Utah Husband Charged in Wife’s Murder

SALT LAKE CITY – From the day Lori Hacking disappeared, police never referred to her husband as anything other than a “person of interest” – even as the lies he told relatives unraveled and his psychological condition deteriorated. Authorities closed in Monday, arresting Mark Hacking for the murder of his pregnant wife despite the lack of a body.

He was picked up before his scheduled release from a psychiatric ward at the University of Utah Hospital and denied bail.

“We’ve actually been ready to make the arrest, probably could have made it sooner had he been released from the hospital sooner,” said Salt Lake Police Chief Rick Dinse, adding that Hacking’s 13-day hospitalization gave detectives more time to conduct their investigation.

Lori Hacking, 27, an assistant stockbroker, has not been seen since late July 18. Mark Hacking reported her missing the following day, telling family, friends and police that she failed to return from a morning jog at a park near downtown.

Cracks soon emerged in her husband’s timeline and overall credibility, and police later said it was likely Lori never made it to the park. “We believed very early in the investigation that she may have been a victim of a crime and her husband may have been responsible,” said Dinse.

Investigators believe Lori Hacking was killed in the couple’s apartment and that her body is buried somewhere in 3,000 tons of trash at the county landfill. Searches using cadaver dogs in the last two weeks have not turned up the body. That effort was to resume Wednesday.

Mark Hacking, 28, is being held for investigation of one count of aggravated murder. Prosecutors have 72 hours to file charges, but they could ask for an extension, if necessary. He is being held without bail and is on a suicide watch.

Detectives identified a motive and have found the weapon that killed Lori Hacking, said Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse. He declined to elaborate about either detail.

Both Dinse and the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office said failing to find the body would not keep the case against Hacking from proceeding, though there are questions how they would show aggravating circumstances.

Those could include multiple victims, killing for personal gain, to elude arrest or carrying out the crime in an exceptionally heinous manner.

Lori Hacking had told friends that she was five weeks pregnant, but Dinse said police could not confirm that. If her body is found and the pregnancy is confirmed, prosecutors could add an additional murder charge, Dinse said. That might satisfy the condition for aggravated circumstances.

Hacking had claimed that his wife went jogging when she vanished and never showed up for work. Thousands of friends and volunteers turned out to search for her and distribute leaflets throughout the community.

Even so, police already were investigating her husband. They searched the couple’s apartment and removed items, including unconfirmed reports of a bloody knife. “We do believe we do know what that instrument was but we’re not going to discuss it,” Dinse said Monday.

Police were seen removing a box spring – but no mattress – from the couple’s apartment. They refused to confirm that had seized an old mattress from a nearby trash bin, but they later asked people to stop providing them tips on old mattresses.

The mattresses became a matter of public attention after it was learned that on the morning that Hacking reported his wife had disappeared, he was buying a mattress even though he told friends and authorities he had been searching her jogging route.

Two days after the disappearance report, news organizations discovered that Hacking had lied about graduating from the University of Utah and lied about being accepted at a medical school in North Carolina, where the couple was to have moved within just days.

Mark Hacking was hospitalized when he was seen running around naked outside a motel where he had taken a room, hours after making an emotional appeal on television for help in searching for his wife.

“My family and I are profoundly anguished to lose Lori, our precious daughter and sister,” Lori Hacking’s mother, Thelma Soares, said Monday through a spokesman. “Our lives will never be the same, and we will grieve for her and miss her until the day we die.”

Soares also reached out to the Hacking family, saying, “To the wonderful Hacking family who has shared this double tragedy with us, may Heavenly Father strengthen you in the difficult days ahead. You know of our love for you.”

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On the Net: http://www.findlori.com