The story of forgiveness missing from Netflix’s ‘Murder Among Mormons’

The new documentation on real crimes “Murder Between the Mormons” arrived on Netflix this week, missing the little-known true story of forgiveness that followed the disappointments and cold-blooded murders committed by master forger Mark Hofmann in the 1980s.

Fifteen years after Hofmann killed Steve Christensen and Kathy Sheets with riddled nail bombs in Salt Lake City, Hofmann’s eldest son turned 19 and decided he wanted to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years old.

Coincidentally, Hofmann’s ex-wife, Dorie Olds, had made friends with Judge Kenneth Rigtrup, the man who sentenced Hofmann to prison.

“I was working and had an office with a group of women in a building in Millcreek, south of Salt Lake, and Judge Rigtrup had an office where he mediated,” Olds told Deseret News. “I started to meet him, and I would greet him if he were there and talk to him for a few minutes, and he would tell me a few things about what happened. He would share some stories and talk to me. He supported me a lot and was very friendly. “

When Olds and Hofmann’s son received his mission call in Germany in 2000, Olds naturally shared the news with Rigtrup.

“I knew he would be interested. I told him that I knew that the family – the grandparents and other members – would be able to collect the monthly amount that we would need to pay each month to support a missionary, but I still didn’t know how I was going to get the money for all the things together. he needed to get ready, like the clothes.

“He said, ‘Let me make a call to Mac Christensen.'”

Christensen was a legend in Utah as the owner of Mr. Mac, a chain of clothing stores specializing in shirts, suits and pants for Latter-day Saint missionaries.

Mac was also the father of Steve Christensen, whose life suddenly ended when he picked up a package containing a bomb made and planted by Hofmann outside his office in Salt Lake City. Hofmann’s goal was to get investigators out of the smell of his decaying house of cards built on forged documents.

It worked, for a while, but the heinous crime stole Mac Christensen from his eldest son. Steve Christensen was 31 years old, a husband, father of small children, businessman and book collector and Latter-day Saint bishop with immense potential.

Mac and the rest of the Christensen family were devastated.

Olds was surprised by Rigtrup’s offer to call Mac Christensen.

“I was like, ‘Really?’ I was amazed, ”she said. “Like, ‘Would he do that?’ He said, ‘Yes, let me call.’ So he did. “

Rigtrup told Mac that there was an anonymous missionary with a struggling single mother who needed help to be equipped for a mission, according to Ed Bagley, who heard Rigtrup’s story before he died in 2019. It was repeated at the funeral of Rigtrup.

“Mac was eager to help,” said Bagley. “At the end of the call, Ken said, ‘Mac, I want you to know who you’re helping.’ Then he said to him: He was the son of Doris Olds. “

The judge who had sentenced Mark Hofmann to prison for murder was now asking the father of one of his victims to help Hofmann’s son serve a mission by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

After a long silence, Mac said, “I need to talk to my family about this,” said Bagley.

A few days later, Mac called Rigtrup and told him that the Christensen family would be happy to provide their son’s clothes for the mission.

“I made the arrangements,” Rigtrup reported to Olds. “Call the store.”

Olds can’t remember whether she or his mother called Mr. Mac outlet. In a 2019 book, one of Christensen’s children reported that he received a call from Olds’ mother and set up the meeting.

“They were very kind,” said Olds of Mac’s son, Spencer Christensen, and the rest of Mr. Mac’s team when she took her mother and son shopping. “They were very polite and professional. I wasn’t sure how to be. I mean, how should you act around someone when your ex-husband killed her brother? I mean, this is really interesting. I was just polite and I was very grateful. I had a very grateful heart. There was no constraint. They were very kind to me. “

Olds said he showed Spencer Christensen the list of items his son needed.

“Of course, they are experts in gathering supplies for missionaries,” she said. “They started to stack things on the counter and make sure we had everything. Then they packed up everything and neither a receipt nor a price tag. I had no idea how much it costs to send a missionary. Other mothers will say, ‘Well, it’s too much.’ I have no idea how much it costs. Not a penny. Nothing. They said, ‘Thank you’. I said thank you.’

“The only thing I was asked to do was not to tell anyone, I would not tell this story to anyone.”

Olds didn’t talk about it. Until she felt compelled a few years later, during a symposium on her ex-husband’s crimes organized by bookseller Ken Sanders.

Tom Smart, Deseret News

“He asked me to go,” she said. “I didn’t want to and I was scared. I was very shy at the time. I didn’t want to speak. I finally decided to go at the last minute. I went and answered some questions. “

That’s when talking about forgiveness has become contagious.

“I think it was Al Rust who started talking about forgiveness,” said Olds of a friend of Hofmann whom he defrauded by tens of thousands of dollars. “He said, ‘I thought of Mark as a son, and I loved him, and I still love him and I just have to forgive him. I just have to let it all go. ‘”

Olds felt he needed to say something.

“I had to break my promise,” she said. “It was a promise, but I had to break it. I got up and said, ‘This is what happened. Here is this person, she is helping the son of the man who killed his son. That really was an incredible thing, I am very grateful for that. “

The Christensens too. Years before Mac Christensen died in 2019, he also forgave Hofmann, using his lost son’s kindness as an example of how to live.

“I forgave him,” Mac told Deseret News in 2011. “I wouldn’t ask to be let out, but I forgave him. This is what you have to do. You have to forgive and just help people. “

Mac’s son who equipped the new missionary described the aftereffects in the correspondence published in “The Divine Gift of Forgiveness,” a book by Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints :

“That boy may have received free clothing, but the gift I received is priceless,” wrote Spencer Christensen. “I did not feel anger or hatred for your father; that burden was not mine to carry. It was about doing what the Savior would do. “

Netflix knew the story, but it was between hours of information that had to be left in the editing room. Jared Hess, the co-director of “Murder Between the Mormons”, who heard Olds’ story, shared it briefly on KSL’s “The Movie Show” last week.

“Here the victim’s father intervenes and quietly offers to help the family of the guy who murdered his son,” said Hess. “It’s just unbelievable and proof of how incredible he was.”

Olds asked for privacy for his son. She is now 62 and works as an awareness trainer in Millcreek, Utah. It helps people with stress relief and personal development.

Ironically, his career grew with the use of his ex-husband and the months and years of anguish after Hofmann was seriously injured by one of his own bombs and, later, investigators finally discovered that he was not another victim of a series of bombings but it was actually the bomber himself. Then she had to manage court hearings, Rigtrup’s Hofmann sentence, divorce and single motherhood.

“People ask me, ‘Well, do you know what stress is like?’ Oh yeah. I know stress, ”she said with a laugh full of life experience.

Tyler Sipe, Deseret News

“I remember my family coming and other people coming, all that time,” she said. “They would come and feel bad and they wanted to help me. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know what to say. You cannot take this away. What do you do? I remember them coming without knowing what to say, and I would be the one who would make them feel better. I would be the one to talk to them about it. They would go away very happy, very relieved, very well. It was me doing the job for them. This is what I do in my life. I help people feel better. So that was a premonition. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a premonition of my life’s work, helping people to feel better ”.

Olds said he liked “Murder Between the Mormons”. The directors interviewed her for hours, in a morning session and an afternoon session, at the Masonic Temple in downtown Salt Lake City. She has been interviewed for documentaries many times over the years. The part of the story that has never been shared with any of them, she said, is the part of God’s help.

“I would tell the truth to those people who came to see me, and I would talk about the Spirit and about God and about feeling supported. That part of the story was never really told. “

Now, she is starting to count. She said that KSL-TV plans to broadcast an interview with her soon about God’s place in her history.

“I thought everything that happened (in the Netflix document series) was amazing, the smooth transition to each piece and how they put it all together,” said Olds. “It was fantastic. The editing was great. There is a lot on the court floor. I know it is kind of difficult to do that. I am very grateful to KSL for being able to tell that part of the story that is not really told.