In a democratic society, we teach our children that decisions determine destiny. Cultivate good friendships, develop your talents, get an education, we tell them. And treat others as you would want to be treated. The Golden Rules for life and success.

Doralee Olds tried to do those things. But the good life she believed she had established with her husband and children a quarter-century ago exploded in a hail of shrapnel, and she's still picking up the pieces.

Olds, the ex-wife of Mark Hofmann, whose numerous forgeries and two subsequent pipe-bomb murders in Salt Lake City 20 years ago made national headlines, is finally ready to speak out publicly.

After two decades of healing and relative silence, she's ready to tell anyone who wants to know that she is a survivor. And she plans to share the message publicly on July 28 at the annual Sunstone Symposium at the Sheraton City Centre downtown.

A graduate of Highland High School nearly 30 years ago, she went to St. George and earned an associate degree in nutrition at Dixie College before enrolling at Utah State University. There, she met her future husband, Mark Hofmann.

He pleaded guilty in 1987 to killing two people, Kathleen Sheets and Steve Christensen, on Oct. 15, 1985, in an attempt to cover up years of forging historical documents. He now serves a life sentence in the Utah State Prison. Many believe his many victims ultimately included his wife and four small children.

A new occupation

Yet in the late 1970s, as she dated her future husband, her wildest nightmares likely couldn't conjure what awaited her only a few years in the future.

"He was pre-med, and my dad was a pharmacist — we had a lot of medical background, and that's still true for my family," she said.

When the couple married on Sept. 14, 1979, Doralee dropped out of school to support her husband, and they had four children in the next eight years.

Hofmann never finished his medical training. Unbeknownst to his wife, he had found a more lucrative occupation forging what he pawned off on unsuspecting victims as historical documents, many of them relating to the early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The two had grown up in the faith and were, by all appearances, staunch members.

Once the ruse began to unravel, some wondered how she could not have known what her husband was up to all that time in the basement of their home, because dealing in rare documents isn't a mainstream career choice.

Admittedly shy and lacking self-confidence back then, Olds said Hofmann "had an answer for everything" when she questioned him on things that didn't add up. At the time, she believed he was much more intelligent than she, so she figured her suspicions must be baseless.