www.justiceforchandra.com

[rd]

Well, what do you know. The route from Memory Park to University area is five miles. He emphasized to the friends he called that he ran three miles each way, retracing Lori's jogging route within the park, six miles total.

The run would be through downtown Salt Lake City. I guess at five in the morning it would be very quiet, so quiet you must be able to hear things a person would never want to hear going through their mind, things you hear after you murdered your pregnant wife. He may never come out of that psycho ward.

He had apparently put their mattress in a dumpster behind a Mormon Church about a half mile away from his apartment earlier in the middle of the night. Go to the park at five, park Lori's car, and run home. Tell your friends how you just ran looking for Lori. Go buy a mattress before calling police.

Yeah, sounds like a plan to me.

rd


from www.strib.com (fair use)

Kin trying to keep the focus on Lori
Missing woman: Mark Hacking's academics deception may not be linked to Lori's disappearance, and family urges the search to go on
By Ashley Broughton and Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune
July 23, 2004

As the search goes on for Lori Hacking, in what Salt Lake City police continue to label a missing persons case, more questions arose Thursday about her husband, Mark Hacking, and statements he has made about his wife's disappearance.

On Monday morning, Mark Hacking called police to report that his wife had disappeared while jogging in or near City Creek Canyon.

At about the same time Monday morning, Mark Hacking reportedly was seen buying a new mattress at a store in South Salt Lake.

Detective Dwayne Baird said Thursday that Hacking's actions before and after Lori Hacking vanished - combined with an elaborate deception in which he apparently falsely told his family he had graduated from college and been accepted into medical school - have contributed to a heightened investigative interest in him.

"He is a person of interest because of the fact that there are discrepancies," Baird said. He called the medical school deception - first revealed on Wednesday - "the tip of the pyramid."

Baird stressed police were not convinced of foul play on Mark Hacking's part and were not calling him a suspect.

"We're not convinced one way or another," he said. "This is still a missing persons case."

Family members Thursday also urged everybody to focus on searching for Lori Hacking and not get distracted.

And Detective Phil Eslinger said, "We've got a couple of promising leads that we're working on right now, on the criminal aspect of it."

Police spent Thursday afternoon searching Dumpsters near the apartment complex where the Hackings lived. A similar search took place earlier this week behind a nearby ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint near the Hackings' apartment.

A church member said police on Monday asked permission to take the contents of a Dumpster behind the church that held a mattress and some door frames. On Tuesday, the door frames remained but the mattress was gone.

The owners of Bradley's Furniture, Etc. told The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday that Mark Hacking came into their South Salt Lake store at about 9:45 Monday morning shopping for a mattress.

"He just came in like any normal customer, just like his wife sent him to buy a mattress - nothing out of the ordinary," said Lisa Downs, who is the wife of store owner Chad Downs.

Lisa Downs said Mark Hacking's credit card purchase of a queen-sized mattress went through at 10:23 a.m. on Monday. Baird confirmed that purchase on Thursday evening.

Friends said on Wednesday that Mark Hacking contacted them about Lori Hacking's disappearance at about 10 a.m. Monday. They also said Hacking had told them he had run his wife's usual jogging route twice, 3 miles each way, looking for her before he called them.

Mark Hacking called police to report his wife missing at 10:49 a.m., according to police records. Lisa Downs said she figures he was still in her store's parking lot at 10:35. Because store staffers were unable to fully secure the mattress to Mark Hacking's car, he was asked to drive home slowly.

Under normal speed limits, the trip from the mattress store to the Hackings' apartment in the University area of Salt Lake City takes about 12 minutes, according to the online map database Mapquest.

Meanwhile, fewer volunteer searchers were scouring the rugged terrain of City Creek Canyon, where Lori Hacking may have disappeared, and canvasing surrounding neighborhoods. Many said they were surprised and confused to learn about Mark Hacking's deceptions about his schooling, but were not swayed from their efforts to find his wife.

For the third day, Mark Hacking, who worked as a psychiatric ward orderly, did not join the search. Police confirmed that officers had been called late Monday to the Chase Suites near 700 East 400 South in Salt Lake City on a disturbance call, and that the disturbance involved Mark Hacking. They also said he received medical attention at the scene.

Relatives said Thursday that Hacking was hospitalized on Tuesday morning.

Baird said Hacking was interviewed Wednesday, but was not under police guard.

Mark Hacking's relatives said Thursday he apparently felt pressured to lie about his educational plans, as he has two older brothers who are "high-achieving," as a doctor and an electrical engineer.

Douglas Hacking said Thursday he had spent all night with his son and talked with him about the deception. "He feels relieved that it's come to an end," he said. "It's like lifting a heavy load off his back."

Mark's brother, Scott Hacking, said, however, that he never felt that kind of pressure.

"My parents are amazing parents," he said. "I've always found, growing up, that they supported me in my personal goals."

On Monday, Mark Hacking had said his wife was five weeks pregnant. Family members Thursday said one of his sisters, Sarah, had seen the pregnancy test and was able to confirm the pregnancy.

Although few others apparently knew about the pregnancy, one of Lori Hacking's college roommates said Thursday she knew the couple was trying to conceive.

Erin Galbraith, who lived with Lori Hacking for three years while the two were attending the U., said she could not imagine two people more devoted to one another.

"Mark has just been fantastic," she said Thursday. "He has just treated her as you would want anyone to treat one of your best friends. He was the softie."

Other friends who saw Lori Hacking the night before she disappeared said they also had that impression. The Hackings attended an open house hosted by Angie Hawkes, another of Lori Hacking's former college roommates. She said the couple seemed happy.

"We talked about the move, we talked about med school, everything," added Galbraith. "That's what had been planned on for so long. I didn't know any different, and I still don't know what to think."

Lori Hacking's father, Herald Soares, said he was concerned, but not suspicious, about the academic deceptions. A former high school teacher in Fullerton, Calif., Soares said he initially did not graduate from the eighth grade.

"Now I have a master's degree," Soares said. "Personally, if he didn't want to go to school, that's OK. When you're young, sometimes you don't want those pressures."

Mark Hacking's family and his wife's family remain "very united," brother Lance Hacking said. "We know Lori's out there. We're committed to getting her."

Relatives said they had no idea what Mark Hacking's true plans were once the couple moved to North Carolina within the next few days, allegedly for Mark to go to school. They said they did not believe Lori Hacking was aware of her husband's fabrications.

Ross Williams, a lifelong friend of Mark Hacking's, described him as "a man of God, a man of service and a man of love." He said he was shocked to hear about the deception. "Mark hasn't lied to me in 27 years. If that's the case now, it's not like Mark."

Members of Mark Hacking's family appeared at two news conferences Thursday accompanied by Ed Smart, father of Elizabeth Smart, a Salt Lake City teenager kidnapped from her home in June 2002 and found nine months later in the company of two street preachers.

"They are a great family," Smart said of the Hackings. "They have a lot of faith."

Asked about Mark Hacking's deceptions, Smart said, "families go through and have issues. That doesn't mean it has anything to do with Lori."

He pleaded for volunteers' continuing support. "Don't jump to conclusions. Please don't. That can make a difference . . . Remember, Elizabeth was in our back yard, literally, for two months. These people came so close to finding her."

Both Hawkes and Galbraith said they had volunteered in the search. "It's hard to stay focused, especially with this business with Mark," Galbraith said. "That's not the important thing right now . . . it's disheartening to see so few people show up, and the numbers dropping every day."

Hawkes said that as the Hackings were leaving Sunday night, "I gave her a hug goodbye," she said. "It dawned on me they were going to be moving, and I asked her if this would be the last time I would see her."

Lori Hacking told her it might be the last time she would see Mark, but not her. Mark Hacking was planning to drive to North Carolina before his wife, who was planning to fly there the first week in August. Lori Hacking promised her she was still planning to attend a girlfriend's birthday party Aug. 1.

"It just freaks me out that she was at my house, and less than 12 hours later, this whole thing goes down," Hawkes said. "It's just a shock."

aebroughton@sltrib.com
mlaplante@sltrib.com
---
Tribune reporter Michael N. Westley contributed to this story.


How to help

* Donations to assist in the search for Lori Hacking will be accepted at any Wells Fargo bank across the country.
Donors can also mail contributions to the Lori Hacking Search Fund at 1338 Foothill Drive, Box 140, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84108. The address is also available at http://www.findlori.com.
The family expects to release information in the next few days about how to make larger, tax-deductible donations.

[peripeteia]

"He just came in like any normal customer, just like his wife sent him to buy a mattress - nothing out of the ordinary," said Lisa Downs, who is the wife of store owner Chad Downs.

This is the description the store owner's wife of Mark the day he bought the matress. This blows the defense of being a nut case out the window.

I was wondering what Marko did for a living and we learn that he worked as a psychiatric orderly. This is interesting as he would have access to drugs that could kill a person,or at least severly drug a person, and also access to needles and syringes. Also he had a bike which he could have put in the car and driven home from the park.

Well they were at a party and everything seems to have been alright. Something snapped. This sure seems like a flash of deja-vous of the Peterson case.

I wonder if they have brought the dogs in to search, can't remember reading that? There must be lakes around there? My guess is that he dumped her in water? Wonder if the hospital has an incinerator that he might have had access to? This is a sure way to incinerate a body? Body limbs and operating room debris and such are burned in some hospitals?

It's a thought?! He had access, he would have known when the coast was clear. The amount of garbage that a hosptial dumps is staggering. It would be very easy to conceal a body in the vast amounts of garbage that are dispensed from a hospital. Would be very curious to know if the psych hospital that he worked at was a part of a large hospital. Also, in some hospital the orderly takes the bodies to the morgue, and usually the garbage disposal is in the basement where the morgue is, so depending on the level of security in the hospital, and employee could come in an do about anything, especially someone in hospital garbs, and wheeling a stretcher.

Well Lori has to be somewhere. If the dogs can't find her, then this means that Mark was up all night disposing of her body farther afield than Salt Lake City.

I'm sorry but I'll never be able to swallow this coincidence about the matress, especially the length he went to lie about not only what he was planning to do, but that he played out the charade of allowing everyone to think he was still going to university. No one can convince me that dearest Marko was and OK kind of guy, he played this game far too a very long time.

My only guess is that he is a closet gay, who was hoping to have a new life, or that he had a girlfriend or a love attraction waiting for him in Chapel Hill. Something doesn't jive here, because it is not like the Carolinas are close to utah, and I don't have to look at a map to tell me this, and that there had to be some kind of an attraction, or something that he had to run away from, the stiff climate of living in a community where he felt he was not accepted and given the rate of bigomy in Utah, extra marital affairs doesn't strike me as something you run have away to the other end of the country. But if you were gay, I can't imagine that it is excepted there. Perhaps I'm wrong but I would think that this is not alright in the Mormon community, that being gay would not be accepted.
The Mormans who I have engaged with, in no uncertain terms have told me that being gay is a NO NO.

Did he meet a patient from the Carolinas, did he have an intimate from the internet? Something is very weird here.!!!! Was there anyone he knows in the Carolinas. Like of all the places that there is to go to why pick North Carolina.? Was he going there because on of his family members had gone there..I just can't make any sense of the move, unless someone was waiting for him at the other end, be it a man or a woman?

So much for my crooked mind, I apologize for my being jadded and not sympathic towards Mark!
_________________
A vision sent me on the path of seeking justice for Chandra, nothing I've seen in print to date has diminished the vividness but only served to reaffirm the validity of this vision.

[rd]

Jayne, here's the details on your breaking news alert last night. I see Rita Cosby is on the case. Looks like she's breaking more news on yet another disappearance.

rd


from www.foxnews.com (fair use)

Bloodstains Found in Hacking Apartment
Fox News
Sunday, July 25, 2004

SALT LAKE CITY — Bloodstains have been found all over the apartment of Mark and Lori Hacking (search), family and investigative sources told Fox News.

Police sources say that when they entered the Hacking apartment earlier in the week, it appeared to have been cleaned. But investigators detected a substantial amount of blood and blood drippings using the forensic chemical luminol, which can make traces of blood glow blue-green in the dark even if it has been cleaned up, sources say. Police say they believe the blood is Lori’s and that she was attacked in her apartment. Toxicology results that can confirm whether it is Lori’s blood are still pending.

Detectives meet privately with the Mark and Lori’s families earlier in the day. Homicide detectives usually inform family members in high profile cases before announcing pertinent information to the media such as possible suspects. Police have previously called husband Mark Hacking a “person of interest” in the investigation, but have not declared him a suspect.

Police searched a municipal landfill with cadaver sniffing dogs earlier today, possibly searching for a discarded mattress. Mark Hacking reportedly purchased a queen-sized mattress a mere half hour before reporting his wife missing to police. Investigators removed a box spring from the couple’s apartment late Monday afternoon.

Lori Hacking, 27, was reported missing to Salt Lake City police on Monday morning by her husband who said she did not return from her usual morning run in Salt Lake’s Memory Grove Park and City Creek Canyon area. More than 1,200 volunteers began searching through the perilous terrain surrounding the city park and canyon for the five-week-pregnant Lori on Tuesday.

Mark Hacking has come under increasing scrutiny in the past few days after it was revealed that he had never completed college and was never accepted to graduate school. Family members of both Mark and Lori Hacking said they were surprised to learn that Mark had not graduated from University of Utah and had never even applied to the University of North Carolina, where they believed the couple was going to move so that Mark could attend medical school.

Family members have denied that Mark is in a psychiatric ward and on medication following a breakdown during which he was found running around a local hotel with nothing but sandals on Monday night. Mark was checked into University Neuropsychiatric Institute early Tuesday morning, but his current whereabouts are uncertain.

Family members are sticking by Hacking. Mark’s brother, Scott Hacking, told Fox News that he had spoken with his brother in the hospital.

“I looked my brother right in the eye and he told me he had nothing to do with it,” he said.

Investigators are not so sure; they have indicated that that they believe the investigation will be completed in a matter of days.

“We think he’s lying and we hope to prove it soon,” an investigative official told Fox News.

Fox News' Rita Cosby, Carol McKinley and C. Spencer Beggs contributed to this report.

[Kortnie]

Because I'm deeply involved in Women's Studies I'm very aware of the enormous amount of violence against women in this world. I knew that O.J. did it. I knew that Scott Peterson did it. And I bet you anything I have (except my husband and my cats) that Mark Hacking is the sole guilty party here. In my humble opinion, the search for Lori begins and ends with her pathological husband. It's amazingly fitting his last name, because I think he hacked her up which is why there's this mysterious mattress scenario -blood on the old one. I mean I am surely not Sherlock Holmes, but this case does not seem, to me, very difficult to figure out.

[rd]

Welcome, Kortnie. I think you're right, hard for me to figure how any of those family members of either family could stand there and say they support him. I guess denial ain't only a river in Egypt.

I am surprised at blood in the apartment. Lori must have put up a fight for her life. I would have thought he would have drugged her to kill her, but maybe was trying to make it look like somebody kidnapped her on jogging trail and dumped her elsewhere. Not sure where but I assume out of town, in a canyon somewhere. Do any of you remember those maps where Ricci might have been in the Elizabeth Smart case?

He knows he's caught red handed, with blood on his hands. He's trying to not answer questions. We're all familiar with that. And he's trying to spend the rest of his life in a cushy psycho ward that he knows all so well.

rd

[peripeteia]

I'm having trouble with Mark's story, he stated that his wife failed to wake him up, from his night shift. They had been to a party and the woman who had the party says that 12 hours before they were at her house. This implies that they left around 10-11pm. So when is it that Mark allegedly went to work, and arrived home. If he worked 2400 he would have gotten off at 0800, it he went at 2300 then he would have gotten off at 0700. Lori allegedly went around 0500. No matter how far she would have run, Lori would have been home by the time he got home and ro sleep.

I just saw a picture of the couple on TV, Mark is overweight and does not look athletic. Lori is very petit, very thin, the picture that is posted on the net does not show how small she is in real life.
_________________
A vision sent me on the path of seeking justice for Chandra, nothing I've seen in print to date has diminished the vividness but only served to reaffirm the validity of this vision.

[Kortnie]

Thanks for your response, rd. My theory is that he did not PLAN on killing her. I think that after this party they attended Sun. night, he admitted the truth of NC to her in their apt. and she, utterly shocked, lost it. You know that Mark Hacking is already a person FILLED with rage due to his enormous feelings of intellectual inferiority, and her reaction to his admission caused him to EXPLODE. Imagine all that pretense of his, the self-loathing is huge, wouldn't take a big match to light that emotional tinderbox. Yet, he appears to be truly loved by both families?? A master manipulator? Just his skinhead looks turn me off. Yuck. RD, when I think of psych wards I think of "One Flew..." and Nurse Ratched. How is that "cushy?" And, how would a life of forced indoor imprisonment be "cushy?" No, I think he truly went bonkers, which means he has a little, just a little, more heart and soul than, say, Scott Peterson, who possesses a flat, emotionless (heartless/soulless) affect AT ALL TIMES. At least, I think, Hacking has remorse. Peterson? Only that he got caught.

[rd]

It is cushy compared to an execution. Remorse? His words and how he said them to his wife's grieving parents are exactly the same as Peterson. There is only remorse he didn't get away with it as he thought he would.

Guys like that do not admit anything to anybody at anytime. He did not admit anything to her, the move was imminent, she became pregnant, how long could he fool her that he was in medical school if she was there with him? Maybe a few days.

He took a page from Scott Peterson's diary. He was moving on, without Lori. Lori had to die, a victim in a park like Chandra and Laci were supposed to be.

Thses guys are copycats, one from the other. Is the chain broken?

rd

[propria]

hello, kortnie ...

and welcome aboard ... it's always good to have another voice calling for truth and justice for those who can no longer seek help for themselves. i agree with almost everything you've said here ... you clearly have a good grasp on some of the most important behavioral characteristics that are consistently observed in those who commit crimes like these. the one point of disagreement i do have is that i'm not so sure mark told lori about the chapel hill scam, at least not intentionally ... i strongly suspect that she found out about it, i'm just not sure he intentionally told her.

in the context of his other known behaviors ... like creating and sustaining a whole educational history that simply did not exist, for instance ... it would really surprise me if he did something as honest and straightforward as confessing his deception to his wife. on the other hand, if someone living that much of a constructed reality suddenly found himself nose to nose with a truth that would altogether destroy the image he had created, i can see how he could fly off the handle and become deadly violent.

you are exactly right that there has to be a whole lot of rage backed up behind that lovable image mark has put out there, apparently for quite a few years now ... in the face of being exposed as a liar, which would obviously make him feel like that much more a failure, i can see his rage doing whatever is necessary to keep lori from telling others what she found out or figured out.

his skinhead appearance caught my attention, too, especially as a contrast to the lovable guy he was apparently seen as by pretty much everyone who knew him ... that's an awfully mean look for a teddy bear kinda guy. i have to wonder if there's more than one mark walking around in his body, and mr. nice guy lost out to mr. skinhead ... i do not, however, consider any form of dissociative identity disorder, up to and including full blown multiple personality disorder, to be an excuse of any kind for criminal behavior.

in that kind of case, i don't care how many 'people' are bopping around the planet in the same body, they are all responsible for the behavior that body enacts, and they need to all be punished together for wrongdoing. if a person is genuinely mentally ill, i have no problem with them being incarcerated in a locked down mental facility and subjected to intense treatment for their mental illness ... once they have grasped the enormity of their crime, then they can go to prison to serve out their sentence.

the days of the cuckoo's nest are over, and mental health facilities are generally pleasant and comfortable places to live ... even folks who are not permitted to leave the facility could hardly be considered as suffering through serious punishment for wrongdoing. on the other hand, today's mental health facilities are also relentless in their pursuit of self honesty and other honesty, so that might be the scariest place of all for folks whose whole existence has long been a self constructed reality. you're right, though, that mark at least seems to have a heart of some variety or other, even if it is a misguided or wrongful heart ... that's more than scott peterson can realistically claim to have.


nanci
_________________
the Truth has a name, and there is power in that Name!

[jane]

I agree that the skinhead look has a really mean, cruel, intimidating appearance and have noticed that it's becoming more and more popular lately - I see it quite a lot among males from the teens up.

[propria]

>>> The route from Memory Park to University area is five miles. He emphasized to the friends he called that he ran three miles each way, retracing Lori's jogging route within the park, six miles total. <<<


oopsey lala ... guess mark didn't sweat the details as well as he should have, especially since the receipt for the mattress he bought shows that he was making that purchase during the same time he claimed he was running around looking for his wife. it seems at this point that the closer we look at this story, the less 'insane' mark's actions appear to be ... in light of his calculated moves like buying a new matress and claiming to have run his wife's jogging route in search of her, he's going to have a really hard time convincing a jury that he was stark raving nutso at the time.


nanci
_________________
the Truth has a name, and there is power in that Name!

[Kortnie]

Hey rd! How did you, a guy, come to be such a feminist? And I mean that as a HUGE COMPLIMENT! I'm a "feminist" and proud of it. Propria, thanks for your input. This is definitely a site for intelligent, perspicacious people. Oh, I don't mean to be sympathetic to Mark --he's pathetic. Oh, he'd be so jealous of me with both B.A. and M.A. degrees! He'd probably have to kill me, too. It seems to me that no matter how inferior you feel, to kill someone? That's a whole 'nother ball game. Yes, his looks are bad, but the Elephant Man didn't look so hot either, and he WAS a good person...Not Mark Hacking, however.

[jane]

Kortnie, from what I've observed, rd is a mysogynist femnist! Ok - I'd better explain the mysogynist part - rd sometimes gets very nasty when disagreeing with females on the board, but never with males, as far as I've noticed.

[rd]

oh wonderful. :) Introspection time. I can't recall disagreeing with any guys except Rich, and we have had some harsh words all the way back to 2001, but he is consistent and reasonable and I'm just cranky.

There just aren't that many men to disagree with, so if you saw my posts through 1998 and 1999 on Y2K there were almost no women and I was nasty as a rattler. Gender has nothing to do with back and forth flaming. This is an equal opportunity kichen to stay in or get out of.

I got into this when I tried to follow what was happening in Chandra's case and saw what Washington was doing to her and her family. Then Laci disappeared and it became all too clear that men were making women disappear and getting away with it.

I am probably not a feminist. I like feminine women but probably am more chivalrous than a feminist.

rd

[propria]

naaaaahhh, rd's not nearly the misogynist he sometimes pretends to be, although he really is a feminist of the finest order ... when he gets combative like that, he's just looking for a sparring partner!! actually, speaking as one of rd's more experienced sparring partners, i can tell you first hand that our patron saint ralph ain't such a bad sort when you get down to the bottom line ... you just might take a couple shots to the jaw on the way to the bottom line, that's all!!

on the other hand, it might not be that bad an idea to provide a heads-up for folks who really are interested in joining our discussions here ... we've become a family of sorts over the three + years we've stalked justice on behalf of the whole levy family, and we get pretty direct and blunt with each other sometimes. well, at the very least, i get really direct and blunt at times, hard core rude at other times, so maybe it is good for me to point out that i growl and snarl and snap, but i don't bite hard enough to draw blood ... well, not without a reeeeeaaaaaalllly good reason, anyway!


nanci
_________________
the Truth has a name, and there is power in that Name!