Murder charge filed against Mark Hacking

Deseret Morning News ^ | August 09, 2004 | Travis Reed

[MizSterious]

Deseret Morning News, Monday, August 09, 2004

Murder charge filed against Mark Hacking

By Travis Reed
Associated Press

A first-degree murder charge was filed Monday against Mark Hacking, who allegedly confessed to relatives that he shot his sleeping wife in the head and threw her body in a trash bin.

Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom talks to the press Monday, as prosecuting attorney Robert Stott looks on.

Chris Bergin, Deseret Morning News

Lori Hacking's body has not been found, despite numerous searches of a landfill.

The charge against the husband carries a sentencing range of five years to life in prison. Hacking remained jailed on bail of $1 million.

A probable-cause statement released Monday states that Hacking told his brothers that he and his wife had been arguing the night of July 18 when he revealed to her that he had lied about his education and future plans.

Lori Hacking later went to bed, and Mark Hacking stayed up to play Nintendo. As he continued packing for the couple's planned move to the medical school at North Carolina, he came across a .22-caliber rifle, walked into the couple's bedroom and shot his wife, according to the probable-cause statement.

He then wrapped her body in garbage bags and put the body in a trash bin at the University of Utah in the pre-dawn hours. He disposed of the gun in another bin and after cutting off the pillow top of the mattress, he put the mattress in a third bin.

Gil Athay, Mark Hacking's lawyer, did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Athay has questioned the circumstances of the alleged confession.

"Remember Mark was housed in a psychiatric unit for the period of time these brothers are claiming they spoke with him," Athay told Salt Lake television station KUTV last week. "To me that creates a substantial issue."

Mark Hacking is scheduled to make his first court appearance Tuesday.

An unidentified tipster gave police information that led to the landfill search, which was expected to resume this week.

The night Lori Hacking was reported missing, police found Mark Hacking naked outside a hotel near the couple's apartment. He was checked into a psychiatric ward by his family, where he stayed for more than a week before his arrest.

Mark Hacking, 28, made the reported confession to his two older brothers when they talked with him at the psychiatric ward July 24.

Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom said the statements attributed to Mark Hacking in the probable-cause document are credible. "Everything corroborates the truth of this statement to a 'T,"' he said.

Hacking was also charged with three counts of obstructing justice, each carrying a sentence of one to 15 years in prison, for allegedly hiding evidence of the crime.

Mark Hacking was arrested Aug. 2. Court documents say investigators found human blood on a knife in the couple's bedroom, on a headboard and on a bed rail. DNA tests showed the blood was Lori Hacking's.

Yocom said prosecutors did not have enough evidence for a charge of aggravated murder, which carries the death penalty, because they could not prove Lori Hacking was pregnant.

---

[MizSterious]

More details on the previous thread here. Also, you might want to take a look at the official charges, posted on this site.

[MizSterious]

Lori Hacking pinglist--if you want on or off, let me know via freepmail!

[MP5]

These f*ckers like Hacking and Petersen are such cowards. They would rather kill their wives than leave them. They are gutless.

[MizSterious]

And now for the obligatory media self-flagellation--all completely sincere, I'm sure...(NOT!)

---

Professor: Media Needs to Be Careful in Hacking Coverage
Aug. 6, 2004

John Daley Reporting

One observer of the media warns that in the race to be first in covering the Hacking case, some news organizations risk crossing the line.

In the past couple of years this news market has seen at least three local stories, each in part involving an apparent or real kidnapping, which were catapulted into the national media spotlight: the Elizabeth Smart story, the saga of Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, and the Hacking case.

It's not surprising the Lori Hacking murder has drawn so much local and national coverage, according to University of Utah Communication professor Brian Massey, particuarly because of the mystery involved and because the families have been so open in expressing their thoughts and feelings. He calls it a legitimate local story.

Brian Massey, Uni. of Utah Communication Professor: "People locally are interested in the story. I think and the media are responding to that audience interest as the media properly should because it's a local story and it happens in people's neighborhoods and people have an interest in following that kind of story."

But Massey draws a sharp distinction between local and national coverage. He warns of the danger of local news operations emulating some of the national and cable media outlets, and being drawn into too much sensationalism and speculation.

Brian Massey: "At the national level a story like this becomes a commodity. At the local level it's more a story of the human tragedy that has happened to our neighbors, people we know, people who live in the same community with us. At the national level, it's commodity. It is something to sell."

Massey says one big problem with devoting too much time to one story is that it crowds out other stories that may have an impact on many more people, but are less dramatic.

 

Source

[MizSterious]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Peterson killed his wife in her sleep, too. Double-cowards, both of them.

[MP5]

Yeah you're probably right. These idiots don't have the gonads to admit to their wives that they are liars and losers.

[MizSterious]

Utah man charged in wife’s murder

Mark Hacking said to have confessed to slaying

The Associated Press

Updated: 6:53 p.m. ET Aug. 9, 2004

SALT LAKE CITY - A first-degree murder charge was filed Monday against Mark Hacking, who allegedly confessed to relatives that he shot his wife in the head and threw her body in a trash bin.

Lori Hacking’s body has not been found, despite numerous searches of a local landfill.

The charge against Mark Hacking carries a possible penalty of five years to life in prison.

You can read the rest of the story here.

[hispanarepublicana]

shot his sleeping wife in the head

Maybe just maybe, she never knew what hit her. I shudder when I think of what Laci Peterson/Lori Hacking must have gone through in the last moments of their lives.....knowing that the person they trusted most in life and had created a child with were about to kill them and their unborn children.

[coconutt2000]

I had a dream about the murder. I fell asleep with the news on last week, and well, the dream went along like this.


He killed her, she looked strangled and beaten, not stabbed, not shot. If she was stabbed, it wasn't what killed her. Not in my dream at least.

Mark Hacking then planted evidence in the dumpster and made sure that the focus would be on a search for the mattress. He made sure the mattress would be found but no evidence would be on it. He'd cut out some of the padding and wrapped her in it.

He buried her somewhere. I don't know where, but it was brownish, reddish dirt, mostly very dry soil.

He then planned to direct the attention of the police toward the land fill, and without a body they'll have trouble ascertaining the exact events leading to her death. The lack of a body enabled him to fabricate the rest of the events, and plant the rest of the evidence so he can control the story, and his eventual confession. So, he acted crazy, and got himself committed.

Since my dream, he has confessed, with enough correlation between his confession and the evidence discovered to indict him, but I bet with discrepancies that will support his defense that his sanity was absent during the murder and while he is guilty, he doesn't know exactly what he did. And so instead of getting a death sentence, he'll plead insanity and he'll get a lighter sentence of some kind.

A man capable of fabricating a life shouldn't have too hard of a time fabricating the circumstances of murder he committed, and then leading the police along a merry chase to look for the body.

ps - in my dream, her eyes were open

[isthisnickcool]

People are murdered in American (and all over the world) every day. While these two cases are sad situations and the people involved bad actors all this news coverage is a waste of time and energy. Actually, it's not "news". It's TV and the lazy media generating "news".

[MizSterious]

Here's one from the Salt Lake Tribune with a lot more detail. Bolding is mine.

---

Charges: First-degree felony murder and obstruction of justice
By Ashley Broughton
and Stephen Hunt
The Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake Tribune

2004-08-10 00:06:36.483

After they argued, Lori Hacking went to bed and Mark Hacking played Nintendo. An hour later, prosecutors say, he shot her in the head as she slept.

   Mark Hacking, 28, was charged Monday with first-degree felony murder in the July 19 death of Lori Hacking, 27.

    A criminal complaint filed in 3rd District Court also charges him with three second-degree felony counts of obstructing justice for allegedly disposing of his wife's body, the murder weapon and the mattress in three different Dumpsters.

    His defense attorney, D. Gilbert Athay, declined comment.

    Mark Hacking is set to make a first appearance in 3rd District Court today. Bail has been set at $1 million, cash only.

    If convicted on the murder charge, Mark Hacking faces a sentence of five years to life in prison. Each obstruction charge carries a sentence of one to 15 years.

    For the first time, authorities revealed that Lori was killed with a gun, specifically a .22-caliber rifle. The much-publicized blood-stained knife recovered from the couple's apartment apparently was used to cut up the couple's mattress to hide evidence.

    The complaint states that blood found on the knife and on the bedframe matched blood found in her car and was linked to Lori through DNA tests.

    "I think we have an excellent case," said Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom.

    That case is built largely around information provided by Mark Hacking's brothers, Scott and Lance, that was substantiated by evidence recovered by police at the alleged crime scene.

    "Everything corroborates the truth of the [brothers'] statement to a T," Yocom said.

    Prosecutors, however, still are missing some key evidence. They do not have a body or a murder weapon, despite nine days of searching the Salt Lake County Landfill.

    And although prosecutors do not have to prove a motive, Yocom said he believes Mark Hacking killed his wife to conceal his lies.

   "She had discovered he had told her innumerable lies. There was obviously a dispute about that. He killed her not to be discovered with regard to his lies."

    The drama began July 16, when Lori called Randee Alston at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to ask about financial aid for her husband, according to the complaint.

    Alston told Lori she had checked several databases, finding Mark Hacking was not registered and had not even applied to the medical school. Lori's co-workers previously said she was upset by a phone call that day and left work early.

   Mark Hacking called police about 10:07 a.m. July 19 and reported his wife had not returned from an early-morning jog in City Creek Canyon. A few minutes later, he called his wife's office and told them he had found her Chrysler Sebring at Memory Grove and was looking for her.

   At 10:46 a.m., he called police again and told them he had found the car.

    Police later learned, however, that Mark Hacking had been shopping. They found a sales receipt in his car from Bradley's Sleep Etc. in South Salt Lake, showing he had purchased a new mattress and pillows there at 10:23 a.m., according to the complaint.

    He claimed he had awakened at 8 a.m. and found his wife had never returned from running. The resulting search drew thousands of volunteers who scoured the canyon and surrounding neighborhoods for more than a week.

   As Mark Hacking reported his wife missing, Alston found a voice-mail message from Lori, left after 5 p.m. Eastern time on July 16. In it, Lori explained her husband had "personally called Ms. Alston" and found that the problem was a computer malfunction and that he had "straightened everything out," the complaint states.

    Alston, however, told police she never has spoken to Mark Hacking.

    Back in Utah, police almost immediately became suspicious of Mark Hacking's story.

    When police examined Lori's car, for example, they found the seat and mirrors were not adjusted for a person her size. They also found blood in and near the back seat of her car.

   At the couple's apartment, police found Lori's purse, containing her wallet and keys. They also noticed the couple's bed was made up with sheets that still had the crease marks from packaging.

   A knife found in a bedstand contained blood and fibers. Blood also was found on the headboard of the bed.

   Authorities later matched all the blood samples to Lori through DNA, though Yocom declined to say how they obtained Lori's DNA.

   Authorities believe Mark Hacking used the knife to cut away the mattress' pillow top.

    "We think he rolled her in that and put all of that, including the bedding and pillows and anything containing blood in garbage sacks around that, and that's what he deposited in the Dumpster," Yocom said. "That's what, hopefully, we'll find at the landfill."

   Before her disappearance, the couple had been packing to move to North Carolina, where Mark Hacking said he had been accepted at medical school. But a few days after she went missing, Hacking's family was stunned to discover that not only had he never applied to medical school, he had never graduated from the University of Utah.

   By July 24, Mark Hacking's brothers decided to learn the truth of what happened to Lori.

    From his room in University Hospital, where he had been recuperating since a psychiatric episode early July 20, Mark Hacking told them he and Lori had argued late Sunday after he told her he lied about medical school.

   Lori went to bed after the argument, and Mark Hacking played Nintendo for about an hour and then did some packing.

   He "came across" his .22-caliber rifle and shot his wife in the head once. "Lori's dead and I killed her," he told his brothers, according to the complaint.

   News of the shooting surprised the Hackings' neighbors, none of whom reported hearing a gunshot.

    Serena Schaugaard, who lived directly upstairs from the couple, said Monday that bothers her.

   "The walls are really thin," she said. "I can hear it when he comes home and I can hear it when they open a door or close a door . . . any of those things I can hear. So yeah, it upsets me that I can't remember hearing anything out of the ordinary."

    After the shooting, Mark Hacking told his brothers, he wrapped his wife's body in garbage bags and placed it in a Dumpster about 2 a.m. near the University of Utah's Neuropsychiatric Institute, where he was employed as a psychiatric technician, prosecutors said.

   That Dumpster was picked up about 6 a.m. on Monday, Yocom said.

    "I suspect he knew when the Dumpster would be emptied, since it was near where he worked."

    Police recovered the Hackings' mattress on July 19 from a Dumpster in the parking lot of an LDS ward near their apartment, said Yocom. They matched it with a box springs recovered from the apartment.

    Before the brothers visited him, Lance Hacking called the hospital and asked staffers to delay his brother's evening medication so he would be lucid, the complaint states.

   "We believe at the time he made the statement, he was not sedated," Yocom said. "He was not in any way incoherent."

   Lance Hacking described his brother's emotions as "very real," and reported that Mark Hacking was "scared and did not know what to do," according to the complaint.

   Police were not aware of the Hacking brothers' visit until July 31 - a week later, the complaint states.

   "There is a bit of a disconnect," said Lance Hacking, reached at his home in Austin, Texas, on Monday. He declined to elaborate.

   Scott Hacking told The Salt Lake Tribune last week that the confession was relayed through an intermediary to police the following day, July 25.

    Authorities said they will continue searching for Lori Hacking's body with cadaver dogs on Thursday in the Salt Lake County Landfill, said Salt Lake City police Detective Dwayne Baird.

   Police were first directed to the landfill by a confidential source who reported the body was put in a Dumpster, Yocom said. He refused to elaborate, except to say the informant was not Scott or Lance Hacking.

    Yocom said he had met with Lori Hacking's parents, Thelma and Hareld Soares, for about two hours Monday before holding a news conference to announce the charges.

   Prosecutors have no evidence, he said, to file aggravated murder charges, which would carry a possible death penalty. Such a charge was considered because Lori was reportedly five weeks pregnant.

   Yocom said it was would be virtually impossible, even if Lori Hacking's body is located, to prove she was pregnant.

    He refused to say whether the Soares family would support the death penalty for Mark Hacking.

   aebroughton@sltrib.com
   shunt@sltrib.com
    ---
   Tribune reporter Matthew D. LaPlante contributed to this story.
   
   What remains unknown
   
   * Police still have not found Lori's body, the bedding she was wrapped in or the gun
   * Lori Hacking's reported pregnancy remains unproven
   

Source

[MizSterious]

Most of us are capable of following more than one news story at a time. Your argument is weak, if not silly.

[Colofornian]

What is sadder is if we don't know if the true gospel was presented to Lori.

When Mormon missionaries miss out on presenting their gospel to Christians, the belief system is that at least those Christians will still wind up in one of three degrees of salvation. When you reverse that process, that is not true. We are left with Jesus' words that wide is the road to destruction, and narrow is the way to life.

[sully777]

I have a theory, Greta.

Gloria Allred and Geoffrey Figer should get a room.

[isthisnickcool]

Most of us are capable of following more than one news story at a time. Your argument is weak, if not silly.

Read my post. My point had nothing to do with you or anyone else's ability to follow "more than one news story at a time". It had nothing to do with the fact you posted this which I have no problem with. Just to be clear. Nothing personal.

My issue is all the "air time" time thrown at these two cases by the media. The three (maybe four) people are dead. While the details of the cases are mildly interesting the court "battle" is not really newsworthy to me.

Tell you what. Since you said I was being "weak" and "silly" explain to me the importance of these two murder cases as they apply to anyone else but the people and families involved. Give it a shot. Tell me why the two cases are so important they warrant more "air time" than the discussion on John Kerry and his Vietnam "service" for example.

Why is it important that we know all the details of these two ongoing court cases? How will the final outcome of the cases change things that we all need to be concerned about? Other than maybe having some limited impact on laws regarding murder where an unborn child is involved (which is not an issue in all the news coverage).

[Grig]

Colofornian, you constant attempts to use this crime as a jumping off point for deriding someone's religion is disgusting and unworthy of someone who claims to be a Christian.

[MizSterious]

Your question--"why is it important to know all the details"--belies your statement that you have no problem with the post. In fact, you do, and I suspect mainly because the story doesn't interest you, so you can't understand why anyone else would follow it. You lack the curiosity that many of us have about why someone would do something like, and how, especially in this case, someone could live a life of lies for years with no one suspecting a thing.

However, if we could understand that, perhaps we could understand how another person has done the same thing, with his wild Vietnam stories and puffed up military record. I see many parallels here. In fact, as I stated on another thread, if I were Teresa, I'd certainly sleep with one eye open.

People post lots of articles that don't interest me in the least. Since they come from the media, I know the media is covering them. They interest some people, even if I can't figure out why. That's life. This story interests me, and it interests many people. I find it far more intriguing than, say, the many "caption this" threads here, or whether Will Smith will enter the political arena. To those, I just shrug, a sort of "who cares" reaction.

[spectre]

Thank you for sharing your "dream" with us. It certainly sounds plausible.

OTOH, I am NOT an authority on rifles, but have been wondering if he indeed "Shot" her point-blank in the head, wouldn't the bullet have penetrated the mattress or wall? Maybe an expert can come on line and share that info with us?

Maybe LE have evidence?

It's still a mystery how she died, just like Laci.

sw

[cherry]

the brothers decided not to tell police what their little brother told them until several days later.....hmmmmm

right there, that shows me the "us" versus "them" attitude....

I am worried about this case....

I think his family is trying to contort the justice system...

why would they have ANY authority to tell the psych hospital staff NOT to give duly ordered medication ?.......they have no right at all, none....

and why would they chose not to tell police what they found out.....

self-serving, arranging for a lawyer, and all the while, having the poor familiy of Lori go thru all of this....

what is going on in SLC and why does the chief suspect's family have this much power?

[isthisnickcool]

In fact, you do, and I suspect mainly because the story doesn't interest you, so you can't understand why anyone else would follow it.

Gee, now you are calling me a liar? Well, well. How nice. That's a first for me here after all these years. No problem. Since it's not accurate.

So, the reason the media (again, not YOU!) needs to keep these two cases in the limelight is because the pathology of the men involved might be the same as John Kerry's? Seems like a stretch for me but if that's your answer OK.

My commentary was only about the media. Since that seems to be something you don't want in this sandbox of yours here and you have taken my posts personally I'll just excuse myself.