It seems like most lay members of the Church don’t hear much about the LDS Church working on interfaith councils.  Fewer know about Mormon schismatic groups.  I was surprised to learn that Dr. Casey Griffiths in on an interfaith council with other schismatic groups.  We’ll get acquainted with Casey, talk about his new book 50 Relics of the Restoration, and learn more about some of these groups you may not be familiar with.

https://youtu.be/bm-JRCD3AJA

Casey:  BYU has several interfaith dialogue teams. I serve on the team that dialogues with Community of Christ and other restoration breakoffs. Typically, our dialogues will involve us and a familiar set of people from Community of Christ, including Lach MacKay. Andrew Bolton is usually there, too. He's a former apostle. But sometimes we'll invite in other groups too, like Daniel Stone has become a really good friend. He's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ--Bickertonite. We found out calling them Bickertonites is kind of as offensive as calling us Brighamites. So we try and keep our terms straight.

GT:  See, I don't mind being called a Brighamite.

Casey:  I don't mind it, either. I think it's kind of fun, to be honest with you. But, we also work with--in the Independence area, for instance, there's around 30 plus churches that believe in the Book of Mormon. We've tried to reach out to the majority of them. I have a really good relationship with the Remnant Church out there that Fred Larson was the head of until he passed away a little while ago.  [There are] a few other groups like the Joint Conference of Restoration Branches and the Conference of Restoration Elders.  There's a whole alphabet soup out there, and they're all great people that believe in the restoration of the Book of Mormon, but in kind of varying and different ways. I've been to see the the Hedrickites, the Church of the Temple Lot. I've even stopped and visited the Cutlerites who, I think have eight members right now.

Check out our conversation….

Dr. Casey Griffiths teaches Church history at BYU and is author of "50 Relics of the Restoration."  He works with other Mormon schismatic groups on an Interfaith Council.

Don't miss our other conversations with Lachlan MacKay & Daniel Stone!

 

Early Mormon apostle Orson Pratt probably did more to keep the memories of the First Vision alive in the LDS Church more than any other person.  In our next conversation with Dr. Steven Harper, author of “First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins” we’ll talk about Orson’s outsized influence.

https://youtu.be/BxExFXXfgZ0

Steven:  I think it's likely that if not for Orson Pratt, we would have a much diminished collective memory, as Latter-day Saints of Joseph Smith's First Vision. He is the foremost selector and relator and repeater of the vision, to use the technical terms that Thomas Anastasio and his colleagues use, for the people who choose what we remember. That happens because someone selects it, someone repeats it often, and relates it to other important components of our shared story. Nobody did that like Orson Pratt did that in the middle of the 19th century. He got the story from Joseph Smith's own mouth.

Orson Pratt heard Joseph tell his First Vision on his way to Scotland on his mission. Joseph was on his mission to Washington, D.C. to seek redress for Missouri grievances. He and Orson Pratt cross paths in the Delaware River Valley. Orson learns the story from Joseph. He writes it in a missionary pamphlet in Scotland. That circulates all over the globe. Orson, ever after, tells that story. He tells the First Vision often.  He tells it early, he coined the term First Vision, as far as we can tell. It's in his writing in 1849, that those two words are used together for the first time in the historical record. Throughout the mid-decades of the 19th century, other church leaders are not telling the vision nearly as often, and they're not telling it in the same way. Even though Joseph Smith's records now and they've been published in the Church newspaper, Joseph Smith’s History will be published in the Pearl of Great Price in Britain in 1851. It'll be canonized in 1880. But in that 30 years, you find quite remarkable variations on the story from George A. Smith, John Taylor, Brigham Young, and others. So, it's Orson Pratt, who tells the story pretty much the way Joseph tells it and repeats it and keeps it on the forefront of minds. Finally, then, it gets canonized. We remember it the way we remember it today, largely because of the work that Orson Pratt did.

We’ll also talk about how some modern critics view the First Vision.  To hear the conclusion, sign up for our free newsletter at https://gospeltangents.com/newsletter to check out our conversation with Dr. Steven Harper.

Orson Pratt had major influence on institutional church memory of First Vision.

Don't miss our previous conversations with Dr. Steven Harper.

517: Comparing the Primary Accounts

516: Did Methodist Minister Scold Young Joseph?

515: Were Revivals in Palmyra in 1820?

514: Memory Problems with First Vision

What are the main differences between the First Vision accounts?  Why are they different, and are these differences significant?  Dr. Steven Harper is the author of “First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins” and he will weigh in on these issues.

https://youtu.be/i2YMe2K6L9o

Steven:  Excellent question. So, the 1832 and 38 are autobiographies. They are strategic memories. Joseph has stress and anxiety associated with strategic retrieval of his memory that he doesn't have when it's a spontaneous memory. So, the 1835 telling is a spontaneous retrieval. Joseph is not planning to write anything. He's not planning to tell the story of his First Vision. He's talking to this fellow from the east, Robert Matthews, and they start comparing prophetic credentials. This guy thinks he's a great spiritual leader. He's heard Joseph is, so, he's come to see him, kind of to compare notes. Maybe, there's kind of a subtle competition going on between them. I think, at least Matthews is trying to figure out if he might ally himself with Joseph Smith in some way or other.

Steven:  So, they're very curious about each other and they want to know what's going on inside each other's brains. They start swapping credentials for what makes them a prophet. Joseph says, "Well, let me tell you how the Book of Mormon came forth.  The first thing that happened is, I was worried about matters that involve eternal consequences, and I worried about it a lot. I had great anxiety.  I was distressed and perplexed, and I went to the woods to pray. I saw a fire, and then one personage revealed another.  It filled me with joy unspeakable [joy.]" It's a fast moving, relatively easy flow for Joseph.  When you compare it to the autobiographies, you notice that it's not freighted with the concern about writing. The first thing Joseph does in both of his autobiographies is he offers a disclaimer about why he can't write well.

GT:  So, the 1835 is not written by Joseph.

Steven:  That's right, it's written by Warren Parrish.  Parrish captures it.

GT:  Oh, Warren Parrish.

Steven:  Parrish captures it and puts it into his journal. Joseph is not writing it. He's not thinking about writing it. He's not thinking about, "What's the beginning of the story, the middle of story, the end of the story.  How do I structure this narrative?"  He's just spilling it out. It comes naturally to him, in that sense. It's much easier work for him when he tells it like that, than it is when he writes it. We now know that he tells it like that quite a bit in this middle 1830s period, much more than we used to think. He's telling it that way by shortly after, if not at the same time or before, he writes the 1832 autobiography. So, 1835 memory is really cool. I think one of the most telling things about it is, it doesn't seem to cause Joseph Smith the psychological need to reconcile with or deal with that Methodist minister's rejection. It's one of the things I argue in the book is the 1832 memory is an effort to make good with or at least not offend the minister or the whole world the minister represents, and that Joseph isn't very satisfied with his memory as a result of that effort. Then, I argue that the 1838 memory is an effort to take that minister head on. This is Joseph in the worst year of his life. He is in a persecution mindset. Notice how many times that account says hot persecution, the bitterest persecution.

GT:  I know Dan Vogel mentions that.[1]

Steven:  It is definitely the present that gives us that version of the past.  It's saturated with persecution. In that mode, Joseph Smith spits venom at the clergy. He calls the Methodists “priests” three times.  He knows that that's a way to offend.

[1] See

As we mentioned in a previous conversation with Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith’s First Vision was quite similar to Methodist visions of Christ of the day.  Dan says it doesn’t make sense for a Methodist minister to question Joseph’s vision.  I asked Dr. Steven Harper, author of “First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins” to weigh in on this issue.

https://youtu.be/H6SjqGFGr64

GT:  I wonder about this other issue. Methodists were known for having visions, so, it seems a little strange that a Methodist minister would reject Joseph.  Could it have been a Presbyterian minister, because they weren't as into ecstatic religious experiences, were they?

Steven:  You're right about that, but it's probably a Methodist minister. I don't think Joseph is mistaken about that. Let me give you a potential interpretation of the facts that make sense. So, right now you're feeling like there's incongruity in Joseph's story. If he had reported a vision…

GT:  I'm trying to give Dan's view.

Steven:  Right. That's what he's saying, exactly.

...

Steven:  Joseph is not attuned to the fine points of debate, even inside the Methodist clergy. He doesn't know, as a later author put it, that orthodoxy became Methodized, and then Methodism became orthodox. In other words, he's not aware of what the Methodist ministers are aware of. That means that he thinks that going into the woods and having a vision is evidence of a Methodist conversion.  It finally worked. The Methodists told me that might work. It was a Methodist minister, who said, "If you lack wisdom, ask God. I did everything they said, and I tried it and tried it before and it never worked, and, finally, it worked." So, Joseph's initial interpretation of his experience is, "I have now a Methodist conversion." What you do in that case, is you report it to the Minister. You get validated. He's shocked when he gets anything but validated, and so that's the point, right? You're saying, "Well, wouldn't a Methodist minister say, 'Yeah, that was a great vision you had.'"  Not necessarily.

Steven: Right.  Think about reasons why that might not be the default response. This Methodist minister may be aware that Methodism is trending toward enthusiasm, which is not a positive term in those days. That means to be crazy, or it's beginning to be [thought of as being crazy.]"  There are some in the Methodist ministry, who are trying to pull back from that over-enthusiastic response.  Lorenzo Dow is still going, and he's still working people into frenzy, but some of the Methodist clergy are saying, "Oh, that's just a little too weird for me." It's also the case that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, has prophesied, "Look. We're going to grow like gangbusters, and the risk we run is becoming formalists." We might grow exponentially and get to a point where we’re like everybody else where we speak of God with our mouths, but we deny the power thereof. We have a form of godliness, but we deny His power. "Don't ever do that," John Wesley says. So let's say you're a Methodist minister, and you've been influential in getting this feeling among the people that they can come to Christ. It's all good until you see maybe some people getting a little excessive for your comfort level, maybe going a little too far. Then one of them comes to you and says, "Guess what? It worked. I saw God and Christ in the woods, and guess what they said? Everybody here, including you, sir, have a form of godliness, but you deny the power, thereof." That's the cue for the Methodist minister to say, “[No.]”

Were you aware that Methodists of the day had visions of Christ?  Did a Methodist minister scold Joseph about his vision? Check out our conversation….

Did a Methodist Minister really scold young Joseph Smith ...

Dr. Wesley Walters was one of the first people to question Joseph’s Smith’s account of the First Vision, saying there were no reports of revivals near Palmyra, NY in 1820 as Joseph Smith claimed.  Is there another way to interpret this?  BYU Professor Steven Harper is the author of “First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins” and seeks to answer this issue.  Were there revivals in 1820?

https://youtu.be/l_xk2KVDAig

Steven:  Do you know there weren't? No. You know that there's no evidence in the newspaper, for example. So, Wesley Walters takes the geographical area to be Palmyra village, and he shows that there are no newspaper accounts of camp meetings in the Palmyra village area in the 1820 window. That's what he knows. So let me be crystal clear. The fact is that he overstated it. Milton Backman did find a reference to a camp meeting in early 1820 in a Palmyra newspaper. So, Wesley Walters knows that the facts are, that in the records he researched, there was little to no mention of unusual religious excitement in Palmyra village in 1820. Well, what he doesn't know is, is there unusual is excitement in the 'whole district of country where we lived,' right? That's Joseph's line. Joseph doesn't say Palmyra village. He says, 'the whole district of country, indeed the whole region of country.'

Steven:  Joseph locates the unusual religious excitement around Manchester, which is actually where his family lives. They don't live in Palmyra, at the time of the vision or within a couple of years of it. So, you can't decide whether something's anachronistic or not, if you are deciding all the parameters of that.  You can't be too close-minded about what Joseph means. One danger is not listening to Joseph well enough, deciding what he means. This is, I think, a problem with quite a lot of people, believers, unbelievers. They think they know what he means before they know what he means. So, I'm not sure I know everything he means, but I am more inclined to let him explain himself.  I'm inclined to listen to him and trust him. I believe he tells an accurate story. Now, I'm not saying it's not distorted. I think he probably did blend memories about Presbyterianism. The idea of saying, "Mom, I know for myself Presbyterianism isn't true." I wouldn't be surprised if that's a later 1820s memory.

GT:  Yeah. Because doesn't his mother and sister join the Presbyterians about 1823?

Steven:  We don't know when they join. That's another thing people assume.  We do not know when they joined. The records don't exist. We know when they leave the Western Presbyterian Church. We don't know when they join. If we did, it might help us sort through some of these things. Assuming that we know when they did is a problem.

Can we find evidence of revivals in 1820?

Steven:  People set out to see what other evidence there might be and among these people was Milton Backman, a University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. [He's a] well-educated Latter-day Saint. He dug into the 'whole region of country.' He used Joseph Smith geographical scope. Joseph used the Methodist term: the whole district of country seemed affected by the unusual religious excitement. So, where Wesley Walters cast his net small in Palmyra Village, a few miles north of Joseph Smith's farm, Professor Backman cast his net wide around the whole area of country, the whole district.

Steven:  What he found was lots of evidence for unusual excitement on the subject of religion. The word revival comes up often, as if that's the measuring stick. A revival is the measuring stick. What often happens is people think a revival equals a camp meeting. All those things are related, but they're not all the same thing. If you confuse them for the same thing, you might mistake what you're looking at. So, there is evidence for a camp meeting in the newspaper in Palmyra in 1820.

Critics of Joseph Smith’s First Vision account claim that Joseph changed his accounts over the years, resulting in contradictions between the four primary accounts.  Could there be other ways to explain these discrepancies?  Dr. Steven Harper from BYU has written a book called “First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins” that seeks to answer some of these questions.

https://youtu.be/qIwKlT8R15w

Steven:  I decided that the first part of the book would be about Joseph Smith's memory. How did he consolidate? How did he form his memories of the First Vision? And what's the nature of those memories? The premise, really, from the beginning is that memories are not what we often think they are.  Memories aren't like some kind of data that you can record to a DVD or keep in a file folder somewhere where you just retrieve it, and it's the same data every time. We talk about memory that way, but that is not how it works. An autobiographical memory, like Joseph's memories of his First Vision, are real-time creations.  He produced the memory every time he told the memory or recorded it. He produced it out of the past, for sure. There were components of memory that he used, but he also always had some present context that was very essential to the way the memory was shaped. This is what we all do. We might think we don't. But this is what we all do. We have a present situation. It prompts us in some way or other to think about our past. We gather up pieces of the past, and we fuse them together, and form them in a way that makes sense in our present, and that addresses the needs of our present. That's how Joseph Smith came up with his memories of the First Vision. So, people might ask, are they accurate or inaccurate? It depends on what you mean.

Steven:  Memories are accurate, and memories are inaccurate, both.  They're not perfect or distorted. They're both of those things. There's no way around that, not for anybody. So, memories are what they are. His [Joseph Smith's memories] are fascinating. The first chunk of the book tells about how he formed those memories.  What was the present context, in which he formed each of his various memories of his First Vision that we have record of? Then the second part of the book is how a collective memory first formed. How did the earliest Latter-day Saints besides Joseph Smith, who came to know about his vision, remember it? What roles did they have? How did that work? That part goes up through the canonization of Joseph Smith's history in the Pearl of Great Price in 1880. Then, the third chunk of the book is about contested memory. It's about the fight over what the First Vision means.  [The fight] over whether Joseph's memories are accurate or inaccurate or distorted or made up or half-remember dream, as Fawn Brodie said, or all the various claims. The stakes have really been raised on the First Vision in the last 50 years or more, and so that's a compelling story.

GT:  Yeah, definitely. I'm curious, because you've got a background in history, and you're going into all this memory stuff, which sounds more like a scientific thing. Did you consult with a neurologist or a memory expert, or something, as you wrote this book?

Steven:  I did. When I first started, I talked a lot to my brother, who's a psychologist, a Ph.D. psychologist. I said, "What about this idea? What about that?"  He said, "That would work. That'd be good." He pointed me in the right directions. "Here are some things you need to read. Here are some things you need to stop assuming."  One thing that historians commonly assume is that memories are like something that you can carbon date, that there's kind of a predictable rate of radioactive decay attached to a memory. You'll hear people talk about it like that.  "Well, this memory was 18 years after the vision, so it's not as good as one that was 10 years or 12 years after the v...

There are many people who wondered how Mark Hofmann hid his secret life of forgeries from his own wife Dorie.  Brent Ashworth was among those.  In our final conversation with Brent, he tells how he came to realize Dorie was duped like everyone else, and how he apologized to Dorie for his beliefs about her.

https://youtu.be/l_YuP_odY9k

Brent:  I always thought Mark was using his wife, that she was in on some of this, because she was so near to it. I was kind of taking it out mentally on his wife, on Dorie for those years. Finally, it dawned on me. It takes me a little while. But finally, it dawned on me that she was just as much in the dark as the rest of us were, even though she was right next to him, and that I'd been kind of blaming her or I shouldn't have blamed her for any part in it. I felt guilty. I thought, "I need to go apologize to Dorie." So, it was 1990, it was 3 years after Hofmann's gone to the slammer. I went up to her house and it was the same door.  She was behind the screen [door,] and I think she was a little surprised to see me.

Remember, to check out our conversation, you need to sign up for our free newsletter.  If you're not already signed up, go to https://GospelTangents.com/newsletter to hear the final part of our conversation with Brent Ashworth.

By the way, if you would like to visit Brent's "museum", here is how you can set up an appointment.

Brent loves visitors. Just give him a call so you can check out his amazing collection!

 

Brent Ashworth gave an apology to Dorie for believing she was involved in Mark Hofmann's crimes.

Don't miss our previous conversations with Brent!

512:  Emily Dickinson Forgery

511:  Hofmann's Court Mistake

510:  Tragedy Before Hofmann Trial

509:  Catching More Hofmann Forgeries

508:  Brent Called Salamander Letter Fake

507:  Hofmann's Motive Against Church

506:  Why 3rd Bomb wasn't Suicide Attempt

505: McLellin Collection Offers

504: Lucy Mack Smith Forgery

503: Mark's Unknown Half Million$ Deal

502: Hiding from Hofmann

501: Meeting Serial Killers

The Emily Dickinson forgery was briefly touched on in the Netflix documentary.  It turns out that Brent Ashworth played a critical role in identifying that forgery.

https://youtu.be/pzT8gDduP7o

GT:  So, basically what you're telling me is Mark offered that back to you in 1984, I believe it was.

Brent:  He offered it to me in '84. He knew that was my favorite poet. That was manufactured for me, I'm just sure.

GT:  Okay.

Brent:  Nobody else knew about it. It ends up, 13 years later.

GT:  But you read it and said..

Brent:  I told Mark, it's horrible. I said, "It looks like her writing to me."  I didn't question the fact that she'd written it, but I didn't want it. I'm not going to spend $10,000 for a poem that I think's the worst one she'd ever written. I didn't know Hofmann had written it. Now, it makes perfect sense because of Hofmann's ideology, "God doesn't care about us, so we don't care about him." That's kind of [Mark's attitude,] which is not the way Latter-day Saint people that love Emily Dickinson know about her writing.

GT:  Right. So, essentially, he sold it to somebody else.  It floated around the US and then ends up in the Sotheby's catalog.

Brent:  What happened was that Shannon Flynn had taken it down to Todd Axelrod for Mark [Hofmann].  Todd Axelrod was this dealer down in Nevada.  There used to be autograph stores in about six big malls around the country. There was one that I visited years ago in the Galleria Mall in Dallas, Texas. There was one, as I recall, in Florida. There was one in Philadelphia.  There were six big malls around the country. Todd began in Las Vegas at the Showplace Mall, right on the strip. That's where his first store was. That's where Shannon Flynn took that and a few other things to him, before the Hofmann bombings and all that. It's interesting, so you might ask Shannon about it sometime. He carried that stuff down there.

Find out how in our next conversation with Brent!  Do you think Axelrod sold it without disclosing that it was affiliated with Mark Hofmann?

Brent Ashworth recognized the Emily Dickinson poem as a Hofmann forgery, offered to him in the 1980s.

Don't miss our other conversations with Brent!

511:  Hofmann’s Court Mistake

510:  Tragedy Before Hofmann Trial

509:  Catching More Hofmann Forgeries

508:  Brent Called Salamander Letter Fake

507:  Hofmann’s Motive Against Church

506:  Why 3rd Bomb wasn’t Suicide Attempt

505: McLellin Collection Offers

504: Lucy Mack Smith Forgery

503: Mark’s Unknown Half Million$ Deal

502: Hiding from Hofmann

501: Meeting Serial Killers

Brent Ashworth tells about his testimony at the preliminary hearing to decide whether Mark Hofmann should be bound over for trial.  Was it effective testimony?  I’ll let you decide.

https://youtu.be/-yHLYgAgHu4

Brent:  I wasn't saying anything nice about him. I asked Bob Stott, afterwards I said, "Bob, how come they didn't call me back?" I said, "I would have called me back and tried to..." He said, "Look, you were throwing javelins," is the way he put it, "at his client for two solid hours. You knew way too much." He said, "He's not going to ever call you back.  Don't worry about it.”

We will also talk about a tactical mistake made by Mark Hofmann’s defense team, which caused Mark to decide to plead guilty rather than risk a jury trial.

Brent:  Hofmann's attorney asked to meet with the judge in chambers and Stott met with him, the two lead [lawyers.] And Yengich says, “My client is really still suffering from his wounds.” His knee and his fingers have been blown [off.] He was being pushed in there every day by his dad and his wife in a wheelchair. And he said, “I am unable to adequately visit with him because of the pain and suffering.” He says, “It would really benefit if we had one week off from this [court.] If we could ask for a week off, [it would really help.] Judge Grant told me, “By this point, I wouldn't get to give him a day off.”

But he said, “It struck me that maybe I should because I might get reversed when I got further up the chain. So I gave him a week off:. And he said, “What really griped me is when he came back a week later and says I need one more week.” And he says, “I was really [angry.] I didn't want to.”

But he finally decided to give him the second week. We gave him the week. He says “Do you know Brent? Something funny happened. The one thing that I didn't have before he got those two weeks off, is I knew he's a bad guy. But I didn't have a motive for him to kill Steve and Kathy. I didn't have any motive for murder there. And that's why I was questioning whether to turn it over or not. You know, at that point, I knew he was a bad guy. I didn’t like him, but he said, a killer they didn't make him out to be.

And so, I was wondering, and we gave him the two weeks. He says, “When we came back, that's when they had Throckmorton. And they found the forgeries. He says you might not have known the sequence of that. But he says that came about during that two weeks that Hofmann had his two weeks off. He says they nailed his butt to the wall while he was gone is when they found the cracking in the ink. And they found the forgeries.

GT:  So was that kind of a mistake by the defense then to ask for the two weeks off?

Brent:  Oh, yeah, it was a big mistake.

Check out our conversation….

Mark Hofmann's defense team made a tactical mistake by asking for more time, allowing the prosecutors time to find the forgeries.

Don't miss our other conversations with Brent!

 

 

After the bombings, Brent Ashworth left town to avoid becoming a target.  To his dismay, his 7-year-old son was involved in a serious accident and died just days before the Hofmann trial.  Brent shares the details of this tragic loss.

https://youtu.be/fE5JI1oIdls

Brent:  We had a rule in our house, at the time, that the kids were never allowed on bikes on Sunday. Anyway, we went out on Saturday and the next day, the kids were on bikes. My youngest brother wouldn't have known that. [My brother Kip and his wife] were staying with our kids, during that time, a couple of days that we were gone.  The only hour that they were not there, hour and a half or so, was during the time this accident took place. They had to go down. Their church assignment was to feed the missionaries at the MTC. So, they went down to do their church calling. They left our 12-year-old daughter, Amy Jo, in charge for an hour and a half. Well, boys, you know, the cat's away... They got on their bikes. At the time, we had these five little boys and two sons born after that. We had nine children all together, two daughters. ..So, the boys are on bikes and we had given John a new little blue bike for his birthday. Sam grabbed it.  Our house overlooks the Provo Temple.  It was up in Oak Hills area and the road feeds down about a football length from our home into a more major road going down this way. The boys were racing to the corner to see who could outrace each other. Our son, Sam, who had just turned seven, grabbed his big brother John's bike. He said, "I'll beat you to the corner, John."

Brent: Well, he'd taken his big brother's bike and so John and the other boys were behind him, chasing him down to the corner. Three teenagers in a car, a Camaro, were coming down the feeder road and they'd been up on the hill. It was Sunday. They'd been up on the hill drinking beer and shooting. They're all 19 years old, should have been on missions but they weren't ready to go on missions. When they saw our son, the kid in the back seat said that the kid that was driving...decided he could beat the kid and he pushed on the gas and my son hit the windshield and flew over the car into the end of the concrete into this blacktop.  They lost control of the car and ended up upside down in the neighbor's front lawn, going down the hill. It's a wonder they weren't badly hurt, the three of them.  They crawled out of the car and the car was badly damaged. It had the trunk broken open and there were beer cans and ammo and guns laying all over the front lawn.  They got out okay. Our son, looking at him, it looked like he was dead, initially.  He had flown over the car and into the street. Our daughter, Amy, could hear the commotion.  She ran out there and saw her brother lying in the street.  She was, of course, really crying and everything, really bad.

Brent discusses the trying months in which is son hovered between life and death, losing him just days before Brent and his wife were set to testify in the Hofmann trial.  Do you think Brent's son was a third Hofmann victim?  Check out our conversation….

Tragedy struck the Ashworth household when a drunk driver struck 7-year-old Sam, who died just days before Brent & his wife had to testify at the Hofmann trial.

Don't miss our previous conversations with Brent!

509:  Catching More Hofmann Forgeries

508:  Brent Called Salamander Letter Fake

507:  Hofmann’s Motive Against Church

506:  Why 3rd Bomb wasn’t Suicide Attempt

505: