Introduction to the Episode and Lynn Packer

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's November 11, 2020 and we are now on part five of our gripping, informative, enlightening series of interviews with legendary Mormon journalist Lynn Packer, nephew of Boyd K. Packer. We've done of the four interviews that we've done so far, we've talked about Boyd K. Packer's upbringing, his rise to power. We've talked about Lynn Packer's rise and his interest in becoming a journalist, including his service in the Vietnam War as a journalist. We've shared a 30 minute video of some really important moments where Boyd K. Packer and J. Reuben Clark and Harold B.

John Dehlin [00:00:54] Lee all got together to sort of change the course of church education. This included a really important book that was published in the mid-1950s and the book was called Tell Us what the Name of the Book was the The Charted Course of the Church in Education. And if you haven't checked out that 30 minute video in my Lynn Packer series, you really should because it gives a lot of background for what we're going to talk about today.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] We spent the morning talking about, in part four, Lynn Packer's journey covering the dark side of Mormonism in Utah. Things like the Ted Bundy case, the Mark Hoffman case, the Lafferty brothers and others. And now we're kind of here for the main event.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] The main event is to cover what Lynn is perhaps best known for, which is the Paul H. Dunn scandal. Lynn Packer spent 15 plus years investigating beloved Mormon general authority Paul H. Dunn, who was so well known and loved for his amazing stories about playing professional baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and for fighting in World War II and, you know, having his buddy die in his arms and telling stories about faith and patriotism, only to find out that Paul H. Dunn was making these stories up and making a lot of money off of these stories, basing his fame on these stories, and even engaging in an affinity fraud where people were persuaded to invest in schemes where they lost a lot of money based on Paul H.

John Dehlin [00:02:40] Dunn's reputation. Ultimately, Paul H. Dunn was put on emeritus status and he's one of the only general authorities in the modern era to be prematurely placed on emeritus status. So it's a really important story and it exists only because of Lynn Packer. And what I think is really important about this interview is that even though this Paul H. Dunn story, it had a feature in Sunstone magazine and I think this story was covered in the Arizona Republic to this day, as I understand it. And Lynn, you can correct me, this story was never really covered in the Deseret News or the Sully Tribune. I want you to correct me if I'm wrong.

John Dehlin [00:03:23] But more importantly, this is the first time anyone's ever granted you an extended full length interview to give you the chance to really discuss your investigation, the book, and to have an exchange about the details about this story. Now tell me what I've gotten right and wrong in my intro.

Lynn Packer [00:03:43] It's correct. This is the first. When I finished the book in about 2015, I sent out press releases, hoping to get at least a review, if not an interview like you're doing for the first time today with the Salt Lake Tribune, the Deseret News, the television stations, kued, Kueer.

Lynn Packer [00:04:09] I sent out a ton of them. Nobody would touch it. It was similar to when I did the first publishable version of the story many years ago. Tried to get it to come out to freelance it and Utah Holiday wouldn't touch it. I almost got UPI to do it. They backed off and it was finally the Arizona Republic that broke the story and the local media, they all did their token. Okay, this is what the Arizona Republic reports. So it made a big splash for a few days. Nobody followed up, nobody went in depth.

Lynn Packer [00:04:52] And I was in Germany when the story broke. So I was interviewed a couple of times by phone. That was pretty much it. So there will be things that some things people will see during this interview and some things I'll say that will be heard and seen mostly for the first time.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Yeah. And so for me, what this interview is also about is it's not just about the, you know, the Paul H. Dunn and how a general authority can deceive so many people, including top church leaders, but it's also about the way that the Mormon Church has used its, its power, its influence, its money to bury and hide important stories that the membership in the world at large needs to know using lawyers and, and pressure and intimidation, you know, because it just seems outrageous that the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News and Kuer and, you know, all these different media outlets that are supposed to be covering Mormonism wouldn't cover it.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] And this could all be sort of, you know, and most, most people today have never heard of Paul H. Dunn. It's so remarkable that unless you live through this, it's, it's gone down the memory hole and everyone's forgotten. And the church is still doing this with stories about sexual abuse, with stories about ecclesiastical abuse, with financial the church's financials. And so this becomes a really important case study in how the church uses its money and power and legal influence to kill stories and to hide information from its members and from the world. Am I overreaching there?

Lynn Packer [00:06:42] No, no, I think that's. I think that's right. You have times that the church weighs in and tries to use its influence to stop a story. A lot of it is self censorship. Most of the news outlets know how and where their bread is buttered, and they don't want to. They don't. They'll take little shots at the church, but they don't want to get into any. Anything that's really controversial. Sometimes stories pop up where you. It is inevitably a big part of the story, like the Hoffman fraud bombing story. But other than that, they don't initiate major negative stories about the church. I think that there's been many scandals involving the church, especially finances, come and go without any of the membership generally or general public knowing about it.

John Dehlin [00:07:43] Yeah, it's true. So let's. Let's go ahead and dig in. And I want to welcome all of our listeners and viewers that are joining us on Facebook and on YouTube. I would love it if you all would share this episode on your social media so that we can get as many viewers and listeners as possible. Of course, you can share it afterwards as well, but we would love to get lots of people learning about this stuff. And to begin, I have a few clips that hopefully give a sense for. For kind of what we're talking about here. But if you want, can you just give a really quick introduction to. To the life of Paul Dunn. Just a little bit of a biographical sketch, a couple minutes, you know, nothing more. Just so people can have an introduction to his early life and who he is.

Who Was Paul H. Dunn?

Lynn Packer [00:08:40] I was a missionary. I think it was 1964. I was in Germany. I remember I was in our apartment. We had. It was in Bochum, Germany. We had an apartment above a sort of a strip joint. I won't forget the apartment that I was in.

Lynn Packer [00:09:00] And we would get the improvement era in the mail and look forward to getting it. And I remember that's the first time I read Paul Dunn has been made a general authority. There was a sort of a drawing of Paul Dunn as a baseball player with the story.

Lynn Packer [00:09:19] And my first thought was, as I read this, it's about time. We've had so many people when they're older and have boring jobs and careers, who my dad. Younger guys don't identify with being called as general Authorities. But here we have somebody who was a professional baseball player. He was a war hero, and he's young. And as we discussed before, he sort of took over my uncle's position. My uncle was really young when he first started going up the ranks, and a lot of people admired him for that youth and identified with him that way. Now, you had Paul Dunn come along who could do my uncle one better, because my uncle served in the Pacific, but was after action ended and Dunn was in the thick of the war in the Pacific.

Lynn Packer [00:10:10] And you throw in this baseball career, that's pretty exciting stuff. And, you know, as time goes on, you learn a little bit more about him, that he was from Southern California, that he grew up in Hollywood. That's some more glitz that's added to it. And very quickly, he begins associating with the rich and famous of Mormons showing up with athletes. Famous athletes.

John Dehlin [00:10:37] Dale Murphy of the Atlanta Braves. Right. Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers.

Lynn Packer [00:10:43] Then, as I pointed out from the last part of the last interview, I grew up very involved with sports. I loved sports, followed baseball, football, all of it. And so all of these Mormon athletes start showing up with, With. With Paul Dunn. It was. It was great. I thought it was a huge plus for the church to call someone like that. And I think it's the main reason he was called. He had given. Done a lot of firesides around Southern California. And remember, this is on the heels of a temple being built, I think, on Sunset Avenue, I think, is where it is, not far from ucla. And so a lot of general authorities were going back and forth and heard about this rising star who was a seminary teacher. I have a friend who took seminary from Paul Dunn. The students loved him because he told all these stories and inspired them.

John Dehlin [00:11:59] Yeah, yeah. And he really was a big deal. And to help illustrate that, now I'm going to share. This is going to be a multimedia presentation where we're going to be sharing Paul Dunn clips and other clips as a part of the interview to give you both a visual but also an auditory kind of sense for what we're talking about. So the first thing I want to do, I'm going to share two things. One is an introduction that more apostle Jeffrey R. Holland.

John Dehlin [00:12:25] And I don't know if he was an apostle at the time that he did this, but he's probably president of byu. But it's an introduction that Jeffrey R. Holland makes to Paul H. Dunn in all the reverence and the majesty of kind of a BYU devotional with his general authority voice and an introduction with all the reverence.

John Dehlin [00:12:45] I'm going to share that. And then I'm going to share another BYU devotional that happened while I was on my mission in 1988. I'm guessing one of Paul H. Dunn's last. And it was like a packed room, like people were sitting on the rafters. It was like so huge. And they have Steve Young, you know, famous quarterback Steve Young from The San Francisco 49ers on the stage giving a talk before Paul H. Dunn talks. Steve Young is kind of like the, you know, he's the vegetables in the meal. Paul Dunn is the, is the meat of the, of the meal, of the presentation. So I'm just going to share this with you guys now so you get a sense for the majesty of Paul H. Dunn.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:13:28] It is a pleasure to introduce Elder

Video Clip 1 [00:13:32] Paul H. Dunn, noted author, educator, friend,

Video Clip 1 [00:13:37] one who is well known to the BYU student body, as evidenced by your attendance here today. Elder Dunn

Video Clip 1 [00:13:46] has served as a member of the first quorum of the seventh since 1964.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:52] A native of Provo, Elder Dunn graduated

Video Clip 1 [00:13:55] from chapman College in 1953 with an A.B. in religion.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:00] The following year he received a master's degree in Educational Administration at the University of Southern California. In 1959, he earned a doctoral degree

Video Clip 1 [00:14:11] in that same discipline there. A popular speaker among church members of

Video Clip 1 [00:14:15] all ages, Elder Dunn is the author

Video Clip 1 [00:14:18] of some 16 books. He served as a seminary teacher and as coordinator of LDS Institutes of Religion

Video Clip 1 [00:14:25] in Southern California for several years. Prior to his call as a general

Video Clip 1 [00:14:29] authority, Elder Dunn was an outstanding athlete

Video Clip 1 [00:14:32] in school, participating in baseball, football, basketball, golf and track.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:40] He also played professional baseball for four

Video Clip 1 [00:14:43] years with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:46] In 1972, he was named Utah's Father of the year. And in 1975, he was picked as one of the top seven former athletes in the United States by the national

Video Clip 1 [00:14:56] association of College Coaches.

John Dehlin [00:15:02] So that's, that's a little bit of a clip to kind of understand the majesty of, of Paul H. Dunn. Denise writes, what year is this? I feel like I was there. I don't know about that clip with Jeffrey R. Holland, but the one that I'm about to show, I believe is 1988, which was an assembly at BYU where, where Steve Young spoke. And there's a couple things that are relevant about this, this Steve Young clip that I'm about to show.

Lynn Packer [00:15:33] Well, let me comment on this.

John Dehlin [00:15:34] Go ahead, Lynn, please, please.

Lynn Packer [00:15:36] Is that he was not a four athlete or four sport athlete in high school. He only played baseball.

John Dehlin [00:15:46] He was we're going to get to all that. Well, yeah, we're just building the majesty, but go ahead.

Lynn Packer [00:15:51] Yeah, I was just going to mention it as it goes, as you go along, because nobody checked into this. You could have easily checked into it. You could have checked into whether he played college ball of any kind and yet he succeeded in getting named one of the top college athletes. He never played any kind of college ball.

Paul H. Dunn [00:16:16] But.

Lynn Packer [00:16:16] Okay, go ahead. I just wanted to point that out.

John Dehlin [00:16:20] No, no, that's an important point. And, and there's all sorts of things now we can look back and say why didn't, why didn't we know. But what I'm gonna, what I'm gonna show now is. And we're not going to show Paul Dunn yet, but what I'm going to show is some by administrator introducing Steve Young, who then speaks briefly about Paul H. Dunn. And the reason why I'm sharing this, there's a couple reasons. Number one is that you get a feel for the majesty of like how much reverence Paul H. Dunn had. You'll hear the, the BYU administrator say that, that Paul H. Dunn is the second most beloved Mormon in the world next to the prophet.

John Dehlin [00:17:03] And I think that's accurate. But then he goes on to basically talk about the formula for why they're having this assembly with Paul H. Dunn and Steve Young. And, and the whole goal is to make you feel the spirit, to make the participants feel the Holy Ghost through these inspired stories. And so it's going to be tipping the hand to what a theme is going to be for this entire presentation, which is, and this is why I shared that 30 minute video that you produced a couple episodes ago. It shows that, you know, the church and the, the 40s and 50s was getting beat up by science, by evolution, by the age of the earth, by geology, by Egyptologists, by scientists, you know, scrutinizing the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:17:55] And the church realized that it needed to pivot away from an emphasis on scholarship and academics and science and towards this education by emotion, where you get people to feel powerful emotional things and then you tell them that that means the Church is true. And that's going to be a theatre. That was Paul Dunn's schtick, making people feel good so that they would believe that the Church was true. And he had the Church's full backing. And so I just have to say that as an introduction because you're going to hear the formula explicitly outlined in this video and then it gets a little bit better.

John Dehlin [00:18:35] Steve Young literally says that like four fifths of his testimony as a boy was based on the stories of Paul Dunn, which, which I think is kind of an interesting and a little bit of a sad commentary. But it, but let's go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:18:52] I'm going to make sure that our, that our audio is set up to work and, and what I want to do is share share this clip now. So here, here it is. One second. Okay.

Paul H. Dunn's Celebrity and Church Fame

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:19:19] We feel very fortunate tonight to be able to have brother Steve Young and Elder Paul Dunn, one of our general authorities. Obviously, they do not need any introduction, just by virtue of all of you that are here. Attest to the fact that you all know them and their reputation precedes them.

Video Clip 2 [00:19:45] It's special for us, I think, as Latter Day Saints, to have someone like Steve Young come and be involved with one of the local franchises in the area, the. And particularly with the 49ers. I think most of you know of Steve's prowess on the football field and how he has distinguished himself both at BYU and in the professional ranks and the excitement that he brought to the 49ers last year and that we anticipate he will be bringing this year.

Video Clip 2 [00:20:18] I think the most important thing, though, that I've been impressed with Steve about, and that is the spirit that he carries with him. Steve is one that comes from an LDS home where gospel principles were taught, where he had the opportunity of growing up, going to the various, participating in the various organizations of the church and developing his testimony, as many of us had that opportunity and as we, many of you have had that opportunity of participating in various church functions, studying the Gospel.

Video Clip 2 [00:20:54] And he does convey a very special spirit and we appreciate him being here. And you'll gain and feel that spirit as he speaks to us tonight. And then we'll be privileged to hear from Elder Paul H. Dunn, a member of the quorum of 70 and probably, I would say, an individual that's probably as revered as, as much as anybody in the church, save the Prophet.

Video Clip 2 [00:21:23] And we're happy to have him with us and his wife that joins with us tonight. Eller Dunn has had the opportunity or has been involved in church administration for many decades. He has been throughout the church. He's prolific in both speaking and in writing.

Video Clip 2 [00:21:45] And again, I think the thing that comes through most of all, even though he's distinguished himself both as an athlete, as a pitcher with St. Louis Cardinals, as a PhD in educational circles,

Video Clip 2 [00:22:03] but

Video Clip 2 [00:22:03] is his spirit and how when you see him and meet him and visit with him, he's very easy to talk to. He understands you and his spirit communicates very well with your spirit. And so it'll be a privilege to hear him and his testimony.

Video Clip 2 [00:22:23] Now, our purpose for meeting tonight is so that we might be able to commune one with another and commune with the spirit of our Father in heaven. And as these brethren speak to us tonight, we'll all have the opportunity of having a personal witness of the things that they bear testimony of.

Video Clip 2 [00:22:43] And so we would hope that you would all pray and have a prayer in your heart that you might be in tune with the spirit that they have and with the message that they have to give us, and then to seek and find out if the things that they have told us are true.

Video Clip 2 [00:22:58] And we hope that that's the spirit in which we will meet this evening. And for those of you that have not yet joined the church, we have some literature and some books of Mormon that you should feel free to take in the various entrances and exits that you'll find in this building.

Video Clip 2 [00:23:16] Again, we appreciate you very much coming this evening, being with us. And we'll now hear from Brother Steve Young. My dad always taught me that human mind is an amazing thing. It starts to work the second that you're born. Doesn't stop until you get up to speak. And in front of this crowd, I can. You can probably understand that I'm quite

Video Clip 2 [00:23:41] humbled and that as I speak to

Video Clip 2 [00:23:45] you tonight and take a few minutes

Video Clip 2 [00:23:46] of your time, I might hope that you would listen to the words I have to say as if I was

Video Clip 2 [00:23:51] speaking just one on one, because as we get a large group, sometimes it

Video Clip 2 [00:23:54] can be lost in the.

Video Clip 2 [00:23:56] The size of the chapel.

Video Clip 2 [00:23:57] But that I care very, very much

Video Clip 2 [00:24:00] about this assignment, I'm tremendously humbled as

Video Clip 2 [00:24:03] I was when I first came to

Video Clip 2 [00:24:04] the 49ers to play with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, Joe Montana, to learn from him and watch him.

Video Clip 2 [00:24:13] All the years that I grew up,

Video Clip 2 [00:24:14] I've become a better quarterback.

Video Clip 2 [00:24:15] Being around him in a lot of

Video Clip 2 [00:24:16] ways, I resemble that. That same experience is very similar to this one and.

Video Clip 2 [00:24:21] And Elder Dunn and growing up with his stories. And I think three quarters of my

Video Clip 2 [00:24:26] testimony came from the many stories that I listened to on tapes and as a young boy in Connecticut.

Video Clip 2 [00:24:30] So I'm very humbled to be with Elder Dunn and his lovely wife. So

John Dehlin [00:24:40] I just wanted to say it's hard to imagine a more condemning clip to the core epistemological foundation of Mormonism in the church education system, because they just said, you know, we're all here to feel the holy Ghost to bear witness to the truthfulness of what's being said. And everybody there felt it. Everybody there got the burning in the bosom. Everybody left knowing the church was true. And the only problem was it was based on lies. But because the church successfully equates warm, positive, inspirational feelings with truth, it's able to. To really influence so many people when truth is actually when. When. When the teachings can be bankrupt as far as truth goes. And so that, for me, that's a. That's a pretty important sequence in the history of Mormonism. What do you think, Lynn?

Lynn Packer [00:25:37] Well, it is. It's unfortunate that, in essence, Steve Young was being used as sort of a proper example to, you know, it's all in furtherance of missionary work and to inspire people who are already Mormons. Steve Young appeared with Paul Dunn frequently. I went to one of their firesides where they packed the arena up at Weber State and both of them spoke. I did an interview with Steve Young. Oh, it's been a few years ago by telephone. It was about another story I was working on. I didn't bother to ask him about this because I'm sure that he, like others who spoke with Paul Dunn, are now fairly embarrassed by it.

John Dehlin [00:26:29] Yeah, yeah. So it's probably. It'd be hard to overstate his influence. I just pulled together a list of. Of 10 books or cassettes that Paul H. Dunn sold. You know, books like Seek the Happy Life, Anxiously Engaged Dimensions of Life, when, if you will, he did a biography on the Osmonds. The Birth that we call Death. Look at your world. Relationships, self, family and God. Lots of. You know, I think Elder Holland said something like 16 books. Is that right?

Lynn Packer [00:27:09] It was a lot. I had all of them. I think everyone has research for my book. I had his cassettes. I had a lot of material that I drew from for the book.

John Dehlin [00:27:24] Is there any way to know how much money he made off of books and cassette tapes?

Lynn Packer [00:27:31] I don't remember the figures. Early on, I was able to. He was deposed once, and the attorney who did the deposition leaked me his tax returns for that particular year. And I think I put the numbers in the book. I don't recall what they were, but clearly he was making more than most general authorities, probably by a fairly long shot.

John Dehlin [00:27:56] Making more money than general authorities.

Paul H. Dunn [00:27:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:58] Yeah. And I think it's worth mentioning mentioning your book just here at the outset. I do have a listener that wrote that they downloaded your book last night and started reading it. It's available on the Internet. Right.

Lynn Packer [00:28:14] It's. I don't know if there's a digital version. There might. I don't know if you can download it.

John Dehlin [00:28:21] Here it is. Here it is. Russ writes, I downloaded Mr. Packer's book on Mr. Dunn last night. Interesting read. I recommend it. Highly available on Kindle Unlimited.

Lynn Packer [00:28:30] Yeah, I think the PDF version is available on Kindle, or if somebody wants the paperback, they can just go to the Amazon bookstore. But, yeah, that's right. It first came out as a digital book and then later as a paperback.

John Dehlin [00:28:42] Okay, so, so I think we've made the point about how much reverence and esteem and fame Pauly Stone had within Mormonism. And to be honest, just to turn on my charitable hat, he was beloved. He made people feel good. He was inspiring. He made youth want to be moral and to be honest. And, you know, he made you want to have character and integrity and be a hard worker. You know, I was an athlete and I was inspired by his stories. And he made you feel patriotic. He made you want to love your country. And if we're going to be fair, there are probably a lot of people that were inspired to do really good things based on the stories of Paul Dunn. Is that fair, Lyn?

Lynn Packer [00:29:30] Right. And were inspired to join the church. It's one of the reasons that they did not deal harshly with him. When we'll get into this, when it came to the church's attention that all of the stories were made up.

John Dehlin [00:29:48] Right. Okay. So I guess now begins, you know, the, the, the, the question that we're all dying to hear is what made you want to start investigating a general authority? And, and by the way, for those of you who aren't Mormon, you will maybe not know that we as Mormons, when we go to the, the temple and, you know, let's say when we're 18 or 19 or when we're getting married in our early 20s, we go to the temple and we make very serious covenants.

Paul H. Dunn's Ties to the Osmonds and Public Life

John Dehlin [00:30:21] And at the time, we would have made covenants where we literally would made oaths to keep these covenants in some degree to the, to the expense of our own lives. In other words, these are very serious, very serious oaths. So one of the oaths that Mormons take is to never speak ill of the Lord's anointed. And a general authority certainly counts as someone who's anointed from the Lord. And so what in the world would make a journalist in Utah, and specifically the nephew of a Mormon apostle, want to start think, think and want to start investigating a Mormon general authority?

Lynn Packer [00:31:01] And that's where The. The slides I prepared begin. If you go to the first slide, I'll. I'll tell you how I got involved. AFCO was a Utah enterprise, a business that was developing a resort at Sherwood Hills. That's in the canyon between Sarnian Canyon, between Brigham and Logan, and Glenmore Village, a subdivision out in the West Valley area. And Grant Affleck, that's where AFFCO gets its name, is seen there in the circle. He was the president of the company or the CEO. His attorney, Carvel Schaefer, is next to him in this photo. And for listeners who can't see what it is, this is a ribbon cutting in about 1979 when the resort, the Sherwood Hills Resort, was opened. And Paul Dunn is there with the Osmond family, most of the Osmond family, and Paul Dunn and Marie are cutting the ribbon. And so how do I then get into this story?

John Dehlin [00:32:14] And I was just. Is it pretty much safe to assume that the Osmonds would have been paid to be a part of this promotion or that they were investors in the. They weren't in the scheme.

Lynn Packer [00:32:23] They got consideration. One of the suites, and it was a promotional consideration. One of the suites, or more than one at Sherwood Hills was named after the Osmonds, and they were given free access and use. And of course, they would love to have the Osmonds come up and stay because would be, you know, publicity for the resort.

John Dehlin [00:32:53] Yeah. And so this introduces this idea of a web of Mormon power, Mormon fame, Mormon influence and Mormon money and how they all act as a binding and a ceiling force, forces to each other. Is that fair to say?

Lynn Packer [00:33:09] And this is huge promotion for Sherwood Hills because Paul Dunn, I think, was the best known general authority, including that he was widely known. He was like you say, beloved by the. By the church membership. He'd written so many books and. And everybody wanted to hear his talks because they were not boring. So I was working at KSL and had just begun working at byu. So I was working three days at ksl, three days at byu, and I got a phone call from my younger brother. My younger brother worked for a title company in Brigham City and he was bishop of a Honeyville, Utah ward.

Lynn Packer [00:33:59] That's north of. Of Brigham City. And my younger brother, he is since deceased, but he was very active in the church. Like I said, he was a bishop. He was very conservative. We were at complete odds when it came to church doctrine.

Lynn Packer [00:34:19] But anyway, I get a call from my brother and he says, I'm concerned about something. He said, I have a member. She's I believe, he said, a widow who has just invested money in a company called Avco, and she invested in condominiums at Sherwood Hills. And as collateral for her loan, she was given a trust deed to a piece of property in Glenmore Village. This was property that was still undeveloped in the subdivision. There was. He says, I'm concerned about that. He said, I don't think this collateral is worth anything.

Lynn Packer [00:34:57] And he knew I had done investigative reporting and he wanted me to do a story on it. I said, I'll look into it. He gave me the name of another investor in Brigham City. I talked to them. They gave me some of their records, including the trust deed that they had that secured their. I think it was like a fifty thousand dollar loan.

Lynn Packer [00:35:24] And they also said that they immediately got 10% of what they put in back either for a missionary or to get a car. And a halfco would help arrange for the car if they wanted it. Because most of the investors were encouraged to take out home equity loans to pay for this investment.

Lynn Packer [00:35:48] That didn't make a lot of sense to me because if AAFCO gave back 10% of the money up front, you have less money working to make these tremendous interest payments that they were promising. But I made a quick inquiry with the Attorney General's office and they said they had looked into AFCO and they didn't see a problem with it. I drove him to, oh, and by

John Dehlin [00:36:15] the way, I mentioned power, money, celebrity. We gotta, we gotta add government and politics, right? Yeah, and media. It's all, it's all interwoven.

Lynn Packer [00:36:26] They said, it's okay. So then I went to the Salt Lake County Recorder's office and looked up the trustee and found that it was in something like 8th or 9th position and worthless and immediately could detect this is a massive fraud. How did I know it was massive? Because there were other people who had been given the same trust deed as collateral for their loans or their investments that they'd made into afco. It was instant. I said, this is a huge scam, and immediately started working on a story because you have, you have to interview people, you have to find out what's going on. I found out that some of the key salesmen were seminary teachers.

Lynn Packer [00:37:14] That added even more credibility. There was a stake president in Brigham who had invested. And of course the salespeople say, hey, the stake president invested in this. It has to be a good thing. And that's when I started.

Lynn Packer [00:37:29] I had a lot of experience in covering fraud and, and knew that would have to be well documented. It was early on that I called Paul Dunn on the phone because his. Everybody was telling me that was a factor in their investment, that they knew Paul Dunn was on the board of directors of afco and so they invested. And so we could, in a second, jump ahead a couple of slides. Why don't you move to the next slide?

John Dehlin [00:38:05] Let me. I think it might be interesting just to play this really brief clip. It shows how Paul H. Dunn and the Osmonds kind of had a relationship. Can I play that really quick?

Lynn Packer [00:38:16] Yeah, yeah. Which one that is? Yeah.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [00:38:18] Why don't you come up a minute? Would you,

Video Clip 3 [00:38:23] all of you, please, all of you,

Video Clip 3 [00:38:30] I promise, as I did in the concert, I will not sing. We're sorry, Donnie and Burl and brother and Sister Osmond can't be here. They're either ill or on other assignments.

John Dehlin [00:38:51] And that's, you know, there's nothing particularly scandalous about that clip other than that. It just shows, you know, tens of thousands of people worshiping in a religious context, and then celebrities are brought out to help kind of drive home the feeling and the excitement. And I think this is going to be relevant when we talk about Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad in our next segment. But any. Anything. Anything else you want to say before we go on?

Lynn Packer [00:39:18] Right. He was known as the. As the general authority to the Osmonds and had a very, very close relationship. They were sort of using each other, and certainly he was using the Osmonds to promote his books, to promote himself, and to promote the church. But if you skip the next slide, is. Is I just stuck here in between. And I'll just talk about it briefly because I wanted to introduce the fact that my Uncle Boyd and Paul Dunn went way back to the 1950s, when Paul Dunn started attending some conferences that the church education system was holding at byu. You know, summer conferences where they go to learn new policies to get fired up about what they're doing.

Lynn Packer [00:40:19] And my research shows that they were at the same conference in 1954, and Dunn had just barely started teaching seminary in California, and Boyd had been teaching for a few years at that point, and they clashed back at that time. So these two men knew each other that far back.

Lynn Packer [00:40:44] And this will become part of the story as Paul Dunn becomes suspicious as to who put me up to do these stories, and as my uncle boy becomes concerned because whether he likes or dislikes Paul Dunn, he doesn't want any negative story like that to come out about the church. So if you then go to the next slide is these are a Couple of images taken from one of the early stories that I prepared about aafco. This would be early, like in.

The AFCO Financial Scandal Begins

Lynn Packer [00:41:22] This would be late 1981, around November is I started putting the stories together by interviewing people. And in this case what I'm doing is showing the flip chart the AFCO salesman used to sell these investments. And it's very similar to the flip chart that I used on my mission that we also called a flip chart. And you would flip through and show various things. And this was one of the most prominent features of the presentation that the Osmonds have a suite at this resort. And Paul H. Dunn not only cut the ribbon with Marie Osmond, but is on the board of directors, that he's a director of the company.

Lynn Packer [00:42:14] So how could anything be wrong? If you have an inspired, well known general authority being on the board of directors. And as I just mentioned a minute ago, there were several seminary teachers and returned missionaries who were using this flip chart to go sell these investments, then you could probably go to the next one where here's what happened is I was prepared to do a story by about November of 1981.

Lynn Packer [00:42:49] You just don't jump on the air with a story like that. You have to do a lot of research, do a lot of interviews, a lot of double checking. You have to give. I gave Grant, I did an interview with Grant Affleck, I did a telephone interview with Paul Dunn asking him about his role. And he admits that he's. Yeah, that he's involved with the company.

Lynn Packer [00:43:12] But then the problems arose trying to get the story on the air. I just could not get KSL to run the story. I was given one excuse after another. It's not quite there. You've got to do more. It's not there.

Lynn Packer [00:43:29] And as I show in the slide is that Spence Kennard held up the story for many weeks. Spence was the news director and he held it up for various reasons. And it wasn't until years later, years later that I talked to Spence and Spence said when you, after you interviewed Paul Dunn and started working on the story, he called me and cautioned me about running the story. I didn't know Canard did. Yeah, he admitted it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he had a little story to tell about what was going on at his house when he, when he, when he got the call. So he, you know, he didn't forget where he was and what was going on when he got the call. It's just an example of what did he say?

John Dehlin [00:44:23] How did he justify not running the story?

Lynn Packer [00:44:25] Pardon?

John Dehlin [00:44:26] How did he justify not running the story?

Lynn Packer [00:44:29] Well, he, he didn't tell me that he was either being pressured or encouraged by Paul Dunn himself. He would say, you're faxed. It's remember these or risky stories to do because they could attract libel suits and could cost the station hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting a lawsuit. And so you should be careful. You have to double and triple check facts. You have to have your attorney look over the story. You have to make sure you've given the other side sufficient chance to respond, which I thought I had done. I was frustrated. And in the meantime, AAFCO is getting into more serious trouble and is selling to more and more couples who are putting their homes up for mortgage on second mortgages.

Lynn Packer [00:45:21] And most of these people will go through the early stages of losing their homes because AAFCO as part of the package, was supposed to make the payment, these second mortgages. And it was a pyramid scheme. They were getting new investors so that they could pay mortgage payments on the old investors, a classic pyramid scheme. And pretty soon it collapsed. They couldn't make payments. And then these lending institutions start telling the people, you've got to pay. I don't care if AFCO says they're going to pay, you've got to pay. And they started foreclosure proceedings on lots of houses.

Lynn Packer [00:46:03] There were, as I understand it, there were divorces that came out of this. And I think there was at least one suicide over somebody who had invested and just didn't see how they were going to come out of it because they were going to lose their home. And you had a lot of spouses at each other's throats after it started going down. Because usually it's one spouse or another who believes, yes, we should take this chance. We should put our house into deeper hawk because we get this 10% up front and it's a sure thing. And we get far more interest than if our money is in the bank.

Lynn Packer [00:46:41] And Grant Affleck used to use the line, awaken the sleeping giant that's in your house. You have this investment in your house, you have this equity build up, use a home equity loan to make this investment. And it just turned out to be a disaster for dozens of, if not maybe perhaps hundreds of Mormon families, mostly Mormon, some non Mormons, did invest. And so while KSL was sitting on the story, there's perhaps dozens of families invested. And remember, AAFCO is going down and they need these new investments to pay off old investors.

Lynn Packer [00:47:24] And they were just absolutely desperate to make any money, any way they could. And so it was not until March, like three months. And it wasn't until AAFCO actually took out bankruptcy that we broke the story. And it was hardly breaking the story, even though we could have, because by then all other media got a hold of it. It was a big deal. I mean, it was a high profile bankruptcy.

John Dehlin [00:47:56] And what year is this?

Lynn Packer [00:47:59] It was 1982. The story broke about March of 1982, somewhere around there.

John Dehlin [00:48:05] And I just have to say this is another example. If I had to pick two people that were influential to me as a youth, it was Paul H. Dunn and Spencer Kennard. Because I used to love music in the spoken word. And before the guy who does it now, Spence Kennard did music in the spoken word. And he was so charismatic, so eloquent, so strong. You know, you just felt the Holy Ghost when, when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang and then when Spence Kennard shared the spoken word. And it was much to my chagrin when he was removed from his position and. And I guess you can tell us why he was ultimately removed from his position.

Lynn Packer [00:48:50] Well, he was. I was at the time this happened. I was in Germany teaching in Dortmund and called my wife and she said, have you heard about Spence? And I said no, that he had been fired from KSL and taken off the spoken word because of an affair he had with one of the. I think she was an anchor, one of the reporters there, of course, Elaine. And I knew Spence and Lynette, his wife, really well.

Lynn Packer [00:49:25] My brother in law and sister lived in their ward in Fruit Heights and of course do Spencer really well. Spence was news director during KSL's glory years. We were a solid number one in the ratings. KSL was making a lot of money.

Lynn Packer [00:49:42] I think I mentioned before, you couldn't pass two people on the street without them recognizing you. Because local news was so heavily watched back at that time. And Spencer put together an excellent news organization with a lot of good reporters.

Lynn Packer [00:50:04] Spence had a lot of experience. He not only had worked as a reporter, but I think he went back to Columbia to get either his master's or some sort of internship so that he had that. Those credentials. He did some work for CBS News. I think he knew Walter Cronkite because one time Spence and I went to a conference, CBS conference in New York. And he took it, took us up to the CBS newsroom, introduced me to people that he knew. So it was, it was tragic that he handled that story that way and tragic the way his career came to an end because he was such a gifted reporter and news director.

Church Power, Money, and Entangled Interests

John Dehlin [00:50:50] But to me, this theme that I'm going to keep coming back to is it's kind of like church power, church money, church general authorities, and then lawyers and control of the media, and then strong interwoven financial interests within the community. These are in so many ways the lifeblood of the Mormon community. And they. They're what keeps the church strong and healthy because there's so much money, so much power, so much influence, all in government. You know, all of it's interwoven and, you know, it's kind of like a theocracy a little bit.

Lynn Packer [00:51:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:29] And.

Lynn Packer [00:51:30] And in fairness, dispense after the story broke, because I had the experience and knowledge about it, is that I wasn't taken off the story. It wasn't like, okay, we don't want you on the story because over the next two or three years, other AFCO related stories developed because there were several major lawsuits in federal court against the lending institutions, saying that they should have known that this was bad. And you can't foreclose against all of these homeowners. And most, if not all of those lawsuits were won in favor of the homeowners. I covered those in federal court. And then the.

Lynn Packer [00:52:16] The biggie. Grant Affleck's trial in federal court, his criminal trial, he covered that along with Jack Ford. And then I think it was a year later, Carvel Schaefer, the. I think he was either president, he was the attorney. He was one rung under Affleck with afco. He was tried and convicted as well.

Lynn Packer [00:52:40] And that's an interesting story because after he was convicted, Orrin Hatch took steps to get him his sentence reduced. So he didn't spend that much time in jail. The other thing that's interesting, and I think this fact is correct, is that Grant Affleck was excommunicated from the church, which is often the policy if you're convicted of a crime, a felony. But Carville Schaefer was not. Carvel Schaeffer got, I think, preferential treatment from both the court, you know, through Orrin Hatch and the church.

John Dehlin [00:53:22] And he. What was his role?

Lynn Packer [00:53:23] Again, he was. I think the way it was at the time is that Affleck was CEO and Carvel Schaefer was president.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] Got it.

Lynn Packer [00:53:30] But for sure, Carvel Schaefer was the attorney. He was one who packaged a lot of this. A lot of this stuff. He would have been the one reviewing these deals to see if they complied with the law.

John Dehlin [00:53:45] Got it. So I guess. I guess we can tie this back now to Paul Dunn and kind of what put you on the trail. Right.

Lynn Packer [00:53:54] Well, right. So what happened is I had interviewed Paul Dunn on the telephone early on in the story, and this was probably a month or so before the story broke, could have been two months before. And Paul Dunn admitted that he was on the board of directors.

Lynn Packer [00:54:15] And, you know, and his attitude was, well, what's wrong with that? Watch your step here. Why are you looking into this? It was. That was sort of his attitude. It wasn't. The interview wasn't very long. So then he gets an attorney assigned to him, Jim Jardine, who was a regional representative. And I think it was pretty much the church that assigned him. And then I start hearing these rumblings that Don had resigned from the board more than three years previous and that the bad guy was. Was Grant Affleck, who continued to use his name and falsely tell investors that Paul Dunn was still on the board of directors.

Lynn Packer [00:55:05] That didn't exactly square with what Dunn had told me. Why didn't Dunn tell me, hey, I resigned three years ago. Why are you even talking to me? That was not the case. And so the pressure mounts as the story unfolds.

Lynn Packer [00:55:24] It was a huge story in Utah. Everybody was covering quickly became known as the biggest fraud in Utah history. It was so widely covered and had triggered so many major lawsuits, and you had so many people in the process of losing their homes because of this investment. So Paul Dunn needed to distance himself.

Lynn Packer [00:55:47] And as soon as he got an attorney, Jim Jardine, to represent him, I made contact with Jim. And of course, the deal is, is now you go through the attorney. It's protocol. It's journalism and legal ethics, that you no longer try to talk to the person who's being represented.

Lynn Packer [00:56:09] And Jim said, let's. Let's have breakfast together. So we had breakfast at. What's the name of the restaurant just north of the courthouse. It was a fish restaurant. I don't remember which.

John Dehlin [00:56:25] The name of the grill.

Lynn Packer [00:56:28] No, it wasn't that, but it was. In any event, we have breakfast there. And I'll never forget is Jim Jardine

John Dehlin [00:56:35] said, and let me just make a point. This is a Mormon general authority.

Lynn Packer [00:56:39] He's a regional representative, regional rep, Which.

John Dehlin [00:56:41] Which is the equivalent to an area authority now.

Lynn Packer [00:56:44] Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] Which is a. Which, you know, we all think of as a general authority. Right. And he's a fixer. He's. He's an attorney that the church brings on as a general authority, not necessarily for spiritual or ecclesiastical, you know, pastoral concerns, but to act as an attorney. Who's a fixer for problems that erupt in the church.

Lynn Packer [00:57:09] True, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So he's assigned to do it. So we go to this breakfast and he says, Lynn, one thing I've learned is that if there's a problem, if there's a problem with his relationship with afco, the best thing to do is to get the facts out quickly and completely because the COVID up could quickly become the major story. That's him telling me that. And I said, right, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you what I've learned and give you a chance to respond.

Lynn Packer [00:57:48] And so as I continue with the investigation, I'm giving this information to Jim Jardine and giving him a chance to respond. And one of the first things he does is he. And I remember I was at the station when he did it because I was working on a story and he said, I have proof that Paul Dunn resigned from the board in 1978. That was three years at least earlier. And he said, I'm going to bring it by and give it to you. And I think I've got a slide of the document. This is the document that he brought me. This is a copy of the very one, 1978.

Lynn Packer [00:58:27] Please be advised of this date. I am withdrawing my position as a board of director of AFCO and its subsidiaries. Thanks. I'm gone. And like I said, this did not square with what Paul Dunn had told me. Why didn't he tell me this?

Lynn Packer [00:58:45] And so it didn't seem credible. And it took me years before I developed absolute proof that this is a fabrication. It's a fake letter that was done

Paul H. Dunn [00:58:57] on

Lynn Packer [00:59:01] church letterhead that was written not in 1978, but early 1982 and backdated to 1978.

John Dehlin [00:59:13] And what this. Tell me if I'm wrong. What this represents is evidence that two Mormon general authorities, well, you know, regional rapper, an area authority, and a general authority, the, the lawyer being assigned by the church would, would be willing to lie and even forge a document so that they could get out of, you know, a, a public relations nightmare for the church and legal problems. Is that fair to say it was

Lynn Packer [00:59:43] Paul Dunn who directed. I ended up tracking down the very day that the, that the letter was generated and the pressure that was on Paul Dunn to extricate himself because I think especially Gordon Hinckley was saying, hey, you've got to get on top of this. This is really bad. Even to have a general authority involved in a business, especially one that's gone Bankrupt, and it's now looked like it's fraudulent. And so this letter was also delivered, I think, the same day to the first presidency to show them, hey, I'm not a part of this. Now, whether Jim Jardine, who delivered it, and he was the one who did deliver it, knew it was fake, I don't know.

Lynn Packer [01:00:28] There was nothing in my research that showed he was in the loop when it was being fabricated. The only question is, is, did he ever ask Paul Dunn, hey, this doesn't make any sense. Is this really real? He, at the very least, readily accepted it as being a genuine letter of resignation.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] Yeah. Which wasn't true.

Lynn Packer [01:00:51] Right. And so, and, and so I, I, I knew immediately when I got this in 1982, it was either late 81, early 82, that it couldn't be genuine, but you can't accuse somebody of fabricating a letter until you have the proof. And so I was always looking for the proof. And it, it was like more than two years later that I, that I found the proof. So if you go to the next slide, is that this. What this is, is a W2 form that purportedly shows Paul Dunn having played for a professional minor league baseball team.

Lynn Packer [01:01:42] And here's how I got onto the baseball part. Because, John, as you know, so far, I've only been talking about afco. I haven't been talking about war. I haven't been talking about baseball. Is that. As I was investigating the AFCO part, I did an interview with.

Lynn Packer [01:02:03] With Paul Dunn's. Paul Dunn with Grant Affleck's brother. And I asked Affleck's brother if Paul Dunn had resigned from the board. And he said, no, he hadn't. That. That was. That. It was a lie. Of course, he had no proof about the. How the letter was fabricated, but he said, no, he was with. He was with AFCO right up to bankruptcy.

Lynn Packer [01:02:31] And then he made. And then I said, you mean he's lying about his resignation? I'll never forget this part of the conversation because he said, well, if you think he's lying about afco, you should look into his baseball. I go, what?

John Dehlin [01:02:47] His baseball?

Lynn Packer [01:02:48] What his baseball stories.

John Dehlin [01:02:50] Oh, and who is this again? Who is this again?

Lynn Packer [01:02:54] Pardon me, is this again?

John Dehlin [01:02:56] Who said that?

Lynn Packer [01:02:56] This is Grant Affleck's brother.

John Dehlin [01:02:58] Okay?

Lynn Packer [01:03:00] And so I was not one who read Paul Dunn books. I'm not inspired by that kind of thing. So I knew. I, I knew he had played for the St. Louis Cardinals. I knew he had been in the war. I didn't know anything. I didn't listen to the tapes, didn't read the books. So this was news to me.

Lynn Packer [01:03:19] And I said, well, how do you know this? And he said, well, it was a friend of Grant Affleck's or his who was a mission president in St. Louis. And Paul Dunn was noted for doing baseball nights, professional baseball nights. It would be Mormon Night. The professional baseball teams loved it because there would be a Mormon Night at a professional baseball game.

Lynn Packer [01:03:46] Mormons would show up, and Paul Dunn usually would go out on the mound, maybe with. There might be a Mormon player or some Mormon celebrity, and they would do the little thing, and it would be sort of like a.

Lynn Packer [01:04:02] A big PR thing for the church. And Paul Dunn was scheduled to do one of these Mormon baseball nights, not just for any team, but for the St. Louis Cardinals team he had played for. So it was a big deal. So the mission president. This is the story I was told at the time.

Lynn Packer [01:04:22] So the mission president said, we need to give him a special plaque. He's coming back to maybe a mound he pitched on. But in any event, he's. He's coming back to his. His ball club. And so we're going to make a plaque. And so they started making a plaque. And he assigned a couple of missionaries to go to the St. Louis Cardinal's office and get details about his career.

Lynn Packer [01:04:51] What year did he pitch, what was his record, that kind of stuff. So they sent him off expecting to get. Come back with all of this information. And when they came back, the missionaries told the mission president he never played for the Cardinals.

Lynn Packer [01:05:09] Mission president said, well, maybe we're confused. Maybe he played in the Cardinal organization. The St. Louis Cardinals were known to having the best organization of minor league teams to develop athletes. And they said, no, he never played in the organization. He didn't even play for a really tiny team somewhere out in Podunk. He didn't play for him.

Lynn Packer [01:05:37] And so they canceled the plaque idea. He still did Mormon Night. But then the rumor started to spread, and then it got back to me. That's when I decided to look into it, because it comes back to the resignation letter.

Lynn Packer [01:05:53] In a trial, if you're, if, if. If you're a lawyer and you're in a trial and witnesses contradict each other, there's a jury instruction that's given. It's a standard instruction you hear all the time. And the jurors are told this.

Lynn Packer [01:06:13] If you find that a witness is lying about one thing and you know you're convinced that's the case, you're free to infer that they've lied about everything else. So that's how I pursue. That's why I pursued the war in baseball. It was because if he's lying about that, it could help prove he's lying about resigning from afco. It all comes back to afco.

John Dehlin [01:06:38] Got it.

Lynn Packer [01:06:39] I was covering the fraud story. I wasn't. I wasn't doing Warren Baseball. And so, and so this W2 form was given to me later because now I'm getting into the baseball stories and I'm hitting Jim Jardine with all of that. He says, I have proof.

Lynn Packer [01:06:58] I have proof that he played for the Hollywood Stars. And they're not in the Cardinals organization, but it's a. Hollywood Stars was a really great minor league team. And if you played for the Hollywood Stars, you were damn good if you played for them.

Lynn Packer [01:07:18] And so I was given this W2 form as proof that he had played for them. And if you look at it carefully on the screen, it's sort of a blurry scan of the W2 form. If you bring it up again and if you look at the figures at the bottom, that showing making what, 5,000 something odd dollars or whatever, that's all. It's a, It's a real W2 form, but it's. It's had the numbers put in. He did try out.

Lynn Packer [01:07:48] Oh, this wasn't the Hollywood Stars. This was even a lower. This was a really low team. This was the Ontario Baseball Club. He was trying to show he played for any professional team. And this particular one, it was for the Ontario Baseball Club.

Fabricated Baseball Stories Exposed

Lynn Packer [01:08:04] And what happened is, is he tried out for the team and he was on the roster for the first game of the season. And then he was dumped. He was cut. So essentially he didn't play for the team. He was cut, but he deserved a very small salary. It would have been just dollars. And so he took that W2 form, falsified it and made it look like he had pitched even for this really podunk minor league team for a year. And so that was part of his. Part of his proof. So Paul Dunn is. What he is, is just a. Just a really inept Mark Hoffman. He fakes documents to prove something.

John Dehlin [01:08:48] Yeah. Okay, so the next slide you have is this one.

Lynn Packer [01:08:55] Now this is. This is the Hollywood Baseball Club. And this is another piece of evidence that Jim Jardine gave me. And it didn't take long to see that this one was clearly faked, that this one had been produced because.

John Dehlin [01:09:13] Describe it for our listeners.

Lynn Packer [01:09:15] Well, basically, just what it is, it says, we're happy to have you join our club? It's like you've apparently tried out and you've made the cut and welcome to the club. And then it's signed by the business manager who would send out a letter like this. And you can see the difference between the two. The one on Paul Dunn's letter and the one of an actual signature of this individual. And it's just clearly forged. And of course, other research shows that he never made that team. He. He wouldn't have been anywhere near good enough to make a team like that.

John Dehlin [01:09:59] And he forged these documents, is that what you're saying?

Lynn Packer [01:10:01] Yeah, yeah, he forged this document. And again, it's not showing he played in the Cardinals organization, but hell, if you can show, hey, I played for some professional baseball team, even though they. The one, the Ontario team was not good at all, but the Hollywood stars were very good, a really good team, almost professional, you know, major league quality team. But he wouldn't have made it. You know, doing the research is that Paul Dunn was a pitcher in high school. And I think we've got that slide coming up in one or two other slides. Can you bring up the next one? Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:40] And I'll just say, listeners, if you're. We've got 600 people that are joining us live right now on YouTube and Facebook, and I would love to get to a thousand. So if all of you could please like this episode, love it, share it, share it on social media. We're. We're still not even yet to the really good stuff, so if all of you could take a moment and share this episode, I would love to get the viewership higher or at least like it or love it. That would be great. Okay, so people are writing in and they're saying that lots of Mormon athletes were involved with Paul Dunn, including Dale Murphy, the. The famous Atlanta Braves baseball player, Danny Ainge, Johnny Miller, the golfer. Lots of. Lots of Mormon celebrities were involved. So, by the way, is this forgery illegal? And could he have been put in jail for forging this stuff?

Paul H. Dunn [01:11:36] Well,

Lynn Packer [01:11:39] another interesting thing is, is that there was a new law that came out in Utah as a result of the AFCO fraud. And it's a law that would have made it easier to prosecute something like this, but it was not on the books at the time Dunn was fabricating these records. It's a law that is probably going to be used against Operation Underground Railroad, which is going to be a separate broadcast later.

Lynn Packer [01:12:09] And the law basically says it's against the law. Use deception to take something away from someone it can be money or anything of value. And it's possible that this could have violated that law. But in any event, it wasn't on the books at the time.

Lynn Packer [01:12:30] So if you go to the next slide, I just threw this one in there because I later wrote an article for Sunstone magazine about this. And this was one of my favorite cartoons that Sunstone had made, where you have Nephi working on the plates and he has himself playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, which really dramatically depicts what Paul Dunn apparently did, where he sits down in his office somewhere and starts creating fake documents. The next slide shows.

John Dehlin [01:13:11] Yeah, and I mean, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this sort of forgery, some would claim strikes at the very core of Mormonism, because if Joseph didn't have golden plates and write the Book of Mormon through translation and revelation, if he didn't know how to translate Egyptian and he created the Book of Abraham, if the three and the eight witnesses didn't really see plates or an angel and instead their names were signed to a document, basically we have a long standing tradition in Mormonism of making false claims, forging documents, and then using people like Martin Harris and the Cowders and the Whitmers and Sidney Rigdon and others and Emma and women and Relief Society members to be the front for fraud. And it's, it's a scheme that goes strikes at the very core of Mormonism.

Guest [01:14:12] Right.

John Dehlin [01:14:12] Is that unfair or is that fair?

Lynn Packer [01:14:15] No. And you can see it's just another reason why they didn't want this story to come out because it, it mushroomed out of control. I mean, it was a bad story with Dunn, you know, having been on the board of a major fraud. And it gets worse if there's a cover up, especially if the COVID up involves faking documents. And remember, if you go to the next slide, there's an image of Jim Jardine. Remember, he's the one that we, I had breakfast with, who said the COVID up is often. The story of. The COVID up is often worse than the story about the crime. And that's why I want the facts to come out quickly.

Lynn Packer [01:14:56] And yet he was the one that started delivering, literally turning over these fake documents. Then it's the next slide that shows Grant Affleck having been arrested for fraud after the case reverted back to the Attorney General's office that had muffed the case before. But then it was quickly switched over to the U.S. attorney's office where the FBI could engage and others. And eventually Grant Affleck was arrested. This is what's known as a perp walk.

Lynn Packer [01:15:33] A perp walk is when reporters are told that a perpetrator is going to be taken either to jail or to the courthouse for arraignment so you can be there with cameras. Normally, what they do is negotiate with the attorneys so that the defendant avoids this embarrassing shot.

Lynn Packer [01:15:55] But in this case, the investigator, Mike Hines, who is walking Grant Affleck into court, apparently for his arraignment or one of the hearings, tipped me on this. So we had. This is a shot from our news camera when we did the story about him being arrested.

Lynn Packer [01:16:17] Now, one of the charges. One of the charges against Affleck was that he used Paul Dunn's name without his permission. Oh, I see my camera's frozen up again. Do you want me to fix that?

John Dehlin [01:16:35] Keep talking.

Paul H. Dunn [01:16:36] I'll.

John Dehlin [01:16:36] I'll add it back when you're. When your camera revives. Keep talking.

Lynn Packer [01:16:40] Okay. So anyway, one of the charges in the. In the indictment was that he had used Paul Dunn's name without permission to use the scam. And I am certain knew that that wasn't the case, knew that. That Paul Dunn had been active in the company up until the end, but they were playing ball. They had made a decision fairly early on that even though Paul Dunn could have been charged in this, they weren't

Paul H. Dunn [01:17:14] going to do it.

Lynn Packer [01:17:16] The excuse that I was given by the U.S. attorney is that had they charged Paul Dunn, it would have turned this into such a huge sideshow that they possibly would have lost. Jurors would have sided with Paul Dunn even if evidence had been shown that he faked his resignation and was really with the company. But any event, that was one of the charges that was against Grant Affleck

John Dehlin [01:17:46] and Lynn. I don't know if you can stop your camera or start it or do whatever you've done in the past to

Lynn Packer [01:17:51] get that going again, if I can get it restarted.

John Dehlin [01:17:56] But while you're doing that, I can go to the next slide.

Lynn Packer [01:17:59] Okay, this is.

John Dehlin [01:18:01] Keep working on your camera so we can get you back on.

Lynn Packer [01:18:03] Okay, let me see if I can find.

John Dehlin [01:18:05] And I'll just. I'll just thank all our listeners who are joining us. And, you know, we're getting different types of comments from. From our listeners.

Guest [01:18:17] And,

John Dehlin [01:18:19] you know, one of them is John Whitman writes the hall of Fame. Detroit Tigers pitcher Jack Morris, World Series MVP and BOE legend separated from Paul Dunn during this period along with Johnny Miller and Danny Ainge. Roger writes. This news broke while I was on my mission. I had been a big Dunn fan up to that point, a lot of people were really disappointed by, by, by what happened. Peg writes, I left the church and then I came back. Don't ask me why. I kept asking about what happened to Paul Dunn and never got an answer. It's another deep, dark secret.

John Dehlin [01:18:58] I didn't, it didn't look good for the church. And so, yeah, there's. Somehow the church is able to just have these stories, kind of. These stories that should be kind of scandalous, that should really, really put the church in jeopardy. And in many cases, people lose their life savings, like you said, Lynn, and somehow what happens is the church isn't harmed and, and the church ends up thriving and these stories get forgotten. And then more and more of these scandals occur and reoccur. And I just can't tell you, every single year in Chicago, in Dallas, I hear about, you know, different Mormon celebrities that back certain financial propositions, schemes.

John Dehlin [01:19:49] Highland, Alpine, Salt Lake, anywhere you can think of Logan. And, and, you know, people lose their life savings, their, their, their homes, they lose everything because of these types of scandals. They just keep happening over and over again. And it's a real tragedy. Lynn, how's your camera?

Lynn Packer [01:20:13] I'm just seeing if I can switch over to another camera. For some reason.

John Dehlin [01:20:20] You're back.

Lynn Packer [01:20:21] For some reason it kicks my cameras out and I've switched over to another great camera.

John Dehlin [01:20:25] Let's just stay on this one.

Lynn Packer [01:20:26] We may have to do this again, but let's see how far we can get with this.

John Dehlin [01:20:32] Okay.

Lynn Packer [01:20:33] With this, with this camera. So anyway, see, you could go. Okay, we're showing a slide where a Grand Affleck is on the stand and he testifies on this. He, Grant Affleck now is feeling really betrayed by Paul Dunn. He thought Paul Dunn. Because Paul Dunn would feel guilty that he threw Grant Affleck under the bus to take the full blame for this fraud. That somehow Paul Dunn would come forward, testify at the trial and save him, and save him from being prosecuted. And he was really saddened and bitter when that didn't happen. Paul Dunn was given an assignment by the church to be, if not out of the state, out of the country during the trial to make sure that he wasn't going to be called to testify.

Lynn Packer [01:21:30] But anyway, because Aflac was burned, he testified that Paul Dunn was with the company up until the end. That was his testimony. And of course, that eliminated his being charged. That eliminated his being charged. That one count, that he lied about Paul Dunn being active in the company because they wouldn't call Paul Dunn to testify to prove otherwise. So that got rid of that count. But he was, he was, he was really bitter over that, as was his family being hung out to dry by a general authority like that. And then he was convicted. I have to look at my version of the slides to see, and I'm

John Dehlin [01:22:26] just going to say while you're looking at that, that this is another. You said that Paul Dunn was asked to be out of the country. Is that right?

Lynn Packer [01:22:32] I don't think he asked. I think the church, this would have been something arranged by Jim Jardine. They would have said, we need to be sure. See, Affleck's attorney, Brent Carruth, was threatening to call Paul Dunn. He was trying to force Paul Dunn to make some kind of a statement or something that would, would, would rescue his client. And, and Brent Carruth, his attorney, was sort of a loose cannon. He might have done it. And my guess is, and I don't know, this is just a wild guess that Jim Jardine told general authorities this trial is going on. Paul Dunn could be called. We need to make sure he can't be called. And so he was not in Utah during this phase of the trial.

Paul H. Dunn [01:23:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:22] And that's a technique that, that we have now learned that the church has used since time in Memorial. Whether it's sending BH Roberts on a mission once he uncovers that the Book of Mormon is not a historical document, whether it's sending Ezra Tap Benson to Europe. You know, I, I, I once, I, I know about, I won't name names,

Lynn Packer [01:23:42] but I was working on another fraud story. That is the, as the investigators got close, the church sent him on a mission.

John Dehlin [01:23:51] And sometimes even as mission presidents, like, it's not even just like, as a lowly missionary, sometimes they'll send people embroiled in scandals as mission presidents out of the state.

Lynn Packer [01:24:01] And this, this case I'm telling you about, he was made a mission president. He was very wealthy, well known. But if you then go to the next slide, it's just something I dropped in there about the fact that Laura Siegler was over at Utah Securities Division, was obviously involved in this prosecution and she acknowledged the obvious. We were under substantial political pressure not to proceed against Paul Dunn. And of course that's, that's what eventually happened.

John Dehlin [01:24:37] So this shows how the church and politicians use their money and influence to, to suppress cases.

Lynn Packer [01:24:42] Yeah. And we're getting, and we'll be getting to an interesting part of the story pretty soon. Why don't you go to the next slide? Just looking over here as to what comes up this is, this is part of the tragedy, is that Paul Dunn, once he knew that a story was going to come out and once he knew that AFCO probably was going to go under, started demanding he had invested some money in aafco.

Lynn Packer [01:25:15] Now, the primary way that he was compensated for being on the board of directors and lending his name to promoting it was being given a new car either every year or every other year. And I think he had a Cadillac El Dorado, I think he had a Mercedes.

Lynn Packer [01:25:35] AFCO was providing this because Grant Affleck was in the car business before he got into afco. He was a well known bountiful car dealer and did a lot of leases. And so he leases and pays for these vehicles, these Mercedes and that for Paul Dunn. But he had, he had invested some money. And as soon as he sees it's going under, and this is probably the worst part of it is instead of going to AFLAC and saying, you have got to get money back to these people who are losing their homes, he said, I want my money, I want to be paid. And he was always pressuring him to get money.

Lynn Packer [01:26:15] And this is an example of one of the checks he got late on after he knew a story was coming out, but the story had not come out would been just probably a little after the time he had talked to Spence Kennard and he was getting checks. And I just threw in an example of one of those.

John Dehlin [01:26:37] And to me it's a little bit extra gross because it's one thing to be perpetrating, you know, part of using undue influence to get people to invest in something. But then when you know that people are losing their shirts, you demand to get your money back and, you know, too bad for everybody else, right?

Lynn Packer [01:26:54] Yeah, it was, it was, he was not Mr. Nice Guy when it came to that. He, he, in Grant Affleck's view, he throws Affleck under the bus and then tries to get what money out of it he can before the sink, the ship sinks. And so the next slide just is another example of him getting involved in business. And this is where Gerald Wingett, his son in law, Gerald Wingett, his son in law was a ball player, an athlete, and Winget Sons were good athletes. And so Paul Dunn identified with Gerald Wingett and they did a lot of business ventures together. And when Gerald Wingett opened a Jiffy Lube, I think in Provo, he has Paul Dun come as a general authority and meet Paul Dunn at the grand opening of this Jiffy Lube and have him autograph one of your books.

John Dehlin [01:27:56] This is a flyer that you've got on the screen of a Jiffy Lube promotion. This was using Paul Dunn.

Lynn Packer [01:28:03] I think this was in either the Provost Daily Herald or the BYU's Daily Universe, a paper you're very familiar with.

John Dehlin [01:28:15] Right?

Lynn Packer [01:28:15] Okay. And we could go on forever talking about this, but I think the. The baseball and war is what starts getting interesting. So if this slide is the beginning of a brief overview of his baseball career. And this is a shot of Paul Dunn. He. He's with a bat and he's playing sandlot baseball in Arkansas. And this is, I think, behind his house, but it's behind one of the neighbor's houses. So he was. He was like me when I was growing up. We were always playing sandlot baseball and even tackle football anywhere we could find a place to play it. His family was not very active in Little Rock. They were lds, but it was out in, you know, the mission field. They were not very active during this time frame. Then the next picture.

John Dehlin [01:29:16] Well, what I have is a. What. What I have now is one of the talks that Dunn gives. And this is the first time now our listening audience is gonna actually hear him talk. And I think this is the Lou Gehrig story. And I wanna put it here to give you a sense for his charisma, his charm, his storytelling, but also so you can contrast the difference between the stories he told and then the evidence, Lynn Packer, that you investigated. Is that all right?

Lynn Packer [01:29:49] Sure.

The Lou Gehrig Story and Other Tall Tales

John Dehlin [01:29:50] All right, everyone. So here is Paul H. Dunn, I believe, telling his famous Lou Gehrig story.

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [01:29:59] The next morning, the Yankees were due at nine and I was there at six. We went through the same ritual. This time I was asked to shag balls by behind the batting practice pitcher so he wouldn't have to bend over so far in throwing baseballs into practice.

Video Clip 4 [01:30:17] Red Roughing, another Hall of Famer was on the mound. And he had a vocabulary that was kind of interesting for a 12 year old. About the fifth batter into the batting cage that morning was Garrick. And my heart beat a little faster as he stepped in.

Video Clip 4 [01:30:35] As he walked up after knocking the dirt out of his cleats, he stood there and he adjusted his cap. He looks out to his friend Roughing, and he says, hey, Red, let that kid behind you pitch to me.

Video Clip 4 [01:30:51] And I went. And Red didn't want to. He said, oh, I want to get through Lou and take a shower. And you. Garrick just stood there. He said. I said, let the boy pitch. Roughing. Turn here, kid. You ladies may not Know it, but a baseball only weighs about five and a half ounces. But it felt like a 16 pound shot put.

Video Clip 4 [01:31:19] I walked up on the mound, I'm 60ft 6 inches from my idol. I don't know who yours is in life, but think of him or her and be in that close proximity. He can see I was concerned. I was feeling very inferior.

Video Clip 4 [01:31:38] He took that magnificent bat and he just held it there and then he pushed it out like this. He said, just aim at the bat, son. And I threw the ball somewhere in the park. Then I got one reasonably close and he hit a little ground ball battle activity. Then he hit another one. Then he hit a short pop fly over second.

Video Clip 4 [01:32:01] In about the fourth or fifth pitch, he let go. The right field wall at Little Rock is 395ft and the ball just tailed out. Then he hit another one right behind it and a third. And I'm feeling a little better because I'm getting the ball close.

Video Clip 4 [01:32:21] I wind up, you know, how hard can a 12 year old throw? And I just grooved that pitch. He took that mighty Gehrig swing and

Video Clip 4 [01:32:31] he missed

Video Clip 4 [01:32:33] and he stood up and he said, beautiful. And I remember growing on the mound and I remember thinking, look out world, I'm coming.

John Dehlin [01:32:52] Oh, it's so emotional to see, to see him tell stories like that.

Lynn Packer [01:32:56] Right, right. And it never happened. I went to great pains to do the research to see what professional. And there were pro teams barnstorming through Little Rock, but that, that's just, did never happen.

John Dehlin [01:33:15] Right. And he's. So you, you can tell, he's told that story, what, dozens, hundreds of times, maybe even thousands of times. And he's got it down to such detail. Right?

Lynn Packer [01:33:27] Yeah. When, when he first started appearing at firesides in Southern California around Los Angeles, he would usually tell all of these stories in the same fireside war stories, baseball stories. And then eventually he learns how to give a speech and only give one or two. BYU had some fantastic resources. So I was able to find a speech that he gave well before he was a general authority in Southern California. And it was just packed with these stories and he probably had given them dozens of, of times before he ever was promoted and came to Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [01:34:15] So Diane, Diane asks, did Lou Gehrig ever hear this story?

Lynn Packer [01:34:23] No. But he did tell a Ted Williams story that also by all accounts was false. But Ted Williams was still alive. And I, I made a great effort to interview Ted Williams, but his publicist never set it up. It's, it's a story about whether he, Williams Got some interest in the church because of Paul Dunn.

Lynn Packer [01:34:50] But again, that's one that's in the book. With what information I was able to learn about it certainly would not have happened. It's the thing about this is all of his significant war stories and baseball stories were all made up. There wasn't like one that he could say this, this really happened. So once he started to lie, he just decided, okay, and, and, and he, he, he needed lots of stories. That's why he parceled them out. It made him a more interesting speaker, unlike some others who lie. But it's just one story and they just have to keep telling the same one over and over.

Lynn Packer [01:35:36] The next slide shows him at Hollywood High in the yearbook. Good looking kid. And he was big. I barely cracked, barely 6 foot in high school and improved 3 inches after high school. Paul Dunn was one of those who got his height and I think he was pretty tall early. So he was a big guy. And I think the next slide shows.

Lynn Packer [01:36:09] Yeah, it does. This is his high school baseball team. It says Hollywood on it because he went to Hollywood High. Meb Schroeder was the coach and he uses Schroeder's name in some of his stories. And he was a pitcher. And I only was able to talk to two or three people and see some news accounts of Paul Dunn pitching.

Lynn Packer [01:36:35] And unfortunately he was what you might call a junk ball pitcher. He had a curve. He, he may have had a slider, he may have had a change up from a curve, which means going from slow to really slow. He had no fastball and you would expect somebody that big to have a really good fastball. But as near as I can tell, he had no fastball. And that's one of the reasons he didn't advance is that if you're going to move up to collegiate ball or in the, in the minor leagues, you've got to have the full palette of pitchers. With some exceptions, there's been some screwball pitchers, some who have never had a fastball, but that's extremely, extremely rare.

Lynn Packer [01:37:24] Then if you go to the, the next one is, you can see how tall Paul Dunn was compared with his dad and his brothers. He's a big guy, they're small guys and they all worked in the family grocery store. And that's where Paul Dunn would have spent a lot of his time is working in his dad's store. And of course, rather, and I think by time Paul Dunn was in college, his dad had a couple of stores. That was the business he was in. It was in selling food is that he had decided he didn't want to take over the stores. He wanted to become an educator or an administrator.

Lynn Packer [01:38:14] He must have enjoyed seminary. And like I said earlier, a friend of mine took one of his seminary classes and said he was very entertaining. He probably was really very popular with the students because, remember, his stories about war and baseball were more contemporary at that time. This was now it's distant past World War II. Back then it was. It was recent past. The next slide shows.

John Dehlin [01:38:46] Let's show one more.

Lynn Packer [01:38:48] Oh, yeah, let's.

John Dehlin [01:38:49] Let's show another clip before we have you talk about the next part. Is that.

Lynn Packer [01:38:53] Okay, now, which one is this?

John Dehlin [01:38:56] It's another baseball one. It's. Yeah, it's another baseball one. I'm not sure which one it is, but I think it's in sequence.

Lynn Packer [01:39:05] All right.

John Dehlin [01:39:06] All right, I'll go ahead and start it.

Paul H. Dunn [01:39:08] When I was a younger teenager wanting to pursue the athletic field, I was moving along with relative ease and with some accomplishment. The time came when I signed a professional contract. Unfortunately, the world conditions were much more serious than they are now. The whole world was engaged in a conflict. And then the enemy struck us. It became necessary that year to lower the draft to 18, and I turned 18 the very month they lowered it. How's that for timing? They had a big drawing in Washington to see which number would go first. Do I need to tell you whose number they picked? And instead of going into my great field of desire, I end up going into the military.

John Dehlin [01:40:07] And you talk about this in your book and in your Sunstone article that the facts don't. Don't substantiate basically anything he said. Is that right?

Lynn Packer [01:40:17] No, what. What happened is he never did get that contract is a lot of his classmates were enlisting. They wanted to go to war. It was the popular thing to do. He had his heart so set on a baseball career that instead of enlisting, he went to Pocatello, Idaho, where he had relatives living, and tried to walk on with the Pocatello Cardinals, which was a St. Louis Cardinal farm team.

Lynn Packer [01:40:48] But I think he got his draft notice maybe while he was in Pocatello. But it came fairly soon and of course his hopes and dreams were dashed because of going into the military. And then I don't have any slides here to show it, but when he was drafted and was assigned before being shipped off to the Pacific, he was stationed at a base in Michigan where he played a season or a short season for one of the bases baseball teams. Baseball was really popular in the community he was in. So the local players would play against the military players.

Lynn Packer [01:41:33] And because some professional baseball players had been drafted, there were some pro players playing in that league. And so at this point, Paul Dunn does get some experience pitching against pro baseball players. But it was in the. In the military.

Lynn Packer [01:41:54] It's really sort of a pathetic, sad story because he writes home saying that he had won certain awards pitching for this military team, awards that he never won. He was really hungry for praise, for adulation, but he would make it up. He was making it up even before he was shipped off to the Pacific like I won. It's in the book. But he won some award. And he writes home. He's all excited about it. It's just simply not true.

John Dehlin [01:42:30] Here's the next video we have. This is another one that you gave me, also talking about baseball. I'll play it real quick.

Paul H. Dunn [01:42:37] On my 18th birthday, I signed a professional baseball contract, was sent up here into the Pioneer League. I won my first ball game 7 to 1. That was a proud moment. Walked off the field and the coach on the opposing team said in kind of a sneery voice, hey, kid, whoever said you could pitch? And I looked right at him and I said, garrig,

John Dehlin [01:43:12] All right, tell us the. What's the truth? What's the truth ometer on that one?

Lynn Packer [01:43:17] It's been a long time since I've reviewed my book, but what I think it says is, is that he did win a couple of games in this in the military league. And I think one that he won was 7 to 1. And so probably in his mind he's talking about that game and transposing it to a professional minor league game in Pocatello, Idaho. But you can imagine even during the season that this, this competition was taking place on his base up in Michigan, the players were coming and going.

Lynn Packer [01:43:59] You might have a great player on a team and. And beheaded for the playoffs, and then you lose that player and your team falls apart. It's been my experience playing on a lot of church and commercial league basketball teams that every team that's successful has to have at least one star that you build the team around. And obviously I was never that star, but I played with a lot of players who were really good. And when you didn't have that player, you. You didn't win. And I think that's what happened in Dunn's league is some of their good players came and went, and he certainly was not.

Lynn Packer [01:44:41] Even though he may have won a couple of games, he wasn't their best Pitcher and he wasn't, he wasn't a star in the league.

Paul H. Dunn [01:44:49] Right.

Lynn Packer [01:44:50] At least in the news accounts that, that I reviewed.

John Dehlin [01:44:55] So tell us about this, this, this article.

Lynn Packer [01:44:59] This is just typical of where he will take a photograph and give it to, in this case the Church News

John Dehlin [01:45:07] and try and read the headline to our listeners.

Lynn Packer [01:45:10] Baseball honors elder Paul Dunn. And this is where is it?

John Dehlin [01:45:18] 1976 it looks like.

Lynn Packer [01:45:19] Yeah. And this is just typical where he gives them facts that aren't true. And then he uses this photo saying that this particular photo shows Paul Dunn and some other players with an actor kneeling with the team. And it was Robert Young who was very well known in the late 50s and early 60s for a television show I think was called. Was it Father Knows Best or something? It was one of these family sitcoms and he was very well known, a very well known actor and for some reason he was with this group. And Paul Dunn has it as being with the Hollywood stars, the Cardinal farm team. But that's not the Hollywood stars. And the Church News didn't vet it. Now I did find out that at one point a reporter, somebody who wrote for the Church News was on to Paul Dunn making up stories.

John Dehlin [01:46:23] And I think somebody said that's Marcus Welby. Yeah.

Lynn Packer [01:46:26] Oh yeah, well, yeah, I think it was Marcus Welby, but I think there was an earlier one too. But sure, Marcus Welby. And, but in, in, in, in any

Paul H. Dunn [01:46:41] event,

Lynn Packer [01:46:44] he, he, he is, is, is making this stuff up. A reporter for the Church News figures it out. And so the Church News had the opportunity at that time to expose what was going on and chose, chose just to continue letting Paul Dunn tell the stories, sell the books.

John Dehlin [01:47:05] Yeah. The, the Mormon Church does not come clean and tell the truth when it's caught in lies or dishonesty. It does the opposite. It tries to hide it or deny it or push it under.

Lynn Packer [01:47:18] Right.

John Dehlin [01:47:19] It just doesn't, it doesn't tell the truth.

Lynn Packer [01:47:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:21] When it's confronted with as we, because

Lynn Packer [01:47:25] we're still not quite to the really interesting part of this. So we ought to run through a little bit of the war in baseball.

Fabricated War Hero Narratives

John Dehlin [01:47:32] Let's do it. So now we're at, now we're at

Lynn Packer [01:47:35] the war part war part. And this is the only photo that I was ever able to find or get. I'm sure Paul Dunn had lots of them but would not share them of him actually in the service. I don't know if this is on Okinawa or where it is. He's very sloppily dressed as a soldier, but I can tell you from having served in Vietnam, we didn't pay that close attention to being always looked like we're ready to be in a parade either because you're in a war zone. And. And he was. And so. Going to the next slide.

John Dehlin [01:48:14] Really? Oh, okay. Go ahead.

Lynn Packer [01:48:16] I'm. I'm just mirroring here on my computer your slides. Is that. That one of the two most important stories he tells about being in the war is the landing at Guam.

John Dehlin [01:48:33] Should I play that?

Lynn Packer [01:48:35] He was.

John Dehlin [01:48:36] Should I. Should I play it?

Lynn Packer [01:48:37] Or do you want to set it up and then. And then play it? He was in the 77th Division. It was a New York division. But as the war soldiered on, they would pull recruits from other parts of the country to be in this New York division. And you see here soldiers from the New York 77th wading ashore. And this is where Paul Dunn describes pushing past dead bodies in the clip that you'll play right now.

John Dehlin [01:49:10] Okay, Here we go. This is Paul H. Dunn telling the story about his landing on Guam.

▶ Video Clip 5

Video Clip 5 [01:49:20] First boat team starts in. They've got about 2,000 yards. This is when the tide is at its height so you can get as far ashore as you possibly can. Well, the first boat team went about 1200 yards before they hit the shore.

Video Clip 5 [01:49:36] The whole beach opened up. We don't know how anybody could stay alive. And one craft after the other was hit and it was scattering American soldiers in the water. Second flare goes off. Next boat goes in. Same thing. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Nobody's getting ashore.

Video Clip 5 [01:49:56] Makes you ponder and wonder. Now it comes time for the seventh wave. That's mine. Fire goes off and then goes the boat team. And it's just kind of eerie sitting there watching that boat go up and down. You can see the palm trees getting a little bigger. Your heart's pounding. Then all of a sudden, the whole shoreline opens up, zeroing in on you. Now it's HR +1. The tide starting to come out. It exposes a large coral reef. And our LCV become lcvp. Can't get over sticks on the coral reef. And the Navy gets excited. They drop the front, say, get out of here. You're drawing fire.

Video Clip 5 [01:50:39] We jump in the water. The water's chest high. You gotta hold your rifle over your head, muzzle drops in the water. That's salt water. It'll blow up on you when you fire. Did you ever try to run in water up to your chest, loaded down, you don't move very fast. The enemy starts to pick you up, and you're pushing with the butt of your rifle, the dead bodies and wounded bodies of your friends and associates you've been training with. The coral is so sharp, it cuts the boots off your feet, and your feet are starting to bleed like mincemeat, and you're trying to get ashore.

Video Clip 5 [01:51:14] I was one of the first ashore that morning. I dug my first foxhole with my fingernails and I crawled in it. And just as I crawled into that mucky hole, an ambu gun opened up. It shoots about 700 rounds a minute, and it went down my right arm and took off my identification bracelet. And I rolled over and started to talk to Heavenly Father, and he answered me.

John Dehlin [01:51:44] See that? There's the hook. You have the charismatic, you know, articulate, interesting, general authority voice telling you this inspiring story. You feel inspired. And then they make that connection that the church is true or God lives or prayer works.

Lynn Packer [01:52:04] The God had preserved his life because he had a mission, which carries over to other stories that he told. Of course, there wasn't nothing remotely close happened that he describes is that the 77th Division was new in going into the Pacific. And what they often would do is have an experienced combat team hit first, and the Marines hit first at Guam, who had seen action on other islands. And they did meet some resistance. Nothing like he describes. They met some. And so by time the 77th Division landed, it was totally unopposed. And I think the only one soldier in the 77th who got killed was run over by a jeep on the shore. And he was killed,

John Dehlin [01:53:06] right? Yeah. All right, so tell us about this photo of Douglas MacArthur.

Lynn Packer [01:53:13] Another of Paul Dunn's stories is that he was made part of a special cadre that was going to land at the Philippines before MacArthur. You know, this is not unusual, that if you have a particular kind of landing, especially when highly publicized like MacArthur coming, is you're going to have some people ashore first to prepare the way. And so Dunn said, I was there before MacArthur and prepared the way. He's sort of like a forest gump. He takes something that's well known and then he places it in the middle of that action. And of course, that's not true at all. And if you go to the next slide is that Hal Sperry was a, I guess, a friend of Dunn's who served in the Philippines.

Lynn Packer [01:54:08] And when the Arizona Republic decided that they wanted to consider running, my story is that they came to Salt Lake and interviewed Paul Dunn in Salt Lake, and Jim Jardine was there, and Rick Ayer was there, too, giving support, and they came up with a new document. They Came up with some new proof that Dunn had served in action in the Philippines, and it was supplied by this house, Sperry.

Lynn Packer [01:54:41] And they did this interview over the Christmas break in 1990, and. And I'd been teaching in Germany, but I came home for Christmas, and they timed it this way so they would do the interview. And as soon as the reporter did the interview, he came to my home and said, hey, we've got this new proof from Hal Sperry. So I took a day or two to investigate. And indeed, Hal Sperry was in the Philippines, but he wasn't anywhere near Paul Dunn's unit. And so I called Hal Sperry while I was there on the phone and asked him about that and said, you couldn't have been there.

Lynn Packer [01:55:23] I did research, and it doesn't look like that you were there. And he admitted. He said, well, I could have been. He said, Paul Dunn called me, said he was in some trouble, needed somebody to. To vouch for what he did, and so I did this. So you had him lying in order to help cover up Paul Dunn's lie. And of course, I reported this back and gave Arizona Republic this information before I went back to Germany. And for some reason, my camera is,

John Dehlin [01:55:56] yeah, go ahead and just keep making the change that you normally do while you're doing that. I'm just going to say that one of the things that's really hard to just accept is you grow up just loving the church and thinking of it as a parent and thinking that these people talk to God and that they represent Jesus and that they're the most loving, ethical, kind people in the world, and that. And you give them the benefit of the doubt that there's no way that they would ever lie or deceive or intimidate or harm anybody, you know, and then, you know, Gordon B. Hinckley goes in front of Larry King and says that polygamy is not doctrinal or, you know, says that we don't emphasize or, you know, that we don't teach that.

John Dehlin [01:56:42] That God was once a man, you know, and. And you give them all the benefit of the doubt because you love them and they're like grandparents and. And you believe they would never intentionally lie. But when you. When you learn about these stories behind the scenes, you. You learn that they systematically lie and deceive and will do anything to protect their assets, their money, their power, and their reputation. And it's systemic. It's systemic.

Lynn Packer [01:57:11] They went all in on it. And if you move to the next slide, I'm moving cameras back and Forth. You can see my other camera in the shot. It's sort of funny. But anyway, the clincher was is I finally tracked down Harold Brown. The story.

John Dehlin [01:57:29] I wanted to find video of that, and I couldn't find it.

Lynn Packer [01:57:31] Yeah, the story of Harold Brown is Harold Brown was his friend all the way through. And Harold was a religious, very religious individual. The two stuck together because both of them had higher standards than other soldiers that they were with. And so they had a great affection for each other. And so Paul Dunn tells the story where one night, they're on the perimeter. They've dug in foxholes.

Lynn Packer [01:57:56] They expect an enemy attack. The enemy attack comes. There's a lot of. Of shots exchanged between the Japanese and them. It's a vicious firefight that takes place. But the rule is, is that during the firefight and until it's all over, you can't move foxholes. You've got to stay where you are and protect your position.

Lynn Packer [01:58:23] And so Paul Dunn, at first light, moves over to Harold Brown's foxhole, which was adjacent, and he's all shot up. He's. He's suffered multiple gunshot wounds. He takes him in his arms. Harold Brown is dying. And Harold Brown says, promise me one thing, something to the effect that if you survive this, that you will minister to the youth or something, sort of like to the youth of your church. And that's the story. And he tells this over and over again.

Lynn Packer [01:58:58] Took me quite a while to track him down. It was harder, much harder in those days without the Internet. So I finally call him on the phone. He tells me the true story. He's aware that Paul Dunn is telling the story.

Lynn Packer [01:59:13] He has since talked to Paul Dunn and visited with him In, I think, St. Louis after the story and just goes along with it. And he's the one who mailed me the photo that shows him and Paul Dunn standing together. He agreed to help with that, and so I scanned it and then I sent it back.

Lynn Packer [01:59:35] Then later, as I'm still working on the book and I'm still at byu, I'm at a college conference in Kansas City, and I make arrangements to go to his house. And so you see the shot of me at Harold Brown's house as we discuss it further, we'd already had several conversations on the phone.

Lynn Packer [01:59:58] My wife waited outside in the car, along with one of my colleagues from one of the German television stations. And I first went inside the house before I came out to talk to him, and his wife was there. And he told me that on more than one occasion, Mormon missionaries would track him out and he would say, I'm Harold Brown. And they'd say, well, all the missionaries knew this story. You're the Harold Brown and the Paul Dunn stories. Yeah, I'm here, I'm alive.

Lynn Packer [02:00:29] And we talked about it further. And then suddenly his wife blurts out, he's still very religious. There's Bibles at least one and maybe two sitting on the, the stands there. And his wife blurts out, says, harold, you know that that was wrong. You know what he was doing is wrong. She was indignant about it, but he went along.

Lynn Packer [02:00:52] I think he may have enjoyed the fact that he was good friends with Paul Dunn and his story was being told even though it was not true

John Dehlin [02:01:02] and, and just so that people understand exactly the story. And now I'm reading from the Sunstone article, but this is also in your book. You know, I'll just read this a bit. Dunn tells the story of how his unit dug in near Chocolate Drop Hill. Normally, he and Harold Brown shared a foxhole, but this night their ranks were so depleted that the two occupied individual foxholes about 50 yards apart. At about 11pm, Brown's Hole took a direct mortar hit. Dunn says he could not go to his rescue because of a rule against leaving foxholes at night. All Dunn could do is endure the night listening to Brown's moans.

John Dehlin [02:01:45] At daybreak, Dunn rushed to his companion's side, finding him alive but bleeding from 67 shrapnel wounds. Somebody counted them. Brown, barely clinging to life, said, paul, I know this is the end. As Donne took him in his arms, Brown made two requests. First, he wanted his mother assured he had been faithful to the end, to the principles she taught him. And then this is quoting, and he said, paul, the second thing I'd appreciate your doing. And he could hardly talk. I had to bend down to hear him. If you ever have an opportunity to talk to the young people of America, will you tell them for me that it's a privilege to lay down my life for them?

John Dehlin [02:02:34] And with that testimony on his lips, he died. And what you're saying is, is this guy never died and you visited him and hung out with him at his house.

Lynn Packer [02:02:46] It's a great story. When the story broke, I was in Germany, but I'd already made arrangements and sold part of my research to Channel two. And as I understand it, they flew back and interviewed Harold Brown. I, I never did see it and I never did.

Lynn Packer [02:03:04] I never did. I never did track it down. But, but, but that. I call it the clincher, because then you Know, it's. It's pretty dramatic. And Dunn would make excuses. Oh, I just used his name. It really happened. But I didn't want to use the name of the soldier. It really happened. With Don, for all the research I did, never saw any action. He was usually behind the lines.

Lynn Packer [02:03:38] Most soldiers didn't see any action. They would participate as backup or in one way or another. And Dunn had a reputation of being sort of a. From one soldier who I talked to who knew him, and maybe he wasn't telling the truth, but he had a reputation of being sort of a pansy as somebody who, you know, easily could go to sick call or wanted to get out of one bit of drudgery, one assignment after another.

Lynn Packer [02:04:11] But there's. There's just nothing that he ever was actually under enemy fire other than even if you're behind the lines, maybe sometime there's some sort of. I don't know if they had artillery. I don't think so, but some sort of attack that way. But then if you go.

John Dehlin [02:04:29] There's no real evidence that he ever even saw meaningful com. Combat at all.

Lynn Packer [02:04:34] No, no, he. He would have seen lots of people who had died, as I did when I was in Vietnam. Never saw any combat whatsoever. I was at bases that were under rocket attack, but that's not combat. And. But I saw on several occasions dead soldiers or dying soldiers. That was common because even if you're in a base like I was, that's not a forward base, is that these injured and dead are being brought back to these to the rear where they're being treated or if they're dead, being shipped out, shipped to Saigon and then back to the States.

Church Pressure to Suppress the Story

Lynn Packer [02:05:20] But. But going to the next slide begins to deal with what happens after I do this research and I'm trying to do the story and it still hasn't come out. And if you go to the. The next one.

Lynn Packer [02:05:40] Oh, well, this one just says that Paul Dunn complained to Jay Balliff, who was an administrator at BYU just under President Holland and was complaining about my research. This is the time I first find out that Paul Dunn and Boyd never got along because he, Don and his family start complaining that Boyd Packer put me up to this, that he's getting even for something. That's the first I'd heard that the two were at odds.

John Dehlin [02:06:16] And I have to say this, that I even have a friend who. Who told me to ask you about this. There are people that still love Paul Dunn that still say, who cares if he told some fibs? He did good. He inspired people, and they tend to be defensive. And. And this, this dear friend of mine told me that, you know, asked me to ask you this because it's. I think it might even be his belief to this day that Boyd K. Packer and other general authorities were just jealous of Paul H. Dunn's fame and money and influence. And so Boyd K. Packer used you as a stooge to take down Paul H. Dunn because they were jealous of what he was doing.

Lynn Packer [02:06:57] Well, I could see where other general authorities. Hell I would be if I were a general authority. And somebody was packing them in and everywhere they go, it's standing room only, and they're. With all these stars, I would feel some jealousy myself. Well, I can tell you this. At no time did any general authority, especially my uncle, say, do this story. And, and with my uncle, with Boyd, it was the opposite. Don't do it. It's not going to do you or the church any good. Don't do it. It was exactly the opposite. It just.

John Dehlin [02:07:29] And the tips. The tips didn't come from church leadership.

Lynn Packer [02:07:32] No, no. As we'll get into here in a couple of minutes, as we get into how the church begins to investigate this, because on the next slide, it shows Jay Balliff, if you pull that one up. Yeah, it shows Jay Balliff and Paul Dunn together. They were friends. They were both very much into sports.

Lynn Packer [02:08:05] And so there's just so much detail about everything that went on over a period of more than a year as I'm trying to finish the story and I'm being threatened with being fired. But finally, in the end, Paul Dunn complains to Jay Balliff, says he's still investigating me, still trying to do a story. So Jay Balliff calls me in to his office at BYU and sort of reads the riot act. He doesn't want to hear anything about war and baseball stories. He says, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if it's not true. We will not take accusations against the general authority to the media. And I tried to explain to him, I am a reporter.

Lynn Packer [02:08:48] I report while I freelance and I work for KSL while I teach. That didn't matter. He didn't care a wit about journalism. And then a. But what I did agree to, one thing that they. They did say is if you want to have an outside chance at keeping your job. And I was in the middle of a semester and I wanted to. They said, you've got to take this information to the church. At least you have a duty as a Mormon, not as a journalist to Take this to church authorities.

Lynn Packer [02:09:25] And to make peace and to keep my life from being totally disrupted at that time, I said, okay, I was will. And so they set it up. And you see the next slide is that I went to the. That they set up the meeting. If you can, pull up the next slide.

John Dehlin [02:09:44] Sorry, sorry. There you go.

Lynn Packer [02:09:46] They set up the meeting. And I remember that they first told me Boyd was aware of the meeting, but he wanted to stay out of it, and rightfully so. And so they told me, first, go to your uncle's office.

Lynn Packer [02:10:00] And I did. He knew why I was there. And he walked me down the hall. And I remember passing Dallin Oaks as we walked down the hall. This is at 47 East South Temple. And Elders Foust and Hate were there, ready to talk.

Lynn Packer [02:10:13] And they were more than understanding and gracious. This was completely different from my meeting with Balif. Balaf was venomous. He was just a total hard ass in the meeting. Demeaning. Why are you doing this against the general? You don't do it. You're a bad guy. You're a bad citizen of byu.

Lynn Packer [02:10:41] These guys were not like that at all. They were sympathetic, and they expected me to be sympathetic to their plight. And the point that they made is so many people came into the church, this would be so disruptive.

Lynn Packer [02:10:54] But they, they. They didn't have all the facts. And they were rather startled when I told them that none of the stories were. Was true. They had not heard that. They had their suspicions over the years. So they asked me this.

Lynn Packer [02:11:10] They said, would you be willing to let our investigator, somebody we assign, look into this? And I said, sure, why not? And so what they did is they assigned an attorney who had retired but was working for the church in one of the departments who was a known, really good attorney to do this. And they said, will you meet with him? And we met in.

Lynn Packer [02:11:36] In Salt Lake, and I brought him just a stack of documents and said, this is. These are the issues, and here's the proof that I've got. His name was Harry Pugsley.

John Dehlin [02:11:48] And by the way, we've interviewed his grandson, Mark Pugsley on Mormon Stories podcast. Mark is an attorney in Utah that focuses on fraud.

Lynn Packer [02:11:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:11:59] Shout out to Mark Pugsley.

Lynn Packer [02:12:00] And yeah. And Harry was very professional, like many attorneys, and he approached it as an attorney. Let's see if there's proof. Let's see if there's nothing. And he investigated for some time, and at one point he got back to me and he had the courtesy of doing this because he didn't have to. And said, lynn, I've checked out your stuff, and it all checks up. And I'm reporting that back to Elders Faust and Hate.

John Dehlin [02:12:29] So he was a. He was a good guy.

Paul H. Dunn [02:12:31] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [02:12:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:32] All right, Mark. Your grandpa's a good guy, apparently.

Lynn Packer [02:12:35] Yeah. And so. And so then they initiated the meeting. I was called back into another meeting with Elders Foust and Haight. And we discussed the fact that they had shown that they now were convinced that this was pretty bad and that something needed to be done. And they said, what we're doing is we're making him emeritus.

Lynn Packer [02:13:02] And I said, why isn't he being fired? And. And made an example of. And why doesn't the churches? And. And they came out, said. They said, we're concerned about all the people who have been converted based on Paul Dunn. And I told him I disagreed with it, but I fully understood that. And then they said, are you now satisfied that we're making him emeritus?

Lynn Packer [02:13:29] And I said, well, what does that have to do with anything? And they said, well, now that he's being essentially given the boot, do you plan to continue to do the story? And I said, yeah, that whether you kept him or fired him or whatever you did had nothing to do with my story. That was not my goal. My goal as a reporter is to present the facts. And then if you want to use the facts and take some sort of action or not take action, then that's your choice. That's the way journalism works. And so that's the way it ended.

Lynn Packer [02:14:02] Remember, the story hasn't broken, and the story only breaks that he's given emeritus status. And so I continue working on the story. Paul Dunn knows I'm continuing to work on the story. And then I think it comes up to another slide where now it really hits the fan that I'm continuing, despite the fact he's been given emeritus status. Status.

Lynn Packer [02:14:26] And Gordon Whiting had been made department chairman over the communications department. He was not a journalist, but he was aware, as of everybody in the department, that this controversy was going on. Everybody in the department knew I'd been researching this over a period of years, that I was trying to get the story published, that I. That Uncle Boyd had told me on two occasions that I know of to quit and not do it. But I was still persisting.

Lynn Packer [02:14:58] And Gordon Whiting initially called me in and said, we are behind you. We are teaching journalism here. And if. If this is true, this is a story that should come out. And that was Gordon Whiting's position. But as the pressure continued and as Gordon Baliff continued to press push for me to be fired. And you go to the next.

John Dehlin [02:15:24] Can I just say how horrible that is that the church is threatening you to hide a story under penalty of firing you for telling the truth about someone committing massive fraud to the general membership in the world. That is so heinous.

Lynn Packer [02:15:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:46] That they would not only try and hide the story, but threaten to fire you. It's outrageous. Yeah.

Lynn Packer [02:15:54] And in essence, it was. The firing was not renewing my contract, which is a firing.

John Dehlin [02:15:58] That's firing.

Lynn Packer [02:15:59] And I was. I was on a committee where they raided classes in our department because we were getting ready to get rid of some classes and combine some others. The two classes I taught and I taught exclusively were top rated. Were at the very top.

Lynn Packer [02:16:19] And I think both because of the effectiveness and importance of the class and I think I was just a damn good teacher. And so they were taking one of the best teachers in the department saying, if you don't back off this, you're going to get the ax. So if you go to the next slide is another amazing turn in this story is Gordon Whiting sent me an email and did. Or a memo, I think it was. Didn't have email back then because I didn't have a computer in my office. Some of the others did is that he sent me a memo and he had done a 180.

Lynn Packer [02:16:59] What he said is, I was in the temple this morning and realized that I should not be supporting you. And in the memo he said, in my judgment, the publication of the Poldun article will damage the church, will damage the university, will damage the department and will damage you. And that ended my career at byu. He's the one that had the authority to either offer me another contract or terminate my work there. And so it was. It was over. He was their hit guy, so to speak.

John Dehlin [02:17:38] So they. They fired you.

Lynn Packer [02:17:40] Yeah. So he. He went to the temple and that's when I've already told you the story that after this happened, I make immediate. I. I go to an immediate effort to try and teach in Germany. And I was successful at doing it. So it was a very quick transition from BYU to the university.

John Dehlin [02:18:05] And did the media cover your firing? Did the Salt Lake Tribune or the Deseret News or Sunstone or anyone or the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times? Like, why wasn't it that the world, or at least the country, if not the state, if not the church membership were. Because I remember this happening. Why wasn't everyone outraged and like picketing. This is horrible.

Lynn Packer [02:18:29] The only time is the A.P. told this story in the most depth. It was after the story broke. This was months later. They all, everybody knew I was working on the story. I had pitched it everywhere. I was trying to freelance the story. I was not working at ksl. I was freelancing, and I was freelancing for Utah holiday. And it's the first and only story I pitched to them that they turned down. They said, this is just too hot. We can't do it.

Lynn Packer [02:18:58] And I went and, and see, UPI came close to doing this story. UPI is a wire service like ap, Associated Press. They had really good reporters. And they had a reporter, Pete Gillins, who had reported on the AFCO fraud. So he knew all about Paul Dunn. And they initially agreed to take the story. And I submitted it. And of course I let Jim Jardine know, which was a mistake.

Lynn Packer [02:19:25] Was a mistake to be open and honest about who might do the story. And so what Jim Jardine did is he flew back to New York, met with the president of upi, and he took a stack of Paul Dunn books and said, how could this be accurate? How could all these stories and all these books over so many years be lies? And I think he also threatened them, as he had threatened me with a libel suit.

Lynn Packer [02:19:54] And immediately after his visit, they pulled the plug and said, we're not going to do the story. It's too hot. We're not going to do it.

John Dehlin [02:20:02] And so is Jim Jardine still alive?

Lynn Packer [02:20:05] Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah. I later, during my career working as a consultant, worked on the Caldera Microsoft case. And I know you used to work for Microsoft, I think, and I was on the other side. I was on Caldera's side. Sorry about that.

John Dehlin [02:20:23] No problem.

Lynn Packer [02:20:24] And he was on Microsoft's side. And so I had not direct dealings with him, but indirectly I dealt with. With a lot of what he was doing as the fight goes back and forth, as the litigation proceeds.

Paul H. Dunn's Admission and Emeritus Status

John Dehlin [02:20:39] So another question I have is why didn't your uncle rescue you? Why didn't he save you from getting fired? Why didn't he stop this and say, hey, this is dishonest. I'm a special witness of Christ. I'm an apostle of the Lord. This general authority is being dishonest, and this story is true. And I'm certainly not going to let the church execute, communicate my nephew for doing his job as a journalist, which is why we hired him at BYU and for telling the truth. Why didn't, why didn't your, your uncle have your back?

Lynn Packer [02:21:10] I think it would have been a disaster. I think it would have made the situation worse. It was already a powder keg.

John Dehlin [02:21:18] Did you ask him to intervene? Did you tell him what was going on?

Lynn Packer [02:21:21] And I wouldn't and I would expect him, if he heard about it, to not intervene. I, I, I saw it as my business. I'm the one, as I use the race car analogy, that's taking it right to the edge, trying to not go over and, and in effect I went over the edge. And you, you suffer the consequences. Yeah. Now whether he could have done something behind the scenes or not, whether I got tossed to the wolves, I don't know.

Lynn Packer [02:21:53] I, I sort of doubt it. But it's just something, I don't know. I don't know what was, I don't know what was going on by then at church headquarters because at the, in the stretch leading up to my being kicked out of byu, it was all going on at byu.

Lynn Packer [02:22:12] I, I, I don't even know that they knew about it and I didn't tell them. I didn't call and plead for my job. I figured if they're going to take it, they're going to take it.

John Dehlin [02:22:21] I just received a message from a friend telling me that Jim Jardine also represented Russell M. Nelson's daughter and son in law in a pretty significant sexual abuse scandal that you know, has been ongoing for quite some time. So he must be a fix it man for the church. Well, in several different ways.

Lynn Packer [02:22:43] Well, clearly he was with the, the Paul Dunty. I don't even know who paid his, his salary or paid him or if he was paid at all. It may have been voluntary. I don't know that.

John Dehlin [02:22:58] Then we have a listener who asks was Jim related to Doug Jardine, Prominent newscaster, excommunicated for cheating with an intern?

Lynn Packer [02:23:07] I never heard about any of that. I don't know if he was related. I have no, no idea.

John Dehlin [02:23:12] Okay.

Lynn Packer [02:23:14] I don't know. But if you sort of Moving on to

John Dehlin [02:23:20] next slide.

Lynn Packer [02:23:22] The next slide is in 1990, a year before his confession. Paul Dunn starts getting involved in other business activities. Like he's involved with the Values Institute where, Values Institute where he's, where they're teaching values of Christianity and honesty and integrity.

Lynn Packer [02:23:46] And I, I wrote about this at some point, I can't remember if I put anything in the book. Maybe I did, maybe it didn't. I don't remember. And then the next slide gets to where I've approached the Arizona Republic right near the time I left byu, they start looking at it, they start doing research, and then finally they break my story.

Lynn Packer [02:24:11] And the Associated Press knew it was going to be broken. I was in contact with the Associated Press, helping them out because they knew that once somebody broke the story, then they could break it. And so they were all prepared to do it. And I was in, like I said, I was in Germany at the time, communicating mostly by fax with the Arizona Republic and with, with ap and I'd already been pre interviewed to some extent by the AP when I was home over the holidays because there was the possibility it was going to break in December. And then it just took a little bit longer than they thought to break then.

John Dehlin [02:24:55] And let me just be clear. The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, neither would, would cover this story.

Lynn Packer [02:25:01] They would not cover it. But they, they, once it was broken in the Arizona Republic, all the local media did stories and for a day

John Dehlin [02:25:11] they wouldn't break the story.

Lynn Packer [02:25:13] Pardon?

John Dehlin [02:25:13] They wouldn't break the story?

Lynn Packer [02:25:14] Oh, no, no. I tried. I, I tried every which way to get somebody to publish it and failed repeatedly. Like I said, even with Utah Holiday, and I'd won awards for Utah Holiday, that never turned down a story. They knew it was a hot story. It was too hot.

John Dehlin [02:25:32] I've never heard of Utah Holiday.

Lynn Packer [02:25:34] It was a respected publication that did a lot of good reporting and then just went under. It just didn't make it.

John Dehlin [02:25:44] Yeah, just, just, just last year there was, there was this story that came out of the Steven Murdoch guy, the bishop, the Mormon bishop and stake president, stake High councilman who was a peeping Tom and you know, taking pictures of women in their dressing rooms, you know, and he had sexually abused several people in his workplace and he was a sitting Stake high Council, stake High counselor and he had been a former bishop and while he was a bishop, he had sexually abused several people. I took that to the Salt Lake Tribune last year and they had zero interest in breaking the story.

Paul H. Dunn [02:26:19] Story.

Lynn Packer [02:26:19] Oh yeah, that's. The Tribune has just plummeted in, in stature. The, the state of journalism. Don't get me in Salt Lake. Don't get me started. It is, it's certainly at an all time low and there's no end in sight. It's, it's going to continue.

John Dehlin [02:26:37] It's just going to get worse.

Lynn Packer [02:26:38] Yeah, yeah. So the, so the next slide shows. What happened is, is that in October of 91, this is after the story breaks, Paul Dunn was required to. Paul Dunn was required to put an open letter to Members of the church in the Church News. I did not know that this was coming. And again I was in Germany this time I had begun consulting and I was working on a project up in Hamburg and got a call in the middle of the night from a reporter saying have you heard about this? We want your comment.

Lynn Packer [02:27:21] And in the letter, Pauldin says, I confess that I've not always been accurate in my public talks and writings. Was a lame admission that something happened. But the interesting part is furthermore I've indulged in other activities inconsistent with the. The high and sacred office which I have held.

Lynn Packer [02:27:40] And then. And so there was he. He had done something that had attracted their attention, that caused them to do this. And before I finish this part of the story, I just wanted to introduce in the next slide the fact of the. And we're sort of going long, so I'm not going to spend much time on this. Just other than if you go to the.

Lynn Packer [02:28:12] Oh oops, you're on the right slide. I was going one past that. So what I found out is after Donne was forced to put this sort of apology or admission in the Church News, he immediately crafts a letter and sends it out to a lot of people and basically undoes his partial admission.

Lynn Packer [02:28:37] He says, wish to clarify that I never fabricated, never created fictional stories about myself. I have experienced the events, I have related in the details, a very small number of stories. I've not been as careful as I should have been. I have on occasion embellished the story a few times. This is just a big lie. Lie. He's just trying to put the best face on it and he's trying to undo all of this negative publicity that resulted when he, when he put that in the. His in. In the Church News and, and later his.

Lynn Packer [02:29:14] After Paul Dunn dies, his wife would. Would make the statement that, that he didn't even write that letter, that he was just forced to sign it the previous one. The previous one.

John Dehlin [02:29:29] So you're saying that this letter where he apologized in the Church News, that the Paul Dunn claimed that the church made him sign that letter but that he didn't write it and that he never meant it and that he was never guilty.

Guest [02:29:41] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [02:29:42] And so he just. So he just undoes it. I mean he clearly is sociopathic. That is, he has no conscience. He, he's just looking out for himself and he has no remorse for having misled so many people for so long. Then you go to the next story, the next slide. And I'm just pointing out that this,

John Dehlin [02:30:05] this wasn't the first time this happened.

Lynn Packer [02:30:07] Right. Something very similar happened where Douglas Stringfellow told this story about being with a special unit that goes into Germany and captures a scientist and does all these heroic things.

John Dehlin [02:30:23] This is in 1946.

Paul H. Dunn [02:30:26] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [02:30:26] And he's elected to Congress on that basis. He's on the television show this is your life. They're able to put together a this is your life show based on something that didn't happen. The reason I bring this up is that he lived in Paul Dunn stake in 1940. 46. And it was in church that he honed and developed this story. And I'm convinced that it's almost to a certainty that Paul Dunn would have heard this talk on more than one occasion and may have patterned his own stories after Douglas Stringfellows. But I don't.

John Dehlin [02:31:04] You're right. And you write on the slide that in 1954 the LDS Church leaders requested. Required Congressman Douglas Stringfellow to go on KSL and confess his fabricated stories.

Lynn Packer [02:31:15] There's a big story behind it. I have a little bit of it in my book. But there's a lot of places that you can read about it. It's a very. A very interesting story. Then the next slide.

John Dehlin [02:31:26] So it didn't turn out so well for Stringfellow. But. So you gotta wonder why. Why Dunn would. Would take a page out of his playbook if that didn't turn out so well for him.

Lynn Packer [02:31:36] How effective it was and that he may not have ever been caught and Paul Dunn may not have ever been caught. If I hadn't started researching it, he would have. He would have died. And even then it probably never would have come out.

John Dehlin [02:31:52] Really quickly. I just want to share the First Presidency statement. My. My good friend Gerardo shared this with me and I want to get your reaction to this. I'll read it. First Presidency Statement. The First Presidency of the Church, Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints issued the following statement on Friday. In consideration of factors of age and health, Elder Paul H. Dunn was given a merit of status on September 30, 1989, along with seven other general authorities.

John Dehlin [02:32:19] Quote. We have had no way to full of fully or finally verifying the accuracy the inaccuracy of the current allegations or accounts that are now under challenge. We are naturally concerned about the well being of Elder Dunn and his family during his stressful time. We appreciate the service Elder Dunn has given and the sacrifices he and his family have made, often at the cost of their own comfort and health. What was and is your reaction to the church's Statement on Paul Dunn.

Lynn Packer [02:32:52] Well, I don't know the date of it. I don't think that was near the time the story broke. I think that was later near the. The time of his death. And if you go to the next slide, the obituary, which is just amazing is. Here's the obituary in 98.

John Dehlin [02:33:10] This is in the Deseret News.

Lynn Packer [02:33:11] Yeah, in the Deseret News, which is long after the. The Arizona Republic. My Sunstone story, I believe, and all of that. And it still calls him a former professional baseball player, still says he played for the Cardinal Cardinals, that he resumed his baseball career until a broken collarbone stopped it, and that he was given emeritus status because of age and health. It's all false. I know why he was given emeritus status because I was in the middle of it at the beginning, the middle and the end was given emeritus status because he had become a liability to the church. And they wanted to make sure that if the story broke, he was not a sitting general authority.

John Dehlin [02:33:52] Authority.

Lynn Packer [02:33:53] And they accomplished that. And I, I pretty much allowed it to happen and pretty much had to because I couldn't get anybody to do the story. Then if you go to the next slide, as we get near the end,

John Dehlin [02:34:07] I just want to say that it's, it's, it's this weird thing that the Church will do some sort of action so that they can have plausible deniability but then continue to perpetuate the mispronouncement perceptions. Yeah, Ongoing. So they do both. They, they do something that the lawyers tell them to do so that they can point to it, but then with the general membership, they just, they just, they keep the fibs going.

Lynn Packer [02:34:32] Yeah. You know, once you start lying, you, it's, it's hard to break away. And you. And that's why so often, and this is not, as you know, not at all unique to Mormonism is that's when cover ups begin. And that's when cover ups often become bigger than the lie itself because it's so sinister, it's so devious. It's, it's, it's so pathetic. But if you go then to the, to the next slide, what this shows is a couple of things. It's getting to where I have another meeting with my Uncle Boyd about this. But the, the, the, the slide or the photo on the right shows Paul Dunn's funeral.

Lynn Packer [02:35:19] I took that shot. I went to the funeral. I didn't go into the main hall. I went into a cry room or something because I didn't want to create a spectacle, but I wanted to Record everything that was said about Paul Dunn.

Lynn Packer [02:35:32] And that was the. The funeral. Shortly before his death, he got involved, involved with another individual by the name of Wade Cook, I think, up in the Seattle area. And the two of them went around promoting Paul Dunn's new book and Wade Cook's promotional stock.

John Dehlin [02:35:48] It was like financial investment stuff.

Lynn Packer [02:35:50] Yeah. And. And, and later this was like a couple of years later, Wade Cook was convicted of fraud and they threw the book at him. He was in prison a lot, long time. But Paul Dunn was gone by then. And Paul Dunn was going to join Wade Cook's board. Right at the time he died, they had announced, I'm going to be on Wake Cook's board. So he would have faced the possibility of being prosecuted another time for.

John Dehlin [02:36:22] He didn't even stop. He didn't even stop the fraud.

Lynn Packer [02:36:24] No, no, no, he didn't. And the one shot you see of the jazz is just to remind people that Wade Cook had little banners on the team seats. You'd see Wade Cook, an email address or something like that. And then I think I talk about it.

Lynn Packer [02:36:47] Oh, I'm going to talk about it on this slide. I just packed a lot of stuff in. So go back to that slide for a second. Is that after Paul Dun's funeral, was probably the most interesting discussion I had with Boyd about that. He called me into his office and I don't remember the main reason. This may have been the main reason. I have to look at my notes and I haven't done it.

Lynn Packer [02:37:15] But he smiled at me and he said, I know you were at Paul Dunn's funeral. I said, yes, I was. As they're recording and taking full photos. And then he has the broadest smile and he said, you noticed who wasn't there?

Lynn Packer [02:37:31] You noticed who wasn't there. Meaning him. Meaning him. He wanted to get that message through. And this is the first direct indication I had that they had been out of sorts since probably 1954.

John Dehlin [02:37:47] And he, Boyd K. Packer and Paul H. Dunn were not on good terms.

Lynn Packer [02:37:51] Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:52] And tell us why. Tell us why.

Lynn Packer [02:37:55] Well, because we never went into great detail, but it was because I think Boyd did not appreciate his war stories. I think, remember, Boyd in the service, was in the Pacific and had landed and did work on some of the islands that Don had been at previously. He would have known about some of the this, and he knows that you shouldn't sensationalize war.

Lynn Packer [02:38:22] He didn't like talking about war much himself. He did, but he didn't like it. But it was also during that meeting, the boy told me, he said, there may be something else. Remember, Dunn is now dead. The story is now out.

Lynn Packer [02:38:42] Boy knows that I may or may not come out with a book because I hadn't at that point. And then Dunn said, there's something else you ought to look into. He said, paul Dunn's got involved with another guy, and I can't think of his name right now. Maybe you should look into that. This is the first and only time anybody has said, maybe you should look into something. And it's long after Paul Dunn is gone.

Aftermath and the Church's Public Response

Lynn Packer [02:39:05] And so I don't know how long it was. Again, it's in my notes and it's in my book, is that I get a call and it's from Boyd. And he said, I remembered the name. It's Wade Cook.

John Dehlin [02:39:19] Huh.

Lynn Packer [02:39:19] True story. Anyway, anyway, we're really getting close to

John Dehlin [02:39:24] the end, and, hey, this is your only shot to tell the story, so don't rush unless you've got to go.

Paul H. Dunn [02:39:29] Okay?

Lynn Packer [02:39:30] Well, I sort of get tired after

John Dehlin [02:39:32] doing this, but, yeah, yeah, I appreciate your generosity.

Lynn Packer [02:39:36] Gerald Wingate, remember the one that he's been involved in business with on several occasions? He's eventually convicted of fraud and serves time at a federal penitentiary in Colorado. The next slide shows Paul Dunn's daughter with President Monson the day her mother dies, which is, of course, after Paul Dunn dies.

Lynn Packer [02:40:08] And I just pointed out again that. Or I point out here, I didn't point out again that Paul Dunn told friends that Monson also embellished stories. Like. So when he got in discussions with some people, he would say, well, I'm not the only one who does this. And then I just toss in one example that I was aware of of Thomas Monson. Because when I worked at KSL sometimes, and this job was sort of passed around as you'd cover conference.

Lynn Packer [02:40:37] We got the speeches in advance. So we would get the speeches in advance. We would read them and highlight what we thought was the most important part. And then we would be sure to get the tape and pull those sound bites.

Lynn Packer [02:40:53] And so you would often be aware in advance of what they were going to say. And so in 1975, President Monson has this dramatic moment during one of his talks in conference, and he says, I've been prompted by the spirit to divert from my prepared text. This is the prepared text that we get. And at that point, he looks up in the audience and he describes a couple of people in the audience. And of course, that was all in the prepared text. It was. It was just for Dramatic effect that

John Dehlin [02:41:23] was in the prepared text where he says that he's inspired to go off script. Yeah.

Lynn Packer [02:41:29] And so. And, but. But see, it's dramatic if, if you, like, make people think that, okay, I'm here and okay, all of a sudden I'm inspired and I need to depart for a minute because it now occurs to me that there's something important. And that's not the only story that. That he was possibly had embellished or made up some way. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:55] Because. Because there's God. It can't be that Dunn was the only one who did this. And the only reason that anyone knows about this is because you did it. And the only reason you did it is because you had the courage to do it, because you. That you got fired for doing it. And you got pressured and threatened by all levels of church administration for pursuing it. And most people aren't that courageous or they can't afford to lose their job. So how many stories have been deep sixed or never covered or have been hidden in all sorts of areas within Mormonism because there weren't courageous, you know, capable people that could. That could, you know, they could tell the story?

Lynn Packer [02:42:43] Yeah, I think that the, The. The. The church would have been a lot better off had there been good news reporting all along, which the Trib tried to do for many years until they got in bed with the Deseret News and started pulling back. There was a time when reporters covered the church office building. I knew a reporter when I covered city county building. Scoop Williams, who told stories of covering the church office building, going in and talking to the president of the church as a reporter, getting quotes directly, just as when I covered the Capitol. I could go into Governor Rampton's office and sit down and have a chat.

Lynn Packer [02:43:26] But that quickly disappeared with the church, and it's also disappeared in state office. You have to go through layers of people for reporters usually to get to these people. And if it looks like it's getting dark, the sun is going down, so my face is only being lit.

John Dehlin [02:43:46] Don't worry about that. Our listeners don't even check the video out. Okay. I think we're at the end, though. This is a controversial slide because it's kind of polarizing. It's got Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and Gordon B. Hinckley, and it asks, why do public figures lie? I think this gets to the crux of how we're ending.

Lynn Packer [02:44:11] Yeah, this slide is one. I only did one book signing at one bookstore, and I think five people showed up. This book I made up my mind at some point, given the Paul Dunn's rancor against my uncle and his false accusations against my uncle. My uncle, I made up my mind I wasn't going to publish the book until Boyd died. And so I held up publication for several years. And so by the time the book came out, nobody read it, nobody wanted to review it, nobody cared. I did one book signing at one bookstore, and I think four or five people showed up. And the slide you just showed was in that presentation I made at the bookstore.

Lynn Packer [02:44:53] And I just wanted to bring up what. Why, why do they lie? Hillary Clinton, it could be President Hinckley, it could be Donald Trump. Why do they. And I think I told you this before, but one of the things I told students repeatedly over the years is that you'd be surprised how many public officials lie. And you know it. As you're holding the microphone there, interviewing them and they're saying it and you're taping it, and you know that it's a lie.

Lynn Packer [02:45:29] And I said, because lies are usually effective. I said, and in this line, I said, maybe they think their adherence can't handle the truth. And I think, I think that's sometimes the case with the, with the church, is that they're not as sinister as you think, that this could be pretty bad. If they heard this, they're being protective. I don't agree with it, but I understand that.

Lynn Packer [02:45:52] And sometimes I think it's the leaders themselves can't handle the truth, and so they lie. And I think that's more often the case. And then mostly it's because lies are just usually damn effective. Lying is really effective. I don't care if you're selling insurance, if you're going door to door selling solar panels or Bibles or whatever it is you're selling. If you're a candidate running for office, lies often are extremely effective and, and are difficult to overcome with facts. And so that's that slide.

John Dehlin [02:46:24] Yeah. And something that I think we can all agree upon, whether you support Trump and the Republicans or whether you support the Democrats and Biden, is you think the other side's lying. And you have to notice that lying persuades people and it moves people emotionally, and it's successful. Because if you hate Trump, Trump got elected. If you believe Trump's a liar, then Trump got elected and he survived through lies. And if you hate Hillary and if you hate Biden, then you're going to say that lies got them elected. And so either way, we just have to acknowledge that lying works very effective. It's Effective. Yeah. Well, I do have a few questions. Do you mind if I ask you a few final questions? L. Lynn.

Paul H. Dunn [02:47:14] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:47:15] You've been super generous. Are you sure you're okay?

Guest [02:47:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:19] Okay.

Lynn Packer [02:47:19] And this ghoulish light off of my screen.

John Dehlin [02:47:24] Don't worry about that. Don't worry about the image. It's been great. Okay. So do you feel like the church has changed as a result of the Paul Dunn scandal? Have they changed? You know, I've heard that the church kicked all the general authorities off of corporate boards. I hear the church has a really firm policy now about, you know, general authorities doing any endorsements. I'm guessing that the church is always picking general authorities that won't become like Paul Dunn. And they're monitoring general authorities to make sure that nobody gets too charismatic and too, you know, successful. Although Jeffrey Holland, you know, maybe be an exception. And some have even questioned Jeffrey Holland's truth telling in some of the stories he's told. But do you think that the church has learned any lessons from all this?

Dunn's Legacy and Famous Associates' Silence

Lynn Packer [02:48:19] I think my recollection is, is that they started dialing back the board of director thing earlier that, that Paul Dunn was, was maybe hanging on against the advice of the brethren. I'm not sure about that because I, I had this discussion once with my uncle.

Lynn Packer [02:48:39] I don't recall what all we talked about, but I know that at one point he was on the board of Zion's bank and then stepped back. But I think that was prompted by an earlier embarrassing fraud. There's been a series of them. They don't, they, they don't end.

Lynn Packer [02:48:56] And because there were other general authorities on other boards that got caught up in scandal that I've written about and I wrote about in the one Utah holiday article story. I think the church has learned some lessons. It's like I said when I met with Elder Haight and Fiennes is that there was just no animosity. It was a, if you could call it, I mean the, the subject matter was, was very controversial, but it was a pleasant exchange. These were not mean spirited guys.

Lynn Packer [02:49:33] I think they had concern for me. I think they had concern for Paul Dunn, but mostly they had concern for people as they expressed it who he had brought into the church, which probably numbered in the thousands.

John Dehlin [02:49:49] Okay, somebody, let's see. Jan writes. What about his wife? Did she ever call him on the lies? And that's the other thing. Didn't he have brothers or sisters or siblings or anyone that could actually speak up and say he wasn't on that baseball team or he that that war story wasn't true. Were there any family members that could have called him out that didn't?

Lynn Packer [02:50:13] His brothers could have, but they didn't. My wife, of course, was in the middle of this and, and faced all the pressure that I faced because when your job is in jeopardy, that's putting food on the table. When I, when I was first covering it, before the story broke, Grant Affleck called her at home and was very threatening in the call and scared her an upsetter about it because he was so desperate. Remember, this is a company that was going under and a single news story would have moved up their bankruptcy date by several months. And he was scrambling to find the money through a Japanese investment to pay everybody off.

Lynn Packer [02:51:07] And that never came about. And it turned out that there was fraud associated with that particular potential deal. So his company had no hope. It was, it was going to go down. But, but yeah, I mean, she's lived the whole Packer family thing. She became part of the extended family, fit in very well.

Lynn Packer [02:51:29] We, as I said in a previous video with you, that it was just a great experience, a great thing to be a, a part of and, and she tracked it and knew about it all along.

John Dehlin [02:51:50] One of our listeners asked, did the Osmonds or Steve Young or any of the famous people attend Paul H. Dunn's funeral?

Lynn Packer [02:51:57] That's a good question. I'm almost certain Steve Young was not there. There could have been and I think there was. Yeah, I recognize recall there was a couple of Osman brothers there. I think I remember in the parking lot going out when they were taking the casket out. I was standing back. I was staying at the perimeter. I did not want to disrupt the, the, the funeral. Some people were critical that I showed up at all, and maybe that's a valid complaint, but I stood back and I think I remember seeing one or two Osmond brothers going to their car after, it seems like. But remember, I'm not in the main part of the chapel. I'm back in a cry room where I can't see who all is there.

Reflections on Lying for the Lord

John Dehlin [02:52:44] What about people that say lim Packer just hates the church? He has an axe to grind. He's just negative. He was just trying to find some way to take the church down. What types of criticisms have you received for doing, doing this and other like, stories and to what extent are they true or not true?

Lynn Packer [02:53:02] Well, sure, you get that. You get that criticism because people who don't like what you're reporting assign bad motives to it. But the reporting I did about the church represents a very, very small fraction of all the reporting I did.

Lynn Packer [02:53:22] We've highlighted it so it may seem like that's all I did was recording. I would say I did thousands of stories over the years in the thousands, and most of them had nothing to do with the church like this. And you would get the same sort of criticism about political stories that you did. You're out to get this politician business stories. You're out to get this business. You hate it. It's journalism. It's what journalists do. And if you have a complaint, what you should do is analyze and see whether the reporter has applied basic journalism tenets to the story. Is it accurate? Did they give both sides a chance to respond?

Lynn Packer [02:54:10] And do they try and put their thumb on the story balance scale as the story is being told? And I worked hard to not do that. And that's what I taught at byu and it's one of the reasons I was hired at byu. They wanted students coming out of BYU to practice traditional journalism methods and apply the tenets. And that's what I taught.

John Dehlin [02:54:37] You chose the title Lying for the Lord. And as I In the Sunstone article, which we'll share in the. In the show notes for the podcast, you actually have some excerpts, I think, from the Arizona Republic's interview of Paul H. Dunn. I was surprised he was even willing to do an interview. But in that discussion he basically says, look, I never told any lies. I basically, you know, my, my heart was always in the right place. I just wanted to inspire the youth of the church to do good. And, and everything I said in my stories were true. Just sometimes I would take truths from two stories and then merge them together just so that I could teach good principles.

John Dehlin [02:55:18] But they were not lies. And my heart was always in a good place. I never made myself the hero. And so what's wrong? And I even know people, friends right now that sort of say, what's so wrong? What's so bad about this? He's, you know, and even Paul Dunn uses the justification I was so bewildered. He says the, the creation story isn't true. He says the flood story isn't true. Like, like the foundation of the Old Testament and the bi. Thus the Bible. We know that they're not real stories. So Paul done himself basically said, you know, religion is about stories that are often myth, but as long as they inspire, that's the important thing.

Guest [02:55:58] Religious.

John Dehlin [02:55:59] What, what is your response to all of that reasoning and. Or justification?

Lynn Packer [02:56:03] Well, that's one way of looking at it. Of course. I Disagree with it. I think that why a little embellishing once in a while. A little once in a while for some drama to me is okay, but making up stories out of whole cloth, I think that's absolutely wrong.

Lynn Packer [02:56:21] And about that interview that Paul Dunn did with the Arizona Republic is he was taking a big risk. He was taking the risk that he, if he met with the. The reporter, allowed the conversation to be taped, he brought in some new evidence proving that he was. Did this at the Philippines and had this affidavit and some other things that the Arizona Republic would drop the story.

Lynn Packer [02:56:48] Now, if you want to hear the story behind the story is as the Arizona Republic told me, if Paul Dunn had not done that interview, they were not going to do the story. They knew it was that controversial. And if they couldn't meet with him face to face and draw conclusions face to face. And so what does that tell you is that they did end up doing the story and they did not believe what Dunn told them during the interview. The statement that you just quoted,

John Dehlin [02:57:22] what about just this idea that his stories weren't fabricated, they were just kind of embellished or merged, but he really didn't tell lies.

Lynn Packer [02:57:33] Well, that's what he says. I mean, of course that's not true. They were all. They. They were all made up. Even when you read my book, you'll see where I'll. I'll find that he on a couple of occasions knew someone that it happened to and so he could tell the story with great conviction and emotion. It just didn't happen to him.

John Dehlin [02:57:56] Do you have any reason to have a belief about Paul H. Dunn's testimony, let's say, before he got busted, during and or after. At any point, do you have a sense that he either lost his testimony or, or was like a super liberal Mormon? And by the way, I also would love your thoughts on the extent to which he believed that the church should be more honest and open about its own history. Those are two questions, but try and deal with them both if you can.

Lynn Packer [02:58:25] Yeah, that's right. I think had I been at that meeting in 1954 when they were deciding what path church education should go down, and had Paul Dunn said what he probably did say, and, and my uncle said what he would have said, I would have probably sided with Paul. Well, I. Not probably. I would have sided with Paul Dunn because remember, Paul Dunn went to a, a school that it was, it was Chapman College. That was a religious school. It was, they turned out preachers. He.

Lynn Packer [02:59:06] He would have had a formal Education in New Testament and the Old Testament. He was an academic and he probably believed that's the way it should be taught. He didn't go to BYU and take institute classes and get quasi brainwashed. He got what would be probably a more accurate view of what the. The Bible meant. And. And, yeah. So see, what was the other part of your question?

John Dehlin [02:59:39] He lost his faith in Mormonism.

Lynn Packer [02:59:41] Yeah, I think he did.

Paul H. Dunn [02:59:42] When?

John Dehlin [02:59:42] When.

Lynn Packer [02:59:44] I think after. I think he. What had happened that I didn't mention is, is that I found out what happened. Remember in the church news article, it said, I've done some things that aren't becoming of a generalist authority that I'm apologizing for. What that was, was at least two women had come forward and alleged some sort of sexual impropriety. I never found out what it was. My source would only say that that was what it was. Whether it was just touching or actual sex, I have no idea.

Lynn Packer [03:00:17] My source would absolutely not tell me, but gave me a lot of detail, is that normally something like this would go to a bishop or a stake priest, president. You've been through the system, you know how it works.

Lynn Packer [03:00:29] But in this case, the quorum of 12 formed a special body to review this, and they did not believe him. And he was given a form of excommunication. It wasn't full excommunication, but it was a form that one of the things involved was not being able to take this.

Lynn Packer [03:00:55] And that's the way they. They handled that. And I think that as that was going on and after it happened, he felt like, hey, I was a superstar. I delivered all these converts. I added a lot of pizzazz to the church with athletes and actors and such. And I think he really felt betrayed.

Lynn Packer [03:01:16] And I don't know if I put it in the book, but I interviewed someone who was close to the book Paul done during this time period. And he thought that he had pretty much lost his, what you would call testimony or lost his faith in the Church.

John Dehlin [03:01:30] There's a decent chance he had had a second anointing. And that's always a tricky thing because the second anointing is supposed to mean you're set to the celestial kingdom. But if you commit adultery or lose your faith, what can the church do with you? Because you're supposed to be saved in the high heavens, right?

Lynn Packer [03:01:45] Yeah, yeah. Second annoying thing never came up. I never heard whether he did or not.

John Dehlin [03:01:53] Okay, so let's see. There are a couple other. Oh, okay. So one of the things that I. I'm really saddened about is Sunstone magazine played such an important role in the church in the 80s and 90s and it was obviously one of the only outlets that would publish your story.

Lynn Packer's Personal Faith Journey

John Dehlin [03:02:22] And, but, but I think it was even hard for you to get Sunstone to cover it. But now Sunstone doesn't even have, as I, as far as I'm aware, a magazine anymore. And there aren't, there aren't people, it doesn't seem like there's people doing journalism on the LDS Church these days.

John Dehlin [03:02:39] You know, you don't get the sense that Peggy Fletcher Stack is really doing this much. She, we know she's a believer in the church and now we know the Salt Lake Tribune is owned by one of the Huntsmans who's a believer. And you know, and the Salt Lake Tribune just canceled. It just announced it's no longer doing print, you know, newspapers. I think the Desert News might be ramping that down as well. Like, it just, it's so sad to me that Mormon journalism is dying and it's been dying and it's about to almost be extinguished. And I just, I'm outraged and I'm wondering if you have thoughts or feelings about that.

Lynn Packer [03:03:20] Well, I said that journalism generally was in freefall. It's not going to get better in my lifetime.

John Dehlin [03:03:29] Any journalism, any, all journalism, whether it's

Lynn Packer [03:03:32] political, business, church, all of it, you have pockets of good journalism remaining. But as that's few and far between, you have so many papers going under completely, there's going to be more go under and then it's going to affect the quality of journalism schools because you'd have to have a screw loose to go into journalism right now. So you get a lot of people going in for the wrong reason. They're not going to be that well trained. It's, it's, I, I never saw this coming and it really saddens me to see this.

John Dehlin [03:04:11] And, and I guess it makes me wonder, you know, who's going to help government and churches and the state, you know, be accountable, you know, heaven help

Lynn Packer [03:04:22] Utah, it's become a one party state. And the, the Republican grip on Utah will only get tighter.

John Dehlin [03:04:31] My dear friend, Lance Frazier. Love you, Lance. He's a journalist, he writes. Journalism isn't dying, it's just changing platforms. And I, I hope that's true, Lance. I mean, I'm trying to be a part of that, but I'm not doing investigative journalism like you did.

Lynn Packer [03:04:47] I, I disagree with that. It is changing platforms. I mean, he's right, but the way it's Changing platforms is not good because they're still. Even though there's the Internet and the possibility they just don't make the money on the Internet the way they did in print and broadcast, the way that it was. The dollars are not there to journalism. You have to be able to pay well and you have to be able to have the wherewithal to finance in depth and investigative reporting, which takes a lot longer, and you have to have a kitty build up so that if you get the inevitable libel suits, you can sustain those that can run up to a million dollars without taking your publication down.

Lynn Packer [03:05:37] And that's what they face now. A lot of the fear now of doing investigative reporting is not just because, well, they. A lot of them don't even have the reporters who can do it. But one libel suit could end, you know, put. Put you completely out of business.

John Dehlin [03:05:56] One listener asks if journalists can be bought off. And I would change that a little bit to pressured. And I'll just say one thing I know is that when Peggy Fletcher, when Peggy Fletcher Stack caught wind through the blogger knackle that Marlon Jensen had apologized

Guest [03:06:14] to

John Dehlin [03:06:17] the Oakland members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints for the treatment of LGBT people. This was many, many years ago. Marlon found out that Peggy was going to be writing an article about that, and Marlon asked Peggy not to publish the article, and she agreed. And Marlon Jensen told me this himself. So, you know, that's just one of probably a billion examples of where the church can pressure journalists not to run stories. But is that, is that your experience? I mean, obviously, yeah, right now you

Lynn Packer [03:06:46] have no idea what's going on, either in government or church or business. The coverage is just. It's just really poor. Like your viewers said it is. Switching platforms. He's right about that, but just not successfully. And that's one of the reasons that I'm pushing smartphone news gathering, because it cuts costs. So if you're going to report aggressively, either you've got to have more money coming in or reduce the cost of producing a video story. And that's what my, all of my articles have been about.

John Dehlin [03:07:26] What would you say? And this is probably, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I want to just address it explicitly. We talked about this with the Mark Hoffman thing, but what does the Paul H. Dunn story tell us about the Brethren? More LDS Church leaders claims to be inspired of God and to have the spirit of discernment and to have kind of a special communication with God and the Holy Ghost?

Lynn Packer [03:07:49] Well, if they have it Must be God's choice as to when he wants to inspire them. Because it's not something that you switch on and it stays on because of the times that they've been hoodwinked by Paul Dunn, by Mark Hoffman. And there's a longer list of people who have deceived leaders of the church specifically and members generally.

John Dehlin [03:08:18] But I would just add it's not just the church leaders that have been deceived, it's church leaders that have led with the deception, whether it's Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates, the Book of Abraham, polygamy, the Masonic Lodge, temple ceremony, all the way through to modern day. We've been covering it this year on Mormon stories, the secret Mormon meetings, BH Roberts, Fawn Brody, just all the way through. It's just this 100 and whatever 200 years of just of, of false information, of, of affinity fraud and then of coercion and punishment of anyone who tries to uncover the truth.

Lynn Packer [03:09:00] Well, that's the thread that runs through that 1989 story I did for Utah Holiday that was titled Mormon Fraud is tracks that through. And I, I, I am certain that a lot of this stuff applies to almost every religion. And people who know about it or concerned about it have to have the hope or belief that the good that comes out of the religion fully outweighs the bad. And that's a judgment everybody has to make for himself.

John Dehlin [03:09:36] A lot of people want to know about your personal beliefs and your faith and that can be in the LDS Church and, or just God and Jesus or spiritual. Is there anything you want to share about your own personal relationship with the church or your, your religious or spiritual beliefs or non beliefs?

Lynn Packer [03:09:54] Yeah, I just, I just call myself a don't knower is I don't know. And I don't think that at least until science is further developed that we can know if there really is a God, if there really is a life after death. I don't know.

Lynn Packer [03:10:14] One of the differences is, is I don't think anybody does. I think people say they know, but I really don't believe it. I think that's just, it's the nature of the beast. You know, we're born, we're here, we look around, we see what's going on.

Lynn Packer [03:10:31] We're very limited in what we understand and can comprehend. We want to figure out what's the meaning, why are we here, what are we supposed to do, where are we going to go? You know, the basic questions that you brought up as a missionary, but where the Mormon Church says we know we know where we were, we know why we're here, we know where we're going. I don't.

John Dehlin [03:10:52] Can you know if the Mormon Church is true, if the Book of Mormon is true, if the Book of Abraham is true, can you know that?

Lynn Packer [03:10:58] Basically, I answered that, no, I don't think anybody knows.

John Dehlin [03:11:02] No, but can they know that it's not true? In other words, is in your opinion, is there enough evidence to condemn the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith, as being works of fraudulent works versus, you know, works of God or true translations of ancient records or Scripture?

Lynn Packer [03:11:23] Well, you know, some facts do shed light on some of the claims in the, in the Book of Mormon and, and factually they don't stand up. My problem with the Book of Mormon, we could take a long time talking about this is the, the, the doctrine. I think that it's a totally racist book. I think it's an embarrassment to the church. It's an embarrassment to members that say that it's the work of God. It is just so racist.

Lynn Packer [03:11:56] It's, that's the most troubling part. And that doesn't have to. That more is a doctrinal problem that I have with it. Besides believing that there's not a lot of factual support there, I am sure that some people through the Book of Mormon look at scriptures that motivate them to be better people.

Lynn Packer [03:12:20] Same with the Bible. And that's a good thing if they can do that. But for a lot of people, the Book of Mormon gave him cover to be racist and that's a bad thing.

John Dehlin [03:12:33] And so why not for you, why not just stay in the church as a cultural member, as a social member, to get the social benefits, the moral benefits?

Lynn Packer [03:12:45] Well, I like the social benefits. I liked the community very much. Church basketball was a big draw. I had a lot of friends. I taught Sunday school and priesthood for years and years and years at different wards. And I was engaged in all of that. And when we had a phone call earlier, I said one of the big factors driving me into inactivity was just the boredom of it, just the repeating the same thing over and over again. And with my wife, the one thing that triggered her to not want to go to a sacrament meeting again and we don't regularly, we, we'll go to a family event for sure, or a funeral.

Lynn Packer [03:13:26] But it was a talk that was given over the pulpit and the person just trashed Barack Obama. And she left that sacrament meeting and in terms of regular attendance, never went back. Sense, she was deeply offended by that. As was I. But she. She more than I was.

John Dehlin [03:13:49] Did. Did Uncle Boy K. Packer ever, you know, did you have any final words with him? Did he ever express disappointment in you or being proud of you? Do you have any final sort of moments with him?

Family Ties and Navigating Church Relationships

Lynn Packer [03:14:02] My feeling was the, based on a couple of meetings, that he. He was proud that I had become a fairly accomplished reporter. And I think he enjoyed our talks even though we disagreed on certain points. But that's just my impression.

John Dehlin [03:14:25] Overall, are you proud to have been his nephew or embarrassed or both?

Lynn Packer [03:14:29] Well, I. I'm proud. I think he was an extraordinarily gifted person, and it was known early in his life that this was somebody unusual who had a lot of talent, A lot of talent. And I'm very disappointed, extremely, on some of his stands, especially on the gay issue. But other than that, I admired him for what he had accomplished, but not for what, in that case, he had preached. And I disagree with the direction that he took the seminaries and in what way? Well, in the way that it's. We had this discussion.

Paul H. Dunn [03:15:11] I.

Lynn Packer [03:15:12] That's what my video is about, where instead of it being more academic and more based on fact, it's more based on testimony and belief, emotion, how you feel about something rather than what you think about it.

John Dehlin [03:15:26] Right. Last. Last question that I could think of, and you've been so generous with your time. You had mentioned to me that in an interview I did with Greg Prince, and by the way, I. I remember talking to Greg Prince when he was doing.

John Dehlin [03:15:43] After he had just published the David O. McKay book and he was doing investigation for the Leonard Arrington book. At some point along that process, before or after the David Omankay book, he interviewed Paul H. Dunn and wanted to write a Paul H. Dunn book.

John Dehlin [03:15:59] But my sense was that at first he didn't do it because the people involved asked him to wait until Paul H. Dunn was dead. But then at some point, something happened, and even though he had all the good materials and all the interviews to do a Paul H. Dunn book, he decided not to do it, and he did a couple other books.

John Dehlin [03:16:21] I think you had mentioned that he was critical of you in your, you know, in your work on Paul H. Dunn, and that it may be at some point he even was fooled a little bit. But. Is there anything you want to say? Not, not, you know, Greg Prince is a friend of mine.

Lynn Packer [03:16:37] We.

John Dehlin [03:16:37] We all love him. Is there anything you want to say about Greg Prince, your book, Paul H. Dunn, or any of that?

Guest [03:16:43] Yeah,

Lynn Packer [03:16:46] I was aware that early on he was critical of what I had reported. I think he initially believed Paul Dunn, as I was doing research done, wanted to do an official. Have an official biography done. He had a lot of material that he had collected. Photographs, artifacts, memorabilia, and he wanted that done. And he had made an arrangement with Greg Prince for him to do that. They met on several occasions. I believe they. I think Dunn went back to his house and where is it? New York or somewhere?

John Dehlin [03:17:22] I was in Maryland.

Guest [03:17:23] Maryland.

Lynn Packer [03:17:26] And stayed with them. I think they became friends. I think that's why he was initially defensive or protective of Paul Dunn. But over time, we made contact. We had multiple times. We, I think, spoke on the phone or exchanged emails. He would not give me the draft of the book that he had been working on, but I got it from another source, so I had that. He would not give me. He had done a lot of work and had done a lot of interviews. He would not give me all of the interviews, but when I made a case that, hey, I need this one, I need that one, he would give me the interviews in. When all is said and done, I think that what he gave me made a substantial and important contribution to the book.

John Dehlin [03:18:19] Okay, well, shout out to Greg Prince, we love you. If he even watches this or hears it.

Lynn Packer [03:18:28] Job with his David R. McKay biography.

John Dehlin [03:18:34] Would you ever write a biography on. On your uncle?

Lynn Packer [03:18:37] Probably not, but I might at some point write an article or do something. I might dig out all my notes that I haven't gone over for years. Some of. Some of my conversations with Boyd, some selected excerpts are in the book in one of the sort of backstory or footnotes on page 300 and something or other. Some of them are. But there's a lot of them that I still have not shared with anybody.

John Dehlin [03:19:07] You got more stuff?

Lynn Packer [03:19:08] He's going to be seen more as a. As the caring individual that I think he was. I just. That care was just taken in a. In a direction that I don't think it should have gone. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:28] Someone very close to me worked directly with Boyd K. Packer and says he's actually a really lovely guy, which is so. Which is so weird because he's so hated. He was so despised by progressive and liberal Mormons because of his stance. Stances on LGBT people.

Guest [03:19:47] Right.

John Dehlin [03:19:47] Know. And many, many attribute, you know, thousands of suicides and premature deaths to his. His emphasis on LGBTQ policies that were so harmful. So it's got to be hard to love this man and see that he's a kind, good, loving man and to know that he's so hated. And that, that, that, that by, by many accounts, he did so much harm.

Lynn Packer [03:20:13] Yeah. And like I said, I had the opportunity during a telephone conversation to just say flat out, boyd, on the gay issue, you are dead wrong. And, and, and that was one of the, that, in fact, that was the last in depth conversation I had with him when I talked to him after that, at family get togethers, we didn't engage in any chit chat about any of these matters because you, because you

John Dehlin [03:20:42] burned a bridge a little bit. Went too far maybe?

Lynn Packer [03:20:44] No, it just wasn't the opportunity there.

John Dehlin [03:20:46] Okay.

Lynn Packer [03:20:47] The opportunity. And did he tell you why he

John Dehlin [03:20:50] cared so much about that issue?

Lynn Packer [03:20:53] Well, he just had the belief. I mean, it was just a strong belief that is shared by a lot of Mormons that it's just unnatural and it might even, it's by choice. And maybe even he, he believed in the, the devil. He believed in this sinister force. I don't. And, and so he believed that in some cases, at best it's a choice and at worst it's promptings of the, the devil, which of course, I just completely reject.

Guest [03:21:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:25] Well, the last thing I just want to say is that for those who've been following, there was a general authority that was excommunicated recently, James J. Hamula. And you know, there's kind of the whisperings about why he was excommunicated. But the truth is, when something like this happens, or with George P. Lee or others, you really don't know why. You really don't know the full story about why these things happen. Because if the church wants to cover something up, they can. And so for me, I just want to leave that as a thought. For anyone who wants to do more history, who wants to do investigative journalism.

Guest [03:22:03] There.

John Dehlin [03:22:03] There are things that we never hear that happen, and then there are things that we do hear that happen, but we probably don't get the full or the real story about why they happened. And, and I think to end, I just want to say on behalf of all my listeners, on behalf of Mormons everywhere, Lynn Packer, your. Yours, your, your professionalism, your journalism, your integrity, not just with the Paul Dunn story, but with all these stories, has meant so much to so many of us. You deserve to have sold your book by the tens or hundreds of thousands. You deserve to be a household name as somebody who has done so much good for so many of us.

Closing Tribute and Final Thoughts

John Dehlin [03:22:48] And I'm grateful that we can just take this moment to honor you, to have you tell your story and to personally thank you on Behalf of tens of thousands of Mormon Stories listeners for your contributions to our well being. Thank you.

Lynn Packer [03:23:04] Well, thank you and it's been my pleasure.

John Dehlin [03:23:08] Are you worn out? Are you ready to go?

Lynn Packer [03:23:10] Yes, and I'm going to disappear into the dark, dark out.

John Dehlin [03:23:17] All right, Lynn, well, everybody's thanking you. Thank you so much. And by the way, we're having you back if you're willing to come back. We're going to have Lynn Packer back for at least one more story, which is we basically want to apply all these concepts of power and greed and politics and money and corruption to Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad. And many people are going to be like, what, he's protecting children from abuse? Well, you have a different perspective and that's our fight. That's going to be potentially our, our final interview with you. Is that right, Lynn?

Lynn Packer [03:23:52] Yeah, I look forward to that.

John Dehlin [03:23:53] Or at least our next one. Maybe not our final one.

Paul H. Dunn [03:23:56] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [03:23:57] All right.

John Dehlin [03:23:57] Don't stop the work, Lynn Packer.

Lynn Packer [03:24:00] All right, see you.

John Dehlin [03:24:01] We need, we need you see it. All right, fade away. Thanks, Lynn. And this is John Dehlin thanking you all for joining us for a full day of Mormon Stories podcast interviews. It's has been so great to have. Lynn Packer. Thanks to everyone who's joined us. We had five to 600 people joining us for this entire interview. It's been amazing. Thanks to everyone who commented on Facebook and on YouTube. Thanks to everyone who donates to the Open Stories to make it possible. And I'll just make my plea again. If you value this type of programming, if you want to see it continue, we less than one out of a thousand listeners actually donates to the Open Stories foundation or Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [03:24:39] So please, please, please, if you want to see stuff like this, continue, if you want to have other journalism, if Lance Frazier's right, if Mormon Stories podcast is a form of modern journalism, as the Salt Lake Tribune takes a dive, as the Deseret News continues to be bankrupt in terms of its integrity with reporting, if you want to see there be some breath of life of true, factual, critical journalism within Mormonism, support Mormon Stories. That's one thing you can do. Go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button at the top. Become a monthly donor that will make the difference that will keep us alive. Please tell your friends and family, Please share.

John Dehlin [03:25:21] Please share this podcast everyone where you can like us on Facebook Give us a positive review on Facebook Morm Stories podcast page. Give us a positive review on itunes, subscribe to us on YouTube and on Facebook. Spread the word. All that stuff helps give us your feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com comment@mormonstories.org that's always useful or on YouTube or Facebook. And support other, you know, podcasts like Radio Free Mormon. Radio Free Mormon does amazing work.

John Dehlin [03:25:52] They deserve your support as well. Marriage on a Tightrope is an amazing podcast. There are others as well. You know, we just need your support. And if you want to see there be any chance of truth and openness and candor within Mormonism, please support us. Thanks so much to everyone. Love you guys. Means the world your support. Please stay in touch. Let us know if you have other good stories that you want us to share and we'll see you guys all again very soon on Mormon Stories Podcast.

John Dehlin [03:26:24] Take care everybody. Thanks so much. Oh and please buy, please buy the book. The book is Lying for the Lord, the Paul H. Done Stories by Lynn Kenneth Packer. He deserves your support. Everyone should own a copy of this book. It's a powerful book. So please, please support it. Thanks everyone. You guys take care and we'll see you all guys again soon. On another.

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