Joseph Smith's Body

An article about a skull posted on the internet caught my attention. The material was a scholarly report on something called a “Le Forte” fracture found on the bones of the exhumed body of Joseph Smith. Exhumed body? Hmmm, this sounded interesting. I’d reconstructed numerous skulls for a variety of cases in the past and had known of, and read about historical reconstructions.

On the web page, the author noted that Joseph Smith’s facial bones were shattered when he fell from a second story window onto his face. They quoted the following as eyewitness proof of this fact:

“He fell on his left side a dead man." –Willard Richards

“He seemed to fall easy and struck partly on his right shoulder and back…” -Wm. M. Daniels

Hmmm again. Left side? Right shoulder? Neither account said he landed on his face. This was enough for me to begin researching the entire event and led me to several obscure books about Joseph Smith’s death, burial, exhumation, death mask, and skull. I will post the research and sources on this blog.

Sound interesting?