George Throckmorton is one of the most amazing police officers in the world. Last year I talked to him about his role in the Mark Hofmann forgeries and bombings. In this first episode, we’ll get acquainted with him, and learn how he became a forgery expert. Of course, we will talk about the Mark Hofmann forgeries and murders, but we will also briefly discuss one of his first forgery cases in Ogden, Utah. The Hi-Fi Shop murders are well-known in Utah because a few robbers tortured and killed customers while robbing an Ogden store called the Hi-Fi Shop. It turns out that forgery was involved in that case!
GT: I don’t know how many of my listeners are familiar with a Hi-Fi Murders as they were known, but there were some criminals that tortured some people and killed them. It was pretty terrible.
George: Ironically that case, a significant part of that was due to handwriting.
GT: Really? Oh, I didn’t know that.
George: Again, we could go into that and I don’t want to take a lot of time because that’s not the emphasis.
GT: I’ll have to come back. We’ll have to talk about that.
George: It’s worth talking about that. The significance was there was a homicide up there before the Hi-Fi Shop Murders, there was a homicide involving in airman from Hill Air Force Base and there was an auto theft ring going on out of Hill Air Force Base and they would steal cars and get an airman that was being released and asked him if he wanted to earn some extra money and he would drive the car back to the Chicago/Detroit area so he would get paid. And he was actually transporting stolen cars. But they didn’t know it.
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George: In order for the cars to go back east, they had to have two sets of keys and Pierre can only find one set of keys. So, he went out to the base and got a duplicate set of keys made. He had to sign for that. I actually was able to attach his signature to request for the extra set of keys on that investigation when the Hi-Fi Shop Murders happened. So, we had been investigating that already and he was a suspect in that murder.
We will talk more about how George became a document examiner. Check out our conversation…..
Don’t forget to check out our previous conversations about the Mark Hofmann case!
