Where Is Shannon Flynn From Murder Among The Mormons?

The latest true crime craze on Netflix is the three-part Murder Among the Mormons, which details the astonishing events of October 1985, when a historical document collector and trader murdered two prominent people in the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to The New York Times, investigations would go on reveal that Mark Hofmann wasn't a dealer of legitimate historical documents, but rather a brilliant forger who fooled everyone from the heights of the Mormon Church to the country's most respected forgery experts.

Hoffman's most infamous fake was known as the Salamander Letter, which claimed that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon faith, had been visited by a spirit that transformed from a white salamander when he discovered the gold plates on which the foundational scriptures of Mormonism were written. The letter went against orthodox Mormon beliefs and shook the church to its core. When a document expert finally began to catch onto Hofmann, the forger made several bombs, killing two people and injuring himself when one accidentally exploded in his car. 

One man interviewed in the Netflix doc, Shannon Flynn, was a friend of Hofmann's, and as the Los Angeles Times reported, he was arrested after the bombings, believed to have been Hofmann's accomplice. He was found to be in possession of an illegal Uzi submachine gun and other firearms, as well as evidence that linked him to the bombings.

Despite the evidence found in his home, Flynn was charged with possession of an illegal machine gun, but he was never charged in relation to the bombings. So where is he today, and what has he been up to since? According to The Sun, Shannon Flynn lives in Arizona, where he runs a company that performs maintenance on parking lots.

It is not known if he is still a member of the Mormon Church, but his involvement with blogs and podcasts on Mormon history, theology, and "science" suggests that he may still be involved in the religion. Flynn worked closely with the authors of the book Shannon Flynn: Inside Look at Mark Hofmann, published by the podcast Gospel Tangents in 2017. And he was most likely the author of a post about Mormon history on the blog By Common Consent in 2018. Although he was a close associate of Hofmann's, we can assume he had nothing to do with the forgeries or the bombs. According to Distractify, he told Gospel Tangents, "[Hofmann] is of no value. The world does not need him. Even if he could contribute something. We don't need him. He needs to spend the rest of his life in jail."