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.
Mark Hacking was a psychiatric aide in a mental ward in a hospital.
UG, you're right.
I got her mixed up with Kathie Lee Gifford, who met first husband (gay) at a Bible College.
Sorry about that.
I am afraid that a great many men have been
petted by their mothers, and wives tend to
continue the trend by trying hard to nurture
and to please them. If you're a man, and you
weren't spoiled by your mother - good.
No worries. Friends of mine knew her first husband quite well.
Oh yes !! I remember now ! Thanks UG.
Thanks, I believe truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Video games????? What more proof is needed??!!!!
Truly a dose of reality. What you said does occur frequently.
It just seems like a stupid thing to lie about. Why not just tell people he wanted to take take a break from schooling instead of pretending he was still attending and graduated. What would be so terrible about that? So he killed her to keep her quiet about the medical school and graduating college or was he upset about her divorcing him over this or was he worried about providing for a new baby or was he planning this whole thing for a long time? Sounds like he was planning on moving without lori because she was moving later so he didn't need housing lined up. I guess she decided to investigate on her own. If she found out on friday, why was she partying with him on sunday? I can't believe she didn't call her parents or talk to her friends about her husbands lies and what she should do about all of it. If I found that a husband had been lying I would be calling people nonstop. There must be something more serious he was doing wrong like stealing money or something and maybe not "moving" to NC but it was a ruse to disappear to another country.
If a woman is having trouble with her husband in anyway, but is embarrassed or scared to talk to anyone she should at least document in writing, or document bruising or videotape the beatings with a hidden camera and keep it hidden somewhere so if anything happens your family or friends can find it. They'll know everything was not perfect in the marriage or relationship.
That would be plausible if she had reason to suspect his mental stability. If she really suspected he was capable of violence, her best bet would have been to quietly pack a bag and find the Greyhound station.
I don't think he has a mental problem. He's faking it.
He strips naked and runs around the hotel to create the appearance of mental breakdown, but he left his shoes on to protect his feet. That is the act of a rational mind.
He's planning his insanity defense right now.
I do. If he killed her Sunday night, why did he call her work that morning and pull the disappeared jogger routine so soon? Why didn't this jerk go about his business Monday and act as if he didn't know she was missing until Monday night when she was supposed to get home from work? He would have had a lot more time to get his story straight.
Ping!
It was also reported today, that he visited another mattress store first & they were not able to give him a mattress that day, so he left & went to another one. What I want to know is if he is so innocent, why doesn't he tell the police where the old mattress is????
REF (scott & mark h.) But, the prosecution in SP's case is throwing the case. It's also a no brainer but will SP walk???
Like the Scott P. case, I think they both did away with their wives the nite before and had all the wee hours after that to get rid of evidence, the body & do the cleanup. I think the prosecution going with the "one trip theory" to the marina for Scott is wrong, they will sink themselves with that. I think there were 2 trips to the bay. One to dispose of Laci & one to get the launch ticket for an alibi.
VERY ODD, since his next statement is that he is looking at her work clothes still at home!!! He isn't as clever as old Scotty boy~!
It seems to me two married adults with marital problems would see a marriage counselor, or their pastor, priest, or rabbi, but not go whining to a parent about their problems.
Parents are never going to give objective views about their married children's problems. Parents are too emotionally involved in their own child.
And he didn't know she would be calling to arrange housing??? Doesn't that sound a little off? I think he probably dismembered her.
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