This Day In History: Forger and counterfeiter Mark Hofmann was born on this day in 1954. Considered as one of the most accomplished forgers in history, he often created documents relating to Mormon history that could embarrass them, and then sold those documents to the Church so that they could suppress them. Hofmann also forged and sold signatures of George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Boone, John Brown, Andrew Jackson, Mark Twain, Nathan Hale, John Hancock, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, John Milton, Paul Revere, Myles Standish, etc. Hofmann also forged an Emily Dickinson poem. Afraid of being discovered, he killed several people with bombs to throw suspicion away from himself. All this made for a fascinating book called The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit and Death by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.
After Hofmann was imprisoned, he was excommunicated by the LDS Church and his wife filed for divorce. Hofmann attempted suicide in his cell by taking an overdose of antidepressants. He was revived, but not before spending twelve hours lying on his right arm and blocking its circulation, thus causing muscle atrophy. His forging hand was thereby permanently disabled.
Hofmann's story was recently featured on Netflix as an American true crime documentary television miniseries called _Murder Among the Mormons_. In the week of its debut, the show was ranked third overall for original-content Video on Demand streaming, with 587 million minutes streamed, according to Neilson.
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