Posted on 07/26/2004 2:28:19 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
SALT LAKE CITY July 26, 2004 — Three days before her husband reported her missing, Lori Hacking took a phone call at work that left her stunned and sobbing, her colleagues at a brokerage house told The Associated Press.
Several colleagues said that Hacking had been arranging for on-campus housing at the University of North Carolina medical school and that they believe the school was returning a call to say her husband, Mark Hacking, was not enrolled there, as he had told her.
Lori Hacking left work early after receiving the call the afternoon of Friday, July 16. Mark Hacking reported his wife's disappearance the following Monday. She is now feared dead, and her husband has become the focus of the police investigation.
At the time of her disappearance, the couple were packing to move to North Carolina within weeks. But after she vanished, police and family members learned that in addition to lying about being accepted to medical school, Mark Hacking had not even graduated from college.
Mark Hacking, a 28-year-old nightshift hospital orderly, has been at a psychiatric hospital since police found him running around naked in sandals the night after the search for his wife began.
Lori Hacking, a 27-year-old trading assistant who just learned she was five weeks pregnant, was a private woman who did not share personal troubles, making her breakdown in the office all the more unusual, said colleagues at Wells Fargo Securities Services.
"She was visibly upset. She started to cry and got up to walk away," her supervisor, Randy Church, told the AP on Monday. He said that when co-workers asked her what was wrong, she replied, "It's no big deal; I'm OK. But I think I will go home."
Lori Hacking's co-workers gave accounts of the phone call to homicide detectives after she was reported missing. Officials at the University of North Carolina were trying to determine whether one of their administrators made the call.
"We wouldn't have any reason to doubt" the Wells Fargo employee accounts, Detective Dwayne Baird said Monday. He would not comment further.
Church said detectives showed up the day after Hacking's disappearance and inspected her e-mail and computer files.
Lori Hacking's mother, Thelma Soares, was unaware her daughter had received the upsetting phone call, but did not get a chance to speak to her the weekend before she vanished, family spokesman Scott Dunaway said.
Results on some of the evidence collected by police, including a mattress recovered from a trash bin and a box spring taken from the couple's apartment, could come back from a laboratory this week.
Brandon Hodge, another trading assistant, said that at about 10 a.m. on Monday, July 19, Mark Hacking placed a call to his wife's office, speaking first to Hodge.
"By the way, how is Lori?" Hodge quoted Hacking as asking. Hodge said he replied, "Well, she's not made it into work yet."
Church, who had been expecting Lori Hacking at 7 a.m. and says she was never late to work, then took the phone. He recalled Mark Hacking saying his wife had not returned from a sunrise jog at Memory Grove, a downtown park near the office. Hacking made it seem as if he was calling from his apartment, Church said.
"Oh, my God, her (work) clothes are still here," Hacking reportedly said to Church.
"I said, `You need to call police immediately. Just get off the phone,'" Church said.
But Hacking did not immediately call police, and police say he was at a store buying a new mattress shortly before reporting his wife missing.
Three of her co-workers who spoke to the AP said they showed up at Memory Grove before Mark Hacking joined them. When he arrived in his Dodge Durango, they told him his wife already had been reported missing. He then placed a call of his own to police dispatchers.
Hacking began an aimless search, walking and pondering before taking off on his own and abandoning Lori's co-workers. But first, he sat in his sport utility vehicle with an address book on his lap, making calls, apparently to relatives.
No, high school romance, they met at Lake Powell, families didnt know one another before from what I read.
They need a forensic psychiatrist -- they can tell if its faked. I think this may show pre-meditation.
Did anyone see her over the weekend?
Both men were the younges children in fairly large families -- spoled youngest child syndrome -- think they can do anything
Good teaching. But a lot of young LDS women still believe (and probably were taught) that such an announcement should be dealt with by praying to receive confirmation. And that's where the hormones tend to interfere with perception of the message being received.
No, it certainly doesn't -- at least with physically abusive spouses. Psychological abuse still seems to get a pretty free ride. My boarder will probably be in therapy for the rest of her life, after growing up in an LDS home headed by a psychologically abusive father, and held together by a submissive mother who was sure God wanted her and her children to put up with his crap, because they'd been sealed in the temple and it was supposed to be for eternity, and if she left she'd end up shut out of the celestial kingdom, while her daughters (if they toed the line for the rest of their lives) would be there living in glory with their abusive father. And nobody from the Church was encouraging her to take her girls and get out of there. And sadly, my boarder -- for whom the legacy includes serious chronic physical illness, stemming from all the psychological stress -- still believes that her mother was doing what God wanted her to do, and was right not to leave.
But in the Hacking case (as in the case of my boarder's family), there's no evidence (at least so far) that Mark was physically abusive up until the time he apparently murdered Lori. From what we know, I surmise that she stuck around in spite of serious warning signs, due to cultural/social/religious pressure to "make the marriage work", in the absence of concrete physical abuse.
Thanks for the ping!
I can't remember how long these two had been married.
I am thinking maybe a couple years?
Laci and Scott Peterson were married for 5 years b/f she was murdered.
Sometimes I have thought about the high rate of divorce, and it's sad. Like many others, I think about how part of the reason for it is that divorce is easier and easier to get.
But then one has to step back and think of how it supposedly was in the "olden" days. Seems to me that if divorce is very hard to get, that might lead to an increased incidence of spouses murdering spouses, since that might be the only way out of a terrible marriage.
Nowadays, it seems that if it's just two people, divorce is the answer to a miserable union. But what about if it's 3 people? Things have changed on that front, too--just in the last 20 years. The federal government has set "guidelines" for child support. They are serious about enforcing it.
Nothing wrong with making sure both parents pay for their children. But... it's very hard to get out of. Nowadays, a child support obligation is like marriage used to be: almost impossible to avoid, once that child is born. (I'm not saying they SHOULD avoid it, I'm just saying some people WANT to avoid it.)
Both Laci and Lori were pregnant. It makes me think that the husbands saw something coming that they couldn't get out of.
It also makes me sick that a potential money problem would, in their minds, outweigh the potential good of having a child.
Your post is very thought-provoking. What an interesting comparison--and I think it definitely holds water.
Mark and Lori were married in 1999. The 5 year mark seems to be a dangerous time.
He asked her co-worker, "By the way how's Lori?"
Huh??
I sometimes call my husband's office. For courtesy's sake, I will chat for just a minute with whoever answers the phone, since I know them all. But I know they're busy, so then I ask to speak to him, and they put him on the phone.
I don't ask them how he is!!
Setting himself up for an insanity defense!
Thanks for the ping grizz...anything new?
Doc, come on over and see ridesthemiles's post 70 and tell me what you think...I think he/she makes an excellent point about him keeping his feet protected.
Missing Jogger's Husband Hires Lawyer
POSTED: 7:54 am EDT July 27, 2004
UPDATED: 8:06 am EDT July 27, 2004
SALT LAKE CITY -- The husband of a missing pregnant woman in Salt Lake City is the focus of a police investigation and has hired an attorney.
(snipped)
http://www.nbc5.com/news/3581631/detail.html?z=dp&dpswid=2265994&dppid=65172
Ping to post #115
Lori and Mark were married for four or five years. They were high school sweethearts.
Cadaver dogs were searching the landfill last night.
"I think he/she makes an excellent point about him keeping his feet protected."
I had to catch up on this story because I haven't followed it closely. After reading a few articles I started to hear Jack Nicholson in my head....sell crazy somewhere else. The shoes are a great point, also, perhaps more importantly, he carefully cleaned the apartment, bought a mattress, probably moved her car, etc. Assuming he did it (which I guess we don't know for sure at this point) he certainly was of sound mind after the fact. It is important to remember that "insanity" is a legal term that usually means that the person did not know that what he/she was doing at the time was wrong or criminal. It's possible that (again assuming he did it) he had a psychotic break when it happened and then came back to reality, understood at that point the gravity of what he did, and then proceeded to clean up/cover his tracks/fake insanity. (Even then, it's more likely he would be so horrified by what he did that he wouldn't be able to take any action.) It is also possible that he is mentally ill (perhaps depressed, anxious, or he may even have a psychotic disorder) but would not be legally insane because at the time of the crime he knew what he was doing. I wonder if he has any history of mental illness? That's my take - I'm not a forensic psychologist but I did work extensively with the chronically mentally ill (many schizophrenics who had frequent psychotic episodes) and I can tell you that his behavior does not come close to resembling how my clients behaved. That said, I don't want to give the impression that these folks are dangerous - they really aren't as a rule. You're safer with a schizophrenic in your life than you are with someone who has antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy).
(KSL News) -- The family of Mark Hacking has hired a prominent criminal defense lawyer to represent him.
Gil Athay confirmed to KSL Newsradio that he is Hacking's lawyer, but declined to comment further.
Athay has represented some of Utah's most notorious murderers, including the Hi-Fi shop killers and John Albert Taylor.
Meanwhile, the police say Mark Hacking is the only "person of interest" they've named in Lori's disappearance.
When asked if police have caught Hacking in any more lies, Salt Lake City Police Detective Dwayne Baird told KSL Newsradio that it's easier to focus on the things Hacking has been truthful about, although he cannot think of any.
Hacking has admitted to lying about his college education. He and Lori were moving to North Carolina, presumably so he could attend medical school, when she vanished.
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