Porter Rockwell: Man or Myth? Inside the Church History Matters Series

By admin | October 14, 2026 |

Few figures in Latter-day Saint history have collected as much folklore as Orrin Porter Rockwell. To some he was the Prophet’s loyal bodyguard and one of Utah’s first lawmen. To his critics he was the “destroying angel of Mormonism,” credited with a hundred murders or more. Sorting the man from the legend is hard, mostly because Rockwell could not read or write and never recorded his own story.

That is exactly the task historians Scott Woodward and Casey Griffiths take on in a three-part series of their podcast, Church History Matters, produced by Scripture Central. Below is a summary of what they covered, what the sources actually support, and where the evidence runs out. All three episodes are embedded so you can watch the full discussion.

Part 1: Did Porter Rockwell Try to Kill Governor Boggs?

The series opens at the end of Rockwell’s life, in June 1878, and with the sharp contrast in how he was remembered. The Salt Lake Tribune ran a scathing editorial accusing him of at least a hundred killings on the Church’s behalf, oddly adding that he never confessed to any of them. A few days later, at a funeral attended by about a thousand people, Apostle Joseph F. Smith said Rockwell “had his little faults” but that his life, taken as a whole, reflected honor on the Church.

From there the hosts sketch Rockwell’s early life. He was a neighbor of the Smith family in Palmyra and one of the earliest people baptized in 1830. His family helped settle Jackson County, Missouri, where they ran the ferry on the Big Blue River. There he and Luana Beebe were married in what may have been the first Latter-day Saint wedding in the county, and he was swept up in the violence of 1833 and the 1838 conflict that gave rise to the Danites.

The heart of the episode is the May 1842 shooting of former Missouri governor Lilburn W. Boggs. Rockwell was living in Independence under another name at the time and was later jailed there for about nine months. But Woodward and Griffiths show how thin the case against him really is:

John C. Bennett started the accusation. He was excommunicated the same month Boggs was shot, and his public claims didn’t match his more cautious sworn statements.
The famous “confessions” trace back to a doubtful source. The reported admissions via William Law and Patrick Connor both come from one writer, Wilhelm Wymetal (who wrote as W. Wyl), whose 1886 book Mormon Portraits also contains claims that can be shown to be false.
The crime scene doesn’t fit an expert marksman. The weapon was stolen from a local shopkeeper and dropped at the scene, which suggests an inexperienced shooter.
No indictment was ever returned. A grand jury declined to indict Rockwell for the shooting. His only sentence was for a jail escape attempt.

The hosts also cite Monte McLaws, a researcher outside the Church, who concluded that nothing but circumstantial evidence pointed to Rockwell. Their verdict is that the case can’t be closed without new evidence, but it should not be treated as settled fact.

Part 2: Nauvoo, Carthage, and the Death of Frank Worrell

The second episode begins on Christmas Day 1843. Rockwell, thin and ragged after his months in a Missouri jail, walked into a party at the Mansion House in Nauvoo. Joseph Smith’s history records that the Prophet at first took him for a troublemaker before recognizing “my long-tried, warm, but cruelly persecuted friend.” According to an account written the next day, Joseph then promised Rockwell that if he stayed true to his faith and did not cut his hair, no bullet or blade could harm him.

The episode follows Rockwell through the last tense months of Joseph’s life:

He knocked a pistol out of Charles Foster’s hand during a confrontation in which Foster later said he would have killed Joseph.
He crossed the Mississippi with Joseph in June 1844, when the Prophet considered heading west, and was there when the decision was made to return.
He did not go to Carthage. The hosts look at the theories for why, none of which is firmly documented.
He was the rider who brought the news of the martyrdom to many in Nauvoo. Years later Joseph Smith III recalled him weeping over losing “the only friend I ever had.”

The episode then covers the first killing by Rockwell that no one disputes. In September 1845, during the violence sometimes called the Hancock County War, Sheriff Jacob Backenstos (who was not a Latter-day Saint) was being chased by armed men led by Frank Worrell. Worrell had commanded the guard at Carthage Jail on the day Joseph and Hyrum were killed. Backenstos called on Rockwell for help in the name of the law, and when Worrell went for his pistol, Rockwell shot him. Backenstos was tried and acquitted.

Rockwell’s own arrest the next spring had a surprising twist. The hosts present evidence that he allowed himself to be taken in, a move that diverted attention while the Saints prepared to leave Nauvoo. His trial was moved to Galena and the charges came to nothing. He then went west with the vanguard company and was among the first Latter-day Saints to enter the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847.

Part 3: The Utah Years, Man vs. Myth

The final episode works through the most-asked questions about Rockwell’s Utah years in a Q&A format.

Did the hair prophecy really happen? Probably, according to the hosts. The best source is a journal entry written within a day. His headstone in the Salt Lake City Cemetery mentions a promise made to him by the Prophet that was fulfilled through obedience.

Did he ever cut his hair? Yes, once. In California in the 1850s he cut it to have a wig made for Agnes Smith, the widow of Joseph’s brother Don Carlos, who had lost her hair to typhoid fever.

How many people did he kill? The legend says over a hundred. The documented record is far smaller: about a dozen killings can be firmly established, with researchers’ broader estimates running from roughly 18 to 24.

Was he Brigham Young’s hired gun? The picture is more complicated. Rockwell held law-enforcement positions from 1849 onward and often acted as a deputy marshal, serving warrants, chasing fugitives, and escorting prisoners. That doesn’t make every act lawful, but it changes the question you have to ask about each incident.

What about the Aiken party? The hosts call this the hardest case. In 1857, during the Utah War, a group of California travelers suspected of being spies disappeared while under escort, and Rockwell was among their guards. Rockwell died before any trial. The only man tried, Sylvanus Collett, was acquitted in 1878 after the prosecution’s witnesses fell apart under cross-examination and no bodies were produced. The claim that Church leaders ordered the killings rests largely on Bill Hickman, a source historians treat with great caution. The hosts say plainly that this case remains unresolved and troubling.

The episode also enjoys the visitors who came to Utah expecting a killer and found something else. In 1863 the journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow famously called Rockwell “one of the pleasantest murderers I ever met.” Two years later, Rockwell invited a party traveling with Vice President Schuyler Colfax to his ranch for strawberries and cream.

So, Who Was Porter Rockwell?

Woodward and Griffiths don’t land on a hero or a villain. Rockwell was fiercely loyal to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, a skilled frontiersman, a lawman, and a man who did take lives. He also sometimes used intimidation, and he drank more than most of his fellow Saints, in an era when the Word of Wisdom was observed differently than it is today. The legend grew far beyond what the sources support, starting with the Boggs accusation and the shooting of Frank Worrell, and spread by nineteenth-century writers who were more interested in a good story than accurate history.

As Joseph F. Smith said at his funeral, Rockwell never forgot his obligations to his brethren and his God. His legacy is complicated, and it deserves an honest look.

🔗 Listen to the Full Series

The summaries above are our own. For the full discussion, sources, and the hosts’ own words, watch the episodes above or visit:

Further reading cited in the series: Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder (University of Utah Press); Richard Lloyd Dewey’s biography of Rockwell; and John W. Rockwell’s short biography of his ancestor. See our Books & Film page for more.

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