like, you know, there. There was one story I remember reading in one of the books. Well, it was cool because, you know, Tyler had gotten through the Freedom of Information act, access to all of basically the case files that the state had on Hoffman. And I remember he was going through a bunch of the photos and was like, man, what the heck is this photo from? And it was like a photograph of a table that had some plates and some spectacles and some, like, missionary arms sitting on it.

Jared Hess [00:31:25] And we were like, what is that from? And I remembered in one of the books, when Hoffman was on his mission, he went to. He was. He visited a museum in Bath, England, or Bath, I guess is how you pronounce it. And somebody had donated to the library or museum a bunch of fake. Some dude named, I think, William Parrott or something, had tried to dupe the church into buying these fake plates and spectacles that he'd, like, made and tried to sell them to the church. And they. They sniffed that turd from a mile away, and they're like, no, thanks. And anyway, this set got donated and Hoffman got access to it and took photographs of it.

Mark Hofmann's Forgery Operation Explained

Jared Hess [00:32:07] And it was such a fascinating thing. Like, okay, already. He. I mean, the whole forgery, like, how can I make some sweet cheddar off of forgeries? Started, like, on the mesh, which. But again, it was a detail that we just didn't have time for. And there were a gazillion details that, again, with a limited amount of real estate, you just don't have time for. But ultimately, a lot of those things that we were excited about, you know, our editors were a good barometer of, like, boring. And then. And then we test screen. You know, we did an early test screening of the three episodes Clear back in August with people that know jack squat about Mormonism, have no connection to

Tyler Measom [00:32:44] it, and believing Mormons at the same time. True.

Jared Hess [00:32:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:48] And.

Jared Hess [00:32:48] But colleagues, like, in the industry to watch it and be like, hey, is this enough Mormonism for you to understand what the heck is going on and why the Salamander Letter was such a big deal? And so we spent a lot of time kind of gauging that, but anything that ended up getting that was exciting for, like, this amount of people was always boring for, like, the audience at large.

Tyler Measom [00:33:11] Oddly enough, when we did that test screening, the majority of people came back and said, we need a little bit more Mormonism just to set it up. And we were struggling how to tell that story. And I remember, like, how do we establish Mormonism? And for a while it was just talking heads. It was like Richard Turley talking about Joseph Smith and Sandra Tanner talking about Joseph Smith. And I go, you know, I was raised on those Mormon film strips and Mormon videos that just. Are you going to the dance tonight? No, I'm not. Don't drink that coffee. It's bad for you. So. And of course, our editors knew nothing about that, but I was like, this is the best way to tell the story. So I, like, I dug into this. There's a Mormon. There's this weird, crazy website.

Jared Hess [00:33:54] It's like, it's called Hard to Find Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:33:56] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [00:33:57] And I just like went deep into that and just started looking and we found all these videos and I'm like, let the Mormon Church tell their own story through their own audio visual propaganda, if you will.

Jared Hess [00:34:10] I love that term, by the way. I remember I had a seminary teacher in Idaho's like, now, Jared, are you still studying audiovisuals? Are you going to school to study audio visuals? It's great. I work in the audio visual industry.

John Dehlin [00:34:28] It's so funny because one critical reviewer used those movies produced by the church to claim that you guys were being anti Mormon in your treatment of the documentary. But. But I just, I. I just thought it was. I. I wanted to. Yeah, I just. I mean it. Oh. Anyway, it.

Jared Hess [00:34:50] So good.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] So keep going.

Jared Hess [00:34:51] Actually, we're just fanboys,

John Dehlin [00:34:55] so. All right, so let's talk really quickly about. I've got like a thousand questions. We'll just rapid fire them. Your attempts to try and get Mark to do an interview because he's still alive, he's still in Utah, and he may even be in contact with people. I've talked to people who have spoken with him extensively. So do you guys want to talk about your attempts to try and get Mark?

Attempts to Interview Hofmann in Prison

Tyler Measom [00:35:16] I started writing him immediately when I found out about the story.

Jared Hess [00:35:20] And that's the worst Pen pal ever. He never replies.

Tyler Measom [00:35:26] But I kept getting letters from Joseph Smith and Martin Harris, if that's him.

Jared Hess [00:35:30] But I'm bumpschooling.

Tyler Measom [00:35:33] But I wrote him immediately. Like I started writing him letters and to no avail. And I thought, okay, there's a way I can get in here. And then I found out that Shannon Flynn was one of the last non family members to visit him. And we tracked down Shannon and we had dinner with him at an Italian restaurant. And he, he just wanted to quote movie, like Godfather movies. Because like that's what. That's what you do when you're talking with filmmakers is you quote movies, right? And he was like ecstatic to meet. He was so happy to be like just a part of this. And he hadn't met with Mark in a long, long time.

John Dehlin [00:36:12] And.

Tyler Measom [00:36:13] But of course he came on and wanted to be a part of the documentary. And it's actually very helpful in finding us. He introduced Dory and he, he had, he had boxes of Hoffman materials, so he was able to give it to us. And I just kept writing Mark and trying and trying. And one day I put myself. Because you have to be on the list to visit him. And I put myself on the list and I sent. And I got a letter back and says, you are on the list. And I couldn't freak him. I couldn't believe it. I might swear. Is that okay?

John Dehlin [00:36:40] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [00:36:41] Can I test it and just go? Penis. That'll break the ice. So I was so. I was so amazed that I got the letter and I was like, I'm going. I'm going to go visit Mark. What am I going to do? And then two days later I called and they said, oh, he's taking you off the list. So for some reason he wanted me to go. And then he changed his mind. I don't know why, but ultimately I've written him over a dozen letters and heard nothing back at all.

Jared Hess [00:37:13] I've only written him one.

John Dehlin [00:37:15] You did just one. You didn't hear back?

Jared Hess [00:37:19] Didn't hear back.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] Any idea why? Like it. If I were him, like, he. One of the things people say about him. I'm going to talk about his motives in just a second. But one of the things people say is he just wanted attention. He wanted to be relevant. He wanted to be the cool guy, kind of a big shot. It reminds me of the guy that killed John Lennon. Right? He just wanted attention.

Tyler Measom [00:37:37] David Chapman.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] But. But yeah, but if he's that much of an attention whore, then why wouldn't he look at this as as a chance to tell a story and resuscitate his reputation and explain things. I guess you guys don't know because you didn't talk to him. I don't know.

Jared Hess [00:37:52] I think he. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:37:55] He's waiting for me is what he's waiting for.

Jared Hess [00:37:58] More exclusive, right, John Deliberate.

Tyler Measom [00:38:01] I don't think. I mean, again, like, he's gotten so many letters in the past that I don't think. And even when I. Even when I wrote him and like, dude, this is going to be on Netflix. I don't think he really knew what Netflix is. I mean, he's a jail selling. I don't think they have Netflix.

Tyler Measom [00:38:16] So I don't think he really knew the gravity of how big the story was and how many people are going to watch it, which is, you know, tens of millions of people already we've been told by Netflix. So I don't think he knows. But frankly, Mark lived a life of secrecy. And yeah, I read his psychological report. I wasn't allowed. I read it when I got the Freedom of Information act and I scanned it. I went to the Freedom of the District Attorney's office. They had boxes, literally boxes all the way up the ceiling. And they said, you have a day to go through it.

Tyler Measom [00:38:46] And I just geeked out and I begged them for one more day, but they allowed me to look at them and put a post it note on all the things that I wanted, and then they made copies. And one of them was his psychological report in prison. And I read it as fast as I could, and then I put a post it note. When I came back, it was just like, black. It was literally like, just redacting Rama. But one of them was said that he is a narcissist.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [00:39:11] It also said something about him, you know, having like, a sexual deviant. But that's another podcast. So I do think he wanted this story to be known, and I do think he has a narcissism, But I just think the only power he wields right now is his story. And he's in a jail cell in Gunnison. And I think knowing that millions, tens of millions of people are talking about him and he's not talking, I think that's just a little secret that he can just keep that, you know, keeps that little deception fire burning inside him.

Jared Hess [00:39:46] Right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:48] Yeah. So I thought it was super cool that Turley was in it. And. And I also know that a lot of that footage came from ksl, which means you. You couldn't get Hoffman but it seems like the church, on some level, was willing to cooperate. You guys want to talk about that? Yeah.

Jared Hess [00:40:05] So I'd never met Richard Turley, had been a fan of, like, all of his books and all of his work and just his approach to history. I've always respected and loved and. And my grandmother was a Turley. Her maiden name is. Is Turley. So they're My. My grandma and Richard Turley are related, weirdly, through polygamy.

Jared Hess [00:40:28] And so, anyway, but. But when Tyler and I were. Were starting the project, I mean, Rick wrote the amazing book Victims, and he was head of public affairs for the church when we interviewed him in February 2020. And then he. He retired shortly thereafter in March. But he was so helpful in getting us access to, you know, putting in a good word for us, I think, you know, with KSL and helping us kind of take that first leap and being able to secure the archival footage. Because generally, I think that they've had a policy there where they don't really send out stuff about Mark Hoffman or the Lafferty Brothers or.

Jared Hess [00:41:10] Did I say Hoffman or Ted Bundy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As well. So. So that was a bit of a hurt. But it was like, hey, like, we're just, you know, using this to tell the story, to put the audience in that moment. Like, this is what people were thinking. This is what they were worried about. People didn't know what was going on in those first two days of the bombings. I mean, it was just like, who could be doing this, why? And they had Hoffman's first and kind of only recorded interview. At least that was on film when he found the Anthon transcript, and that was crucial.

Jared Hess [00:41:43] And we had really busted VHS copies of it that were just kind of hard to look at. They had all the masters. And so being able to get that and hearing him right out of the gate with his first home run discovery and him talk about it. And when you watch it now, he's just. He's kind of like, well, it's pretty exciting that the golden plates were just right there. You know, this. Is that the first Joseph Smith holograph. You know, you're like, holy cow. Like, I mean, it's. But he's kind of smiling. You watch it knowing that he's a fraud now. And you're like, dude, he's just got this crappy and grin on his face like.

Jared Hess [00:42:18] Like he's just pulling one over. I mean, it's like, oh, man. He's just kind of smirking, like, wow, I'm really, really getting Away with this.

Tyler Measom [00:42:24] Wow. Dory. This is exciting,

John Dehlin [00:42:28] people. Sometimes I'm. I'm disappointed the ex Mormon community, because there were. There were ex Mormons that. On Reddit that wanted this to be a massive hit piece. And they. They basically said that you guys were somehow bought off or, like, manipulated by the church or, you know, and I. I knowing you guys, I think that is hilarious. Like, Jared, you're doing a big belly laugh like.

Jared Hess [00:42:51] Like the QAnon of Exmoor. You know, it's like these guys, it's like the church would support a smoking gun pointed to their head about, you know, they pay money to take themselves down. It's like, what?

Tyler Measom [00:43:04] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:05] Not. Not really.

Jared Hess [00:43:06] I mean. I mean, the great thing, I think with this story is like, the church, they know how it ends. Like, like, and they know what occurred because they live through it, right? So there's. There's nothing to hide. It's like, yes, they. Leaders made big mistakes along the way that looked shady and weird, like they were trying to cover things up. But ultimately, it's like everybody was frigging scrambling with what do we do with these documents that totally throw upside down, like, what we were told that occurred from Joseph Smith, their founder.

Tyler Measom [00:43:39] So, yeah, it's. I will tell everyone, like, the Mormon Church, and no one had influence over this. You know, Jared and I, we were able to tell the story, for the most part, we wanted to tell. And that includes, you know, we got notes from Netflix. We had a dozen producers who gave us notes. But the good thing about having made films before with Jared and I is we were able to, like, say, we want to try this, and this is how we want to do it. And it was really nice. So, no, the Mormon Church did not affect it. And the fact of the matter is, is, look, tens of millions of people are being introduced to the Mormon Church right now in places that the Mormon Church couldn't reach.

Tyler Measom [00:44:12] And that's for better or worse. You know, there are people who are out there going, oh, my God, there's. There's angels. And this dude, an angel appeared to him in his bedroom. And one of our editors, Matt, was like, he. He was. I was like, we should make more of a comparison of angels and make more of the salamander being weird. And he goes, dude, you know, what's the difference between a salamander and an angel? Like, they're both outlandish. And that's where I'm. I mean, honestly, a salamander is more likely to appear to someone. I've seen a Salamander. I've never seen a talking one, but for me, that's like, they're both crazy.

Tyler Measom [00:44:47] So just let the audience. And my favorite filmmaking quote is Billy Wilder. He said, let the audience figure out two plus two, and they'll love you for it. And so we show Joseph Smith uncovering plates at the beginning of the film in the ground. And later in the film, we show Mark Hoffman finding a jar of coins later in the ground. And if someone is astute enough, they can put those two and two together. But do we need to put those shots next to each other for the audience to understand it? No. So you can take from it what you want, but no, the Mormon Church did not strong arm us.

Jared Hess [00:45:20] I had a comedian friend who just finished. He was out in Boston, and he just finished watching the series. And. And he was really funny. He was like, wow, Salamander, huh? Versus an angel. What a disgrace.

Tyler Measom [00:45:35] Like, he was just like, it's such,

Jared Hess [00:45:37] like, a lateral move, right? I mean, kind of. It's like the rest of the world's like, whoopi, why was this such a big deal? And it is. You know, you have to understand that, like, gosh, this is a sacred story that definitely falls within. You know, I. I mean, Charlie says it Christian, familiar terms like angels and God, but if it's twisted toward, like, this pagan kind of witchcraft language with toads and salamanders and the occult, that. That could be freaky, right?

John Dehlin [00:46:08] Yeah. I love it. I'm guessing you guys wanted to get Oaks or other apostles or First Presidency members.

Tyler Measom [00:46:15] I mean, not really. You know, the thing is, is we. We. We thought about it, and, you know, there are actually a number of people we interviewed that hit the cutting room floor. And in the end, you know, it was really just about the inside story. The people that were there.

John Dehlin [00:46:29] Hooks was kind of there.

Tyler Measom [00:46:30] Oakes was kind of there. And, you know, I think we are for sure. We broached it to Turley, didn't he? And. And he was like, we did.

Jared Hess [00:46:36] And I think he reached out, but it's like, they're incredibly busy, and this would probably be the last thing on their list to want to do and then also be a part of. But. And it's fine, though. But one of the stories that we, you know, George Throckmorton, who's one of the. He's the guy that kind of broke open the whole case. So he LDS guy, total amazing science nerd in the film. He's like, I got into science because I don't like dealing with People

John Dehlin [00:47:06] like,

Jared Hess [00:47:06] we've seen memes and T shirts of him now since the film's come out. But, you know, he tells the story that he went initially, when this. The whole idea of forgery was very new, I think, to the whole investigative team. And he said, hey, like, for me to be able to kind of even determine if these Hoffman documents that came through his hands are forgeries, I need to get access to everything that the church has that we know is authentic, that they've had in their archives since the beginning. And I need to compare them to Hoffman stuff. And so they initially had a meeting where Throckmorton went, and he told the story to us on camera, where he went, met with, I think, the church's lawyers, the curtain of McConkey dudes, and was like, hey, I need to get access to this stuff.

Jared Hess [00:47:51] And this is very early, like in the weeks following. And they were like, nope, can't do it. We're not going to give you access to anything. And Throckmorton was just ticked. He's like, can I slam my hand

John Dehlin [00:48:00] down on the table?

Jared Hess [00:48:00] And I walked out. And then the next day or a couple days later, Oaks said, you know, said, we will not have it be known on the records of the church that we did not cooperate with the law to the fullest extent. And then he was like, let them have whatever they need. So Oaks came back and said, hey, we got to open it up. We need to give access to everything. And so they set up shop, Throckmorton and Bill Flynn in the church office building when they were, like, had their microscopes going and, you know, comparing everything, and that's when they, you know, discovered the cracking. So, I mean, that was a story to me that was super, super fascinating. I think the, you know, the people in the know would have loved that story. Incredibly boring to the rest of the world.

John Dehlin [00:48:45] Yeah, they were like, great.

Jared Hess [00:48:48] Another white guy from Utah pushing back

John Dehlin [00:48:50] on the investigation now what?

Jared Hess [00:48:53] Oh, but they gave him access. So, I mean, but to me, I was like, we gotta get that in there. This is an incredible. It's a fascinating story. There's some drama and conflict, but it was just like for everybody else.

John Dehlin [00:49:05] So there you go. All right. So one of the things that I, you know, as someone who had studied psychology, I really wanted to get into Mark Hoffman's head. And what I really wanted to do was to kind of project all of my life as much as possible into Mark Hoffman story without making myself a murder. Right. Murderer. Right. Like, but. But, like, of course I deal A huge chunk of my audience, just a percentage, because we have active, believing Mormons, bishops, stake presidents who regularly listen to Mormon stories.

Tyler Measom [00:49:39] I sure I shouldn't have said penis then, huh?

John Dehlin [00:49:41] No, I think they could take it.

Tyler Measom [00:49:42] Okay, good.

John Dehlin [00:49:43] But I wanted to project into Hoffman, like, this guy who learned early that the church wasn't true, learned early that the Brethren had not been honest about its history, that felt disillusioned. Maybe he had some sexual deviance that made him feel shamed and awful about himself. And so this whole thing was sort of a way for him. He couldn't come out because back in the 70s, you come out, you're toast. You know, you lose your marriage, you lose your family. It's even worse than it is now, if you can believe it.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] So I wanted to project into Mark Hoffman this kind of guy who had, you know, who had been disillusioned and hurt, and so his motives were understandable, and then who just took it too far. And then it just got out of control like a. Like a bad Ponzi scheme. And then it blew up and he became a murderer. But from all the people I've talked to, including Sandra Tanner and others, it. It's probably that. That. That narrative is probably not going to fly. So do you guys want to talk about his early years and his motives as much or as little as you want? Because that's interesting to me.

Getting Inside Hofmann's Mind

Tyler Measom [00:50:44] You know, I'm. I'm speculating here, but I think I may have entered more of his mind than anyone. And I've spent four years researching Mark, and I have read. I have accumulated so much of his materials. His mission journal, his childhood journal, his letters. He wrote everything. And I've talked to every single person I could who's involved in it. So, I mean, I know this dude well, I'd like to think. And of course, nobody knows Mark Hoffman well. And one of his letters, I remember reading that he wrote to his wife, said, you know, everyone thinks they know me, but nobody knows me but me, as I always say.

Tyler Measom [00:51:26] So Mark has his own secrets and his own motivations, and nobody will ultimately know that. But as far as Mark's childhood and going back, you know, I mean, we cover a bit of it in the film, but I think Mark, first and foremost, I think he's brilliant. I think he's incredibly intelligent and driven to be intelligent.

Tyler Measom [00:51:48] So he, He, He. He was curious, very curious individual who, like a lot of boys growing up in small towns in Utah, they did stupid. Like, they'd blow up mailboxes, and he'd you know, mess around with cats, which is actually an unfortunate thing that we. We left out that he was kind of interested in hurting cats.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] Like Dahmer.

Tyler Measom [00:52:06] A bit like Dahmer, but without all the soy sauce added in it, I guess, if that's what Dahmer used.

Jared Hess [00:52:15] But.

Tyler Measom [00:52:15] But I think Mark just had, like, this need to deceive and was very good at it. And I think initially one of the things that Mark was interested in as a child was magic tricks. And he loved doing magic, he loved deceiving. And I. Even one of his letters, he says that I loved deceiving people with magic and the power that that had. But one thing, and I know a bit about magicians, I did a documentary about magic. Is one thing I revere about magicians is the ability to keep the secret, not just to do the bloody trick, but to say, I'm not going to tell you how I did it.

Tyler Measom [00:52:49] And that power that Mark probably felt as a child when he forged the mint mark on a coin at the age of 14 and sent it into the US Treasury, I think that imagine, like, imagine I remember being a kid, changing my report card and fooling my mom.

Tyler Measom [00:53:07] Secret's out, mom. Like, you felt a little something like, I did it. I pulled that off. I can't believe I pulled that off. And they believed it. An adult believed that he sent the coin into the U.S. treasury and they sent him a letter saying that it's real. He took that coin into a dealer and they said it's real. And he sold it for a great deal of money. Like the power that he must have felt. And knowing that he can't tell. Now, I can't tell people that because I just sold this coin for thousands of dollars and I'm not. I don't have the money to take it back.

Tyler Measom [00:53:37] That must have been, like, intoxicating for this young man. So that, I think, set him on this course of, I can get away with anything if I just tell people that it's true.

Jared Hess [00:53:49] Power tripping.

John Dehlin [00:53:51] But. So, yes, all that. But I do believe that motives are usually multifaceted. And there is no question that he had been studying church history very early on that he had lost his faith and that he was angry at the Brethren on some level and wanted to kind of get back at them and embarrass them. And that shows that. That somehow some of this stuff factored in. No, he.

Jared Hess [00:54:16] I mean, you know, one of the people that we interview in the film is Tyler's cousin, Ron Meesum, right? Who was his buddy in college up at Utah State, before his mission and after his mission. And it actually gone to Hoffman's mission farewell and everything.

Tyler Measom [00:54:31] Yeah, he said the prayer. Hoffman said the prayer at his mission farewell. Oh, oh, it runs. And it's interesting because of all the books I've read and all the things I read, nobody ever talked to him. And he was, for the most part, Mark's only friend in college.

Jared Hess [00:54:42] It's wild. Like. But he would. But, like, Hoffman would go to Tyler's cousin's family's home and talk about all, like, you know, as he was learning about, I guess, the skeletons in the closet of church history and just the contradictions and some of the more depressing stuff.

Jared Hess [00:55:02] He would. You could see him kind of testing the waters with faithful members to see, you know, kind of what would spark their worry or what would. What would evoke a real emotional response. And it was fascinating hearing Tyler's cousin talk about that kind of stuff because it was a little window into his state of mind that leading up to the Anthon transcript discovery, because that was all at Utah State. He just gotten married to Dory. He was studying chemistry. He was pre med up there. And then obviously, once he hit this home run and came into some money with the Anthon transcript, it's like, I'm going to do this full time.

Jared Hess [00:55:45] But it was interesting as far as, like, him, you know, he said he became an atheist at a very young age. And that's something documented that he confesses to. But it was interesting when we were in. We were in Connecticut, I think, and I can't remember who. One of the experts on Hoffman has quite a collection of actual Hoffman stuff.

Tyler Measom [00:56:06] And he had John Reznikov.

Jared Hess [00:56:08] John Reznikov. He had Hoffman's high school chemistry book. And in, like, Hoffman's weird little chicken scratch. And he has horrible penmanship, and he doesn't spell very well either. But he'd drawn a picture, like a stick figure of Jesus getting hung. And it said, why was Jesus crucified and not hung?

Tyler Measom [00:56:31] And it was like. But he spelled hung wrong.

Jared Hess [00:56:33] He spelled it H, U, N, D. Hung, crucified, like, with an S. And it was like, who's thinking about this disturbing crap? Like, in high school, you know, like, why was he killed this way instead of this way? And it was such like, wow, this is the kind of stuff he was thinking about and talking. And he could have just been goofing off, too, right? But. But it is. It was like a little. Little weird nugget.

Tyler Measom [00:56:56] My cousin Ron and he told some stories. One of them was that. And these. Unfortunately, you know, we tried to put them in the film and just couldn't. There was no place for it. He said that when he went to his. His dorm in college, Mark once pulled out a shoebox from under the bed, and it was full of writing instruments and pens and inks. And he'd opened up a notebook and he had practiced, like, a bunch of signatures and handwriting. And he said. He. Mark told him, I'm practicing signatures. And in there was George Washington and Joseph Smith. And this was him kind of revealing that he was doing this, you know, early.

Tyler Measom [00:57:38] And that's the first time I've ever heard that, you know, there was a story in the. In the film that we tried like hell to put in. And it was when everyone was at a restaurant in Boston and Dory was there, and I think Shannon Flynn was there, and Brent Metcalf, I believe, was there. I can't remember, but they'd gone to some book fair.

Tyler Measom [00:57:57] And the table. They were sitting at a table, and the table was. Was paper, and there were crayons or pens, and. And everyone was, like, doodling. And Mark just popped off this amazing George Washington signature. And then he popped off Joseph Smith, and then he popped off a Mark Twain. And just one after another, he just, you know, strung these signatures together. Exact. And everyone was kind of amazed that he could do that. And of course, he goes, it's just something I do. And this was what.

John Dehlin [00:58:27] Yeah, I know.

Tyler Measom [00:58:27] And nobody, you know, it never registered two plus two. That. Oh, he just, you know, forged a George Washington signature. And three months later, he found a George Washington letter, you know, and nobody

Jared Hess [00:58:39] was even in the headspace of forgery at that time, though. I mean, this is like in the mid mid 80s, you know, leading up to the bombing. So nobody. People just thought, oh, yeah, he's seen a bunch of them. He can bang him out.

Tyler Measom [00:58:50] That's cool.

Jared Hess [00:58:50] But in hindsight, yeah, yeah. People are like, holy dang.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [00:58:54] You know, nobody. Nobody mentioned forgery. The funny thing is, is everyone says, well, how come. How come so many people were able to. He fooled so many people. But Mark was a. He was a brilliant forger, and we can go into that later. He was really, really good at it.

Tyler Measom [00:59:08] B, he would never just find the documents himself. You know, a lot of times he'd have Lynn Jacobs, an associate, find it. Or Shannon Flynn would, quote, unquote, find it. So he'd give it to Shannon and say, shannon, go sell this. Or C, he was the only one who was doing this, you know, D. Michael Quinn was like, I asked him, I was like, why did no one question. He goes, look, he was the only guy whose full time job was to find documents and that's it. And so of course he would uncover certain things, but nobody ever thought forgery. Nobody. And I know people say, oh, Gerald Tanner did, and Gerald Tanner did.

Tyler Measom [00:59:43] To some aspects, Gerald Tanner believed that the Salamander letter was a forgery. And that's because it was closely akin to Mormonism Unveiled, which he said is too similar. However, he never said to Mark, it's a forgery.

John Dehlin [00:59:58] He said it in a newsletter. Sanders shopped around.

Tyler Measom [01:00:01] He never said Mark forged it. He said, oh, right, it was forgery of the time. One incident, the only incident I've heard of is somebody Mark presented Brent Ashworth with some hole in the wall photos, Butch Cassidy. And there were photos, and on the back it was like listed, you know, the Butch Cassidy or whomever it was. And these were photos that were sent out to sheriffs in the, you know, in the old west, like wanted cards, if you will. And he presented them to Brent and he goes, these are forgeries. And Mark was, well, okay, must have bought him as a forgery. I'll take him back.

Tyler Measom [01:00:36] So that's the only time that I've heard that anyone called out Mark Hoffman as a forgery. And then he just passed it off. Oh, I must have bought him as forgers. So nobody suspected. And that includes everyone from the FBI to Sotheby's to every renowned document examiner prior to him being bombed or bombing.

Jared Hess [01:00:55] Right, right.

Tyler Measom [01:00:56] Spoiler alert.

John Dehlin [01:00:58] There's bombings.

Tyler Measom [01:01:01] Episode 2 well, when I think about,

John Dehlin [01:01:04] like Magneto of, of the X Men, you know, I think about like a. A broken, devious, you know, murderer with a cause. And I, I do feel like Hoffman had motive. Right, sure.

Tyler Measom [01:01:20] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you ask him, it's money, and he'll say it was money. I don't think that's necessarily true, but

Jared Hess [01:01:26] yeah, no, I mean, in. Again, in his confession transcript, he's like, well, I didn't want to take down the church. Well, let me take that back. Maybe I did, or not take down the church, but rewrite history or change history. And he totally did because he knew the history. He knew how fun it would. I mean, again, it was like he was just power tripping. He loved the feeling he had by pulling one over on people. And to be able to rewrite history, it's like there are documents that have been quoted in modern History books like in the 2000s that later in their second edition, they have had to go back and go, oops, we just found out this is a Hoffman turd. So we were wrong about, you know what I mean? Like, that's happened on a number of occasions. So yeah, yeah, they're still out there, man.

The Major Mormon-Related Forgeries

John Dehlin [01:02:20] So let's go ahead and talk about the forgeries. So I had John Hamer on last week. We went through kind of all of his major Mormon related forgeries, you know, from, from the second anointing letter that he gave to the Tanners in the late 70s, you know, to the, to the Anthon manuscript, to the Joseph Smith III forgery, to the Josiah stole letter about treasure digging. And then of course the big one being the Salamander letter. Anything you guys want to say about his Mormon forgeries?

Tyler Measom [01:02:54] Nope, nothing at all. I want that keep getting that, that money from the church.

Jared Hess [01:03:01] I mean, one of the cool things that we had was, you know, Hoffman, he recorded a lot of his conversations with people on the phone. There was a point where he got kind of paranoid that his phone was being tapped. And this is probably 83, 84, 85 when he, you know, I think when again, privately his whole Ponzi scheme was, you know, people were coming after him. And so he started to record conversations. But early on with the Joseph Smith III Blessing, Tyler and I found on one of his answering machine tapes a conversation he was having with the RLDS Church in trying to negotiate a deal for the Joseph Smith III blessing which he had forged. And, and he was, you know, he was playing LDS church and the RLDS Church to try and get as much

John Dehlin [01:03:53] money as he could, right?

Jared Hess [01:03:54] As he could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was again, and those were fascinating. I mean you could have done a whole episode on the stories of each of those documents, the Josiah Stoll letter, that it was a money digging letter about Joseph, you know, trying to find some sweet Spanish gold with like two rods, you know, on Jose stole his property. And then, but then it was like, then there was the Lucy Mack Smith letter, which is the first account of, you know, it was purported to be, wow, this is the first document of the recollections of Joseph Smith's mom of his kind of religious thinking back in the day. And Brent Ashworth bought it and he was like, oh, I about fell off the chair when I first read it. I mean, that's in the film. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean

Tyler Measom [01:04:46] there's the Grandin document as well, the Grandin contract. There's the letter that Joseph Smith wrote in. In. I don't want to say not Carthage Jail, but Liberty. No, the other one. One of the jails he was in, the last one, the last letter he supposedly wrote.

Jared Hess [01:05:01] Carthage.

Tyler Measom [01:05:02] Was it Carthage?

Jared Hess [01:05:03] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [01:05:05] So there were so many documents and so many letters that he forged and things. And initially we wanted to put a lot of those in, and we just couldn't. Like, it was just like, do we need more documents to confuse the audience? Let's just concentrate on the anthon salamander, the McClellan and the oath.

Jared Hess [01:05:22] Yeah. The ones that cause the most drama.

Tyler Measom [01:05:23] Right. Because otherwise we're just swimming in so

Jared Hess [01:05:26] many documents because people be like, what. What in the crap is that the Josiah Stoll letter? I don't know who that is.

Tyler Measom [01:05:33] Yeah. And again, it's like, you have to explain these things. Even the. I think the most difficult thing we had to do in the film was explain the Salamander letter. I can't tell you how many cuts we had of that where we just, like, it's not enough. It's too much. We can't. Why do we have to explain who is Martin Harris? Why the hell does that matter? You know, it's just. It's so difficult. If we had to that with the Stol and the Grandin and everything else, it's just like. It's. It's exhausting. Yeah.

Jared Hess [01:05:56] And it was a note that we got from our amazing team at Netflix. They were like, yeah, it'd be great if we just had one little analogy for people that still don't get it, that don't understand what the disruption, the Salaman. Because again, right. People still watch it and they're like, who cares?

John Dehlin [01:06:12] Lizard, angel, whatever.

Jared Hess [01:06:15] But the. Anyway, so we were like, oh, man.

Tyler Measom [01:06:17] So we.

John Dehlin [01:06:19] We.

Jared Hess [01:06:19] We tried to come up with some analogies, right? Like, what's a good analogy? And so we went and talked to Sandra Tanner and got some sound bites from her to kind of try and explain it. And then we went to our boy Rod Decker, and he was like, I got one. Let's roll. He's like, that would be as if someone found documents that said that Moses had gotten the Ten Commandments from the ghost of Elvis Presley.

Tyler Measom [01:06:41] I mean, Jared recorded it, and I just. I fell over laughing. So funny, so perfect.

John Dehlin [01:06:48] He's so great.

Tyler Measom [01:06:49] You were like, so great.

Jared Hess [01:06:50] Thanks, Rod. I think that sums it up. That's a good, great analogy.

Tyler Measom [01:06:53] I love Rod Decker. Every time you call him, he goes, decker here. That's how he answers his phone live at 10 o' clock news. This is Rod Decker. Go.

John Dehlin [01:07:02] He's a legend. So great. Dude's a legend.

Tyler Measom [01:07:04] He's amazing. His interview was so amazing. Like the cutting room floor stuff, you know, I. I interviewed him. Jared and I switched off. He'd interview someone, I'd interview someone. And I interviewed Rod and Jared would just be busted. They had to go in the next room because Jared would be laughing his ass off at all. I remember his first thing, his first. I was like, okay, Mr. Decker, could you kind of set up the Mormon world? And he goes, I don't want to get this wrong. Let me just make sure I can't even remember. He goes, he told a joke. He goes, what? How can you tell a Mormon wedding? The bride isn't pregnant, but the mother is. That was like how he defined Utah.

Jared Hess [01:07:45] Oh, yeah, yeah.

Tyler Measom [01:07:48] And that was in an early cut. We just had to take it out. But, but he was such a great interview and, and we. Fortunately we were lucky to keep him in most of his stuff. Just not that joke.

Jared Hess [01:07:59] I mean, we interviewed D. Michael Quinn and I interviewed him and I loved it because it was like, you're just like, whoa. I mean, he was doing the deep dive of sweet Mormon history, everything. And it would be like one question and then like a 45 minute answer and I'd be like, okay. And we passed Mr. Quinn.

John Dehlin [01:08:24] D. Michael, can you say all of

Jared Hess [01:08:26] that but in two sentences? Oh, boy.

Tyler Measom [01:08:30] 20 minutes later. And then it was like we'd get

Jared Hess [01:08:32] like a five minute answer.

John Dehlin [01:08:33] Great.

Jared Hess [01:08:34] He's so smart. Sum that up in about 25 seconds.

Tyler Measom [01:08:40] So we just ended up using audio visual.

Jared Hess [01:08:43] But it was great. But it was so good. It's like, man, we should just do the D. Michael Quinn.

John Dehlin [01:08:49] Oh, I'm gonna ask you about the outtakes in a bit. Okay. Anything else about the actual forgeries before I.

Tyler Measom [01:08:56] No, I mean, you know, we were able to touch base on just some of the ways Mark forged these documents. And I wish we could go deeper into how he did it and the ways he did it and the means he did it because it was genius in his construction of. Well, first, his planning of it, you know, is this a document that I can sell?

Tyler Measom [01:09:21] His research was unbelievable. And he was able to get and go into the church history libraries to find the research out. But also just, I mean, I've said this before, is like, you know, the George Washington signature is the most forged signature in history. Like there are George Washington's floating around. I have like 12 of them. I don't. But Mark Wouldn't just forge a signature like some people do. He'd forge entire letters, Emily Dickinson poems. He'd do printing press. He'd do currency photographs. Just. His range was unbelievable.

Jared Hess [01:09:56] He was just loaded with Deseret currency.

John Dehlin [01:09:58] Oh, yeah.

Tyler Measom [01:09:59] I mean, Deseret currency was in his own cash. The Spanish.

Jared Hess [01:10:02] He could roll into ZCMI with that. Now buy a pair of Jerbo jeans anyway, keep going.

Tyler Measom [01:10:08] But he just, like, currency was amazing. Like, he just used Al Rust, unfortunately, as, like, his atm, he'd literally, quite literally print money because the currency that he made, the Deseret or the Spanish Fork notes, were so simple. And he just figured out how to make them and make them good. He'd take them to Al Rust and poor old dear Al rust, give him 500 dol. You know, for each one.

Tyler Measom [01:10:30] But Mark was brilliant. And not just like, so. So one thing he did. And there's so many things that Mark did. It wasn't just that he. He would forge something. He'd create a story around it. And we're all. We all want to know stories.

Tyler Measom [01:10:43] You know, he. He'd forge a. He'd forged some currency. And what he did is he found an old envelope, and he put them in an envelope, and, like, it was stashed away. And that's how he sold those currency. Not just like, pieces, but how he. He found it. One thing he did, he bought an Al Capone photograph, a signed Al Capone photograph from Brent ashworth. Paid like 50 bucks for it. Well, then he took it to New York, and this was early. I think it was 82. He took it to New York, walked into a shop and goes, golly, look what I found at a garage sale.

Tyler Measom [01:11:14] And literally said, I found it at a garage sale, sold it for $4,200. Ted Koppel talked about it on the nightly news that night. It was. It was national news. And Brandon Ashworth called him. He's like, dude, you didn't find this at a garage sale. I sold it to you. And Mark was like, well, you know, it's a good story, and it is a good story, and that's the kind of thing Mark would do.

Tyler Measom [01:11:35] You know, he wouldn't just find a letter. He'd find one small thing he did. Like, he forged an Emily Dickinson poem, which in and of itself is remarkable. That fooled experts. And he used the right paper, he used the right ink, he used the right handwriting style, and he.

Tyler Measom [01:11:51] In a letter he wrote to somebody about that. He said that he spent two hours reading her poetry and he quote, found her muse, which, you know, as an artist like to hear that word that Mark literally found another artist's muse and borrowed her, borrowed that muse. And if you want to hear, you know, the muse is an interesting thing, but he borrowed that muse so that he could write her in her style.

Tyler Measom [01:12:16] And he forged this poem. But what he did that was genius is on the back of it. He wrote Aunt Emily in pencil. So it had everyone spinning when they found this document. Who did he write it for? Was it his cousin? Was it his sister? Who did he write this lost poem for? And that's the completeness of Mark. It wasn't just the poem he wrote. It was the touches. It was the elements of. Just like when he forged the oath of a freeman on the back he wrote in different pension with different ink later. Oath, oath of a freeman. Like somebody had filed it away that way, you know, so he was so good at finding the beginning, the middle and the end of these stories and, or these documents and creating a story around them.

Tyler Measom [01:12:59] I found this in a basement. I found this looking through old letters when in fact he was just making the damn thing in his basement.

John Dehlin [01:13:07] Beautiful.

Jared Hess [01:13:09] Hoff diggity dog.

John Dehlin [01:13:11] I was just regarding the content of the Mormon related forgeries. I think it's important note something you guys have already kind of noted with the Joseph Smith III letter. People already knew that The Joseph Smith Jr. Had designated his son as his successor. So he wasn't like creating stuff out of whole cloth to embarrass the church. Pretty much everything he, he was doing, even the Salamander letter was based on a reference to a toad. So like toad, salamander. So, so it feel the anthon, you know, stuff was there. There were already some characters. It seems like in other words, he didn't really have to build the story any. He was just trying to kind of create documents that reflected the actual story, but just with documents that weren't in existence yet. Is that fair to say?

Jared Hess [01:13:58] No. It all fit into the history. Yeah, like it all fit into the history. So it's like it was, you know, they were all substantiated on some levels out there. And it's funny, you read like, no man knows my history. And there's, you know, the affidavits that mention a white toad. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm gonna make it a salamander, spice things up. I mean, so it's like it all, it all had historical context that would work even if it was like screwy.

John Dehlin [01:14:28] Yeah, Fawn Brody's the og, isn't she?

Jared Hess [01:14:31] She's good. It's a fun one.

John Dehlin [01:14:33] Oh, yeah. Okay, this is a question that may be uncomfortable, maybe not, but just say what you want to say about it or not. For me, one of the biggest questions about this whole thing, other than Hoffman's motivation, was was there a cover up by church leaders? And if so, you know, how problematic, how fraught, how problematic was Gordon B. Hinckley's behavior with the Josiah Stole letter? Dallin H. Oaks, his responses in 85 and 87. There's a really good Radio Free Mormon Bill real episode that talked about this last week. But, but some would want to say that the church was fully transparent and others would want to say this is like the smoking gun example of the brethren, you know, buying up documents so that they could hide them and mislead the members and fool them and then lying about it. Where did each of you come down on that question?

Church Leadership's Response to the Documents

Jared Hess [01:15:29] I think everybody reacted to these documents differently, right? I think that there were some church leaders that were like, hey, let's get it it. Let's try and research it, understand a historical context before we, like, take it out into the real world and present it. And then, you know, other people, I think, you know, because there, I know for a fact that there were bishops stake presidents that were like, oh, gosh, how do we, how do we find our own responses to it, right? Just beyond what was happening in Salt Lake City? And it was like, well, golly, I think the French word for salamanders is spirit or, you know, or whatever, whatever kind of like methods that people could spin to kind of understand it or whatever kind of mental gymnastics they had to do.

Jared Hess [01:16:15] But I think, yeah, with, with these early documents, it was like, yeah, let's buy it. These were private transactions at large. Like, they weren't public. And, and so without question, that looks like, oh man, they're, they're buying it so they can throw it in a vault and not have to talk about it and not have to address it. So, yeah, that absolutely looks super shady. And I don't doubt on some level that it was. But at the same time, their response is like, gosh, we want authenticators to look at it to make sure it's this, you know, and have historians look at it forensically, see if it checks out before we.

Jared Hess [01:16:56] And I without, you know, it's like Hinckley was trying to figure out, I think, how to present the content of it to the church. I mean, it was, I mean, he talks about it in his book, people close to him talk about it. It was a tough, tough friggin thing because it's like, man, this is the founding story of our faith.

Jared Hess [01:17:16] And now it's, it's a lizard. I mean not a lizard, an amphibian, a white salamander. It's like holy dang, what do you do? So of course you're going to be like, geez, this is a complete rebranding, you know what I mean? Like, like what? You know. But, but it's interesting now. It's like, okay, you've got like the whole translation and the seer stone and the hat. That's different than like, you know, just like a little curtain between Oliver Cowdery and Joseph as he's just like reading off the plates.

Tyler Measom [01:17:44] Right?

Jared Hess [01:17:45] And, and now they're kind of trying to own that with the essays and you know, the artwork hasn't changed a lot but you know, it's, it's, they're just trying to make it palatable, I think.

John Dehlin [01:17:57] I'll come to you, Tyler. I'm just going to say that people have to understand at the time, for example, right now, anyone who's, you know, most active believing Mormons know nothing about any of this stuff still, like sure, 95% but there is a 5% now that have heard about the essays and that know about new Mormon history.

John Dehlin [01:18:15] But what the people who are living now who weren't around back then don't realize is in the early 80s, the church was saying there was no treasure digging. The church was saying there was no folk magic. That was all no seer stone in a hat. Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie and others were on the record as saying that's a lie, there's no peepstone, there's no hat. And of course we know that Joseph Ealing Smith had hid, ripped out the pages of Joseph Smith's 1832 journal that had a first vision account that was inconvenient because it only had the Lord visiting instead of God and Jesus.

John Dehlin [01:18:50] And it didn't say anything about starting a church. And, and so you know, from the, from the 2018s and 20s, 19 teens and 20s to the 19, early 1980s, the church, I think you can make the argument they were intentionally hiding stuff. And, and the stuff that Mark Hoffman brings out touches on all those things to sort of say it's almost like he's saying Mormon Church, you are going to stop hiding stuff from the members and lying to them. And I'm going to help prompt it. Not by creating documents that lie, but by creating documents that focus people's direction on the ways the church is misleading people.

Jared Hess [01:19:32] And ultimately, it's like. It's like that whole push, you see, it's cultural assimilation. They don't want to be like the weird, bearded, polygamous dudes in the mountains of Utah anymore. It's like, man, we want to be. We want to be Americans. You know what I mean? It was this big push, I think, to really assimilate themselves culturally to the. To the nation and not be the isolated weirdos in the mountains anymore, you know? And so I can see anything that didn't fit within this attempt to be seen as just another group of Christians doing their thing out in the Intermountain West. It's like, that's kind of so. So all of these things when you look at it, it's like, oh, boy. Folk magic.

John Dehlin [01:20:15] Dang it. We gotta.

Jared Hess [01:20:16] You know what I mean? We just. We just, you know, we've. We want to be normal. And so, I mean, for like.

John Dehlin [01:20:23] And we don't want people to lose their faith.

Jared Hess [01:20:25] We don't want people to lose their faith.

Tyler Measom [01:20:26] I mean, they're a big business. Every big business has secrets, you know. Every single one of them does. And I do think they hid documents. I do think they tried to keep the Salamander letter quiet. And it's only because Mark leaked it to the LA Times. I. They did keep the stole letter quiet.

John Dehlin [01:20:43] They put it personally. Well, he.

Tyler Measom [01:20:46] Not from his own check, but he wrote a check. He went and got the checkbook and wrote it himself. And as Mark Hoffman said. And I found, you know, in his testimony, which I have here, exhibit A. Can you put rustling of paper like I'm. Thank you. That's good.

Tyler Measom [01:21:01] But, you know, he, He. When he took it to him, he took the stole letter in and he took it to Inkley's office and it sold. And he said that they were the only ones that knew about it. And Mark said that there were three meetings.

Tyler Measom [01:21:15] Hinckley gave him a check for $15,000. And supposedly, and this is from the mouth of Mark, he handed it to Francis Gibbons with instructions to put it in the vault. And Mark had instructions not to talk about it. But Mark had kept his Xerox copy, even though he told Hinckley he didn't. So I do believe that the church was trying to hide it. And whether they were, as they say, we're going to look at it before we release it. But Mark always played that game where he would, you know, keep A Xerox copy, or he'd try to, you know, leak it to someone else for that reason.

Tyler Measom [01:21:48] And who knows what else you sold. I do. You know, one thing that we always get is this whole, like, you know, you see these amazing photos of the. The First Presidency looking at the Anton transcript, and we have that photo in the.

Tyler Measom [01:22:02] In the film. And everyone says, like, how could. How could these prophecies and revelators not see this? And there is something to be said for that. I mean, they were conned, they were duped, and they should possibly know better. You know, me, I don't know. And my faith was lost a long time ago. So I'm not the expert, but I don't know if prophecy works that way myself. If they knew that, they'd be able to tell you, you know, who's going to win the game tonight.

Tyler Measom [01:22:32] What I do think they did is they lied. And I do think the First Presidency deceived in many aspects about being asked, did you have this? And saying, no, do you keep records of this? And for Hinckley to say, no, I don't keep records of Mark Hoffman visiting was bullshit. And he told the investigators, I do not keep records. When later, few days later, they had those records. They literally. And the church keeps records of everything. I have the records of Mark's visiting. I have his parking pass, a copy of his parking pass. So even after that, they were trying to deceive a little bit and keep some secrets.

Tyler Measom [01:23:13] So, you know, I'm not going to make say someone lied or someone didn't lie, or someone should have had power of discernment. I don't know that they were conned by one of the greatest con men of all time, Mark, and they were dunked on by Michael Jordan. And there's not a lot of shame in that because a lot of people were conned by him. What I do know is that they've, since that time, come clean. And in Turley's book, to their credit, they list every single document that they bought. And there were hundreds of documents that they bought from Mark Hoffman. Many of them were small little, you know, financial records and history records from a library that Mark found. They were meaningless for the most part. Some of them were incredibly damning, but they were there, you know, so I'm.

Jared Hess [01:24:05] I don't.

Tyler Measom [01:24:05] I don't know. You can pick a side and say, they should have seen this because people died, or you can just say they were conned and they were up front. I don't think. I think there's a gray area all around.

Jared Hess [01:24:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:20] Yeah. That part was stunning to me. When Hinckley said, I. We don't. I have. We don't keep record. I didn't keep records of my time with Hoffman. I was like, yeah, he did. And then oaks later, like in. I think it's in 87, you know, and even later, you know, the church has made statements like, we've never hit anything, and we're as honest as we know how to be. And it. You know, that's frustrating. But again, they neither seek nor request apologies. Right. So that's hard.

Tyler Measom [01:24:50] And it's also difficult when you're in the middle of a. You know, this was two days after people were killed, and they didn't know what was happening. You know, for them, it was a surprise that Steve Christensen was going to meet with him that day, that Alvin Russ thought he was going to meet with him, that Mark was going to meet with him. They didn't know all the details. And in many aspects, the best thing when you're that close legally from a murder is just to say, I don't know, at this point, let's figure all this out. So.

Jared Hess [01:25:17] Right, right, right.

John Dehlin [01:25:18] I got this really sad email. Was there anything else you want to say about that, Jerry? I got this really sad email from a family member, Steve Christensen. I'll just say that. And they're like, john, I saw how excited you are about this documentary coming out, and I just want you to know, you know, I loved. You know, I loved my dad, you know, and to see you gleefully getting all excited about it, I just want you to remember, people died about this. And I. I felt torn. It's like, okay, on the one hand, people died. That's horrendous. And there's so many victims. On the other hand, this is a cool documentary. It's super exciting, and they even make it worse sometimes. It's hilarious. Some of the stuff like the. The guy with the priesthood, oil blessing, Hoffman, or even Shannon Flynn.

Jared Hess [01:26:04] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:26:05] It's so many emotions. So anyway, you guys talk about that and talk about the bombings, because we should be respectful and talk about the bombings.

The Bombings and Their Victims

Jared Hess [01:26:12] Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. I mean, these are two hugely beloved people in the community. I mean, everybody that knew Steve Christensen and knew Kathy Sheets, it's like these people were senselessly murdered by Hoffman. And you hear from Hoffman's own mouth that he just, you know, he didn't care who the Kathy Sheets bomb killed, if it was a child or a dog or whoever he was. So callous and heartless.

Jared Hess [01:26:43] And, you know, specifically with that bombing with Steve, it was kind of vengeful and protecting. He. You know, there was this sense that Steve was onto him. And because Steve had been kind of put in charge, unofficially or officially by the church to help secure the McClellan collection.

Jared Hess [01:27:03] There were, you know, Hoffman was soliciting money from all. He told a bunch of different people, like, yeah, give me X amount of money and you can have the McClellan collection, and then you'll be able to sell it to the church for X amount. He did that with Al Rust. He did that with. I mean, there were other people and maybe even more that we don't know about that had given him money for the McClellan collection, and the church was one of them.

John Dehlin [01:27:27] And.

Jared Hess [01:27:27] And so you've got. But Steve, again, I think, saw through Hoffman's BS and was calling him out on it. And even his widow, Terry Christensen, says, yeah, I think Steve was telling him, you got to pay up. You got to give us the money back. If you're not going to deliver the McClellan collection, you've got to give us the money back. And so all of those things were just converging on that day. And anyway, so, I mean, that aside, we wanted to be so respectful to the family. I know that they. None of them have fully. The children that were raised without a father, both or. Or a mother. With the Sheets family and the Christensen family, it's like, you can't. It's like my father died at age 33, and I'm.

John Dehlin [01:28:14] I'm his age 33, not yours.

Jared Hess [01:28:16] So.

Tyler Measom [01:28:16] Sorry.

Jared Hess [01:28:17] Sorry. My. My personal father died of cancer when he was 33.

John Dehlin [01:28:20] Not when you were 33.

Jared Hess [01:28:21] No, no, no, no. Yeah, when he was 33, I was eight years old. And so, you know, my mom remarried shortly thereafter, but me and my brothers, we still haven't fully recovered of. Of having grown up without our father. Right. Like, knowing what lessons or experiences we might have had with him. So I identify big time with what the Christiansen, you know, went through on some level.

Jared Hess [01:28:50] And we, you know, we. There were photos, crime scene photos of him laying there, some that were very, very graphic and difficult. And we were. There's no way we were going to use those in the film, but we did have shots of his, you know, his legs. And you needed to see what this evil man had done on some level for it to have an impact. And I know. I've heard through, you know, I don't think the Christensen family had ever seen that. And that's I'm so heartbroken finding that out after the fact and. And how difficult that must have been. But we wanted there to.

Jared Hess [01:29:28] To people understand what an incredible person Steve was. And even just hearing Brett Metcalf in the interview talk about him and just what an incredible man he was and still being emotional about it and feeling responsible for it on some level, that he had introduced Steve to Mark. And it's like, how do you get over that?

John Dehlin [01:29:47] How do you recover from that?

Jared Hess [01:29:48] Yeah, how do you recover from that?

Tyler Measom [01:29:50] It's. There's still so much pain for Mark Hoffman. It's palatable in this city. And it's evident in the film.

Jared Hess [01:29:58] And I.

Tyler Measom [01:29:59] Somebody said this to me that it's amazing how many people, how many grown men were vulnerable in this film. And they were. They opened up and they were. They showed their pain. And part of that pain is the death of Kathy Sheets and Steve Christensen.

Tyler Measom [01:30:16] And to the families of them, I genuinely say I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry that this drudged up pain for them, and it drudged up pain for a lot of people. And I'm sorry that we. We couldn't shield the world from what had happened.

Tyler Measom [01:30:36] But consequently, I talked to one of them and I said, you know, my father died about a year and a half ago, and he was a good, good man. He was a good man. He died of leukemia, and he was a really good man. And I said, you have a.

Tyler Measom [01:30:51] A love letter in many ways, to your father. There's so many people who spoke so well of him. And we put that in the film. And that was a conscious choice to show the kind of monster that Mark was, to do this, because we were always walking that line with this film of a flawed protagonist.

Tyler Measom [01:31:09] Because we, in some aspects, want to revere Mark for the craftsman he was that he pulled over. Pulled the wool over so many people's eyes and did it in such a unique way. And we wanted to balance that. And so part of the balance was just to show the photos and their small aspects, but also to show the pain that he caused and still caused.

Tyler Measom [01:31:31] And unfortunately, Kathy Sheets is a footnote in the film. And I'm sorry that we couldn't go more into her as a wonderful human being. She wasn't as much a story as Steve Christensen was. Steve Christensen was elemental to the story of Mark Hoffman in the Salamander Letter. Kathy Sheets was an innocent bystander, for God's sakes. She just happened to be going on a walk and picked up a package that was in Front of her house, which, you know, shows even more so the monster that Mark Hoffman was.

Tyler Measom [01:32:01] So I, I again, I, I wish there weren't victims involved in true crime. And there are and many other true crime series go a lot deeper than we did. They show horrific scenes of death and crime and we have those horror, horrible photos. And I have them and they will never, ever, ever be seen. I have them and no one else does for the most part that I know of of these horrific crime scene photos that will be locked away and no one will see them. So,

John Dehlin [01:32:33] yeah, so our sincere love and condolences to the Sheets family, the Christensen family and all the victims, Dory, everyone. So many victims. We don't want to trivialize that at all. So thank you for responding to that. So really quickly, the third bomb, do you guys want to just quickly address your, your thoughts on who that was for?

Jared Hess [01:32:58] He, I mean, we've talked about this a little bit, but it's like Mark, like in many aspects, he played the long game with his forgeries, right. He was with the Salamander letter establishing the handwriting of Martin Harris. So then later, hopefully he could pull off the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon, which he would have made a killing on. He would have made so much money in the tens of millions, probably. But then in other aspects of his life, he was incredibly short sighted and obviously with money, he was horrible. He would spend it the moment he would get it. He would promise things to people and never be able to deliver. And that's ultimately what put him in the bind where he started. He felt that his only way out was to kill people and buy time.

John Dehlin [01:33:46] And, and because he had to shut up Steve. Right?

Jared Hess [01:33:49] He had to shut up Steve, I think. And you know, but then he wanted to throw people off the trail of Steve.

John Dehlin [01:33:56] So he had to get out of the McClellan promises.

Jared Hess [01:33:59] He had to get out of them. He had to get out of that because he didn't. It was such a vast collection that had been promised to people and I don't think he was anywhere even close to delivering on that. So that he, look, he was scheduled to meet with Bryn Ashworth that day. He easily could have met with Al Rust. He easily could have met with Brent Metcalf.

Tyler Measom [01:34:19] He had lunch. He was supposed to have lunch with Brent.

Jared Hess [01:34:21] With Brent. So there were a number of people on the short list that we think that bomb could have been intended for. But he parked, you know, behind the desert gym, which is, you know, just north of what is now the LDS Church conference center, and it's on a hill. All of his bombs were activated where. If you would tip them.

Tyler Measom [01:34:42] Right.

Jared Hess [01:34:42] The connection.

John Dehlin [01:34:43] Mercury switch kind of thing.

Jared Hess [01:34:45] It was a mercury switch. Exactly. And blow it up. But he was in his. First of all, his story was that he was in the car, the door was closed and blew up. Well, if that would happen, it would have killed him. He was blown across the street. Right. So it's like. I think. I think that he had intended to blow up his car and destroy the McClellan collection.

John Dehlin [01:35:09] But I do.

Jared Hess [01:35:09] I don't. Something went wrong, I think, where he timed it wrong and just got blown. I mean, he literally flew across the street. They found him kind of where you see in the film. He's laying on this, little, like, grass stretch next to the sidewalk, and that's where he was found and given the blessing and. And all that stuff. So it's. I don't know if he'd intended to actually kill himself. I mean, I think if he. It doesn't add up.

Tyler Measom [01:35:37] He says the forensics.

Jared Hess [01:35:39] He says he wanted to.

Tyler Measom [01:35:41] I don't think he had the guts to do that.

Jared Hess [01:35:43] Right.

Tyler Measom [01:35:43] I don't think he had the guts.

Jared Hess [01:35:44] He was smart enough to know if I really want to do it, keep the door closed.

Tyler Measom [01:35:47] So I think he probably wanted. It might have been targeted for Brent Ashworth. And in recovering fragments from the bomb, they found a brown paper, and all they found was an R, a letter R, a capital letter R. But all of his. The words he wrote on the bombs were capitals. And that could have been for Rust, could have been for Brent Ashworth, could have been for Brent Metcalfe.

Jared Hess [01:36:13] They all got Rs in their name, right.

Tyler Measom [01:36:15] So I think it might have been for Brent Ashworth myself. But I think maybe when he didn't show, he said, okay, I'm going to. The trunk was full of old documents that was supposedly the McClellan collection. He wanted the car to blow up, burn these documents. I think he wanted it to blow up in front of him or near him so that he could say, oh, my God, they're after me and Skip town. There's one part of the story, the vast saga of Mark Hoffman, that we couldn't go into, which is. We tried. We had a cut of it, like, a few days before the bombings. He owed people to the tunes of $1.5 million.

John Dehlin [01:36:54] Whoa.

Tyler Measom [01:36:55] And in fact, I have this amazing record of all the people he owed. And he actually owed, like, $15,000 to the cell phone company because he had this big brick cell phone, which $15,000. That was like. Yeah, every call was like 10 bucks you had to spend. That's maybe worthy of a bombing.

Tyler Measom [01:37:12] But he. There was a day when like someone demanded their money. A guy named Thomas Wilding who'd given him a lot of money and he promised these documents he couldn't. And there was a guy who had lost his hand in a lumberjack accident or a. And he took all the. From Idaho, he took all the money and he gave it to Mark Hoffman as this investment. And you know, Mark a lot of times was very good at him. People give him money and say, I've got a lead on this document. I'm going to find it. And they'd get their money back.

John Dehlin [01:37:39] Ponzi?

Tyler Measom [01:37:39] Yeah, in some ways. And a lot of times they were real documents. A lot of times he created them. But, you know, they were making their money and he owed these people money. And they showed up at his house in the morning, 6am and he said, I will find your money. And the whole day they followed him around and he went to. From person to person, to bank to bank, to Kurt Bench, to Al Rust. All these people trying to get money to pay these people off. And at the end of the day, they didn't give him money. And the one armed lumberjack punched Mark Hoffman in the face. So that's this crazy ass story that we couldn't go into.

Jared Hess [01:38:10] That would have been the best. Didn't have the budge.

John Dehlin [01:38:15] You could have played the lumberjack.

Tyler Measom [01:38:17] But this showed how desperate Mark was at the time. So if the bomb would have gone off, he could have skipped town. And I think, you know, he had wires sticking out of the bomb and when he connected those two wires, it connected the, the battery to the mercury switch. And when tipped, it went off. I hope I'm not telling too many people how to make bombs, but the slant of the hill, I think he connected those wires hoping that maybe the car would tip or something or someone else would find it and it blew him out of the car.

John Dehlin [01:38:49] So intended for someone else. Likely.

Tyler Measom [01:38:51] I think so. But. But in a way him, like he's being targeted.

John Dehlin [01:38:55] Right, right. That's important.

Tyler Measom [01:38:57] So I'm getting. I'm skipping town.

John Dehlin [01:38:59] That's right.

Jared Hess [01:38:59] Right.

John Dehlin [01:39:00] That's good. One of the, you know, Shannon Flynn was obviously a big star. And I was really surprised because there's this great podcaster named Rick Bennett who's got a podcast YouTube channel called Gospel Tangents. Shout out to Rick. He interviews Shannon Flynn. Totally different Shannon Flynn than the Shannon Flynn you guys got.

Shannon Flynn and Others Close to Hofmann

Jared Hess [01:39:20] By the way, when was the interview? Was it before the film?

Tyler Measom [01:39:22] Yeah. Prior? Yeah, yeah.

Jared Hess [01:39:24] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:25] Different guy. But anyway, Shannon Flynn was much more theatrical for you guys than he was for, for Rick. I'm not, I'm just, maybe he's just excited. But, but here's what I want to say. Sometimes the reactions are really uncharitable and the, the two, the, the one question I wanted to ask you guys is there were people who. This is. I'm going to just say this is a really serious accusation, but there were people that wanted to kind of find accomplices and the, the two that popped up for me in terms of what I heard from others were Shannon Flynn as a potential total spec. Just unfair, mean spirited.

John Dehlin [01:40:05] And Lynn J. Irresponsible speculation. And then Lynn Jacobs, who the film actually never is able to talk to, probably because you just didn't have enough time. But Sandra Tanner mentioned him. Do you guys want to talk about potential accomplices and anything you say about Lynn Jacobs and. Or Shannon as the people many listeners most want?

Jared Hess [01:40:26] Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, Shannon, I mean he was homies with Mark. They worked together for like the last two years of Mark's runs. Like 84, 85 is when Shannon really started working for Mark full time. So he was a part of all their document deals. Shannon would like pack heat when he'd like fly to New York. We literally, I wish we could have put it in the film, but we've got another funny little reenactment where they're like in a dumpy hotel room and Shannon's like spinning, you know, the whatever on his, the chamber on his six shooter and like puts it in, throws it and in a briefcase and then they clasp hands like bros, I'll show you.

Tyler Measom [01:41:12] But I have a cop.

Jared Hess [01:41:13] But yeah, but it's, it's, it's. I mean, so it's like that's the world. They were kind of peas in a pod. I mean, Shannon was definitely into the Soldier of Fortune stuff and the guns and yeah, the Uzi stuff. And they would just go to the desert like a couple of Boy Scouts and blow stuff up and just be stupid. And so like Shannon, I mean, look, during the course of the interview, I mean, there were times, first of all, Shannon's body language, he's, I think, very uncomfortable about talking about some of this stuff. And so he twitches and kind of moves nervously and it just, it comes off super suspicious. Like he was an accomplice, right?

Tyler Measom [01:41:52] And he, by the way, he showed up in, in that three piece suit. There's, I've heard people like, I can't believe the filmmakers dressed him up like that. Like we did that. We didn't put a shirt on him.

Jared Hess [01:42:03] Nobody's the same way.

Tyler Measom [01:42:04] We didn't put a shirt on Ken Sanders. They came as they are as the kind of people we wanted.

Jared Hess [01:42:09] Somebody on social media said the MVP of Murder among the Mormons is this dude's shirt buttons. And it was Ken Sanders.

Tyler Measom [01:42:17] Yeah, it's an essential worker. Should get a vaccine.

Jared Hess [01:42:22] Ken is amazing. The. Yeah, but I think Shannon. And it's like because they had spent so much time doing these activities together, going and shooting guns, blowing stuff up in the desert. Like the blast caps apparently that were used for some of the bombs Shannon had bought from like somewhere in southern Utah, giving him to Mark ages ago. But it was normal. It was like, oh, we're going out to blow up big old firecrackers and be pyros, like a couple of 14 year olds.

Tyler Measom [01:42:52] Well, imagine being 20 years old and you're in your 20s and you're into that stuff. Like you're into Soldier of Fortress and all of a sudden you're like, you're Shannon Flynn and you're carrying guns. You're going to New York with literally suitcases full of cash. You're flying to South America to sell a document. You know, you're doing back end midnight deals, you're sitting in a fancy restaurant in New York eating and drinking too much. I did not drink. Just so you know. I did no drinking, as he said. I mean, what a life. These kids from Utah, like dealing and feeling and playing like James Bond. That's amazing. He must have felt.

Jared Hess [01:43:31] And, and it's like ultimately the investigators were so amazing and so good at what they did. It's like they, they dug deeper than anyone has. Like at the time, you got Michael George, you've got Stott, Ken Farnsworth, you know, Ken had passed away. Jerry Delia, who's in the film, all these guys, like, they, you know, Shannon was super suspicious to him, but ultimately, you know, he was exonerated. He didn't, you know, he was not an accomplice to Mark and we, and we trust that. But again, body language, people. You know, he looks suspicious at times in the film, but I don't think he had anything to do with it.

John Dehlin [01:44:13] You don't think he knew? You don't think Shannon.

Jared Hess [01:44:14] No, I do.

Tyler Measom [01:44:15] He says it, I mean, he says in the film, I mean point blank says, I Didn't want to know. So maybe he had hints of it, but I don't. I don't think he looked deep enough.

Jared Hess [01:44:26] Yeah, no, I think it was too swept up in the fun he was having. Yeah. With the lifestyle.

Tyler Measom [01:44:32] Yeah.

Jared Hess [01:44:32] But Lynn Jacobs.

Tyler Measom [01:44:33] Lynn Jacobs was an associate of Mark. And Lynn Jacobs lived here in Salt lake in the mid-80s. And he was. Mark, he was openly gay, which must have been incredibly difficult to be openly gay in Salt Lake city in the 80s.

Tyler Measom [01:44:45] He was a genius. He went to Harvard and he worked with Mark Hoffman closely. And in fact, it was Lynn Jacobs who initially, Mark found the Salamander letter, supposedly gave it to Lyn, and Lyn took that into the church to sell. So because Mark said I'm finding too many documents, it's getting suspicious.

Tyler Measom [01:45:11] There's two speculations. One is that Mark was a homosexual and Lynn was his secret partner. And two was that Lyn knew Lynn Jacobs passed away from aids. I. I don't remember when. I think it was the late 80s.

Tyler Measom [01:45:28] So we weren't able to talk to him, obviously. And there's very little, there's no audio, there's very few pictures of Lynn. We just don't have much. So unfortunately we just couldn't go into him in the documentary. He was also a brilliant document restorer. Lynn was able to fix documents and take. Piece them together. So look, if anyone, if anyone did know, if anyone did know, it was Lynn Jacobs. That doesn't mean he did, you know. As for the homosexuality, which, I'll be honest, I have had dozens and dozens of questions, was marque.

Tyler Measom [01:46:05] I asked as many people as I could whether he was or not, including people like Justin Schiller, who, you know, him and his partner are homosexuals and would hang out with Mark. First off, it doesn't matter. I don't care if Mark was or not, but he will. And again, we'll never know. I don't think it matters. But everyone said no, he wasn't.

Jared Hess [01:46:27] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [01:46:27] However close to him, Mark also kept some other secrets. So who knows?

John Dehlin [01:46:32] Right. Right. Brilliant. Okay. So at the end of the day, were there heroes and any, you know, were there heroes that you guys want to just say? These people were heroes to me.

The Investigators Who Cracked the Case

Jared Hess [01:46:45] They come out of the story Al Rust. For me, all the investigators, I think were heroes. George Therock, Morton, Bill Flynn, I mean, they really kind of broke the case wide open when, you know, in the face of these huge institutions whose reputations were on the line, they just came in with some good old fashioned science and discovered that these were Forgeries, and that changed everything. And then when the investigators were able to, you know, find out that Hoffman had been making these plates to do the oath of a Freeman, it's like it was such an incredible team of smart people that work tirelessly to really break it open.

Jared Hess [01:47:27] But I, you know, I think people that openly forgave Mark after the fact, like Al Rust, who was completely devastated and ruined financially. I mean, it's kind of mind blowing to me. And Matt Christensen, too, the, you know, the father of Steve Christensen. The stories that we heard, one that we didn't have time for, the Desert News wrote an article about how he, you know, when Dory, one of Mark Hoffman's children, were grown, and Dory's like a single mom kind of destitute a lot of the time. Matt Christensen stepped in when her oldest son wanted to go on a mission, said, I will help provide things that. That you need to go. And that's just amazing. But also.

John Dehlin [01:48:10] So he pays for the son of his son's murderer to go on a mission.

Jared Hess [01:48:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:16] And then.

Jared Hess [01:48:17] And then another one. And this is one that Randy Rigby told us that we didn't have time for. But in the hearing for Hoffman, when the investigators and prosecutors were laying out their case against Mark, just horrible time for Mark Hoffman's family, who would. All along, Hoffman's dad and mom had believed that he was innocent and that these allegations were false. But when it came to light when the evidence was so damning that there was no question that Mark was guilty, like Matt Christensen leaned over to Hoffman's dad and said, hey, I just want you to know that my family holds no ill will against you or your family.

Jared Hess [01:48:58] We love you. You know, we. We forgive, you know, what has been done. And it's like, wow, that was. I mean, Randy Rigby could barely get through telling that story. We were all bawling as he told it, and it was just like, wow, these are just incredible people that we're willing to kind of forgive and train, heal and move on from it. But, yeah, you know, that.

Tyler Measom [01:49:20] That story about how Matt Christensen paid for Mark Hoffman's son to go on a mission, you know, and everyone says that's.

John Dehlin [01:49:27] And I.

Tyler Measom [01:49:27] And it is a beautiful. It's a wonderful story, and it shows the forgiveness and the amazement of Utah. I told that story to my therapist, and he goes, yeah, well, you could also look at it as, you took my son. I'm going to take yours. So not to be that, but, you know, negative about it, but, you know,

Jared Hess [01:49:42] wow, that's a negative therapist.

Tyler Measom [01:49:45] It explains a bit about me. No, no, no, no, no.

John Dehlin [01:49:48] That's dark.

Tyler Measom [01:49:50] But I. You know, one. One person who I think is amazing in this is. Is Alvin Rust, who is salt of the earth. He's a great human being and he just loved collecting these coins and loved when Mark came in and he. He said, I treated him.

John Dehlin [01:50:05] He.

Tyler Measom [01:50:06] I treated him like a son and he betrayed me. Which for those who know the story of Al Rust and the Utah story of his son, Galen Rust is kind of heartbreaking as well. And he, he openly cried about that. He said, I had one son who. One man who treated me as a son betray me and a real son betray me. And if people who know Galen Rust, his son involved in a large scale Ponzi scheme, a silver dealing scheme.

Tyler Measom [01:50:33] Here's a little inside story that I've never told anyone publicly. I went in to visit Galen Rust and I talked to him and I said, I want to interview you because Galen Rust had his own story with Mark. He went to Mark with it, to New York with Mark to retrieve the McClellan collection. I went and talked to Galen and he took me in his office and we talked for about an hour. And he says, I don't want you to make this documentary. I don't want you to make it. Every time, everyone, time this story comes up, it causes a lot of pain, which I agree with.

Tyler Measom [01:51:02] And then he said, and of course, Galen Russ had millions of dollars and he was interested in the arts and student funding. And he said, tyler, how much have you put into this documentary? And I was relatively early at the time in making it. I said, I've got about $30,000 into the making of this film so far.

Tyler Measom [01:51:18] And he said, how about I give you $50,000 not to make it and I'll give you a million dollars to make a documentary about how important music is to students. And that's a sizable amount of money. I went to the dentist and I sat in my. Right after I went to the dentist, I sat in the dentist chair and I sat there for an hour and a half just thinking about it. $50,000 just right back to me. And a million dollars to make a film. And by the end of it, I said, I'm not going to do that. There's no way I would regret the rest of my life if I took a payoff to not make the story that I want to make.

Tyler Measom [01:51:55] So I got in my car and I was driving and I got a call from Galen and he said, tyler, I did my Research. You're a great filmmaker. I talked to a number of people, and you're gonna make this film anyways. So rather than me trying to not make, have you make it, I'm gonna give you the money to make it, and you're gonna come into my studio. I'm gonna outfit you. I'm gonna give you all the money to make this documentary. And I, you know, initially, that was also interesting as well. Of course, at the time, I didn't have any funding for the film, and I went down that road for a while.

Tyler Measom [01:52:27] Unfortunately, it didn't materialize. And that's good because the FBI eventually raided his studio and took all of the hard drives and took everything. I do believe, in my opinion, that Galen was trying to hide something there too.

Jared Hess [01:52:40] This is before it broke, that all that.

Tyler Measom [01:52:42] Oh, yeah. This is before it broke, of course, before the whole scandal. Yeah. So, you know, I. I think Galen. My opinion, I think Galen knowingly forged or sold Mark Hoffman forgeries after Mark Hoffman was convicted, including coins. And Galen told me, Mark Hoffman never forged coins. He never forged coins. He never forged coins. And the lady doth protest way too much when he was telling me, I never sold Mark Hoffman forgeries. I never sold coins of Mark Hoffman's, which I genuinely believe he did. And he may have been trying to hide that.

John Dehlin [01:53:14] He.

Tyler Measom [01:53:15] He took over the business from Al, and Al told us, like, he. I sold him the business, and I regret it because he didn't have the love of documents that Al Rust had. Al loved these coins. Galen just treated them as merchandise and sold them. So there's a little inside baseball. It may have gone way too deep.

Jared Hess [01:53:34] Wow. I didn't know that story.

Tyler Measom [01:53:36] Yeah, you hadn't. Come on yet, actually, at the time, you weren't a part of it.

John Dehlin [01:53:39] Epic.

Tyler Measom [01:53:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:40] Oh, my God. Okay, last two. You guys have already said you intentionally wanted people to connect their own dots. Last two questions about the Mormon Church. Then I want to end by just asking you a couple questions about the doc, its reception, people's reaction to it, and we'll get you out of here. The two questions that I would want to ask you about the church to end, and it's the type of thing that people really, especially people who have felt hurt by the church, betrayed by the church, etc. The two things that they want to do are make parallels between Joseph Smith and Mark Hoffman.

Moral Responsibility and Church Culpability

John Dehlin [01:54:10] And then the other thing that they want to do is they want to say if the church hadn't had a history of not being honest about its history if the church hadn't had a history of buying up documents, if the church hadn't had a history of using front people to be their purchasers so that they wouldn't have to be the ones purchasing to then hide that and then donating the documents, then these deaths wouldn't have happened. The whole Markov. Mark Hoffman wouldn't have even had a reason to become a con man in this way because the Church would have been fully transparent in its history, and then Steve Christensen wouldn't have been put in harm's way.

John Dehlin [01:54:45] I know that's a lot of sort of like hindsight 2020 stuff. And I want to just tell you guys, if you guys just want to say, let the people connect their own dots, that's a fine answer for me. But I would feel bad if I didn't at least ask you if there's anything you want to say about either of those questions.

Jared Hess [01:54:59] I just don't think anybody could have done anything to anticipate the evil premeditated murder, you know, in killing that Hoffman, you know, pulled off like, you know, in hindsight, it's easy to go oh, and kind of point fingers, but it seems like the mess that he'd gotten himself into, he'd already put it in his own head that people would have to die. And it's a mess that he created.

Jared Hess [01:55:28] And I just don't think it's smart to kind of like, look back and give blame to people. I mean, you look at Brent Metcalfe, who feels totally responsible for having introduced Steve to Mark Hoffman. And I'm sure that people at the church feel horrible about asking Steve Christensen to kind of be the go between with the documents. It's like there's so much pain and guilt, I think, that people have looking at it. But again, this was all created by Mark Hoffman. Like, this whole mess was created by him. And to try and point blame anywhere other than where it deserves to be is just a mistake.

Tyler Measom [01:56:10] So, yeah, we had to set up the context and the setting in which Mark Hoffman was able to thrive. And he was able to thrive. His ballpark, his short right porch in Yankee Field, was the Mormon Church and the faith and the people within the community and A, their. Their affinity for one another and their trust for people who were also of their same faith in which Mark utilized that B, the love of history that the Mormon faith and the Mormon historians had in this need to collect their history.

Tyler Measom [01:56:42] Also the money that, you know, a lot of active Mormons have and the Mormon faith has, he was able to really utilize those to his advantage. Also, you know, the Mormon faith has a history of treasure. They find treasure and they look for treasure. And Joseph Smith was a treasure digger. I'm sorry, he was, he looked for treasure. It's just fact.

Tyler Measom [01:57:06] And you know, so they. This was the setting in which Mark was able to place himself in, which allowed him to thrive. Of course he also utilized those same things in the international and national stage with historical documents.

Tyler Measom [01:57:22] So was the church responsible? I don't know. My opinion, I have lost my faith. God and angel did not appear to a young boy in the woods. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and there is none. I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.

Tyler Measom [01:57:43] And Mark didn't buy it, obviously. And I'm not putting myself on the level of Mark and what he did. There are crazy stories within the Mormon faith. Me personally, I'm sorry man, Polygamy, I don't, I'm getting off on a tangent, but no man needs 37 wives. And if there was a hardware store where a man married a 14 year old girl and had 37 wives, I wouldn't go to that store and most people wouldn't. But yet there's a statue to that man just up the road.

Tyler Measom [01:58:11] So I don't buy these things. I don't believe them. And Mark didn't believe him and he utilized that. And in some ways those stories may have needed to be outed. And if Mark Hoffman, through his connivery and evilness and wicked ways was able to allow the church to open their history a little bit more and reveal the fact that we have these skeletons in their closet, there is something to be commended for that he achieved his purpose in a horrible, horrific way and allowed some secrets that needed to be told told because there are people out there who, you know, believe this and that's great.

Tyler Measom [01:58:52] I have no problem with them. If it makes him happy, that's wonderful. I have no problem with that. Zero. I really don't. I have no ill will and want to pull anyone out of the church, I just don't. It's just not for me. So Mark had his agenda and he accomplished it.

Tyler Measom [01:59:06] If Mark had probably just said at some point, said, you know what, when he was in trouble and he owed people millions of dollars, if he would have just said, the jig is up guys, I'm a forger, I'm a fraud, he probably would have done 10 years and now he'd be working for the FBI. He'd pull a Frank Abagnale, catch me if you can. But instead, he planted two bombs and killed two innocent people and cost the state very millions of dollars and a lot of, you know, the pain he did, the things he did. There's.

Tyler Measom [01:59:40] There was a store here in Salt Lake, and now I'm really good off. But there was a store here in Salt Lake called the Cosmic Airplane, right? And it was the cool shop in Salt Lake. It was the head shop. It was where you got crazy magazines. Ken Sanders had his store. That was the early birth of that store. But they also, the owner of that bought Hoffman forgeries. And when they were found to be forgeries, he had to buy them back, ultimately closing down the coolest store in Salt Lake City. So the effects of Mark, the fingers of Mark were far reaching. The damage he did was far reaching.

Tyler Measom [02:00:11] And the damage he did was to the Mormon Church. The damage he did was to people's faith. The damage he did was to people's lives. And many of those things, most of those things can never be brought back.

John Dehlin [02:00:25] So dark.

Tyler Measom [02:00:27] Oh,

John Dehlin [02:00:29] what have been the most encouraging, touching, heart warming reactions. I mean, tens of millions of viewers, Number two, Netflix, you know, movie in the world, huge positive success, you guys have already said, would have been the most heartwarming. And if you want to so share the most disappointing responses to the documentary,

Jared Hess [02:00:52] I think, you know, it's funny going into it. I think the perception of the story, the title, Murder among the Mormons, you know, I, I had a lot of concern and sleepless nights just about the perception within the community.

John Dehlin [02:01:05] Did you pick the title or did Netflix or so.

Jared Hess [02:01:08] No, no, I mean, it was. Netflix wanted us to change it from the Salamander.

John Dehlin [02:01:11] From the beginning, it was going to be the Salamander.

Jared Hess [02:01:14] Yeah, it was going to be the same. That was a working title.

Tyler Measom [02:01:16] We toyed with the Salamander murders, which is which.

Jared Hess [02:01:18] They were like, yeah, and then they. They saw the. The clip that we had, you know, piece of archival sound bite where it's like the church in an uncomfortable spotlight as there is murder among the Mormons. And they were like, that's it. And it's just, you know, it's. It's a question of clarity. But anyway, all of those things, just knowing that the word Mormons taboo now, it didn't.

Tyler Measom [02:01:39] It didn't have. They're trying to move murder among the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Didn't it just have the same ring, it the same alliteration?

Jared Hess [02:01:47] But yeah, for me, I think, you know, and in Netflix, you know, they cut together their own trailer. Do Their own marketing. And, you know, I think the perception just of the story within the community is like, oh, this is something we don't really talk about. The church could look really bad. You know, that kind of a thing. And.

Jared Hess [02:02:04] And people had their own agenda for it too, right? What they wanted it to be, whether they wanted it to be an expose on the church or totally exonerating the church or whatever, and it was none of those things. It's like what we wanted to tell, again, was let people tell their story. The people closest to Mark let them tell the story. And that's where we took all of our cues from. And so I think when people saw it, for me, the most rewarding thing is people feel that when they watch it, like, whether they're ex Mormon, post Mormon, or totally in the church, they come away with, oh, we just heard people kind of tell their story, and it was fascinating.

Jared Hess [02:02:42] And they all take their own kind of, you know, lessons from it without us kind of having to preach what we want. It's like just put the story out there and let people decide for themselves what it's all about. So that's been the most fun thing. And then again, this was made for. Not the.

Jared Hess [02:03:02] Not the small community of people that know the ins and outs of this story. It was made for a global audience and so for people to be able to watch it. And the funny thing, people that don't know anything about Mormonism or the church, all the feedback I've got is like, I had no idea it was Mark until the end of episode two.

John Dehlin [02:03:21] It's like, you did that on purpose, right?

Jared Hess [02:03:22] Yeah. I mean, we wanted to structure it that way, but the fact that it worked for people that went into it cold and didn't know jack squat was. It's.

John Dehlin [02:03:31] That's a real cool achievement.

Jared Hess [02:03:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tyler Measom [02:03:33] So it's cool. But anyway, yeah, I mean, I gotta say, like, I'm proud of us. And Jared said that. He called us before it was done. He called me and he's like, dude, I'm so proud of this work, and I'm proud of it. We spent years getting a very difficult story off the ground, and we got it onto the platform that everyone essentially can watch it, and we told the story we wanted to tell for the most part. And it's fun and it's entertaining and it's engaging and it makes you think. And we put levity in it because I think that was an important part of it. We didn't want it to be this gruesome, horrible True crime. We put a little, you know, there's

John Dehlin [02:04:11] that Rice Krispy treat moment. Was that an homage to Napoleon Dynamite? Be honest.

Jared Hess [02:04:16] No, I don't think there's any Rice Krispies in Napoleon. But I mean, no, the hand reaching

John Dehlin [02:04:20] for dessert was that little tinkle.

Jared Hess [02:04:21] That was. Oh, yeah, little flourish. That was our sandman, who ended up playing Shannon Flynn in the Recreations. And he was.

Tyler Measom [02:04:31] John May was our sound man. And when we end up casting, we're like, nobody looks like Shannon more than the dude holding the boom pole. And he was brilliant.

Making the Film and the Production Team

Jared Hess [02:04:41] We got to give a shout out real quick, though, to our amazing team and crew. Like, I mean, Tyler's already mentioned our editors, and really, I mean, for me, making a movie in Covid, you know, it was so bizarre, the restrictions you have with production. The fact that we were even able to shoot recreations was a miracle. But then having to work remotely was super weird. Tyler and I couldn't be in the cutting room, so we were watching cuts via Zoom. But just, you know, our editors, our producer, Janet Gargi. Duff Rich, our producer here in Tannah. Him and his wife Amy Rich were just incredible pulling together the production. It was an impossible task, and they just hit it out of the park. Jonas Sappington. Jonas was amazing.

Tyler Measom [02:05:25] JJ Neward, who'd been on the project from day one much, much before, and she wasn't a producer on the project.

Jared Hess [02:05:32] Amazing.

Tyler Measom [02:05:33] The Utah Film Commission was amazing, and we actually got a state of Utah rebate for this. We were granted part of that.

Jared Hess [02:05:41] So real quick, Bianca Klein, or cinematographer. Unbelievable. Sam Demke, our prop guy, was incredible. He pulled together. He had to fabricate all of the. The forgeries and documents into a knockout job.

Tyler Measom [02:05:58] And we did. We did as much as we could in. In truth, like, we. We created Mark's workshop, his basement. We. We had Jonas, our production designer. We gave him some photos of the tr. The actual workshop that Mark worked in from the police records, and he created it. Exactly. Almost exactly. You know, we use.

Jared Hess [02:06:20] Water's about to explode.

Tyler Measom [02:06:21] So is mine. Do you want.

Jared Hess [02:06:22] Embarrassing. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:06:24] If you're like, we should wrap up.

Tyler Measom [02:06:25] You can.

John Dehlin [02:06:26] You can run, but I go, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Jared Hess [02:06:28] Gosh.

Tyler Measom [02:06:28] Can I use your water bottle? Because I have to do the same thing. What's your shot? Is it here? Can I just.

John Dehlin [02:06:33] Yeah, you know, don't worry. Yeah, don't worry. Grab whatever you want.

Tyler Measom [02:06:35] I know. I just had a big old coffee. No, yeah, no, I know. I'll keep talking.

John Dehlin [02:06:39] Okay.

Tyler Measom [02:06:41] Where was I I was talking about the crew. Oh, yeah. So we did as much as we could. We did as much as we could to make it similar. Like, we. We used actual plates that Mark had. Mark's actual plates. We used the cards. We got as much as we could that was real from the film. When we found the Mr. 2 and we found the Mr. 2 here in Utah, we searched all over the place. We found an Mr. 2 here in West Valley. We bought it.

John Dehlin [02:07:06] Was it the right color?

Tyler Measom [02:07:07] Yeah, totally.

John Dehlin [02:07:07] So cool.

Tyler Measom [02:07:09] And it's badass. It's bad.

John Dehlin [02:07:11] You still have it.

Tyler Measom [02:07:12] Duff Rich has it. And we blew the engine. We. You know, that thing has been around since 1986, and we took it out for a weekend and just did donuts out in the west desert and blew the engine. But, you know, when we shot that scene where he parked the car, we shot it in the exact same spot where Mark actually parked the car. So we. We tried to do as much as we could, and that was the sensibilities of, now that Jared's gone, I can talk about him. We tried to do, you know, the sensibilities of Jared being a narrative filmmaker and me being a documentary filmmaker. We blended those two together of, like, I wanted to be just as authentic as possible with the documentary, and he wanted to have a little bit of fun. And so between those two, it was great.

John Dehlin [02:07:56] We.

Tyler Measom [02:07:56] We kind of told a broader, wider story. But after I got my vaccine, my wonderful girlfriend, Diana Whitten, who just was amazing and so wonderful in helping make this film and put it together, and every wife should be commended for every filmmaker who spends years doing something. But we went and got our vaccine a couple weeks ago, and afterwards we went to Templin House and we went and had a beer, and we were sitting outside, and we're sitting next to some people, and, I mean, we've been quarantining mad, and for, like, the first time in a year, we talked to strangers, and the dude just started talking and he just goes, holy shit.

Tyler Measom [02:08:32] Have you guys seen this movie, Murder among the Mormons? It's amazing. And Diana wanted to say it was me who did it, and I just kind of held back, and I was like, what'd you think of it? And for. For someone to, like, tell me to watch my own movie on, you know, just to say it out there. Like, that was so amazing to see that. The response has been great, and it's been great from my Mormon mother, who was. Who loved the film, to people in Indonesia who I read on Twitter about. And, you Know, to, to see that the world can see this story and to be on the biggest streaming service in the world has been remarkable.

John Dehlin [02:09:13] So amazing. Yeah.

Tyler Measom [02:09:15] Yeah. I mean, it's a hell of a story, man.

John Dehlin [02:09:17] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [02:09:18] This is like, this is like. It's not just murder. Yeah. There's two murders, there's pipe bombs, but there's greed and there's forgery and there's deception and there's religion. This in religion and this, you know, this central casting type of. Of investigators with sport coats and mustaches. You know, just like this story has everything.

John Dehlin [02:09:37] Yeah.

Tyler Measom [02:09:37] And it ties in.

John Dehlin [02:09:38] Not a lot of sex. It's the only thing you didn't know, which is fine.

Tyler Measom [02:09:41] That's the DVD extras. We'll show you later. You know, it's not just like, yeah, this happened in 1985 and Mark started in 1980, but this forgery and this story goes back to 1830, you know, and it goes back even further if you talk about the amazement of the oath of a Freeman, which. That forgery, the oath of a Freeman was Marx, Mona Lisa and how he pulled that off and the history of it. That's the first printed document in American history.

John Dehlin [02:10:11] There we go.

Tyler Measom [02:10:11] And Mark was able to fool everyone. And the way he fooled everyone by doing that, the techniques he, he, he, he did to create that document was amazing. It's my turn. You're gonna roll.

Jared Hess [02:10:21] Go for it.

John Dehlin [02:10:22] Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, no, I know. I promise you. I promise you guys. Two hours. So. So I'll ask Jared. I'll ask you first. And then when Tyler comes, I'll ask him the same question. Well, anything else you wanted to say about people's reactions or.

Audience Reception of the Documentary

Jared Hess [02:10:36] No, it's been overwhelmingly positive. And just.

John Dehlin [02:10:39] What about believing Mormons?

Jared Hess [02:10:41] And especially believing Mormons? I've been kind of blown away. And again, I think a lot. There was a lot of fear and trepidation initially, like, oh, should we watch this? Is there an ax to grind? Are we going to lose our People

John Dehlin [02:10:53] were like, Jared's gonna be extra communicated for sure. But this one, he's gone, you know?

Jared Hess [02:10:59] No, but, but people. I think there was a lot of worry initially, but then it's like, I think the word of mouth has been amazing. I mean, it's funny, just walking through my neighborhood, which is predominantly lds, and people stopping, saying, oh, my gosh, we loved it. It was just wow. We were surprised that it was just kind of right down the center. Like, it didn't.

John Dehlin [02:11:18] That's a real, That's a real accomplishment. Yeah. Yeah.

Jared Hess [02:11:21] I Mean, so that's. It's fun that it was received that way, but it. But you had to tell both sides of the story. I mean, to be able to have a semblance of integrity with your filmmaking, it's like, yeah, you know, we hear Sandra Tanner go, you know what? There was a great questioning in the church. How do these prophet seers and revelators not know that Hoffman was a fraud and that they were being duped? And this was, you know, a very difficult thing for the church.

Tyler Measom [02:11:50] It's like you need to be able

Jared Hess [02:11:51] to hear Richard Turley say, hey, this is God doesn't always step in. You know, if you're. If you believe in God, like, he doesn't interfere sometimes and lets people have their agency and, you know, so you. I mean, again, to not have Turley be able to tell his side of the. You know what I mean? You need to hear both. And the perspective and the takeaways that everyone had after this had happened, you know, in hindsight, like, what they learned from it. So, I mean, we tried to do that, but maybe weren't as effective or whatever.

John Dehlin [02:12:25] But anyway, okay, I want to ask you guys just about future plans, future projects, and if there's ever going to be a Joseph Smith series or documentary. But I want to just have you comment on one thing. There was. There was one. There was one thing that I really wished was in the documentary. And it's only because of my love for this couple. But, you know, I kind of felt like I kind of, in my own mind that loves fantasy, that loves superheroes. I almost envisioned Gerald Tanner as kind of the arch nemesis of Mark Hoffman, maybe matched him in brilliance. And the fact, you know, we talked a lot about discernment and integrity and prophet seers and revelators.

John Dehlin [02:13:10] This dude was able to detect the Salamander letter as a forgery a full year before anybody else. And had the integrity as an ex Mormon and as being viewed as the world's worst, most awful, hateful, satanic, Anti Mormon, Anti Mormon.

Tyler Measom [02:13:29] You know,

John Dehlin [02:13:31] I know a little bit about. What do you.

Jared Hess [02:13:32] What are you laughing at?

Tyler Measom [02:13:33] I'm just a joke. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:35] He had the integrity to say, yeah, I'd love to run with this, but I want to make sure it's accurate. And then he was willing to stand up through sending his wife out, of course, stand up to the, you know, ex Mormon community, a lot of his peers, and say, I know you guys love this. I know you want to be spiking the football and dancing about this, but we can't. We can't do that because I don't think this documents legitimate profit. This is prophet, seer, revelator. And matching the brilliance in my mind potentially of Mark Hoffman. I guess I would have loved that story to be memorialized. And I'm not giving you guys a hard time about it.

Jared Hess [02:14:10] No, no, no.

John Dehlin [02:14:10] The.

Jared Hess [02:14:11] That's one that I wanted in so bad. That was fascinating. I kept harping on our editors, like, guys, we gotta have this in there in episode two. This is so fascinating. But it fell ultimately into the category of, like, this only means something. Exactly.

Jared Hess [02:14:28] This many people that have read the books and even know who Gerald Tanner is. But for me, it was something so huge because again, to the rest of the world, it doesn't matter because they already don't believe that Mormonism is true. It's. You know what I mean? It's just another religion.

Jared Hess [02:14:47] So, again, it was kind of going down a rabbit hole. But I loved it just again, because I'm so fascinated with the Tanners. And it was amazing to talk to Sandra about it. And she said, you know what? Gerald saw it, read the context. And he was like, look, even though the paper checks out, the handwriting checks out, he's like, the content is too packed is what she said. It's. It's almost too obvious, too easy. It's patterned after anything that you could read, you know, And Sandra wanted it

Tyler Measom [02:15:16] to be true, which is interesting.

John Dehlin [02:15:18] Yeah. They told that story how they argued and argued about that. Yeah, yeah.

Jared Hess [02:15:22] So it's super. And to me, I loved it. But again, the rest of the world, it was just boring. But to us, it's like, wow. Like that are versed in the history and know the history of the Tanner's relationship to the church. It's so fascinating.

John Dehlin [02:15:39] Kind of legendary. You want to add anything to that or.

Jared Hess [02:15:41] Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Measom [02:15:42] No, I mean, you know. No.

Future Projects and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [02:15:44] Okay. All right, so we'll get you out on this. And thanks so much for your time. You guys are brilliant. I'm sorry. So proud to call you friends. And I'm so proud of what you've done. Tell us what you're working on, if there's anything you want to share about what you're working on next, any projects you want people to know about, how to follow up, if there's anything. I know everyone's always looking for projects or fundraisers or donors or whatever. And there's always this question of is there ever going to be that Joseph Smith documentary biography, motion picture? Do you guys have any interest on doing Any more of these types of projects, or are you guys going back to. I mean, in your case, Jared, going back to the stuff you've been doing all along? Tyler, do you have any. What's next? So I just want to give you.

Tyler Measom [02:16:23] We're doing the Shannon Flynn. Mark Hoffman is what we're doing. Part A team partner, Nerdorama.

Jared Hess [02:16:34] Oh, man. No, I'm.

John Dehlin [02:16:36] I'm.

Jared Hess [02:16:36] Jerush and I are busy working on an animated feature film for Netflix called the Film of the Unicorns. We're in production on that, and it's a big musical comedy, so kind of Pixar level, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, CG animation and. Yeah. But it's. It's super fun. Netflix is a dream to work with, so.

John Dehlin [02:16:54] Yep. That came after this project.

Jared Hess [02:16:57] I mean, we've been working on it for a couple of years now. I mean, the animation takes such a long time, but, yeah, fun. So kind of simultaneously, it's been happening. Okay.

Tyler Measom [02:17:08] I've got a. Always a number of things I'm trying to get off the ground in certain areas of development. My last film before this was I Want My mtv, which Netflix is gonna put on in August. It aired previously on A and E, but it's gonna be on Netflix in August. It is, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:24] Oh, good.

Tyler Measom [02:17:25] Yeah. Hurt. When you have a big hit on Netflix to call them up and say, you know, I got another movie that you could show. And they said, we'll take it. So, so great. And it's a great. It was a fun film. It was so much fun making it. And I love making stories about music, so I'm considering doing one about the birth of. Or the period of hair metal, if you will. Or glam rock.

John Dehlin [02:17:46] Yes.

Tyler Measom [02:17:46] Which is a lot like Murder among the Mormons. Just more mascara.

John Dehlin [02:17:50] You're talking about, like. Like Rat and Twisted Sister.

Tyler Measom [02:17:53] Yeah. The birth and death of hair metal. And I'm, you know, I'm entertaining offers. It's been really nice. I've been looking. I've been getting offers right now to do some pretty badass documentaries, you know, and if something comes along that Jared and I are right for, I jump right in, we do something crazy again like that.

Jared Hess [02:18:12] It's fun.

Tyler Measom [02:18:13] I'm doing a. I've been hired by Iheart to do a podcast, to host and produce a podcast called Was I in a Cult? Which, you know, each episode tells the individual story of a person who was in and left a cult. And that's been kind of fantastic and fun, but, you know, I'm always looking to Tell some good stories. I don't want to stay too much in the Mormonism realm. People say Tyler does music like Mad Magicians and Mormonism. And I don't want to just only do that.

Jared Hess [02:18:44] It's a good combo.

Tyler Measom [02:18:46] But as far as like the Joseph Smith story,

John Dehlin [02:18:50] you know, some people are saying the Netflix success shows a demand for. We've, we've got Nexium, we've got Scientology, you know, we've. We've got holy, you know, holy hell, and we've got wild, wild country, like the Vow. Yeah. There's all. Some are saying that the Netflix dog. And there's already people sending me treatments, like pitches. Do you have, like, what do I do? You know, do you guys think there's more of a demand for. No, I think Joseph Smith.

Jared Hess [02:19:16] It's funny. I think there's so much, I guess, mystery around the faith. Like, like, it's such a weird, complex kind of dichotomy between. You've got like happy Missionary, you got the Book of Mormon musical. Right. That, that people know, like, wow, these happy go lucky Mormons. The Os.

Tyler Measom [02:19:40] Yeah.

Jared Hess [02:19:41] Like the branding of the people is just this incredibly warm, happy, positive, happy, positive fun.

John Dehlin [02:19:47] Yeah.

Jared Hess [02:19:48] Good clean fun people that'll bring you a huge mountain of Rice Krispies. When you move into the neighborhood, it's like, that's what you know. But then with that, it's like, well, what do they do in the temple? What's the, you know, wait, they. What's Kolob? You know, you've got. There's like the Dungeons and Dragons sci fi world of Mormonism meets like these hat like the product is like these happy, genuine good people. And it's a mystery and it's incredibly entertaining. And I think that is, I think I'm the zeitgeist. What people are curious about and if there's a scandal or a true crime thing or whatever about it, people are just instantly kind of entertained with the idea of what they're going to learn.

John Dehlin [02:20:29] It's good material.

Jared Hess [02:20:30] It's good.

Tyler Measom [02:20:30] Yeah.

Jared Hess [02:20:31] I mean, yeah, episodes are super fun

Tyler Measom [02:20:33] and apparently Robert Redford and Paul Newman were going to play Brigham Young and Joseph Smith supposedly decades ago. And I don't know, obviously that hasn't happened. But you know, look, that's. As far as Western expansion and good stories and interesting characters and sex and violence and corruption and creed. The story of early Mormonism and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young would make Deadwood look like Mr. Rogers neighborhood. You know what I mean? Like, it would make a good story and Whether someone does it or not, I don't know.

Jared Hess [02:21:06] Yeah, there's a lot. You just kind of have to pick the point of view that you're telling it from, you know, and which character. It's so vast. Right. You. You know, and if you're telling that story in 120 minutes in a film, it's like, you gotta pay. There's too much.

John Dehlin [02:21:20] Somewhat like a 10 part series. You know what I mean?

Jared Hess [02:21:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd have to.

John Dehlin [02:21:24] Like a miniseries.

Jared Hess [02:21:25] Yeah, miniseries. It would be heavy duty. There's a lot of characters to follow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tyler Measom [02:21:30] Or roots, as it's called in Utah.

John Dehlin [02:21:33] All right.

Jared Hess [02:21:33] But I'm fine with the Car Malone Porter Rockwell film. That's a masterpiece. He plays Elijah Abel as a gunslinger, which. I don't know. It was super accurate, but it's a winner. We checked it out. It was a family. Family home meeting. Corma was the only one not dressed in period clothes. I feel like he had some stone washed, like Wranglers or Levi's on. He rolls up. It's a disturbing film too, because it's like Porter Rockwell is like courting again a very young, like, teenage girl who he wants to marry. You like, ooh, something's off here.

Tyler Measom [02:22:08] And it was Karl Malone, anyway.

Jared Hess [02:22:11] Well, that was the best part.

John Dehlin [02:22:12] On behalf of all the people that listen to Mormon stories. Podcast Mormon people. Because I can speak on behalf of the Mormon people. Just kidding. All right, thank you, Jared, and thank you, Tyler, for making this amazing, important documentary, for telling this really important story, for just being who you are, for doing it so gracefully, so diplomatically, so professionally. I loved it and I'm proud to call you guys friends and. And you guys deserve all the success that's going to come from this because I love you guys and I think my listeners and viewers will agree. You guys have given us a really important gift. So thank you.

Tyler Measom [02:22:48] Thanks, John. It was nice to. Nice to go a little deep. Deep. We've been doing a lot of interviews and they're like five minutes. You got 10 minutes for entertainment Weekly. And this wheel allows us to go a little bit deep. So thank you.

John Dehlin [02:23:00] Anytime, brethren.

Jared Hess [02:23:01] Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:23:01] Anytime, brethren.

Jared Hess [02:23:02] You rock.

John Dehlin [02:23:03] Any final things you want to say to the audience?

Jared Hess [02:23:05] Nothing. I just done a full bladder.

Tyler Measom [02:23:07] You just went to the bathroom.

Jared Hess [02:23:09] Oh, man.

Tyler Measom [02:23:10] You're pregnant woman.

Jared Hess [02:23:11] Tiny bladder.

John Dehlin [02:23:12] You guys are awesome.

Jared Hess [02:23:13] I'm pregnant with cinnamon rolls right now.

John Dehlin [02:23:15] All right, love you guys. Thanks, everyone. Support us@mormonstories.org if you like this kind of content. Most importantly, check out Murder among the Mormons on Netflix and shout out to the BBC. I had a British woman reach out to me and say, you gotta mention that. You got to mention the BBC because they wouldn't have happened without them. So shout out to the BBC and Netflix for making this happen. Thanks to all the listeners. Thanks to all my supporters. Please become a monthly donor on Mormon stories podcast@mormonstories.org if you want to see this content and continue. But most importantly, tell everyone about this documentary. Share it with everyone. Share this episode with everyone everywhere because we got to get the word out. Take care everyone. Be good to each other. Be kind. Love you guys. Jared and and Tyler. Be good.

Jared Hess [02:23:58] Thanks.

John Dehlin [02:23:58] Take care guys.

Jared Hess [02:24:02] And same.

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