For example, he reveals at the end that Joseph and Hyrum’s sister Katharine had noted some hostility within the Quorum of the Twelve in Nauvoo. Griffin also sometimes greatly overreaches his evidence. Human memories are notoriously unreliable and faulty - even without bullets flying and lives on the line at the time of the event, and even without the sacred importance believers attached to every last detail in the years that followed. For example, he does not seem to entertain the possibility that Richards and Taylor, writing their memories of the assassinations long after the event, just didn’t remember them correctly.
#Memories of murders theories professional
Rather than investigating how such stories develop over years and decades, which is what professional historians would do, or trying to understand the historical context in Nauvoo that led to the mob descending on Carthage in the first place (see here for a terrific book about that), Griffin just serves up a conspiracy theory that it was an inside job.Īlong the way he accepts all kinds of things at face value. It would be shocking if those stories had not been embellished.
Those pieces of the story, added over time, served a purpose, like all martyrdom narratives serve a purpose: to valorize the fallen and coalesce support and obedience among those left behind. There are plenty of pieces of the church’s conventional “martyrdom” narrative that do not pass the sniff test. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)Ī statue of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum outside Carthage Jail. And even though members of the mob bragged about their responsibility in the attack.
Even though Taylor was grievously injured himself. Griffin’s particular theory is that Willard Richards and John Taylor, two close associates who were with the Smiths in the jail and survived the attack, were actually - wait for it - the murderers. Much of their job is to present the primary sources and allow readers and viewers to draw their own conclusions - something Griffin seems loathe to do. Sometimes their views will support the conventional wisdom and sometimes they won’t. Actual historians do not demand that their interpretation of an event be unique or iconoclastic. Nearly an hour into the documentary, Griffin remarks, “You can’t really call yourself a Carthage researcher until you come up with your own theory about what happened.” Which kind of tells us everything we need to know about his historical method. (Or rather, it’s an hour and 38 minutes, unfortunately.) Griffin analyzes several theories from researchers, including one pair he alternately calls “the Lyon brothers” (correct) or “the Lyons brothers” (oops). The documentary does give us screenshots of articles by both professional and amateur historians but only so that Griffin can dissect their various arguments and find them wanting. Hey, what’s a few centuries, give or take? It’s only history.Īctual professional historians - by which I mean people who have formally studied historical methodology and published peer-reviewed research in academic journals and books by university presses - are conspicuously absent from the scene. No matter that we are talking about murders that happened less than 200 years ago. Through all of this, Griffin wants to challenge the narrative that the church has used “for hundreds of years” to describe the Smiths’ murders. (Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
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