Salt Lake landfill search began immediately
By Pat Reavy and Jennifer Dobner
Deseret Morning News
A search of a Salt Lake Valley landfill for clues to the whereabouts of Lori Hacking may have begun — or was at least planned by city police — as early as one day after the Salt Lake woman was reported missing by her husband last week.
 Lori Hacking's family released this photo of the 27-year-old woman just days after she was reported missing.  Associated Press |
"We relocated after we got word, a day after Lori was missing," said Stewart, adding that it's been nearly 10 years since a police search was last conducted at the facility.
Police have been to the landfill, 6030 W. California Ave. (1400 South), several times in the 10 days since 27-year-old Lori Hacking disappeared. Each search — the most recent of which lasted through the night Wednesday — has employed cadaver dogs, police detective Dwayne Baird confirmed.
Trying to find anything in a place where upward of 2,500 tons of new solid waste is deposited daily is literally like looking for a needle in a haystack, Stewart added. Police have concentrated their efforts so far on an area the size of "one to two acres," he said.
Baird could not confirm what day police focused on the landfill as a possible location for either the body of the missing woman or other pieces of evidence in the case, but he said reports that the search area was so small were erroneous.
"We're looking at 20 times that amount," he said.
Police have not indicated publicly just what they might be looking for.
What does seem clear, however, is that police knew early that they had a criminal investigation on their hands.
A court document released Wednesday indicates prosecutors sought an "order of secrecy" from a 3rd District judge two days after the search for Lori Hacking began.
The order, which has not yet been granted, would effectively seal all subpoenas related to the investigation and appears to specifically protect the identity of a particular witness and any of that person's testimony. In making their case to the judge, prosecutors say that without that protection, their criminal investigation could be harmed.
Lori Hacking's husband, Mark, continues to be the only person police have named as a "person of interest" in the investigation, and no one has directly been called a suspect, although police say they are following other leads.
Mark Hacking reported his wife missing to police at 10:49 a.m. July 19, saying she had gone jogging in Memory Grove and that he had assumed she had gone to work from there. He claimed that when he tried to call her at work about 10 a.m., he learned she had never arrived.
Actually Hacking was trying to buy a mattress at two different stores about 10 a.m., witnesses have said. At 10:23 a.m. he purchased a mattress from the Bradley Sleep Center in South Salt Lake and left the store parking lot between 10:30 a.m. and 10:35.
But Hacking also told police just a short time later that he had frantically searched a three-mile trail in City Creek Canyon twice before officers arrived, a time line that doesn't add up.
A massive search of the canyon July 19 and 20 turned up nothing.
Wednesday, Baird said it's a possibility that Lori Hacking never went jogging that morning and was never in Memory Grove.
"We don't have any indication she was in Memory Grove," he said.
Last week police were seen removing items from the Hackings' apartment near 100 South and 900 East. Computers, a box spring with a red stain either on the wrapping or the mattress itself and other assorted items in bags and boxes were among some of the items removed.
The Deseret Morning News learned that a knife with blood and hair was also one of the items seized, but the results of forensic tests on any evidence collected could be "weeks to months" away, Baird said.
The last person to have seen Lori Hacking may have been Eric Holleman. Late Tuesday, Holleman, a clerk at Maverik Country Store near 900 East and 300 South, told the Deseret Morning News that Mark and Lori Hacking were in his store Sunday about 8:30 p.m.
He said something seemed to be wrong with Lori Hacking because she was very silent and not talking to her husband.
"It looked like something was wrong," he said. "They were not friendly with each other."
Mark Hacking, on the other hand, seemed to be happy and talkative, at least with the clerks, Holleman said.
Holleman said Mark Hacking came to the store, usually by himself, several times a week. Sometimes he would buy cigarettes. But on Sunday night he motioned to the clerks not to let his wife know that he had ever purchased cigarettes at the store.
Much of the speculation surrounding Mark Hacking arose after it was discovered he lied to his family and friends, apparently including his wife, about his schooling. His parents thought Hacking graduated in May from the University of Utah with a degree in psychology. He sent out graduation announcements and reportedly had textbooks for school, but he then said he was sick on graduation day.
Hacking also told his family he was accepted to medical school at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In reality, Hacking last attended school in 2002 and hadn't even applied to medical school.
Baird said Hacking's schooling was the "pinnacle" of many years of lies.
"He worked harder at maintaining his lies and deceptions than others do at earning a living," he said.
Hacking has retained prominent local defense attorney Gil Athay, who has handled capital homicide cases in the past.