Deceits Follow Husband in Hacking Case

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks for the links--here's another I haven't seen posted yet. It's from yesterday, but it has some interesting tidbits in it:

Lab: Evidence May Help Solve Hacking Case

Fri Jul 30, 7:18 AM ET

By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer

SALT LAKE CITY - Police did a thorough job of collecting evidence that could prove useful in helping solve the disappearance of Lori Hacking, the pregnant woman reported missing by her husband, the head of the state's crime lab said Thursday.

Much of the evidence consists of everyday items taken from the couple's apartment that shows no obvious connection to foul play, said Maj. Stuart Smith, chief of the state Bureau of Forensic Services.

But that evidence, including such routine items as scissors, knives, tape and rope, may be needed later to match evidence uncovered from other places, including a municipal landfill where police have been diligently searching.

Police, who have spent four nights using a backhoe to burrow 15 feet deep into a huge mound of garbage and dirt, said they didn't plan to return with their cadaver dogs Thursday night.

"The dogs need a break," said Detective Phil Eslinger. He was uncertain how long the dogs needed to rest, but said their handlers would know when the dogs are up to the job again.

The landfill search may be a long shot, but police can't afford to overlook tips that led them to cordoning off a sprawling area used to deposit a day's layer of trash, Smith said.

One tip came from a neighbor of the Hackings who said someone may have used his plastic trash bin, left on the street, to dispose of a dead body. The neighbor found a foul "protein-rich" liquid in the bottom of the barrel after collection rounds the day Lori Hacking disappeared.

The landfill search is nothing if not daunting. "A car could be in there and you might not find it," Eslinger said. "This is very much like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Smith, a former state police investigator who supervises Utah's main crime lab, gave police high marks for collecting and preserving evidence in the Hacking case.

"The police followed good procedures," Smith said. "That will all bear fruit later when there's something to compare it to."

The state crime lab has a six-week backlog of samples from criminal cases awaiting testing. Smith said he was reluctant to drop everything for the Hacking case until police can identify their most important pieces of evidence.

A single DNA analysis can cost $700, he said. That makes it important for investigators to decide which pieces of evidence require a full chemical or DNA analysis. It can take several weeks to fully analyze a single piece of evidence.

The fact that Lori Hacking, a 27-year-old stock trader's assistant, was an adopted daughter is one factor that can complicate DNA testing, he said.

Smith left the impression police have yet to collect evidence from her apartment or elsewhere that would obviously point to foul play in Lori Hacking's disappearance. But he wouldn't discuss the condition of an old mattress police recovered from a trash bin in the Hackings' neighborhood.

Police said Mark Hacking, a 28-year-old hospital orderly, was at a store buying a new mattress shortly before telling police his wife hadn't returned from an early-morning jog July 19.

Mark Hacking has been named a "person of interest" but not a suspect in the case.

His credibility came under scrutiny since it was revealed he had been lying to his wife, family and police about having been accepted to medical school at the University of North Carolina. Neither had Hacking graduated from college, as he told friends and relatives.

Police said Hacking lived a life of various lies for at least four of the five years he has been married. He has been at a psychiatric hospital since he was found running outdoors naked the night after the search began.

The University of Utah has posted Hacking's job, health care assistant, which starts at $8.42 an hour and requires work at odd hours. Health care assistants work under the direction of nurses and support patients' basic needs, the job description says.

The University accepted Hacking's resignation July 23, television station KUTV reported.

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