'Lori's dead and I killed her'
HACKING TOLD BROTHERS HE SHOT WIFE: PROSECUTORSWed, August 11, 2004
By APTHE MAN who confessed to shooting his wife in the head and throwing her body in a trash bin stood passive yesterday as a Salt Lake City judge read the charges against him during a court appearance. Charged with first-degree murder, Mark Hacking appeared in court on a video feed from the county jail. He uttered 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-calibre rifle and shot her in the head as she lay sleeping.
"Lori's dead and I killed her," Hacking, 28, told his brothers, according to the documents.
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 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 school.
It has since been learned that he had not even graduated from university.
On July 24, Hacking 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 later passed that information along to police.