Further reading for Mark Hoffman/ Central Park 5

The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit and Death

The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City’s Most Infamous Crimes

Info:

1954 Salt Lake City, Utah, Mark Hoffman is born to devoutly religious parents who are part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Although it is known that he was a below average student, he had many hobbies that he excelled at, including magic, chemistry and stamp collecting he also started forging coins in his teen years.

It was forgery that Hoffman would excel at, being part of the church meant that Hoffman would go on missionary trips to countries where he would find old book stores to wander where he would buy old Mormon books and material. Soon he was forging Mormon documents that had been rumored to be lost as well as coins and even Signatures of famous Americans down to even creating a “lost” Emily Dickinson poem.

Hoffman made tons of money on his forged goods, yet spent more then he made and was in a considerable amount of debt. To pay off some of his debt he made a deal with a document collector to sell him the Mclellin collection, a lost collection of Mormon material written by an early Mormon apostle who broke ties with the church. Hoffman found he was running out of time to make credible forgeries of these documents so to buy some time he decided he would go to extreme measures.

He started constructing bombs, in 1985, document collector Steven Christiansen was killed by a bomb, his secretary injured by the shrapnel. Later that same day Kathy Sheets, the wife of a former employee of Christiansen was killed by a bomb at her house. Police initially expected the bombs were related to the collapse of the investments business. Until Hoffman accidentally injured himself severely when one of his bombed exploded in his car.

Jan 1986, Hoffman was arrested and charged on 27 counts, including first degree murder, delivering a bomb, constructing a bomb, theft by deception and communication fraud. Hoffman maintained his innocence, but as the evidence piled up against him he agreed to confess in order to remove the death penalty from the table. He was convicted and sentenced to five years to life, but the judge recommended he never be released.

The Central Park 5

This case has been a big deal in the media in current years as the five teens (now men) charged in the case had their convictions vacated in 2002 and successfully won a lawsuit against both the city and the state of NY.

April 19, 1989 a group of about 30 teenagers got together in manhattans central park, many in the group committed robbery, assaults and attacks against people jogging and riding their bikes through the park. One woman was found later severely beaten and raped she had been pulled 300 feet off the path, attacked and left there.

Five youths were falsely convicted and the case blew up in the media foe quite some time.

Episode 76

Episode link: