RELIGION

Ex-Wife Of Utah Bomber Shares Story Of Finding Faith In Darkness

Mar 9, 2021, 11:09 PM | Updated: Mar 10, 2021, 5:50 am

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – “He felt control when he could make people have certain emotions, and he did that a lot with me,” is how Dorie Olds described a part of her life with Mark Hofmann, her ex-husband and infamous Utah bomber.

After 36 years, the story has taken center stage in the Netflix production, “Murder Among the Mormons.”

One part of the story that Olds felt has never been told is how she was able to cope with the trauma — and that is through her faith.

In 1985, a man and a woman were brutally murdered by bombs in Salt Lake City. The KSL-TV news team covered the stories that continued for years until Hofmann was convicted of those crimes and forgery and sentenced to life in prison.

But this is the story from the perspective of his then-young wife, which has never been told.

“We had religion in our house. We did pray,” Olds said.

Olds grew up in a Latter-day Saint family in Salt Lake City.

“And for me, I did not have deep roots,” she said. “Like, that’s how I would say it is a plant with like little, teeny tiny roots into the ground, but not very deep, but they were there.”

She met Hofmann while they were both students at Utah State University. She felt she had a spiritual warning the night before their marriage in the Salt Lake Temple.

“So, I’m in bed, not really going to sleep, but just laying in bed,” Olds said. “And suddenly I hear this really, loud voice that says, ‘You don’t have to do this.'”

Worried about the reaction from both sets of parents, she went on with it, and quit her job to let Hofmann finish school — but the lies began there as he never did.

“What do you need to do to graduate? And he was all wishy-washy about that graduation thing,” Olds said. “So I don’t think he had any intention. I don’t think he even went to school that last year.”

“Every day there was always something that was not good,” Olds added.

KSL’s Carole Mikita asked if Olds was afraid of him. “No,” she replied.

And then, was Hofmann abusive?

“Well, he was, he was covertly abusive,” Olds said. “I remember watching that movie ‘Gaslight’ going, ‘Oh, that’s what I went through.’ Because there were things that were going on. But I wasn’t seeing that.”

From 1980 to 1985, Hofmann was working as a documents dealer, claiming to have found rare historic manuscripts when, in fact, he was a forger.

Olds was busy raising their three young children. She said she felt like a possession.

“I was told, it doesn’t matter what you want, or what you think. That was creepy and odd to me,” she said.

“Like you belong to him?” Mikita asked.

“Exactly,” Olds said. “And that was true. In a sense, what I realized during our marriage is that what’s mine was his. And what’s his was his but nothing of his was mine.”

During the years when Hofmann was forging documents about the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he would invite friends to their home and embarrass Olds.

“And then he stopped in the middle of the discussion group, and he’d say, ‘Dorie, do you still believe in the Church? Do you still believe in Joseph Smith? Do you still believe in Book of Mormon? I was stunned,” Olds said. “‘Yes.’ And he’d go, and he’d, he would put me on the spot. And he was like, ‘Really? And you get upset? It’s like, how can you believe that?’ And so here I am, in my own home, with these people. They’re all witnessing this.”

The bombings that Hofmann said were to cover up or divert from his forgeries, shattered the lives of Steve Christensen’s family and Kathleen Sheets’ family, along with his own family as well.

“It’s like I had to start really listening to answers to prayer and had to really start finding my faith,” Olds said. “And I did with that. Everything’s going to be OK, I trusted that, I trusted that I knew that was true. ”

When a third bomb critically injured Hofmann, Olds was terrified.

“I was shaking,” she said. “And I think I shook. I don’t know how long, weeks I was just shaking. And I couldn’t stop.”

As police focused on Hofmann as a suspect, he did what he had done so often — he blamed Olds.

“And then I had his parents telling me, this is all your fault. This is all your fault. This is all your fault. You’re the one that made him do this. This is all your fault,” Olds said. “And I went out the door and went out into the hallway and there was no one there. And as I stood there in the hallway, I heard that voice again. Here’s this voice coming in and saying, ‘Everything’s going to be OK. Everything’s going to be OK.’ And I had this really deep feeling of peace, which I can still find today.”

When her husband came home from the hospital, Olds still did not believe he was guilty but again she heard that voice tell her that the uncertainty would not last.

“I knew we weren’t going to stay married, that whatever was happening, I didn’t know what would be going on with him,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. But I remember hearing when he came home, it’s like I kept hearing, ‘It’s about 18 months, you have about 18 months.'”

Olds said she was in shock once her husband was arrested, but good people just came to her. Strangers gave her money at the grocery store, and even though she didn’t want to, she was inspired to go to Church.

“You’re going to go to church. That’s what I was hearing in my head,” Olds said. “And so I come in with these four kids and come in the back and going into the Cultural Hall and immediately people jumping up, and one’s taking the baby and one’s taking this and other.”

Not everyone was welcoming. “I had one woman tell me, ‘You need to leave, you need to leave, you’re polluting the church you need to leave right now.’”

Her Latter-day Saint bishop was told and he took her into his office. “He said you are not leaving … we’re going to help you,” Olds said. “You’re going to be here. You’re you are not leaving this Church.”

Mikita asked if Hofmann told her before he made his confession. “No,” Olds said. “He’s never confessed to me to this day.”

Her four children have families of their own and live out-of-state. But growing up was difficult as Hofmann tried to control their lives from prison.

“He said, ‘If you keep getting pregnant, you just stay pregnant, the state will take care of you, and then you’ll be OK.’ And that was his, that was his magnificent advice to me, is to stay pregnant.”

Instead, Olds got a divorce.

Mikita asked her about the people, over the years, who said she must have known was her then-husband was doing in their home — making forgeries and bombs.

“She must have known. She must have known she went in the room, which I did,” Olds said. “And I saw papers and books and all kinds of crap. You know, it wasn’t anything that I am identifying as anything.”

Olds believes she’s a different person now.

“Not really being able to stand up to him. I wasn’t able to do that,” she said. “That I that’s the part I needed to learn — stand up for myself.”

“There was a lot of low self-esteem with me. And I really felt like I wasn’t friends with God. And through all of this. It’s like, boy was I wrong. And I have more and more,” Olds said. “Way too many miracles that were specific for me that like, ‘OK, this is what she’s going to need.’ I want people to realize they are so powerful that they are it’s like, be my motto, be the divine of who you are.”

Olds is now a consciousness coach, helping others who have suffered from trauma. She lives by the motto “Never not there — the Lord is never not there.”

Mikita asked if she believes in forgiveness. “Absolutely,” Olds replied. “I mean it’s really, really important. When I forgave, I could live my life.”

Mikita also wondered about her tiny roots of faith as a child and how that has changed.

“Faith is very strong and each time I went through these experiences and felt that support, felt the spirit there or an answer to a prayer or felt that support, those were roots were growing and growing,” Olds said. “And now it’s like you can’t see them. They’re too deep. They’re way too deep.”

As a young reporter covering this story, Mikita was assigned to try to talk to Old. It didn’t happen then. But 36 years later, she was very grateful to be able to tell her story.

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Ex-Wife Of Utah Bomber Shares Story Of Finding Faith In Darkness