 AP Photo |
Posted on 07/31/2004 10:26:24 AM PDT by MizSterious
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Fri Jul 30, 7:34 PM ET
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By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY - By all accounts, Mark Hacking was fun to be around and loving to his wife. He wanted to be liked and respected and, like his father, to become a doctor.
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But years of deceptions are catching up to Hacking, a 28-year-old former nightshift hospital orderly who has become the focus of police in the disappearance of his wife, who vanished as they were packing to move to a medical school where, it turns out, he wasn't enrolled.
And friends and co-workers are recalling moments when they believe Lori Hacking discovered her husband's propensity for lying. Not only was he never accepted to a North Carolina medical school, he had dropped out of college, even though he kept textbooks spread open around his apartment.
Detective Phil Eslinger said police are trying to build a "rock-solid" case, but they lack one important piece of evidence that had cadaver dogs working a municipal landfill this week.
"We need a body," Assistant District Attorney Bob Stott said Friday.
Mark Hacking often hung out at a neighborhood store — refilling sodas, eating hot-dogs and smoking Camel menthols — when his wife was at work and he was supposedly attending classes or studying for medical exams.
Clerks say he asked them never to reveal his cigarette habit to his wife. He told them he was a therapist.
Like his wife, Mark Hacking is a Mormon who isn't supposed to smoke.
His history of deceptions, petty and grand, took family members by surprise when they started unraveling last week, says his father, Douglas Hacking, a pediatrician.
"We didn't see it coming," he said. "We got completely blindsided by it."
Mark Hacking was taken to a psychiatric ward a day after the search for his wife began, after he was seen running around at night naked in sandals outside a motel where he'd taken a room.
Doctors are trying to "sort out what is going on in his mind," his father said. The family hired a noted Utah defense lawyer, D. Gilbert Athay, who was seen at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute as recently as Thursday. Athay will confirm only that he has spoken several times with Hacking.
Mark Hacking never was on track to become a doctor, nor is he a therapist. State records show he is a licensed health care assistant, a job he resigned July 23 that is being advertised at the University of Utah. The job posting says health care assistants start at $8.42 an hour and must be available for odd work hours.
Records show Lori Hacking, a 27-year-old stockbroker's assistant at Wells Fargo, graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Utah in 1999. She put her plans to pursue an MBA on hold until her husband could graduate from medical school.
Once, in 2000, a friend of Lori's recalls her confiding that Mark Hacking "just lied to me" about having enrolled one semester at college, both Salt Lake City daily newspapers reported Friday.
But it is believed to be a bigger lie that left Lori Hacking stunned and sobbing on Friday, July 16, three days before her husband reported her missing.
Her colleagues say she had been trying to make some arrangements at the North Carolina-Chapel Hill school. They believe an administrator was returning a call that day to say her husband wasn't enrolled there. A private woman, Lori Hacking didn't share her grief with co-workers, but took up their suggestion to leave work early.
Later that night, she showed up with her husband at a going-away party at her boss' mountain cabin, betraying no sign of distress. She was last seen by friends Sunday night, July 18, and failed to show for work the next morning at 7 a.m.
Mark Hacking has told police his wife didn't return from a sunrise jog July 19, but his timeline is falling apart.
Police don't believe Lori Hacking ever went jogging at a city park and doubt his claims he jogged the route before reporting her missing. They say he was crosstown at a store buying a new mattress at 10:23 a.m, before alerting police at 10:49 a.m. Police have recovered the old mattress from a trash bin in their neighborhood.
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It doesn't sound like Mark is under arrest. They are reporting no guards at his door.
So what new information DID Mark provide?
Did he fabricate "self defense" OR did he claim she "ran away" to Mexico?
sw
Good one!
So noble Mark was really doing a good thing by letting them think she was kidnapped instead? What a guy!
sw
Woah! I missed this part! When did they establish that he was drunk? Is there an article that states he was drunk and can you post a link to it? Thanks. Can't believe I missed this.
your imagination is scaring me now.
wouldn't that just be so cool if he was the stooge and she was the one that got away.
if only ...
I'm not sure I'll follow the trial, if there is one. More likely, the fireworks will center on the insanity plea, and I'm betting there will be one. I think, from the news today, they know where the body is.
Thanks for this update! FNC just mentioned some of this, but not all of it. In fact, they were speculating that he had told his doctors, rather than the family. I hope he told the family, not the doctors, because then it will be admissable.
Hi Meg33, I did not see post #79 till this morning. So you were aware late last night of breaking news on the case? Good catch!
To All, new thread,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1182828/posts
"Search now 'unnecessary,' say families of Lori Hacking"
You mean like "She committed suicide and I couldn't bear for the family to know..."?
oh wow, hope not.
Foxnews article this morning says
'Sources also told FOX News that police believe Lori Hacking's husband Mark used a knife to kill her in their apartment. There was evidence of a struggle, which police purposely have not released.
'Police believe Lori Hacking confronted her husband after discovering he had lied about graduating from college and being accepted to medical school.'
New thread at
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1182828/posts
haven't heard anymore on that "friend"
Here's a link to the new thread,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1182828/posts
Yeah...What a guy..he may have them chasing a shadow.
Utah has a gulty but insane plea..One can go to the hospital if found insane but once treated and"cured",instead of being released, one must serve the remaining sentence in prison.
This is good news. We need that kind of law in every state.
No.
I'm not buying that at all.
I'm also not buying that nobody knew he lied like a rug. Anybody who has even a passing relationship with another human being can detect if someone is lying, and he told whoppers.
I'm thinking that his plan was to kill her when he got her to NC so the families would be far removed from the situation. However, I'm thinking that she found out about something and he had to do it right away. Maybe she discovered a premeditated plan to kill her, or a girlfriend (or boyfriend) in NC. Who knows?
I think he confessed because he doesn't want any more snooping into his background. There's something there that is humiliating and he doesn't want the whole world to know.
That alias and that post office box......
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