Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 5 · 1:39:55

Carthage Conspiracy Part 1

The video claiming new forensic proof about Carthage leans on the very two men it accuses, John Taylor and Willard Richards, for Hyrum's last words and for how many times Joseph's pistol fired.

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The question ·

Several listeners emailed about a new video claiming new forensic evidence that Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered by an inside conspiracy. Does it hold up?

Richard (relaying several listener emails)

Several listeners emailed about a new video claiming John Taylor and Willard Richards murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and Richard drags a reluctant Gerrit into answering it. Gerrit starts with the difference between an enthusiast and a trained historian, using Gettysburg tour guides, basketball coaches and Hurricane Katrina to show why accounts made at the time beat memories made decades later. Richard walks through the film's reenactment, and Gerrit points out that it uses the alleged murderers' own accounts whenever they help and throws them out when they don't, with no historian or ballistics expert in sight. They give the film a tip of the cap on John Taylor's watch, then take apart its claims about bayonets, a mob that came back to shoot Hyrum, and Saints who stayed away from the trial. Gerrit lands on a simple test: if the theory were airtight, historians who don't share our faith would win prizes proving it, and Richard announces that this one-parter is now a two-parter.

Who comes upJoseph SmithHyrum SmithJohn TaylorWillard RichardsBrigham YoungSamuel H. SmithWilliam ClaytonWilliam DanielsThomas BullockCyrus WheelockKing FollettFawn Brodie

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.

Gerrit Miracles. Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by Professor Richard LeDuc.

Richard Thank you very much, Gerrit. In this week's podcast, it's gonna be a little bit of a different podcast, actually.

Gerrit Whenever he says that, it generally means it's against my will.

Richard 100%. So we actually received several email responses. Thank you for those, by the way. We received-

Gerrit Not from my mom.

Richard No, no. We received several email responses about a new video that is claiming new conspiracy theories relating to the murder of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Gerrit I feel like calling the video movie, I won't even use the word documentary because in order to make a documentary, you have to use documents, right? So that's the whole point of a documentary is these sources say this, which is very different than I talked to this guy one time and he gave this idea to me and it seemed pretty cool. I'm not recommending anyone sees it, but since we have questions and if you're not someone who saw it, then that's fine and you don't need to, and you're already not listening to the podcast anyway, for someone who's interested.

Richard This is one of those things, right? I remember as a, actually, we talked to your mom about this, when just last night, so we had a bit of a watch party where we watched this video, and it's about two hours long.

Gerrit That's what we do.

Richard Yeah, and we watched this and the response was, it reminds me of actually being a kid, where people would say, well, if you don't ever talk about these things, then no one will ever know about these things, and then you don't have to deal with it. But gone are the days, right?

Gerrit Well, the reality is that there are people who are being, I mean, first of all, this is being sold as like a new documentary with new forensic evidence proving what really happened at Carthage. The only parts of any part of that explanation that are accurate is that Carthage exists as a place.

Richard Although after watching the documentary, I don't believe that it does.

Gerrit So Richard actually started to believe that perhaps even Carthage doesn't exist.

Richard That's how loose the facts are here that I don't even believe Carthage exists anymore.

Gerrit Obviously this, let me just give it, let's do a short brief summary.

Richard Yeah, let's do that, but even before-

Gerrit People will already tune out.

Richard Well, no, so do you want to just get to the end at the beginning? Just get to the end.

Gerrit We like to leave you with cliffhangers, but in this case, the end is so bad that we might as well start with it.

Richard So Salt Lake Tribune, as we all know, is very good friends with the church. They never write anything-

Gerrit Always publishing incredibly pro-Latter-day saint.

Richard It started as a contrary voice to the church.

Gerrit I mean, look, the Salt Lake Tribune today is, I mean, ridiculously objective and kind towards the church from what it was in the Utah Territorial days. Well, so it was founded by antagonists. It was founded by the anti-Mormon party in Utah. They were made up almost entirely of essentially apostate, Latter-day saints or non-members who moved there. A lot of people coming with the railroad, things like that. And the Salt Lake Tribune was one of their entities. And it regularly published attacks on Joseph Smith, attacks on Brigham Young, attacks on the character. They're publishing things, attacking Joseph Smith as a liar and a money digger. I mean, in the newspaper, it's like, oh, look, new evidence of them. So.

Richard It is funny every time, with all this new evidence that all says the same thing. New evidence. Yeah, that Eberhaus said.

Gerrit Yeah, yeah, you haven't heard this before, but this guy looked for treasure. I mean, it was, so anyway, it was much more antagonistic then. But your point is that it's not a, it's not. It's not owned by the church.

Richard And it certainly isn't a friend.

Gerrit It's not like the Deseret News.

Richard Right. And in this article, which we'll publish a link to this particular article. And this article, by the way, makes all kinds of jabs at the church. Plenty of them, even in this article. But boy, they absolutely skewer this. And in a way that saying things that we would be afraid to say without full freedom of the press.

Gerrit Yeah, which we don't have. But yeah, I mean, so the reaction is that by both people who are believers and then also other academics who outside of belief, whether they're Latter-day Saints or not, are going to see this quasi-documentary as really as ridiculous in both what it's arguing and its conclusions and what it's using and taking for evidence.

Richard The thing is is that, so what happens essentially in this particular article or in this particular documentary is that you have a circumstance where they are hypercritical of other types of reports, other types of things that are said, other types of sources. And then when they themselves lay out their case, they are fast and loose.

Gerrit Yeah, well, and that's what you find actually with most people who aren't actually academics. And so look, I mean, I understand that history is something that a lot of people love, but there's a really big difference between being a trained historian and being an enthusiast and someone who really likes it. And we really kind of, we confuse the two. I mean, a great example of this is, I go to my son's basketball games, right? And I'll be thinking in my head, well, the coach should have done this or the coach should have done that. And well, I've never coached a basketball team. Right now, I really like basketball. I've played basketball, but am I a coach? Have I read a single book on coaching? Have I experienced anything or outside of some minor thing? But there I am watching the Utah Jazz saying, yeah, Snyder really should have made that switch quick.

Gerrit You know, I think that because I'm invested emotionally and because I spend a lot of time on it, that that's the same thing as being an expert on it. And to the point where, you know what? They should have taken Sabathie out in the eighth inning. Where it's like, well, actually, I don't even have experience coaching a little league team in baseball, but there I am yelling at the World Series about when they should have made their change.

Richard So you've mentioned this before, and I think that this is actually really, really important for this specific argument, because they're never at any point in the entire video, is anyone, and Salt Lake Tribune points this out several times, is anyone that's actually historian, anyone that's actually in the channel, anyone that's actually done research, anyone that actually doesn't.

Gerrit No one who's actually been vetted to receive an actual degree in what they're talking about makes an appearance in the show.

Richard You brought up a point as it relates, and you brought it up in a similar way in previous episodes about the Gettysburg Park Ranger.

Gerrit Right, yeah, so I mean, when you go on a tour to the battlefield of Gettysburg, and you have the tour guide or the park ranger take you around, you are going to be blown away by what this guy knows, right? I mean, he is telling you things like, and that's when the 17th infantry moved slightly in an oblique formation to the right, and you're sitting there thinking, I don't even know what an oblique formation is. I don't even know what the 17th infantry is. And this guy, he knows, he is incredible. He knows so much. And you start to believe that the person giving the tour is an expert on the Battle of Gettysburg, or that they are, you'll often even hear people, oh, he's a battlefield historian. But the person doing that tour didn't come to these research conclusions on their own.

Richard I think one of the problems is that people think just because this person knows more than I do, who doesn't know, because he's presenting something to me for the first time.

Gerrit I didn't know that oblique formations existed.

Richard So since this person knows so much, he must be an expert.

Gerrit And it's true that he certainly knows more about the Battle of Gettysburg than the average tourist coming there. Does that mean he's an expert on the battle? And there's a distinction. What's the distinction? The reason why that tour guide knows everything that he's talking about is because he's read battlefield books about the battle. They've got a site guide that tells them different aspects about the battle, and he has read it really well. He's studied a lot of things on it, and he knows his stuff. But the real expert is the person who wrote the book that he read slash memorized to make him such a good battlefield tour guide. And that is the difference. The difference is real experts are the people who create the content by looking at all of these sources, not the people who memorize the content.

Gerrit There's a very big difference.

Richard So the person that wrote the book, what would they have to have done in order to have put that together?

Gerrit For instance, someone who writes a history of the battle of Gettysburg, which there's a great one that I just read recently. They come out once in a while, because it's a very big battle, obviously, in American history. They will have, first and foremost, read everything they could read in the secondary literature about the battle. Okay, so I'm gonna read, before I even start to write my book about Gettysburg, I'm gonna read every other book that's ever been written about Gettysburg. So that's a lot of books, okay? So that I know what people have said and what they haven't said. The next thing I'm gonna do is I have my own vein of research, right? So I'm going to study, I'm gonna take a look at the Battle of Gettysburg through the letters of soldiers who were involved. That'll be my vein of research. And I'm gonna read thousands and thousands of letters from soldiers at different points in the battle talking about it.

Gerrit I'm gonna read dispatch reports from the generals. I'm going to read other later reminiscent accounts of generals who were there, you know? And then I'm gonna compare what those generals said later with the things they said at the time with what soldiers said at the time. So, you know, we've got, you know, Dan Sickles moves his troops into the wheat field rather than having them up on the ridge. Why did he do that? It's a great question for the Battle of Gettysburg. Well, you have Dan Sickles, of course, much later saying, well, I obviously did that to delay the Confederate advance and give us a better chance at defense. Most military historians will turn around and say, that was the worst military decision you could have made and you moved yourself from a high position to a low position and suffered all kinds of casualties, right? So how do I try to find out then what really happened? Well, I can, I'll read all the letters I can get my hands on from the soldiers or especially the officers that were adjutants to him in that unit. What were the orders that he gave?

Gerrit Why did he say that he did it? What did the soldiers think they were doing when they went down there? How did they reflect on it? What did the order that he gave, that he wrote, what did that say that day? What were the orders he had received? Did someone tell him to go down there? What were the orders that were, how were those orders reflected upon later? You can see at this point, you've examined hundreds of primary source documents that were created at the time. And on top of spending all of those hours looking at hundreds of actual documents, you're also reading all these reminiscent accounts where people 30 years later are like, oh yes, I was at the Battle of Gettysburg. I was with Dan Sickles. I remember he ordered us to go down there and well, I thought it was a bad idea at the time. Now, of course, hindsight's always 20-20. So when you're using a reminiscent account, it's very easy to always be right. It's very easy, like essentially whenever they interview anyone who's living on the street with someone who ends up becoming a murderer or something like that, they always say one of two things.

Gerrit But what is, we had no idea, it was completely like, and I think that's because they're distancing themselves from the fact that like, oh, I don't just live next to murderers and not tell anybody about it. So they're like, he was quiet, kind of a loner, kept himself, that kind of stuff. But we had no idea. Or it's the other way around. They say, oh, we always knew. Yeah, we always knew there's a, and you think, well, you probably should have told somebody. You probably, I mean, so you're telling me you knew he was going to kill someone but didn't contact the authorities? Things become much, much, much, much bigger deals after the fact than they were before the time. And I remember this, I remember so clearly going back when the horrible hurricane Katrina happened. There was a lot going on in the news leading up to Hurricane Katrina. And I remember having a conversation with somebody like, oh yeah, there's that hurricane headed for Florida because that's what was going to Florida, right? But it looks like it won't be that bad.

Gerrit And that was the commentary surrounding it. Oh, it was in the news. But there was essentially no commentary that this was going to be this massive killer storm that would go over Florida, reconstitute, then hit New York. I mean, it was, so six, seven days out, you barely know that Katrina is a storm, right? It's in the aftermath of that, that it is suddenly everybody, oh, we all knew, we all knew. Why didn't they prepare? Well, I mean, and so that's why historians have to be careful when it comes to reminiscing accounts, because people are giving information after they already know the end of the story. They already know what happened. So it's very easy after you know the levy broke, to say, I knew, I knew those levies wouldn't hold, right? I mean, I think it's very similar to having conversations about things like what happened after September 11th, right? I mean, the reality is that it's very easy to play a Monday morning quarterback, and that can sometimes affect the way people remember things.

Gerrit That's the reason why historians prize firsthand accounts that are created at the time, as over, you know, not always, but at least generally over those that are created decades and decades later, because how much is going on in that person's life? How many other experiences do they have? How much do they even remember of that experience? If you ask me what the topic was in church last Sunday, I might have a pretty good idea. If you ask me what the topic in church was 24 years ago, even if I tell you that I know, I don't actually know. And how much worse if I then start to give you a verbatim quote of what the speaker said? I might remember a single key phrase of what the speaker said. It touched me to the core, right? But if I start to give you a lengthy transcription of what that speaker said, and I'm not using notes that I recorded at the time, I'm obviously playing a little fast and loose.

Richard So the reason why we're spending so much time on this...

Gerrit Is because this is a terrible podcast.

Richard Well, A, B and C.

Gerrit Also that.

Richard But E. But the issue then, the reason for this discussion is, is because what happens in this particular video is that this exact thing happens. People that have an interest in a particular thing are given the same level of credibility as actual historians, actual forensic scientists.

Gerrit Some of the evidence that is given as to someone's credulity is how many times they've driven to Carthage.

Richard Right.

Gerrit I've driven there so many times. Well, okay, I've driven on I-15 a lot, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't make me a structural engineer. You know, I mean, the fact that you've been to a place no more makes you an expert on that place. I mean, look, this happens. I know what happens with everybody who goes, what happens to me when I go on vacation? You know, I go to Belize and I come back loving everything there is about Belize and feeling like some kind of like, you know, soft spot in my heart for Belize. And when people bring up Belize, oh yeah, you know, but I am not an expert on Belize. And it'd actually be pretty offensive to anyone from Belize if they, like, this guy's walking around because he was here for a week. I mean, thank you for trivializing us, our country, to the point where you think you're an expert because you were there one time.

Richard And so this is the problem then, is that so much of the actual arguments that are made in this video are based on things that have no actual historical basis. And so then the problem is, then you're having kind of this theory upon a theory upon a theory, and now you're pretty removed from what things actually are saying. And we have several examples.

Gerrit I mean, the reality is, this was a conclusion in search of a theory to make the conclusion work. Although it's presented the exact opposite, like, oh yeah, I went through every possible scenario until I came up with the only one that worked. And what you mean by that is, I went through every possible scenario that fit the narrative I already wanted, and this is the one that worked for me, but I already wanted that.

Richard So should we kind of explain the end and then kind of work our way back?

Gerrit I mean, I think, first of all, the idea behind this is, you know, it's billed as here's new forensic evidence that shows what really happened at Carthage. Now, whenever someone says, let me tell you what really happened anywhere, you should already not pay attention to them. I mean, I really, I mean, I'm sure there are cases where that's not the case.

Richard But in our next podcast, we're going to start it with that.

Gerrit Let me tell you what really happened. I mean, obviously we learn things if we study history. So I don't want to say that we're not going to learn things. I don't want people, you know, married to whatever belief they had when they were in primary. We need to be open to the fact that we understand and learn new things all the time. But when someone claims that they have some kind of new evidence that overturns everything that everyone else has ever thought, they better really bring it. Because the reality is, what usually happens in history? What usually happens is, well, you know, they said this conference happened on the 5th and 6th of April. Okay, well, here's another person who says that it happened on the 5th, 6th, and 7th of April. This is the only person who says that it happened on the 7th of April. So that adds to our understanding, oh, it might have been a three-day conference instead of a two-day conference, but it doesn't invalidate that the first two days of the conference happened.

Gerrit You see what I'm saying? So generally when history, when people learn things about history, what they learn is details that affect things at the margins, not things that completely invalidate literally everything that's been written about or spoken about.

Richard And so it is one of my favorite things that as a 20-year friend to Gerrit, I am on a podcast about church history without having any idea about church history. It is my favorite thing.

Gerrit You should talk more. Or you should actually make a documentary at this point.

Richard So my wife says every time I say, she's going to hate this one because I've said more than three words. She just wants Gerrit to just deal the whole time and have me never talk. But so my current training and experience is in business, because I'm pursuing a PhD in business at Oklahoma State. And it's very different than history, obviously. But within that, there's also theory. And often is the case is that there's a particular theory around marketing, around exchange orientation, around all of these different things. And there are mediating and moderating effects that impact and kind of move the research along. Now occasionally, a person thinks of a thing in a different way, and sometimes completely upsets the conventional wisdom on that thing. And that article better be so full of freaking numbers.

Gerrit Yeah, it better have every evidence rather than...

Richard All of the evidences, every single possible evidence. Because it is going to be open in a peer review setting to be absolutely destroyed unless it is completely buttoned up in every single way. And one kind of silly example, as the video, as the movie starts, the creators of the film, I forget his...

Gerrit The director himself.

Richard Justin Griffin or whatever his name is. He says this has been something that's been questioned and studied for...

Gerrit Yeah, this is the way that the martyrdom has been presented for hundreds of years.

Richard So that's how he starts. And so Gerrit, as we started on this, he pounced on that. And I was like, I mean...

Gerrit Cut the guy some slack. You know, another 30, 40 years, it'll be 200 years. But first of all, whenever you use the word hundreds, you better mean more than one, and you better mean more than two. Because if you have no context, the word hundreds at least is going to mean three. Otherwise you'd say for a couple hundred years.

Richard Well, at least two.

Gerrit It better be at least more than one because of the word hundreds. But frankly, you just wouldn't do that. So already you get kind of keys. You get indicators that someone is attempting to deceive. And one of the ways you get it is through absolutely unnecessary hyperbole. If your argument is as good as you say it is, then why do you need to pretend that it's something that you're refuting that's hundreds of years old? You actually don't need to say that at all. All you would need to say is, I've got new information that refutes the standard narrative of what happened at Carthage. That's all you'd have to say. So why don't you say that? Because I've got information that refutes the standard narrative of Carthage isn't really as powerful as for hundreds of years.

Richard And so this is the problem then, right? Is that for you to come at this conventionalism, because what happens is they pick up on every subtle, slight nuance of a particular thing and pounce on that particular thing. But then when they come to talk about anything ever, I mean, I'm being hyperbolic right now, but they're pretty fast and loose with a lot of things.

Gerrit With anything that seems to help them. So for instance, I mean, a great for instance of this is he asserts that there's only two main sources of the accounts of what happened in Carthage. I mean, you can go back and listen to our modern podcast. You won't want to, especially because you've already stopped listening to this one.

Richard So I know we're self-deprecating, but that is one of the best ones. And it has the most listens by a lot.

Gerrit My mom's still downloading it.

Richard Thank you, Renee. It's been great. So that actually is one of the best ones. It's one of the best ones, and you know it's one of the best ones, because I speak the least in that one. That's how you know it.

Gerrit Well, so, I mean, you already know that there's actually multiple accounts of the martyrdom. Willard Richards and John Taylor give multiple accounts of the martyrdom to say that there's only these two, and then to spend all of your time using those two, which actually, you know, that it's not a very thorough investigation. I mean, if you're doing a thorough investigation, I want every single account of the martyrdom. I'm not going to say that these are the only ones that I'm going to use. And from the beginning, he foreshadows the horrendous conclusion that he's going to make by trying to point out that Willard Richards gave his account, you know, Two Minutes in Jail, which is published in the Times and Seasons right afterwards, but that John Taylor waited until 10 years later.

Richard And they say it just like that, by the way.

Gerrit Way more creepy than I just said. But he waited 10 years until after Willard Richards was dead. I mean, the foreshadowing on it, like, ah, I see. I see John Taylor waited until he could lie.

Richard So what, so this is, actually this was an argument. We've never actually had a pre-show meeting. And the reason why we've never had one is because, like, I contribute nothing, Gerrit does the research and he comes in and talks. But the thing is, is that what, well, this particular one, Gerrit brought up the fact that, because you're about to talk about one of the main sources that they cite is very late. And I'm like, well, but maybe he didn't know that a later source is a big deal. But then you brought up, like you said just now, he certainly said that John Taylor 10 years later is a big deal.

Gerrit He spends a ton of time about the fact that John Taylor's account of the martyrdom is 10 years after the fact. He makes a big deal of it because what he's trying to say is that it's later because John Taylor is part of this conspiracy to kill Joseph and Hyrum Smith. But he doesn't do that when he tries to claim. And so again, I guess a brief summary here for those who were 30 minutes in.

Richard Get into it. This is about to turn into a three-parter.

Gerrit We're only doing one. But we'll see. We'll see. I apologize if this is two, but it's only one. The... It's only one. The part of the argument essentially boils down to this. I looked at the ballistics of where the bullet holes are in the door and then compared them with where the bullet holes are in Hyrum's clothing and where the blood stains are on Hyrum's clothing. And I came to the conclusion...

Richard And where the shot would have entered into Hyrum's...

Gerrit Sure. The bullets in the bodies. The ballistics of the bullets. And I came to the conclusion that there's no possible way that Hyrum was shot in the way that we normally say. So the most logical thing is that John Taylor put a pistol underneath Hyrum's chin and pulled the trigger. It's ridiculously offensive to even think about this. Even more so for anyone who knows John Taylor's desperate devotion to Joseph and Hyrum Smith. How upset he is at their loss. How desperately... John Taylor's decision to leave the United States because he is done with the United States is so much based on the fact that Joseph and Hyrum are murdered and that nothing's done about it.

Richard The problem is though, is that if I'm on the other side of this, I would say, well, obviously he needs to leave the United States. He just murdered the Prophet Joseph Smith. This is how deep the conspiracy goes.

Gerrit It just goes so deep. And so the argument is that there is a mob that collects at Carthage. They're saying that there's a mob, although the mobs are very... Well, they're kind of flighty.

Richard Well, they went to hang him. That's what they were talking about.

Gerrit Yeah, so they come and they shoot through the door, which is what you usually do when you're trying to hang someone. Normally, I shoot at them first. Always.

Richard You want them to know you're serious.

Gerrit This is just a... Now, I don't know where they're standing. It's a teeny room. I'm probably going to hit somebody behind the door, but let's just shoot through the door anyway. And you shoot through the door, and the claim, the way that they portray it, is that then Joseph pulls out his pistol, which we talked about, Joseph had a pistol, but then he just kind of casually walks out into the hallway, and whoever shot through the door isn't there anymore, I guess. I guess they, maybe the bullet ricocheted from the stairs on up, and came through the door.

Richard Toward the end of the video, you have the reenactment as only, it could possibly be, given the information that they have, and the forensic evidence that they've put together. Yeah. So there is the two shots, right?

Gerrit That come through the door.

Richard That come through the door.

Gerrit So Joseph then takes his gun out, and instead of, he just opens the door and walks into the hallway.

Richard He looks at Hyrum like it's like...

Gerrit He's like, it's go time on the Apollo.

Richard It's go time, and then he steps out. So he steps out. When Joseph steps out, you hear two more gunshots in the reenactment, right?

Gerrit But that aren't from Joseph.

Richard Right, and the door is kind of shut. Then you have John Taylor look at his pistol, then go to point it at Hyrum.

Gerrit He kind of weighs the pistol in his hand. He's like, am I really about to do this?

Richard Yeah, I'm about to do this. He points the pistol at Hyrum, then Willard Richards yells, John, no, or something like that.

Gerrit And tries to knock the pistol away.

Richard Right, and then Hyrum turns and shoots John Taylor in the leg.

Gerrit Yes.

Richard Then there's a struggle.

Gerrit A scuffle ensues.

Richard Now, this is kind of the point. So we don't have any evidence that John Taylor had a weapon. In fact, we were told the exact opposite. But who are we told by?

Intro John Taylor.

Richard Oh, and Willard Richards. As then there's this struggle, John Taylor puts the gun underneath Hyrum Smith's chin. Again, this is the most, I realize, as we watch this is just the most offensive thing that I'm possibly saying.

Gerrit And it's so utterly idiotic.

Richard And the reason that they're saying that this is the case is because from a ballistic standpoint, the-

Gerrit No, no, from their ballistic standpoint, let's not act as if there were actually any bullets. So that's part of the problem. Like, oh, look at our new forensic evidence. Okay, great. If you have new forensic evidence, I'm going to assume then that you have some kind of forensic expert that's helping you do this. I talked to a guy and he said that it would be like really hard for one of these bullets to go through the door that way. Okay, so how about we talk to someone who's called a professor somewhere? I don't know, maybe someone who's published and what you're talking about. Wouldn't that be interesting if they were the ones who came to that conclusion? No, they of course wouldn't come to that conclusion because they're the ones trying to hide it.

Richard Well, that's how deep the conspiracy goes. That's literally all that you have to say.

Gerrit Well, that's how all conspiracy theories work, right? The reason why they work is you don't actually have to tie things together.

Richard The lack of evidence is proof of evidence of how deep the conspiracy goes.

Gerrit Which is the opposite of what historians do. Historians take existing evidence and they say this is what most likely happened in the past. They don't make arguments from the absence of evidence, or at least when they do, they better be really, really, really careful. So a historian doesn't say, Joseph Smith obviously never told anyone about the First Vision until 1832 when it was written down. Now, an antagonist of the church, or Joseph Smith says that, but a historian doesn't. Why not? Because as a historian doesn't actually know.

Richard Because the absence of evidence is an evidence.

Gerrit The absence of evidence. Maybe Joseph did tell someone. What would a historian say? The earliest recorded instance of Joseph Smith telling the story of the First Vision is his 1832 history. Now, notice how that's different. I'm not saying that Joseph didn't talk about it earlier. Why? Because I don't know that. What do I know? I know what documents tell me. This is a document created in 1832 where Joseph explains the First Vision. That doesn't mean he didn't write another document that's been lost. It doesn't mean that he didn't tell someone else and that wasn't recorded. It just means I know for certain by 1832, he's talking about it.

Richard And so part of the reason for this, and we'll get into this a little bit more, but part of the reason that they're saying that based on their forensic evidence, and their forensic evidence is people that like to shoot guns then are trying to shoot guns with muskets and different things to try to come up with different possible options, right? And so the issue is that they're saying that the injury to Hyrum, if he was shot with a musket, would have obliterated him versus what a pistol would have done. And they even reference a talk by Elder Holland in General Conference.

Gerrit Where he's talking about the martyrdom.

Richard We're talking about the martyrdom and he says pistol and ball.

Gerrit Yeah, that pistol and ball were coming. And they actually make this a really big part of it. A big part of it. Ah, this is the church trying to change their narrative, right? And they're trying to change their narrative because the church realizes that they couldn't have been shot with muskets because if they were shot with muskets, that would have done too much damage to their bodies. And that damage isn't reflected. So therefore, they were probably shot with pistols. And so the church is trying to do some little bit of revisionism by doing that. The argument that all of the damage inflicted by everyone everywhere was by muskets, I'm not even entirely sure where that comes from. And I mean, it's true that Willard Richards says that, and John Taylor say, oh, we saw a mob with muskets, you know, charging up the stairs.

Richard So hold on just one second though, before you even go, because this is one of the biggest problems that you have. You're using as a source to explain what happened, John Taylor and Willard Richards, who were the murderers.

Gerrit Right. So you didn't finish telling the story. Finish the story. Everyone's hanging, they're baited.

Richard Hanging on everyone.

Gerrit Everyone here is like, what? So let me do a disclaimer. I don't believe any of this, not only just as a Latter-day Saint, this is the shoddiest, most aliens built the pyramid, horrible, quasi-fake documentary put together with some angry sounds to make it seem like it was some kind of a real thing that I think I've seen in a long time. And I've seen terrible, I have college students write papers for me. And this is, nothing, nothing equals this.

Richard And I'm on the fence. So the issue is, is then there's the struggle. John Taylor shoots Hyrum, putting the gun under his chin, instead of having it come through his face and down, it goes through his chin and up. And that Joseph is outside of the room.

Gerrit Apparently just, he's parlaying at the mob. The mob is shot through the door, Joseph immediately comes out with a gun.

Richard Two more shots are heard outside of the reenactment.

Gerrit And I know he's just like, you know, guys, guys, you know. Frankly, one of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of the argument is that the mob is there to kill Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith comes out of the locked door, which wasn't locked, but they thought it was, right? They shoot through the door. Joseph Smith comes out of the room, presents himself, and the mob says, never mind.

Richard And in the time that Joseph is out, parlaying with the mob, there's the struggle, and John Taylor shoots, sees it as his opportunity, shoots and kills Hyrum.

Gerrit Right. With Hyrum shooting him in the...

Richard Yeah, Hyrum first shoots him in the front of the leg, by the way. And so, and then John Taylor falls to the ground, Joseph Smith comes back in and sees his brother on the ground.

Gerrit Shot.

Richard Shot. And then points, sees, realizes what's happening, points the gun at John Taylor and shoots John Taylor three times. Because John Taylor had received four balls, and the gun that Joseph fired only shot three times. Three times it didn't fire. In fact, Willard Richards was very clear, as was John Taylor, as that they were united in the fact that it only shot three.

Gerrit Which he argued was part of the conspiracy.

Richard How did they know that only three shot?

Gerrit How would you know in all of that confusion? How would you know that it only shot three times? With all the bullets, how would you know? I know how they knew. They knew because they...

Richard They saw.

Gerrit So, or, I don't know, the very first place that any forensic person would look at is in the barrels where the undischarged shot still is. I mean, it's not like they took the pistol and threw it out the window to hide the murder evidence.

Richard We'll get to that.

Gerrit Don't worry. That happens.

Richard So, and that will be in part five. So, what happened?

Gerrit We now move from this being one part to being a year-long series on this ridiculously idiotic...

Richard So, now John Taylor, who has now been shot by Joseph three additional times, rolls underneath the bed.

Gerrit With a sneer on his face, though.

Richard And so, Joseph then goes down to Hyrum. And what does he say?

Gerrit He says, oh, my poor dear brother, Hyrum.

Richard Oh, one thing I forgot is that while they're struggling, Hyrum, while they're struggling, Hyrum says, I'm a dead man. So, he's still alive, struggling. That's when he says it. So, one of the things that you love is that they quote Willard Richards and John Taylor.

Gerrit So, the only reason we know that Hyrum Smith, his last words are, I am a dead man, and that Joseph, when he sees Hyrum shot, comes over and says, oh, my poor dear brother, Hyrum. The only reason we know that is from Willard Richards and John Taylor's accounts, which their accounts were also kind of used together to create what was then put into the history of the church, you know, so it's really kind of three different places. So, and it actually factors really prominently. I mean, this guy's saying like, there's no possible way that Hyrum Smith could have even talked if a bullet hit his jaw. There is no way that he could have said, I'm a dead man. So therefore that, you know, because the bolt would have shattered his jaw. And there's a lot of could have, would have, should have there. It makes me feel like perhaps he hasn't read very many battlefield accounts of the Civil War, actually to go back to the Civil War. It's like, there's all kinds of things that are going on with shots and ball and wounds and claiming that, oh no, I know exactly how this would have happened is something that someone who had more training in that wouldn't do, or any training at all, which would be more training than him.

Richard So anyway, so he's trying to match the fact that Hyrum says this thing, but the reason that we know that Hyrum said this thing comes from the person that killed Hyrum.

Gerrit That you're claiming murdered them.

Richard That's right. So that's again, so they're trying to match the ballistics to quotes that if what they're saying is true, why am I trying to match these things that they're saying?

Gerrit To those two quotes, right? So when would Joseph have said, my poor dear brother Hyrum? Well, I'm guessing if you're trusting two pathological lying murderers, you concocted a theory to kill them both, nothing, right? Then you don't take anything they have to say. And that's just kind of an example of the shoddiness. Now, you're going to finish this short.

Richard We're almost done.

Gerrit I can't wait to move on to a different topic.

Richard So then what happens, so John Taylor, so he rolls under the bed, Joseph Smith goes down to his brother, says the thing that John Taylor said he said, and then Willard Richards, as Joseph looks up and he shoots Joseph. So the person who says, John, no, is now shooting Joseph Smith.

Gerrit So I'm guessing now he didn't explain it in this one, but don't worry, part two is coming. And I don't mean of this podcast.

Richard Oh, it's good. We're at 47 minutes. It's absolutely. We haven't gotten into any of the evidence.

Gerrit No one's listening to this.

Richard Well, the three people that emailed, she's never listened to any.

Gerrit She just keeps downloading.

Richard The thing is that you have, we received several emails from people that were like, what the heck is this?

Gerrit The real question is Craig Wilson still listening.

Richard I'll ask.

Gerrit Okay, we'll find out.

Richard We're doing this live? Yeah, we're doing it live. So the person who's telling John Taylor not to do it, maybe it's just a timing issue, right? Or that Hyrum is innocent and it was always Joseph all along. We never got any.

Gerrit No, that comes in the next one.

Richard It has to. We never have.

Gerrit Here's what we already know will be in the next one because this is not the first time this kind of theory has been purported. So the argument is going to be that in fact, Brigham Young is behind this.

Richard He ordered the code red.

Gerrit Yeah, Brigham Young ordered the code red. Brigham Young, though he is in, I think, New Hampshire, Massachusetts at the time on his mission. All plans. Yes, he has put in motion already the plan to have, and this is really oversold in the documentary. I don't want to call it a documentary.

Richard Yeah, we need to stop doing that.

Gerrit In this, I don't want to call it a film either. What do we call something that's worthless?

Richard In this iPhone movie?

Gerrit No, the production values would have been better. In this representation, in this false representation of what happened, they make a really big deal. Why were John Taylor and Willard Richards with Joseph Smith? They didn't need to be with Joseph Smith. They made sure that they were there with Joseph Smith. It was really obvious too that while, as he said, I have spent thousands and thousands and thousands of hours working on the ballistics of this and figuring out what happened, one of those thousands of hours wasn't spent getting a degree in history.

Richard Or talking to anyone that has one.

Gerrit The second thousand hour wasn't also spent then reading any actual historical documents beyond the ones that he had readily available to him. For instance, I said he doesn't include some of the other accounts. He doesn't talk about William Clayton's account of the martyrdom. He doesn't talk about William Daniel's account, which we spent all kinds of time on.

Richard So it's possible that he will, because there was, it looked like, because what happens then, so Willard Richards shoots him once, and then, like I said, he literally pulls out multiple revolvers, not revolvers, but multiple guns, multiple single shot, single shot pistols. And he shoots him then a second time. And then Joseph, he shoots him a second time as he's heading toward the window. And as he shoots him the second time, then Willard Richards goes over, picks up his legs and throws Joseph out the window, and then goes and collects what are now 37 pistols.

Gerrit Yeah, so we went from having only two pistols in the room at Carthage to an entire arsenal. When questioned where did John Taylor get his other gun, the response was essentially something to the point of, well, as someone who owns guns, when you give a gun away to someone...

Richard Because you mentioned this in the Martin Lutheran podcast. So John Taylor gave his...

Gerrit He'd given his gun to Cyrus Wheelock.

Richard And so there's no evidence that he has another gun, but their evidence claim is...

Gerrit As someone who's a gun owner, when you give your gun away to someone, you always do that because you've just bought another gun.

Richard That's literally their evidence for how John Taylor has that gun.

Gerrit He must have bought another gun. He bought another gun that we don't have any record of, that we don't know about, but that must have been in there for this to work.

Richard And this is the thing. We're going to get into some of the source pieces here, because that is really where, you know, I mean, the whole thing falls apart immediately, but essentially you have a situation where they're saying the only way for Hyrum to have been shot this way was if it was done, and then they just concoct this entire thing that has no base in any other...

Gerrit They don't even prove the first part of it. They don't even prove the first part of it, because there's great discrepancy about where and how Hyrum was shot, right? Was the bullet that went into his face the same one that entered into his neck? Well, we don't have Hyrum's body, nor do we have 21st century forensic...

Richard But they do cite the fact that they went through and they dug up their...

Gerrit Sure, in 1921. Yeah. Do you know how much of their bodies were left in 1921? Here's how I know there wasn't a whole lot. When I was at the Community of Christ, formerly Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, archives, I don't know, probably seven or eight years ago, one of the objects that they were very, very proud to show us were the rocks that had fallen into the skulls of Joseph and Hyrum after their bodies had decayed. So these were rocks that had been inside of the skulls when they exhumed the bodies. So I'm guessing that you aren't able to get a whole lot of what part of the hip did this enter his body of, right? You might be able to see something. Again, if it's being done in a program, in a professional way, which how do I know that, right?

Gerrit I think that's always one of the difficult things for historians to try to reconstruct people's mental states, which is what, you know, Fawn Brody did in No Man Knows My History to try to say, let me give you a little psychoanalysis. Hold on.

Richard So just spend just a second on it, because we've received actually a couple of emails on Fawn Brody as well. This was something that was a bigger deal when we were on our missions. Just kind of explain.

Gerrit Yeah, it's just a book that this researcher claimed that all kinds of things about Joseph Smith and among them that he thought that he was having visions because he would pass out and things like that. So that's why he seemed like he was being sincere because he really thought he was having visions, but he didn't. But she attempted to psychoanalyze Joseph and what he did and outside of the evidence. I mean, I remember one of the worst parts of this book is where she invented a narrative in Joseph's head that Joseph was sitting in Liberty Jail thinking about Eliza Beeman. We have no record of this at all. Why was she saying that? Because Joseph in 1841 is married to Eliza Beeman in a plural marriage. So, in order to make that seem like it was a much longer premeditated event, she invented Joseph Smith fantasizing about Eliza Beeman three years earlier when he's in Liberty Jail.

Richard It's actually fairly similar to what actually this video is about. This, I mean, the video is even worse than that, but just to say like, well, he marries this person. There's a plural marriage here. So this must have happened previously.

Gerrit Right. And that's part of the problem is that whenever anyone says it stands to reason, well, that means they don't have a source. When someone says it stands to reason, what they mean is I don't have evidence, but I really think this is what happened. And that's fine if you say, I think this is what happened. But acting as if standing to reason is the same thing as having proof for it is a real problem. So for instance, one of the arguments is that, you know, that's made over and over again is that no one shot from outside of the jail. No one shot. You know why I know they didn't shoot from outside of the jail? Because if they'd have been shooting through that window, then why would they do that if they knew their friends were going up the stairs? I have no idea whether or not they're friends. Has anyone ever been involved in a riot or a mob? I'm not advertising that you should go do this, but I'm pretty sure people involved in a mob are not sitting there thinking, now, wait a minute here. If I start this car on fire, there's a possibility that that could explode and hurt other people.

Richard And I'm here with Greg. I don't want Greg to get hurt.

Gerrit Yeah, I mean, I just met Greg yesterday. I mean, the reality is the, oh, it doesn't make any sense for me that someone would be shooting from outside of the jail.

Richard That's very different from evidence.

Gerrit Yeah. Okay. So it doesn't make any sense to you. And also, also, I don't see the, the musket shot marks on the outside of the jail that I would expect to see, because you are trained to spot and see those, right? Because you were given unfettered access to the sides of the wall, because you've determined exactly what's happened to those sides of the wall over the past 150 or wait, hundreds of years. Obviously, you are claiming an expertise that you don't have in order to make this, this silly, stupid argument.

Richard It's difficult to disprove.

Gerrit It's very hard to disprove someone saying something that they already alleged without any evidence. You know, so when someone says, why in the world would John Taylor and Willard Richards be in the room with him? Well, according to Willard Richards' journal, Joseph asked him to go to Carthage with him. So maybe Willard Richards, knowing that he was about to murder Joseph Smith, wrote into his journal, I'm going to pretend that Joseph asked me to go so that it looks like I'm there under correct pretenses, so that when someone later gets my journal, figures out what it says, because my handwriting is completely illegible to almost anyone, and every Joseph Smith historian who spent any time looking at it all is wanting to tear their hair out because I have such bad handwriting, I'll make sure I write into that journal that Joseph asked me to go to complete my conspiracy.

Richard So, again, very difficult on certain and specific things that they're alleging, and there actually isn't even a motive yet.

Gerrit No, that comes later, it's a delayed thesis.

Richard Can't wait. Because the whole point is, well, this is preposterous. Well, I guess, hopefully in part two, they'll explain the reason why and we'll talk about it.

Gerrit We already know what they're going to claim, that Brigham Young invented plural marriage, Joseph Smith didn't want to practice it, Brigham Young decided that the best way to do this and to take power would be to off Joseph Smith and Hyrum, and apparently also Samuel, one of the claims is made is that they also, Samuel died under suspicious circumstances, they had to kill Samuel Smith as well. That people make allegations that Samuel Smith died, he dies of a disease, which is called everyone in the 19th century. If we were saying that every person who dies from a sickness in Nauvoo is a conspiracy, then we are talking thousands of conspiracies because that's the reality.

Richard But the claim isn't just that he dies of suspicious circumstances, it's that he was third in line.

Gerrit Yeah, he would have been next, he would have been next in line, which is a very community of Christ, well, not at the time, the community of Christ isn't alleging this now, but reorganized church argument, right, that they will later make that the leadership of the church should be passing through Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith's line. Samuel H. Smith, of course, is not in any way in the line of leadership of the church, but you can see why someone would make that claim later. And so to make the conspiracy stick, we've got to make sure that all of them are out of the way.

Richard Some of them might seem like minor issues, but, Gerrit, you want to explain?

Gerrit Well, I mean, I think that's part of the problem, right? When you are saying you've had the truth kept from you, that only these Latter-day Saint historians are the ones who've put forward their truth, and I'm here to unveil it for you, the real truth. And when you make statements like every single aspect of this documentary was thought about and vetted, you're doing that to try to demonstrate, look, we have really spent a lot of time on this. The problem is, it allows you for very little room for error when you actually aren't doing or saying the things that you're doing or saying. So if you are going to say, let me give you the truth that you don't have, well then, you better make sure that the next words that come out of your mouth actually fit all of the sources. And if you're not going to tell everyone about the other sources that contradict what you're saying, then you have to ask the question, why are you not telling them?

Gerrit If the whole point is to give all of the truth that's been kept from people because Latter-day Saint historians have kept it from people, then I guess you better make sure you give all the truth to the people. There's two reasons why you don't. One, you don't know. Now, I'll give you a little bit of a pass on this. You might actually not know. I mean, you don't have a degree in history. You haven't studied history. You've spent thousands of hours looking at the way ballistics might have gone through a door, but haven't actually convinced a single ballistic expert of that enough to get them on your documentary. So yeah, you might not actually know what the other sources are or how to use sources or anything really.

Richard Or what's even worse is that you do know them, and then you just leave it out on purpose. But this is one thing, though, to where you're admitting, yeah, certainly these people have obviously no idea. But the problem is then if you're creating a quote unquote documentary, then you don't get to not have an idea. That's right.

Gerrit Because no one's forcing you to create a documentary.

Richard So whether you don't know or you're lying at this point, it actually...

Gerrit If I start a dentist's office in my basement, it doesn't matter if I don't fully understand all of the rules of dentistry. The moment I start taking money and calling myself a dentist, it's on me to have actually done that. And that's the problem here. If you're going to say, oh, I've looked at all the sources, well then, let's talk about the sources because that's what you just said you did.

Richard So we'll start with the Salt Lake Tribune article and then we'll kind of get into it. Through all of this, Griffin wants to challenge...

Gerrit This is quoting the article.

Richard Yeah, sorry. Yeah, this is a quote.

Gerrit This is a part of it. Obviously, it's a much longer article.

Richard Through all of this, Griffin wants to challenge the narrative that the church has used for hundreds of years to describe the Smith's murders, no matter that we are talking about murders that happened less than 200 years ago. Hey, what's a few centuries, give or take? It's only history. It was a comment that we made last before.

Gerrit Right.

Richard Like you're starting saying hundreds of years.

Gerrit That was my first comment before I even read a review of it.

Richard Actual professional historians, by which I mean people who have formerly studied historical methodology and published peer-reviewed research in academic journals and books by university presses, are conspicuously absent from the scene. The documentary does give us screenshots of articles by both professional and amateur historians, but only so that Griffin can dissect their various arguments and find them wanting. This is actually, so this is me stopping, you know, unquote. This is one of the issues that is at the heart of this problem, is that just the slightest thing in some sort of academic or even pseudo-academic article, he's pouncing on a particular thing. And then when he talks, it stands to reason, and we think possibly in this type of thing.

Gerrit Well, and it's an incredible straw man to take someone who themselves is not a professional historian and then critique their argument as if you found a flaw in what a professional historian came up with, right?

Richard When you yourself are also not a...

Gerrit Exactly, like, oh yeah, well, this guy says this. Well, that guy doesn't have a degree in history and isn't a trained historian. Surprisingly, they don't have historically, academically sound arguments because they aren't trained in it. And now you are attacking this amateur argument as if it was somehow the accepted narrative by everyone.

Richard So back to the article, but only so the Griffin can dissect their various arguments and find them wanting. In other words, it's amateur hour, or rather, it's an hour and 38 minutes, unfortunately. Griffin analyzes several theories from researchers, including one pair he alternately calls the Lion Brothers, correct, or the Lions Brothers, oops. Nearly an hour into the documentary, Griffin remarks, you can't really call yourself a Carthage researcher until you have come up with your own theory about what happened, unquote. Which kind of tells us everything we need to know about his historical method. Actual historians do not demand that their own interpretation of an event be unique or iconoclastic. Sometimes their views will support the conventional wisdom, and sometimes they won't. Much of their job is to present the primary sources and allow readers and viewers to draw their own conclusions, something Griffin seems loathe to do.

Gerrit Absolutely, I mean, the whole point is that you're not allowed to draw your own conclusion. But in so doing, in his it stands to reason mindset, he is going to use sources in ways that professional historians would not use them. And then you have to ask yourself why. We already pointed this out last time that he is continually quoting from the accounts of John Taylor and Willard Richards not to demonstrate how they were wrong and how there's discrepancies. He is repeatedly quoting from them to prove his point that the murder was an inside job. So he's taking parts of what they're saying as absolute facts. This proves it. And then taking other parts of what they're saying and completely throwing it out. Without actually providing us a template whereby, you know, what is the magic eight ball that you're using that lets you know whether this sentence was a lie and this sentence wasn't.

Richard So let's start with a place where we might give them a little bit of...

Gerrit A taste of my indignation.

Richard No, no, no. This is the tip of the cap. This is the opposite of that. Okay, sorry.

Gerrit I don't know what he's talking about. I didn't want to do this podcast.

Richard The pocket watch. So there's a pretty decent amount of time spent in this video talking about how there's no way that John Taylor could have been shot in the watch like he claims in his account.

Gerrit Yeah, well, so John Taylor actually is not as adamant about his watch saving his life as you might think. I mean, he doesn't seem... He seems like he's making it as a kind of, you know, this must be what happened. He's being shot as he's running towards the window. And he, at least later, thinks that what happened, because he said, I felt myself falling out, and then I felt myself falling back in through some unseen force, which he later attributes to, you know, I looked at my watch, and it was smashed. So that means it must have been someone shooting from outside who, as I'm getting to the window and about to jump out, they shoot and hit my watch, and that knocks me back inside. And so that was something that was touted by, you know, people doing the history in the church for years as a kind of a miracle of, you know, that here John Taylor almost, you know, if he would have gone out of the window, he maybe would have been killed on the ground, but he didn't go out because he was miraculously shot back in.

Gerrit Well, I mean, it's been multiple decades since researchers looking at the watch itself have said that it seems far more likely that what actually happened is that Taylor being shot. And he says he dropped like when he was shot, he dropped that he said it must have been some kind of nerve that must have been hit when he was shot because he said, you know, he's running for the window to jump out of it. And when he gets hit, he collapses the second he gets hit. He said, in fact, he uses the example in one of his accounts saying that as if you might see a squirrel when a squirrel gets shot, that like, boom, it just immediately drops. And apparently, and this is what the conclusion is, that I think is a pretty fairly consensus conclusion, is that when he drops as hard as he does, he lands on the window sill with all of his bodily force.

Gerrit And that's what smashes the face of his watch. And that, you know, in all the confusion and the shooting and everything, later, after everything's over, and he looks at his watch, he sees that it's damaged. And he says, you know what, that must have been what kept me from going outside. Which is, you know, it's a fairly logical conclusion. Now I will say, I don't think you can definitively say that that's not the case. Because when you're dealing with black powder, musket and ball, you actually don't know how much velocity that ball is traveling at. I mean, there are numerous accounts, numerous accounts of soldiers in the Civil War who are struck by a ball of musket that doesn't kill them because it's stopped by something else. I mean, you've all heard stories of people having it stopped by their Bible, having it stopped by the scabbard of their sword, you know. Well, ordinarily, that ball is still going to go through their Bible, right?

Gerrit But if it's fired from far enough away, and these balls are notoriously inaccurate, then by the time it got there, it might not have had enough velocity to go through that giant family Bible and through. Or even more likely, bullets are flying everywhere, there's ricochets everywhere. You don't know where a bullet is coming from when it hits something. It's certainly very difficult to track. At any rate, if someone wants to still believe that it's possible that a bullet struck the watch, I mean, I think it's hard to rule it out 100%. I think the most important part of that is that John Taylor felt like it was a miracle that he didn't fall out of the window to what he thought to be certain death. Whether that was God, through some other influence, pushing him back in, or whether it was a book, I mean, that's kind of an argument of a question. Now, of course, this faux documentary is going to make the case that this is all part of the John Taylor ruse and lie, essentially.

Gerrit The reason why he said that was it's all part of his attempt to try to cover up his misdeeds. I mean, yeah, we don't know, I mean, you don't know how much gunpowder is being loaded in this. And so when people try to make a standardized thing, look, yeah, there's, here's typically how much you would put in it. But there is actually no way of knowing what's going on from that, that, that, what's what's actually very hard to recreate. Um, exactly how things would have happened because you, it's an unknown variable, right? So one of the unknown variables is I don't actually know what firearm is being used. I don't know if it was loaded properly. I don't know, you know, if the person accidentally put twice as much powder in or half as much, but I don't actually know that. And those things factor into things like how much damage is going to be.

Richard So, but that said, it's not necessarily the most common thought now that he was...

Gerrit Yeah, I would say most historians would say that it seems most likely, or maybe they want to be more definitive, that Taylor's watch was likely damaged when he fell, not because it was hit by a bullet. And I think that's a point that the documentary makes, but then tries to make other arguments because of that, whereas most historians are like, yeah, it seems most likely that he fell on it.

Richard And when you say historians, you also mean church historians.

Gerrit Yeah, and yes, obviously, that's the standard idea, and it really has been for decades. So if you're claiming this is some kind of a new idea, it's not a new idea.

Richard But that's the thing is that there's always this hidden context that the church is hiding this. The church doesn't want you to know this.

Gerrit Yeah, they don't want you to know it. That's the reason why it says at the museum when it displays it that he fell on the watch. They're trying to hide it by telling everybody that this is what happened. Now, sometimes people will say, well, how come for a while we thought it was the other way? Well, because until you have more information, what are you going to think? I mean, the reality is actually historians are very open to the idea that what they think, their conclusions they have, could change as more research comes to light. And that's sometimes hard for people who aren't historians because they're like, no, this is what my Sunday school teacher told me that. That's great. And I'm sure he was using what resources that he had, but that doesn't mean that that's immutable. Obviously, things can change.

Richard So there was a quote from the video where he says, according to John Taylor's own telling of events, he was knocking down the bayonets with his walking stick. So that's the common kind of thought and idea. So a quote from him, according to John Taylor's own words, he's at the door, the mob's trying to come in, and he's knocking down the bayonets.

Gerrit Except that in John Taylor's actual account from John Taylor, he never mentions bayonets at all. In fact, one of the big points that's made by this documentary is all of the guns that we're firing, they would have been muskets, right? Everyone out there would have had a musket. It was all muskets. Because the ballistic argument that he's making is the damage to Joseph and Hyrum suggests they were shot by pistols. And of course, all of the mob, the only weapons they ever could have had is muskets. So therefore, the only people who had pistols had to have been John Taylor. So a big part of their argument is the mob only had muskets, even though we don't have an inventory of what the mob had when they went out to go do their attack. John Taylor doesn't say, I was there knocking down bayonets.

Richard What does John Taylor say?

Gerrit John Taylor's account says he was knocking down, he was parrying guns, he was near firearms. He doesn't even use that terminology. Now, in a speech that he gives in 1854, so not his published account, but in a speech that he gives, Thomas Bullock records him as making a reference to bayonets as well as firearms. But I think that it's a little disingenuous to say, according to John Taylor's own words, he was knocking down bayonets by the door. Because the account that you've been using, his published account, doesn't actually say that. So instead of saying, again, a careful historian would say, in Taylor's published account, he explained knocking guns down at the door. In another account recorded by someone else, they also made a reference to bayonets.

Gerrit Now, Willard Richards also makes a reference to bayonets being there. So I'm not saying that bayonets weren't there. What I'm saying is, if you're going to make an emphasis of something by saying, according to John Taylor's own account, then what you're doing is you're overly proving the point. Even John Taylor shows what was going on. Then you better be right about what's going on. Again, the video spends so much time on trying to prove what kind of weapons were being used. That's part of the reason why it matters. It matters because a big part of this argument that's not an argument because it's not actually backed up by sources is that knowing what weapons are used. And frankly, one of the most frustrating aspects of watching the entire thing is how much credence is given to portrayals of the martyrdom, right? So here's what this painting shows.

Gerrit It shows it like this. In fact, at one point, the claim is made that because a small sketch drawing of hands holding the door at Carthage shows the bullet coming through the door with hands holding it, that the church is saying definitively that Hyrum was actually up against the door when he was shot not away from the door like John Taylor and Willard Richards said that he was because of a sketch that's the beginning of part of one of the chapters of Saints. Very small and not labeled. These are Hyrum's hands. There's none of that. But that is, you know, it's made as this shows that the church is trying to even make this argument.

Richard One other, this was, this is actually, I don't know what percentage of the video this is, but it's a pretty significant part, is the mob coming into the room. There's multiple aspects to how, the reason why this matters. But the mob coming into the room after the account, where do they get that from and what's going on?

Gerrit So one of the things, the way it's presented in the film, film, my goodness, I apologize to all filmmakers everywhere.

Richard Yeah, Francis Ford Coppola, we're very sorry.

Gerrit One of the points it's made is, again, you don't know this, but I do. One of the things that many people don't know about the martyrdom, is that the mob comes in after. So, in part, we have our own selves to blame for some of the doorways that we opened up for crackpot conspiracy theorists to try to push their way through, to try to make it work that Joseph was murdered by John Taylor and Willard Richards. In an effort to try to describe what happened in Carthage, primarily by using the clothing that's purported to be Hyrum Smith, several writers have tried to construct events that would demonstrate what's going on. Well, one writer, in an attempt to try to demonstrate just how essential Hyrum Smith was to the Church, has made the claim that after Joseph is murdered in the street, that the mob actually came back into the jail.

Gerrit So they run downstairs because they are Joseph out the window, they run downstairs, they make sure Joseph is dead, and then the mob came back up inside the jail, came to where Hyrum was laying on the floor, and then shot him in the back to make sure he was dead. Now, why is that made an argument? One, because the place where the bullet wound is in the clothing purported to be Hyrum's, doesn't have the blood evidence, or doesn't have a bunch of blood that you would expect if he was shot and bleeding out through it. And so the argument goes, well, if he was shot a lot later, then he wouldn't be bleeding that way anymore, the blood would already be pooling in the stomach, and so that's why there's no blood. I don't know why there's not a ton of blood on the back of Hyrum's shirt. And I don't know, frankly, I don't really know exactly the provenance and what's happened with those clothes over the course of time. I know that the family has said, these are ours and they've never been washed and right.

Gerrit But unfortunately, when you're a historian, you find that sometimes people really, really, really, really believe things that in their family history that end up not actually being the case. Now it's unfortunate when you're confronted with that as a historian in the parade and you end up being a hope crusher to somebody when they say, oh yes, my grandfather, when he fought in the Battle of Nauvoo with this type of repeating rifle and you have to explain to them, well, that repeating rifle wasn't invented until four years after the Battle of Nauvoo. They might have been at the Battle of Nauvoo, but they weren't using that repeating rifle. Just because people feel things really, really, really strongly from a family history perspective doesn't actually mean that that's the case. Now I'm going to offend a lot of listeners right now, so I probably should stop.

Richard No, go ahead.

Gerrit No one's listening. One of the things that you find is pretty problematic when you're dealing with Joseph Smith history is how many people were bodyguards of Joseph Smith. Often when I give a fireside or a presentation, a lot of people say, you know, my grandfather was a bodyguard of Joseph Smith. Now I have nothing but respect for these people. I love the fact that they feel connected to the prophet and to our church history because they feel like they defended Joseph, but through their ancestor. The problem is we have a very different idea of what a bodyguard is. And so when you say to someone, oh yes, he was Joseph Smith's bodyguard, the image they have in their mind is a secret service agent with an earbud going, we're moving the prophet now. I mean, we have the football, we have the football, that kind of thing. Well, there's no way to describe this other than Joseph Smith doesn't have any bodyguards.

Gerrit Like I said, that's going to upset a whole lot of people. I'm not saying that there weren't different people at different times who were absolutely willing to lay down their life for the prophet. And especially people that were part of the Nauvoo police force, oftentimes found themselves having to guard and protect the prophet. Those people absolutely exist. Is there someone who is following Joseph around in the classical sense of what we think a bodyguard is? You know, making sure that no one gets into the club without the right credentials kind of a thing. Well, no, that doesn't really exist. Even Porter Rockwell is not following Joseph around everywhere and checking the specs on everybody before anyone's allowed to talk to him. But what happens is someone in their family history, they know that their great-great-great grandfather was part of the Nauvoo police force, and at one point they were called out to protect Joseph from some Missouri ruffians. And so, yes, he protected Joseph.

Gerrit Yes, on this occasion, he protected Joseph. When you say he's a bodyguard, well, that makes it sound like his job is following Joseph around and keeping people off of him. The reality is that, you know, while there's some aspects of those things that are true, then there's also some that might be a little bit embellished. I mean, you found this when, you know, genetic testing, DNA testing was done on people who in their family history were certain, claimed with certainty, claimed with family history that they were descended from the plural marriages of the Prophet Joseph Smith. They were adamant about it. They had all kinds of stories about what their, you know, this is how grandma told me about it and on and on down the line. And then when they were DNA tested, the result demonstrated that they weren't actually descended from Joseph Smith.

Gerrit And so that actually, that's tough. That's why dealing with family tradition, while it can be helpful and certainly puts us in a place to search, you also have to be careful because the reality is that just because someone says, oh yes, my great grandfather said this happened, is not the same thing as academically demonstrating that it happened. It's just not. And again, I apologize if that, I don't mean to be offensive at all. I mean, I have family history, that are just like that. I have one of my ancestors that was, now I'm going to invent a story about them, but no, but that went on a mission with Wilford Woodruff. And so we have that in my family too. I'm not saying that that's wrong, and I'm not saying that my great-grandfather wasn't a great man. He was. What I'm saying is that at times, especially when it relates to things that happened in the distant past, it's harder for historians to know exactly how, what this reminiscent account said, how it happened.

Richard There's actually in the post, like a post-interview, post-production interview, where they're actually one of the things that is even brought up is the idea that King Follett was actually murdered because he was a bodyguard of the Prophet Joseph Smith and was in too deep.

Gerrit Yeah, and the sources we have for that would be zero sources. But it would help.

Richard That's actually a higher number than most of the sources that we have.

Gerrit Yeah, right, so negative four sources. And when you're dealing with conspiracy, the problem is that it doesn't matter how much evidence you come up with. Because if you say, well, if that's the case, then why wouldn't the people who came and got his body, why wouldn't they say this was suspicious? He's killed by the collapsing brick of a well, right? Why wouldn't someone say, oh my goodness, this is suspicious, this was... Well, because the person who looked, they were in on it too. Well, how soon and how often were all these people in it? Oh, that's all part of it. Again, not to say that King Follett didn't at times pledge himself to defend Joseph Smith.

Richard I'm sure he did.

Gerrit But that's not the same thing as following Joseph around with an earpiece in and checking the ID cards of everyone who came up to talk to him.

Richard So then going back to this particular thing of the mob entering into the room. So there's a theory to help to describe why there's a lack of blood in the back of Hyrum's shirt. And so this is one theory. Is there any actual discussion of the mob even entering the room in any way whatsoever?

Gerrit So part of the problem with this account is that, I mean with this explanation that's him to be given, is that they don't verify what our sources do say. And that is that the mob never actually comes into the room. In fact, at one point, very incredulously, the maker of this movie says something like, so why didn't they just go in and do it? You know, essentially saying that that I find it really hard to believe that they didn't just go into the room. Yeah, actually, John Taylor says the exact same thing. And he says what saves their life is Joseph. After Hyrum is hit, Joseph immediately goes to the door, opens it, reaches his hand around blindly and shoots into the hallway. Now these murderers, who are more than willing to kill innocent people, but not willing to die themselves, they have, this is a lot tougher situation. Because they don't know how many guns are in that room. Now, according to the maker of this film, there are thousands of guns in the room.

Gerrit There's so many guns.

Richard Just seen from Rambo.

Gerrit John Taylor's got a bandolero of just hundreds of guns that he and Willard Richards have brought in. But I mean, the reality is that the mob don't know who else has a gun in there. They know that obviously it was a revolver that shot because the shots went pretty quickly. Well, they don't know that the gun's misfired. How would they know that? So you know that someone in that room has a gun. Are they reloading that gun? Do they have other guns? I'm not going to be the first person through the door when the person has a gun. And so that's why they don't come into the room. And John Taylor remarks on this that they, because of their cowardice, don't come into the room. This is taken by this filmmaker to say, oh yeah, well, I find it really hard to believe that they wouldn't go in. Really? You find it really hard to believe that if you were approaching a door and someone stuck a gun out of it and shot down the hallway hitting several people, you find it hard to believe that people would then be hesitant to be the first person through the door.

Gerrit Seems like that's relatively easy to believe that you would be that person. It stands to reason, so to speak. And as far as this wounding after, so John Willard Richards gives an account and he gives one of the ones most immediately afterwards.

Richard Is this where he's telling the truth or lying?

Gerrit Well, it all depends on what part of what we want to use.

Richard I see.

Gerrit So the published account is called Two Minutes in Jail and we spent a lot of time on that in our Mardigan podcast. And he doesn't say anything about the mob coming back up afterwards and shooting Hyrum again. I mean, one of the great questions for that is, where is Willard Richards while the mob gets... So in the standard telling of the story, right, Willard Richards sees Joseph go out the window and looks out the window, sees that Joseph is dead, comes back in and tells John Taylor, drags John Taylor to the cell, and then puts the mattress over him. And then, Richard leaves for a moment and then comes back and says, Joseph really is dead and the mob has fled. So for the theory that the mob came up the stairs and then checked to see if Hyrum was dead and then shot him, you've got a real problem. And that is you've got a very, a very powerfully built man in Willard Richards who's not, look, he probably has a hard time going up and down those stairs in the sense of fitting in them, it's so narrow.

Gerrit Well, so where is he when the mob comes back in to make sure that Hyrum's dead and shoots Hyrum? And by the way, doesn't make any reference to this at all. Right, why doesn't he? John Taylor in his account also the same thing. John Taylor also in his account says, you know, Hyrum lays right where he fell when he died and that's it. And he was placid and calm as the summers mourn. And there's no reference to the mob coming back up and shooting him. Now there is an account, again, an account that Thomas Bullock is recording of John Taylor in which he says the mob found that they were dead and absconded. So that there's this one account that says they returned. But the way this film treats it is that it is a settled fact. It is absolute that the mob came back up the stairs after Joseph was dead and shot Hyrum.

Richard In fact, the whole movie starts with that assumption as fact.

Gerrit Right. And look, I'm not saying that there's not researchers, they're not historians, but I'm not saying there's not researchers who've made that claim, but they are a single person having made that claim. It's also important to note that the Council of 50 Minutes has yet another account of the martyrdom that William Clayton writes in 1845, taking multiple accounts of various people. That account also does not claim that the mob came back up and shot them. So I mean, this is a great example of saying, where do we have some historical ambiguity? We have multiple sources about the martyrdom. One of them provides the possibility of the mob coming back up the stairs. The remainder of them not only don't provide that possibility, they seem to make it pretty impossible with the timeline that it happened.

Gerrit Does that mean that it didn't happen? No. A trained, a responsible historian would say, most of the records don't mention anything about a mob coming and would make it hard to fit them coming back up and shooting Hyrum. None of them, by the way, zero sources say that the mob shot. Even the Thomas Bullock account that says the mob came back up the stairs, says they came back up the stairs, saw that Hyrum was dead and left. Now, I would guess that there's a pretty big difference between seeing someone and shooting them again and seeing them and leaving. Guns are pretty loud. It's a pretty hectic, terrible thing that's going on. Most of the firing has already ceased because Joseph is dead. Both Willard Richards and John Taylor don't record that Hyrum shot again. Right? Now, again, that doesn't mean that they weren't, but that's not how this argument is being made.

Gerrit This argument is being made categorically that he was. Now, again, their argument is going to be, well, because there's not blood on the back of his shirt. Again, so you're taking something that I don't know the total provenance on and making an argument for the remainder of the argument. You can't start with something that is difficult to know and then use that as the basis of your entire theory, especially when the majority of our sources don't have a mob coming back up and zero of our sources have them shooting Hyrum coming up, checking him, seeing if he's alive and then shooting him. None of our sources say that.

Richard So next item we wanted to talk about was the Saints not testifying in the trial.

Gerrit Right. So by the time, so a really big deal, this is the beginning of the film and then it's referred back to this again, that John Taylor kept telling people not to go testify, don't go testify, don't go testify. First of all, it's not coming from John Taylor, although it is something that's explained by John Taylor. Brigham Young is telling people not to go testify. Now I'm sure that in our second video, it'll be like Brigham Young didn't want anyone to know. No, Brigham Young is by the time of the trial, thoroughly disgusted with what's going on. He knows that people can't be protected in Carthage. Making the reference back to my great-great grandfather, Jonathan Harriman Hale, he actually has a letter that he writes to Brigham Young. When he goes to Carthage to help protect some other people that had been indicted for other crimes because there's such a great fear that people are going to be killed if they go to Carthage. For some crazy reason, Latter-day Saints seem to believe that they're not safe going to Carthage. It's an odd thing that though a governor might pledge their faith to protect them, that they still feel uneasy.

Gerrit No one really knows why. But so Brigham Young tells the witnesses to not, they make a decision, look, they impaneled a jury of all non-Latter-day Saints, even though Hancock County is majority Latter-day Saint. So if that's the case, you aren't even trying.

Richard So they do say in the video that it was a Mormon jury, and then the defense attorney says this isn't unfair, and so then they get a completely non-Mormon jury, which would make it much more fair.

Gerrit The most fair because only Mormons are liars. Well, so this is well documented. The reason why they don't send witnesses is because they A, don't believe it will matter. They think that these guys are going to get acquitted no matter what. And B, they think if they go, that they'll be killed if they go. And so, you know, the conspiracy theorist voice says, well, don't you find it interesting that they were all acquitted? No, I don't find that interesting in the least. I find it anger inducing that there are hundreds of witnesses outside of John Taylor and Willard Richards. And why is the prosecution not able to bring any charges against anyone? I mean, because the reality isn't because Brigham Young said, hey, if you go there, you're going to be killed. You probably shouldn't go. That's not the reason why.

Richard Wow, Gerrit, that was great. It looks like we're out of time. I'm not doing a part two. It looks like this will be a part two. And you'll have to join us next week.

Gerrit I don't want to talk about this the first time.

Richard You didn't want to watch it. You didn't want to talk about it. And now we're doing two hours on it.

Gerrit I feel like I'm losing control of the podcast. We may need to have, I think a venture capitalist firm has taken over. And it just so happens to be, look, it stands to reason that the person getting their PhD in business just so happens to have taken over.

Richard That's right. I want to stretch this out so that we can make the same amount of zero dollars that we make by turning this into two episodes.

Gerrit Well, technically we're losing money every week.

Richard Absolutely we are.

Gerrit Yeah, we live on the largesse of people saying, you guys need like a microphone or something.

Richard I will say there are just some of the absolute kindest people that, and this, so one of the reasons why Gerrit has, he's talked about this at length, the reason that he wants to do this podcast is to provide opportunities for people who hear things and don't have other places to go to find answers to try to find, to provide some evidence, to provide some sources, to provide some context, to help people to not lose their faith over things that, I mean, if someone loses their faith over this video, that would be an absolute tragedy.

Gerrit That would be a tragedy because the persons creating it created it with the intent to try to destroy someone's faith. And so allowing that to happen means you're actually, you're allowing their, and look, this is the reason why, back to the early review from the Salt Lake Tribune article, if this was a good argument, why aren't there other historians? Look, there are thousands of non-Latter-day Saint historians who don't care about our religion at all, who would make the biggest splash that you could ever make in the field of history if they had the real proof that in fact Brigham Young, who we all want to hate anyway, and the third leader of the Latter-day Saint Church, conspired together to have Joseph and Hyrum murdered. If you could prove that, you would be a Pulitzer Prize winning writer.

Gerrit If it was airtight, you would essentially have crushed the 19th century religious history community. So that's the question that you have to ask whenever you see something like this. Whenever you read or see something that's coming from someone who is a self-proclaimed expert, not an expert because someone said they're an expert, not because they went and got a degree and a board said that they're an expert. But whenever you get something from someone who's a self-proclaimed expert, the first question you have to ask is, if this is such a good argument, why are you making it? Why isn't someone who has some kind of credibility making it? And I think you know the answer right now. Now what they would respond is, because they're all part of the conspiracy. Oh yes, all of these non-Latter-day Saint historians who hate our church are also in the conspiracy to make our church look good.

Gerrit I mean, at some point, when we're talking about it standing to reason, that's what doesn't stand to reason. So I guess we're going to do another week of this. I'm not happy about it and I blame Richard. And probably next week, my mom will be joining us as the primary, as my co-host.

Richard I'll be replaced.

Gerrit Yeah. That or my son Kai. Those are the two options we have. Thank you so much for listening.

Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

I feel like calling the video movie, I won't even use the word documentary because in order to make a documentary, you have to use documents, right?

That's how loose the facts are here that I don't even believe Carthage exists anymore.

The difference is real experts are the people who create the content by looking at all of these sources, not the people who memorize the content.

Well, okay, I've driven on I-15 a lot, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't make me a structural engineer.

I mean, the reality is, this was a conclusion in search of a theory to make the conclusion work.

Cut the guy some slack. You know, another 30, 40 years, it'll be 200 years.

The lack of evidence is proof of evidence of how deep the conspiracy goes.

When someone says it stands to reason, what they mean is I don't have evidence, but I really think this is what happened.

They're trying to hide it by telling everybody that this is what happened.

I want to stretch this out so that we can make the same amount of zero dollars that we make by turning this into two episodes.

Source shelf

19 sources cited on air · verses link to the scriptures, Joseph Smith’s documents to the Joseph Smith Papers

other

"Who Killed Joseph Smith?" video (director named on air as Justin Griffin)

The roughly two-hour video listeners emailed about; Gerrit won't call it a documentary because it doesn't use documents.

newspaper

Salt Lake Tribune review of the video (link promised on air)

The Tribune, founded by Utah's anti-Mormon party and still no friend of the Church, skewers the film.

record

Willard Richards, "Two Minutes in Jail," Times and Seasons (1844)

Published right after the martyrdom; the film treats Richards's and Taylor's as the only two accounts.

record

John Taylor's published account of the martyrdom (about 10 years later)

The film makes much of its lateness to cast Taylor as a conspirator, but doesn't apply the same test to its own late sources.

record

Joseph Smith's 1832 history

The earliest recorded First Vision account; Gerrit's example of saying what the documents show without arguing from silence.

Find it in the Joseph Smith Papers →

sermon

Jeffrey R. Holland, general conference talk mentioning the martyrdom (title not named on air)

The film reads his phrase "pistol and ball" as the Church quietly changing its story.

record

Willard Richards and John Taylor, accounts of Hyrum's and Joseph's last words

oh, my poor dear brother, Hyrum

The only reason we know "I am a dead man" and Joseph's cry over Hyrum is the two men the film accuses.

record

William Daniels's account of the martyrdom

One of several accounts the film leaves out.

other

Stones from the skulls of Joseph and Hyrum, Community of Christ archives

Shown to Gerrit years ago; little of the bodies remained at exhumation. Said on air as 1921; the exhumation was in 1928.

book

Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History

Gerrit's example of inventing a person's thoughts without a source, here Joseph in Liberty Jail. The plural wife is named on air as "Eliza Beeman"; Joseph married Louisa Beaman in 1841.

journal

Willard Richards journal, June 1844

Records that Joseph asked Richards to go with him to Carthage.

newspaper

Salt Lake Tribune review, on "hundreds of years"

Through all of this, Griffin wants to challenge the narrative that the church has used for hundreds of years to describe the Smith's murders, no matter that we are talking about murders that happened less than 200 years ago.

The reviewer makes the same point Gerrit made before reading it.

newspaper

Salt Lake Tribune review, on missing historians

Actual professional historians, by which I mean people who have formerly studied historical methodology and published peer-reviewed research in academic journals and books by university presses, are conspicuously absent from the scene.

No one trained in historical method appears in the film.

newspaper

Salt Lake Tribune review, "amateur hour"

In other words, it's amateur hour, or rather, it's an hour and 38 minutes, unfortunately.

The reviewer on Griffin's view that every researcher needs a theory of his own.

sermon

John Taylor, 1854 speech recorded by Thomas Bullock

Mentions bayonets as well as firearms; Taylor's published account only speaks of knocking guns aside.

book

Saints, volume 1, chapter-opening sketch of hands holding the Carthage door

A small, unlabeled drawing the film treats as the Church saying Hyrum was against the door.

record

Thomas Bullock's record of John Taylor saying the mob returned

The one account that has the mob coming back; even it says they found the men dead and left.

record

William Clayton's 1845 account of the martyrdom, Council of Fifty minutes

Compiled from several witnesses; it also has no mob coming back to shoot Hyrum.

Find it in the Joseph Smith Papers →

letter

Jonathan Harriman Hale to Brigham Young (Gerrit's ancestor)

Written while protecting others indicted in Carthage, where Saints feared they would be killed.

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found

New forensic evidence proves John Taylor and Willard Richards murdered Joseph and Hyrum.

The Church hid that John Taylor's watch probably wasn't stopped by a bullet.

The mob came back up the stairs and shot Hyrum again.

Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Knowing more than the average person isn't the same as being an expert; real historians build conclusions from every source, not from the ones that fit.

Accounts written at the time usually beat memories written decades later, because later memories already know how the story ends.

When someone says "it stands to reason," ask for the source. Absence of evidence is not evidence.

A simple test for a sensational claim: if it were airtight, why aren't trained historians outside our faith making it?

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead

Not a documentaryGerrit won't call it a documentary, then not a film, then apologizes to filmmakers everywhere; Richard apologizes to Francis Ford Coppola (1:14, 45:21, 1:15:25).

Hundreds of yearsThe film says the martyrdom story is hundreds of years old; another 30 or 40 years and it'll be 200 (23:43, callback 59:15).

Does Carthage even exist?After the video, Richard isn't sure Carthage exists anymore (2:46).

The audience: Gerrit's mom (and Rachel's mom)Not from my mom; she keeps downloading; thank you, Renee; next week she or Gerrit's son Kai will co-host (0:56, 25:56, 44:16, 1:39:20).

Is anyone still awake?People will already tune out, this is a terrible podcast, no one's listening (3:06, 17:14, 44:10, 1:18:59).

One part, then a series"We're only doing one," then part five, then a year-long series, then Richard declares a part two (28:25, 40:36, 1:35:14).

Is Craig Wilson still listening?Gerrit asks; Richard will check (44:23).

Richard says three wordsHis wife wants Gerrit to talk the whole time, and the martyrdom episode is the best because Richard speaks least in it (21:53, 25:58).

John Taylor's arsenalFrom two pistols to 37, and a bandolier of guns like a scene from Rambo (46:28, 1:25:53).

Losing money every weekGerrit blames a venture capitalist takeover by the business PhD; the podcast lives on people saying, "you guys need like a microphone" (1:35:32, 1:36:01).

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode

Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.

Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward

Read Willard Richards's "Two Minutes in Jail" and John Taylor's published account side by side, and notice what each adds (26:07).

Listen back to the martyrdom episodes from Season 1, which Richard calls one of the best and most downloaded (25:30).

Look into how historians weigh reminiscent accounts, using Dan Sickles at Gettysburg as a case study (11:53).

Find William Clayton's 1845 martyrdom account in the Council of Fifty minutes (1:29:35).

See the John Taylor watch display and read how researchers concluded he fell on it (1:04:51).

SOT Litner · S2E5.

Carthage Conspiracy Part 1

Chapters

Transcript

Quote board

Source shelf

"Who Killed Joseph Smith?" video (director named on air as Justin Griffin)

Salt Lake Tribune review of the video (link promised on air)

Willard Richards, "Two Minutes in Jail," Times and Seasons (1844)

John Taylor's published account of the martyrdom (about 10 years later)

Joseph Smith's 1832 history

Jeffrey R. Holland, general conference talk mentioning the martyrdom (title not named on air)

Willard Richards and John Taylor, accounts of Hyrum's and Joseph's last words

William Daniels's account of the martyrdom

Stones from the skulls of Joseph and Hyrum, Community of Christ archives

Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History

Willard Richards journal, June 1844

Salt Lake Tribune review, on "hundreds of years"

Salt Lake Tribune review, on missing historians

Salt Lake Tribune review, "amateur hour"

John Taylor, 1854 speech recorded by Thomas Bullock

Saints, volume 1, chapter-opening sketch of hands holding the Carthage door

Thomas Bullock's record of John Taylor saying the mob returned

William Clayton's 1845 account of the martyrdom, Council of Fifty minutes

Jonathan Harriman Hale to Brigham Young (Gerrit's ancestor)

Episode quiz

Why won't Gerrit call the video a documentary?

Fun with Numbers

From 1832 to 1921

Percentages said on air

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words

More from this episode

Claim check

Take it to class

Banter bin

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Go deeper

Carthage Conspiracy Part 1

Listeners ask about a video

"Who Killed Joseph Smith?" video (director named on air as Justin Griffin)

Salt Lake Tribune review of the video (link promised on air)

Willard Richards, "Two Minutes in Jail," Times and Seasons (1844)

John Taylor's published account of the martyrdom (about 10 years later)

Joseph Smith's 1832 history

Jeffrey R. Holland, general conference talk mentioning the martyrdom (title not named on air)

Willard Richards and John Taylor, accounts of Hyrum's and Joseph's last words

William Daniels's account of the martyrdom

Stones from the skulls of Joseph and Hyrum, Community of Christ archives

Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History

Willard Richards journal, June 1844

Salt Lake Tribune review, on "hundreds of years"

Salt Lake Tribune review, on missing historians

Salt Lake Tribune review, "amateur hour"

John Taylor, 1854 speech recorded by Thomas Bullock

Saints, volume 1, chapter-opening sketch of hands holding the Carthage door

Thomas Bullock's record of John Taylor saying the mob returned

William Clayton's 1845 account of the martyrdom, Council of Fifty minutes

Jonathan Harriman Hale to Brigham Young (Gerrit's ancestor)

Why won't Gerrit call the video a documentary?

From 1832 to 1921

Percentages said on air

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words