Transcription
Oh, [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] thirty years ago, I came to Nauvoo for my first time. It was awesome to go around Nauvoo and see all of the historical things that I have heard about my whole life. And then at one point, a group was going to come over to Carthage, and they asked me to come with them to see if I wanted to see the jail, but I said no. And that makes no sense why I would have said no, because I wanted to see everything. I guess I just wasn't ready at that time.
Not long after that trip, I served a mission for the Church in Greece and then got married a few years later. I graduated from BYU and began my career in business and then spent the next few decades raising my family. But in all that time, when I thought about my visit to Nauvoo, I always regretted not seeing Carthage. Here we are 30 years later, coming to check it out. I guess I'm ready now. [Music]
The first thing I want to see at Carthage is the window where Joseph was shot and fell to his death. I go to it immediately and look for any signs of musket shots striking the stones around the opening. I don't find anything. I walk 50, 60, and then 70 feet back from the window, trying to figure out if the mob outside of the jail that day could get a clear shot on Hiram with their muskets. I can easily see inside of the bedroom where Joseph, Hiram, John Taylor, and Willard Richards were being held. I see the same door the mob shot through twice before entering the room. I'm taking measurements and making calculations, and it hits me what really happened here in this moment. The story of the martyrdom becomes even more real for me. Forensic detectives call it losing your grip when the science takes a back seat to the human tragedy that has taken place at a crime scene. I try not to get emotional, but it's impossible. I'm feeling waves of anger mixed with sadness. All of this is adding to my drive to understand this mystery. All I care about for now is figuring out exactly what happened in the two to three minutes when Joseph and Hiram were killed. [Music]
On June 7, 1844, William Law, a disaffected Mormon, publishes the first issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, attempting to rally anti-Mormons against the Church in Nauvoo by calling out the alleged evils of Joseph Smith and other city officials. The Nauvoo City Council declares the Expositor to be a nuisance. Two days later, they send the town marshal to destroy their press. Destroying the press ignites outrage from citizen groups in Hancock County who call for the removal of the Latter-day Saints from Illinois. Convinced an attack on Nauvoo is imminent, on June 18th, Joseph proclaims martial law and calls out the Nauvoo Legion to protect the city. One week later, the members of the city council surrender themselves to authorities at Carthage. All are released on bail except Joseph and Hiram, who at the last moment are falsely accused of treason, a capital offense. The brothers are moved to Carthage Jail to await their trial, where Governor Ford promises they will be protected. [Music]
On June 27, 1844, two days before their scheduled trial, an armed mob storms the jail, and Joseph and Hiram are murdered. The next day, the bodies of Joseph and Hiram are carried back to Nauvoo on wagons. In the afternoon of June 29th, boxes with sandbags are taken and publicly buried in the Nauvoo City Cemetery. Sometime around midnight, the coffins, which contain the real bodies, are secretly buried in the basement of the Nauvoo House. That next spring, on May 21, 1845, the trial begins. John Taylor urges his fellow Latter-day Saints to refuse to testify, warning them that their lives could still be in danger. Nine days after the trial begins, all five defendants in the Smith brothers' murder case are found not guilty. That fall, all Nauvoo council members charged in the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor are also acquitted by a jury in Hancock County. [Music]
Joseph and Hiram are now dead. Joseph was the leader of the Church, and Hiram would have been the second in command, and they are both gone. Next in command most likely would have been Samuel, their younger brother. Within a few weeks, Samuel was also dead under suspicious circumstances. The crazy thing is nobody investigated his death ever, and nobody began the investigation on Joseph and Hiram's deaths either until a few months later. A new sheriff was voted in for the county. [Music] And he began a huge investigation, and in the end, he indicted nine different men. Now, four of those men, as soon as they got word that they were indicted, they fled the county, and that's a shame because three of those four men were actually injured by Joseph at Carthage. So the fact that they had been shot by Joseph says they were right there on the spot. Now, out of the remaining five men, most likely none of them were in Carthage or pulling triggers of guns. However, they're the ones that convinced everybody to come to Carthage to get Joseph and Hiram. So those five men couldn't actually be arrested for murder, but they were brought in on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and then the trial began. Now the trial started out, all of the members of the jury were Mormons, members of the Church, but at the last second, the defense attorney made a motion to the judge to change out the jury because they were afraid that that jury, you know, they were all Mormons, and the judge agreed and completely changed the jury with all of the people that were there on site. Now the biggest problem with this court case is our two biggest witnesses, John Taylor and Willard Richards, were not there to testify. John Taylor had sent out to all the people in the community, do not testify at that trial. So the two main eyewitnesses weren't even there to tell their story. So those five remaining men were all acquitted. You know, this is one of the most consequential crimes in American history. It only took about nine days, and all five of those men were acquitted. Now, what would have happened if John Taylor and Willard Richards would have testified? I mean, they had the full eyewitness accounts; they were in the room when it all happened; they should have seen the mob members that were there. If anybody knew who pulled that trigger to kill Joseph and Hiram, it should have been them.
Willard Richards and John Taylor are the only other men inside the jail at Carthage when Joseph and Hiram Smith are killed. Both are ordained apostles in the Church, and Richards is a personal scribe to Joseph. Richards publishes his eyewitness account in the Nauvoo Neighbor four weeks after the martyrdom, on July 24, 1844. John Taylor waits until after Willard Richard's death, nearly 10 years later, to give his first public account of the martyrdom at a conference in Salt Lake City. The Richards and Taylor accounts have been the basis for telling the story of the martyrdom since 1844. The following reenactment is based on their accounts. [Music]
On June 27, 1844, four men remain in the jailer's bedroom on the second floor of Carthage Jail: Joseph Smith, Hiram Smith, John Taylor, and Willard Richards. Joseph has a six-shooter pepper box revolver smuggled into him that morning by Cyrus Wheelock. Hiram holds a single-shot pistol brought in by John Fulmer. Taylor and Richards each have a walking stick as their only means of defense. Just after five o'clock, a mob of 100 to 200 men approaches the jail. The door to the bedroom has no lock and no usable catch, according to Willard Richards. When the mob comes this time, Joseph, Hiram, Taylor, and Richards close the door and brace themselves against it. According to John Taylor, only Hiram and Richards lean against the door, pressing into it with their shoulders to prevent it from being opened. It's important to understand the position of the four men against the wall and the door when the mob first comes. That first shot enters right about here. So if all four of them were against the door at the same time, it seems impossible to me that one of them would not have been hit when that first bullet comes through the door. Both Taylor and Richards agree that the men scatter; they move to the sides, and Hiram comes 10 feet back from the door, looking straight at the door. The mob shoots a second ball through the panel of the door; it strikes Hiram on the left side of his nose. At the same time, a ball is shot from outside of the jail through the east window; it strikes Hiram in his lower back, passes through his body, and strikes the watch in his front right vest pocket. He falls backwards. As he hits the floor, he exclaims, "I'm a dead man; my room never moves again."
The Richards and Taylor accounts differ on what happens after Hiram is killed. According to Richards, Joseph looks towards Hiram lying on the floor and exclaims, "Oh dear brother Hiram." Immediately, Joseph opens the door two or three inches with his left hand; he reaches around with the six-shooter in his right hand and begins firing shots randomly into the entry. According to Taylor, Joseph does not immediately begin firing through the doorway. Rather, Joseph goes to his brother, leans over him, and exclaims, "Oh my poor dear brother Hiram." Joseph rises, pulls the six-shooter from his pocket, and goes back towards the door. He opens it slightly and fires his pistol six successive times. Both Richards and Taylor report that three of Joseph's barrels misfired. Joseph is now unarmed. The mob continues sticking their muskets through the doorway and firing. Taylor uses his stick to knock down the muskets. A ball grazes Hiram's breast and enters his throat, passing into his head. Two more balls strike his body, one in the right thigh and another just below his left knee. [Music]
After seeing Hiram killed and Joseph is out of bullets, Taylor worries the mob will enter the room. He rushes to the window hoping to escape. A ball shot from the doorway enters his right thigh and causes him to fall into the windowsill. A ball shot from outside the window strikes the pocket watch in his vest pocket and throws him back into the room onto the floor, and for a moment he is unable to move. Taylor regains enough strength to roll under the bed. A shot from the door cuts away a piece of flesh from his left hip. Willard Richards continues knocking away the muskets aimed through the door with his walking stick. Another ball strikes Taylor a little below the left knee, and another enters his left wrist and lodges in his hand. According to John Taylor's own telling of the events, he was struck five times while he was over here against the wall, you know, knocking down the bayonets with his walking stick. When he could see that Joseph Smith had run out of ammo, he decides to make an escape over to the window. So he's running over to the window, and he gets shot, and that causes him to fall into the windowsill, and he's falling out the window, and the way that he tells the story is a shot comes from out of the window and hits him in his pocket watch that's in his vest pocket. That throws him from out of the window back onto the floor, and on the floor when he gains his movement back, he's moving under the bed and gets shot in the left hip; he gets shot in the left hand, just here in the wrist, below the left hand, traveling up below the fingers, and then he gets struck just below his left knee. [Music]
"I had often remarked to Miss Taylor the singular fact of finding myself inside the room when I felt a moment before, after being shot, that I was falling out, and I never could account for it until then, but here the thing was fully elucidated and was rendered plain to my mind. I was indeed falling out when some villain aimed at my heart; the ball struck my watch and forced me back. If I had fallen out, I should assuredly have been killed, if not by the fall, by those around, and this ball intended to dispatch me was turned by an overruling providence into a messenger of mercy and saved my life. I felt that the Lord had preserved me by a special act of mercy, that my time had not yet come, and that I still had a work to perform upon the earth." The story of John Taylor's miraculous preservation has been an integral part of telling the story of the martyrdom for hundreds of years. Most martyrdom researchers agree today that Taylor's watch was never struck by a musket ball. In the late 90s, several individuals began to question the long-accepted narrative, including curators at the LDS Church History Museum where the watch is currently on display. So these are two comparable watches from that time, and this one we simulated a musket shot, and this one I shot with a .22. [Music]
If you see the watch in the museum that was in John Taylor's pocket, you can see there's barely any damage to it. The hands are missing on it now, but you can see that front hole in the face of the watch. But if you look really closely in that picture, you can see the little gear in that hole. So what I believe happened is the same thing that every Carthage researcher today believes happened, and that's that when John fell against the window seal, it smashed the watch together, causing that gear to pop that hole out on the front of the watch. I agree with the researchers on this one that John was never shot in his watch. With Taylor under the bed, Joseph attempts to leap from the same window. Two balls pierce him from the door, and one enters his right breast from outside the window. He falls out of the window, exclaiming, "Oh Lord, my God!" At this instant, the cry was raised. Richards carries the badly injured Taylor into the jail cell in the adjoining room. As he is laid at the head of the stairs, he has a full view of Hiram. John Taylor's last words in his account are, "Very lays we're left in." [Music]
Later, when actually incarcerated in the jail, Joseph the Prophet bore a powerful testimony of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Shortly thereafter, pistol and ball would take the lives of these two testators. Hearing Elder Holland say that the martyrs were killed with pistol and ball catches my attention. Willard Richards and John Taylor both stated clearly that the mob had shot Joseph and Hiram with muskets. Elder Holland gave this talk in October of 2009. Their honor and their own search for eternal salvation. If you're a Carthage purist, this whole scene is problematic. It's taken from a movie called Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration. The screenplay was written by Gary Cook of the Church's Curriculum Department, with input from the First Presidency, and originally released in December of 2005. Did you notice the mob member fires a pistol through the door instead of a musket? This movie may have been where Elder Holland got his information for his talk. Notice how Hiram is hit while he's still holding the door shut, contrary to the Taylor and Wilford accounts that state Hiram was standing 10 feet back from the door when he was struck. Lastly, did you notice when Hiram is on the floor and Joseph is holding him, but the mob has not yet entered the room? How's this even possible? The door has no latch; Joseph and Hiram are pushing the door closed with all their might to keep the mob out, and somehow when they're on the floor, the angry mob doesn't rush in and kill everyone in the room. This whole scene makes absolutely no sense. I know I'm being too hard on a movie clip; it's just one man's interpretation for dramatic effect, right? But even if it wasn't meant to be historically accurate, it's still very curious what kind of guns were the mob using.
Oh, that's a great question. Now, I don't remember off the top of my head, but for more detail about the mob and the things that they um that they did and how the events played out, you can read Saints, the first volume. There's chapter 44; it gives a full account of the martyrdom and the events that happen that night. I look up the chapter in the book, The Saints, that the sister missionaries recommended to us. This book was published in 2018, and it confirms what I had been thinking all day. The LDS Church no longer accepts the eyewitness accounts as they were given by John Taylor and Willard Richards. You can see Hiram's hands on the door when the second shot is fired through the door panel. This book now presents the new official narrative for the Church. John Taylor and Willard Richards said Hiram was shot in the back through the window by a musket of a mob member outside of the jail, but this book describes Hiram getting shot in the back while stumbling away from the door.
So let me sum up the evolution of the Church's narration on what actually happened at Carthage. In the late 90s, historian Glenn Leonard, former director of the LDS Museum of Church History, claims in his book that John Taylor's watch was never shot, citing the unpublished research of Neil and Gail Ord. Then in 2005, Gary Cook from the Church Curriculum Department writes the screenplay for the movie Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration, which alters several major details from the traditionally accepted story of the martyrdom. Then in October of 2009, Elder Holland says "pistol and ball" in his talk about the martyrdom. This is the first time a General Authority from the LDS Church in conference alters the John Taylor and Willard Richards eyewitness accounts. Finally, in 2018, the altered narrative is officially published in the book called The Saints, which is now the story pointed to by Church representatives at Carthage as the official LDS Church narrative for the martyrdom. I have to admit I didn't notice when the Church made any of these changes, but now looking back I can see them all so clearly. The Church has known that there was a problem with the eyewitness accounts for a couple of decades now, and to their credit, they've done a lot of their own really good research, and they've come up with their own theory to explain how the narrative can still fit the eyewitness accounts. However, the Church was not the first to begin this work; that would be Mormon Church historian John Hyrum, who back in the early 1990s began a series of seminars going through what he believed really happened at Carthage. [Music]
Working with rare Latter-day Saint documents for about 40 years, I started looking at documents in 1980. I had some very rigorous historical training as a child, beginning in about 1973. But in 1980, when we moved to Wisconsin, I began to examine early Mormon documents from the Nauvoo and Kirtland periods, or the origins of the Church. I met John a couple of years ago, and there's not a lot of people that know more about the life and history of Joseph Smith. He takes the story of what happened at Carthage very seriously. I had visited Carthage so many times now, probably 50 times that I visited Carthage and 150 times probably that I visited Nauvoo, being that I live in the area. So John's probably one of the top five experts in the world on what happened at Carthage. So when he started asking questions, people paid attention, and that's exactly the spark that we needed to get the story of the martyrdom back in the mind of the public. Mostly the angles, the angle, the possibility of Hiram Smith being shot in the back and having that bullet come from the outside, that makes no sense. And you can stand outside of the Carthage Jail and go down to the mission home and go down a little farther and go down a little farther and try to figure out where you can see the middle of the door, and I'm not going to all the measurements or anything, but just try to see the middle of the door from some distance. You have to go quite out some distance. Now imagine the window closed or open; it just didn't add up for me; it just didn't seem plausible that 200 of your best friends just went rushing up the stairs, and you're a half a block away, and the first thing that pops into your head is, "I've got a clean shot through the window up there where all my friends are having a skirmish," and that just doesn't fit. So one of the first inconsistencies that every true Carthage researcher points out is the angles, the angles of how Hiram was shot from outside of the jail into his lower back; those angles just do not add up. In 2016, a video was posted on YouTube called "The Carthage Conspiracy." The video appears to be a copy of a presentation delivered much earlier than 2016. The presenter, also named Joseph Smith, has a background in black powder rifles and is well versed in the muzzle energy of a 19th-century musket. He makes the same case as Jon Hyrum that the angles from the shots fired outside of the jail cannot be realistic. Stories about the Carthage murders are just filled with inconsistencies; there's a hundred inconsistencies in the stories between Will and Richards and John Taylor and against the other evidence that we have. [Music] Ballistic
Experts have identified the mob most likely used the .69 caliber U.S. Model 1816 flintlock muskets with a smooth bore. Willard Richards mentions bayonets twice in his testimony. The 1816 musket came with an attached bayonet, making it the prime candidate as the weapon used by the mob. Today, the 1860 musket was shot with approximately 2,100 foot-pounds of energy. In comparison, a round shot from a .30-06 today contains approximately 2,300 foot-pounds of energy, which is enough to shoot through a steel plate over 50 yards away.
For our own tests, we've chosen to use a shotgun slug fired through a smooth bore barrel with only 1,650 foot-pounds of energy. That's 20 percent less firepower than the 1816 musket. We purposefully chose to use a round with less muzzle energy to account for mob members who might not have put the full amount of gunpowder into their muskets. So [Music] Willard Richards said that after Hiram was shot through the door to the left of the nose, he fell on his back. And while he was laying on his back, he never moved again. And there was another shot that came from the door from a musket that grazed his chest and entered here into his throat. So we're gonna try and simulate that shot with this angle, shooting a parallel, hitting here, and we'll see if it, you know, exits out of the top of the score. [Music] [Music] And they say that Hiram's head, supposedly he was still leaning against the door when he was shot, rather than being 10 feet back. So we're going to recreate that just to see what happens.
Can you see now why Elder Holland said "pistol and ball"? I can tell you from my own experience, there is no way Hiram was shot twice in the head with a musket. There is no evidence that shows that. Throughout the 1990s, muzzle energy and shot angles were the main two talking points. But in the 2000s, three new pieces of evidence came to light that are much harder to explain. First was the bullet hole angle in the panel of the door. Second are the photos of Hiram's skull. And third are the blood stains on Hiram's clothing.
David Lyon was the first to come up with the idea of inserting a laser pointer through the hole in the door panel to determine the path of the musket ball that supposedly struck Hiram in the face. The ball was traveling five degrees downward and was aimed slightly to the right. And would have hit just below the windowsill had Hiram been standing in the path of this bullet 10 feet back from the door; it would have struck him in his abdominal area and not his face. In 1928, the skeletal remains of Joseph and Hiram were discovered under the brick foundation of a small building not far from Emma's grave. President Smith of the RLDS Church authorized the removal of Joseph and Hiram's skulls from the ground so they could be examined further. They were taken to an upper room in the mansion house and photographed and measured. As you can see, there are no visible exit wounds in the back or top of Hiram's skull. So we now know, because of the angle of this shot through the door, that there was no way, if it traveled and hit Hiram while he was standing right here, that it could have hit him in the face; it would have hit him somewhere in the abdomen.
Secondly, we also know that there's no way that he could have been shot twice in the head because we can see the skull and there's no exit wound from either of those shots. The shot that struck Hiram in the back penetrated his vest, shirt, pants, and pantaloons. Another bullet entered Hiram's leg just below the left knee, and a fourth bullet struck Hiram on his right thigh. Mary Fielding Smith, Hiram's widow, carefully preserved Hiram's clothing and brought them to the Salt Lake Valley in 1848. The eldest son of the Hiram Smith line inherited the clothing for five generations until Eldred G. and Gary Smith donated them to the Church History Museum in 2013. The fatal wound to Hiram's face left significant blood on the upper right front of his vest and shirt. In fact, the vest was so blood-soaked that a triangular-shaped piece of the vest was removed, but the blood on the front of the shirt is still visible. We also know that Hyrum must have bled out from those first two shots because all of the rest of the shots on his body, there was no blood around any of them in his clothes. Gary Smith, who had possession of these items for many years, has examined them closely and concluded Hiram must have bled out from the wound to his face before receiving the other three wounds to his body. He cites Dr. Eric Christensen, a forensic pathologist and chief medical examiner for the Department of Health for the state of Utah, who stated the complete absence of blood on the clothing is not consistent with them having been washed and is most consistent with those injuries having been inflicted post-mortem.
In total, Hiram had five wounds: first was here to the left of the nose; then here below his chin; then he had a shot that hit him in the lower back right here and came and hit the watch that was in this pocket and stopped; he was also struck just below the left knee; and he was hit right here on the side of his right thigh. All of the physical pieces of evidence from the crime scene can be observed, measured, and compared against the eyewitness accounts. And if you want to come up with your own theory about what happened at Carthage, you can start by asking a couple of questions about Hiram: If Hiram was facing the door, how did that musket ball from the window strike him in his lower back and then change angles, traveling parallel to the floor and straight towards the door? How could two musket shots with 2,100 foot-pounds of energy cause so little damage to Hiram's face? How could Hiram get shot in the face and still have the ability to emphatically say the words, "I'm a dead man"? The second bullet hole in the door is 51 and 3/4 inches from the floor. Hiram was 74 inches tall. If Hiram was standing 10 feet or more away from the door, how did that musket ball strike him in the face, especially because it was fired at a 5-degree downward angle? There are no exit wounds to Hiram's skull from either shot to his head. There is no visible damage to Hiram's nasal cavity or anywhere around the shot that struck him to the left of his nose. In fact, the only major damage visible to Hiram's skull after 84 years of deterioration is that he is missing his maxilla, or upper jawbone. Why are there no blood stains around the other three bullet holes in Hiram's clothing?
The first Carthage researchers to officially answer these questions in a published study were the Lyon brothers. Joseph and David Lyon were the first to conduct a full forensic study of the crime scene on-site at Carthage Jail. They published their landmark findings in the BYU Studies Quarterly in January of 2008. Just like the LDS Church, the Lyon brothers did their own research. And after they did their own research, they could no longer say that the eyewitness accounts were 100% accurate. So they came up with their own questions, and they devised their own theories to explain how could the eyewitness accounts still be as accurate as possible. And that's how they came up with their one-shot theory. According to the eyewitness accounts, there were two shots to Hiram's head, one entering to the left of his nose and one entering below his chin. But the Lyon brothers knew it was impossible for those shots not to cause damage to the back or top of Hiram's skull. That's why they believe Hiram was shot only once in the head. So in order for the Lyon brothers' theory to make sense, that ball entered here and exited here; it was a super steep angle downwards. And we also know that the shot from the door was 5 degrees—that's 5 degrees. So somehow we have to get Hiram's head almost parallel to the floor in order to make that shot work. The problem with trying to get that angle is it's nearly impossible—it is impossible, according to the Lyons brothers' theory. Because of the bullet hole angle from the second shot through the door, Hiram could not have been standing 10 feet back when he was struck. Therefore, they believe he must have still been holding the door closed when that shot was made. Their theory is that the ball struck Hiram to the left of his nose and exited through his chin. Hiram then stood up and turned around, saying, "I'm a dead man," when another ball fired through the open door struck him in his lower back, and that shot spun him back around, and then he finally fell backwards onto his back. So let's see how the Lyons brothers' theory stacks up.
Like most Carthage researchers today, the Lyon brothers don't believe the angles work for a musket ball to have struck Hiram in the back from a shot fired outside of the window. That's why their theory changes that shot to a musket pointing through the door. Their one-shot theory explains very clearly how the muzzle energy of a musket did not cause more damage to Hiram's head. Instead of two shots with no exit wounds, there is only one shot that enters to the left of Hiram's nose and exits below his chin, thus giving the force of the ball an exit instead of being absorbed into the skull. This part of their theory is an epic failure. According to the Lyons brothers, the musket ball that entered through the side of Hiram's nose would have obliterated the roof of Hiram's mouth and tongue on the way to exiting below his chin. How could Hiram possibly have spoken any words intelligibly after that amount of damage inside of his mouth? Because of the bullet hole angle, the Lyon brothers do not believe Hiram could have been shot in the face while standing 10 feet back from the door. Their theory suggests Hiram was still up against the door when he was struck by the second shot, just like the LDS Church now believes. However, there is no feasible way to position someone's body at the door to make that shot possible. The one-shot theory matches very closely with the visible damage to Hiram's skull. You can see from the photos that Hiram's skull was missing the upper jawbone, which would have been shattered to pieces by a bullet passing through his nasal cavity and exiting below his chin. According to the Lyon brothers, the first shot to Hiram's head spun him around, and then he was shot in the lower back by a musket pointed through the doorway. However, if this theory was correct, there should have been blood on his clothes from that wound to his back.
I like many things about the Lyons brothers' study. Their one-shot theory is absolutely revolutionary. I have even adapted part of it into my own theory, but they do admit that a big weakness in their theory is the lack of blood on Hiram's clothes. They explain this by suggesting Hiram's family washed his pants, underclothing, vest, and the lower part of his shirt, but not the upper part of his shirt, which seems highly unlikely to me. But that's not the main problem with their theory. Their main problem is that it's impossible for a six-foot, two-inch man to position his body against the door in a way that a musket ball could penetrate to the left of his nose at five degrees and exit the chin without striking him somewhere else in his body. I've tried every possible angle, and it doesn't work unless you're standing upside down or something like that, which makes no sense for a man trying to hold a door closed. [Music] So while I was researching those angles, I came across a famous painting by Casey Childs about the martyrdom. Casey Childs' painting, called "Greater Love Hath No Man," is a two-part painting. The first half, on the right, was begun in 2009 and depicts Joseph, Hiram, Taylor, and Richards in Carthage leaning against the door to keep out the mob. The second half, actually showing the mob, was completed in 2014. The full painting is now on permanent display in the Church History Museum. Casey initially consulted with the Lyons brothers for the first half of his painting, and it shows—can you see how he depicts Hiram's position still against the door with a member of the mob about to shoot the door with a musket? Notice the angle of the musket and the position of Hiram's head. Does it look like that ball could possibly enter the left side of his nose, exit his chin from that angle without striking Hiram somewhere else in his body? So the more that I spoke with Casey about his painting, the more that he kept referring to Sam Weston, and I was like, "Okay, who's Sam Weston? I need to meet Sam Weston." Come to find out that he works at the Church History Museum, and he allowed me to come and speak with him. There's few people in the world that have done more work on Carthage today than Sam Weston. I spent the whole afternoon with him, and he taught me all sorts of things that I had never heard before. And that's when I first walked in and saw that painting. I went in the exhibit before it's even open, and I saw that, just took my breath away. I was, "Wow, somebody's actually drawing this," and um, so I contacted Casey. We got to talk. You learned really quickly after meeting Sam why Casey consulted with him for the second half of his painting. They're bad at guns. And I says, "You know what's missing?" Tracy says, "What?" The smoke. They'd have been shooting downstairs, and they were shooting, rushing up the stairs, shooting into the jail. Wait, why would they have been shooting? They were shooting at the guard. They shot the guard. They were shooting blanks. Remember that paper cartridge I showed you? They carry blanks with them; that was part of their accoutrements, but they didn't have the ball, right? And so they were loading those, shooting blanks. And so they shot blanks downstairs. She'd have the smoke, the mob's rushing up the stairs, shooting into the jail cell. So they've been shooting, coming up the stairs. I says, "You need the smoke in the picture."
Part of the reason Casey adopted Sam Weston's theory for the second half of his painting is because both he and Sam came up with different measurements for the bullet holes in the door panel than the Lyons brothers. The Lyons brothers measured it at 0.69 inches, and Casey and Sam measured it at 0.52 inches. All right, this is exactly right. So we went back—my wife and I went back—and we had to gel to ourselves for several hours, okay, and we were able to measure and contemplate and look at things. And I took a ball back with me, okay. The first thing I did, I read the Lyons brothers' article, and the first thing I did is try to push that to the hole in the door. No way that's going to fit. So I had some digital calipers; I measure it. I completely did that though. Nope, they never did it. That's what I complained is, why didn't they even least measure that? You can actually look through that door, and you can see there's a directional angle. And I put a dowel in the door, okay, and measure the angles exactly, okay. But you know, a bullet going, especially a round ball going through something, the trajectory could be a way off. I mean, one of their drawings they show the bullet on this side of the room was exactly here, but on this side of the room they had a plus or minus the foot. Actually, how does that work? Well, no, he had the plus or minus on this side, and then on this side was exactly where the—because he was trying to figure out where the angle of the rifle must have been to make the—his measurements were way off. So did the muskets have these, or was the shot that made that hole in the door? John Taylor mentioned bayonets, right? Willard Richards mentions bayonets, right? A lot of the Carthage guards, which were a block and a half away on the square, came running, and they had their bayonets fixed. Uh, the mob could have had bayonets, right? 1816, .69 caliber smoothbore flintlock. Wait, is this original? That's a reproduction, a very nice reproduction of the river. I've got an original room, but it's pretty crude. So this six shoots the .69, which is why they've always used .69 caliber. Well, it was a common issue for the militias, .69 caliber. These were made, but these were gorgeous; these were um, commissioned by the U.S. government for the military, like that. Do you agree with them that there was probably guns being handed up and switched out? Would you think guys would shoot, run down, someone else would run out, kind of thing? Yeah, they could be one gun. If you look at Casey Childs' painting, the gun that's aiming at the door, that's a Hall breech loader. And so these are all muzzle loaders. A breech loader; they've been around since the 1700s, but Hall brothers designed theirs, and they were sold to the Warsaw militia. We know that they had Hall breech loaders, okay. So any military weapon carried a cartridge like this. So this is a .69 caliber ball in a cartridge. So to load this gun—see that was one of the requirements to be in the militia; you had to have at least two teeth because you'd rip this open and prime your gut. So this is a flintlock. So this is your frozen pan. So you would take this—so this has a pre-measured amount of black powder in it and the ball, which is a .69 count. You put that and rip that off, and you prime; you put a little bit of powder there, and you shut the cover. Now the powder can't fall out, and then you would um, you would dump the rest of the powder in here, and then you'd shove the paper and the ball in there. They were just dumping it in. How much did they get in? Did they spill some? You know, there's a lot of gifts. And so once that's loaded, now the ball won't fall out. And so this is a piece of flint. So this is a flintlock. Most of the guns at this time period have been converted to percussion guns, right? But there still were a lot of flintlocks. There were flintlocks on the Civil War. So when I pull the trigger, you'll see that spark against that and pop it open. [Music] And that lights the powder in the pan, and there's a little hole here; the sparks go through and ignite, and boom. Breach loader has a chamber here; you push a button; it pops up; you throw that in; you load it again and go. And we know there were breech loader guns there, and so they could stand up there and load their guns in a matter of five or six seconds between shots.
Casey concluded from his own research and from talking with Sam that the 1819 Hall breech-loading musket was the musket that the mob used to shoot Hiram. You can see from his painting that this is the musket he depicts being pointed at the door panel. The interesting thing about this musket is that it has no bayonet. Of the 12 firearms carried by the mob in Casey's painting, only one has a bayonet. This is a striking departure from the eyewitness testimony of Willard Richards, who detailed knocking down the muskets with bayonets poking through the door. I've done my own research on the 1819 Hall breech-loading musket, and it does have less muzzle energy than the other muskets with the bayonets. However, Sam still shows that there's quite a bit of energy coming from that musket. So there's several—this is the most convincing one though. So this—this is the picture I like right there because if his face would have been in the dart a bit, burnt too. Sam's tests also brought up another good point about the door and the splintering from that shot. If Hiram's head had been next to the door when he was shot, that splintering should have caused way more damage to his head than we can see on his death mask. It's not there. So I—I drew this to prove that angle could have hit him in the back, and that's standing. How—how hard is it to get an accurate shot from that distance with this kind of um—probably most of them missed, okay. I mean, so they were just firing away. Yeah, they were just—in order to get through, okay. So you're the first one that's convinced me that angle is a possibility. Oh yeah, because yeah, doesn't John Taylor's the one that says you couldn't have shot in because it would have all hit the ceiling because of the angle, but that's what Willard says to—the only time, right? They didn't realize Hiram was shot in the back till after the whole thing was over. Okay, they didn't know that, but then he says, but the only time he could have received that ball is when he was standing up in front of the window right after touring Carthage myself. I can see Sam's angles through the window for that shot on Hiram.
Can see that they work, but that they could possibly work. However, it still makes no sense to me why, if you're in a mob with all your friends, to come and get Joseph and Hiram, half of them come up the stairs and the other half are shooting through the window into the room where their friends are entering. That makes no sense to me. But I also asked Sam, I said, "Why do you think the church and other people believe that Hiram was against the door when he was shot?" And Sam gave me a really good explanation for that. And John Taylor and Willard both say Hiram backed up and got shot. Yep, but the Lion brothers are like, "The angles aren't right," that's why they had to come up with the "He was against the door." I've got a pitch when they restored the building in the 30s, and he's standing there looking at the camera, putting his hands on the door and has his face down by there, and he's smiling at the camp. And I think that's about the time people start thinking, "Well, his face had to be by the door; he's shot." They completely disregard Willard's account, and it's like any picture, any photograph, any painting of church history, it paints a picture in your mind of what happened. Right? I mean, what did the wall look like that Samuel Lamonite stood on? Right? We all know that, right? We can describe it in detail. Why? Because somebody painted it. That's right. And so some, there's finding a picture of somebody standing by the door with their face by the bullet hole. Right? And okay, that's what happened in our mind; that's what happened. I mean, one that was when the eight witnesses saw the plates, the angel put them on a stump and showed him the plates. Where does that come from? A painting. A painting. The stump is not mentioned anywhere; it's a painting. So you can't really call yourself a Carthage researcher until you come up with your own theory about what happened at Carthage. And Sam did that, and he wrote it out and completed that in 2014, but he never published it. And I think one of the reasons why he never published it is because it's an ongoing work for him; he's still analyzing, he's still collecting evidence, he's still coming up with new ideas. One of the reasons why I wanted to make this film is to bring his theory to light so that people could see it. I think it's that good.
So your theory is, if I got it correct, Hiram and whoever else is standing against the door, they shoot the first shot through the lock; he backs up two-thirds from the door; he gets shot through the back from outside; falls to his knees as he's uttering the words, "I'm a dead man," and then the shot through the door hits him in the face. And then later on when the doors open and more shots come in, that's the one that hits him in the throat and the two in the legs. Correct? Okay. I love Sam's theory, but part of the reason I have a hard time accepting it is because it requires you to go back to believing Hiram was shot twice in the head, and that means there should have been two large exit wounds. Let's see how Sam's theory stacks up. According to Sam's theory, if the shooter is 50 to 70 feet back from the window and Hiram angled his body a little more towards the window, it's possible to make that shot. However, Sam admitted most of the shots from that distance would have missed, and there is no evidence of damage from musket balls to the outside stone around that window. The major problem I have with Sam's theory is that it requires you to go back to believing Hiram absorbed the brunt of two musket shots into his head without sustaining far more damage. Sam has researched Civil War injuries, looking for examples of facial injuries caused by musket fire. So far, none of them match the minimal injury into Hiram's face depicted on his death mask. This is the greatest strength of Sam's theory: if Hiram was shot in the back first, it would be easy for him to have said, "I'm a dead man," while falling to his knees before being struck in his face. According to Sam, after Hiram is struck in the back, he falls to his knees and then gets hit by the second ball shot through the door, which fits the shot angle far better than if he was still standing. There are no exit wounds to Hiram's skull that would justify the two straight shots to Hiram's head from muskets as described by the two eyewitnesses. There is not even any visible damage around the nasal cavity from any caliber size of ball. This is also one of the major weaknesses with Sam's theory: if the first shot to Hiram was in his lower back, there should have been blood all over his clothing in that area. Sam explains this by relying on the Lion brothers' theory that Hiram's family could have washed those blood stains completely out, but he does not know why the family would have left the stains on the upper part of his shirt.
I like Sam's theory because it gives us some very plausible new explanations to better fit the current evidence. However, it does not offer a good explanation for the lack of major damage to Hiram's skull like the one-shot theory does. But there's a very important reason Sam disagrees with the Lion brothers' one-shot theory. Wait, do you, are you thinking that's a possibility on the shot when he was kneeling that it could have come in and exited, one shot? It is possible; I'm not saying it isn't. But Willard says at entry wound, the coroner's inquest says it was an entryway, right? And I think they had seen enough bullet ones to know the difference between the entry one and excellent. The coroner said the wound below Hiram's chin was an entry wound, not an exit wound. This detail from the coroner is a very important aspect of my own theory, which I will cover later. [Music] Gary Smith is one of the Hiram Smith descendants that actually held possession of Hiram's clothing before donating the shirt, best pants, and underclothing to the Church History Museum. Gary believes that both Taylor and Richards are credible witnesses, while also admitting that portions of their accounts are inconsistent and sometimes implausible, most likely because of the amount of time that lapsed between the events of the martyrdom and their accounts, as well as the confusion in the room during the shootings and how quickly they moved to the adjacent room after the murders. It is Gary's contention that soon after Joseph Smith went out the window, that the mob returned upstairs into the room to make sure Hiram had also been killed. When they saw him lying on his back, they turned him over slightly to check his vitals and then shot him in the back to make sure he was dead. So let's see how Gary Smith's theory stacks up. For the most part, Gary accepts the Lion brothers' theory that Hiram was shot in the face while still leaning against the door. However, he doesn't believe the mob shot Hiram in the back until they return to the jail later, which makes the window shot a moot point. Gary matches the Lion brothers' theory on each of these four points, though it's still highly improbable for Hiram to have been positioned against the door in such a way to make their one-shot theory work. The strength of Gary's theory is his explanation for the lack of blood on Hiram's clothing; no other current theory can explain this piece of evidence, which is why I use it in my own theory as well. So there are three theories that we're talking about here: we've got the Lion brothers, we've got Sam Weston, and we've got Gary Smith. And I like all of them; they all have good components to them, but unfortunately, none of them can work based on the forensic evidence.
I understand that it's impossible to know exactly what happened at Carthage; I mean, there's always going to be an unlimited number of possibilities. But at some point after a thorough investigation, you have to choose the most likely scenario. And there's a reason why none of the current three theories can account for all of the physical evidence; all of them were trying to prove the current narrative, but you can't get to the truth by trying to prove what you already believe; you have to stay open to wherever the evidence leads. There's a couple of different reasons why I believe that Hiram wasn't shot through the window first: first of all, it was an extremely difficult angle to hit, and that would have meant that many of the shots from the mob outside of the jail would have missed, and there is zero evidence for musket shots in the stone around that window. In fact, we have an example from the Saint Magnus Cathedral of what it looks like when a musket ball hits a similar stone, and you can see here on Carthage that there is nothing like that anywhere on the outside. Secondly, it doesn't make a lot of sense for why the mob outside would be firing through the window knowing their friends were inside the jail. And third of all, there's no blood on Hiram's back, and that means he couldn't have been shot in the back before he had already bled out from his other two wounds. So I agree with Gary Smith on that, that the mob came up later and shot Hiram in the back, and that's why there was no blood in the clothing around that wound. Now, as far as the muzzle energy goes, I also agree with the Lion brothers and Gary Smith that the one-shot theory is a far better explanation for the two wounds in Hiram's head. So if it entered and exited, that means the skull wouldn't have borne the brunt of the energy from that shot, and that's why there's no exit wounds in the back or the top of Hiram's skull. Hiram did say, "I'm a dead man," but it was before he was shot, and that means he knew exactly what was about to happen to him. So he was calling out, "I'm a dead man." I don't think Hiram was shot through the door. Why would anyone stand in front of that door after seeing the mob shoot right through it? It just doesn't make any sense to me. I know this directly refutes the eyewitness testimonies, but the evidence does not back up any scenario that I've seen where Hiram was shot in the face and killed by a ball coming through that second hole in the door. Now, I agree that the one-shot theory is the only way to explain the lack of damage to Hiram's skull, but there's no scenario where that shot could have entered through his nose and exited below his chin. I believe the Lion brothers; I believe the evidence points so there was only one shot. However, this is where I agree with Sam: that shot didn't enter here and exit here; it was here that it entered; that's what the coroner said. I agree with Sam on that: the shot entered here, but what does that mean? If it entered here and exited here, how do you make that shot? There's no way that that shot could have come through the door. Now, a lot of people that I talk with say, when I explain this to them and I show them the angles, I say, "How could you possibly make a shot right here?" And they're like, "Well, I don't know, the mob could have done it." And I'm like, "Okay, if the mob did make that shot, they would have had to come into the room and somehow grabbed Hiram and shot him here under the neck. And if that's true, why didn't John Taylor and Willard Richards tell that part of the story? Why did they make up this other story that he was, you know, standing right here when he got shot through the door? I mean, how hard would it have been to confuse a mob member walks in and shoots him through the neck right here?" Something's going on. The evidence points to this was the shot; it entered here; it exited here. How did that happen?
I didn't want to make this documentary just to show all of the current theories there are out there right now on what happened at Carthage. I wanted to show my own theory. I've spent thousands of hours researching what happened, reading all of the documents, reading all the reports; I've consulted with 20 different people, including two forensic detectives. I reconstructed the entire set to match exactly the measurements of that room at Carthage, and then I brought actors in and moved them in different positions, showing all the different theories and explaining where the mob was, looking to see how it could all fit together. After you spend that much time on something, you begin to see the pieces that fit together, and you see a story that begins to emerge. Now, let me tell you a little bit about the difference between the three main theories that we've covered, which are from the Lion brothers, Sam Weston, and from Gary Smith. All three of them are members of the LDS Church, and they know that there's inconsistencies in those eyewitness accounts, but they wanted to preserve the good name of Willard Richards and John Taylor and show how the evidence could still fit their eyewitness accounts. They wanted to protect the name of the Church, and they wanted to protect the name of the descendants of all the people that were involved. And I get that, but that wasn't the way that I looked at it. I'm also a member of the Church, and I want to protect all these people as well, but I want the truth. I want to know who really killed Joseph Smith and his brother Hiram; what really happened in those two to three minutes at Carthage. Let me show you what I think happened. [Music] So [Music] [Music] we want jump [Applause] [Music] um man of grief hath often crossed me on my way who sued so [Music] I had now [Music] he came [Music] I knew not why [Music] [Music] opened greater [Music] clear [Music] to me was clear as day was these brothers [Music] he says I chose comments [Music] Willard Richards tries to make the room look like the mob committed the murders; he collects the guns and fires more shots into the wall and possibly Hiram's leg. Richards helps Taylor into the next room where he leaves him for the next nine hours. [Music] [Music] There he lays where I left him; he has not moved. [Music] After some time passes, the mob comes back into the room looking for Hiram. One of the mob members fires a shot into Hiram's back; they turn Hiram's body over to make sure it's him. [Music] Joseph came to Carthage like a lamb to the slaughter; he knew he would have to seal his testimony with his blood. What he didn't know is that he and Hiram would be killed by their friends. So John Taylor and Willard Richards were both members of the Quorum of the Twelve; Willard Richards was Joseph's personal scribe; John Taylor went on to become the third president and prophet of the Church. These men were supposed to be Joseph and Hiram's friends, and they found a way to be in that room that day. I understand the implications of what I'm saying are going to make a lot of people upset, but I wanted the truth; I was willing to deal with the truth. [Music] I wasn't the first one to come up with the theory that Joseph and Hiram were killed by their friends. The idea that the martyrdom was an inside job has been around since 1844. Listen to the words of Joseph and Hiram's sister, Catherine: "I was in Nauvoo a few days before my brothers were brought to Carthage where they met their death. I shall never forget that Saturday, June 23, 1844, when I last saw my brothers alive. I heard Brother Joseph's last sermon delivered to a great audience in Nauvoo. I might say that it was more in the nature of a prophecy than a sermon, or rather its conclusion was, for as he finished, he turned and facing some of the high priests and elders sitting there, he told them that there were seated on the stand beside him those who were conspiring to deliver him up to the enemy to take his life and who would be responsible for his death. He said, 'There are those among you who will betray me soon; in fact, you have plotted to deliver me up to the enemy to be slain.' The truth of this prophecy is of history; he was betrayed, and by his own alleged best friends. These same fellows attempted to assume the reigns of the Church at his death." [Music] A lot of this depends on what your paradigm is, how you approach the proof that we've presented. If you want to prove a certain narrative, then you'll only see the evidence that proves that certain narrative. I've been on both sides of both narratives: was an inside job and it was the mob. I had the idea that John Taylor and Willard Richards killed Joseph Smith, but that would be preposterous to any other Mormon because those two men went on, especially John Taylor, to become even greater influences, general authorities in the Church; they were apostles then. But I didn't see it in the same framework; for me, I already understood that William Law was a member of the First Presidency, and he was influential in the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. And so to me, and I saw so many apostles leave in Kirtland and leave in Nauvoo or even in Missouri; there was a big turnover and a lot of apostasy in the Quorum of 12. So right from the outset, I don't have the conditioning and the, um, the preconceptions that an apostle can't betray the Church or betray Joseph Smith. The apostles, of course, were all betraying Joseph Smith; there wasn't a single part of this reenactment that we didn't think completely through; every detail; we asked, "Exactly, does this belong in this documentary or not?" So what most people don't know is that the mob came twice; they also don't know that there were more people in the room than just Joseph and Hiram. Joseph and Hiram were the only ones that were actually under arrest; they were the only ones that were told by the judge that they had to remain at Carthage. But for some reason, the jailer let many other people come in and out of that room. And the night before the actual martyrdom happened, around 12 midnight, Dan Jones tells his own account of what happened: it was dark; they heard the mob come up the stairs; were talking behind the door; they all ran to the door; Dan's the one that said that they had only had a chair leaning against the door, and someone grabbed that as a means of defense, but they all stood against that wall. And I believe most likely that was what happened when they were actually killed, as they were all standing against the wall; they weren't against that door. Joseph called out to them, "We're ready for you," something like that, and it spooked the mob, and they took off. The next morning, Joseph sends Dan out to go find out what happened; what was this mob that was there last night? And as Dan is going around town, he runs into a remnant of that mob, and they talk about that they're there to hang Joseph; that they came to Carthage to grab him, to hang him. I think that probably tells more accurately what was in the mind of the mob members rather than they're busting through the door, shooting while their friends are out shooting at them through the other window. That doesn't make sense to me; they had come there; they were armed, but they wanted to take Joseph, and they wanted to take Hiram out of that room. Now, can you imagine the shock that they had when they found out that Joseph was armed? And Joseph came out, and he shot his pistol, and he had a six-shooter that looked a lot like this, and there are three of the mob members that were actually injured by those shots from Joseph. Now, it's very important that you understand that it was three shots, three injuries that were caused. Because of all the details that John Taylor and Willard Richards conflict with, even each other, there's one detail they both get very clear: they say when Joseph fired his six shots, three of them misfired. And that was always puzzling to me: why would they go out of their way to talk about these misfires? How would they even know that that Joseph had misfired? Do you hear the bang but don't see the bullet come out of the front, or do you hear the click of the gun, and all the things that were going on in that room? How did they both come up with that detail that Joseph had three shots that fired and three that misfired? Dan Jones had not been allowed back into the room once he left; the jailer had made sure that all that was in that room was John Taylor and Willard Richards. So when Joseph goes out, I have him going out of the room to fire; John and Willard now have to figure out what are they going to do in that moment. I tried to portray in the reenactment that John, you know, wasn't exactly sure he was ready to go through with this, but he...
Had to make a decision, and he knew he had to take Hiram out. And then he was going to have to go and take Joseph out. So Joseph and Hyrum didn't have guns, but their friends brought them guns. John Fulmer brought in a single shot, which Joseph at first had, but then Cyrus Wheelock is the one that brought in the sixth shooter. And that sixth shooter, he said, "Does anybody want this?" and Joseph took the six shooter and gave the single shot to his brother Hiram. So they were both armed. And it's important to understand that Joseph had six shots and Hiram had a single shot. And it's also important to understand that that sixth shooter that Cyrus Wheelock gave Hiram actually used to belong to John Taylor. John Taylor collected guns, and he had sold that sick shooter to Cyrus Wheelock, which tells me he probably had a new one. So in my estimation, that's what he had with him in the jail that day—was at least a six shooter. And I think Willard had at least one single shot, probably two; he could have had a six shooter as well. Anyway, so Joseph goes outside of the room to dispatch the mob. The mob, when they see that he's firing on them, they all take off back down the stairs.
In the meantime, Hiram and John Taylor get in a shootout inside of the room. Hiram, of course, is completely shocked that John would have been in on this. So in the middle of that squirmish, that's where I believe that Hiram shot John Taylor in the leg. That was the first big wound that John Taylor received with that single shot from Hiram. When John Taylor and he were in a gunfight, he calls out, "Joseph, I'm a dead man." So John shoots him, and he gets that shot that I've been describing this whole time—under his throat, enters here and it exits here—and then he falls to the ground.
Now I had to decide what to do with that fall. In the eyewitness accounts, they have Hiram on his back; they say he landed on his back and he never moved again. And I have gone through this scenario so many times: If he landed on his back and the shot to his lower back was from the mob later on, then what did they do? Did the mob come in, look at him, turn him over, and then shoot him in the back, and then turn him back over and shoot him in the knee and shoot him in the thigh? Because remember, all three of those shots don't have any blood with them, which means they happened after Hiram had already bled out. So the timing of it would suggest that that happened when the mob came back up, and I just don't see them turning his body back over and shooting him. So I see Hiram hitting the floor on his stomach and staying on his stomach, and then the mob comes up and shoots him first in the back and then checks and is like, "Yes indeed, that is Hiram."
So a very interesting thing happened during the filming of that scene. If you look at the vest of Hiram, you can see that there's a large section of it cut out, and it's on the right lapel, on the right side, and that's where all of the blood would have come from his wound. And there's no other blood anywhere on the vest, but there is blood on his shirt underneath where his vest would have been covered in blood. And a lot of people are like, "Well, shouldn't there have been other blood all over the vest?" And maybe, maybe not. And it's very convenient, they say, that that big section of his vest was cut out with all the blood on it, and we can't, you know, really tell if that had blood on it or not. But I did not intend this at all. And we've simulated the blood coming from those two wounds; that was all out on the floor. And then after we were finished with the shoot and Hyrum stood up, you could see where the blood ended up. I mean, I was blown away—this is exactly, exactly where the piece of his vest was cut out. It's on the wrong side because I turned his head to the left, but had I turned it to the right, it just as easily could have been on this side. Look at that—we basically, without even trying, proved that it was a possibility that with that major wound, the only blood on his vest would be in the exact area that was cut out.
So Hiram gets this shot into John Taylor's thigh. Now he's unarmed, and now he's dead, laying on the floor. And now Joseph comes back into the room, and Joseph sees what had happened—his brother is lying on the floor and John Taylor is there. And then John Taylor opens fire on Joseph and strikes him. And that's when I believe that Joseph Smith starts firing back on John. Now John—most people think that John got shot five times—and that's not correct. That only works if you believe he was actually shot in the watch, and I think again today, every Carthage researcher out there, none of them believe that John was shot in the watch. That means all that was left was four wounds: the big shot in his thigh, the shot into his wrist that traveled up below his fingers, the shot below his left knee, and the shot in his left hip. He was shot four times—four. That first shot came from Hiram; the next three shots I believe were from Joseph's gun.
Now why do I think that? Between three caliber sizes of the balls that came out of the guns at that time: this is a 69 caliber would have been fired from the musket; this is a 50 caliber that could have been shot from a rifle or a hand pistol; and then this is about approximately a 30 caliber, a little bit bigger than today's 22, and that is the ball that gets shot from a six-shot gun like Joseph had. So let me ask you: If John Taylor was shot in the hand with this—it hit him in the wrist and traveled up his hand and was lodged right here—the doctor that worked on him afterwards to remove that ball had to cut it out with a pen knife, digging around in his hand trying to find that ball, and then he used a compass to pull it out when he found it, and of course John was in excruciating pain when that was happening—do you think if that ball hit you in the wrist and traveled up to your hand here that it would be difficult to find it? There's no way. If it had been a 50 caliber shot hit here, traveled up—even then, still easy to find. The only thing that makes sense to me was that 30 caliber that I believe could hit you in the wrist, travel up your hand, and get lodged here and be difficult to find when you're digging around in his hand with a pen knife. That makes way more sense to me. Secondly, that wound to John Taylor's knee, just below his knee—he never removed that ball for the rest of his life; it stayed. Do you think you could walk around the rest of your life with a 69 caliber ball stuck in your knee? There's no way. On the other hand, if you had this 30 caliber, that I could see was a possibility. Now the final wound on his hip—didn't the ball didn't lodge in his hip; it tore a piece of the skin off—so I can't say about that shot, but the other two shots absolutely—they were not a 69 caliber musket ball; it was a smaller caliber.
Now we went out in the range and we tested this for ourselves. We took a ballistic arm, and the very first thing we did was shoot it with a 22, and we hit it right here in the wrist, just like John Taylor described, and that bullet traveled up and it went right through the fingers. So then we decided to shoot it with a 69 caliber musket simulated, and it blew the hand completely off. That's what I suspected all along—that there's no way that there was muskets aiming through the door and that's how John was shot. There would have been way too much damage on him getting hit three times, four times like he did; there just would have been way more damage than in the record. You don't just walk away from a 69 caliber musket ball hitting you in the knee; it would have tore your leg off. Same thing if it hit you in the hand—you don't have a hand anymore. We did this simulation; we watched what happened ourselves.
Last piece of evidence that I wanted to cover was section 135 of the Doctrine and Covenants. This is what John Taylor wrote afterwards about the martyrdom: "To seal the testimony of this book, in the Book of Mormon, we announced the martyrdom of Joseph Smith the prophet and Hiram Smith the patriarch. They were shot in Carthage Jail on the 27th of June 1844, at about five o'clock p.m., by an armed mob, painted black, up from 150 to 200 persons. Hiram was shot first and fell calmly, exclaiming, 'I am a dead man.' Joseph leaped from the window and was shot dead in the attempt, exclaiming, 'Oh Lord, my God.' They were both shot after they were dead in a brutal manner, and both received four balls—four balls is what Hiram received." Now what John may have forgotten or didn't know was going to be a possibility is that Hiram's clothes were going to be preserved all the way from that day till today, and you can see in the clothes where he was shot once in the back, once in the knee, once in the hip—there's three. If he was only hit by four balls, that's one shot left, but there's still two wounds—one in the nose and one below the chin. That's why so many of us believe today that that shot, that final shot to be accounted for, was one shot. Some say this is the entry and this is the exit; I think that the evidence proves this is the entry and this is the exit. John Taylor knew that Hiram had only received four shots; it wasn't five like the eyewitness accounts today make it look or make it seem like that's what happened.
When it comes to understanding everything that happened at Carthage, we're not done yet. There are still new stories to be told, new evidences to be discovered; there are new Carthage researchers that still have to wake up. I can't wait. I was so worried when the actor playing Joseph grabbed Hiram to turn him over because he still had blood on his hand and it got on Hiram's shirt, and there was nothing we could do about it after we were done filming. I looked closely at Hiram's shirt and was totally shocked. Over the last few years, we've had a lot of positive evidence come out about Joseph that seems to exonerate him from all the atrocities that are attributed to his name, and I just look forward for a lot more good to come out regarding Joseph. As a forensic detective specializing in cold cases, I have personally overseen the investigation of over 100 murder cases. I believe the most likely scenario is that the Smith brothers were fired upon first by the two men staying in the jail with them.