Welcome and Introduction to Part Four

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is November 11, 2020, and I'm super excited to have you joining us for our continuing series interviewing legendary Mormon journalist Lynn Packer, nephew of Boyd K. Packer. If you were able to join us for our previous episodes, Lynn Packer, as the nephew of Boyd K. Packer, was able to share with us his insight into the rise of Boyd K. Packer into a position of power. And that's of course, LDS or Mormon Church Apostle Boyd K. Packer into a position of power before he ascends into the Quorum of the twelve Apostles. That was the first episode we did with journalist Lynn Packer. The second was Lyn's own story about his early years in the church, his efforts to become a journalist, and him actually becoming a journalist for KSL in Salt Lake City and in Utah. And we talked a little bit his interactions with with Boyd K. Packer at the time. And we finished that second part talking briefly about Lynn's experience as a journalist in in Vietnam. And we've had several people write in about how touched and moved they were by Lynn's stories as a Mormon journalist in Vietnam. We talked a bit about Lynn's testimony in the early 60s, his mission experience. It was a great episode. I strongly recommend you go back and watch or listen to those too. Last night I released a part three with Lynn Packer, which was that Lynn has shared on YouTube. I titled the episode J. Reuben Clark, Boyd K. Packer and the Charted Course of the Church in Education. For me, this was a really informative and interesting piece that Lyn produced as a background to his Paul H. Dunn book because it talks about how the LDS Church in the mid-50s, specifically 1954, under the influence of J. Reuben Clark, Harold B. Lee and Boyd K. Packer, sort of turned the emphasis of the church away from scholarship, away from science, away from critical thinking, towards this premise that emotion and feelings are what matters most and that the church education system needs to stop emphasizing facts and evidence and scholarship and critical thinking and instead needs to turn its focus towards building and growing testimonies based on emotion. It's really important and I hope you'll all listen to it because it's a really important foundation for what we're going to cover today. What we're going to cover today are two things. We're going to be covering an episode. We'll call this the fourth segment with Lynn Packer, and I'm calling this Covering the Dark side of Mormonism as a Utah reporter. So Lyn spent several years in Utah covering a lot of really dark stories, including Ted Bundy, the Lafferty brothers, and Mark Hoffman and others. These are really serious and kind of sad stories. They bleed into the 80s, of course. And we're just to talk about what it was like for Lynn to be a journalist talking about these really difficult things and covering these really difficult things, not just as a Mormon, but also as Boyd K. Packer's nephew and as a Utahn. So that's going to be part four of our series with Lynn Packer. And then after that, this morning, we're going to take a break, short break. We're going to have lunch and then we're going to come back and talk about, for some, the most significant story that Lynn Packer ever investigated and covered, which is that Lynn Packer did the investigative work to discover that beloved Mormon general authority, Paul, not only built his reputation and fame within the church on telling false stories about his career as a professional baseball player and his service In World War II as a soldier, but also considerable affinity fraud, real fraud that Pauly Stone was involved with, that Lyn helped investigate and uncover. He did investigate and uncover. And that story is epic in and of itself. But it's also super important because it covers how the Mormon Church has used manipulation and emotion to persuade its membership and how it's used power and lawyers and church leaders to suppress and hide and cover up stories. It's got it all. So that's what you're in tune for today. It's going to be a long but gripping day. I'm on the edge of my seats. I really appreciate everyone who's joining us live on YouTube and on Facebook. We really do welcome your comments and questions, both on YouTube and on Facebook, because that always makes it more exciting and interesting. We can incorporate. And already we've got a comment from my dear beloved friend, Sam Young, who writes until this series, I knew nothing about Lynn Packer. What really stands out about his character is his integrity, standing up for what he believes, not sitting in silence. Amen. Sam Young, that's why we love you for what you've done, Sam Young. That's why we love your mom, Birdie. And that's why I wanted to bring Lynn Packer on today. So without any further ado, Lynn Packer, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. It's so great to have you.

Lynn Packer [00:05:00] Good morning. Good to be here.

John Dehlin [00:05:02] All right, so any, any quick comments about the reception of your three segments before we jump into the fourth segment? Anything you want to share about that?

Lynn Packer [00:05:12] No, I, I think all of that I think was good background. I think that beginning today we really get into the sort of red meat of my reporting on Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:05:26] All right, well, let's do it. We have, we have ready and prepared a PowerPoint presentation. So for those who are just listening on YouTube or, sorry, who are just listening on their iPhones or their Android devices, who don't have the visuals, we're going to do our best, describe the images. But if you do want to switch over to YouTube or Facebook, you'll be able to get images that we think are going to be helpful. Again, this segment, segment four with Lynn is called Covering the Dark side of Mormonism as a Utah Reporter. Lynn Packer, Part 4. So let's dig in. Where do you want to begin, Lynn?

Reporting on the Ervil LeBaron Murders

Lynn Packer [00:05:56] Well, right here where we left off. I'd mentioned last time that I was a reporter for Channel 5 news for 15 years. Two of the years I worked as the chief investigative reporter in the documentary unit and that's where I did some of the more in depth reporting. And one example we could jump to the next slide is where I reported on the so called Ervil LeBaron murders. I won't go into detail about.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] Well, Lynn, listen, this is so important because one of the things the Mormon Church is so good at, and I say this, you know, not, not in a mean spirited way, but just in truth is there's so many really crucial seminal events in Mormon history. Whether it's the the 1912 New York Times article about, you know, the Book of Abraham not being true, the 1922 secret Mormon meetings with B.H. roberts, where the B.H. roberts put the church leaders on notice that the Book of Mormon was not historical. You know, to Fron Brody, to no man knows my history, to so many stories that we just don't know our history. And so this is old news for you, but for me and so many of our listeners, they've never heard of this stuff. So as we go to each of these stories, if you could just spend a couple minutes.

Lynn Packer [00:07:21] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:22] Describing the stories and the cases. We need to re educate our modern people about some of these stories because they really do speak to the influence of the Mormon Church for good or for ill. Because, you know, there is a dark underbelly of the Church's power and influence. Not just to be scandalous, but just so that we can see the full picture. The church has done a really good job of showing us how great it is, how awesome it is. All the great things that it does, what it doesn't do a great job of is, is helping us understand where it hurts people and where its doctrine or its theology have unpleasant consequences. So tell us about this story.

Lynn Packer [00:08:03] Sure. The photo that you see in the middle, and I'll describe it, shows me leading into a documentary that I did on the Ervil LeBaron murders. And you see a shot of Ervil over my shoulders. This was a report I did in 1978. Ervil LeBaron was part of a family. There were several Lebaran brothers, and all of them suffered from severe mental illnesses. They believed they were prophets, believed that they communicated with God. Blade. They had a mission to continue with polygamy. And there's lots of groups like that. But what was unusual about this one is that they were very violent. And Ervil engaged in murder, including murdering one of his brothers, who was a rival for leading his church. The Church of the Firstborn, of the Fullness of Times was the name of it. And right around 1978, there was. Were he was in prison, he had been imprisoned in Mexico, and he'd put contracts out on other people, not just his relatives, but others. And. And let me talk about a couple of other people. The shots that I put in there on the right side, you see where I'm walking out of court with Alex Joseph, who was a rival polygamous leader. Now, Alex was not violent, didn't have anybody killed. But because he was a rival to Ervil Lebaron, he was always armed. When I interviewed him, interviewed him at his house one time, and he had a loaded 9 millimeter handgun sitting on the refrigerator just in case. And he had reason to be in fear of his life. Of course, Ervil had put out the contract on Rulon Allred, who was a peaceful polygamous leader in Salt Lake City on the lower right, you see an interview I'm doing with Ross Lebaron. This is, I believe, older brother to Ervil, who also claimed the right to head up a polygamous church. Ervil, I guess, never saw him as a really strong rival. And he wasn't. He didn't have many followers. So there was no hit put out on Ross that I know of. And the way I first learned about Ross Lebaron, the brother, was 10 years earlier, in 1968, I just started working at KSL. I was assigned to the Capitol. And I was, you know, working might

John Dehlin [00:11:03] be,

Lynn Packer [00:11:05] and was talking with the Secretary of State, who at the time was the person who incorporated new businesses in Utah that's changed since. And I went in, he says, hey, I've got a really good story for you. And I said, what's that? He said, somebody just incorporated in Utah a flying saucer factory. I said, flying saucer? Yeah, it's just here, here's the incorporation papers. Here's a diagram of the flying sauce, and here's who incorporated it, Ross Lebaron. And here's his phone number. So I decided to do a story on it and I went out to his house. It was a house out in the valley, Salt Lake Valley somewhere, really, in a lower income area. And he said, oh yeah, I've incorporated because the flying saucers which going to be used to bring Jesus back to the earth. And he took me out in the backyard where he had some models of flying saucers and he would flip them with, you know, sort of like with an elastic and have them fly across the backyard. He took me inside and showed me what he said are the true revisions of LDS garments, where he had changed some of the signs on the garments that he. Used with, with his branch of, of this church. And then Years later, in 1968, he was one I interviewed when I did this piece on Ervil Lebaron on the left. You see me doing a stand up in front of a jail in Ensenada, Mexico. And at the time, Dan Jordan, one of Ervil Lebaron's lieutenants and hitmen, was incarcerated there. He didn't let us do a video interview, but I was able to talk to him and take notes. And he was there because he was suspected to have been involved in the murder of Ervil Lebaron's brother. So that's the, the, the background. And these Ervil Lebaron stories popped up regularly in the news in the 70s and then again in the early 80s.

John Dehlin [00:13:33] And how, tell us how. So, you know, I always want, you know, one of the things I love about the field of journalism is that the journalists really strive to be fair and balanced and honest. I know fair and balanced, that term has been corrupted a bit in modern times, but I really do, you know, when I listen to npr, when I read the New York Times, when I watch ABC News or CBS News or NBC News, I really still, in 2020, see journalists trying super hard to be fair, to interview people from all sides, to not to try to avoid interjecting their own personal opinions and emotionality into it. So striving to be fair. I have this question about kind of people like the Lebarons because I did read, I read the book under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. And he talks about the LeBaron brothers there. And one of the strong impressions I received reading that book was that they're really, you know, number one, there often isn't a big difference between Joseph Smith and a lot of these more severe fundamentalist characters, of course, stopping short of murder. But also that a lot of these offshoots, whether it's Warren Jeffs or the lebere brothers or others, in some ways the Mormon Church is responsible for them because number one, Joseph Smith started it all. Number two, they just do what Joseph Smith did. Number three, we still have determined polygamy as part of the Doctrine and covenants in section 132. And so this is kind of our mess. And so I'm curious. Number I'm curious about two things. Whenever you tried to cover things like the LeBarons or, or Warren Jeffs or others, what was the church's response publicly? What was their PR approach? And two, did you feel like that was responsible for, given the potential culpability of the church, again, without a desire to blame all bad things on the church? Does that question make sense?

Covering Polygamy and the LeBaron Sect

Lynn Packer [00:15:46] Sure. Yeah. Polygamy is a millstone around the church's neck that simply is not going to go away. And to, you know, they went through all the trauma over decades trying to become a state and then had to, at least here on earth, try to discontinue the practice. They continued it for a while in secret and then finally actually really gave it up. The, the one step that the church should have made, probably still should, is to repudiate it as a doctrine and just say Joseph Smith was wrong. And I don't think that's ever going to happen. And because of that, you're going to have these splinter groups continue to pop up. And I think for the same reason that Joseph Smith did it, it's just a religious justification to engage in extramarital sex. And. Well, and there's another question you ask is what, what about here I am working for the church's television station doing this in depth report on Ervil LeBaron. The reason that KSL formed the documentary unit that I was in was to try and make sure that it could preserve its license with the fcc. And that license required it to, to act in the public interest and not in the Church's interest. So there was always this semi wall between the news department and the church. And over the years that eroded with deregulation of the FCC and the onset of cable. Today there's no way KSL would air a story like that.

John Dehlin [00:17:35] What do you mean?

Lynn Packer [00:17:37] Well, because. Because there's not a fear anymore of losing your license when you have a succession of Republican presidents who believe that the owners of these licenses should be able to act in their own interest. And the Democratic presence we've had have really not tried to restore the old power of the fcc. And then it became less relevant having a license because you had then cable that was not licensed and overseen by the fcc. And now with the Internet, the thought is, hey, there's enough opinion out there. It doesn't hurt if somebody who owns a license still, like a kUTV or a KSL, acts in its own interest and they take advantage of that.

John Dehlin [00:18:27] Yeah. And it really is to the detriment of people who want to kind of understand what's going on in our state and in our church. Right?

Lynn Packer [00:18:35] It is, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:36] Yeah. Okay, so you covered the LeBarons. How. How did the church. Do you have anything sort of to share about how the church, you know, dealt with this story other than what you've said?

Lynn Packer [00:18:52] Well, you know, all. Most reporters in Salt Lake were. Knew the spokespersons for the church. And often you would get a response. I assume that that's what I did with this. And got the typical response. They would have said something like that, that we disavow. We have absolutely no connection with these groups. We disavow and totally disagree with what they do. It's just so embarrassing. I mean, it's.

John Dehlin [00:19:29] It reminds me when, when Gordon B. Hinckley went on Larry King Live and said, you know, polygamy is not doctrinal. You know, that's something that other people, fringe people do, but it's just not doctrinal. And yet Dallin H. Oaks and Russell M. Nelson are two highest ranking Mormon leaders today, are in plural marriages.

Lynn Packer [00:19:47] Well, sure. And. Well, and the thing is, is that it is doctrinal. They didn't discontinue or repudiate polygamy as a doctrine. They just said, we will quit practicing it and quit authorizing polygamous marriages. It's still there and it's still taught that in the next life there will be polygamous marriages.

John Dehlin [00:20:14] Right. All right. So, yeah, let's go to the next slide. It's entitled Dan, Ron and Alan Lafferty, Polygamy Associated Murders.

The Lafferty Murders and Personal Revelation

Lynn Packer [00:20:26] Right. This was in about 1981, and again, this was a huge story where Brenda White Lafferty was found dead in her home with her throat slit and her baby's throat Slit. And it turned out that they had been murdered by these two, Dan and Ron Lafferty, who were forming their own church based on polygamy. And both of them believed that they were being inspired and led by God. And this struck home to me because Brenda, and it was Brenda White at the time, was in the very first class I taught at byu. She was an excellent student. She was dating Allen at the time. I thought she was going to at least start a career before she started a family. And I lost track of what happened until I heard that she had been murdered. And I didn't cover the main crime story. I covered sidebar stories that provided more insight about how these. How these religious groups work. And I did several interviews over the course of the next several months about that because. And of course, you read the. The key book that, that goes into the detail about, about the Lafferties.

John Dehlin [00:22:06] Yeah. Under the Banner of Heaven.

Lynn Packer [00:22:08] Yeah. Yeah. My belief was, is that Alan. Alan sort of said, I hardly knew that they were going to do this or I didn't know anything about it. Is when I was working on the story, I interviewed Allen at length on the telephone and formed the opinion that he knew that they. They were going to kill his wife, but he was never charged.

John Dehlin [00:22:36] And are. Are two of them at point of the mountain right now. Is that right?

Lynn Packer [00:22:40] Well, I believe. I haven't followed it since, but I believe Ron died.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] Oh, right.

Lynn Packer [00:22:47] In his. While he was in custody. He was never going to get out.

John Dehlin [00:22:51] Yeah. I think he was in the same high security sort of unit as, as Mark Hoffman. Right.

Lynn Packer [00:22:58] It could have been. Like I said, I didn't, I, I didn't follow it after that.

John Dehlin [00:23:02] Okay. Is it, is it. Is it kind of scary to, to be covering kind of murders and things like that as a reporter? Is it exciting? Is it. Is it depressing? Is it exhilarating? What's that like?

Lynn Packer [00:23:16] Well, we'll get to the Mark Hoffman story in a minute and I can tell you more about how you feel covering that, because when that story broke, everybody thought that, that they could be a target because they didn't really know initially who was setting off the bombs.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [00:23:36] The bombs in place, we have a

John Dehlin [00:23:38] question from a listener. E. Cornell writes, is Lynn's KSL documentary available to view?

Lynn Packer [00:23:47] I don't know that I ever kept a copy of it. I may have, but what the. Your viewer may want to do is the Oxygen Network has produced a documentary about Ervil LeBaron. And I've seen the trailer. I don't know if it's aired yet or not. I haven't checked. But all they have to do is check the Oxygen Network and see if it's aired yet. And I was interviewed at length for that. And I provided part of the video that they use in it. When I, when I was teaching at byu, I had saved a lot of the film outtakes, that is film that you shoot and you don't use for many of the documentaries that I did. And I donated that to byu. And they stored the film away and have just recently started to digitize it so that it's available to the public and for journalism and the Oxygen Network. I was able to help coordinate there, getting some of that video that I hadn't seen in a long time. So if, if and when they air it, like I said, I haven't checked. I've been way too busy. You'll see some of the video that I used in the original documentary.

John Dehlin [00:25:13] Right. Okay, next slide. Ted Bundy. Tell us about who Ted Bundy was. Give us a. I mean, there. This is one story that's getting a lot of play. Netflix and Hulu and others for some reason have really been talking about Ted Bundy lately. So this is a story that some of our listeners will know about. But give us just the short version.

Investigating Ted Bundy and His Trial

Lynn Packer [00:25:37] Yeah. Over the last three years, I've been interviewed twice by ABC and CNN for specials they did on Ted Bundy. He's one of the most famous or infamous serial killers in the United States. But he was living in Utah, going to the U of U Law school when he was first arrested. And his first arrest was not for a murder but for a kidnapping. A girl named Carol Durant. She kidnapped at the mall. What's the name of the mall in South Salt Lake? She was kidnapped there. He was driving her away in his Volkswagen, and she was able to escape, jump out of the car and flee. And so they finally were able to figure out who it was, make an arrest. And so the first trial was for kidnapping, not for murder. And I covered that trial for ksl. And the shot that you see on the screen, if you could go back to that shows on the left where during a break, during the trial, I'm talking to Bundy and his attorney. And at the right, you see where his Volkswagen had been taken into storage. The interesting thing about that trial is that the FBI had begun processing the evidence that they got out of the Volkswagen and found traces, you know, like hair and such, and was able to determine while this kidnapping trial was going on that he had become the number One suspect for several unsolved murders. And of course, I was able to find that out through another KSL reporter, Jack Ford, who had excellent contacts with the police. And of course, we could not report that at that time because a trial was going on, and we didn't want to prejudice that trial because he could have been and then acquitted and been on the run again. And so I learned that information while the trial was going on and did not report it until later. And so I think I was the first one to get film of the car, which has since become almost as famous as Bundy because it was used in so many of the abductions and. And murders. The one interesting thing that took place during the trial is that while prosecutors were putting on their evidence, I was sitting in the courtroom, and during a break, I got a tap on my shoulder. Somebody tapped me on my shoulder, and I turned around. There were two men sitting there. And one of them said, why are you reporting all this negative stuff about Bundy? Because he didn't do it. And I said, well, the prosecution's putting on their case, and when the defense puts on his case, I will cover that side of the story. And then my curiosity got the best of me. I said, how do you know. How do you know that the Bundy is innocent? They said, because we're the ones who baptized him. He was baptized into the church. There's speculation of whether he was trying to have his sins baptized away or whether he was going to just use his connection with the church to get more victims.

John Dehlin [00:29:23] Yeah, there is a listener. His name's Josh. He writes us Mormon murderinos are obsessed with Ted Bundy and his ties to Mormonism and the lack of discernment. Do you have any idea what Josh means?

Lynn Packer [00:29:39] Well, sure.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] He says lack of discernment because if

Lynn Packer [00:29:42] you're missionaries and you're moved by the spirit to preach to this individual, to baptize them, you say, where's the discernment? He's right in the middle of committing these heinous crimes. And you're baptizing him into the church,

John Dehlin [00:30:01] right? Yeah. Or maybe the mission president or somebody somewhere would have the inspiration not to. Do you. Do you know if he had committed murders before he was baptized into the church? Yeah, he did. Yeah, several.

Lynn Packer [00:30:18] Yeah, I never bothered to add them up, but yeah, murdered at that point, just hadn't been caught.

John Dehlin [00:30:26] What was it like to talk to him? You know, did you actually get to talk to him? A little bit. And what was that like?

Lynn Packer [00:30:33] I. I talked to his attorney. If you look at the film, he's just amused by the conversation. He. He impressed me as somebody being cocky, as someone thinking, I'm going to get away with this. He was going to law school and was assisting in his own defense. He had his parents fly down and they were at the trial. I think it was a surprise to him that he was convicted because it was not. It was a good case, but it was not really strong. And remember, you've got to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. My belief is that the investigators who now knew that he was connected to murders tipped the judge. It was a bench trial. There was not a jury. It was the judge who decided. And my belief is, and it would have been unethical to do it, that the judge was tipped and said, you cannot let this guy go. And so he was convicted. He went to Utah State Prison and then he. The investigators. There were murders committed in Utah, but he was never charged with those. I think the police did a poor job investigating them. And so the first prosecutions of murder took place in Colorado, and that's where he escaped from jail. I covered that. We flew over after he escaped, of course, finally ends up in Florida where he commits more murders.

John Dehlin [00:32:10] There's a comment from a listener that's kind of interesting. It was said Bundy had charisma. And this is important because, you know, when we talked about missionaries and emotion and discernment, as we're going to get to Paul H. Done later, and Steve Young and the Osmonds, but, you know, it's pretty clear to me now that a cancer that's kind of vexed the Mormon people is this reliance on charisma and emotionality as, as a source of truth. And in some ways, you know, those people tapping you on your shoulder saying, why are you going after Ted Bundy? I felt that he's a good guy. You know, how. How many people in 2020, how many Mormons, how many Utahans, how many Americans, how many people in the world are still basing their decisions not on evidence, not on data, but on the charisma and the, the charisma of people and the emotions that they feel.

Lynn Packer [00:33:17] Sure, he, that was his reputation, is that he was, he was a good looking kid. He was said to be smooth, a smooth talker, and he just had various cons. I think sometimes he would put his arm in a sling or something like that so he could approach a young woman, say, can you help me do something, put something in my car. And then bam, they're abducted and then killed. And so There was testimony about that by Carol La Ranch because she was one who was abducted but lived to, to tell about it.

John Dehlin [00:34:04] Yeah. And my only point is that in some ways we're primed to, as humans, as Utahns, as Mormons, we're primed to give special deference to charismatic figureheads that make us feel good and I think that can leave us susceptible to manipulation and bad things.

Lynn Packer [00:34:25] Exactly. And I know we're going to talk about this in a segment that we're going to do later, but this is part of the stranger danger warning that when I was growing up, don't take candy from strangers. And usually you imagined pedophiles, rapists, murderers just being these really sinister looking people. It just doesn't. And I don't see where it would have crossed any of Bundy's victims minds that this was a dangerous guy, just looked like a good looking guy that needed some help and so they're flattered. And I think that was part of the key to his success in killing so many people.

John Dehlin [00:35:15] Yeah. One of our viewers says it better than I can. He wrote. F.W. willis wrote, it seems as a people we Mormons are on average more credulous, more susceptible to equate confidence and charisma with honesty and integrity. And this is true in the Bundy case, but it's also true in just affinity fraud and pyramid schemes and multi level marketing. By, by all standards I understand Utah to be by far and away the number one state per capita in the United States for people who fall prey to, to scams. True.

Lynn Packer [00:35:51] Commit them, you know, it's commit them,

John Dehlin [00:35:53] commit them and fall prey to them.

Lynn Packer [00:35:54] Yeah, it's still known as the fraud capital of the United States and there's plenty of evidence to support that idea. On more than one occasion I've talked to prosecutors and have pointed out that white collar criminals usually get a lot better deal and shake with law enforcement than blue collar. Blue collar, they don't have a lot of money, they may not really be clean shaven, may have scraggly hair and they get the book thrown at them harder and more often than someone who is closely shaven, wears a suit and a tie.

John Dehlin [00:36:38] Yeah. All right, this is so fascinating. Let's go to the next one. This is one that I'm, I'm fuzzy on the details. It's Emmanuel David. Emmanuel David. Tell us about that story.

The Emmanuel David Story and False Prophets

Lynn Packer [00:36:51] Yeah, this was another headline making story where. Yeah, this was 1978. Emmanuel David. The first story broke was when Emmanuel David himself, who was a self proclaimed prophet, he had been excommunicated from the Mormon Church, was a prophet, and he was found dead, having committed suicide in his car somewhere up by the University of Utah. I don't think I covered that story. But three days later, after he was found dead, his wife, Rachel, took their seven children on the 11th floor balcony of their hotel. It's changed name several times. I'm trying to remember what the name of it was back then. And threw them off and then jumped to her death as well. One of the children survived, and so I helped with the coverage. Anytime, John, a story like that breaks, it's all hands on deck. You'll have the crime reporter do the main crime story, and then you'll have other reporters do sidebars to fill in some of the blanks. And that was the role I played with that particular story. And because. Because there were so many bizarre deaths and killings associated with these people who believed they had revelation, believed that they were being led by God, it prompted me to write a memo to my Uncle Boyd. And you see that in the. In the. You see that? Well, that's the story. That's the story I did. On the upper left, part of the controversy was, is that this Emmanuel David was also a swindler, and he had swindled several members of the Tabernacle Choir. And that's an angle to the story that rankled a lot of church leaders. I mean, besides the fact that you have a cult leader who was a Mormon who believed in polygamy, committing suicide in his family, and his wife engaged in these bizarre murders. But there was also that Mormon Tabernacle Choir aspect of it. And so I think in this slide.

John Dehlin [00:39:26] What do you mean by that? Mormon Tabernacle Choir. What do you mean, Mormon Tabernacle Choir?

Lynn Packer [00:39:31] Well, he was a swindler.

John Dehlin [00:39:33] He.

Lynn Packer [00:39:33] He raised money by running these scams, and he. He ran scams. And so there were some members of the Tabernacle Choir that fell prey to this. To the scams.

John Dehlin [00:39:51] Got it. Okay. There's a. I think your video's frozen. At least it's frozen for me. I'm not sure if you can stop it and start it again or if there's something. But I'm gonna. While you're playing with that, I'm just gonna read a comment from a listener because I think it's. It illustrates a pretty important point. JD Writes, there's an issue with Mormonism and a lot of revelatory groups where one believes that the thoughts in their head are there usually because of the Holy Ghost. This is at odds with reason. And I think that really is an important point to make, because if people believe that, you know, thoughts that come into their head are from the Holy Ghost, that God can communicate with us through thoughts in our head, then if you have crazy thoughts or unhealthy thoughts, instead of saying, whoa, I need to see a therapist, if you've been primed to think that God communicates with people by sending thoughts to their head, then, then you, then, then they are potentially more willing to act on those dangerous and unhealthy thoughts thinking that they're truly from God. And so, you know, I'm not saying that all bad things that happen within a religious context are religion's fault or the church's fault, but what if people were primed to believe that if they have a thought in their head that says anything that violates the law or that could hurt anybody, they're to go to a mental health unit, not, not there to believe it as, as having a divine nature. Could that change, you know, some people's behavior that. That happens to harm people? You know, I think that's, it's fair to at least ask that question. All right, Lynn, we got you back.

Lynn Packer [00:41:50] Okay, I switched.

John Dehlin [00:41:52] Did you hear what I just said?

Lynn Packer [00:41:54] Yeah, I did. And I, I agree with that. And that has to do with the memo that I sent to my uncle. So if you go to the next slide, I think it's on there. I'll move ahead and see if I've got.

John Dehlin [00:42:07] Yes, yes, here it is.

Lynn Packer [00:42:09] Okay, so what I did is shortly after this incident takes place is that I sent Boyd a several page memo. And I kicked off the memo by saying, and I think I'll read it for people who can't see it on the screen. It said, some may believe that a few persons receiving false visions is the price which must be paid in order that all have the opportunity to communicate with the heavens. The quest for personal revelation, however, can hurt more than the erratic fringe. So I'm saying that basically that you have the erratic fringe that really is, is. Is that the problem is exacerbated when you're told to pray and get a revelation and you hear voices like you're talking about. And then I said, many seek personal witnesses and don't experience anything. Mormons without testimonies or second class Mormons. Then I go on giving several examples that I've run across as a reporter. And then if you go to the next slide really quickly, some of my

John Dehlin [00:43:24] listeners are saying that my voice is echoing. Is it echoing? For you, Lynn?

Lynn Packer [00:43:28] No.

John Dehlin [00:43:29] Okay, listeners, if. If you guys are hearing my voice echoing, I need to know that so I can. So that I can change it. So please quickly comment either on YouTube or on Facebook so that we can make sure. Lynn, while. While you're saying I. I. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's go ahead and go to the next. Next slide.

Lynn Packer [00:43:53] Okay. In the background there, you see several pages of notes I typed up, obviously, when I met with Boyd in his office. And I should point out that KSL at the time was on Social Hall Avenue, and it took all of, like, five minutes to walk over to 47 East South Temple. And so a few. Couple of weeks later, I get a call from a secretary. Elder Packer would like to talk to you about this. And so I went over to his office and we discussed it at length. It was a long conversation, a lot. He said a lot of interesting things that there's not time to get into detail about here. But I'll sort of stick to the main point is, bottom line is, he said it's impossible, even though there's this downside, there's this lunatic fringe that gets sparked by the church's belief and preaching of personal revelation. He said, we just can't quit emphasizing it. And it has to do with things we've discussed. And we'll discuss about the importance of getting a witness, of getting a feeling or hearing a voice or something. And. And. And then he. I said then in response that I saw two main problems. Those who see visions that are not genuine and members under pressure pretend to gain a witness or testimony. So I'm telling him these two. And then he said, there's a third. And he said, those who get information from a false source. And then he mentions Ervil LeBaron's name at that point, because, like I pointed out, he was in the news. And of course, the difference here between Boyd and me is that he believes that when an herbal LeBaron hears voices, it's the devil speaking. And I've long formed the opinion that when somebody like Herville LeBaron hears voices, it's because he's psychotic and the devil plays no role in it. And then going back to the slide, one thing I will share that I was impressed with, frankly, is then he told me this story about a family who brought their daughter to his house to get an evil spirit cast out. And he said others came along to see the sideshow. And so what he was saying is they were coming to see him heal this girl who somehow was being influenced by the devil. And he said he wouldn't give her a blessing. And what he did is he made arrangements for her to get medical help and to have her father released so he could focus on that problem. And I think that that usually is the correct response. It reminds me of a time on my mission that I had a member come to me. It was one of the times when I was branch president and she. And she was with her family. She said, I need a blessing because I'm going blind in this eye. And I was curious of you seeing the doctor. And she said, well, I saw a doctor for my other eye or no. She said, I haven't seen the doctor, but I had the same problem in the other eye. And I came to the elders and they gave me a blessing. And I said, what was the result? And she said, well, I lost vision in that eye. So she was coming back to get a blessing to save vision in her other eye. And I said, I will give you a blessing, but first I'm going to insist that you go to the doctor. And about an hour, two hours later, I got a phone call and said, you've got to get over here and give her her blessing because she's being put on a plane to go to a specialist and get emergency surgery. So what had happened is she had substituted prayer for medical treatment. And I think Boyd was basically aware of the same thing, that even though he believes some of these spirits or some of these voices are evil, he realizes some of them are generated within the mind of the person themselves and so insisted that she get medical help.

John Dehlin [00:48:20] Yeah, on the one hand, I'm impressed that an apostle in the 70s is referring someone to getting medical help. If I'm actually putting myself in the shoes of an apostle, of course they don't want to actually be put in the position of having to heal somebody in front of other people, because when it doesn't work, everyone's going to know that the apostle didn't have the power that he claims. But more broadly speaking, what's more impressive is if apostle were to go on general conference and say, yeah, we really don't have the power to heal people, and neither do you if you're hearing voices in your head or if you have the perception of someone being, you know, possessed, or even if you have cancer or some illness, Priesthood power isn't the way to get healed. It's to go to your local medical professional. That would be more impressive because, again, you know, I. I think apostles are disincentivized to actually perform Healing blessings. Because then everybody's got the stories of, of when it actually didn't work. Does that make sense?

Lynn Packer [00:49:33] Makes sense, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:34] Yeah. Okay, so really quickly. So did in the 70s, did, did, did Apostle Boyd K. Packer know that you weren't really an orthodox believer at this point?

Boyd K. Packer and Church Pressure on Journalists

Lynn Packer [00:49:50] Yeah. Yeah. Even in that memo, I labeled myself as a liberal Mormon. And he knew, and I think he knew what it meant. And it was a stronger term back then than it is today.

John Dehlin [00:50:07] And yet he was willing to interact with you and not just ignore your letters, but respond. What do you think made Boyd K. Packer willing to respond to a non believing family member's questions that called the church's truth claims maybe into question a little bit?

Lynn Packer [00:50:28] I think that there was a mutual respect to develop despite the fact that we were far apart on a lot of doctrinal issues. And he told me other things in that, in that meeting. It went on a long time. We discussed a lot of different things. And at one point, I won't tell you what it was about, but at one point I said, why don't you say this over the pulpit? This really makes sense. And he said, I, I can't. He said, we are, our words are so often misconstrued and misused that we have to play it safe. And I think that's unfortunate because I think some of what he could have, should have said makes more sense than some of the things that he did say, like about gays.

John Dehlin [00:51:21] And we're gonna, we're gonna cover that later. Right. Things he told you about that

Lynn Packer [00:51:28] maybe what happened is over the years, I had lots of conversations with him, and after the conversations, I would type up my notes and I saved them in a folder and it's about this thick. And I always thought someday I may do something, put them all together. But I've been sharing with you bits and pieces of things that he did not say publicly.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] Yeah. So a couple things that reveals. One is that, you know, if Boyd Hay Packer is telling you that some people get information from, from Satan or the adversary, it does show that he did believe, you know, in core Mormon doctrine as a very sincere believer, or he wouldn't believe in an adversary giving false messages. Right.

Lynn Packer [00:52:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:19] But it also shows that he observed this practice of there are things we say publicly and then there are things we say privately, but there are things we can't say to the membership.

Lynn Packer [00:52:31] Right, Right. Because you have too many members who will misconstrue it or go off the deep end in some way, and they Want to avoid that or not?

John Dehlin [00:52:42] All things that are true or useful, which he's famous for saying later. Yeah. Okay, should we, should we move on to Mark Hoffman?

Mark Hofmann, the Forgeries, and the Bombings

Lynn Packer [00:52:51] Yeah, this was, there's one slide. Yeah, this. Yeah, this next slide. This is a really well known photo that was used over and over again.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] Tell our listeners, Tell our listeners just the base story of Mark Hoffman.

Lynn Packer [00:53:07] Well, what happened is he was a Utah State up there in your neighborhood up at Utah State. And he started, he took a great interest in Mormon history and Mormon records and discovered that there was big business, a lot of money to be made if you could come up with Mormon documents. And so he started forging a lot of them and selling them on the. You know, there's collectors who go after this stuff like first edition Books of Mormon, any letters, anything with signatures of important Mormon historical figures. And he ended up selling or giving. It's a process that went on some of these to the church, some of which the church secreted away without saying that it had in the Church's vault. But in any event, this one that you see in the photo is one that. I can't remember which one it was. You see in the photo is one that he gave to the church. Everybody was excited about it because here's something that Joseph Smith produced years ago. It's a very important find. And somehow church PR decided we're going to have these key leaders looking at it. You see the who's who of Mormon leadership in 1980, including President Kimball and Nathan Tanner, Romney Hinckley and my uncle standing in the background. And I'm sure later when this story broke, my uncle wished he was standing behind that curtain that you see behind him rather than in front of it. Because here you're seen with not only someone who is a major swindler, but also later a murderer when he tried to cover up his crimes. And this was. You could go to the next slide really quickly.

John Dehlin [00:55:09] You're probably going to cover this, but I just want to make sure we're explicit about it. There's at least three or four problems that are really encapsulated in this picture. Number one is that the Church is trying to secretly purchase and hide historical documents that it believes will be harmful to its members. Right? Yeah, that's number one. Using tithing money. That's number two. Number three is they clearly lack the spirit of discernment because this guy ends up being a murderer and he's a fraud and they don't have any clue. And it's not just one of Them. It's all of them. Now, those are, those are at least three problems I have with this photo. Are there any others, you know, key, key core themes that I'm missing?

Lynn Packer [00:56:09] It's, it's why it's so embarrassing. And of course, Hoffman understood. Hoffman was, as near as I can tell, a liberal Mormon and had very quickly come to disbelief in the church and could. And figured out that if you fabricated these sensitive records that it would stir a lot of excitement, they would be worth a lot of money. And of course, in this case, the church bought and publicized, or they used donors to buy and donate and publicize while some of them were put away in the vault because they were considered too sensitive. And basically they were caught trying to cover them up. And, and, and you need to think that they're genuine if you do that. If they're not genuine, you just expose the guy for what he was. And that's a fraud.

John Dehlin [00:57:04] Yeah, yeah. And this is something we're going to cover with the Paul H. Dunn story as well. Just how the Church uses lawyers and PR to coerce and hide information from its membership. And it's a really seedy, unfortunate thing. Okay, so the next slide.

Lynn Packer [00:57:28] Well, the next slide is. This is part of my coverage of the story. At the time this story broke, I was working three days a week at byu, teaching in three days a week at ksl. And because I had heard about Hoffman documents and knew some of the people involved did not have not done a story, but just knew about it Right after the first bombs went off, I was down at BYU and was called to get to Salt Lake and get to work on this story. And so I became. There were probably four reporters who worked the most on it. I think Jack Ford and I did most of the work. He had really good police contacts, but I think I may have been the lead investigative reporter on it, if not close to it. At one point, as we got into the story, I had a vacation with my family for a week planned in Hawaii. And I was told, you can't go. This story is too hot, it's too competitive. And I had some sources inside the prosecutor's office that we relied on to stay ahead of the competition. And so KSL, it was really to KSL's credit that there was little attempt to censor anything early on. Now that happened later. But early on we were pretty much free to report whatever facts we came across. And on the right, you see me at Hoffman's attorney's office, Brad Rich. And he permitted me to come in we said, we want some shots of you consulting with Mark. And so I did an interview with him. I was not permitted to ask Mark any questions. And at this point, it was unclear who the prime. Who. Who set the bombs off. He was the. The prime suspect at the time, but the police had not made that known at the time. And Brad Rich even thought that he was innocent and there were other suspects who possibly could have done it. Of course, later he is charged and the evidence is overwhelming as they build the case that he indeed not only had forged the documents, that there were forgeries, that. But that he had committed the murders. The shot you see on the left is during a break, during his preliminary hearing. I'm just chatting with him while he's waiting for his dad to pick him up in the car and of course, getting a few more shots that he used to.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] Okay. And so you. You've spoken with Mark Hoffman.

Lynn Packer [01:00:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] And. And if I'm right, those crutches are when. When he injured himself by Bob. By the bomb exploding. So this is after the murders, but before anyone had any idea. They all thought that somebody else tried to kill Mark Hoffman, when in reality his own bomb went off.

Lynn Packer [01:00:42] No. See him sitting in the office where I interviewed his attorney, but did not talk to him. He had crutches then, maybe even a wheelchair at that point, because this is early on. The. The shot on the left is late in the game. He's already been criminally charged.

John Dehlin [01:01:02] Okay.

Lynn Packer [01:01:02] He still is recovering from the injuries that he had. It was also near where he's standing that I interviewed an individual who gave him a priesthood blessing, I think. I think on the spot, right when he was taken out of the car. You know, his car blew up, was over by Deseret Gym. His car blew up and. And he. And he was injured, but he got a blessing right after. And the person who gave him the blessing was called to call to testify. Now, the. I don't know why my phone's ringing. The. The. The preliminary hearing. After the preliminary hearing, he pleads guilty. So there never was a trial. There was a lot of speculation whether Gordon Hinckley, who had a lot of contact with Hoffman, was going to be called or not. And to this day, there's this belief that Hoffman cut a deal and that the church authorities were. Participated in it, that he would avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty and avoiding a trial and avoiding any further embarrassment that the church could get by having his defense attorney call leaders of the church to the standard. And so it looks like, of course, he Attempted once a few years ago.

John Dehlin [01:02:42] Attempted suicide. Is that what he said?

Lynn Packer [01:02:44] Yeah, at Utah State Prison. There was he, I think I've remembered it correctly that there was one suicide attempt, but it looks like he's going to go to the grave with the full and detailed story about this scam going with him. I made a couple of attempts to talk to his attorney a few years after he went to prison to see if he would grant an interview and it was absolutely not. It's not going to happen. And so far it hasn't happened. And it would be a huge scoop if any reporter could accomplish doing that.

John Dehlin [01:03:22] What was it like? I'll just say this, that my dear friend Tyler Meesum, filmmaker Tyler Meesum, along with Jared Hess from Napoleon Dynamite, are in the final stages of releasing a Netflix documentary series. I think it's a three part documentary series on Mark Hoffman. So that's going to be coming out, let's just say in the spring. And we've talked about it a bit, but it's going to be really good. I'm super excited about it. For everyone who don't know, burn this into your brain. Hoffman is spelled H O F M A N N. Everybody spells it H O F F M A N and it's H O F M A N N. What was it like to talk to Mark Hoffman?

Lynn Packer [01:04:02] Lynn Packer, we just chatted. I would have. There's some reporters, if they get that close to a suspect, they will like say, okay, did you really do it? Are you guilty or why did you do this or that? I'm not one of those jump behind the bush with a rolling camera type of reporters. So I was just, we were chatting about something but it was not the case.

John Dehlin [01:04:32] And in this photo where you're with him after he's charged, do you believe that he's a murderer in this photo?

Lynn Packer [01:04:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:40] And what's that like to be standing next to a guy you know is a murderer?

Lynn Packer [01:04:45] Well, it was like when I was standing next to Bundy at a time where I knew what the public didn't and that's that the FBI had fairly credible evidence that he had committed multiple murders using his Volkswagen. Is that. It was like when I interviewed Dan Jordan in prison. You're talking to somebody that you know that there's again, really good evidence that he committed the murders and you're talking to him and, and it's reporters and journalists often are in that situation.

John Dehlin [01:05:22] And again, I on the one hand don't want to blame all bad things on the church on the other hand, I'm just going to say that when you learn more about Mark Hoffman, you realize that he probably lost his testimony on his mission, if not before, that he believed that the church was hiding and misleading people. And even though he sincerely loved making forgeries, and he was probably a sociopath on some level. And when I say sociopath, I mean the personality disorder called. Oh, I'm spacing on my psychology expert, antisocial personality disorder, which is, you know, the, the, the general understanding of it is that you don't have a conscience, that you don't feel for other people. While he may have had that, he was also fighting against a church that he believed and that in fact, was deceiving and manipulating people. And it had to have given him some pleasure to be making a lot of money by selling the church fake documents that he knew the church was scooping up to continue deceiving the membership. There's some sort of sinister, you know, arch, arch evil dude who's kind of like playing the church for its own deceptions. And I just want to say that the Mormon Church isn't guiltless in, in murders or catastrophes like this because they're complicit by their behaviors of hiding, deceiving, manipulating, purchasing, using their money and power to continue a century and a half of deception. Is that fair or not fair?

Lynn Packer [01:07:02] No, I think you're right. And I, I would call him a sinister genius. He was not. He, he not only understood all the problems with church history and the church's desire to cover it up, but he had these remarkable skills to create documents that looked real and deceived a lot of, A lot of experts. Yeah, but, but one of the interviews I did during this time period was with Gerald Tanner, and I think you've interviewed Sandra Tanner before. And they never believed that these documents were genuine because they, they weren't document experts. They didn't determine that they were forgeries. They determined that they were not genuine based on their content that it just didn't. They had studied Mormon history better than many church historians, and it didn't square with what they knew. And so they were skeptics from the beginning. And I, I knew that, and they were. Gerald was one of the first ones I interviewed as the story was breaking.

Human Cost of Church Deception and the Hofmann Case

John Dehlin [01:08:17] Yeah, yeah. As we're talking about our frustrations with the Mormon Church, we can't forget kind of the human cost of this sorts of stuff. One of our listeners, John Whitman, writes, Steve was a prince of a person. He's talking about Steve Christensen. See he wrote earlier, Steve Christensen was a close friend and home teaching companion to me. And then he writes later, Steve was a principal person in years ahead of us as Boy Scouts all the way back to junior high and Bountiful. It wasn't just Steve Christensen that was murdered. It was Kathy Sheets as well. And you know, if ever there was a time for the brethren to make good on their claim of having the spirit of discernment, of being, of having a connection with God, it's in a case like this where people end up getting murdered. Mother, beloved mothers and husbands end up getting murdered. And instead of using their discernment to save people's lives, the church is using their lawyers and their money to buy up secret documents to hide them from the membership. And I'll never forget Brent Metcalfe. The day that I heard him speak at Sunstone where he talked about the day his belief in the church and in God died was the day that Steve and Kathy were murdered. Because if ever there was a time for a loving God to intervene on behalf of his children, it was in the Mark Hoffman case.

Lynn Packer [01:09:43] Right? And I knew who Brent was. I must have met him at some point. And so that afternoon that I came up from BYU to start reporting, he was the one of the first ones I interviewed. He was living at an apartment on 4th South, I think I recall, in Bountiful. And I did the interview in front of his apartment. And he was scared and should have been, because nobody knew. Remember, at this point, bombs are going off, you don't know who's setting him off, and you don't know who the next target is.

John Dehlin [01:10:21] Yeah, yeah, it's super scary and it's super sad. And. And again, people like the Tanners the church labels as evil, bad, apostates, when in reality, if anyone had the spirit of discernment, it was Geraldine Sandra Tanner. And they were just trying to get the truth out.

Lynn Packer [01:10:39] Well, you could tell they weren't just doing anything they could to discredit the church if it didn't have some basis in fact, they were honest enough to not use it. Because a lot of people would think, okay, these documents have come out. They're really embarrassing. They'll jump on that bandwagon whether they believe them or not. But no, they. Gerald insisted, these cannot be. These, these cannot be real.

John Dehlin [01:11:06] Couple quick comments from our listeners. Barbie Ken writes, the documents obtained by the church from Hoffman called the succession of the priesthood authority into question. Did they not, Barbie? Usually a lot of Hoffman's documents were embarrassing to the church and that was part of his scam. If he could create documents that were plausible, believable and that would pose a problem to the church, he would produce them. And the Salamander letter is the best example where he's got one of the Witnesses or Joseph basically, you know, having Moroni turn into a white salamander or emerge from a white salamander. Something really weird, but just believable enough to embarrass the church and to be problematic for the church really quickly. DWTT XJW says third generation ex Jehovah's Witness here. Boy, were we all fooled by our respective religions. So glad you could join us. Shout out to all our never Mormon listeners. Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals. It's so glad to have you. I'm so grateful that you're. That you guys tune in. Max writes great information about Mormonism behind the scenes activity. Thanks to you both. And I just want to give a shout out to David Welsh. David is clearly from the UK, I believe, and he used the YouTube feature to donate 10 bucks to Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. And he wrote, keep up the good work, John, and the truth will make you free. YouTube does have a feature where you can click on a little dollar sign under the chat next to the chat window and donate. You know, donations are how we keep all this going. So a huge thanks to David. Shout out to David for his donation. All right, Lynn, where do we go from here? This is so good.

Lynn Packer [01:13:00] Probably jump to next slide about my next career. I'm gonna.

John Dehlin [01:13:05] Okay, so.

Lynn Packer [01:13:06] Yeah, what's the bit? So I'm gonna cast a little.

John Dehlin [01:13:08] Yeah, natural light is good. What's what. So you were. How long. How much of this time were you actually at BYU as a journalism professor?

Lynn Packer [01:13:17] I was there for nine years.

John Dehlin [01:13:21] From what year to what year? Basically Approximately.

Lynn Packer [01:13:23] It was 81 to 90.

John Dehlin [01:13:26] Okay, so a lot of this stuff. Oh, by the way, you did not mention Gary Gilmore and you didn't mention the priesthood ban and the priesthood lifting. I imagine you covered both of those. Or not.

Lynn Packer [01:13:38] I did the priesthood ban. We could get into that at some point, but it would probably take about a half hour. And I think we'll come as we move ahead. There will be different aspects of it. I think we'll get into it a little bit here in terms of Gary Gilmore. I only did a little Gilmore coverage.

John Dehlin [01:14:00] Tell our listeners who he was.

Lynn Packer [01:14:03] Gary Gilmore had been with. He'd been charged with murder, but he stood out because he was going to become the first person to be executed to get capital punishment in many years. And so it was Utah that reopened that door. There had been sort of a quasi ban on doing it for several years. And so he was the. The first. And so reporters from around the nation, I think even around the world,

John Dehlin [01:14:34] came

Lynn Packer [01:14:35] to Utah to see the execution. He was executed. He chose to be executed by firing squad. I believe there was a choice back then. And I was in Minnesota covering a story the day that he was. That the execution was carried out. But I became involved in a story a few years later that involved Gary Gilmore and whether the execution had been secretly filmed. And maybe we could get into that later, or maybe not.

John Dehlin [01:15:10] And, well, for me, the Mormon tie there is that Utah, as I understand it, was one of, if not the only state in the United States that that continued to do executions by firing squad. And it was because it was rooted in Brigham Young's teachings about blood atonement. And that the only way you could receive forgiveness for the really serious sins was to literally have your blood spilled.

Lynn Packer [01:15:35] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] And so here in the 70s, Gary Gilmore literally dies by firing squad because of teachings of Brigham Young back from the 1850s.

Lynn Packer [01:15:48] Sure. And he had that choice. So that any Mormon woman convicted of a capital crime would have that choice and would have the thought that maybe I can get forgiveness by having my own blood spilled. And of course, Ervil Lebaron, that that was what he was doing, only it wasn't by his victim's choice. He chose forum to spill.

John Dehlin [01:16:14] He was the execution. He was the executioner. Yeah. On behalf of God.

Lynn Packer [01:16:18] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:16:20] Really quickly, John Wetman wants to share one more thing. He writes, I believe Steve Christensen figured out the fraud of the Salamander letter and was going to expose Hoffman, which panicked Hoffman into the bombings. The other bomb was actually intended for Gary Sheets, Steve's business partner.

Lynn Packer [01:16:37] I agree with that.

John Dehlin [01:16:38] So John believes, and it sounds like you do too, Lynn, that. That. That. That Hoffman killed these people because people were on to his fraud.

Lynn Packer [01:16:48] Yeah, that's what it looks like. We would have known a lot more had the case gone to trial.

John Dehlin [01:16:54] Yeah. Okay, so you. So you were a journalist at BYU for nine years, but this would have been after a lot of these cases that we just discussed, correct?

Teaching at BYU and Getting Pushed Out

Lynn Packer [01:17:07] Was. Yeah, it was. It was after. And then, of course, during. I was teaching there when I did the. The Hoffman cover. The Hoffman murder story is the shot on the right shows. This is one of several classrooms I used at byu. They were assigned all across campus, but at the time we were located in The Harris Fine Arts center, for those of you, you who are watching that went to byu, this is in the basement of the Harris Fine Arts Center.

John Dehlin [01:17:39] But I talked H Vac as we knew it.

Lynn Packer [01:17:41] H Vac, right. And KBYU was located back then in the same building. And to the left you see a student broadcast. When I was teaching, for most of the time, the students for a half hour every night produced, anchored, produced the stories for their own newscast. And it helped propel BYU to be either the best or next to best program in the United States. It was a really rewarding and fulfilling time for me to teach in BYU's glory days. They had good instructors, we had reasonably good equipment, and the program was geared to teach practical experience and knowledge so that when you left byu, you were ready to shoot video, edit video, do a live shot. It was a great time to be teaching there. I would hate to be teaching there now because of the decline in journalism and the fact that more people are being laid off journalism jobs than being hired. But it was, it was great.

John Dehlin [01:18:57] A member of my student ward as a freshman, Rosemary Knighton from Boston, became one of the anchors while I was at byu. And that was really cool to see. Yeah, that was a really cool program.

Lynn Packer [01:19:09] It was outstanding. And if you go to the next slide, you'll see the two men most responsible for creating the program that I came into and inherited, their good work is Norm Tarbox, you see standing next to me. He recently passed. And Tom Griffith to the right was the other key player. He also is now deceased. And Bill Silcock, who. Didn't rise to their profile in the department but was a key factor, and he now teaches at Arizona State. This just happens to be the only shot that I have of me with my bosses in the department. Department head, the sequence leader, RI Yang, was a visitor from a network in Korea, I believe he was lds. And while he was there, he translated the textbook that I wrote for one of my own classes into Korean. And you see a shot of that next to us. But it was a great time and there were really good students at byu. And one of the reasons was, is so many people wanted to go to BYU is they kept raising the standards and they used their, you know, testing and GPAs as the criteria to cut out a lot of people. I know my daughter, my younger daughter who went to BYU barely made it. She barely made it into byu. She eventually graduated from there, but so the students were bright and there was so. Plus there was a lot of competition to stay in the broadcasting program. There were so many students that wanted to be in it. When I was hired, one of my jobs was to be a gatekeeper. That is, I taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced television news. And if you didn't get at least a B in my beginning class, you were cut from the program. And I was told to grade hard and to cut students. And I would tell them in advance, I would say, if you don't get at least a B in this class. And so I would use the B minus to cut out students. And so I probably was known as the Boyd Packer of instructors. I was tough, but we had to be, and somebody had to do it. And it's one of the reasons I was brought in, to both reduce the number of students advancing in the program who would use all these great facilities because they only had so much capacity and to determine whether they were really interested in journalism or just wanted to be on television, just wanted to be a star. And that's what I did. It was left to me, and I

John Dehlin [01:22:19] did that for nine years again, ending what year?

Lynn Packer [01:22:25] In 90.

John Dehlin [01:22:26] 90. So you would have been there when Boyd K. Packer gave his famous talk. The mantle is far greater than the intellect, where he. I think he pulled. I don't know if it was teachers or CES teachers or historian faculty, but he basically pulled all these church educators aside and. And taught this famous quote that not all things that are true are useful, and basically said, we need to teach faithful history.

Lynn Packer [01:22:51] Yeah. Which would you.

John Dehlin [01:22:53] Would you have been there at the time?

Lynn Packer [01:22:57] I don't remember. I certainly. I didn't go to the devotional speeches. I didn't go to any of them. They were mandatory. And so the campus would be sort of cleared out during the time that there were either devotional speeches. But he may have made that speech in the forum that you suggest, But I wasn't paying that much attention to it because it was just consistent with everything I knew about him. The one thing about Boyd is he was consistent from beginning to end. That was his belief that propelled him into leadership. He never wavered. And as you and I have discussed before, I think that there was some honesty in his saying it in so stark and clear of terms that the faith and that the heart is more important than the mind.

John Dehlin [01:23:47] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [01:23:48] And so at least you knew where he stood and. And what kind of direction he was giving. He didn't try and have it both ways.

John Dehlin [01:23:56] Right. Really quickly, I have a. I have a listener who asked a question, and I want to address this now. So just one second. Okay. Let me Pull up so the listener writes. John, why the thrive hat? Are you involved in the multi level marketing business? Let me just address this directly. The word thrive represents only one thing. It represents the idea that you can that when someone leaves the LDS church and finds healing and growth, they can end up being healthy and happy and even healthier or happier than sometimes when they're in the church. It's simply an idea. I don't sell these hats. I'm not part of any multi level marketing scheme. It's not even a business. I have had some events where I try and encourage healing and growth after Mormonism. But one of the things that keeps people sometimes tethered to the church in unhealthy ways is this conditioned, learned helplessness and fear that you can't be healthy and happy without the church. And my goal is not to have people leave the church. But I do want this word thrive. Whenever you see it, I want you to think that it is possible to leave the LDS Church or to leave religion and find healing and growth. And that's all that thrive means. There's nothing monetary. It's not associated with any mlm. I hear there's an MLM that uses that word. It has nothing to do with me and it never will be because I'd loathe the harm that MLMs and pyramid schemes can cause to people. So I just had. I apologize, but I had to answer that question. Please spread the word. If anybody accuses me of any commercial interest, there's none. I just want people to know they can find healing and growth when they leave the church if they feel like they need to leave the church. Okay, sorry for that detour. Lynn, let's jump to your next slide.

Lynn Packer [01:26:08] So after I leave byu, and really quickly.

John Dehlin [01:26:13] You left byu? Did you leave BYU in connection with the Paul Dunn story?

Lynn Packer [01:26:18] Yeah. Yeah. So we can get into that in the next.

John Dehlin [01:26:23] For people that. That haven't. Or just give the 30 second version so that they know what happened.

Lynn Packer [01:26:28] That version is, is the. I was hired or rehired annually. You'd sign to an annual contract and it would outline how much money you made and basically how many classes you needed to teach. And it became known that I was doing research, that I wanted to break the Paul Done story. I had support from my department people to do it. They knew I was working on it. But it came to the attention of higher ups in the BYU hierarchy that I was working on it. I was called in, pronounced a bad citizen. That's the term that they used. We don't report anything negative about leaders of the church and my contract was not renewed.

John Dehlin [01:27:24] Yeah. And you feel, do you feel like that was why?

Lynn Packer [01:27:27] Oh, it was because the Paul Dunn store.

John Dehlin [01:27:29] Because what about the Paul Dud story?

Lynn Packer [01:27:31] Well, it was because they didn't want it out that they believed Paul Dunn is the one who went to them and said, why is this guy teaching there? He's trying to report lies about me. Yeah. The Jay Balliff, the one who I guess made the final decision, was friends with Pauldon.

John Dehlin [01:27:54] And, and I guess we'll want to ask you at some point whether or not Boyd K. Packer had your back. But if you want to answer that later, we can talk about that later. It is a teaser.

Lynn Packer [01:28:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:06] Will you be addressing that later?

Lynn Packer [01:28:07] Yeah, we can talk about it later.

John Dehlin [01:28:09] Okay. It's a teaser for the Paul Dunn episode which is coming next.

Lynn Packer [01:28:13] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:28:14] Okay. So you got booted from BYU for your journalism, your integrity. Again, I just have to say, just like with the Tanners, just like with Jeremy Runnels, just like with other people, the church punishes and eliminates their truth tellers. And, and that's why I call Lynn Packer a legendary journalist. Because you were punished for only telling the truth.

Lynn Packer [01:28:46] Right. And by the way, when I had the discussion with Jay Balaf, I said, but this stuff is true. And he just said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if whether you're going to report about a general authority is true or not. You just, you don't do it

John Dehlin [01:29:03] really quickly. Dragonfly rights, Dragonfly 520 writes. What is the Paul Dunn story?

Lynn Packer [01:29:10] Yeah, tell them to tune in. It was something that I worked on, often on part time for more than I haven't added up the years, certainly more than 15, maybe 20.

John Dehlin [01:29:25] And I'll just say that there's a BYU devotional. We're going to play it where the person that introduces Steve Young and Paul Dunn says, you know, today we'll be interview. Today we'll be introducing Paul Dunn, who's the. The most beloved man within the Mormon Church besides the prophet himself. And I think that's fair to say he sold over a dozen books, he sold inspirational tapes and he was basically this super charismatic Mormon general authority who had the world of Mormonism in his palm until it was discovered by Lynn Packer that many of the stories he was telling were made up and fabricated. And he was involved in financial affinity fraud that involved the Osmonds and other people. And that's what we're going to be talking about in Our next episode. So stay tuned.

Lynn Packer [01:30:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:18] All right, Lynn. So what does Germany have to do with anything?

Broadcasting Career and Work in Germany

Lynn Packer [01:30:21] Okay, this is. I. I loved almost every job I had. I loved when I worked in radio as a disc jockey, loved working for ksl, Worked with great people and reporters there. Same thing with byu. And while I was teaching at byu, I participated in an exchange in Germany. Made contact with the largest television station in Germany, wdr, which is also one of the largest in the world, and started doing just a little bit of consulting for them while I was at byu.

John Dehlin [01:31:02] And are you fluent in German?

Lynn Packer [01:31:04] Yeah. Huh?

John Dehlin [01:31:05] Oh, wow.

Lynn Packer [01:31:06] So, yeah, I was on a mission in Germany, but my fluency really came after I started doing more consulting because it forces you to learn more than just religion, Biblical and Book of Mormon terms. You have to be able to talk about lots of stuff. And so when I knew I was being laid off and my contract was not being renewed at byu, I contacted the person, Werner Schmidt, who I was working with at wdr, because I had the desire to do more in Germany than I was doing. And. And Werner had already come to Utah to go to one of the broadcast conventions with me. I'd had him come, so I knew him well. I probably even told him I was working on the Paul Dunn story. And so I said I would really like to teach at a German university. And so he arranged it. He contacted the University of Dortmund. They had one of the best broadcast and journalism programs in Germany. But the broadcast part was only radio. It emphasized radio and set it up that I would go there and

John Dehlin [01:32:29] teach

Lynn Packer [01:32:30] for a year, two semesters at the University of Dortmund. And the slide that you see that you can pop up on the screen, if you can get that back, is the top slide shows some of my students at the University of Dortmund. And Nicole, the student in the middle, was fluent in English and wanted to study in the United States. And I was still on really good terms with the program at byu. So I set it up so that she went to byu. I can't remember if it was one or two semesters. I think it was two. And go through the program, which was great, because at the time, University of Dortmund didn't have the facilities to teach broadcast news. And so she went there and then came back to Germany and had. Has had quite a long career in broadcasting.

John Dehlin [01:33:26] Nice.

Lynn Packer [01:33:27] But while I was at Dortmund, one of the things that they asked me to do was to begin their broadcast program. And so I taught the second semester a program, Broadcast News, sort of using a Jerry Rigg camera system, doing the best that I could. And from there they developed the program. And eventually it was similar to BYU's, where they had a student broadcast and used cameras and produced. And it just became sort of the BYU of Germany. And then in the same photos that I slapped on that slide, if you go, go to the one previous to that again, the one on the bottom right is because I spoke German and I like to freelance. Here I'm with a crew where I'm helping freelance a story. I'm working with another German reporter where I just made extra money by freelancing. And that's the German crew that I used. They drove a Mercedes station wagon. The crews were bigger than we have in the United States. In the US you just have a cameraman, they have a sound man and a driver. It's very expensive, but that's who I used for that particular story. Then on the left, several years later, my boss at Dortmund, the one who hired me, and I worked under Uli Petzol, he retired. I'm here at his apartment in Berlin several years later where I gave a presentation at the University of Potsdam. And because he was in Berlin, I said, uli, you need to come over and watch this presentation. He did. Then we drove back to his apartment and we had a toast with those wine glasses that you see with Ulis. He's a brilliant instructor and he's one of Germany's leading and most frequently published journalism instructors. A great guy. And about the wine is that I probably would drink wine occasionally, but my stomach can hardly take any alcohol, which is probably lucky for me. Who knows, I probably would maybe would turn out to be an alcoholic. And so the only times I drink wine, I remember when I finished a project in Munich at another television station. At the end we all toasted with champagne and I drank a little bit of that. So that's the only time I drink. Okay, you go to the next slide. Is so that after I taught at the University of Dortmund, while I was there, I struck up a relationship with SAT1, which was the largest private television network in Germany. And at that time their news operation was in Hamburg. They were, their headquarters were in, I think Mainz and they had offices in Berlin. I struck up a relationship and then signed a multi year contract to consult for Sat 1. And here you see me instructing the anchors on how to use a new set that I helped organize. It was built in San Diego and shipped over to Hamburg. And now I'm helping teach the US style of presenting the news to these anchors, the main anchor and the Sports anchor. And that's when we did in Hamburg. Then a few years later, to the right, you see a project I did for Pulse T FAU in Berlin, which was a local television news broadcast, one of the first ones in Germany, because they didn't have much local news there. And again, the set was. That's a set that was built in San Diego that I helped arrange and organize and flown to Berlin. It happens to be a design that I put together. It was funny. We were in a meeting where we had to design the set. So I'm there for, like, a couple of months to do the set. And I said, here's an idea. We could build a set around the Brandenburg Gate that's about two miles from here and have sort of the Brandenburg Gate look. And I said, okay, that's an idea. Now you guys come up with some ideas of what you want the set to look like. And they all pointed and said, well, that. That's what we want. And it was decided, like, in 10 minutes. And so the designers fly over and take that concept and turn it into a television set again. I did this for 10 years for several other television stations. There were a couple of other sets involved. I did a lot of training, and it was just a great time. I really enjoyed it because their journalism is a little bit different, but similar, but their way of producing news stories is really different. So I had to learn a new system in order to do training.

John Dehlin [01:38:50] Let me just ask you, like, there's. And maybe you're going to want to talk about this in the Paul Dunn thing, but since we're kind of profiling your own story, you know, Here you gave 10 or 20 years of your life or more. How many total years were you. Were you in Utah doing journalism?

Lynn Packer [01:39:08] Well, it was a lot, because while I was consulting, I would commute, I would do most of the work. I started off with fax and then with the Internet, with email. I. I would. I would do that. And then I would go over, like, for two weeks, for a month, I would go back and forth, and in between, I would continue to freelance for Salt Lake City Weekly. And I've got.

John Dehlin [01:39:34] Right. And there's a slide on that. But I'm just saying I'm trying to capture a moment, which is you had been reporting in Utah for at least 20 years. By the time you go to Germany. Right. You had given your heart and soul to the profession, but also to the Mormon people. And then you kind of are exiled. And I'm, on the one hand, my heartstrings are pulled. Wondering how that must have felt to be covering all these. And these are just a small subset of all the stories you covered. You kind of gave your heart and soul and your profession to Utah and the Mormon people, only to kind of get fired and dismissed. So on the one hand, I'm saddened by that. On the other hand, I'm kind of inspired by your resilience of you going off to Germany and just having a new adventure. Can you talk to both sides of that from an emotional perspective, from a personal perspective?

Lynn Packer [01:40:34] Well, I consider myself something like a cat that you throw out of a two story window and somehow he manages to land on his feet. And that happened on more than one occasion. I used to tell my students at byu, I said, no story is worth losing your job over. I said, I don't care where you go. It's not just the Mormon Church, it's a business. It's a friend of the station manager or the news director. It's going to come up and you have to be ready to deal with that and not go storming out the first time that it happens. But also, in my career I have not wanted to lose my job over a story. But I've often gone to the edge. And the best way to explain it is on two occasions because I'm sort of a car nut. I've gone to high speed car training courses, one in Phoenix and one in California where you learn how to race cars. And the idea is you get right to the edge of being out of control, you go around a curve, you take it right to the edge as to where you could either spin out or go shooting off the race course. And it's a skill and it's an art. And I've had that art in my career on a couple of occasions I've careened off the track and so I just get back on again.

John Dehlin [01:42:04] So you're just Brazilian, but were you sad?

Lynn Packer [01:42:08] Yeah, yeah, it's painful. Change is painful. But I've embraced it for the opportunities it presents. And I had the desire to do something in Germany a long time. I was not going to career it at byu. I probably would have stayed there at most maybe two more years and would have further explored because remember I'd started consulting in Germany and so but then I, I needed to improve my German. I wanted to continue teaching for a while and so the University of Dortmund opportunity was just great and just a great experience.

John Dehlin [01:42:52] I'm probably just projecting here, but for me pain doesn't quite cover it. It's rejection for telling the truth and doing your job as best as you can and then getting rejected and eliminated for being a truth teller and doing a professional job. That, that's particularly inspiring and heartbreaking to me.

Lynn Packer [01:43:19] Well, and you're talking about something that journalists across the country and the world face. It's a lot of times the truth hurts. You attract opposition to the story coming out. You have to, there's censorship involved. You have to deal with it and fight it off. And it's a skill that if you're going to do investigative reporting, you have to develop.

John Dehlin [01:43:52] Lynn, your, your, your camera's frozen for me. I don't know if there's anything you did to fix that last time.

Lynn Packer [01:43:58] Another slide, but let me just check and see that. And whether it switched to the. I think it's your software that I think I may need to unplug them on camera. But let me. If you wanted to talk for a

John Dehlin [01:44:11] second real quickly, we have. And you can just talk if, if your camera's not quite working yet. John Wetman asks, have you lost any family over, you know, your journalism work or after coming out so publicly and doing the work that you do?

Faith Transition and Family Relationships

Lynn Packer [01:44:32] The, the answer is, is no. My, my family is almost all, I would say, not radical, but conservative or conservative Mormons. And, and I haven't had a problem. I think they, they know why I got into journalism. They know what I do. And, and I think that they've just been, they've been accepting of it. You know, I could be a police officer or a fireman, somebody that there's, you know, they're facing danger, facing sometimes controversy, and it just sort of goes with the job. But no, I haven't. Not even my extended family. We talked last time about the extended family and how I knew many cousins much better than average, and I've never had one come up and say, why are you doing this? And why are you a bad Mormon? I'm certain some have thought about it or thought it, but it's never boiled over to the point that they need to express it and express any kind of that disagreement.

Paul H. Dunn and Fabricated Stories

John Dehlin [01:45:50] Okay, well, I guess we've got some, I've got this deck has some final slides that just talk about some of the trailing aspects of your journalism career. Should we, should we cover them kind of maybe quickly?

Lynn Packer [01:46:07] Yeah, we could just sort of fly through them and we give a little insight of what's coming up. This is just shows that I've continued to be, to be involved in news coverage, video news coverage is that I've been writing a lot about smartphone news gathering technology which I think is the wave of the future.

John Dehlin [01:46:33] Yeah. So reporters don't have to have these big crews. They can literally have their, their phones and they can have the equivalent of that whole satellite pickup and the camera crew and the audio crew. Literally just a cell phone. Right.

Lynn Packer [01:46:47] All of that. And I've written extensively about it. It's becoming more popular worldwide, but still has not advanced to the point where it's making really a big difference. And so I've been one of the advocates. I've been published in several national news outlets. And a year ago this week I gave a presentation at a conference in Washington D.C. about smartphone news gathering. A lot of this has been put sort of on hold because of the pandemic. And it's something that when I finish with a project I'm working on right now in the legal sphere, I hope to re. Engage in. Then if you went to the next slide, we can just sort of fly through these. Oh, this is out of order. This just shows that I, I did a lot of training in Germany besides consulting. And here I'm consulting with Sony of Germany where I went on a road show with them. And some of their technology was not geared to the German way of producing television news. And so they needed an American, American to come over and say, here's how you edit. You don't do it the same way as you do it in Germany. In this way is faster, better. This had to do with editing in the field, which is becoming more popular

John Dehlin [01:48:13] really quickly to our listeners. Lynn Packer's career has been so important that, that right now we're just taking a few final moments to let him share with us some aspects of his career. We don't want you to go away. We want to make sure you understand that. We'll be taking a break very soon and then we're going to come back with the meat of today's presentation which is an in depth dive into Lynn Packer's investigative reporting. You said a 15 year plus investigation into the lies and the fraud committed by Mormon general authority Polish done. So we're going to, we're going to finish out this deck. We're going to take a pause, but don't go away. We're going to restart the stream and have a very important presentation very soon. So I'm just letting people know about that. Okay, Lynn, keep going.

Lynn Packer [01:49:01] Okay. Just keep flying through these. I, as I was consulting in Germany, I did lots of stories for City Weekly, won several awards. You see I did several about the Olympics, interviewed Mitt Romney twice during that period, won an award for that. Did a really interesting story about Senator Orrin Hatch and a companion story about Ezra Tab Benson and these odd cures that they believed in.

John Dehlin [01:49:35] Sort of these herbal remedies that had no scientific basis, basically, mostly is based

Lynn Packer [01:49:40] on the electrodermal machine, these, you know, electronic machines that supposedly tell you everything that's going wrong. But. But it did involve some herbal cures and remedies as well.

John Dehlin [01:49:56] Were these things Orrin Hatch had a financial interest in, where he, maybe he or family members made money off on the side from?

Lynn Packer [01:50:04] I don't know if he did. Since he retired from the Senate, he has had financial interest in at least one extraordinarily flaky company. But it didn't have to do with, you know, detecting or diagnosing disease like this article goes into. And then the, the COVID story I did on the right, I did before I went to Germany about Mormon fraud. And I think it's still one of the most important stories that have been written about how Mormon fraud came about and what it is. And it was like it shows a cover story for Utah Holiday. Then you can just flip through. You can just go through these slides really fast. I've written, besides the textbooks that I've written, I've written two books. One on the left is a novel. It's the only novel I've written and the only one I ever will. And it's my statement about Black Lives Matter and basically was written as an apology to anybody who wanted to read for Mormonisms. Just what I think are really terrible racist scriptures and doctrines. Then, of course, the one we'll talk about coming up is the book I wrote about Paul Dunn, Lying for the Lord. They're only in paperback. They're not hardback at the Amazon bookstore. Then going to the. I'm just sort of following this along, but go to the next. Yeah. The done book research was more than two decades ago. We'll get into this. But I wanted to mention this book, a Time to Kill for just a second is that while I was teaching at byu, Ray Hillam at the Kennedy center started writing this.

John Dehlin [01:51:58] Wait, wait, wait. Can I just say one, one comment from a listener. John Wetman writes, I was deeply over my head invested in computerized thermal imaging with, he said, Boyd K. Packer's son.

Lynn Packer [01:52:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:10] Does that sound right?

Lynn Packer [01:52:11] Yeah, I know about that.

John Dehlin [01:52:13] Okay.

Lynn Packer [01:52:14] Sometimes we ought to have a talk about that.

John Dehlin [01:52:16] Okay.

Lynn Packer [01:52:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:17] All right.

Lynn Packer [01:52:18] And. And also my cousin was involved with it. As well.

John Dehlin [01:52:23] John says there was huge stock market fraud. Basically.

Lynn Packer [01:52:26] Yeah. They got involved in thermal imaging.

John Dehlin [01:52:29] Okay.

Lynn Packer [01:52:30] And so where were we? What slide. Okay. A Time to Kill. So this is interesting, and I'll mention it quickly, is that Hillam had interviewed Paul Dunn for this book. It was going to be a chapter. And when Hillam found out I was doing research at BYU on Paul Dunn, he approached me and said, what's up? And I told him, I said, I wouldn't put that chapter in if I were you. He did some of his own research, and not only did he eliminate that chapter, he gave me Paul Dunn's, the chapter that he was going to do on Paul Dunn, which had a couple of brand new Paul Dunn stories in it. And he substituted a chapter about me and my experience in Vietnam. So how's that?

John Dehlin [01:53:17] Ray Hillem was a political science professor at byu, right?

Lynn Packer [01:53:20] Well, he's sort of. He's with the. You know, he moved over into the Kennedy center and did stuff like. Like this.

John Dehlin [01:53:26] Got it.

Lynn Packer [01:53:27] Then you can move ahead to the next one. You can go pretty fast with these. I told you about what that is. It came out of. I've played church basketball forever. Started playing pickup ball. Remember this?

John Dehlin [01:53:40] How tall are you, Lynn?

Lynn Packer [01:53:42] Pardon?

John Dehlin [01:53:42] How tall are you? How tall are you?

Lynn Packer [01:53:45] Six three.

John Dehlin [01:53:46] Okay, so you're kind of tall.

Lynn Packer [01:53:49] Yeah. This was. I could talk forever about the team that you see here. Almost everybody on the team was like 6:2 or 6:3, basically a short team for basketball and went on one of the longest winning streaks of any church team ever. It was a great team, was a fun team, but it just shows that I have a love for basketball. And that's why I wrote a book that involves basketball and black history. And you could keep going that I've coached junior jazz basketball and this is just one of the teams that I coached. Keep flying through. And the reason that the black thing comes in, which really cemented my feelings about discrimination against blacks, was my experience in Vietnam. I was opposed to the church's priesthood policy before I went there. After going to Vietnam, it was just like, this is just. It's just not right. And it's one thing that led to the book the Next Slide. I had a legal consulting career that I still continue with that went about 10 years. Here's a case I worked on where a doctor was accused of murdering several elderly patients. We won that case in. In grand style. There's. You could flip through to some more to the next.

John Dehlin [01:55:30] And is. Is this kind of using your journalism, investigative skills yeah. In the legal realm, is that basically

Lynn Packer [01:55:37] what you do with how the case is presented in the courtroom using technology. And in almost every occasion we're working on a case because I can do it. They've had me investigate as well. On some occasions, I've only investigated. On some occasions, I've only helped prepare the technology. That's the material for the courtroom technology. But usually I do both.

John Dehlin [01:56:04] Love it.

Lynn Packer [01:56:05] Then.

John Dehlin [01:56:06] Okay. Warren Jeffs.

Lynn Packer [01:56:08] I worked on the Warren Jeffs case in St. George. I worked on his side, was down there and prepared help prepare both the opening and closing statements. And was there as we prepped witnesses prior to the trial. Several polygamists, wives who were witnesses in the case. We could talk a lot about that, but some other day. Okay, I'll go to the next one. This is an interesting case that I at least wanted to mention to show how problematic Utah's legal system is, especially when it comes to custody and how custody is done. This is a case. And these are slides that I presented with my client, who was the wife to the Child Welfare Legislative Committee. It involved a man named Gordon Bowen, who's an advertising executive on Madison Avenue. He's brilliant. Been involved in many big campaigns like for Coca Cola. His father was Wes Bowen, who I knew really well at ksl. Wes Bowen did the Public Pulse radio show that I sat in for him on occasion when he couldn't do it. But this was a custody case where Bowen wanted to have joint custody of two children that he helped father. And I was working with his wife's attorneys to try and block that custody. And he was, in our view, not fit to have custody with young children. Like in his journal, he wrote God, I was living a gay life. Most of your homosexual desire has gone as evil spirits, unclean spirits, have departed your body. He's talking about exorcism where he was gay but was exercised, so he's no longer gay. He told his stepsons that they were possessed by spirits that made them gay, blamed their father, said they should be exercised. And on several occasions he induced his older stepsons to sleep in the same bed. It was a bizarre story. And if you go to the next slide, he was good friends with Gordon Hinckley and he participated as a consultant in some of the church's advertising campaigns. He was very good friends with Mitt Romney and consulted on some of Romney's campaigns. And he consulted on the Olympics. And he's the one who came up with the Olympic tagline or theme of light to fire within. And the bottom line Is that in our belief, he should have had no contact with his two young children. But the court gave him contact. And we think it's because he knew people in high places. And it's just a case of the legal system sometimes just absolutely fails. But if you go to the final slide or the next one that he talks about, and he wrote a script for some sort of movie or something, and in this script he talks about being Christ's warrior who's taught secret combinations. In the script, he's writing this for somebody else. I take the child in my arms. All the naked men are in their fiery furnaces doing their penis exercises. Is I hold her next to my chest and escape. He's taking this young child escaping from this scenario. The court was aware of all of this and yet granted full custody. And it's just like I said.

John Dehlin [01:59:48] Do you think that like people like Gordon B. Hinckley and Mitt Romney and others knew about this stuff about him, or do you think he just hid it from them and so they were fooled?

Lynn Packer [01:59:59] No, I think they probably knew about it.

John Dehlin [02:00:02] And so you're saying the guy. The guy Mormons in high powerful places cover up for and or aid and abet abusers because of their power and influence.

Lynn Packer [02:00:15] I'm not accusing him in any way of being an actual pedophile that acts on his desires or of doing any of that. The case that we made is that because of what he's written and what he said and what he's done by sleeping in the same bed with the older boys that he's unfit to have joint custody. And that's the only case we made and we failed in making that case. And I think it's because of the. Generally, the legal system that deals with custody disputes and matters is badly broken in Utah, and it's susceptible to having somebody powerful in high places get their way when they shouldn't have it.

John Dehlin [02:01:06] Yeah. Okay, Going on more slides and then

Lynn Packer [02:01:11] we'll wrap up for this session in courtroom technology. You can just sort of keep flying through that. One of my favorite that no viewers will be interested in is how the acorn did not fall far from the tree. Is. My father early on loved to modify cars and fixed them up and loved vehicles and became a mechanic. And I followed in the same footsteps. If you go to the next slide, is that a Porsche? Yeah, Porsche, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:41] What, what. What year model is that?

Lynn Packer [02:01:44] Cayman. It was 2008. Love the car had. I've driven Porsches, Audis, BMWs, Mercedes. That's generally what I drive but that one was a stripped Cayman, but probably my all time favorite car that I had for various reasons. You can jump ahead and the guy

John Dehlin [02:02:09] on the left is who?

Lynn Packer [02:02:10] That's my father.

John Dehlin [02:02:11] And what car is he posing with?

Lynn Packer [02:02:14] I think it's a. The Sodom that he fixed all up. He put twin. He put twin horns on it. That's what they did. Twin antennas, twin spare tires. They put them on both sides instead of just having them. One side is sort of the twin thing. Put trim rings on the wheels and of course polished it to the hilt. That was just dad. And if you go to the next slides, these are projects my father and I did when I was growing up in high school. We took an old Plymouth that had a good engine and front end and cut the frame off and then took the engine in front of the frame off of this Jeep because they were popular, but the engine on this Jeep had expired and created the pleat. And it was a fun project. I worked on it. I did all the interior work, changing over the instruments, putting in the radio, rewiring it. It was a fun project. We had fun driving it for a couple of years and then sold it. Then the next one slide shows a project dad and I did later where we resurrected this old Dodge truck that had been in a barn up in Deweyville, Utah, that had been used to take kids to school. And we restored that took two or three years just working off and on, on it. And then another project on the next slide where I restored an old Z car just for the fun of it where. Just work on it, fix it up. And, and what it does is, is. I'm just saying that, that this is part of the extended family. Growing up with the family, owning the business Packer Motor and being one of the cousins lessons who, who takes a strong liking to doing it and, and doing what my dad did, working on cars.

John Dehlin [02:04:15] Well, in Packer, it's. It's super fun to take a trip down memory lane with you. But even more so, it's just. I just. On behalf of the Mormon people, on behalf of Utahns, you know, I just want to thank you for your, what I would say illustrious and or legendary career because you covered a lot of really important stories and you've given us a lot. And the story that we're going to cover next, which is the Paul Dunn story, is one that really impacted me personally. I was at BYU, you know, from 87 to 93. So that story touched and impacted me very directly. And so just on behalf of Utahns and Mormons and post Mormons everywhere. Can we just take a minute to thank you for all you've done for us?

Lynn Packer [02:05:07] Thank you.

Closing Reflections and Listener Support

John Dehlin [02:05:11] All right. Well. All right. So, so anything you want to say to close Lynn, or should we just.

Lynn Packer [02:05:17] I'm anxious to dive into the, to this other story because it was a wild 20, 25 year ride.

John Dehlin [02:05:26] All right. So listeners, thanks for joining us for, you know, these two hours with Lynn Packer. We're going to take a lunch break, a potty break, and I'm guessing, you know, in around 30 minutes or so, we're going to start up again and we're going to dig deep into the story of Paul H. Dunn. He's a the second, you know, he was probably one of the most beloved general authorities in Mormon church history while he was alive. And while he's a general authority, he was considered the second most beloved general authority next to whatever prophet was still alive at the time. And turns out that these fantastic stories about playing baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and having his buddies die in his arms in the war and all these stories were made up. And he also was engaged in affinity fraud where people lost a lot of money and he used his fame and reputation to advance commercial interests and he was ultimately put on emeritus status. And I think that probably changed a lot about church culture and general authority worship culture, but not totally. But it was Lynn Packer who did the investigative work as Boyd K. Packer's son, the nephew, lost his job at BYU as a result of it. But, and the story was, was hidden. And, and the Paul H. Done story is not just fascinating because of Paul H. Dunn. If you want to understand Mormonism today and the way it wields its influence with the media, with power, with lawyers, with COVID ups, with coercion and intimidation, the Paul H. Dunn story is a great example of what the church does now. And now that there are less restrictions on journalism, less vibrant news channels and newspapers, the church is probably, you could argue, doing this sort of activity more now than it actually did back then. And the Paul H. Dunn story is a perfect case study of the Mormon Church's tendency to use power, money, lawyers, to hide information from its members, to kill stories and to avoid coverage for of, of deceptive, deceptive information. And so is there anything I'm leaving out in the story, Lynn, as a preview?

Lynn Packer [02:07:50] Oh, you've given it in a nutshell.

John Dehlin [02:07:53] All right, so stay tuned. We're going to be coming back in about 30 minutes and we're very eager to tell the story of Paul Dunn as told to a spy. Lynn Packer. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Lynn. Go get some lunch and I'll see you in about 30 minutes. All right. Thanks, Lynn. Thanks, everybody. And if you've enjoyed today and if you want to see more episodes like this, please consider donating to the Open Stories Foundation. You can go to mormonstories.org you can click on the donate button, and you can become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 25 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. Your donations will keep us alive and will allow us to continue. Every year we have to look and say, can we keep going or not? And as long as people donate, we'll keep going. Your donations are tax deductible in the U.S. we're transparent in our finances. 100% of your donations go to keep this program alive. And you were governed by a board and I believe a responsible, transparent way. So please share. If you want to donate through YouTube right now, you can click on the little dollar sign, donate through YouTube and those donations will reach us as well. I have a listener who says, John says, I have a huge Paul Dunn story and Grant Affleck's story from my homeward connection, but I'll shut the heck up now and watch. So, John, we want to hear that story later. Thanks to all you guys who have joined us today. And we'll see you guys in about 30 minutes for another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Camille writes, Lynn, thank you so much for your story and thank you for standing for actual truth and righteousness. And thank you, Camille, for sharing your thanks, because Lynn does deserve our thanks. All right, everybody, you guys take care, and we'll see you guys again soon on Mormon Stories Podcast. See you soon. Have a good lunch. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.