Just under 25 years after Mark Hofmann coldly murdered two people with homemade pipe bombs, his criminal legacy seems to rest with his masterful forgeries.

The Salt Lake Tribune ran a story last week that focused on an affidavit purportedly written by a witness to the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre — except it wasn’t. It was, forensic investigators found, a Hofmann forgery that had been flagged in 1983 as questionable by a curator at the Utah State Historical Society.

Of course, anything that has to do with the massacre, committed by Mormon settlers who killed 120 Arkansas travelers, is big news. A link to Hofmann makes it even more tantalizing.

But such ephemera veils what those of us who’ve been around a while remember most vividly: the husband, the wife, and children and families of Kathy Sheets and Steve Christensen, who died on Oct. 15, 1985, when Hofmann’s bombs exploded.

The blasts set off an intense criminal investigation and pervasive fear among the people of the Salt Lake Valley. Were the bombers anti-Mormon vigilantes? A byproduct of drug wars? Some kind of mountain land Cosa Nostra?

And for those of us in the news business back then, it was the first day of months, years, of watching the unbelievable Hofmann affair unfold.

On Oct. 16, Hofmann’s Toyota sports car exploded just down the street from the old Deseret Gym. In our newsroom, the sound of sirens had us instantly on the phone with the police dispatchers. With a general idea of where the bomb had gone off, we headed for the scene.

By the time I got there, all I saw was the back of the ambulance heading for LDS Hospital and the Toyota smoldering at the curb.

The investigation seemed to take forever, but Hofmann ultimately copped a plea and was sent to Point of the Mountain. He’s still there, and last time I checked, he still was a cellmate of Dan Lafferty, the fundamentalist Mormon murderer of a mother and child.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which had purchased many of Hofmann’s most incendiary forgeries regarding the faith’s origins, certainly suffered from its role in the episode.

But even today, what’s lost in all the chatter about forgeries are those who lost Steve and Kathy — spouses and children, grandchildren and maybe even great-grandkids, who will know them only in stories and photographs.

But as news organizations do, next month The Tribune will produce a retrospective marking the 25th anniversary of the Hofmann murders. We’ll draw on files of our coverage then, new interviews, reminiscences and updates on those who remain —which speaks to the role of institutional knowledge in this business. As always, we chase breaking news avidly and produce investigative and enterprise stories. We feed our website day and night, and employ the latest technology to get the news out fast.

And for those of us who were around back then, we listen to those plaintive, if silent, voices that whisper, “Please don’t forget us.”

Peg McEntee is a columnist. Reach her at pegmcentee@sltrib.com.