Salt Lake County is ignoring a $1 million claim by financier J. Gary Sheets, who believes county officials wrongfully released a copy of his wife's diary to a novel writer after she was killed in 1985 by a pipe bomb left at her home by Mark Hofmann.
The claim has been under investigation by the Salt Lake County attorney's office since it was submitted to the County Commission June 7. On Wednesday, the commission accepted a letter from Chief Deputy County Attorney Donald Sawaya, who reported that "no basis in law or fact exists to support the allegations" in Sheets' claim and that the claim should be denied.In the claim, Sheets said his deceased wife, Kathleen, kept a diary before she was killed and that he made the diary available to Salt Lake City detectives and attorneys from the county attorney's office who were trying to solve the pipe bomb murders of both Kathleen and Sheets' business partner, Steven Christensen.
A copy of the diary was given to novelist Robert Lindsey, who wrote a book about the murders titled "The Gathering of the Saints."