Hidden Truth: Lori Hacking case

CBS NEWS ^ | August 7, 2004 | CBS

[eccentric]

I don't understand what they can't find the body. He reported her missing a few hours after he supposedly dumped her body. Always suspecting the husband first, surely the cops checked the dumpster then. With nothing there, didn't they immediately contact the landfill people to start checking the the trucks and where they were being dumped. There can't be that big of an area in one day.

Unless, of course, they for some reaseon didn't bother witht he landfill for several days.

[shezza]

He loved her with all his heart...couldn't bear to let her down...so he killed her. (Maybe it's just me, but I simply do not understand this "explanation.")

[MizSterious]

Hilarious pics! John "Tenderfoot" Kerry visits the west, LOL! Maybe Theresa knows him best, after all.

[since1868]

if you still have the Hacking ping list add me thanks

[lady lawyer]

A couple of my sons in law play Nintendo. One has one child, the other has five. They just like it. One of them plays with his older brothers, all of whom have families.

[najida]

Uh ho,

I still play computer games and I am a geezer!

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

Mark Hacking is all a lie; and it's all to glorify himself.

I admit to praying that Mark still has one more lie up his sleeve, and that he will come forward soon to tell the authorities that he's tied Lori up somewhere, and that she is still alive. I keep praying that he concocted something like this to make himself come out a hero after causing all this suffering and heartache.

[2Jedismom]

His response to her was along the lines of "FINE! We'll just all DIE in Oklahoma then!"

He says that like that's a BAD thing! Sounds good to me! I love Oklahoma...it's a beautiful state and has the greatest people.

[MizSterious]

Hacking Appears in Court on Murder Charge

54 minutes ago

By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer

SALT LAKE CITY - The man who confessed to shooting his wife in the head and throwing her body in a trash bin stood passive Tuesday as a judge read the charges against him during an initial court appearance.

Charged with first-degree murder, Mark Hacking appeared in court on a video feed from the county jail. Wearing an orange jumpsuit and with his hands cuffed behind his back, he uttered just three words, answering "Yeah — yes, sir" when the judge asked him to confirm his name.

On Monday, prosecutors filed the charges along with court documents detailing Hacking's confession to the slaying, made to his brothers as they visited with him in a psychiatric ward.

It said that after arguing with his wife July 19, Mark Hacking played video games, did some packing, "came across" his .22-caliber rifle and shot her in the head as she lay sleeping.

"Lori's dead and I killed her," Hacking told his brothers, according to the documents. The first-degree murder charge carries a maximum penalty of five years to life in prison.

Hacking, 28, also was charged with three counts of obstructing justice, which carries a maximum penalty of one to 15 years in prison. The obstruction charges relate to his alleged disposal of the body, the rifle and the mattress where she had been sleeping.

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

District Attorney David Yocom said prosecutors did not have enough evidence for an aggravated murder charge, which carries the death penalty, because they couldn't prove Lori Hacking was pregnant, as she confided to friends. They can't do so without a body.

The couple's crisis started on July 16 when Lori Hacking called the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to inquire about financial aid for her husband, who had told her and everyone else that he would be going to medical school there.

The couple had been planning to move there a few days later. But the 27-year-old woman was told there was no record of him even applying to the medical school. It has since been learned that he had not even graduated from the University of Utah, contrary to what he had led everyone to believe.

The following Monday, Hacking called police and reported his wife had gone jogging and never showed up for work. Authorities soon discovered he'd been busy buying a new mattress that morning, and the sheets on the bed were brand new.

They also found a bloody knife, which they believe was used to cut the mattress, and they found more blood on the headboard and in the woman's car — all identified by DNA tests as that of Lori Hacking.

Police suspect Mark Hacking used a knife to cut off the mattress's pillow top, rolled his wife's body in it and tossed it in a trash bin near the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute, where he worked as an orderly.

Based on a tip, they began searching a portion of the county landfill where the trash collected the day of the disappearance would have been unloaded. Authorities said about half of the 3,000 tons of trash has been searched.

The night after he reported his wife missing, Hacking was found naked outside a hotel and was taken to a psychiatric ward, where he remained until he was taken to jail on Aug. 9. He was held on $500,000 bail, which was increased Monday to $1 million.

On July 24, he was visited by his older brothers, Scott Hacking and Lance Hacking. The brothers asked that hospital staff delay Mark's medication so he would be lucid when he talked to them. They said he confessed and they passed that information along to police.

"Everything corroborates the truth of this statement to a `T,'" Yocom said.

Hacking's attorney, Gil Athay, did not return a phone call seeking comment. He previously told Salt Lake television station KUTV that he expected to challenge the admission of the brothers' statement, and that "mental illness, mental deficiency certainly will be an issue in this case." Source

[MizSterious]

LOL--I'd rather be in Oklahoma than in some parts of California!

[MizSterious]

Deseret Morning News, Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Start over? Search effort at landfill re-evaluated

By Leigh Dethman
Deseret Morning News

Police could have already missed Lori Hacking's body while sifting through thousands of tons of trash, according to a landfill official.

District Attorney David Yocom, left, is joined by prosecuting attorney Robert Stott as he announces charges on Monday.

Chris Bergin, Deseret Morning News

That possibility has prompted police and landfill officials to re-evaluate their search efforts, said Bud Stanford, operations manager at the Salt Lake Valley Solid Waste Management Facility.

Police have spent nine days searching the landfill for Lori's body and have found nothing of consequence. Police said they were giving searchers and cadaver dogs a rest before resuming the search Thursday.

Cadaver dogs and investigators have combed through approximately half of the 3,000 tons of trash in the section of the landfill where police believe Lori's body lies, Stanford said.

"Who's to say we didn't miss her when we went through that half?" Stanford said. "We hope we didn't, but we don't know for sure."

One possibility would be to move the trash from the landfill, Stanford said.

He declined to talk about other options Monday.

"We're just trying to formulate a plan to evaluate all of our options and do it as efficiently as we can so that we can be successful as soon as possible," Stanford said. "It's just an idea stage right now."

Finding a body in piles of garbage nearly 40 feet deep won't be easy, Salt Lake City police detective Dwayne Baird said.

Intense heat, coupled with the foul smell, forced the search to run in the wee hours of the morning. But that poses other problems.

"It's a little bit harder to see at night," Stanford said.

The search has been physically draining and dangerous for both searchers and cadaver dogs. Last week, the health department asked the landfill to start monitoring methane gas levels.

Searchers aren't required to wear special masks or suits, since the landfill is not considered a hazardous waste site. But Stanford said all searchers wear sturdy long pants, steel-toed boots and quality leather gloves.

"We're doing the best we can," Stanford said. "The people out here want to find Lori."

City leaders and landfill officials agreed they will continue searching so the Hacking family can give Lori a proper burial.

"It's difficult to think that a beautiful young lady was murdered, put in the trash and is out here in the landfill," Stanford said.

---

Source

[MizSterious]

A Hacking trial would be 'a pretty good boxing match'

By Stephen Hunt
The Salt Lake Tribune

	Gil Athay (Leah Hogsten/Tribune file photo)

If the Mark Hacking murder case goes to trial, former 3rd District Judge Michael Hutchings expects "a pretty good boxing match."
   Lead prosecutor Robert Stott, 60, has had a hand in every capital case filed by the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office during the past 28 years.
   Hacking's

	Deputy Salt Lake District Attorney Robert Stott. (Leah Hogsten/Tribune file photo)

attorney, D. Gilbert Athay, 64, has defended numerous murder suspects and is a staunch death penalty opponent who worked 14 years without pay trying to save Pierre Dale Selby, executed in 1987 for Ogden's Hi-Fi murders.
    "There will be a couple of people in the ring who will be able to go at it in a very   interesting way," said Hutchings, who retired six years ago and estimates the two appeared before him "hundreds of times."
    Hutchings called Stott "determined, methodical and focused. He's a guy who doesn't pull any punches, but you don't see any dirty tricks from Bob Stott."
    Athay is "well respected . . . professional,"   Hutchings said. "He always has his client's best interest at heart. He'd certainly be on everybody's top 10 list of the top criminal defense lawyers in Utah."
    Neither attorney "plays to the media" in the courtroom, said Hutchings, who spent 15 years on the bench.
    "You have two personalities that are not so dynamic that they   will get in the way of the facts, and I like that," he said. "Sometimes you can have attorneys become so dominating and so charismatic that they will overshadow and outshine the facts of the case. Sometimes the truth can get lost."

Source

[Spunky]

"Always suspecting the husband first, surely the cops checked the dumpster then. With nothing there, didn't they immediately contact the landfill people to start checking the the trucks and where they were being dumped.

Oh! but there was something there. They found the mattress. I can't remember if it was in the dumpster at the apartment or at the church. Anyway Mark spread stuff in various dumpsters and the police at that time didn't know where what was so they couldn't have known when the dumpster she was in was dumpted.

[sarasota]

That's why guys like him are called "con artists". They con the wife, the parents, the entire extended family.

[sarasota]

If the body was put in a dumpster, and the authorities know which one, can't it be tested for DNA?

[Rabbit29]

Thanks for the update :)

[Rabbit29]

They did check one trash can I believe. The one from the neighbor or whatever that had a foul smelling stench and a dark brown fluid in it. But I don't think I ever heard if that in itself came back as Lori's blood.

[Space Wrangler]

Hey! I resemble that remark! Seriously though, I have a high stress job, wife, and TWO kids, and one of my only sanctuaries is locking myself in my office and playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on my PS2 til my thumbs hurt!

[uvular]

So this was the inital court appearance; when does he go back to plead guilty or not guilty? Or did he not plead today because of possible plea deal?

[Rabbit29]

I do believe this initial court hearing is just officially charging him with murder. Basically stating that they are accusing him of committing the crime. The next court hearing is where he will have to enter a plea.