Posted on 07/31/2004 10:26:24 AM PDT by MizSterious
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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I find it hard to believe that his wife would never have caught on to his smoking habit. For a nonsmoker to kiss a smoker is a very unpleasant experience; even proximity to someone who has recently smoked makes it rather obvious. Smokers don't realize how bad it is, because they're inured to it. I would imagine their relationship wasn't going too well, because obviously they weren't getting very close to one another.
What a guy. His lawyer is going to have to spread a lot of mayonaisse to get a jury to choke this s**t sandwich down.
I wish the press and the police would stop hounding this poor guy...for heaven's sake...he just lost his wife!!!!!!!
Hi MizS! Hope all is well with you...
I've been watching some of the news reports (*TV*)...it doesn't look good for the husband does it.
I once knew a guy like this. He'd lie even when the truth would do. He'd lie knowing that it would be found out in short order. I don't know what goes through these people's heads, but they're sure a pain to be around. Dangerous too, from the looks of this case.
The trick is going to be getting him remember where he left her.
Unfortunately, I think he left her in several different areas :-(
We all knew a guy like this. As a matter of fact, he was the President of the United States. (For those unsure of who I mean, my screen name may give a clue ...)
He sat on a bench at the train station every day, all the while his family thought he was at work.
When the debt and the burden of supporting his family became overwhelming, he murdered his mother who lived with him, his wife, and his three children.
Lined them all up in the ballroom of his mansion and disappeared.
Thanks to America's Most Wanted he was caught and sits in jail.
What's up with the disappearing wives and 'abducted' school girls out here??
You were kidding, right? A few snippets from the story...
>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.
>She put her plans to pursue an MBA on hold until her husband could graduate from medical school.
>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.
>..he was seen running around at night naked in sandals...
>...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.
>Doctors are trying to "sort out what is going on in his mind,"...
IMHO, it sounds like this guy is a whack job that just committed a hack job.
Mix this with Chippendales and England and we gots ourselves a MOVIE!
..you know how if you hang your coat next to a smokers', your coat even picks up the smell ( sorry smokers, but it is absolutely true..think of what it is doing to your insides)
but more than that, I would suspect Lori was a "Stepford" wife type of wife.....she might have accepted all that Marko told her without reservation, like a good wife...
in that sense, I am NOT a good wife!.....lol
I'm holding this at arm's length until I see more sources, especially the police themselves, confirm it. It's too important a revelation to get scant mention at the bottom of this article. It really deserves a screaming headline of its own.
Thanks for the ping, MS!
then they actually had a pt. from the psych hosp where Marko worked....
Fox was really scrapping the barrel on that one....
getting back to the garbage can and the maggots....I didn't think maggots could mature that quickly....so maybe the contents had nothing to do with Lori...
That she went to the going away party with him that evening instead of going home to Mom leaves me wondering tho.
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