Scott Woodward: In 1952 a book entitled The Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith was published by N. B. Lundwall. Within its pages, among other things, Lundwall presented various stories describing how many of those who played significant roles in the persecution of Joseph Smith met with unfortunate ends in unnatural and sometimes gruesome ways, underscoring the idea of divine justice and retribution.  Unfortunately, the historical credibility of most of these stories is seriously lacking, since they are based on unverifiable hearsay rather than well-documented and corroborated records. These morbid tales are thus the stuff of legend and folklore rather than a robust documentary record. But they do stir up the question, what do we actually know about what happened to those involved in the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith? Were they ever brought to justice? Did they live long lives? Did any of them meet a tragic mortal end?  In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we investigate the answers to these questions. based primarily in the solid historical research of Marvin S. Hill and Dallin H. Oaks.  I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our seventh episode in this series about the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Now, let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hi, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: We’re back.

Scott Woodward: We’re back. Excited to talk post-martyrdom today.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. About the fate of the persecutors of the prophet Joseph Smith, which is an amazing title.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: And I really hope that’s the title of this episode, though I know you’re the one that has final say when it comes to stuff like that, so . . .

Scott Woodward: We’re going to do it. That’s the name of this episode.

Casey Griffiths: It’s so grabby. Like, it just pulls you right in. You want to be like, “Ooh, I want to hear this story,” so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And it’s not original to us.

Casey Griffiths: It’s not original to us.

Scott Woodward: We’ll talk about that.

Casey Griffiths: We’ll talk about where it comes from, yeah. Let’s recap really fast, and I’m going to do this really quick.

Scott Woodward: All right. Let’s see how fast you can go.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Scott Woodward: Our whole series up to this point.

Casey Griffiths: And there’s so much to recap, so forgive the brevity. Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were killed on June 27, 1844. Why were they killed? They had people outside of Nauvoo who didn’t like them, mostly for political reasons. They had people inside Nauvoo who didn’t like them, mostly for religious and spiritual reasons. The people inside Nauvoo published a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor that was intended to expose Joseph Smith as a false prophet. Joseph Smith and the city council of Nauvoo were forced to respond by destroying the Expositor press, which caused, again, the whole situation to just kind of blow up.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: People were trying to get Joseph Smith to leave Nauvoo because he had a good system of protection there that would allow him, when he got into legal trouble, to kind of be protected a little bit. They do eventually succeed in getting him to Carthage. When there’s there a whole bunch of stuff that’s shady happens with the local officials and with the governor of the state of Illinois, Thomas Ford. We talked a little bit last time about Thomas Ford’s possible involvement or complicity in the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum, but the bottom line is Joseph and Hyrum were killed by a mob in Carthage Jail.  We, and not just we, but, you know, no less a person than Dallin H. Oaks has said, it was really a political assassination that happened—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —in Carthage Jail.

Scott Woodward: Joseph was a presidential candidate that year.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He would be on the ballot.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So there were politics motivating the murders, and everybody in Hancock County knew that it was a murder. Like, there wasn’t a huge secret. This wasn’t seen as, like, a totally, you know, out-of-control mob that came from nowhere. They were their fellow citizens, mostly from Warsaw, but some people in Carthage participated, and they recognized that there needed to be some sort of trial. So that’s going to be the thing we talk about today, which is what happened to the people that participated in the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Accepting there wasn’t a big mystery about who was involved. Most people knew who was involved in the murders.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Nicely done. A few decades ago there was a really popular book compiled by a guy named N. B. Lundwall entitled, wait for it, Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Oh, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Hey, that’s what our episode’s called today. Okay. So that’s where we get it. We got the title of our episode today from the title of that book.

Casey Griffiths: And I just want to say, I picked up a copy of Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith on my mission, and it is objectively awesome. Like, it’s so . . .

Scott Woodward: Objectively awesome.

Casey Griffiths: It’s so good. And N. B. Lundwall, I found out, was a convert to the church. He was RLDS growing up.

Scott Woodward: Oh, really?

Casey Griffiths: And then joined our church, and he put out a few books that are mostly compilations. Like, he would find really rare documents, like the poetic version of section 76, and assemble it in another great book called The Vision.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: This one has some valuable stuff in it, like it’s got Willard Richards’ and John Taylor’s account of the martyrdom. It has historical accounts from Liberty Jail.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But, boy, does it, like, sing when it starts talking about the fate of the persecutors of the prophet Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward: It takes some liberties. We’ll say that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And it details, like, gruesome fates of the men who attacked Carthage Jail.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And like you’re saying, the book does have some valuable material in it, but it also has some very detailed tales.

Casey Griffiths: Gruesome.

Scott Woodward: Yes, gruesome tales of the horrific fates suffered by the men who attacked the jail.  Two of the stories were featured in American Crucifixion, which is an account of the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum written by a guy named Alex Beam, a non-Latter-day-Saint writer. For instance, Beam writes about numerous Latter-day Saint diarists recording instances of “the Mormon curse”, they called it, a rotting of the flesh that struck down the men who had lifted their hands against the prophet. They called this the Mormon curse, Casey.  Perhaps this curse fulfilled Joseph’s recorded prophecy five days before his death that his tormentors “will be smitten with the scab.” The Indians reported that a man named Jack Reed, who supposedly helped kill Joseph, was so deformed that no white woman could look at him. He was literally eaten alive by worms. His eyeballs had fallen out. The flesh on his cheeks and neck had fallen off. Although he could breathe, he could only take nourishment through an opening in his throat. Pieces of flesh as large as two hands had reputedly fallen from different parts of his body. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that’s in this book.  The book told another story of a guy named Corporal James Belton who bragged of taking a shot at Joseph Smith during the events of June 27, and it was reported that, “He died from a cancer in his eye, and when his meals were brought to him, the pus from his eye would drop in his plate.” Oh, geez, that’s nasty.

Casey Griffiths: Oof.

Scott Woodward: And, like, none of the names of these guys actually appear on the list of the alleged mobbers that was compiled by Willard Richards, Jacob Backenstouse, and William Clayton. But a crippled, elderly mobber who boasted that, “I saw the last bullet shot into the old boy,” meaning Joseph Smith, was said to be sharing a cabin with his abusive son in Colville, Utah. The son used his father as a pack horse to carry sacks filled with coal and flayed him with the belt when the old man tarried in his work. Eventually their cabin burned down with the father inside, and somehow the elderly, charred parent didn’t die. Local well-wishers put together a collection for some medicine, sending the son into Park City to fetch the healing lotion, but instead the son drank the money away in a dingy saloon, and his unrepentant father mobber succumbed in his absence. I mean, that’s a good story.

Casey Griffiths: That is my favorite story in the book. They talk about how the guy’s house burned down, and everybody around him heard him screaming all night, but they were like, nah, he’s just crazy. He screams all the time.  And then they woke up in the morning and they see, like, the smoldering remains of the house, and they find the guy, like, huddling in the ashes, and his son just takes all the money and drinks it away. So it is, like—it’s good reading.

Scott Woodward: Those are some very gruesomely entertaining stories.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: In some ways they’re satisfying to Latter-day Saints who are like, yeah, they got what was coming to them, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: The only problem, Casey, the only problem with these stories is that they’re probably not true.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: The real story of the fate of the men who murdered Joseph and Hyrum is actually fairly well documented, but it’s certainly not as satisfying as Lundwall’s book. And—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —so that’s what we want to talk about today is what’s the true story? What do we actually know about those who murdered the prophet Joseph? If not what Lundwall is talking about, then what? So where do you want to start with this question today? What actually happened to the men who murdered Joseph and Hyrum?

Casey Griffiths: Well, let’s start with a little historiography—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —which is this: Lundwall’s book is objectively awesome, honestly. And I remember reading it as a missionary and thinking, “Whoo-wee, this is good stuff.” But even though it might be immensely satisfying, it basically is a collection of stories with not a lot of attempt at verification. Now, again, there’s some great stuff in there, like Willard Richards’ account and John Taylor’s account.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Casey Griffiths: And if you can find a copy, get one. But it was really in the 1970s, when Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill published Carthage Conspiracy,  that we get some hard historical information. And President Oaks did a podcast with the Joseph Smith Papers where he talked about this, but he literally went to Carthage and went to the courthouse and found the original records. He was one of the first people to look at them since the 1840s, and the two of them did a great job constructing the story. So, in putting the story together today, we’re drawing largely from their book but also from Alex Beam’s book, American Crucifixion, which Alex Beam is not a Latter-day Saint, is my understanding.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Dallin H. Oaks is a Latter-day Saint, spoiler alert, and so is Marvin Hill, but we’re bouncing back and forth between what they said, though it’s clear that Alex Beam drew pretty heavily from Carthage Conspiracy when he wrote his book as well, but we just want credit where credit’s due.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They’re the ones that did the research. So this is a pretty shocking look into how the legal system was subverted and how, you know, in something so obvious as the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, basically the murderers largely went unpunished, at least the main people responsible for it.

Scott Woodward: Nobody was convicted for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Casey Griffiths: That’s correct. Yeah, but it’s complex as to say why. For instance, there was an immediate outcry for justice.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: No less a figure than Governor Thomas Ford, who we spent a lot of time talking about, wrote a message to the people of Illinois. He said, “It has always appeared to me that the persons who committed the deed ought to be made to answer for their crime.” So they’ve got the support of the governor. They’ve got a lot of things going for their conviction. For instance, the murders took place in a public space in broad daylight.  There were survivors of the attack on the jail. Willard Richards and John Taylor both saw and witnessed the entire attack and should have been easily able to identify at least some of the people that were at the scene.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Casey Griffiths: The sheriff of Hancock County, Jacob Backenstos, was sympathetic to the saints, and he was really motivated to bring the murderers to justice. So this isn’t a case where only Latter-day Saints are good guys and everybody else is against them. They have this non Latter-day Saint sheriff who was really interested in sort of redeeming the name of Hancock County by bringing them to justice.

Scott Woodward: Hmm. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: However, there’s some huge factors working against the case as well. First among them, the four people who probably fired the shots, so we’re talking the direct murderers, are John Wills and William Voorhees, William Gallagher, and Nathan Allen, and when they find out that there’s going to be a trial held, they vanish.

Scott Woodward: Why do we think that those four are the ones? Because, I mean, the accounts say there’s, like, 150 to 200 people.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Why is it boiled down to those four?

Casey Griffiths: The indictment identifies those ones as the ones that actually fired the shots that killed Joseph and Hyrum. So three of those men, that’s Wills, Voorhees, and Gallagher, were also the ones that were supposedly hit when Joseph Smith fired.

Scott Woodward: Okay. So there’s some evidence that they were there because they were wounded.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. They were wounded, and so it’s hard for them to be like, Oh yeah, my gun went off accidentally, and, you know, it’s the same type of bullet that was in Joseph Smith’s gun.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: However, as soon as there’s a whiff of this happening, these four kind of vanish. They cross the river, they go to Missouri, and from there Oaks and Hill had a really hard time finding any information about them. Even William Gallagher—we’re dubious as to if that’s his first name or not—they kind of just disappear from the story.

Scott Woodward: Interesting.

Casey Griffiths: Second, the defense attorneys that were running the trial managed to exclude any Latter-day Saints from serving on the jury for the trial even though, at this time, the saints made up more than half of the population of Hancock County. So, if this is a fair trial, it’s going to draw from a representative sample of the population. It doesn’t. It doesn’t for several reasons. The judge basically allows them to exclude anybody from the jury that is a Latter-day Saint or even shows sympathies towards a Latter-day Saint. Back then the term “Jack Mormon” referred to somebody who was just sympathetic towards the church.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: The judge basically said they could exclude anybody they wanted to, and so we wind up with twelve people who do appear to be, like, fairly neutral, but none of them are Latter-day Saints or have shown any real sympathies towards Latter-day Saints. That kind of suggests that the fix is going to be in.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And here’s the real thing that killed the trial: The Saints were not motivated to help the trial in any way.

Scott Woodward: Why not?

Casey Griffiths: Why not?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Because the trial took place in Carthage, and so if you’re John Taylor and you’ve been shot several times in Carthage, are you motivated to go back to Carthage? I wouldn’t be.

Scott Woodward: Okay. So they’re still feeling like the cards are stacked against them. This is just going to be, like, a sham trial.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And it actually might even be a trap for targeting more Latter-day Saints.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. And so John Taylor and Willard Richards, the two people you’d really want to appear in the trial, refuse to go to Carthage, and they do so not only of their own choice, but the leaders of the church, Brigham Young and the Twelve, are telling them, if you go to Carthage, you’re just going to get killed. Look what happened the last time we sent somebody to Carthage. We know what justice looks like for them. And so the saints really don’t participate in the trial. And the saints at this time, too, are focused on finishing the temple, getting everybody endowed in the temple, and then getting out of town.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Before there’s another extermination order or anything like that, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So from the saints’ perspective, I can’t blame them for saying, hey, if the trial is successful, it’s just going to inflame the anti-Mormon factions against us, but on the opposite side, the people that are conducting the trial have no political motives. The Latter-day Saints are leaving. They don’t have any reason to assist them. They’re going to be gone. And so they can’t say, “Hey, we’re going to make sure there’s a fair trial because we want to make sure that Latter-day Saints know we’re good people.” The saints had openly said they were going to leave the country by this point and were preparing to leave, so there’s not a lot of motivation from people that might even be neutral to assist the saints in making sure this is a fair trial.

Scott Woodward: And so what year is this that the trial is happening?

Casey Griffiths: Well, that’s the other thing, too, is Carthage is kind of, like, the sticks, right? And they had these lawyers and judges that would ride the circuit, and so they only held court two times a year in Carthage when a judge and lawyers came to town. They tried to get their act together and do a trial in October—again, Joseph and Hyrum are killed in June—but they can’t get it together, so they hold the trial the following spring in May, and the trial is kind of a circus from the beginning, where it’s sort of an entire community that hates the saints and aren’t exactly sad that Joseph and Hyrum are dead that turn out. And then the trial is kind of populated with these colorful figures that themselves—I mean, I got to credit Oaks and Hill: like, their book in certain parts reads like a legal thriller where, “Ooh, what’s going to happen, and what’s going on here?” And they do a really great job kind of reproducing the trial from the original documents, but let me just kind of set the scene.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, let’s paint the picture.

Casey Griffiths: The judge for the trial is a guy named Richard Young, who was a former U. S. Senator. He lost his election, but he wants to go back to the Senate, and it’s clear that he has political ambitions, and that may have affected some of his rulings, like them being to very easily disqualify jurors who they thought had Latter-day Saint sympathies. So this guy knows the Saints are leaving the state. He’s not super motivated to help them because it’s really not going to help him politically. The prosecutor was a guy named Josiah Lamborn, and Lamborn’s a really interesting figure. He’s a former state attorney general of Illinois, and he’s said by some to be the best orator in the state of Illinois.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: But he’s also kind of fallen on hard times because of corruption, and there’s a lot of sources that say he was kind of an alcoholic. So he’s this guy who’s sort of reached the apex of his popularity, and now he’s on a downward streak, and maybe if he wins this huge, high-profile case, he’ll go back up.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But he’s really gifted, and that speaks to them trying to be fair. Like, we sent this prosecutor who’s really good, but at the same time, he’s got a whiff of corruption about him  that makes him maybe susceptible to outside influence.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Now on the defense side there’s several attorneys, but the one we’ll focus on is Orville Browning, whose name you might recognize. Joseph Smith mentions Orville Browning in the last letter he writes from Carthage Jail.

Scott Woodward: He wanted Browning to come and represent them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah, Browning had actually represented Joseph Smith—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —when Missourians tried to extradite him to Missouri after Governor Boggs had an attempted assassination done to him. And Joseph actually writes and says, if you can get Orville Browning to defend me, that would be great, but Joseph is killed.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Now, Browning is, like, the opposite of Lamborn. He’s super religious. He won’t even travel on the Sabbath day, and he leads a team of really qualified attorneys, and Browning is, you know, described in the contemporary records as, like, one of the best lawyers in the state. Like, the people that he’s running in circles with are Abraham Lincoln, who you’ve probably heard of.

Scott Woodward: I’ve heard of him.

Casey Griffiths: And Stephen Douglas, who are both riding the same circuits that he is. So—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —a little tweak here or there, and it’s possible Abraham Lincoln could have been involved in this trial or Stephen Douglas, who both go on to fame and greater things.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Wow.

Casey Griffiths: But you’ve got this gifted but corrupt attorney who’s acting as the prosecutor. You’ve got this very, very upright and respected attorney who’s acting as the lead defense attorney for them, who actually has had dealings with Joseph Smith in the past and was Joseph Smith’s favorite attorney. And that’s kind of the setup for the scene, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Okay, so it would have been cool if it went the other way, right? To have Browning as the prosecutor and  the more corrupt guy as the defense attorney, but that’s how the cards fell.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And it’s not to say that Josiah Lamborn, at least in Joseph Smith’s trial, doesn’t do a bad job. Like, in some ways he does a great job, but he also does some stuff that’s really, really suspicious. And by the way, they split it into two trials: They decide to do a trial for the murderers of Joseph Smith and a trial for the murderers of Hyrum Smith. So—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —Josiah Lamborn calls all these people to the stand, but most of them are from Carthage, and most of them are sort of, you know, evasive in the answers that they give.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Casey Griffiths: Like, just to give you a sample, Frank Worrell is the captain of the guard at the jail.

Scott Woodward: He’s, like the—part of the Carthage Greys, right? The sworn enemies of the saints.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. He’s supposed to be, yeah, the leader of the Greys, who were the militia defending the jail when the mob attacks. Because that’s the question: Nobody says that the guards defending the jail killed anybody. Like, they—apparently nobody in the mob was hurt by them.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So the question is why did they not do something when the mob was attacking?

Casey Griffiths: Why didn’t you put up more of a fight?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And one accusation was made was that they had loaded their guns with blanks. That they knew that there was an attack coming on the jail, and they were going to make it look like they had fired back and done their duty, but their guns really weren’t loaded with anything that would harm. And so in one particularly tense moment of questioning, Josiah Lamborn asks him, “Do you know if the Carthage Greys that evening loaded their guns with blank cartridges?” and he asked that question, and immediately Browning objects. Browning says, you don’t have to answer that question. And that’s what Frank Worrell says. Frank Worrell says, “I will not answer that question. I know nothing about the Carthage Greys, only the six men I had to do with.” So he’s asked directly, did you load your guns with blanks? And Frank Worrell says, I’m not going to answer the question. And Josiah Lamborn follows up and says, did those six men? Because Frank Worrell says, I only know about the six men I was with. Frank Worrell says, “Did those six men load their guns with blank cartridges that evening?” And Worrell says, “I will not answer it.” So he’s kind of like, I plead the fifth, which, again—

Scott Woodward: Geez.

Casey Griffiths: —to the jury should have made him look real, real guilty.

Scott Woodward: Right?

Casey Griffiths: If he’s not willing to answer that question or he’ll get in trouble.

Scott Woodward: Interesting.

Casey Griffiths: So basically the judge, when Browning objects, sustains the objection and basically says that Frank Worrell doesn’t have to answer any questions that might incriminate himself, that he can plead the Fifth.  So Lamborn asks again, and Worrell again says, I’m not going to answer, and that’s kind of where they end up. Now, many years later, John Hay, who we mentioned last episode, he becomes a prominent official in the Lincoln administration, writes, “It would be difficult to imagine anything cooler than this quiet perjury to screen a murder.” So—

Scott Woodward: Geez.

Casey Griffiths: —this is one thing. This guy won’t even say if his gun’s loaded or not, and he’s guarding the jail. He won’t answer that simple a question, which makes it look like there’s some serious collusion going on.

Scott Woodward: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: What think ye about that? Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Why won’t he answer the question? And, again, what Lamborn has to prove here is conspiracy.  The people that are indicted, which includes Thomas Sharp and several other men, aren’t being accused of firing the guns but being part of a conspiracy to murder Joseph and Hyrum Smith.  And so this really makes it look like there was some sort of collusion between the Carthage Greys and the Warsaw Militia, who are the ones to attack the jail.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So it’s looking good, as we start out here.

Scott Woodward: Meaning, looking like we’re gonna catch some bad guys?

Casey Griffiths: Looking like we’re gonna catch some bad guys, even if the saints aren’t going to cooperate.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: The next person that he calls to the stand is a man named William Daniels, and William Daniels is a 24-year-old cooper, he makes barrels,  who claimed that he participated in the jail. He says that he was in the mob that attacked the jail, but that he later converted to the church. In fact, he talks about having a dream where he meets Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith gave him a drink of pure water and basically blessed him and told him to tell the truth, and he writes a pamphlet that becomes very popular among the saints called A Correct Account of the Murders of General Joseph and Hyrum Smith.  And so this pamphlet is published, he probably used a ghostwriter because William Daniels himself was very young and not that literate. The guy that probably wrote the pamphlet is called Lyman Littlefield.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And that’s kind of what’s at stake here is Orville Browning, when he cross-examines William Daniels, is basically looking at the pamphlet and saying, well, you said this happened. You said this happened. You said this happened. And Daniels knows that if he contradicts the pamphlet, he’ll be accused of being a liar, and so that’s what puts pressure on him. Now, here’s what Daniels claims, okay? Daniels was asked, like, is this pamphlet an accurate representation? And he says, in substance, yes, even though Littlefield may have embellished the details a little bit. And some of the things he claimed was that he attended a rally where Thomas Sharp had announced a plan to murder the Smiths while Governor Ford was in Nauvoo, hoping that when the Saints heard that their prophet and patriarch were dead, they would rise up and also kill the governor.  So Thomas Sharp is saying, we’ll wait ’till the governor gets to Nauvoo, then we’ll kill the Smiths, and then the Saints will kill the governor as well. Clean sweep. Everybody that can get us in trouble is now dead.

Scott Woodward: But, plot twist, when the governor heard the cannon fire, John Taylor says, he fled immediately.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. It’s a twisty story.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: He also, William Daniels, claimed that a letter was written from the Carthage Greys to the Warsaw Irregulars. This is the disbanded Warsaw militia.  The letter read, “Now is a delightful time to murder the Smiths. The governor has gone to Nauvoo with all the troops. The Carthage Greys are left to guard the prisoners. Five of our men will be stationed at the jail. The rest will be upon the public square. To keep up appearances, you will attack the men at the jail. A sham scuffle will ensue. Their guns will be loaded with blank cartridges. They will fire in the air.”  And so he’s also alleging that the Carthage Greys sent this letter, which again points towards a conspiracy—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —between Warsaw and Carthage to kill the Smiths. He also said that during the attack on the jail, that Joseph kind of went to the window, and in his account he says that Joseph stayed there for “several minutes,” that’s the wording he used. Several minutes, while the leaders of the mob called for someone to shoot him. He said that Levi Williams, who’s one of the five men indicted for Joseph’s murder, was like, somebody shoot the guy, somebody shoot the guy. And then he said Joseph fell and was shot several times on the ground while he was still conscious. Then he adds a detail that’s often shared in regards to the martyrdom, and Scott, you’ve probably heard this story—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —before, but this is in his pamphlet. Okay, so this is what he writes: He says that a ruffian stepped out of the crowd,  “barefoot and bareheaded, having on no coat, with his pants rolled above his knees and shirt sleeves above his elbows. He muttered, ‘This old Joe, I know you. I know you, old Joe, damn you. You are the man that had my daddy shot.’” And so what Daniels is claiming is that the son of Lilburn Boggs  was in the mob and he stepped out of the mob and started to kind of curse at Joseph Smith. Apparently what Daniels describes is that Levi Williams assembled four men to shoot the wounded prisoner at point blank range, Joseph Smith is still alive. While the mobbers primed their muskets and raised their barrels to eye level, President Smith’s eyes rested upon them with a calm and quiet resignation. He betrayed no agitated feelings, and the expression upon his countenance seemed betoken his only prayer to be, ‘O Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ The mobbers fired, and Joseph’s body pitched forward. Suddenly the ill-clad ruffian, same one, returned to the scene, now armed with a bowie knife. He lifted his arm, with every intention of severing Joseph’s head, when a light, so sudden and powerful, burst from the heavens upon the bloody scene, passing its vivid chain between Joseph and his murderers, that they were struck with terrified awe and filled with consternation. This light, in its appearance and potency, baffles all powers of description. The dazzling light stayed the hand brandishing the bowie knife. The soldiers dropped their muskets, and they all stood like marble statues.

Scott Woodward: Oh. Okay. This sounds like some supernatural intervention.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And Daniels actually says, this is what converted me. This is what made me, you know, stop and reconsider and try and rejoin the church. Now, when Lamborn asks him, like, was this all you or did some of this come from Lyman Littlefield? Who’s the author of the pamphlet?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He admits that Lyman Littlefield embellished parts of the account, and then Orville Browning gets up and starts to cross-examine William Daniels, and the story really starts to kind of fall apart. For instance, Browning asks, “At what time did you see this marvelous light?” And Daniels says, “I saw it at the place after the shooting.” “Well, tell us about that light.” “It was like a flash of lightning, there at a moment.” And Browning asks, “When Joseph was shot, did any person go up to him?” “Yes, a young man attempted to get him.” “Had he a bowie knife in his hand?” “I did not see that.” And so now Daniels is kind of hedging on the whole, the son of Lilburn Boggs was going to decapitate Joseph Smith,  and say, I don’t know if I saw that or not. He starts to kind of equivocate back and forth on this.  Then. Browning starts to really pick away at the guy. He says, okay, how are you currently making a living? And Daniels says, “I’m living off selling the pamphlets and exhibiting a painting  that shows the murders at Carthage Jail.” And so he’s questioning Daniel’s motive, saying, like, well, you’re making your livelihood off of the murder and the stories that you’re telling.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: And then he actually says, “Has anybody approached to give you money?” And Daniels says somebody had offered him $500, he won’t say who, if he would tell a story in court and said that somebody had also offered him $2,500 if he would leave and not tell his story. So he’s saying people on both sides have tried to bribe me.

Scott Woodward: So what do modern historians believe about the Daniels story? Is there any corroborating evidence whatsoever that he might have some of the details right? Any flash of light? Any Boggs’ son determined to decapitate Joseph or anything like that?

Casey Griffiths: I mean, even though that story is objectively awesome, especially if you’re a believing Latter-day Saint, like you want to believe.

Scott Woodward: You want that to be true.

Casey Griffiths: The son of Lilburn Boggs tried to decapitate Joseph Smith and was struck by a bolt of lightning or ray of light.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, doesn’t the account say that he actually fell dead or something like that?

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know if William Daniels claims that or not, but it’s pretty—I mean, it doesn’t show up in Willard Richards’ account or John Taylor’s account.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: It’s not mentioned in Section 135, and you’d think that the authors of Section 135 would mention some kind of supernatural occurrence.

Scott Woodward: They’d want to tell that story.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: B. H. Roberts, who was the church historian who assembled a lot of this material, referred to it as a sensational pamphlet, and B. H. Roberts gives this assessment: he said, “The story of Daniels is incredible, not because it involves incidents that would be set down as miraculous, but because the story is all out of harmony with what in the nature of things would happen under the circumstances, and the incidents he details are too numerous, too complicated, too deliberate, and would have occupied too much time to be crowded into the space within which necessarily they would have happened if they happened at all.” So it’s a story that’s persistently been around. Like, I remember hearing this as a seminary student and hearing it as a missionary on several occasions, but a historian with integrity like B. H. Roberts is saying it just doesn’t fit any of the other accounts.

Scott Woodward: And B. H. Roberts is a Latter-day Saint.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So, for instance, consider the fact that Willard Richards entitles his account “Two Minutes in Jail.”

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: William Daniels says Joseph Smith stayed at the window for several minutes.  Willard Richards says they killed them and then they got the heck out of there. This leaves behind all this time to, you know, decapitate Joseph Smith, to be struck by lightning, to be dragged away. I mean, it’s really, really great, but it’s one of those examples of poorly written history that favors the story we want, but we’ve got to be honest as historians and say, it just really doesn’t . . .

Scott Woodward: Not plausible, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And yet today, when you Google—I just did it right now to make sure this was true—if you Google “martyrdom at Carthage”, you’ll see a bunch of pictures. Click on “Images,” and one of those pictures is a light beam.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: It’s a light beam coming at this guy who’s about to harm the body of Joseph, and everyone’s struck and frozen. That just comes from that account, but this picture continues to circulate—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —on the internet. So that’s where it comes from.

Casey Griffiths: It’s in Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Which again, there’s a lot of good stuff in there, but  it’s not exactly objective.

Scott Woodward: As someone once said, never let the truth get in the way of telling a good story.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.  So the next witness called by Josiah Lamborn is probably the most credible. She’s a woman named Eliza Graham, and she is a Latter-day Saint who’s working in the tavern in Warsaw. So her aunt owns the tavern in Warsaw, and she was working there the day that the murders happened. So she said that around sunset Thomas Sharp arrived at the tavern in a two-horse carriage, came and asked for a cup of water, and then said, “We have finished the leading men of the Mormon church.” So she said that Thomas Sharp basically walked into the tavern and announced that they had killed Joseph and Hyrum.

Scott Woodward: So she heard it. She’s a ear-witness.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. She heard him say it. She also said that around midnight, two of the defendants, Davis and Grover, showed up, including William Voorhees, again, who’s one of the persons that was supposedly hit by Joseph Smith, and that they tried to one-up each other with “rival claims of having finished off old Joe.” So Eliza says, we heard them brag all night. They were even trying to one up each other about who killed Joseph Smith.  And that’s pretty damning testimony. And she doesn’t have the same kind of credibility issues that William Daniels has, but Browning also really goes after her by saying, well, you’re a member of the church, so you’ve got a motive, and also the fact that Eliza Graham had previously said she didn’t know anything about the case because she didn’t want to testify in court. And so Eliza Graham really deserves credit for bravery. You know, she’s the only active Latter-day Saint to take the stand as a witness—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —in this whole affair.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And you can really not blame her for saying, no, I don’t know anything about it, because it’s kind of scary to go to Carthage after all this has happened, especially if you’re a Latter-day Saint, to go to a place that’s where they killed your prophet.

Scott Woodward: So then when she finally gets the courage to go and testify in court, Browning used that against her, that she had previously declared ignorance about the case.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: That essentially disqualifies her testimony.

Casey Griffiths: I guess so, yeah. I mean . . .

Scott Woodward: Jeez.

Casey Griffiths: But, again, when we speak to motives here, like, she did have a motive to at first say, I don’t know anything about it. Would she have a motive to then go in and say, yeah, I heard them say all this. The only motive I can think of is if she’s telling the truth, to be honest with you, because she’s literally putting her life in danger. Like, the courtroom, according to all accounts, was a total circus. Like, people were cheering and jeering and everything like that  as the witnesses spoke, and so she’s probably the strongest of the witnesses called. Now, next one called is a guy named Benjamin Brackenberry. Benjamin Brackenberry was a young man who drove a baggage wagon for the militia company, and he said he followed the Warsaw regulars on the road to Carthage, and somewhere between seventy and 100 of them left the road three or four miles outside of Carthage to approach the jailhouse through the woods. He said he saw all five, all five of the defendants in the trial, headed to Carthage. He saw four of them return the way they came, and he said he also saw three of the absent defendants, that’s William Voorhees, John Wills, and William Gallagher, all wounded and straggling back to Warsaw after the attack. He also said that Captain Grover, who’s a captain in the Warsaw militia, said that he had killed Smith, that Smith was a damn stout man, and he had went into the room where Smith was, and that Smith had struck him twice in the face.

Scott Woodward: Oh. That’s a detail that doesn’t come out in John Taylor or Willard Richards’ accounts: that Joseph punched someone in the face.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Maybe this happened after he fired the pistol. I don’t know if it happened.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Now, when Orville Browning cross-examines him, he asks, first of all, had you been drinking on June 27? And Brackenberry says, yes, I drank enough to make me feel nice.  Which, again, not good. He says, did you actually see Captain Grover go to the jail? Brackenberry says, no, but when he got into my wagon afterwards, he was talking to Mr. Williams, that’s Levi Williams, about killing the Smiths. He said that he boasted that he was the first man through the jailhouse doorway and repeated his claim that Smith bashed him in the face. Browning remarked that it was odd, given that he was holding a pistol. So he’s probably referring to Joseph. So he’s basically going after this guy’s credibility. And then Browning asks him, what business do you follow? And Brackenberry’s answer is loafering.

Scott Woodward: What does that mean? Loafering?

Casey Griffiths: Loafing. Like, he just kind of lays around. Like, he doesn’t really do anything.

Scott Woodward: That’s his business?

Casey Griffiths: That’s his business. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Wait, that seems weird. I’m gonna Google that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, Google that. Look that up.

Scott Woodward: Loafering is one that loafs.  A loaferer. But would someone in the court of law say my business is loafering?

Casey Griffiths: This is what the record says. It’s in Alex Beam’s book, and it’s in Oaks and Hill that his profession was a loaferer.

Scott Woodward: So what do you do for work? I am an idler. I don’t do work.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: I’m a loaferer, which, again, if you’re on the jury, like, this guy admitted he was drinking the night that it happened and that he’s kind of a ne’er-do-well, and Browning kind of politely asks, how long have you been doing that? Meaning being a loaferer. He responds, most of this winter. When did you commence that trade? A little before the last court here, meaning October. And then he explains that he’d been living with Jack Mormond, Minor Deming, so someone who was sympathetic towards the church, and he didn’t really know who paid for his room and board. So this guy’s, like, a ne’er-do-well, like, a vagabond, and he doesn’t really know who’s been taking care of him. Which, again, speaks to his credibility.

Scott Woodward: Hmm. So he’s basically just saying you are a non-contributor to society who was drinking the night that this happened, and yet we’re supposed to take your word for the fact that these men admitted to killing Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, it’s kind of a, “if you can’t attack the case, attack the witness” kind of situation.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Let’s speak to the witness’s credibility. So Lamborn, Josiah Lamborn, prosecutor, hadn’t really built an overwhelming case, but you could argue it was persuasive.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Casey Griffiths: It looked like some of the defendants might be in trouble, you know?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But then he does something that completely shocks everybody in the courtroom. Here’s the big plot twist, all right?

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Lamborn basically gets up and disavows all of his witnesses  that he’s called. So—

Scott Woodward: Wha—what?

Casey Griffiths: First he goes after William Daniels. He says, “Daniels has made statements which ought to impeach his evidence before any court.” This is the prosecutor who’s saying this.

Scott Woodward: He’s saying that Daniels, the guy that wrote the pamphlet—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —is an incompetent witness.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. He calls Daniels’ pamphlet, “Obviously a tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end.” And then Lamborn went on to say, “I intend to be fair and candid and therefore want to exclude Daniels’ evidence from consideration of the jury.” So he actually tells the jury, don’t take into consideration anything that William Daniels said.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: Like, imagine a prosecutor getting up and saying, just ignore that witness. It’s okay.

Scott Woodward: Which was one of the witnesses that would have strengthened his own victory as a lawyer.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Hmm. What’s going on here, man?

Casey Griffiths: Then he goes after Benjamin Brackenberry, the loaferer.

Scott Woodward: The loaferer.

Casey Griffiths: The loafer. He says, “Brackenberry, who had seen them go to Carthage, was a drunk, is a loafer, and perjured himself before the grand jury. I am satisfied that his evidence can be successfully impeached, and therefore withdraw it from the jury. So his second witness he withdraws from the jury, too.

Scott Woodward: What the heck?

Casey Griffiths: And then finally we get to Eliza Graham, who’s probably the best of the three witnesses.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But he gets up and disowns her, too. He says, “She is contradicted, and I therefore give her up.” So imagine a case where a prosecutor, brings all these witnesses, has them tell their story. Some of the stories are pretty damning, to be honest, and then gets up and says, but just ignore everything that all my witnesses have said, in his instructions to the jury.

Scott Woodward: Why is Lamborn doing that? What’s going on?

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know.

Scott Woodward: Any theories?

Casey Griffiths: I mean, Lamborn had been accused of corruption before.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: If he wins the case, worst case scenario, his life’s in danger.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Best case scenario, he has won a victory on behalf of a group of people that are despised and are about to leave the state. So what kind of motivation does he have for doing that? I won’t ascribe any conspiracy theories except to say that it really just appears like Lamborn just decided, this isn’t worth doing. Like, I’m not going to put my life in danger when it seems like these Mormons don’t really care if I win the case or not.

Scott Woodward: His sudden change of approach here is suspicious, right, of potentially having received a threat or something like that. Like—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —I mean, I don’t know. Like you said, we don’t want to get into conspiracy, but his change here is abrupt.

Casey Griffiths: It’s abrupt.

Scott Woodward: He’s bringing the evidence, and then suddenly he disavows the evidence after some time, which some of it’s pretty good evidence—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —and disavows all of his witnesses. I mean, I could see—and I know this is not above those in Carthage—I could see some of them threatening him or seeking to pay him off. As Daniels said, that someone had offered him $2,500 to not bring up anything about his pamphlet.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So, like, that kind of shady stuff is happening during this time, but—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —Like you said, we just don’t know for sure why he does the about face.

Casey Griffiths: You’ve got to admit it’s strange, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah, it’s weird.

Casey Griffiths: So once he’s done this, Browning gets up and just basically eviscerates everything that he’s brought up, because there’s no case here. In fact, Browning concludes by saying, “You would not hang a dog on such evidence.”  And the next morning the judge brings the jury in, instructs them, and they return a not guilty verdict after lunch. So the jury deliberates for several hours, but not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.

Scott Woodward: The leaders of the mob that killed Joseph Smith strut boldly out of the courtroom, free to resume their normal lives.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. That’s how Alex Beam writes it.

Scott Woodward: Jeez.

Casey Griffiths: I mean, the fix was in is all I can say. And your and my response is actually not that different from how Brigham Young responded.  When Brigham Young was told, he—in his journal, he writes, “As we anticipated, it would be a new thing under the sun for Satan’s kingdom to bring to justice a man who has murdered a prophet of God.” And the saints, again, are just basically saying, we didn’t expect a fair trial. We’re not surprised it’s a fair trial. It seems like the trial barely even gets covered in the newspapers that are being printed in Nauvoo. And so the saints expected it to turn out this way. It does turn out this way. It doesn’t surprise anybody now.

Scott Woodward: But there is a contemporary, a guy named Usher Linder, who does suggest that Lamborn was wholly destitute of principle and shamelessly took bribes when he was Illinois Attorney General. So he says, “I know myself of his having dismissed forty or fifty indictments in the Shelbyville court and openly displayed the money he had received from defendants.” And so that is, again, like we were just suggesting, that is one of the ways that the saints may have made sense of what happened. Or perhaps he just wasn’t up for the job.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And Lamborn dies less than two years after this trial.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Shaking his life away in an attack of delirium after abandoning his wife and child, so—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —he’s on the outs already. Why he was the best lawyer we could get I don’t know, but dang it, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: I know. And this kind of speaks towards, like, Governor Ford being guilty, because is he the one that assigned Lamborn?

Scott Woodward: Is this case the state of Illinois versus these guys? Is this a state case?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah, the official name is the State of Illinois versus Levi Williams, because Levi Williams is kind of the most bloodthirsty of them all.

Scott Woodward: So Lamborn would be a state-appointed attorney, just to make your case that Governor Ford may have put this guy that was on the outs anyway in his career as the prosecuting attorney on this case.

Casey Griffiths: But, I mean, couldn’t you make the argument that, like, Ford was tossing Lamborn a bone, that, like, he knew this was a high-profile case, it’s hostile, if he can win it, maybe in other parts of Illinois he’s going to look like an amazing attorney because he won it without any support from the saints or something like that? Like, I’m sorry to keep defending Thomas Ford, but . . .

Scott Woodward: I don’t know. I don’t know. It feels shady. Feels shady all the way down.

Casey Griffiths: But that’s just the trial of Joseph Smith. We can do the trial of Hyrum Smith really quick.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Lamborn is supposed to be the prosecutor for the trial of Hyrum Smith, which Judge Young sets for Tuesday, June 24. And Lamborn goes through the motions, he prepares his case, he even subpoenas ninety-three prosecution witnesses, got commitments from men and women who should have participated in the first trial. For example, he contacts George Stigall and his wife, who’s the jailer that’s living in Carthage Jail—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —when the jail’s attacked, he contacts one of the guards who served under Frank Worrell. Like, this is all stuff that should have been done in Joseph Smith’s trial, and he contacts several members of the Carthage Greys. However, Tuesday, June 24, Judge Young shows up and starts the court, and Lamborn doesn’t show up.

Scott Woodward: Oh. My. Word.

Casey Griffiths: He just doesn’t appear.

Scott Woodward: Lamborn!

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Jeez.

Casey Griffiths: So the judge basically ends the trial and frees the defendants for want of prosecution. Like, have you ever heard of anything like this where the prosecutor just literally doesn’t show up to the trial and the judge is like, well, what you gonna do? And they don’t even try.

Scott Woodward: I guess they’re not guilty if there’s no prosecuting attorney. Holy cow.

Casey Griffiths: I mean, find another attorney. Find something else. Say, this isn’t over, but the judge just says, no, you guys are free to go.

Scott Woodward: What do we know about Judge Young? Is he shady?

Casey Griffiths: He’s a little shady. Yeah. Yeah. The thing he does in the trial which basically forbids them from having any Mormons serve on the jury is very shady.

Scott Woodward: That’s shady. Good point.

Casey Griffiths: He’s also got political ambitions. He’s already served in the Senate for one term, but he lost his election.  On the other hand, you know, there’s a lot of good things written about Judge Young, that he was fair and everything like that.

Scott Woodward: As long as you’re not a Mormon.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a different legal system.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And also, like, don’t ignore the fact that this is a very hostile courtroom that, like, hundreds of people apparently showed up and sat in the court and were, you know, doing a full vaudeville show anytime that anything that looked like their boys were going to be incriminated was part of it.

Scott Woodward: So what does Governor Ford make of all this since, like, you know, he’s the one that wanted these trials to happen, so how does he come down on how things shook out?

Casey Griffiths: He’s the one that appoints Lamborn as the prosecutor, and he promises the saints that they’ll have justice just in the courtroom.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But he actually says once it’s all over, “No one would be convicted of any crime in Hancock. Government was at an end there, and the whole community were delivered up to the dominion of a frightful anarchy.”

Scott Woodward: Okay. Accurate. Accurate.

Casey Griffiths: In other words, what do you do when you’re holding a trial for murderers who killed somebody that everybody wanted dead and that they don’t want to see punished? It’s just kind of a travesty.

Scott Woodward: So nobody is convicted of the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Nobody ever pays for that. Justice was never done through the legal system of the United States of America.

Casey Griffiths: No. No. And, I mean, again, it was a different time back then, but, I mean, even by frontier standards of justice, this was not good. It was . . .

Scott Woodward: It was a debacle.

Casey Griffiths: It was a debacle.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So let’s move on to two other things, and then we’re going to come back to the fate of the persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Next part of the story, and this is kind of twisty, too, but Joseph and Hyrum’s burial. So  instead of burying them publicly, there was a public burial, but they were coffins filled with sandbags, basically.  They were buried publicly on June 29, 1844, two days after the murders. In secret, Emma Smith was concerned that the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum would be desecrated, so she takes a small group of men, they carry the coffins to the basement of the Nauvoo House,  and they remain there for several months. Several months later, in the fall of 1844, Emma has the bodies removed from the church-owned Nauvoo House and re-interred on Smith land, so Smith-owned land. And this second burial, which was probably designed to maintain Emma’s control over the disposition of her husband’s body, was carried out even more secretly than the first, but, again, this isn’t their final resting place, okay?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So while they’re preparing for the Exodus, apparently Emma was afraid that Brigham Young might take some action to obtain control of the body. So even their bodies are kind of controversial.

Scott Woodward: Man, her and Brigham Young, man.

Casey Griffiths: They were on about things.

Scott Woodward: Yes. Okay. So even the body she was afraid Brigham might take them with him. Wow.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah—well, what we’re thinking is Joseph had talked about a tomb that was going to be up closer to the temple. The tomb of Joseph you’ve probably heard of.

Scott Woodward: The tomb of Joseph. I have.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a big deal in Nauvoo right now, but we won’t get into that.

Scott Woodward: Nope.

Casey Griffiths: The tomb of Joseph is where he wanted to be, but Emma apparently wanted to control the bodies, so she wanted them buried on her land, and one source says just before the departure of the Twelve from Nauvoo in 1846, Joseph F. Smith said his Aunt Emma had the bodies removed again, this time to the Hibbard Woods below the Nauvoo House near the river. And how long they stayed there is unknown, but apparently the bodies were removed back to the old place. They were moved back to Smith land.

Scott Woodward: Let me summarize, here. So you’re saying the actual public burial of Joseph and Hyrum’s bodies were actually just bags of sand because—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —they didn’t want any haters to come and desecrate their bodies.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So Emma’s moving them around, but then it becomes internal. She doesn’t want Brigham Young putting Joseph’s body in the tomb of Joseph.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: She wants to maintain full control. And so she continues to kind of move the bodies around until she feels like the danger is past of anyone doing anything with these bodies.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And now they lay close to where they are today?

Casey Griffiths: Well, sort of. Like, she doesn’t really tell anybody where they’re at, and . . .

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: When she passes away, the building that apparently they were buried within is gone, too, and knowledge of the exact location of the graves was lost on a practical level. So nobody knows where they’re buried.

Scott Woodward: Whoa.

Casey Griffiths: Although a few family members and other close and trusted friends knew that the graves were somewhere on the Homestead. This is one of the properties that just came back into church control.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: The Homestead was where Joseph lived almost the entire time he was in Nauvoo, so somewhere on that property is where they’re located, and little Joseph Smith III, who visited the site with his mother, even pointed out the spot to a few others on at least one occasion, but he dies in 1914, and after that only the general location is known, that they’re buried somewhere on the Homestead property. And Emma’s buried there, too. And by the 20th century, after the death of Joseph III, we don’t even really know where Emma is buried.

Scott Woodward: Whoa. So do we still not know where their bodies are buried today?

Casey Griffiths: We do. Let me explain.

Scott Woodward: Yes, please.

Casey Griffiths: Let me sum up. There is too much.

Scott Woodward: Let me sum up.

Casey Griffiths: So in 1913 they start to build a dam downriver at Keokuk. If you go to Nauvoo today, you can still see the Keokuk Dam. It’s huge. You get to make dam jokes.

Scott Woodward: Every time we pass, yes.

Casey Griffiths: Super fun.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: But they’re worried, because now there’s this big dam downriver that’s backing up the water of the Mississippi, that because Joseph and Hyrum and Emma are buried somewhere near the Mississippi—the Homestead’s right on the banks of the Mississippi—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —that their bodies are going to be washed away.

Scott Woodward: Because that causes the river to rise pretty significantly by Nauvoo—the dam does, and . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So that’s a fair concern, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: If you go to Nauvoo today, the Mississippi River is much larger in appearance than it was in Joseph Smith’s time because the dam has backed up the river.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: So they’re worried the bodies are going to get washed away, so Frederick M. Smith, who is the grandson of Joseph Smith, Jr., son of Joseph Smith III, hires a guy named William Oscar Hands, who’s an engineer from Kansas City, to find the graves and move them onto higher ground. And so in January 1928, Hans hires a small crew, and he starts digging. They start digging, like, trenches across the Homestead property to try and find the bodies, and on the third day of the search, they find Emma.  So they find Emma, they quickly identify her because there’s a woman’s comb and the remains of a calico silk dress,  and they move her out.

Scott Woodward: OK.

Casey Griffiths: On the sixth day of digging, they discover a brick foundation and the floor of a small building not far from Emma’s grave, and upon removing the northwest corner of the floor, they find a skull. And they identify this skull as belonging to Hyrum.

Scott Woodward: He’s the easiest skull to identify, right? Because he was shot in the face on the left side of his nose, and so . . .

Casey Griffiths: Well . . .

Scott Woodward: Oh, shoot.

Casey Griffiths: It gets even more complex, okay? So hang with me here. A few minutes later they find a second skull, which they identify as Joseph. And so they let Frederick Smith, the president of the RLDS church at the time, know, and he and other RLDS officials come to Nauvoo three days later, and they authorized the removal of their skulls from the ground, This is all very macabre stuff, but they take photos of the skulls and remains, they take them to the Mansion House, and then they have ten witnesses sign an affidavit stating that they were satisfied the identifications were correct.

Scott Woodward: But ten people are convinced that these are the bones of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. And then they re-inter them, and that’s where they’re at today. The official grave, which you see when you go there today, has this huge granite marker on top of it that identifies Emma, identifies Joseph, and identifies Hyrum, all right next to each other. That was placed in 1991 by the Smith Foundation, which was kind of a collaboration between Wallace Smith, who’s the president of Community of Christ at that time, M. Russell Ballard,  the apostle M. Russell Ballard was representative of our church during that time.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So Joseph and Emma are buried, Joseph’s in the middle, Emma’s on one side, Hyrum’s on the other side, just as it should be, until possible plot twist.

Scott Woodward: Oh, geez.

Casey Griffiths: Okay? So . . .

Scott Woodward: Oh, man.

Casey Griffiths: In 1994, two historians, Ron Romig and Lach Mackay, these are both Community of Christ historians,  present evidence that they may have possibly misidentified the bodies  when they placed them in the grave.

Scott Woodward: Oh, boy.

Casey Griffiths: And the way Lach tells this is that they had two skulls: one of them had completely collapsed in on itself, and the other one had a tiny, little hole in it, so they assume the one with the tiny hole near the nose is Hyrum, because Hyrum’s death mask has a bullet hole.

Scott Woodward: Right there, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But when they were looking at the death mask and then comparing the photographs of the skull, the hole was on the wrong side.

Scott Woodward: That’s a problem.

Casey Griffiths: And so now these two historians are claiming, ooh, they’re in the wrong spot, and the theory was that Hyrum was the one whose skull had completely collapsed in because of the trauma  of a bullet being fired in his face that caused his skeletal structure to collapse.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Joseph was not shot in the face, so his skull would have been more survivable.  This was a theory accepted for a number of years. There were other people, like Shannon Michael Tracy, who published a book called In Search of Joseph, and this book has the photographs of the skulls and everything. If you’re interested,  go find a copy, and this was the case until second plot twist.

Scott Woodward: Oh, man.

Casey Griffiths: In 2009 a researcher named Curtis Weber presented evidence using the death masks and the photos of the skulls taken and even phrenology measurements that had been taken on Joseph Smith in 1840 when he went to Washington, D. C. Now, Scott, you’ll recall that phrenology is the study of a person’s skull to basically, like, measure it, and . . .

Scott Woodward: You can infer stuff about their personality, their character traits based on the skull measurements. Yeah. Phrenology.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I read through all of Curtis’s findings last night. They are very compelling, and he makes a pretty good case to say, no, they were correctly identified, and they’re in the right space, but can we ever really know? No.

Scott Woodward: The argument being that Joseph would have been the one that had the face all the way collapsed in because he fell from the window.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And hit his face.

Scott Woodward: And hit his face, and so that would have fractured his facial bones.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And they would have therefore disintegrated earlier than Hyrum’s.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. He suffered more facial trauma, but it was less obvious in the death mask than a bullet wound. So, I mean, if you go to Nauvoo, and it is a very special experience to go to the Smith family cemetery, which, by the way, is the only Nauvoo property—well, it’s the most prominent Nauvoo property that wasn’t transferred—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s still owned by Community of Christ and maintained by the Smith Family Foundation.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: You can see the grave, and it’s possible—there’s no way to know for sure unless we dig them up again, which is very unlikely given we’re coming up on a century since they were dug up the first time—that Joseph and Hyrum are in the wrong spot. But I’ve been there when Lach Mackay has given a tour of this, and he’s just kind of dealt with it with a smile and a twinkle by saying, well, if Hyrum and Emma are next to each other, then they were friends, you know, they probably don’t mind being neighbors in the afterlife, but there’s no way to know—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —exactly what happened. So even the burial of Joseph and Hyrum is sort of surrounded by controversy, and their reburial. And even if you visit their grave today, you still kind of have to do a, well, actually . . .

Scott Woodward: It’s one way or the other.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: This is either correct or maybe not, but wow.

Casey Griffiths: But good to know. Good to know.

Scott Woodward: Wow. Okay. Wow. You just took us on a little journey there.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. That was a little bit of a journey.

Scott Woodward: So, Casey, we know that the fate of the persecutors of Joseph Smith was not what N. B. Lundwall said.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So what do we actually know? We know none of them were convicted for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum, so what do we actually know happened to them? What was their fate?

Casey Griffiths: Okay. I’m sorry to say the five that were indicted,  their fates weren’t horrible. Mark Aldrich ran for sheriff in Hancock County in 1846, but he lost, so he left Illinois. He went to California during the Gold Rush. By the 1860s he’d moved to Tucson, Arizona, where he served as postmaster and was elected to three terms in the upper house of the territorial legislature, and even in 1866 he was the president of the legislature. He dies in Tucson in 1874, at the age of 73.

Scott Woodward: So Mark Aldridge lives a basically normal life.

Casey Griffiths: Normal life, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Jacob Davis distinguished himself as one of Hancock County’s most successful politicians. He was elected to the state Senate in 1846, 1850, 1854. He served in Congress. He filled a vacancy created by the resignation of William Richardson but was defeated in his bid for re-election. Nothing too bad there.

Scott Woodward: Normal ups and downs of a politician’s life.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: William Grover, this is the Captain Grover mentioned in some of the accounts.

Scott Woodward: Captain of the Warsaw Militia?

Casey Griffiths: Captain of the Warsaw Militia.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Ran last among four candidates for state representative from Hancock County in 1852. So he doesn’t win, but afterward he moved to St. Louis, he practices law there. In 1863 he was appointed U. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. He moves back to Warsaw prior to 1871 and was still living there in 1890, prosperous and respected.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Nothing gruesome there.

Casey Griffiths: Okay. Old Tom Sharp, the one we’ve probably talked the most about.

Scott Woodward: Tell me that he dies of worms and pus coming out of his eyes and all the things. Tell me that’s true, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Nope.  He gives up the Warsaw Signal in 1846. We already talked about this. He openly says, like, now there’s no Mormons around. I can’t make any money with my newspaper.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He becomes an educator, a lawyer, a judge, and, again, a newspaperman. He’s elected delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1847, served as justice of the peace in 1851, and in 1853 he began the first of three successful terms as mayor of Warsaw.  He was unsuccessful as a Republican candidate for Congress in 1856. In 1864 he was elected to a four-year term as judge of Hancock County, where he was, “greatly esteemed.” He still later served as a school principal, and this just kills me. Like, imagine the principal calls you into the office, and he’s a guy who has led a mob and murdered two leaders of a major religion. It would be hard to get out of line with that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, there’s no reports of any misbehavior from any of the schoolboys during his terms as principal.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, don’t mess with Principal Sharp, would have been. He was literally on trial for murder a couple years ago.

Scott Woodward: Oh my word.

Casey Griffiths: He dies in 1894 at the age of 80. He owned the Carthage Gazette, which he left to his son, so no terrible fates there.

Scott Woodward: Dang it.

Casey Griffiths: Levi Williams was one of the most bloodthirsty of the ones that were involved. He comes up a lot.

Scott Woodward: He’s called psychologically more violent than the others.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And Oaks and Hill aren’t able to find very much about him except that he served as postmaster of Green Plains. That was the town that bought new clothes for the two guys that shot Joseph Smith.  And Latter-day Saints noticed his death in 1858, and he does have a headstone in Green Plains. So at least he doesn’t live super long, but, yeah, nothing really happens to him. Okay, so Captain Robert Smith, he’s the leader of the Carthage Greys who failed in their guard duty at the jail. He served in the Illinois militia during the Civil War. He participated in William Sherman’s siege of Atlanta and the March to the Sea. He was briefly a brigadier general and served for a time as the military governor in Georgia, and other than that, we don’t know very much about him.

Scott Woodward: Okay. So were there any of the persecutors of the prophet that had tragic endings, or do they all just kind of live normal lives and ride off into the sunset?

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so this is what Oaks and Hill write: Richard Young, who’s the judge in the trial, he sought for the democratic nomination for governor in 1846, but he’s defeated. He moved to Washington, D. C., where a friend from his Senate days, that’s James K. Polk, appointed him Commissioner of the General Land Office in 1847. He was dismissed from that job in less than two years when the Whigs came to power, it was Zachary Taylor. He then persuaded the House of Representatives to elect him Clerk of the House for a two-year period. He practiced law in Washington, gradually descending the ladder of prominence which he longed to climb. “In 1858,” this is what Oaks and Hill write, “his reason failed him and he was forced to retire. In 1860 he was admitted to the government hospital for the insane. He was released after six months but died a year later, broken in fortune, body, and mind.” And if you know anything about 19th century mental institutions—

Scott Woodward: Yikes.

Casey Griffiths: —that’s not a pleasant way to go. Finally, old Tom Ford.

Scott Woodward: Governor Thomas Ford.

Casey Griffiths: He failed to win an election in 1846. He retired to his home in Peoria. This is what Oaks and Hill write: “He was dependent upon the charity of the local citizens to provide him with necessities. While afflicted with consumption, with the consumption that took his life in 1850, he wrote The History of Illinois,” that’s the book that really stirs up John Taylor—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: “—which he hoped to provide some support to his destitute children. In his history Ford lamented the possibility that the names of Nauvoo and the Carthage Jail may become holy and venerable names, places of classic interest in another age, like Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, and Mount Calvary to the Christian. Ford wrote that if this were to be the case, he felt degraded by the reflection that the humble governor of an obscure state who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years stands a fair chance, like Pilate and Herod, by their official connection with the true religion, of being dragged down to posterity with an immortal name hitched on to the memory of a miserable imposter.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So Governor Ford doesn’t come to a great end either.

Scott Woodward: So he dies of consumption, which we call today tuberculosis, I believe.

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: Wow. Okay. So the true fate of the persecutors of Joseph and Hyrum is not as sensational as N. B. Lundwall made it out to be, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: No, not the ones we know are involved. Lundwall kind of singles out people who said they participated in it, and there’s kind of rumor surrounding them, but none of the names he lists are people that are associated with the trial—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —or that are listed in any kind of the credible lists of the people that attacked Carthage Jail.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Well, how would you like to conclude this episode?

Casey Griffiths: Jeez, this is kind of a depressing way  to end. And so, I mean, it’s a tragedy, and it’s still something that lives in historical trauma for Latter-day Saints. It’s difficult for us to process. I went to Carthage Jail a couple weeks ago. I was leading a church history tour.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And one guy came out of the jail after having done the tour, and he was just emotional, and he came up to me and just said, I’m angry. I’m angry.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And, yeah, I think you’re supposed to be a little angry.

Scott Woodward: I’ve felt that before, studying this history.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. But I also think that, you know, it’s been 180 years since their death, and I also think that Joseph and Hyrum would probably be more happy if we were focusing on their life than trying to re-prosecute their deaths over and over again. What happened to them was a tragedy. There’s no doubt that it was a corrupt and awful action.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But let’s focus on what they brought to us and that they stayed true. In fact, I’ll read from section 135: “Hyrum Smith was 44 years old in February 1844. Joseph Smith was 38 in December 1843,  and henceforth their names will be classed among the martyrs of religion, and the reader in every nation will be reminded that the Book of Mormon and this book of Doctrine and Covenants of the Church cost the best blood of the 19th century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world.” I’ll skip forward: “They lived for glory, they died for glory, and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified.” So it’s interesting to explore their death, and I have to admit that this is kind of a hobby horse for me, but I also think that we don’t want to dwell on it too much or emphasize victimhood. We want to emphasize what they did and why they’re important to us.

Scott Woodward: Their names have come to us as gems for the sanctified, and I think that’s the right way to remember them.

Casey Griffiths: Well said.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, so thank you, Casey. Until next time.

Casey Griffiths: Until next time.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week, in our series finale, Casey sits down with Sam Weston, a docent at the Church History Museum, who has been researching the martyrdom at Carthage Jail in meticulous detail for the last fifteen years. They discuss the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum from something of a forensic crime scene investigation perspective, which is incredibly interesting.  If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find.  Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.