Mormon Criminal Element in Nauvoo: The Multi-Faceted Tragedy of the Hodge Brothers There is a strong tendency to idealize “the Nauvoo period” of Mormon history. What is often overlooked is that Nauvoo was still a frontier town, prone to many of the same struggles facing all settlements of this period. One of these struggles was crime, and not all Nauvoo criminals were Gentiles. Using the brutal murders of a Mennonite minister and his son-in-law by two Mormon brothers, William and Stephen Hodge, as a springboard, this paper explores the issue of the Mormon criminal element in Nauvoo. In exploring the tragedy of these murders and the subsequent trial, hangings, and newspaper coverage of the Hodge saga, we gain a deeper understanding of frontier Nauvoo in the year immediately following the death of Joseph Smith. The story of crime in Nauvoo reaches into the struggle between Brigham Young and William Smith for control of the Church; it highlights the mindset in which every murder was seen as evidence of the plottings of “secret combinations”; and it raises questions about the role of Hosea Stout and the Nauvoo police in possible incidents of “blood atonement.”

William Shepard, D. Michael Quinn