LDS Experts Finally Respond to Who Killed Joseph Smith

[Music] Welcome to the Who Killed Joseph Smith podcast. My name is Justin Griffin, and I'm super excited about this episode. It's been a little over a year, year and a half coming, but the Church has finally responded to the movie. And there's two different groups that actually have responded in the last couple of months. First was a panel of seven experts made up of authors, researchers, um, a detective, and they all got together and put together a three and a half hour podcast responding to the movie. And second, just recently, the historians from the Joseph Smith Papers put together an eight-part series going through Carthage, and during that they respond to the movie as well. And it's interesting because both of them put forth their theories of what happened in the room, and both of them go against the official Church narrative.

It wasn't long ago that Brian Hales came on to Michelle's podcast, 132 Problems, and I want to play a clip from that really quick. That's the official narrative now. If you want to believe differently than that, let me let me back up. If a person wants to believe differently, that's their right, and they can reject it wholly. But if they want to try to convince other people or to cast doubt on the official uh, position by saying that it's open for debate, I think that's where the problem comes. So basically, again, the panelists and the historians, both speaking from as being apologists to the Church, both go against the official Church narrative. And like Brian Hales said, you can believe different, but once you start questioning the official Church narrative, that's when he says you get into trouble. That's where I got into trouble, is because I dared question that narrative. Anyway, I hope you find this informative and interesting, and there's some new things that I'll be going through tonight that we haven't talked about before. So thanks again for coming. Thank you. [Music]

All right, so first question that is on most people's minds is what is the official Church narrative? And you can find the most current narrative of what happened in the room in Carthage in the book Saints. This book was approved by the First Presidency in Quorum of the Twelve, or I'll call them Q15 for short. This is, if you go to Carthage and actually go through the tour, this is the narrative that they refer to in that tour. So this is the Q15 official Church narrative, and you can find this in the book Saints. And I'm going to read and compare what the Church says with their narrative with the Q15 narrative to what Willard said happened in his journal and in his subsequent writing. Two minutes in jail, here we go.

A few minutes later, the prisoners heard a rustling at the door and the crack of three or four gunshots. Willard glanced out the open window and saw a hundred men below. So far we're doing okay. Their faces blackened with mud and gunpowder, storming the entry to the jail. I hate this description. He makes it sound like, or whoever wrote this, this Q15 version makes it sound like there's a hundred mob members, and that Willard saw them storming into the jail, and that's not true. There could have been a hundred mob members there; different people estimated different amounts. But actually, they came into the jail; there's only one witness at the trial that said it was about six that actually came into the jail, and we have the ages of two of those; they were teenagers. So what happened? This big bad angry mob standing outside sends the young kids in to go and grab Joseph and Hiram so that they can hang them. But everybody in their mind has this picture that the mob, hundreds of men, were barreling up the stairs and pushing against the door, and that's just not true. So I don't agree with this part of the official narrative, but that's the way the Q15 has put it.

Joseph grabbed one of the pistols while Hiram seized the other. John and Willard picked up canes and gripped them like clubs. All four men pressed themselves against the door as the mob rushed up the stairs and tried to force their way up inside. So yes, this is Willard's version. All four men in the room, Joseph, Hiram, John Taylor, and Willard Richards, were pushing against the door, and the mob was pushing back against them with the six teenagers, or six whoever was in that room. You know, no one else, no one on the scene that day said anything about pushing him back and forth on that door. Anyway, that's a pretty standard thing in Willard's account, so I I understand why it's in the Q15 account. Gunfire sounded in the stairwell as the mob shot at the door. Now we know from Willard's account there's two shots; the first one supposedly came above the door latch that didn't hit anybody. The second shot came through the panel of the door, and that's the one he says struck Hiram in the face. So the Q15 account: Gunfire sounded in the stairwell as the mob shot at the door. Joseph, John, and Willard sprang to the side of the doorway as a ball splintered through the wood. That's Willard's account that Joseph, John, and Willard all went to the left of the door, and Hiram backed up about 10 feet is what Willard said. But these guys, the Q15, don't say it's two shots; they say this shot came through the door; those guys went left, and that shot hit Hiram in the face. He wasn't 10 feet back from the door; he was at the door there, saying when he when he got struck. It struck Hiram in the face, and he turned, stumbling away from the door, and another ball struck him in the lower back. They're saying that second ball that hit him in the back came from the door; that's completely against Willard's account. He said it, the shot came through the window that struck him in the back. Again, Willard says Hiram was 10 feet away from the door when he was shot in the face, and the shot in the back came through the window. The Q15 is now saying Hiram was against the door when he got shot in the face; he turned and then got shot in the back. That's the prophet, seers, and revelators saying that's what happened.

Now here's one other interesting detail. As Hiram is stumbling away from the door and the ball struck him in the lower back, his pistol fired and he fell to the floor. "Brother Hiram," Joseph cried, gripping his six-shooter. He opened the door a few inches and fired once. Why did he need to open the door? Wasn't the mob jamming themselves in to push against the door, and now suddenly no one's guarding the door from the inside, and he has to open it? Why did the mob stop pushing against the door? Joseph, gripping his six-shooter, opened the door a few inches and fired once more. Musket balls flew into the room. Now you've got to get me to believe Joseph opens the door a few inches; he's jamming his gun through, shooting at them; they're jamming their muskets back, firing; both of them are firing point-blank range at each other; no one's flinching. I don't believe that for a second. Somebody opens the door and aims a gun at you; you're running out of that room. Joseph fired haphazardly at the mob while John used a cane to beat down the gun barrels and bayonets thrust through the doorway. No one's pushing the garb; the door closed; it's opened a few inches that Joseph opened it; the bayonets are jamming through there; John's hitting them with his stick; and somehow that door's not flying open. That account makes no sense. I don't understand how the Q15 can even write this; it's just it doesn't work at all.

After Joseph's revolver misfired two or three times, of course they got that detail in there; that's Willard's big thing. John ran to the window and tried to climb the deep window seal. I showed that in the movie; it's about two feet, that windowsill. So far we're okay; this matches Willard. A musket ball flew across the room and struck him in the leg. That goes with Willard, tipping him off balance; his body went numb, and he crashed against the windowsill, smashing his pocket watch at 16 minutes past five o'clock. Willard says John was falling out of the window, got shot by a mob member, and that shot pushed him back into the room; that shot is what hit his watch. This is a major departure away from Willard's narrative. And interestingly, the current studies that have been announced recently is they've done a whole bunch more studies where they're saying that watch could have been shot by a slower-moving fragment of a bullet, hit it, and I'm like, why are you still doing studies? The Q15 have spoken; the narrative is set; why are you still doing studies? Why don't you just accept the way that they've said it? That watch, whether it was hit or not, like I said in part two of the movie, I don't care; that never bothered me. It's interesting, but what's I find more interesting is the whole idea of John falling out of the window and getting shot and pushed back in. The detective went through that in detail; it's impossible. John lied about that, and no one outside of the jail, these hundred people, we have many accounts, over 10 accounts from people who saw the window; they saw Joseph come to the window; not one of them mentioned John Taylor ever coming to the window. No one from inside the jail or outside of the jail. I don't think it happened; I think that story was made up. But of course, that's me questioning the Q15 narrative here. It I guess it doesn't matter as much anymore for me. So anyway, they're saying John didn't get shot on the watch; he his watch was smashed when he fell into the windowsill windowsill.

"I am shot," John cried. John dragged himself across the floor and rolled under the bed as the mob fired again and again. A ball ripped into his hip, tearing away a chunk of flesh. Willard confirms that two more balls struck his wrist and the bone just above his knee. Interestingly, Willard and John say that knee shot was below his knee, but the Q15s changed that. I don't know how they got that information; I don't know what source they're using, but whatever it is, they decided that that shot was above his knee. Across the room, Joseph and Willard strained to put all their weight against the door as Willard knocked away the musket barrels. Okay, now they've moved back in front of the door; in other words, they're saying that mob's still pushing against the door the whole time. Earlier, no one's against the door; no one comes in; Joseph has to open the door; then he they're firing back and forth; why Willard's knocking? Now he's they're trying to hold the door closed. What sense does that make if no one's guarding the door and they wanted to get in, they could have got in in like two seconds. Okay, so Willard strained to put all their weight against the door as Willard knocked away the musket barrels and bayonets in front of him. Suddenly, Joseph dropped his revolver to the floor and darted for the window. As he straddled the windowsill, two balls struck his back; that was from the doorway, and another ball hurtled through the window and pierced him below the heart; that's according to Willard. I don't think Willard or I don't think John, Joseph went and jumped out of that window; I think he was thrown out by Willard, and in order to make that story sound good, they had to add John in there and say John tried to jump out of the window too. Everyone was trying to jump out of the window because it was safer outside of the room. Willard later in his account says he went to the window and looked out, saw 100 bayonets, and was like, I'm not jumping out there. Why wouldn't Joseph and John Taylor have felt the same way? John never happened; Joseph didn't do it on his own volition; he was pushed out.

"Oh Lord, my God," Joseph cried. His body lurched forward, and he pitched headfirst out of the window. Willard rushed across the room and stuck his head outside as lead balls whistled past him. I've talked about that many times; Willard's a big man; he filled the window. What are these balls that are whistling past his head there? If the mob's still shooting from inside the jail, he's 10 feet away; how do you miss him? If you're shooting from outside of the jail, I'm missing that means you're hitting the stones outside of the window, and there's nothing that shows any of those stones were damaged by musket balls, and can't be true. Below he saw the mob swarming around Joseph's bleeding body. The prophet lay on his left side next to a stone well. Willard watched, hoping to see some sign that his friend was still alive. Seconds passed, and he saw no movement. Joseph Smith, the prophet and seer of the Lord, was dead. That's the Q15 version; many departures from Willard's version, but whatever. Where do they get their information? How do they decide what the narrative is? I don't know, but these prophet, seers, and revelators have said this is the official narrative. And what did Brian Hales say? If you want to believe differently, that's fine, but if you go against it and you start trying to convince people against the official Church narrative, that's when you're going to get into trouble. Now that's crazy because the historians and the panel both go against the official narrative, and I'll I'll show you why next.

So this is the historians; this comes from episode four, the martyrdom, of that eight-part series that they recently did on their podcast. And they have different historians that work for the Joseph Smith Papers, and all of them are, you know, talking together and starting out with the what happened in the actual two to three minutes. It starts off with Elizabeth. She says, "Sometime after five o'clock, an armed mob rushed the Hancock County Jail, broke through the guards, climbed the stairway." You see what she did there? It's so subtle. This 100 to 200 member mob run, and they all rush, breaking through the guard up in the jail, up the stairs. It's not true; they climbed the stairway, attempted to force entry into the bedroom where Joseph, Hiram, John Taylor, and Willard Richards were. The four men quickly grabbed the weapons they had available and barricaded themselves in the room, bracing themselves against the door. So far they're following Willard's uh, version pretty closely. Spencer McBride: "Hiram was struck first, according to Willard Richards' account of the event. Hiram was shot in his face, clasping his wound with his hands. Hiram fell back and exclaimed, 'I am a dead man.'" They just skip the shots from the door and where they were standing, even though that's in Willard's account; they just skip all those details. Why? They want to get past that; they don't want people talking about physical evidence; they want you to concentrate on the historical documents, not the physical evidence. I'm like, the physical evidence is the historical evidence, and it trumps the documents, but they don't want to go there because it does not look good for them. But interestingly, and they say, "As historians, we have to just stick with the documents," but where's this? "Hiram was shot in his face, clasping his wound with his hands; he fell back." That's not in any rendition; that's not in Willard's or John's or anyone else's; they just add that detail in there. They don't like it when other people do that, but they do it all the time; they speculate; they fill in the missing information with their own ideas. Elizabeth then says, responding to Hiram's death, "Joseph opened the door slightly." The Q15 says a few inches; they say slightly, "and repeatedly fired a revolver, which he had received from Cyrus Wheelock earlier that day, into the crowd, though it misfired two or three times." Thank goodness they got that two or three misfires in there; we wouldn't want to miss that detail. Spencer: "Fearing a mob attack and worrying that the jail's security was insufficient, Church member Cyrus Wheelock had snuck two guns into the jail." Whoa, it's one; he only brought the six-shooter is what the official record says; the single-shot was brought by John Fulmer. But here the historians are saying Cyrus brought two guns, so I'm like, are you just mistaken, or is there some detail in a document that you haven't released yet that shows Cyrus brought two guns? Because I've always suspected that it's not in the accounts anywhere. The historians say it; I'm like, what's going on here? Are you really bad historians? Did you make that up? Was it just a mistake, or is this something that we need to know about? Can you show us that source?

Then they go on to talk about, you know, people can't believe that Joseph and Hiram would would fight back, and some of the portrayals that you see of the events, "We lose sight of the fact that, of course, these men are trying to defend themselves. They have two handguns in the room with them, a couple of canes that they're using to knock down rifle barrels." No, they're not; that is only in Willard and John Taylor's account with the canes knocking down rifles; no one else in the jail said that; no one outside of the jail said that; some people made fun of them for making that up; that event didn't happen; there is no physical evidence of that; nothing on the cane, nothing in the door frame showing this fight with canes and door and muskets jamming through the doorway. I just don't think that happened. They had two handguns in the room with them and a couple of canes that they were using to knock down the rifle barrels, musket barrels, and that kind of thing. That, of course, doesn't minimize the atrocity that's committed; the fact they are trying to defend themselves, that Joseph gets off a few successful shots with the revolver; it also misfires a few times; not uncommon. If there's a shot from Hiram's single-shot pistol, see now he says there's two guns; Joseph has a six-shooter; Hiram has the single shot. Now I'm thinking it's just a mistake that they said Cyrus brought both of those; these historians that are supposed to be trained professionals and know all these details said Cyrus brought both of them. These are the guys you trust with the narrative. Do you trust the Q15 who said Taylor was shot above the knee when everything historical says it was below the knee? Do you trust the historians when they don't know who actually brought the guns, and that's clear as day in the historical record? Okay, if there's a shot from Hiram's single-shot pistol, it goes into the floor and not anyone in the stairwell. How the heck do they know that? How do they know where that shot from Hiram goes? Oh, it went into the floor; we're sure. The floor was replaced decades ago, but somehow they know that. Now I know that Hiram's gun fired because Willard said he fired it, but where that ball ended up, nobody knows; there's no there's nothing in the record, physical or historical, about that; yet somehow these historians know where that went; it went into the floor. And then they say, "Not anyone in the stairwell," but they are being mobbed in the jail. Willard Richards says from 100 to 200 men. Yeah, you're getting to paint that picture that there's tons of men in the jail; there wasn't; there were six or less, and they were young kids, inebriated, half-inebriated; they were given alcohol before they went in there. Okay, "The mob was divided in two parts; those who rushed into the jail and fired at the prisoners from inside and those who surrounded the jail from without to prevent escape." Okay, I can go along with that. John Taylor apparently rushed to the window in a bid to escape, apparently, and when he did was struck by shots fired from both inside and outside the jail. Badly wounded, Taylor fell to the floor and rolled himself beneath the bed for cover. They just skipped the watch; they don't know what to make of the watch; was it shot? Wasn't it? The official narrative says no, it wasn't shot; he landed on the windowsill. These guys, the historians, just get spooked and stay away from that, even though it's right there in the historical or Willard's account and John's account; they skip it; they don't believe Willard; they don't believe the Q15 on this detail.

Oh, here we go. "Willard Richards was wedged in the corner of the room between the opening door and the wall; using a cane, he did his best to knock down the guns that were taking aim at the mob's primary target, Joseph Smith." Okay, so in Willard's account, he's saying he's to the left of the door; the Q15 account, they're saying he's to the left of the door; the historians are saying he's to the right of the door, in the corner, hiding. Why? Because that's what other witnesses said; Willard was hiding in that corner. But I'm like, historians, you're going against the Q15 on this, and you expect me to believe he's standing in the corner holding the cane across the door, knocking down muskets? You guys did not think this out; you haven't done any research; you don't even understand the record as Willard Richards recorded the event. Joseph attempted at the last resort to

LEAP the same window from whence Mr. Taylor fell? No, he did not. He was pushed. When two balls pierced him, one from the door, and one entered his right breast from without. So he was shot inside the room and outside, exclaiming, "Oh Lord, my God!" Joseph fell to the ground below, outside the jail, near the well of water that served the building. Members of the mob watched his body tumble. It is unclear if Joseph was dead by the time he fell from the window.

Speculation, Elizabeth: There are a variety of accounts on this point, but some accounts claim that Joseph was still alive when he hit the ground, and that he was either able to prop himself up against the well curb or that the mob physically propped him against the well curb. Accounts vary on this, but Joseph was then shot again at the well curb, killing him.

Spencer: The job was done in an instant. Richards would soon write about the murder of his beloved friends, Joseph and Hiram Smith, and the mob fled the scene soon after its members were sure that Joseph was dead. Richard's worried that the assailants would travel to Nauvoo to wage war on the Saints. "They have no idea what they're talking about," he said. "They do not want to know what happened in those two to three minutes. They act like they are the end-all be-all. We are the historians; we are the source of Truth. They miss crucial details; they make up stuff, and they go against the official Church Q15 narrative. I'm like, 'Are these the guys that you're going to trust to tell you what happened in that in that room?' Okay, the last version is the panelists. The panelists have done legitimate research—well, not all of them, but Sam Weston has. He's the only one that's actually on that panel done physical evidence and study about what does the evidence from Carthage really saying to us. And Sam came up with a theory, and Sam's theory is that Hiram was 10 feet away from the door, and that second shot—he got shot in the back first from the window, fell to his knees, and then the panel shot hit him in the face. That's when he said, 'I'm a dead man.' Is when he first got shot in the back, and then the panel shot hit him in the face, then he fell back on his back, and then the second shot came through the door under his chin. It explains a lot of things. I've always liked Sam's Theory. It explains the 'I'm a dead man' statement, which you can't say that after you've been shot in the face, but you could if he got shot in the back first.

Two big problems with Sam's theory: there's no blood on the back shot. It couldn't have been the first shot. He was shot in the back and then fell on the back; there would have been blood in the clothing, and there's not. And Sam has a bunch of explanations for that, but he hasn't proven any of it with any of his testing. But the even bigger problem is if you shot Hiram in the face with the musket and the chin, there's no exit wound. Not only is there not an exit wound, there's not even any cracks anywhere else in the skull. And everyone with half a brain that's ever seen a musket fire knows that's impossible. So Sam's done all of his work by saying, "Well, maybe it was a pistol," and maybe there's less and less and less gunpowder. But I've shot pistols. I've shot 50-caliber pistols with less gunpowder than Sam used. It went through the panel of a door an inch thick black walnut, still penetrated all the way through the skull. I'm like, Sam, I have extra heads here. I have all the weapons. You bring yours; I'll bring wine. Let's run those tests. We can film them together. I'm not afraid to do that. You said I'm afraid; I'm not. I just want the truth. I'll take care of the cost if that's what you're worried about. We'll get the true gel heads with the skulls inside of them, and we'll fire them, and we'll see if you can ever make that not create an exit wound or any cracking to the skull. I don't think that's gonna happen, but we can do it with all the different weapons and all the different loads of black powder, everything you want to test. I'm willing to do that anytime you say.

Now Taylor, another person who's on that panel who claims to be some sort of ballistic expert—that's why we we've talked before—he agrees no exit wound is a big problem, and so he says it's one shot, but that shot came through the nose and exited out of the chin. So first he was 10 feet back from the door; he got shot in the back; he fell to his knees; then his head moved forward, and that shot hit him in the left of the nose and exited out of the chin. And I understand that, but the problem is is the only way that that shot angle works is if his head was down like this. If your head's down like that, the exit—the ball into the body—and there is no wound on Hiram, nothing like that on the clothing or on his skin. Taylor's Theory, right off the bat, I'm like, "Okay, I think that's a great Theory; it's very creative, put it together," but it didn't take long to disprove it, and I'm like, Taylor, feel free to answer that: if his head was down, how does he get one shot exit out of the chin that doesn't hit him anywhere else in his body? So, but the interesting thing is this: their Theory, the panelist theory, goes against the Q15. They say Hiram was back from that door when the Q15 says he's right at the door the whole time. They go against the official Narrative of the church. I got excommunicated for that. They didn't—for some reason—they can question it; other people can question it. Brian Hales is like, that's when you get in troubles if you try to convince people that historians—they came up with their own story against them; these guys—what does that all mean? Why was I excommunicated? Okay, we know why: it's because my theory questions the authority of the church, and theirs didn't. And that's where Brian Hales is a little bit wrong. You can say whatever you want; you can say whatever you believe in the church; you just can't question the authority of the Q15. If you do that, that's the problem, and that's why I'm the one that came out with this Theory. If I wasn't going to question the authority, then I wouldn't have been able to come out with the Inside Job Theory, but because I just wanted the truth and I didn't care, I was willing to say that, and yeah, I got excommunicated for it. These guys aren't going to go that far, but yeah, they're going to keep questioning the Q15. I'm like, "Well, do you not trust them? They're Prophet, seers, and revelators. They have told you this is now the official narrative." Now, of course, they go against one of the forefathers of the church, Willard Richards' account, but you know their position: prophets today trump the prophets of old. If we say this is the narrative, and it's different than the one of old, then ours is correct. Their Revelation is more clear, more correct than the guy in the past. So I get the church's position. They can say whatever story they want, and they can say this is what Revelation dictates, and the members just have to accept it, and you can't question it, and you can't go run tests and have physical evidence; you can't question any of that. And the historians, I think, were trying to support them in that, but they came out and were like, "Wow, what the Q15 set doesn't fit the historical documents," and then they made some stuff up, and then the panelists are all over the place with theories that don't work.

So you guys want to debate? I'm happy to debate anytime, any of you, and we'll go through the historical documents, or we'll go through the physical evidence. You want to get all your teams out and run tests, as many tests as you want? I'll do that. I want the truth. I'm not lying about the tests that I've run. I've shown them on video; they are duplicatable. Anybody can come and watch that or make any adjustments you want. Let's get that on camera, and I would love it if the historians came, and I would love it if the panelists came; I'd love it if the Q15 came. Let's film it all. Let's get to the bottom of who really killed Joseph Smith and Hiram here.

Now, I don't think it's helpful, you know, when you come up with a three and a half-hour panel discussion with question after question after question. You just do this shotgun approach and then say you have to answer all of these questions. It would take hours to answer all those. I'm not afraid of any of them, but if you want to have a legitimate debate, what I think is more the better way to do that is let's come up with a clear list of questions, and I'll do my best to answer it from my point of view; you do your best to answer it from your point of view, and then the audience can decide. So I'm going to start off with some questions that came out of, you know, both the his—the historians' account and the panelists' account, and we'll just go through it. So before I get into those questions real quick, I wanted to show a little clip of something. The guy that put that panel together, his name is Shannon Tracy, and this is—this is what he said to kind of challenge me: "What we do officially right now, Justin, we are challenging you to come and debate and talk about all the points that we have discussed in this panel. We want to start with a historical perspective, and I—we want you to go point by point and show where they are wrong, and you have run away from the historical perspective and all the historical documentation up into this point. No longer allow you to hide in the shadows, in the gray spaces, of the dark spaces. We challenge you to come before us." All right, so he's saying I'm hiding in the shower shadows and the gray spaces. I'm like, "What are you talking about? I made two movies, made these podcast episodes, uh, I've talked with—I've already had debates with two of the guys on your panel, and I—and I have a Facebook page dedicated to talking about this. If anyone can come on there and talk about it, what Shadows are you talking about, Shannon? I'll talk with you anytime; just let me—just let me know."

So here are the questions. Question number one: Is there anything in the historical record indicating an inside job? Because both of them say no, that doesn't exist. Well, one of the documents that I mentioned in the film, let me pull that up. This is from the Church History catalog. So this letter was written by a Samuel James—what it says up at the top—but then at the bottom it says Samuel Jones, and is fixed, and he writes this to Willard Richards because he had a very interesting experience where somebody who witnessed the martyrdom told him what happened, and he wanted to report that to Willard Richards as soon as possible. And so he says here that that martyrdom—a murder of the blackest that has ever appeared on the pages of History, perpetrated by friends whose characteristics are such that language cannot furnish a picture. Yes, they have murdered men who have given them the words of Eternal truth, offered them protection, and have laid down their lives for their friends. So this says perpetrated by friends, but then the r has this cross through to make it seem like perpetrated by fiends. So the question is: is—did he, when he gave this account, mean friends, and then somebody tried to hide that, or did he mean fiends, and whoever typed this typed it incorrectly? Well, I look at the rest of the context of that paragraph that that was put in, and it says fiends whose characters are such that language cannot furnish a picture. Yes, they have murdered men who have given them the words of Eternal truth. That would suggest they were known, you know, the people who committed that murder was known by Joseph and Hiram, and they taught them the gospel. Yes, they have murdered men who have given them the words of Eternal truth, offered them protection, and have laid down their lives for their friends. That's what happened: Joseph and Hiram were killed by people that they supposed were their friends. So that's—that's in the historical account. Now you can argue it, and you can argue this source, and you can argue whether that says friends or fiends, and that's fine, but what you can't say is there's nothing in the historical account that indicates an inside job. Let's go through some additional quotes. This is by Catherine Smith Salisbury. I put this in the first movie, and this was Joseph's sister, and she gave this towards the end of her life, and she said, talking about Joseph, quoting him: "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—is of History. He was betrayed, and by his own alleged best friends. That's why I think it was friends in that letter. Two people now are backing that: "These same fellows attempted to assume the Reigns of the church at his death." That's some—a very specific group of people who did that. So the next quote is from Emma Smith, although it was given by Brigham Young at a conference in 1860, the October 1866 conference in Salt Lake City, and he said: "Emma is naturally a very smart woman; she is subtle and ingenious, and she has made all her children believe that myself, Brother Kimball, and the others members of The Twelve laid the plot which terminated in the death of the Prophet." This charges especially laid to myself. At the time that Joseph was killed, I was in the city of Boston, a number of hundred miles away from the scene of the martyrdom. So Emma, not just Joseph's sister, but Emma said Brigham did it too, and Brigham's like, "How could I have done it? I was in Boston." Okay. Next: William Smith, Joseph's brother: "I would here observe that I heard my brother Joseph declare before his death that Brigham Young was a man whose passions, if unrestrained, were calculated to make him the most licentious man in the world, and should the time ever come," said he, "that this man should lead the church, he would certainly lead it to destruction." So he didn't necessarily say that Brigham killed Joseph, but he was saying that Joseph was explaining Brigham is not a good guy. Next: This is a quote that was discovered by Whitney Horning in the Joseph Smith papers from a testimony meeting in Utah in 1870. Here's the notes: "Broadbent sent said those who murdered the prophet are shortly to be revealed, and they will not be able to deny it but will acknowledge it. They're in this place, meaning, as I understood, the leaders of the church, and will be revealed by the spirit of Revelation to the Saints. Thus saith the spirit. President of the stakes said the spirit has whispered the same to me as Brother Broadbent. It is so. Foreman, a Cooper in this place, said the leaders in this place have laid the foundation of their houses in blood; they have torn families asunder and scattered them over the face of the land, thus robbing the poor Saints. Judgment will speedily come upon them. Arouse ye Elders." That's right in a church meeting that they're discussing who killed Joseph Smith. It was the leaders of the church. It's right in the historical record. Now here's Wilford Woodruff, Salt Lake Tabernacle, December 21st, 1856. This is from the Journal of discourses: "I remember what Joseph said a short time before he was slain, and one of the last sermons I have ever heard him preach, said he: 'Men are here today who are seeking my blood, and they are those who have held the priesthood and have received their washings and anointings, men who have received their endowments,' close to him, men that he helped, his friends." This is Apostle George A. Smith from the South Salt Lake Tabernacle, March 18, 1855: "Joseph said to the council and police"—he's quoting from what he remembered Joseph saying—"I might live as Caesar might have lived were it not for a right-hand Brutus." And finally, this is Brigham Young in Salt Lake, October 6, 1855: "I wish to say to the Elders of Israel, to all people, I shall tell you of your iniquity and talk about you just as I please, and when you feel like killing me for doing so, as some of the people did who called themselves brethren in the days of Joseph Smith, look out for yourselves. The false Brethren are the cause of Joseph's death, and I am not a very righteous man. You talk about me in other words; I'll kill you too." That's Brigham. Okay. So again, you can question these quotes, and we can argue the validity of them and where they came from and whether they're legitimate or not. What you can't do is say there's nothing in the historical record about it being an inside job, because there is, and there's more.

Next question: Did John Taylor and Willard Richards have guns? I'm going to start off by playing a clip from the panel. So this clip is from Brian, who talks about John Hay, who seems to be one of his heroes. Um, Brian wrote a book about Warsaw, and John Hay is one of the most famous people that came from Warsaw, and here's—here's his take: "So I mentioned uh, Charles Hay, Dr. Hay, who was the doctor for the Warsaw, you know, troops that went back to—back to Warsaw. Well, his son was just young at the time, but he grew up to be Warsaw's most famous—famous and famous product, however you want to say it. He became President Lincoln's Secretary of State and his ambassador to several—uh, presidents' countries for several presidents, and he negotiated the Panama Canal treaty for once. So if you ever go through the Panama Canal, it was partially there because of the Warsaw resident John Hay. Well, as he became famous and—and—and—and well known throughout the United States, he wrote an article that was a community Memoir. Again, he was kind of young at the time. Now he wrote it for Atlantic Monthly, and he recounted the—the events of Carthage and—as specifically the jury. And this is what he wrote for the national magazine: 'There was not a man on the jury in the court—Court in the county they did not know the defendants had not done the murder, but it was not proven, and the verdict of not guilty was right in the law. Yes.'" So Brian likes John Hay and thinks he's a credible Witness, and he quotes from that article that he wrote, but he doesn't quote all of the details, because here's what else John Hay said: "In that Smith had two loaded six-barreled revolvers in his room. Two. How a man on trial for capital offenses came to be supplied with such luxuries as a mystery that perhaps only one man could fully have solved, and as General Deming, a Jack Mormon Sheriff, died soon after and left no explanation of the matter, investigation is effectually baffled." So I had in the movie two six guns, six shooters in the room, one with Joseph and one with John Taylor. Do you think if there were two in the room, like John—John Hay said there was, that Joseph would have held on to both of them, or do you think he would have given one to John Taylor? One of which belonged to John Taylor; he had given it to Silas Wheelock, who gave it to Joseph. So there we have in the historical record two six shooters, as I showed in the movie. Well, there's more. Thomas Sharp, Warsaw Signal, after the murders, he said: "A general confusion ensued in the crowd around the jail, and his fellow Mormon prisoners it seems had provided themselves with pistols and commenced to firing upon the guards within." So did John Taylor and Willard Richards also have guns? Now we have two—two accounts that they did. Thomas Sharp says something else: "It is a well ascertained fact that the prisoners were well provided with firearms and other weapons." So yeah, the historical documents show there was other guns in the room, at least another six shooter and possibly more. All of the prisoners were armed.

Next question: Did Joseph and Hiram actually fire their guns? There was a question about this on the panel, so I'm gonna play that video real quick: "Yeah, historically here we have a picture of the two type of guns that were written about that we know were inside that jail room—uh, there's a six-shot pepper box, what they call a pepper box pistol, and then a single shot, basically a single shot Coke pistol, what they call them, and they're both black powder, but those two—not only do we know that they existed because even after the fact they were reviewed, and the pepperbox—"

Was found to have still three unfired chambers, and the other single shot, which was Hiram's pistol, had not been shot either; it was still loaded. Okay, so he says somebody examined the guns afterwards and found that there were still three unfired shots in the six-shooter, and that Hiram's single-shot pistol was still loaded. Where is that? No one else has ever said that before. You guys, multiple of you, said that on the panel like that's some sort of proof, but you never say your source. Can you please show the world where you got that information—that the guns were examined afterwards and found to not be fired?

In the actual historical account, Willard Richards' Journal, he says Hiram fired his pistol. The Q15 in their official narrative for the church says Hiram fired his pistol. The historians on the Joseph Smith Papers project said Hiram fired his pistol, and you guys say no, he didn't, and somebody did this analysis of it, and we can prove it. And then you mentioned no sources or show anything else. Until you show that source, how are we going to even be able to look at that? Because I'll admit, if that's a legitimate source that proves that they never fired their guns in that room, then that changes a whole lot of details; it's crucial you bring that forward.

Next question: Was Joseph shot inside or outside of the jail? A lot of people in their response say Joseph couldn't have been killed by an inside job by Willard and John because he wasn't even shot inside of the jail. And one of the panelists goes to great lengths to explain eyewitness accounts that say all of the shots that Joseph received were outside of the jail, and he names four sources: Daniels, John C. Elliott, James Belton, and Governor Ford, all of whom say Joseph was shot—the four wounds he received—were outside of the jail, laying by the well. But what they left out is the many accounts who contradict that. First and foremost is Willard Richards, who said Joseph attempted, at the last resort, to leap the same window from whence Mr. Taylor fell, when two balls pierced him from the door, and one entered his right breast from without, and he fell outward, exclaiming, "O Lord, my God!" In other words, two of those shots came from inside; one came to the window outside. Not only that, there was one left when he was down on the ground—that was Wheeler, that's your guy; he was actually in the room saying that, and you choose to go with the other eyewitnesses that contradict that.

Here's another one: Brian's favorite witness, John Hay—the one we just talked about that says there were two guns, two six-shooters, in the room. He said, "Severely wounded as he was, he ran to the window, which was open to receive the fresh June air, and half leaped, half fell into the jail yard below." Joseph was wounded in the room. This is your witness, John Hay, Brian, that you like so much—that you just said is the greatest guy from Warsaw; he worked for Lincoln; we should trust him. Why would you say, "Oh, well, that detail he was wrong"? That's two so far. Next, the Quincy Herald extra from July 10, 1844, which got reprinted in the Nauvoo Neighbor: "Joe was in the act of raising the window when he was shot from both without and within and fell out of the window to the ground." There's another historical account that he was shot in the room. Next, Samuel Arthur Williams: "He was shot several times and a bayonet run through him after he fell." Shot inside the room, came out of the window, and then someone stuck him with a bayonet. He's the only one that said the bayonet thing, so I don't know how much weight we can give to that, but this is a reputation of your accounts that it was all outside. Next, Jeremiah Willey, Charles Golier: "He then shot him at the window from the door or near the door, and Boris shot him from the outside of the prison, and he fell out upon the ground." There's another guy in the jail that says Joseph was shot inside of the jail. Next, William Webb: "The door flew open, and I saw two men in the room. We shot at them several times; at length one of them fell on the floor, and the other jumped out of the window." Shots from inside of the room. Next, Thomas Barnes, the doctor and coroner: "As he was receiving shots from behind," speaking of Joseph, "as he was receiving shots from behind, which he could not stand, in desperation he leaped, or rather fell, out of the window near the well where he breathed his last." Another witness saying he was shot inside the room—that's the doctor. Then there's Thomas Dixon at the trial. He was asked, "Did you see Smith fall out of the window?" He said, "Yes." He was asked, "Had he been shot before he fell out of the window?" Dixon answered, "He was shot or hurt some little or for when he first came into the window; there was blood on his pantaloons." He was asked, "Did you see him set up against a well curb?" He said, "I saw him raise himself against the well curb and die immediately." Then he was asked, "Did you see four men shoot him?" And he said, "No." Direct refutation of the accounts that were brought up by the panel. And then lastly, this is William R. Hamilton, a trial witness. Here's what he said at the trial: "I started for the jail on the run and got there just as Joe Smith came to the window and was shot. He fell out, striking the ground on his left side, his head toward the north. One of the mob went up to him and said, 'He's dead, boys!' Without the mob immediately left in a quick but orderly manner in the direction whence they came. Smith was not shot, maltreated, or molested in any manner after he fell out of the window, and all such stories by Mormons or anyone else are absolutely false." Double the amount of witnesses that you said that he was only shot outside of the jail. Brian, you've said this a million times: He was never shot inside the jail. And I said, "Yes, he was." I don't know if he died inside of the jail or he died after he hit the ground, but he was really killed inside the jail; he was shot in the jail. I know you try to fight that; you can't; it's in the historical record twice as often as that he was only shot outside of the jail, and he's mentioned as being shot inside his jail by Willard, your top witness, and by the Q15, and by the historians.

Okay, next question: Are the skulls identified correctly? This is Shannon Tracy's big thing. He made a book in 2008, and he was the first to publish pictures of this—of the skulls of Joseph and Hiram. And this was initially—this picture was identified as Hiram's skull, and he says it was switched; that this isn't Hiram, this is Joseph. And the way that he figured that out was he said that he put the death masks over them, and the death mask of Joseph fit this more closely. And there's a lot of evidence that comes from knowing which skull belongs to who, and so it is a big question: Are the skulls identified correctly? But the problem is, as soon as he came out with his book, another fellow named Curtis Weber did a much more in-depth scientific study and determined that, no, this is Hiram's skull; it's correctly identified. And he talked with Shannon, and he showed him why he was wrong, and Shannon understood. Nine months ago, Shannon was on Steve Piner's podcast, and here's what he said: "And, uh, for me, uh, you know, once you publish a book, then it just starts aging, and sometimes it doesn't age very well, specifically when it's around technology; those things start becoming obsolete, and and you can be critical about that, and I agree with that. So for me, the most important…" Yeah, so in other words, he's admitting, "Okay, maybe my book wasn't accurate; my technology at the time isn't as good as there is now." He's kind of dancing around that, but then he comes out on the panel and says, "No, he's identified those skulls correctly." And for whatever reason, Curtis couldn't take that anymore, so Curtis went on to the same show, Steve Piner's show, and said this about Shannon Tracy's analysis: "And so I just tilted the mask back 2.1 degrees, and lo and behold, now the eye is perfectly in, but so are a few other things. That's practically a perfect match at the nose, and now the lips match just fine, now the chin matches just fine. But there's one big problem: Now you have the actual skull protruding through the mask, Steve. And all Tracy did was tip this mask back and then change the shape of the forehead of his 3D model to cover the skull. And the reason I know this is true is because he was kind enough to leave the back edge of his rotated, tilted mask now parallel with the actual mask. So this is how he produced the shape to cover the skull. And I was stunned, surprised, and disappointed to discover this, but this is what the evidence clearly indicates." So you can go watch that show on Steve Piner's channel; it's called Mormon Book Reviews, and it came out a couple of weeks ago with Curtis Weber, and he goes into full detail how he explained all this stuff to Shannon, and Shannon agreed, but Shannon wouldn't recant, and he's like, "Okay, I'm gonna show the world what you did; it's fraud. You thought you could just make an interesting book by saying the skulls are switched, and your research is total crap, and he showed you that, and you don't back down, and then you tell me that I put the wrong skulls in the movie, and then you create this panel…" Well, yeah, go watch the Curtis Weber interview for yourself if you want to see who Shannon Tracy is. I feel bad for the rest of the panelists; I don't know if you knew all of this when you got involved on that panel, especially you, Sam. I know you actually care about the martyrdom; I know you actually have done work to figure out what really happened in there. Shannon has not. Shannon, if you want to argue about the skulls, let's do it; let's show the real technology today. And if you want to talk about the details of the modern room, let's do it. You say I'm hiding in the showers; I'm not hiding. You name the time and the place, and I'll be there.

Next question: Was the hole in the door panel made by a .69 caliber musket or a .55 caliber pistol? When the Line brothers first came out with their report, they were the first to say that they measured that, and they said that it measured at 0.69 inches, which is why they said it was a .69 caliber musket that made that shot. But they never show how they came up with that measurement. They use a—what kind of measuring device did they use? And then Sam went, and he got time alone in that room, and he took a .69 caliber musket ball, stuck it in the hole, and it wouldn't fit through it. He's like, "Obviously, it's not .69 inches." But Sam, in his first report, didn't say how wide it was either. And then I sent a friend, John Tucker, and he was kind enough and brought a digital caliper with him; he stuck it in the door, and he measured it at 0.58. So that's, as far as I'm aware, the first accurate digital reading measurement of the hole in that door. So I'm like, "Okay, well, if it's 0.58, it's not a musket ball, or it wasn't a 0.69 musket that shot this hole." But lo and behold, as I did my research—I've shot so many dang panels now with a .69 caliber musket—every time you fire a black fire ball through these panels, the hole is always smaller than the actual ball. And with all of the calculations I took, on average it's about—it's about 20 percent smaller. So if you have a 0.69 caliber ball and shoot it through that hole, you would expect it to be about 0.55 inches is what it would measure, and the digital caliper puts it at 0.58; that's well within the acceptable range of people sticking their finger in there and making it a little bit wider. Sam shot it with a pistol, a .55 caliber pistol, if—and he also admitted to Curtis Weber that indeed every time he shot a panel, the hole ends up smaller than the actual ball itself. So if you shoot it with a 0.55 caliber ball, which is what he did, 20 less than that would be 0.44 inches; you can't even get your finger in 0.44 inches. So I'm like, Sam, it was a .69 caliber musket that made that hole. If you want to refute that, please show me how; let's shoot it with the two muskets; I'll shoot the panel a hundred times and show you that measurement. And we both know the angle of the trajectory of that ball through the panel is still—you can still see it and measure it in the hole of the door; that's how we know the angle of that shot. That means the fingers that were stuck in that hole over the years didn't ruin that evidence; it's 0.58 today. That thing was a .69 caliber musket that made that shot, and if that's the truth, your theory can't work because that ball would have penetrated all the way through the skull of Hiram, and there is no evidence that that happened.

Next question: Is there historical and physical evidence of one shot to Hiram? Absolutely. And I went over this in part two of the movie. I'm gonna read the quote; this is from Colonel J.W. Woods; this is Joseph Smith's attorney; he made this—he said this on May 13, 1885, in the Adam's County Democrat, and he's a little bit mistaken on many of the details, so you can hear it for yourself: "Joe Smith, with a six-barrel revolver, faced the mob and discharged five of the barrels. Interesting finding it too hot for him, he retreated to the east window and raised it. As he was in the act, a ball hit him under the jaw and passed out through his left eye." That's Hiram, not Joseph. How do I know that that's Hiram? Because he says, "Another struck him under the shoulder blade and lodged in the works of the watch in his left vest pocket." That was Hiram who got shot in the back, and it hit the watch in his watch pocket. Right there we have, in the historical record, an account of a shot that enters the chin and exits out of the left of the nose; it's right there in the historical record. Next, the coroner's verdict; this was filed with the court October 25th, 1844: "We the jury, having been duly sworn by George W. Stegall, coroner of Hancock County, diligently to inquire and a true presentment make what manner and by whom Joseph Smith and Hiram Smith, whose dead bodies were found in and at the jail of Hancock County on the 27th day of June 1844, came to their deaths. After having heard the evidence and upon full inquiry concerning the facts and careful examination of the said bodies, to find that the deceased came to their deaths by violence; that the body of the said Joseph Smith was upon it—the following has upon it the following marks, to wit: a wound of a bullet near the right breast and another in the right shoulder near the neck; and that said Hiram Smith has the following marks, to wit: a wound in the throat by a bullet and a wound in the abdomen." It was the wound in the throat that they noted, why? Because that was the entry wound. Dr. Thomas Barnes, who also had a chance to see the body, said, "It appears that one of the balls in the commencement attack passed through the panel of the door and hit Hiram in his neck, which probably broke his neck. He fell back and died, as I was informed, instantly. When I went into the room shortly afterwards, his head was laying against the wall on the other side of the room from the door." A lot of people say, if that shot came to the chin and next to the nose, that's not a kill shot. But if it broke your neck, or if your neck was broken while someone was wrangling you around to make that shot, it would have been a kill shot. That's three different records from history that talk about that shot entering the throat and exiting out of the side of the nose. Now, Sam gives an explanation of this; let's see what Sam has to say: "At that time, who were looking—the wounds could identify as easy as I could by looking at these pictures—what an X wound—an excellent entrance—one in an exit looks like with a round ball. And so, um, I think this is pretty good proof to show the eyewitness accounts knew what they were talking about; everything they mentioned I have proven without a doubt could happen. I have no distinction then between the exit and and entry." So what is the difference in the look at that? Well, the big difference is on the entrance wounds; there's a nice round smooth hole, and it's usually a little larger than the size of the ball. Exit wound, you see, um, I can't remember the term—medical term they used, but basically it's torn skin; it's flaps of skin that have opened up, let the ball go out, and then closed. And so those—the doctors mentioned those flaps could be closed again—an exit wound, not an entrance wound. That skin—that flash—anything around there—just gone; there's nothing to close. So the exit wound is very identifiable by the flaps of skin that could be closed again. Okay, so Sam is talking about the difference between an entry and an exit, and he's the one that says those guys at that time knew how to identify the difference, and I'm like, "You're darn right they knew; that's why they said the throat was the entry." Willard didn't say that, but the experts did. But I wanted to go over that flap of skin because if you look at this skull and you align it with the death mask, so we took the outline of the nasal cavity and the eye sockets, and those are in red here, and you can see this is the wound from the shot outside of that nasal cavity; that means that that wound was right here. If that's where he was shot in the skull, there would be a big hole in the skull right there, but there's not. So why—how could there be a wound on his nose and not any damage to that part of the skull? That's the flap—that's the flap that Sam just talked about. This was the exit; this was the clear—no skin; you can see the round circular hole—this because it was the exit; the ball blew out of the side of his nose and ripped that skin; that's why there was a wound over the bone, and the bone wasn't touched. I'm like, Sam, you got it, man. Whose one shot—this was the entry.

Okay, last—or yeah, last question: Why did the mob return to the room? Several accounts that the mob returned to the room after Joseph was finished off outside. And Willard said, you know, he took John Taylor into the next cell and put him in the cell under a mattress, and then he stood in the doorway and waited for the mob to return. Why did the mob return? Obviously, it wasn't to finish off Willard and John because they didn't do that; they saw them there and didn't do anything to them. It's when they saw that Hiram was already dead that they left. They came back up because they didn't know Hiram was dead, and they were gonna get Hiram. How did they not know that if he was laying on the floor dead, like Willard said? And the mob saw that and tore—you know—their firing back and forth, and they fired under his chin. How did they not know he was dead? And how did they say, you know, in a council later, "We shot through the door, and it killed Hiram"? They couldn't have even seen that shot. Willard, standing in that doorway, told them, "Here's what happened; you killed him; you killed Hiram." And they all believed it, and that's the stories they told: "We shot Joseph; we shot Hiram; we finished them off." It was the perfect cover-up.

Okay, so last thing I wanted to share: One of the panelists, his name is Taylor Smith, and he is related to Joseph and Hiram, and he talks about how two of his sisters watched the film and were convinced by it, and that's one of the things that really upset him, and I understand why he was upset. But I was super excited to hear that two Smith descendants now know the truth—that it was an inside job. And there's others that I've spoken to—Smith descendants of Joseph and Hiram—that understand this now, and that's wonderful. And I—but I was always worried there would come a day when the John Taylor and Willard Richards' descendants would reach…

Out to me and let me know how they felt about the movie. And I didn't think it was going to be good. And that happened last year. Someone messaged me on Facebook, said, "I'm a descendant of John Taylor and we need to talk." I didn't want to talk to him, but I did. I was gonna face it and let him tell me what he thought. And he sends me a screenshot of the family search app, and he shows his direct link—his great-great-grandson of John Taylor. And so we—I call him up and we talk on the phone. And he says, "You know, I went on my mission and I learned some stuff about John Taylor that, you know, he was my hero, and I learned some stuff that was not right about him and what he did." And I came home and I started researching that. And then he went to the museum, the Church History Museum, spent time in the martyrdom exhibit. And he said he went and looked at the watch, John Taylor's watch, and he said, "I knew that that watch wasn't shot; there's no way that watch was shot." And then he said, "I went over to the death masks and I looked at Hiram's death mask and I saw that wound." And he said, "I heard a voice; something spoke to me and said, 'John Taylor, your grandpa did this.'" He's like, "What? What?" And then he's like, "Not long after that, I saw your movie and I just had to talk with you." And I was like, "Whoa, this is not what I was expecting at all." And he said, "Do you know any—any Smith descendants? Do you know someone from the Joseph Smith family? Because I want to call and apologize to them on behalf of the Taylor family." I was just like, "Sure, I did know some," and I put them in touch, and they had that conversation. And, you know, I've talked with other Taylor descendants as well who've watched the movie and are convinced that it was an inside job. And that's a hard thing to deal with, you know, that was one of your ancestors. I've never talked with anyone from the Willard Richards line; maybe that'll happen someday. But this is—this is real; this is powerful.

My experience with working on this and trying to find the truth has been life-changing in many—in many ways. I don't want to stop. I don't think anyone wants to stop when they're on the search for truth. You know, I'm glad that the church finally responded. Um, I didn't think it was that great of a response; they just didn't do the work that they needed to do. Q15 can say whatever they want and how they receive their answer, but the other guys, the experts, the top experts in the church just didn't know what they were talking about. And if you think that's an unfair assessment, then I'm like, "Let's talk further; let's run more tests together. We can have a whole team film the whole thing. I'm not hiding from anything. I'll welcome any feedback." I'm grateful that you guys spent some time with me on this tonight and look forward to any other questions that you have or any new theories. Please share them in the comments. Until next time, thank you. [Music]