By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

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In our publication Howard Hughes and the “Mormon Will” written in May 1976, we demonstrated that in spite of the fact that several prominent handwriting experts endorsed the so-called “Mormon Will,” the internal evidence proved it was a forgery. Two years after we wrote this pamphlet the Salt Lake Tribune (June 9, 1978) reported: “A district court jury Thursday rejected the ‘Mormon Will’ of Howard Hughes as a fraud, . . .” Although we knew that the Mormon Church had called a press conference to announce the discovery of the will, we were surprised to learn that it was paying part of the court costs for the trial of this bogus document. The Salt Lake Tribune for June 7, 1978, revealed: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement Tuesday saying is [it?] is ‘neutral’ concerning validity of the purported Howard Hughes will, but is sharing court costs in Nevada” (emphasis added).

On the subject of the “Mormon Will” it is also interesting to note that Henry Silver, the handwriting expert who was certain the will was genuine, is the same man that the Spalding researchers¹ first contacted.

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1. Three researchers who published the book, Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? ↩︎

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