Document Forger's Deadly Deception: The Mark Hofmann Bombings

On the morning of October 15, 1985, Mark Hofmann, a 30-year-old document forger, carried out one of Salt Lake City's most calculated crimes. Within hours, two people were dead—victims of homemade pipe bombs filled with nails that Hofmann had carefully constructed and placed in packages.

Steven Christensen was the first to die. An investor who had become suspicious of Hofmann's dealings, Christensen opened a package addressed to him and triggered the bomb. Less than two hours later, Kathy Sheets, the wife of a businessman working closely with Christensen, fell victim to an identical device in her own home. Both were killed by the same method: a pipe bomb rigged to detonate when the package was opened.

For Hofmann, the murders were not crimes of passion but calculated acts of survival. For years, he had built a lucrative career selling forged historical documents to collectors, institutions, and investors for thousands of dollars each. He had begun his deception as a teenager, impressing friends with copied signatures of old church leaders and fooling coin dealers with fake rare coins. But by 1985, his scheme was unraveling. Suspicious investors were closing in, and exposure was imminent.

Faced with the prospect of being labeled a fraud, Hofmann made a chilling calculation: it was better to eliminate those who threatened his secret than to face public disgrace. In a 1988 letter to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, later reported by the Deseret News, Hofmann revealed the twisted logic behind his actions. He rationalized that his victims would likely have died anyway—in a car accident or from a heart attack—and that he preferred taking human lives over being exposed as a fraud.

But Hofmann's violence didn't stop with Christensen and Sheets. On October 16, 1985, the day after his two victims died, Hofmann constructed a third bomb—this time intended for himself. The device detonated in his car in what appeared to be a suicide attempt. Instead of dying, Hofmann survived with injuries, a fact that would ultimately prove his undoing.