Brent Ashworth purchased a faith promoting letter from Mark Hofmann and then toured the state of Utah bearing testimony about this wonderful letter. Problem was, it was a forgery. Brent talks about the letter, and ties up some loose ends on that $435,000 deal.
Brent: Anyway, the point was, is that we had met originally on that deal in his little MR2, which was his new Toyota. And we sat there for several hours talking about this big deal. And he wanted to get the Lucy Mack Smith letter back. He wanted to get the Martin Harris letter back that I had. He wanted to get the page of the Book of Mormon manuscript, which was a phony, which I bought, which was published on the Ensign in December 1983, full page. He wanted to get all these things back, and a couple of real things too, from me. And he offered originally just for the Lucy Mack Smith, he offered $125,000. And when I turned him down, I said, “Mark, I didn’t get that to make money. I got it because I like giving talks and share it.” I didn’t get to go on a regular mission. I had to go in the army. And so now I can kind of perform a little mission by testifying as Joseph Smith as a prophet by using this letter. It was very faith-promoting. And so he came back and he says, “Oh, my guy just told me that he would pay a quarter million for that letter. And then he made this list of these other things he wanted, and it came up with this $435,000
GT: So he was buying his stuff back from you.
Brent: Right. It was kind of like he wanted to get all these things out of circulation because I was the only one. The church was putting them in a safe. I was out there doing dog and pony shows everywhere: firesides. I mentioned on the follow up podcast the other day after the Netflix [documentary], there was one Sunday I started out in Tremonton, Utah with a Relief Society meeting. And I did five meetings that one day and ended up at a stake priesthood meeting in St. George, talking about the Lucy Mack Smith Letter.
GT: Tremonton to St. George! that’s like…
Brent: Five meetings in that one day.
GT: That’s like 500 miles.
Brent: Oh, I know. Yeah.
Check out our conversation….
