The second most noteworthy event in 1987 (as determined by the KSL staff), was different than most. The public and the media had anticipated if for months.
Convicted murderer Mark Hofmann agreed to fill in the details of his forgery and bombing sprees in prison interviews with prosecutors.
The transcripts of those interviews did cast new light on the crimes, but left some questions unanswered.
News Specialist Con Psarras takes us back to July 31, 1987.
Early in the morning, the transcripts were made public, and news reporters plunged in head first.
They were pages filled with details, how ink and paper were aged to create convincing forgeries, how pipes and nails were forged into death-dealing bombs.
Beneath the detail, there emerged a portrait of Mark Hofmann's character. It was a peek behind a facade of a gentle and bookish man, a glimpse at a diabolical crook and killer.
But the release of the transcripts by no means marked an end to the controversy. Hofmann was conspicuously quiet about his motives for planting the three pipe bombs. Prosecutors filled in the gaps from notes taken during informal talks with Hofmann.
For law enforcement officials, it wasn't enough.
As a forger, Hofmann's reputation and his impact on the historic documents market still grows.
A Probe Five investigation in September revealed that a quarter of a million dollars worth of valuable papers now in circulation are indeed Hofmann forgeries.
And in October, the nation's top documents expert s gathered in California to assess the impact of Hofmann's forgeries on their science.
The LDS Church, whose history Mark Hofmann sought to alter, took the publication of the transcripts as a signal that the controversy was over.
For another Hofmann victim, the widow of the murdered Steven F. Christensen, the release of the so-called Hofmann Papers marked the final chapter in her personal tragedy.
