Netflix's "Murder Among the Mormons" was inspired by Utah's oddities: Co-director Tyler Measom has a complicated history with Utah.

• Author: Swanson, Jacob

TYLER MEASOM HAS LONG FELT A CALLING to tell the lore of Utah. In March of 2021, he brought one of the state's most famous stories to millions of televisions across the world with "Murder Among the Mormons."

The three-part Netflix docuseries tells the story of Mark Hofmann--a prolific forger of documents pertaining to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--and the series of bombings he committed in the 1980s.

"Murder Among the Mormons" brought the story to a mainstream audience and made a star out of the late Shannon Flynn, who was interviewed for the series that became one of Netflix's most-watched titles of the spring.

Both Measom and co-director Jared Hess--writer and director of "Napoleon Dynamite"--grew up in Utah. They began researching the story in 2017 and pitched it to anyone that would listen. They even sent it to Netflix a previous time before the streaming conglomerate accepted their second pitch.

Just researching and pitching the story was a big push--but once Netflix accepted the project, the work only intensified. "If was a labor of love trying to convince people that this is an amazing story, and I'm insanely proud of it," Measom says. "Not just because of the content, but because it was done. Because I made it. We made this project. We brought it into the world where it wasn't before."

Measom believes he made a documentary series that was "very even-handed" and fair, one that doesn't take unnecessary shots at the Church or its members and didn't turn the story into more than what it was. "I think a lot of people were afraid that this massive Netflix project would throw punches at people's beloved faith--or conversely, I think people wanted the project to pull the rug out from the Church's upstanding nature, if you will--but it didn't. I just wasn't part of the story," Measom says. "We told the story in three hours, mainly focusing on Mark ..."

Hofmann forged many documents in the 1980s, several of them pertaining to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2002, the Deseret News reported that the Church had discovered 446 Hofmann forgeries in its collections. Then, in October of 1985, three bombings set the situation in motion.

Two of the bombings killed Steve Christensen and Kathy Sheets, for which Hofmann pleaded guilty to two second-degree murder charges in 1987. The other bombing injured Hofmann himself.

While Measom believes the story told was a fair one, he felt that a series titled "Murder Among...