Three weeks ago Lori Hacking was reported missing by her husband, Mark. He told police she had gone for an early-morning jog in Memory Grove. Her car was still there.
Mark Hacking appeared frantic that day. He called friends, family and Lori's co-workers. At a hurried news conference that afternoon, he appealed for volunteer searchers. They came in droves.
But as the days passed, Mark Hacking's story unraveled. As it turned out, he had lied about graduating from the University of Utah. He had lied about his acceptance to medical school in North Carolina. He followed up his initial 10:07 a.m. call to police with a 10:23 a.m. purchase of a new mattress. By 10:46 a.m., he was on the line a second time to police, asking again for help.
Late that night, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward.
Two weeks later Mark Hacking, 28, was arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of criminal homicide. Police say Hacking killed his 27-year-old, possibly pregnant wife as she slept and then dumped her body in a trash bin.
On Monday prosecutors are expected to file murder charges against Mark Hacking.
Lori Hacking's body, for which police and trained dogs continued to search last night and early today in the county landfill, has not yet been found.
In this special report by Lucinda Dillon Kinkead, with additional reporting by Jennifer Dobner and Leigh Dethman, friends and family recount the lives of Lori and Mark Hacking, as children growing up in Utah County and as a couple — to all outward appearances, a happy one.
LORI
She is the girl we all know now as just Lori. A 5-foot-3 little bit of a thing with hair and heart twice her stature.
She's gone now, we are told.
Her friends, family and those in Utah who've grown to love her through newspapers and television now perpetually wait for the girl with near-perfect attendance and punctuality. She is gone, investigators believe, because of her husband Mark Hacking, the man she chose over several others.
"I feel so angry at Mark. Like how could he do this to my friend and her baby? How could he do this to Thelma? There were so many people that loved him and trusted him. He had everything." — Holly Thomas, lifelong friend of Lori Hacking
Most importantly, Mark Hacking, who is accused of killing his wife while she slept, had Lori.
The hazel-eyed beauty was a sophomore at Orem High School when she met Mark during a trip with friends to Lake Powell. Mark burned his hands in the bonfire that night and Lori stayed up all night to help him.
"I met a boy," Lori told her mom during a phone call later. "His name is Mark."
And so it was. That was the beginning. And this is the story of a fiercely loyal and protective young woman who by all appearances protected her husband until the day she disappeared, July 19.
The spitfire
It's easy to see why Lori so fiercely guarded her family. Most of the time, it was just Lori and her mom, Thelma, when she was growing up. The family lived in California early on, but Thelma and her daughter moved to Utah after she and Eraldo Soares divorced when Lori was in the fifth grade and her elder brother Paul was in his teens. Thelma was Lori's grounding pole.
Lori palled around with Holly and Rebecca Carroll through high school, lounging in Lori's big bedroom on her green-and-white bedspread, dishing about boys and girl stuff in the early years then bombing around Orem in the blue VW bug Lori's dad bought her for her 16th birthday.
Lori and Rebecca got their first job together — as wash girls at the Orem Car Wash. And it was at this time that Lori honed the principles she carried through life.
"Lori was always good with money. She always worked. She always had money, and she knew what she wanted," Carroll says. "She wanted to be married. She wanted to have a career. And she wanted to have a family when the time was right."
Heidi Gregory, now 27, wasn't sure about her curly haired roommate when the two were assigned to the LaSal dormitories at Weber State University in 1995.
Lori Soares was sarcastic and feisty. And you always knew where you stood with her. She wasn't a brat, not a snot, Gregory says. "That was just Lori. She was hilariously blunt. It was like, 'Yeah, sure, we'll be friends, but on my terms.' "
Heidi, Lori and the group of girls at Weber had a blast, dancing in the halls and being goofy. They loved the Olive Garden restaurant and ice cream and shakes from Jake's Over the Top in Ogden.
And, man, could that little spitfire go. Heidi and Lori traveled: Savannah, Atlanta, New York. One year they hopped a red-eye from Salt Lake City to New York City at midnight on the morning of New Year's Eve. They spent all day walking up and down the streets of Manhattan, landed at Times Square for the evening party, then took another all-night flight back home.
"It was just a whirlwind. We didn't even get a hotel room," Gregory said. "She was the only person I met who could keep up with me."
Meanwhile, Mark and Lori had continued dating on and off in high school, then more exclusively in college. Lori moved to Salt Lake City to study management at the University of Utah. She graduated with a bachelor of science degree in management and additional honors as a member of Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society, an award given to those in the top tenth of their graduating class.
A few months earlier, in August 1999, she and Mark had married in the Bountiful Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Her parents were elated. Her father, Eraldo Soares of Fullerton, Calif., said at the time he was "110 percent behind the marriage." Mark was everything he'd hoped for in a son-in-law.
"Now, she had lots of choices," he said. "But she loved Mark."
No one, it seems, saw trouble brewing — and all say Lori probably wouldn't have told if there was.
She was always a deeply private person.
The first day they met, Heidi Gregory saw a picture of Lori and Thelma Soares. "You don't look a bit like your mom," Heidi said. "I know," Lori replied. It was weeks before Lori told her new friend she'd been adopted as an infant.
And a year later, when Mark Hacking was sent home early from his LDS mission to Winnipeg, Canada, Lori also had very little to say about the circumstances.
Mark told her he had been caught up in the discipline for the improprieties of his fellow missionaries. But it now appears Mark himself was involved in a relationship with a young woman in Canada.
"She was bugged by it because she didn't think he'd given her a straight answer," Gregory said. "I'm sure she dealt with it with him later, but I never knew of it."
Lori never spoke to her close circle of friends about any of Mark's behaviors — smoking, drinking and lying about school graduation and medical school acceptance — now so closely scrutinized.
"Lori wouldn't want anyone to know if her marriage was bad — if it was," Gregory said, echoing similar comments from other friends. "She was very proud that way."
What she knew
This is the dichotomy of this young woman's personality.
One after another, her friends talked about her traits: Smart about money. Smart about school. Smart about her decisions. Driven. Thrifty. Actively involved in her husband's life.
So, didn't she smell smoke if her husband had taken up a cigarette habit?
Didn't she know he wasn't going to classes?
"He definitely went to great lengths to lie to her," said Christy Goodro, a friend of the couple from their LDS ward.
The two would meet on campus between his classes and have lunch. Mark carried around a backpack with books. He even had his mother-in-law proofread term papers before he supposedly submitted them to his professors.
And denial may have protected her from seeing the destruction of a lifetime of dreams and goals, said Lou Bertram, a former psychological profile coordinator for the FBI.
"The cover-ups that he was doing. . . , she was catching on, but when you have vices like he did and then you have to go to church on Sunday, that's tough, too," Bertram said.
Many times wives accept certain behavior if they think their spouses have made a mistake but are moving on and correcting that behavior, Bertram said.
"Lori saw this great guy who was going places, and she chose to ignore some things," he said. "Maybe she thought he would straighten out. If she found out about the medical school, maybe she thought they would work it out. I think she was willing to live through it, but Mark reached the boiling point and he just exploded."
Whatever Mark's vices, whatever darkness and deceit he may have been wading into, it appears Lori spent her last months happy.
She happily hung out with Goodro. Christy's husband, Matt, was serving in the Iraq war from January 2003 until April 2004, and Lori visited and helped out with the kids often.
"She was such a doll to me. She would come over and hang out with me on nights. She was so cute. She'd say, 'I have no husband either. He is working nights, so let's just hang out.' "
Most people who don't have children don't want to come and hang out with two children, Goodro noted, but Lori would take them out to dinner and the movies. She chased Goodro's children around the theater recently while watching "Cheaper by the Dozen."
"She was a lifesaver at a time I needed one."
The two talked about their husbands, their weddings. Lori said hers was perfect.
"I never once heard her say anything bad about him. Usually people complain a little, but not even that," she said. "She definitely thought he was the world, and that she had found Mr. Right."
A month ago, Lori went to dinner with Holly and Rebecca, her high school chums. The three closed down the Porcupine Grill, laughing and chatting. Lori was excited about moving to North Carolina, where Mark was supposed to have enrolled in medical school. She was excited about being a doctor's wife, Carroll said. "And she was really excited for Mark."
Heartbroken
The case has been devastating for the close-knit group of folks at the Wells Fargo's investment office on 400 South and Main. Just yesterday, it seems, Lori was there with them, interrupting their indoor golf-putting game on her way to the copier. "Hey Lori, get off the green!" someone would holler.
Then came Monday morning, July 19, when Mark called asking if they'd seen his wife. "We all sprang to action," said Kelly Murdock, one of the first to search for his friend. Lori, who was always on time, was three hours late.
Elizabeth Read, a co-worker, running partner and maybe her closest friend, aches. Four days before she disappeared, Lori called Elizabeth at 10 p.m. She'd just taken a pregnancy test, she told Elizabeth. She and Mark were expecting. "She was so excited."
Elizabeth was walking Lori through some of these transitions: the going-away party at work, the baby. Lori was going to move in with Elizabeth for a few weeks while her husband became settled in North Carolina.
Elizabeth has given up on interviews, preferring to grieve privately.
"How will it bring Lori back?" she asks someone. "How?"
A memorial service has been scheduled for Lori. On Saturday, Aug. 14, her family and friends will celebrate who she was and ache for what they've lost. What will remain then are dozens of Lori's loved ones who wonder why they didn't notice and how this tragedy could have been prevented.
"Every conversation I've had with Lori goes through my head," Goodro said. "Was there something I missed?"
Contributing: Jennifer Dobner and Leigh Dethman
E-mail: lucy@desnews.com