Yuku free message boards

John Heinerman made a good impression on me too. He couldn't substantiate everything Johnny Brewer did or said, but he does vouch for the mummies & at least a portion of the plates. If you don't have his book yet I highly recommend it.

Here are my notes from his talk he gave on 6/20/08:

Dr. John Heinerman is the only living witness to the finds by Johnny Brewer & still stands by his claims today. Johnny Brewer for those who might not know is a man who back in the 60's or so found an entrance to a small man-made cavern in the mountains east of Manti which contained ancient plates, weapons of war, 2 royal mummies with crowns, etc. You can read about it in Tresures of the Ancients by Stpehn B Shaffer or in Hidden Treasures of Ancient American Cultures by John Heinerman. The latter is out of print but can currently be found on Amazon.com. If they are out you can buy one from Dr. Heinerman himself. Here is his info:

Dr. John Heinerman
PO Box 11471
SLC, UT 84147
(801) 824-3898 international cell
(801) 520-5577 local cell

I had the pleasure of hearing him speak in a small meeting in Fairview on 6/20/08. He spoke for a good 3 to 4 hours that morning. He was a surprise guest, and because of his being there, Glenn & Chase Kimball refused the day before the meeting to come & speak I emailed Glenn about this & he explained his reasons, but he had never met the man & thought that it would damage his reputation to speak alongside such a controversial guest.

Here are my notes & what I can add from memory. If anyone is interested I can try to get the audio that was recorded or at least the person you can buy it from. The following are my notes from his talk. I'll try to fill in the gaps the best I can remember. I've read his book & there are many details left out that were added in this talk.

Dr. John Heinerman has a PHD in Anthropology. He also is an expert in herbal remedies & has written many books on that subject. He owns a bookstore in Salt Lake as his father did before him. He is an active member of the LDS church.

How he met John Brewer:
John H had heard from a friend about a story of a man who claimed to had found ancient mummies & plates in the Sanpete Mountains. He became interested & having heard of other similar finds in the Utah area, decided to drive around Manti & try to find the man, without even knowing his name or address. As he drove along one street he asked a boy on a bicycle if he could help him find someone. When asked what his name was he replied he didn't know, but that he heard that he had found some mummies. The boy answered, "Oh you mean crazy Brewer. He works in the sewer plant over there." So he drove down there & met Johnny & asked if he could talk with him about his discoveries. Brewer had done several interviews previously with professors, LDS church authorities, etc. & didn't mind taking the time to talk to him. So he left work & told him the story of what he found & how he came to find it.

(Part of the story that was too controversial to be included in the book) When Johnny Brewer had found solid rock steps & a smooth rock wall while searching for arrow heads in a small alcove that he had visited many times, he finally after several months was able to break through the rock door & climb into a small chamber. When he first entered he could barely breathe because of all the dust he had displaced, but after a time it settled & he began to see what was under the dust, moving very carefully as to not disturb the dust much. He was highly excited when he found shiny plates in boxes throughout the room, so excited that he broke some of the boxes in his haste to see what was inside. After he had loaded his backpack with some of these plates, he thought he saw someone come in with a bright flashlight and he said, "Who the F are you?!?" The light went away & he saw a man who said his name was Ether, and scolded him for his behavior in such a holy place. The rest of their conversation wasn't described, but the next thing Johnny knew was he woke up on the cavern floor & felt like someone had beat the crap out of him. From then on he gave the cave & artifacts the respect they deserved & was much more careful.

John H then thanked him for his time, left his number with him & left. Several weeks later, Heinerman got a call from Brewer. There was one thing that John H didn't ask which all the others had done. He didn't ask Johnny to show him the cave. Johnny was looking for someone to trust & share his finds with, since he found that he could not trust any of the professors that he had met or even as family, and even had some artifacts stolen from him. Brewer asked Heinerman why he didn't ask him & he responded that he didn't need to. He had studied other similar finds of giant mummies, etc. & didn't have any reason to doubt Mr. Brewer. That was when their friendship began & Mr. Brewer began to trust him & eventually share the locations of the caves that he had found.

Johnny Brewer had taken John Heinerman out for hikes several times without ever bringing him to the cave. He was testing him to see what kind of person he was & if he would betray his trust. Finally after a time John H just told him to stop playing games & either show him the caves or stop wasting his time, because he knew he was testing him. So one night Brewer showed up at Heinerman's door late at night, surprised to find him already dressed & ready for the trip. Again, Johnny said, "What the F?" Heinerman explained that he had an impression to be ready for his visit that night to be a witness to what was in the cave.

He took Heinerman out to the cave which was a long & hard hike up a steep mountain. The original alcove that Johnny had dug in had previously collapsed because of all his digging, so he had to dig a small tunnel to the hole in the stone wall, & that is how they had to enter that night. He told John H to take off most of his clothes when they got there. John H asked is this some kind of weird test again? Then he explained that he would never fit through the small tunnel he had made unless he took off as much as he could to get through it. So he obliged & he led him through the hole & warned him not to make any sudden movements because of the dust.

John H described the room as such: 9' tall ceilings, 14' x 14' room with a 24' x 8' side room which contained the 2 mummies, a man & a woman wearing crowns & royal looking clothes. The sarcophagus's where 10' 6" long. The first 196 sq.ft. room was originally a burial chamber, but appeared to later become a storage room for records, weapons, tools, sheets of metal, instruments for markings, clothing, etc. a lot of which was just in a pile in the middle of the room. The following were also found, but I can't remember if it was from the first cave or the second cave that was shown to him: a dry cell battery, gold, lead & copper plates, spears, spear points, very nice looking bows & arrows, swords, blankets, sandals, etc.

John H said that he still has many of the artifacts in his possession & he was willing to give them back to Johnny after their falling apart if asked for, but he never came back for them. Heinerman still has several sets of plates & a gold rod which he may write another book about in the future.

At one point Brewer approached Heinerman & asked him to take several sets of plates for the purpose of translating them. Heinerman told him there was no way he was going to get involved in that & refused the plates. Brewer was very persistent & finally convinced Heinerman to at least take them for safe keeping at his home. Heinerman stated that for months the plates were left in a file cabinet untouched with no intention of ever attempting to translate them. Then one long boring day, he decided to take them out just out of curiosity. He began to study the symbols, couldn't make anything out of them, so he said a prayer that he could be able to translate them. Nothing miraculous happened, he said, but the symbols started to make sense to him & thoughts began to enter his mind & he wrote down everything that did. He said be careful what you pray for, because sometimes you will get it.

He said that the first plates were about housekeeping, another was about raising children, one about a royal elephant hunt. Then one in particular that he found interesting was how faith was compared to a snow flake. They are particles of power that attract to us, and are self moving particles of the universe. They are made of power & intelligence but have no personality. They take personality & emotion from the people they are attracted to. That was about all he described about his translations.

As for their "falling apart" John H described the experience as follows. They had been close friends for many years. Brewer had complete trust in Heinerman & shared with him everything he had found & also about his occasional meetings with angels. Heinerman visited him frequently whenever they both had free time to spare. On one of his last visits, Heinerman visited him & found that Brewer was very angry with him and "Get out of my face you devil!" He never told him why he was mad, and Heinerman was so upset that on his drive back home he pulled over & cried for hours. He had given up a lot for this man, including his finace who left him once she learned that he was involved with "Crazy Brewer". He had also had his reputation damaged from all the controversy that the Brewer caves had stirred up, especially from news of Heinerman's readings of the plates. He spoke with his father about what they were to do, & they decided to preform a priesthood curse on Brewer & his family. (I know that sounds unreasonable but there was probably more to the story) Heinerman claims that because of this curse, Brewer's life took a turn for the worst. He was continually watched by a Utah cult (the name escapes me), his son was murdered, and he eventually came to loose his mind.

Also after this experience Joihn Heinerman was very angry with God for what had happened & cursed at him, telling him that he didn't want to waste his time with the church & wanted to became rich & famous among the Gentiles which he did with his books on herbal remedies, but after several years returned to his beliefs & now reaffirms his story of the Manti caves.

The afore mentioned fiance's name was Louise & she was the one who tried to get John Heinerman excommunicated. When the church asked him about his translations he told them that they were nothing but a poor man's attempt to translate the plates out of curiosity, with no intent of publishing the translations or claiming to be a prophet. He was later disfollowshipped for a period of time for his liberality with the word of wisdom, but had never committed the sin of messing around with woman as stated Stephen B Shaffer. He is still a 60 odd year old virgin & is in good standing with the church, although he admittedly still has some griefs with the Word of Wisdom.

After the speech I approached Dr. John Heinerman & asked him why Johnny all of the sudden hated him or if I had missed that part of the story? He claimed that he still does not know, but that he recently visited Johnny Brewer several years ago to see if he still hated him. He came with a younger friend & Johnny answered the door & shook the young man's hand. Then when John H asked him if he remembered who he was, Johnny took a good look, his eyes got really big and he shook his finger at him & slammed the door on him. Even after his mind was nearly completely gone, his hatred towards Heinerman was still there. It would be good to hear from the Brewer family exactly why this was so. John Heinerman could think of nothing that he had done to every betray his trust. But still to this day according to Heinerman the family will not talk to anyone about Johnny's finds & will chase anyone off their land with a shotgun because they are tired of all it has caused their family.

John says that he has visited the caves recently & found that they were both empty. The 2nd cave near Wales, UT which was a natural cave had many large things in it & said that the only way those large things could have been removed without anyone noticing would have to be by angelic means. He didn't say how he know, but he now believes that all the remaining artifacts, platess, mummies, etc. have been transferred to another place near Cananville or Kanab. That cave he also said was older than the 1st & had many Jaredite records in it, but no mummies. The 2nd cave was found from a map to it from the first cave. The map also led to many other small caches throughout Sanpete valley that Brewer had gone & dug up. John Heinerman does not ever plan on publishing his writings & is very careful about who he shares the artifacts with. He also spoke about how he came to know that the Jaredites where from Chinese origin & spoke some about that, but that part was was more fully explained in his book Hidden Treasures.

Here is what some of the boxes look like for those who haven't seen them. They are believed to be boxes that held the records & the large one a sarcophagus. The sarcophagus was drug out of a cave near Manti. The man claimed that he found it while hunting & it was empty, as was the rest of the cave. He took his truck back up there later & with a lot of effort brought it back home & made a flower pot out of it. I was shown pictures of a few of these inside the side of a cliff, some empty & some not. If I make it down there again next year I'd like to hike up to the spot & verify for myself. Wayne May has seen them & did an article about them in Ancient American a while back.