Two unsolved murders. One Black Mormon born into slavery. A doctor who challenged Brigham Young’s power. And a mutilated body left on Arsenal Hill with a warning pinned to its chest. In the winter of 1866, Salt Lake City became the scene of a story involving blood atonement, racial terror, vigilante violence, and a possible cover-up at the highest levels of territorial Utah. This week, we follow the murder of Dr. John King Robinson, the lynching of Thomas Coleman, and historian Connell O’Donovan’s chilling theory that Coleman may have been killed for one reason above all others: he knew too much.

Show Notes

• ⁠“Let This Be a Warning to All [N-words]”: The Life and Murder of Thomas Coleman in Theocratic Utah, by Connell O’Donovan
• ⁠Century of Black Mormons Database, University of Utah
• ⁠Racial Lynching in Utah Digital History Project, University of Utah
• ⁠Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, by David L. Bigler
• ⁠Brigham Young Hampton, Utah Historical Quarterly, by Jeff Nichols
• ⁠Robert Newton Baskin Papers, University of Utah Marriott Library
• ⁠Thomas Coleman entry, Century of Black Mormons
• ⁠Elijah Abel entry, Century of Black Mormons
• ⁠Equal Justice Initiative, National Memorial for Peace and Justice
• ⁠Journal of Discourses (digitized collection)
• ⁠Salt Lake County Death Records Collection, Utah Division of Archives