Posted on 08/01/2004 7:25:22 AM PDT by JockoManning
Search now 'unnecessary,' say families of Lori Hacking By Jennifer Dobner Deseret Morning News
Mark Hacking told his family something important Saturday — and whatever it is, it apparently makes any further volunteer searches for his missing 27-year-old wife unnecessary.
That news came late Saturday, not from Salt Lake City police but by way of a statement faxed to the Deseret Morning News and other media by Mark and Lori Hackings' families. "The families understand that Mark Hacking has provided information that makes it unnecessary for individuals or groups to continue the volunteer search," the statement reads. "At this time, the families ask that all efforts from volunteers cease and that anyone with information that they feel might be helpful contact the Salt Lake City Police Department directly." Salt Lake City police were to meet with family members late Saturday, and the family was expected to share with investigators details of their conversation with Mark Hacking, detective Phil Eslinger said. "To my knowledge we are going to work through the night with the family to determine what that information is," Eslinger said. "All I know is that it was a legitimate fax from the family. This is not another one of those cruel jokes or rumors." Police are expected to hold a news conference sometime today.
No further statements are likely from the Hacking or Soares families in the near future. Their statement included a plea that their privacy be respected in what was described in the families' statement as "this difficult time" and indicated they plan to make no further statements about the case. Contacted at his home Saturday night, attorney D. Gilbert Athay, who has been hired to represent Mark Hacking, said he had no comment. Lori Hacking disappeared July 19, allegedly while jogging in Memory Grove just before 6 a.m. Volunteers' search efforts in the park and nearby canyons, which over a week drew more than 4,000 people, were unsuccessful.
Police now say they believe Lori, who had just learned she was five-weeks pregnant, was never in the park. Mark Hacking has been hospitalized since the day after he reported his wife missing. He has also been named a "person of interest" in the case by police but as of Saturday had never officially been called a suspect. However, investigators took numerous pieces of evidence from the couple's apartment at 127 S. Lincoln St. (945 East), including box springs and computers. Also among the evidence being evaluated by forensic experts is a knife said to have blood and hair samples. Before Lori Hacking disappeared, the couple was supposedly moving to Chapel Hill, N.C., where Mark was to attend medical school. But three days into the case, it was learned that Mark Hacking had lied about his acceptance to medical school, as well as his recent graduation from the University of Utah. Over the past two weeks, more and more information has trickled out indicating that Mark may have been lying to his friends and family for as long as 18 months about his present and future life. The details and the time line of events Hacking shared with police also quickly crumbled. Mark Hacking said on July 19 that he had learned Lori had failed to arrive at work about 10 a.m., but a mattress store clerk said Mark was shopping for a mattress at the time. A credit card receipt showed he had indeed purchased one, just 26 minutes before he called police at 10:49 a.m. Until Saturday, it appeared that Mark had also maintained he knew nothing about his wife's disappearance. In a conversation with his father, Douglas Hacking, Mark said he had lied about his life because he felt pressure to be successful like his father and siblings. But he said he didn't know what had happened to his wife.
"He looked me in the eye and said, 'No,' " Douglas Hacking said when recounting his conversation with his son to reporters July 23. No one is certain what Lori Hacking knew of her husband's deception or when she knew it. However, co-workers at Wells Fargo Bank have said that the Friday before she disappeared, Lori received an upsetting phone call and left in tears. Police have focused most of their search efforts on the Salt Lake Valley Solid Waste Facility, sifting through piles of refuse on four separate occasions with investigators and four cadaver dogs. That search was temporarily suspended on Friday, with police saying the dogs needed a day or two of rest. So far, the only comment from police about the landfill searches has been that "nothing of consequence" had yet been found. Landfill searches are expected to resume, but police have not been specific about when. The task of finding what is presumably Lori Hacking's body in the landfill could be seen as nearly impossible. More than 2,500 tons of refuse is deposited there daily by more than 600 dump trucks. Police have focused their efforts on a one- to two-acre segment of the facility. Police apparently believed the landfill held significant clues as to Lori Hacking's whereabouts as early as one day after she went missing. Landfill executive director Romney Stewart told the Deseret Morning News last week that police asked him on July 20 to suspend dumping in a certain area so that it could be searched.
E-mail: jdobner@desnews.com
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595081258,00.html
I just keep thinking...that if the body is very decomposed (and it surely is by now), to the point where the knife wounds are obliterated...what's to keep Mark from claiming she killed herself?
He would not have pulled that off if they'd found the body right away, because the placement of the wounds would refute it. But the longer this goes on...
Dr Hacking is a pediatrician.
She couldn't kill herself and bury herself in a landfill.
http://newstrove.com/cgi-bin/search.pl?search=lori+hacking
Hacking news stories link
The insanity plea works very rarely and is extremely difficult to prove in court. It's obvious that the perp set himself up for an insanity plea ever since the cops started finding lies and inconsistencies in his alibi. He pulled a stunt to get put into the psych ward so that the cops couldn't interrogate him.
Mark's attempts to get an insanity plea will fail. If he was insane, he would have admitted that he killed his wife because she was possessed by the devil or that God told him to do it or some such thing. His wife's well-hidden body and attempted alibi show that he knew he was doing something wrong. If he were insane, he would be sleeping like a baby and would be proclaiming that his conscience is clear. He would not have been getting all distraught and getting picked up by the cops running naked around a hotel while gibbering uncontrollably. He didn't act insane, he acted out his stereotype of how insane people act.
But he could say (liar that he is), well, she had a miscarriage from all the stress dealing with my med-school lie, and then she killed herself and I couldn't bear for the family to know that so I got rid of her body and cleaned up the mess, 'cause I was so ashamed that I failed her so miserably, etc.
Good links, thanks! I'm seeing a lot of new articles, but none of them seem to have any new information in them. I don't see the point in posting a new thread, with no new information--or of pinging a bunch of people to old news. I keep thinking there will be an arrest or a discovery soon--the family and police are very "leak-proof" since this last statement.
Bizzee, I have no doubt whatsoever he might try something like that. His lies have always worked for him in the past, and I think he believes in his ability to snow anyone and everyone. (And hey, it seems to be working ok for Scott Peterson...)
Published 8/1/2004 11:19 PM
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- The vigil for a missing Utah woman became a waiting game Sunday after Lori Hacking's loved ones released a statement implying that her husband, Mark, had come forth with the dreaded confirmation that she was indeed lying dead in an undisclosed location.
The proverbial other shoe appeared to be dropping Sunday when Lori Hacking's family members said there was no longer a reason for the public to look for the missing woman; however the police remained silent Sunday night about the chances that homicide detectives would be putting the cuffs on Mark any time soon.
"The primary person of interest, Mark Hacking, remains at a local medical facility and has not been in the custody of the police," police said in a written statement Sunday afternoon. "We continue to follow-up on all leads in this case."
The announcement virtually snuffed out any hope that Lori Hacking would miraculously be found alive, and seemed to ensure that her troubled husband's arrest was not only imminent but was a mere formality.
"I know it is bad to say, but in a way it is exciting because we are getting closer to finding out what happened," Saysha Nielson, a member of the Hacking's Mormon church ward told the Salt Lake Tribune Sunday. "Apparently, it is on his shoulders somehow."
The developments appeared to come as a surprise to investigators who had suspected from the beginning of the case that foul play had been involved in the young pregnant woman's disappearance on July 19. One day later, her husband checked himself into a psychiatric ward where he has since remained; he is the son of a well-known Utah pediatrician.
During that time, worried volunteers frantically beat the bushes around the canyon park where Lori, 27, had reportedly gone jogging. Meanwhile, detectives were focused on trashcans and dumpsters in the area as well as a landfill where dogs trained to sniff out corpses spent four nights going over a 2-acre swath estimated to hold 2,500 tons of garbage.
"The search of the landfill will continue this Friday, Aug. 6, when the dogs become available to continue the search," said the statement that was read to the anxious media by Det. Dwayne Baird.
Baird did not take questions at the brief news conference, nor did he elaborate on the brief statement that basically said Mark Hacking had said something to an in-law that was then relayed to the police.
"A member of the Hacking family came in and provided additional substantive information," Baird said. "This information, along with other leads, will continue to be followed up on by investigators."
Questions left hanging open were whether or not they knew where Lori's body was, and when Mark Hacking would be arrested.
Authorities in Salt Lake City have been telling the media that patience should be the watchword. Forensic evidence as of Sunday appeared largely to be in the realm of DNA identification, which can take a matter of weeks or months to complete. Hacking's status as a self-admitted psychiatric patient calls into question the credibility of any statements he made to his wife's bewildered and torn family.
At the same time, friends and relatives reported that nothing was obviously amiss with the young couple that would corroborate any history violence within the Hacking home.
That image of domestic bliss was called into question after the media discovered Mark Hacking had not been accepted to medical school in North Carolina -- even though he had told people he that he had been and that he and his wife who was only five weeks pregnant, would be moving east in the fall.
The parallel to the disappearance of Laci Peterson in California was difficult to escape. Like Lori Hacking, Laci was by all outward appearances a happy young woman who was expecting her first child and who was looking forward to the rest of her life with a man whom it would be highly charitable to even call him "flawed."
I agree...No new news to post since the "information" has made volunteer searchers unnecessary...according to the family..
I just hope he isn't lying about the location of the body to try and prevent it from being found.
Nothing. In fact, he can claim anything he wants -- abducted by aliens, bushy haired stranger climbed in the window, food poisoning at an Albanian bistro, God pointed and she dropped dead, etc.
It all comes down to what a jury is going to believe.
I don't think it matters if he's lying. The police don't seem to be inclined to take his word for much of anything. If it comes to trial, I don't think the jury will, either.
Just guessing, but I believe Hacking made a slip when he was talking with that relative. He revealed something about this case that only the killer would know. Realizing this comment could be significant, that relative went to the police. They put the info in his comment together with what they already know (and have been careful not to publicize) and they now know for a fact that he's the killer.
Hacking is cunning and manipulative, but he's no genius and he talks too much. I think this just came back to bite him. Look at his past. He drew the store clerks in his own neighborhood into his deception about the smoking. That was sloppy. He drew other missionaries into his dissolute activities up in Canada. That was sloppy too. He clearly has a history of saying more than is discreet for somebody who has secrets he wants to keep. I think he made the same mistake during this recent conversation with this relative.
Unfortunately, most juries that are selected are missing a key piece of evidence...their brains. The only ones that can serve on a jury for 4-6 months at a time are those diagnosed with Alzheimers and the unemployed who can't keep a job. These are the people making the decisions for the country on who goes to prison and who is freed. Pitiful.
yes. Lies and obfuscations unfortunately do work, too much of the time. (#42 comes to mind...)
Mark may have told them she is dead, but I don't think he will ever admit he's the one who made her that way. Just MHO. I'll be happy if I'm wrong.
I wonder why it wouldn't be admissible if he told his doctors? I thought doctor-patient privilege only applied to issues related to the treatment of his health. Is the argument that the confession is part of his mental health treatment? That seems pretty weak....
I would find it hard to believe they don't have some kind of DNA evidence... even hair from her hairbrush or something. And since she'd just found out she was pregnant, isn't it possible that her doctor has something from tests that could be used as well?
But with all its drawbacks, it's far better, IMO, than a system in which some arrogant, high-handed, agenda-driven, black-robed individual seals the defendant's fate. BTW, a lot of the retirees who serve on juries are very sharp people with a lot of experience.
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