02x11 - Postal Mortem

[bunniefuu]

- So Steve, I see you had your breakfast of champions there with you?

- Janet McDermott planned to stop by her office only briefly on the morning of

October th, .

- Have a nice day, Steve.

- She had a number of business appointments around Salt Lake City that

day.

[expl*si*n]

Moments later, an expl*si*n rocked the building, k*lling her colleague who worked

next door. Science uncovered a tale of forgery, fraud and m*rder.

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- The expl*si*n occured on the sixth floor of the historic Judge building in downtown

Salt Lake City. k*lled in the blast was -year old Steve Christensen, a financial

consultant who left behind his wife, Terri and a young family.

- He was lying in the doorway of his office and he was lying on his right side,

burn marks on his face, smoke marks and blood.

- The expl*si*n ripped the door off it's hinges and the location of the debris told

investigators that the blast occured directly in front of Steve Christensen's

office door.

- You could tell the precise location where the b*mb exploded. Match that with

the autopsy and we could tell where the b*mb was when it exploded because of its

sheering power, breaking bones, going through skin, things of that nature.

- Small pieces of batteries and fragments of pipe were found in the hallway as well.

Many of the parts had the name Tandy imprinted, a brand sold exclusively in

Radio Shack electronic stores. All of the fragments were collected and pieced back

together, revealing that the expl*si*n was caused by a pipe b*mb. This is a replica

of the type which was used. But who wanted to k*ll Steve Christensen and why?

Christensen had recently resigned his job as Vice President of Consolidated

Financial Services or CFS, a real estate investment company which was undergoing

serious financial difficulties. Many clients had lost large sums of money and

some were alleging fraud. In the debris, police discovered a piece of brown

wrapping paper with Christensen's first name written in thick black marker. Bruce

Passey had a jewelry business a few floors below Steve Christensen's office. He told

police he noticed something unusual in the elevator that morning.

- I told them that I saw a box this morning that had the name Steve

Christensen and that my father and I went up in the elevator with the gentleman

holding this box.

- Janet McDermott recalled seeing the package in the hallway directly in front

of Steve Christensen's office door. A motion sensitive mercury switch was found

in the debris, an indication that the b*mb was activated by tilting the package.

Motion-sensitive bombs are almost always delivered by the bombers themselves so

they can be delivered without going off. Bruce Passey described the delivery man as

a white male, about '" tall with medium brown hair.

- Once he came in, I mean he was wearing a high school letter jacket without the

letter on it but it had the colors of a letter jacket.

- I was just very concerned for the business community and that other people

might be involved on a revenge-type situation, whether it be for

investments gone bad or something similar to that and I was

worried who would be the next victim.

- That worry became reality just two hours later.

Two hours after the bombing which k*lled Steve Christensen,

there was another expl*si*n across town. This time the victim was -year old

Cathy Sheets.

Her husband, Gary, was the former business partner of Steve Christensen.

- It was real devastating to have your mother k*lled on your front doorstep.

You feel that you're safe in your home and that it's okay and to have something

like that happen really shattered your faith that things are okay.

- Once again, the fragments recovered at the scene were consistent with the pipe

b*mb. Police found scraps of brown paper near the blast with the name of the

victim's husband, Gary Sheets.

- The time I got to the second scene, I already knew what I was looking for if

there were going to be similarities. Within minutes, I had found the

similarities. Within five hours, I found a component. That component was a very small

piece of a Mercury switch.

- A Mercury switch was found at the Christensen b*mb site as well.

A Mercury switch is a glass ball filled with Mercury, a liquid metal.

When the Mercury is tilted, it completes the electrical circuit,

triggering the expl*si*n.

- We had a lot of similarities and they would include the cardboard container, the

types of tape, more than one type, the size of the pipe that which includes the

diameter and the length. The expl*sive inside, the type of

expl*sives inside.

- g*n powder from both b*mb sites were sent to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol,

Tobacco and Firearms lab for analysis. They store samples of every known g*n

powder manufactured. The particles of g*n powder from the pipe bombs were placed on

a profile projector, which measures the size and shape of the granules. When this

information was entered into a computer database, the g*n powder was identified as

Hercules Bullseye brand. The same type was used in both bombs. Since Radio Shack

batteries and electrical components were found at both b*mb sites, detectives

checked all of the Radio Shack stores in the Salt Lake City area. Records showed

that an individual by the name of Mike Hansen had recently purchased the same

components from this Radio Shack store in Holiday, Utah. The store had an address

for Mike Hansen but it was a vacant lot and detective suspected that the name was

an alias. The only individual who reported seeing anything suspicious at the Sheet's

home was a -year old neighbor, Aaron Taplick. He told police he saw a tan

Toyota minivan turn into the Sheet's driveway around midnight, the night before

the bombing. He said the van drove out of the Sheet's driveway a few minutes later

but the boy could offer no description of the driver.

- I think we have a serial bomber out there.

What was entering in my mind was how soon are we gonna have another bombing?

- It was a very short wait.

While investigators were sifting through the rubble of the bombings

which k*lled Steve Christensen and Cathy Sheets, there was a

third expl*si*n the very next day. This time, it happened in a parked car in

downtown Salt Lake City. The victim was -year old Mark Hoffman, a rare documents

dealer. Unlike the other two victims, Hoffman survived the blast.

Hoffman's injuries were severe. The expl*si*n blew off

the tips of two fingers, a portion of his right knee cap was missing

and a piece of metal was imbedded in his knee.

- Mark Hoffman said that he pulled open the door and the package fell from the

seat of the car onto the floorboard of the car, at which time it exploded

and he was injured.

- Mark Hoffman had no connection with the CFS Corporation. He was a well known and

respected rare documents dealer who specialized in early Mormon currency and

documents. But Mark Hoffman and Steve Christensen knew one another.

Christensen was a collector of rare books and documents and had purchased some items

from Hoffman over the years. One thing detectives knew, the bombs which k*lled

Steve Christensen, Cathy Sheets, and seriously injured Mark Hoffman were all

made by the same individual. They also knew that evidence inside Mark Hoffman's

car was inconsistent with what he told police. Hoffman said someone placed a

package on the seat of his car and when he opened the car door, the package fell onto

the floor and exploded. But when a pipe b*mb explodes, the end caps blow out in a

straight line. One of the end caps blew a hole through the side door on the

passenger side. The other end cap was found in Mark Hoffman's knee.

This important detail told investigators that the b*mb did not explode on the floor

of the car as Hoffman indicated.

- It didn't line up with the exploding b*mb. We can't change that because of the

holes in the vehicle. That's the truth, it's not taking the injured pieces of the

individual, putting them so they come in contact with the b*mb.

- The injury to Hoffman's knee indicated that his right knee was on the driver seat

at the time of the expl*si*n. And the injuries to Hoffman's fingers indicated

that he had been touching the b*mb when it exploded.

- So now we have an injured hand, an injured leg and I know the attitude the

pipe b*mb was in. I also know that he has uninjured body parts, the other

leg is in very good shape. There's not even any burn damage. So I have part of

him outside the car, part of him inside the car.

- The evidence revealed that the b*mb exploded over the center console,

in between the two front seats and not on the floor of the vehicle

as Hoffman indicated.

When police searched Mark Hoffman's home, they found a high school letter jacket

with the letter missing, similar to the one Bruce Passey saw on the delivery man

in the elevator on the morning of Steve Christensen's m*rder.

Even more alarming, police discovered that Hoffman owned a tan colored

Toyota minivan similar to the one the teenage boy saw

driving into the Sheets' driveway the night before the bombing.

Inside Hoffman's van, police discovered a single flake of g*n powder.

Tests revealed that it was Hercules Bullseye g*n powder, the same type used

in making the pipe bombs.

- We had no idea why Mark Hoffman, if he were the perpetrator, would k*ll a close

associate and friend of his, Steve Christensen. And for all we knew,

he didn't even know Cathy Lee Sheets.

- Hoffman told police that he was a victim and even took a lie detector test to prove

his innocence.

- We had him take a polygraph and he passed with flying colors. Not even close.

He passed with a high number saying that he was not deceptive and that he did not

do the bombings.

- Despite the polygraph results, investigators were suspicious

of Mark Hoffman since the scientific evidence was inconsistent

with his description of the bombing.

On the day of Steve Christensen's m*rder, Mark Hoffman was scheduled to meet

with Mormon church officials to discuss some early Mormon documents he was selling

known as the McLelland collection. Steve Christensen was active in the

Mormon church and was asked to attend that meeting in order to certify that the

documents were authentic.

- As I was inquiring about who examined the documents, it was my feeling

it had never been examined forensically.

- George Throckmorton was asked to do just that,

to use scientific forensic methods to find out whether some of

the world's leading experts had been fooled.

Despite the fact that Mark Hoffman passed a lie detector test, b*mb experts from the

Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were convinced that Mark Hoffman

was inside his automobile, possibly arming the b*mb, when it accidentally exploded.

[expl*si*n]

The scientific evidence supported their theory but missing was a motive.

- How do you prove Mark Hoffman was a m*rder*r is you first prove that he was

a con-man, that his whole life was based upon fraud.

- George Throckmorton is a forensic document examiner who was asked to examine

the rare documents Mark Hoffman had sold over the years.

He compared them to other rare documents the Mormon Church had in its

vault from the same time period which Hoffman had nothing to do with.

Under ultraviolet light, many of the documents Hoffman sold turned blue.

This was not the case with the documents the Mormon Church obtained

from other sources. Under a microscope, Throckmorton noticed that the ink

on Hoffman's documents ran in one direction.

In the other documents, the ink was absorbed by the paper uniformly,

spreading in all directions. And Throckmorton discovered

microscopic cracks in the ink on the documents Hoffman uncovered.

Throckmorton calls it alligatoring and there was none of this

in any of the other documents.

- At this point, it made us say something's wrong but we don't know what.

Why are Hoffman's documents different than the other documents?

- When Mark Hoffman's home was searched following the bombings, police discovered

a book which contained a recipe for Irongallotannic ink, an ink that was

common in the s. Throckmorton made a batch of that ink and wrote with it on

some paper. He then applied an ammonious solution which is known to age paper.

The test document displayed the same blue haze under ultraviolet light. And when it

was hung to dry, the ink ran in one direction and exhibited the same

alligatoring condition as the Hoffman documents. Finally, Throckmorton turned

his attention to the Oath Of A Freeman, believed to be the oldest printed document

in the United States. It was a document Mark Hoffman said he purchased in a used

bookstore and was valued at over $ million. It had been authenticated by both

the Library of Congress and the FBI. When Throckmorton looked at it closely, he

found a curious anomaly, there was a tiny flaw in the letter M.

- That microscopic flaw was not caused by old age, was not caused by a printing

problem, it was caused through the photographic process. Therefore that

document had to go through that photographic process.

- The flaw looked like emulsion on a photographic negative. This modern

printing method did not exist in when the Oath Of A Freeman was allegedly

written.

- Therefore it had to be counterfeit.

- Inside Hoffman's home, police discovered a receipt from a printing company in Utah.

It was for a printing plate for the Oath Of A Freeman document. The printing

company thought the plate was used to print facsimiles. In fact it was.

Hoffman took the plate, added the old ink recipe and a piece of old paper to create

the forgery and offered it for sale as an original. On the receipt was the name

Mike Hansen but it included Mark Hoffman's telephone number. It was the same name

used at the Radio Shack store to purchase the b*mb components.

Throckmorton's forensic document examination proved that Hoffman was a

fraud and a forger. Prosecuters believe that Steve Christensen was on to

Mark Hoffman and was about to expose him as a liar and possibly a fraud.

Hoffman sensed this and decided to m*rder Steve Christensen with a pipe b*mb.

But Hoffman wanted Christensen's m*rder to appear to be business-related,

so he delivered a diversionary b*mb to Christensen's former business partner,

Gary Sheets.

The boy living across the street saw a van similar to Hoffman's pull into the

Sheet's driveway around midnight.

Hoffman placed the pipe b*mb package on the front walkway to the Sheets' home.

The next morning, Hoffman delivered the primary b*mb to Steve Christensen's office

building. It was packed with more than a hundred masonry nails, leaving no doubt

that its intent was to k*ll, not injure.

The jewelry store owner identified Mark Hoffman as the man wearing the letter

jacket in the elevator. He was carrying a package addressed to Steve Christensen.

Hoffman left the package outside Christensen's office door.

It was armed with a motion-sensitive Mercury switch set to explode

when tilted at a degree angle.

- Bye. Have a good day, Steve.

- Steve Christensen picked up the package when he arrived for work.

[expl*si*n]

Two hours later, Cathy Sheets noticed the package left outside her home addressed to

her husband, Gary.

[expl*si*n]

Mark Hoffman was arrested and charged with two counts of m*rder and for theft

by deception for selling forged documents. Hoffman pleaded guilty to second degree

m*rder and was convicted. A parole board recommended that he spend the rest of his

life in prison.

Ironically, many of Hoffman's forgeries are still on the market.

- Every single document that I looked at had been forged or manipulated in some way

to make it valuable and I looked at over of his documents. Every single one of

them was forged. He never found a single genuine document ever.

- And the deception turned a mild mannered documents dealer into a k*ller.

- I think Mark is probably the most evil of people that I worked with.

Serial bombers by and large are much more evil.

They don't want to just hurt you, they want to continue to hurt many people.

- And how common is it for a bomber to blow himself up

when handling one of his own bombs?

- Not common enough.