Mormon studies became an increasingly hazardous pursuit for Mormon scholars, "especially if they were members of the Brigham Young University faculty." The Church restricted access to papers formerly available to non-Mormons and asked researchers to sign releases "giving the church permission to exercise pre-publication censorship." The sensational Mark Hofmann murder and forgery case of 1985, could only have developed from the "curious mixture of paranoia and obsessiveness" with which both the LDS Church and individual Mormons approached the history of their faith.