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Shannon Flynn describes Mark Hofmann’s physical condition in prison.  It’s pretty interesting to hear both his bomb injuries, as well as his injuries from inside the Utah State Penitentiary.

Shannon:  Physically he is not in great shape these days, because from the bombing he had a severe injury to one of his knees.  He’s missing part of the fingers on one hand where he flipped that [bomb] over.  There’s a lot of damage to one of the arms and he has some scars around.

Shannon describes Mark's suicide attempt, as well as Mark's letter to the Parole Board indicating even he wasn't sure the motive of the murders.  I hope you can watch our Youtube link.  We have a video that shows Mark Hofmann's letter discussing the murders.

Don't forget to listen to our previous episode where Shannon Flynn describes what it was like to be imprisoned as well!  Check out the conversation….

https://youtu.be/U6sUUl7boCo

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In 1985 Shannon Flynn was arrested and jailed for being friends with Mark Hofmann.  We’ll listen to his conversation about his experiences in jail and the false accusations police made against him.  He has some strong words about police.

when I went down to be interviewed, I was just trying to be nice, I ended up going out in handcuffs.  My parents came down to the police station to pick up my car.  One of the detectives met them and said, “Oh, he murdered two people?”

GT:  You murdered two people?

Shannon:  That’s right.

GT:  Really.  I bet that went over well with your parents.

Shannon shakes his head in disbelief: Well, I’m sure that the guy that did that to this day doesn’t care.  “Well, that’s what I believed.”  I will not forgive that.

Then they did something else too.  They did a search of my house while I was in jail.  We had a storage unit across the street.  We had some baby furniture and a few odds and ends in there.  They went in there and they believed they had found the bomb factory.  An agent from the BATF[1], unfortunately I don’t know his name right now, but I will come up with it and I will speak his name out loud because that man should be made to be responsible for what he did.

They had called the news media, all three Salt Lake channels were out there, Associated Press, Deseret News, everybody.  They went in there, had a big pair of bolt-cutters, cut that lock, swung open that door, looked, came out.  There was nothing there.  That man stood and looked in the camera and said, “The bomb factory was there, but it has been moved.”

GT:  Oh really.

Shannon shakes his head in disgust: He straight out lied.  So when they said to me, “Mark made those bombs.”

I said, “No.  You’re lying.  Because I’ve seen you do it before.  You’ve done it to me.”  I got to watch that while I was sitting in jail, up on the felony floor.  It was very exciting.  All of my fellow cell mates were {Shannon imitates them looking at him in disbelief, then chuckles.}  I was the most famous person in jail that weekend.

[1] Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Why did Shannon get arrested in the first place?  Check out our conversation…..

https://youtu.be/DBQcuEYS0FQ

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In 1985 Mark Hofmann's last bomb blew himself up with his own pipe bomb.  Shannon Flynn, a good friend of Mark Hofmann describes what bystanders did to save Hofmann’s life.  It’s a pretty interesting story.

When Mark had been blown up, he was lying in the street, and I’ll give another little strange [story.]  This whole thing is just too weird.   There were some people in the area that saw that happen.  Several of them ran over to him.  There was a fellow by the last name of Christensen who saw that and went over.  Mark’s shirt was torn a bit and he could see garments, so he knew that guy [Mark] was a member [of the LDS Church], pulled out a little vial of oil and gave him a blessing that he would live.  Well he did live.  I’ll let you all think about that one.

What do you think about blessing a criminal to live?  Did God honor that blessing?

But that bomb didn’t just severely injure Hofmann, it blew the lid off Mormon history.  We’ll talk about the Salamander Letter and the magical world view, and how that really changed things for Mormon history.

As an example, the Salamander letter, people said that’s going to ruin the church.  That completely goes against the standard history of the church.  It did go against the basic juvenile understanding that most members have of the church, but that particular concept of salamander or toad, he actually took from Mormonism Unvailed.[1]  The concept of Joseph being prevented by that, he took it from a Jesse Knight diary.  At the end of the day, it was new information, more, but down the same track.

It would not, and in fact it has been proved, I mean it isn’t a real letter, but I mean my heavens, Michael Quinn some years later with Mormonism and the Magic World View, he confirmed every bit of it, every bit of it; not the particular animal, but confirmed every bit of it.

in 1986 or 1987, Curt Bench put together this Errata for Dean Jesse's book The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith to alert readers to 6 Hofmann forgeries. The 2nd edition, published in 2002 has these forgeries removed.

[1]Mormonism Unvailed was the first anti-Mormon book, written in 1834 by E.D. Howe.  Dan Vogel has written an annotated copy of the book, complete with footnotes reverencing Howe’s claims.  See http://amzn.to/2fOpjU7

It turns out that home of Hofmann's forgeries ended up in some scholarly books.  Dean Jessee published a book called The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith in 1984 that unfortunately contained some Hofmann forgeries.  In 2002, Jessee published a 2nd edition of The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith that removed these forgeries.  Second edition is available at http://amzn.to/2fVPuM9  .  You can listen to Curt Bench’s interview discussing the errata at https://gospeltangents.com/2017/05/22/updated-salamander-letter-podcast/

FAIR Mormon notes one of these forgeries was in both Dean Jessee’s book, as well as Michael Quinn’s book, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994).  Jessee had included (and Quinn referenced Jessee’s book) that a Hofmann forgery was incorrectly included where Joseph allegedly wrote a letter to Jonathan Dunham asking the Nauvoo Legion to rescue Joseph from Carthage Jail.  FAIR notes “Deseret Book and Dean Jesse had also released an errata sheet for his Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, which was available by DATE. [citation needed].”  Date is probably around 1986-1987 when Hofmann was sentenced to j...

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In 1985 Mark Hofmann blew himself up with his own pipe bomb.  Police immediately suspected him as the prime suspect in a rash of bombings in 1985.  In this next conversation we’ll talk about how his lawyers tried to get Mark to take a polygraph test.  He passed with flying colors.  How was Mark successful in fooling lie detector?  Shannon Flynn will tell us how.

A good examiner will get a person really stressful so that they react strongly, physically when they are telling an untruth.  When you hear about that sweating, that galvanic skin response, that’s one of them.  They will test for that.  They’ll test your breathing rate.  They’ll test your pulse.  When I had mine there were six different indicators going on.  When Mark did his there were just four because it was being done remotely.

I mean the way he was able to beat the polygraph, he had very competent examinations and reads and they all showed him to be telling the truth.  The way that those polygraphs work is, they work on what is known as the zero-null system.  In other words they put up a scale.  Zero is the center, then it goes -1, -2, -3, -4, all the way to -15, whatever, and then +1, +2, +3, whatever.  When a test is scored, they will give a number, but the number will be +1, or -3, or +10.  Generally between -5 and +5 is a null reading.  They can’t tell.  They person has been messing with the test or the examination wasn’t done well.  They can’t tell so it will be towards the center of that.

But then when you get to -10, -11, -12, very untruthful and easily seen; +10, +12, +15, very truthful.  Mark scored a +14.  I scored a +12.  That really bothered those examiners when they found out he had beat that test, it just really bothered them.  It turns out the main person up at the University of Utah, David Raskin was able to arrange an interview with Mark when he was in prison about two years, a year and a half, two years afterwards, because he wanted to find out how in the world he was able to do that.  This is what Mark told him.

Don't forget to learn about Hofmann's coin forgeries, cheating people, and his Million-dollar Con.  Check out our conversation…..

https://youtu.be/JKQGREcG8oo

 

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In LDS circles, Mark Hofmann is most well-known for the Salamander Letter, a forgery that threatened the founding stories of the LDS Church.  What gets lost on the conversation is an even more audacious forgery, Oath of a Freeman.  In 1985, Mark Hofmann attempted a Million-dollar con.  Shannon Flynn describes this document.

It is the first known printed document in what is now the United States of America.  A printing press was brought from England over to America, and it was operated by a guy named Stephen Crane.  He was the first professional printing press printer in the United States.  The first item that he printed was a single sheet of paper called the Oath of a Freeman.  The fourth one is actually known, and there are copies available, and it is called Bay Psalm Book.

The Oath of a Freeman is very interesting because what it does is it was printed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony and it is a way for the people that were participating in that Massachusetts Bay Colony that religious organization to essentially sign an oath of fidelity to the new group, and say I’m here, and I’m part of this group.  It starts out, “I,” and then the letters “ab,” which are supposed to be for your name, and you say, “I will follow the rules of the group.”  I’m just paraphrasing it.  You can find it and read it.  The interesting part was it said nothing about England.  So it turns out in a strange way, it is the first seed of revolution.

Shannon describes how Mark made the document, planted it, and then tried to sell it to the Library of Congress for $1.5 million documents.  It was the most expensive document at the time, although the LDS Church just purchased the Printer's Manuscript from the Community of Christ for $35 million.  Don't forget to learn how he started forging coins to this audacious forgery.  Check out our conversation...

https://youtu.be/388udxgqQ6Q

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In our last conversation, Shannon Flynn told us that Mark Hofmann started forging coins as a teen.  How was he able to fool so many experts for so long?  Was he a charismatic person?  What's it like to work with a master forger?

Shannon:  Nowadays you would kind of see him as a computer nerd.  He was not charismatic in the least.  He kind of had poor social skills.  I remember on at least one occasion going with Lynn, some friends of Lynn, my wife and I and were going to have a barbecue dinner at the Hofmann’s house, a lot of chatting and so forth.  We got there a little bit late.  We go in the house and Mark has already made his dinner and eaten it.  You would have thought a normal person would have waited.  He didn’t know and didn’t care.

Like I said he was not a good host or those sorts of things, but he was a very personable person.  I don’t ever remember a time seeing him, he never suffered from depression or those sort of things.  He was not a down kind of a person.  Of course at that time if you had any interest in Mormon history or collecting, he was the person to know because he was always in the middle of this thing and that thing and buying and selling.

...

The prosecutors, they interviewed him after his plea agreement and didn’t record it but took notes of it.  That was one of their first questions was how did you do all of this stuff?  He said, “Well it’s really not that hard to figure out.”  Again I’m paraphrasing.  “He said it’s really not that hard to figure out.  What do you do for a living?”

He said, “We’re attorneys.”

He said, “Are you any good at it?”

“Well yeah, we think so.”

He said, “I cheat people.  That’s what I do for a living.  I’m good at it.  I’m a good forger.”

Check out our conversation…..

https://youtu.be/bgznUgVL2iM

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Shannon Flynn worked closely with Mark Hofmann and knows him better than most other people.  In this conversation, we’ll talk about Hofmann's Teenage Forgeries.  How old was he when he started?

Shannon:  His first coin forgery was when he was 12 years old.  I believe the first time he ever uttered a forgery, in other words other than something for doing himself was when he was 14 years old.  He had learned through a process of trial and error how to add mint marks to legitimate coins.  He would buy a legitimate coin, maybe a penny or something that had no mint mark on it, and then was able to put a mint mark on it that would significantly increase its value.  The penny was real and legitimate.  The only thing that wasn’t was just that little mint mark.

Don't forget to check out our Curt Bench Interviews on Mark Hofmann.  (See Part 1 here.)  Check out our conversation…..

https://youtu.be/xhCRoVuwXb0

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In January 2014, the LDS Church produced a new Gospel Topics Essay on DNA and the Book of Mormon.  I asked Dr. Ugo Perego if he had anything to do with writing that essay.  I think you’ll find his answer very interesting.

Ugo:  I actually took the lead on the project of writing that.  I wrote a much more extensive paper which has been published as well in the Interpreter, the online Mormon journal.  It’s about 40 pages long and then from that the Church condensed it down to what is the in Gospel Topics today. Some people will say, well if this is doesn’t say—they wanted to keep it short.  There are a lot of footnotes.  You can go and read more.  You have the full article on the other page.  There is another article with me in the other article[1], a more extensive article, and then we have several geneticists, even known Latter-day saint geneticists that I sent the manuscript, and asked, “what do you think about it?”  Forget that you don’t know, or you know about the Book of Mormon, but does the story make sense with the genetic context.  Am I presenting genetics and the principles in a fair manner, an honest manner?  I incorporated their feedback, and then I submitted that to the Church and that’s what we have today.  I was the main guy behind it but it was others, even known LDS geneticists that were involved.

[1] Other author is Jayne E. Ekins.  See http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/is-decrypting-the-genetic-legacy-of-americas-indigenous-populations-key-to-the-historicity-of-the-book-of-mormon/

We’ll also talk about Rodney Meldrum’s claim to have found DNA in Native Americans here in the Americas.

Rod Meldrum honestly, the Heartlanders, the people who promote the Book of Mormon geography in North America, and I don’t have a problem if they like to put the Book of Mormon there but as of today, we have absolutely no genetic evidence of their claims.  Fortunately they are hammering that nail DNA continually, saying that DNA is proving their theory, but it is not.  They can have other good evidence to support their theory but they should not use today DNA.  Maybe down the road there will be some new discoveries that will change how we are interpreting the data today, and we might be saying, oh maybe it was Middle Eastern.  Maybe we’re going to find X2A in Jerusalem that we never found before, right?  But as of today there is no evidence.

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Critics of the Book of Mormon say this is the nail in the coffin.  Rod Meldrum says this is the nail in the coffin for his theory.  It depends how you look at it.  I honestly think that we are far from using DNA in favor or against the Book of Mormon.

Don't forget to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our discussion about DNA and the Book of Mormon.  Check out our conversation…..

https://youtu.be/qN-Ihu7QUUU

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We're continuing our series on DNA & Book of Mormon.  How to Lemba Tribe & Vikings DNA relate to the Book or Mormon?  If you’ve listened to my interviews on the Book of Mormon, I’ve asked a few people, like Jim Vun Cannon and David Rosenvall about the Lemba Tribe in Africa.  They’re a tribe that has Middle Eastern DNA, unlike Native Americans who don’t. Dr. Ugo Perego gives a good introduction into the Lemba Tribe, and why similar DNA is or is not found in America.

Lemba Tribe from Africa

 

Ugo: The Lemba Tribe is an African tribe.  Traditionally they claim to have Jewish ancestry but physically they are African.  They did this DNA study, this was done several years ago, and actually things have changed a little bit since then.  The original thing that made a huge impact that people still remember is the fact that Jewish researchers identified a marker among Jewish families called the Cohen haplotype.

Cohen is the priestly class.  It’s a surname which is linked back in time of the Levi or Aaron, brother of Moses, and that would be the priestly class that was found among the different Israelite tribes.  The first research says we identified these markers.  It’s very dominant among the Cohen families which traditionally was the priestly family.  They have the marker.  The other families don’t have it as much as they do.

Do all the Cohen people have the marker?  No.  Do people that are not Cohen have the marker?  Yes, but the majority of the Cohens has it, so they are linking to them.  It’s never 100%, it’s never all or none.  They have it.  We link it to Jewish families, we link it to the priestly class.  Now the Lemba Tribe says we are part of the Jewish family too.  They found the Cohen haplotype among them as well, so you think genetically it makes more sense.

GT:  Right.  The story that I remember, it seemed to me, and correct me if I’m wrong.  It seemed to me they kind of had a similar story as Book of Mormon people.  They both left Jerusalem about the same time.

Ugo: Yes.

GT:  600 B.C. In the case of the Lemba tribe, they travelled through and ended up in southern Africa, married with the local population, and they have this…

Ugo interrupts: this marker.  That’s the simple story.  There are other things that could happen.  One of them is that Jews accept converts.  You are not biologically a Jew only because you are …{pauses}

GT:  born Jew.

Ugo: born Jew.  They accept converts.  What I think is that most of these Lemba thing could also be a result of a sort of a mixture, some sort of founder effect, but not much as a migration as much as they thought, maybe like a few people that came and had an interaction and then there was maybe this gene that spread.  Another thing that they discovered, this is today’s knowledge.

This marker is found among all of the Middle Eastern population, not just Jews.  It pre-dates Aaron’s time.  Arabs have it.  Muslims have it.  It matches other types of markers.  It is not Jewish-specific or Jerusalem-specific marker.  It’s a lot more spread and common than we think it is.

It’s good.  They did a study on a Jewish population.  They did a study on another population, and they did find something in common between them.

Viking versus Columbus DNA

We’ll also talk a little bit about Viking DNA. Can that be distinguished from Columbus DNA?

Ugo:  Do you think we can determine DNA from 1800 versus DNA from 1000 A.D. from Europe found in America?

GT:  I would think so.

Ugo: The answer is no.  Do you know the Vikings were in Greenland from 1000-1400 A.D., 400 years?

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DNA & Book of Mormon: It's a favorite topic of anti-Mormons because evidence seems to show that Native Americans came from Asia rather than from the Middle East as the Book of Mormon implies.  Dr. Ugo Perego is a population geneticist.  How does he explain this?  Would you be surprised that he talks about concubines?

Ugo:  We cannot deny scientifically that there were people here before Lehi.  We don’t know anything about the Jaredites really.  We think we know but we don’t know anything about the Jaredites.  Could the Jaredites play any role with pre-Lehites?  We don’t know to what extent.  We know there were people, probably millions of people.

So Lehi’s family comes.  They come from Jerusalem.  These people that are here come from Asia.  They are closely related genetically to Asian people.  Lehi’s family comes, 30, 40, 50 people.  There are the Mulekites that are coming too.  We don’t know how many.  We don’t know if they are a population isolated.  We don’t know if they mix with locals.  People say, “The Book of Mormon doesn’t say anything about others here, so they didn’t exist.”  True, but the Book of Mormon is also summary.  It is not a full record.  It’s what Mormon decided to put in there, and if its focus is to bring people to Christ, it’s going to talk about what people were doing to get ready or not ready for that.  It’s going to leave a lot of the details out.

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This is first generation.  Is that possible that because they had the gospel and they encounter other people and then teach them the gospel and they become part of their group?  You go to Jacob chapter two.  Jacob, first generation in the Book of Mormon lands, how many people are there right now of that group, the original group?  How long have they been there?  In Jacob chapter two is frustrated with the Nephites for taking too many wives and too many concubines.  You have got a group of people that are what, 60-70, they are all cousins.  Where do you get these concubines from?  How are you satisfying your sexual desires with this?

Actually I’ve been doing some discussions lately with some other people around here, according to Israelite tradition, because in the Old Testament it talks about concubines, and Hagar was a concubine of Abraham.  The reference to concubine usually—you can take wives, multiple wives according to Jewish tradition.  They are wife as long as they are part of your same culture or your same social status.  But concubines are usually foreign women.  They do not have the same status as your family, so you treat them as some sort of wife, there is a legal binding, but they do not have the same status.  Could it be that the Nephites were doing the same, some foreign women, some local indigenous women?

GT:  Today with ISIS[1] in the Middle East, a lot of times they are taking these Yazidi women and they are basically sex slaves.  Is that kind of…?

Ugo:  Sex slaves, that’s another word for concubine.  It depends culturally where you are.  Sex slaves is probably the worst situation you can have.  I mean you are really there only to satisfy sexual pleasure.  Concubine has some rights as well.  In fact even today with Islam you can have up to four wives and as many concubines as you want but the problem is that when the husband dies, the inheritance only goes to the first four wives.  As long as the man is alive, the concubines have the same rights as the women, the same lifestyle or status, but then when the husband dies they don’t get anything.  They leave.

...

Then you have Jacob chapter seven, you have Sherem,