This showed up in "Breaking News"
Link to the full article
Now, I'd never heard of this massacre and to be frank am unsurprised that the Salt Lake police say that evidence about BY is a fake (query How can you compare engraving to handwriting?) but were the Mormons truely that violent early on?
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A forensic examiner says a document blaming Mormon Church leader Brigham Young for the 1857 massacre of 120 Arkansas pioneers is a fake.
The sheet of lead, discovered earlier this year, was engraved with words purportedly written by John D. Lee, the only man held accountable for the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah. Dated 1872, it says Lee and other Mormon leaders carried out the murders on orders from Young, head of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Lee was executed for his role in the massacre. But the engraving's authenticity has been questioned ever since it was found inside a former trading post called Lee's Fort during a restoration.
William Flynn, a private Phoenix examiner hired by the National Park Service, said on Tuesday that the engraved sheet of lead appeared to be the work of convicted con man Mark Hofmann.
Flynn and George Throckmorton, manager of the Salt Lake City police crime lab, examined the lead sheet April 5 after the park service asked them to determine its authenticity. Flynn said they discussed the lead sheet with colleagues, all of whom agreed the handwriting on the document wasn't Lee's.
Link to the full article
Now, I'd never heard of this massacre and to be frank am unsurprised that the Salt Lake police say that evidence about BY is a fake (query How can you compare engraving to handwriting?) but were the Mormons truely that violent early on?