For those who may not know, Utah and the Mormons aren’t the most exciting and colorful parts of the world. However, this story is pretty insane and happened in the heart of the Utah-Mormon community and this short documentary lets the audience learn extensively about what happened and how it did. While at times I wish the documentary went more in-depth with certain things, I also was pleasantly entertained by how complex and deep this story was in Murder Among The Mormons.
If you’ve never heard of the story of two people that were murdered by pipe bombs in Utah in the 80s, I would recommend watching this show and experiencing the mystery for yourself. It’s a wild ride and interesting enough to go into the story blind and experience it in the way that the documentary is told.
So, if you made it this far, you either know the story and who did all these things or you don’t care that much about spoilers. This documentary follows Mark Hoffman right before he was about to make a major sale to The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and looks at the wide variety of crimes he committed. Between murder, levels of theft, and profound counterfeiting and forgery, this guy had quite the reputation. The documentary felt like a mystery being solved right in front of me. After the first 15 minutes, I was basically hooked in and wanted to know why people died, how they died and how they connected to these newly found documents that could possibly affect the validity and beliefs of the Mormon faith. It’s a short enough documentary that binging through it in one or two days is totally reasonable too. If it went any longer, it would’ve felt dragged out and any shorter wouldn’t do this insane story justice. I do wish that there were more explanations on his different types of forgery techniques, but there’s enough to show the depth of Hoffman’s abilities.
The presentation is also really strong. Between reenactments, actual footage, interviews of his family, and close colleagues now and from interviews from almost 40 years ago all blend together seamlessly and create really great pacing. At the end of the documentary, it is stated that Hoffman was not interested in any interviews now. And while I would be very interested in hearing what he would have to say now, it’s probably still as horrifying to see him actually talk about the things he did in such a casual nature as he did in his older interviews.
Overall, this was a really great documentary that presented a really unique story in a smart, swift, and surprising way. A bit more information on how he committed his crimes would have improved the documentary, great watch, and engaging story.
