The July 2004 disappearance of Lori Hacking shocked her tight-knit Mormon community in Salt Lake City and made national headlines. By all accounts, Lori had a bright future ahead – having recently graduated from college, she was happily married and newly pregnant with her first child. But as the police investigation into Lori’s disappearance unfolded, a far more sinister story emerged that revealed her husband Mark’s disturbing history of lies and deception spanning over a decade.
The Quintessential Mormon Couple
To all outside appearances, Mark and Lori Hacking seemed like the quintessential Mormon power couple. They had met in 1999 at a church function for young single adults and dated for two years before getting married. Mark came from a well-respected family deeply enmeshed in the Mormon community, while California native Lori was known by friends as a friendly and responsible girl with a strong Mormon faith.
Like many young couples in Mormon culture, Mark and Lori married in their early 20s feeling tremendous pressure to settle down and start a family. Tragically, statistics show that highly religious communities like Mormons often have higher than average rates of domestic abuse and violence hidden behind closed doors.
As a married couple, Mark and Lori were actively involved in their local Mormon ward. Mark claimed to be studying medicine at the University of Utah and the University of Nevada-Reno Medical School, while Lori substitute taught at a local elementary school. When Lori discovered she was 5 weeks pregnant in early 2004, it seemed their life together was falling perfectly into place.
But troubling signs of stresses in the couple’s relationship began creeping to the surface. Despite her joy over the pregnancy, Lori confided to close friends that she felt increasing unhappy, isolated and alone in her marriage to Mark over the past year. Meanwhile, Mark became increasingly emotionally distant and controlling over Lori’s social life, actively discouraging her from communicating with lifelong friends and family members from her former life in California. These behaviors align closely with patterns seen in many domestic abuse cases.
Jenny Parkinson, Lori’s best friend from childhood, later reported to the media: “In the last year, Lori definitely felt cut off from family and those she had been close to. It seemed like Mark deliberately made her more and more dependent on him socially and emotionally. She once called me upset, saying Mark had gotten angry and forbidden her from answering a call from her mom. Looking back now, that should have been a major red flag.”
A History of Elaborate Lies
The first clues that something was amiss in Mark Hacking’s life came months before Lori’s disappearance, when Mark failed to enroll at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Medical School in 2003 as planned. When questioned about the sudden change in plans by perplexed family members who had expected to attend his White Coat ceremony, Mark casually claimed that the Dean had made a last minute scheduling change. No one suspected that this seemingly minor excuse covered just one of countless lies Mark had been spinning for years.
In reality, Mark had never even graduated from college as he had claimed to everyone from his wife to fellow Mormon ward members to childhood friends. A thorough investigation into Mark’s increasingly suspicious background soon revealed an entire false identity had been constructed on elaborate untruths spanning years.
As it turned out, Mark had flunked out of college at the University of Utah years earlier than he had reported due to consistently poor grades. His academic failures started much earlier, as former classmates from Highland High School could now plainly see in hindsight that Mark had grossly inflated his GPAs and test scored when applying for college.
During his Mormon mission from 1995-1997 in Canada, Mark had also been sent home early after finally confessing to church leaders that he had been secretly partying, drinking alcohol, smoking pot and having affairs with multiple women – all activities strictly prohibited by the Mormon faith and grounds for exclusion from all church privileges. Rather than own up to his mistakes, Mark buried the embarrassing truth and spent years methodically creating an alternate reality to make himself appear successful.
Mark lied extensively about attending medical school and graduating college. He falsified documents showing acceptance letters to PhD programs and fabricated work histories listing employment at clinics and hospitals that had no records of him ever working there. He shared fictionalized stories to friends and family about completing medical rotations that never happened. He even lied about owning investment property and having enough savings to make a downpayment on a house with Lori, despite having no actual income or assets.
For over a decade, Mark actively lived a double life that allowed him to preserve his public reputation and image as a top Mormon student on track to become a surgeon, while secretly bending moral rules and failing to measure up to religious expectations of perfection. His affable charm and mild manners deflected any suspicions over the years, allowing the façade to be maintained right up until the violent and tragic conclusion.
A Violent End and Aftermath
Shortly after 5AM on July 19th, 2004, Mark Hacking called 911 to report his wife Lori missing after she failed to return home from an early morning jog in Salt Lake City’s Memory Grove park. An intense search was immediately launched in the area, but turned up no trace of Lori besides her abandoned car.
Investigators quickly turned their attention to Mark as a potential suspect in Lori’s disappearance, rather than simply a concerned husband. The couple’s home soon revealed chilling clues that implied foul play and deception. Blood spatters were discovered soaked deep into newly purchased bedroom mattresses that Lori was seemingly unaware Mark had bought. Large blood stains were also found soaked into the fabric of the trunk of Mark’s car. Analysis quickly confirmed the blood belonged to Lori.
Confronted by police investigators about the evidence, Mark finally admitted to throwing away a bloody mattress the day Lori went missing – but still firmly denied harming her. That mattress was soon found by FBI investigators dumped in a local trash enclosure near the couple’s apartment in an attempt to hide evidence. Mark Hacking’s alibi and story was quickly unraveling.
Just ten days after Lori mysteriously vanished, Mark Hacking confessed the truth to his brothers on a phone call from the Salt Lake County jail – admitting he had strangled Lori during a heated argument in Memory Grove park, transported her lifeless body in the trunk of his car, and disposed of her remains in a little-used landfill over an hour away from Salt Lake City. The deception was over.
For another year, Lori’s grief-stricken family held onto hope that Lori could still be found alive despite Mark’s confession. Tragically, county authorities eventually discovered scattered human remains among nearly 1000 tons of garbage extracted from the landfill. DNA analysis confirmed the remains belonged to Lori and her unborn child. For the family, the last remaining doubts about her fate were extinguished.
The outcome of Lori Hacking’s murder highlighted how her husband Mark’s years creating an intricate web of lies ultimately drove him to brutally murder his pregnant wife once she discovered the truth rather than publicly admit his entire identity had been fabricated.
What type of psychological compulsions drive a person to manipulate the people closest to them for over a decade? Forensic psychologists speculate that Mark likely suffered from a personality disorder such as sociopathy that diminished his capacity for empathy. His rigid religious upbringing also intensely indoctrinated the idea that any moral or ethical failures must be concealed rather than addressed – a fear likely linked to murdering Lori as she uncovered his lies about attending medical school.
In 2005, Mark Hacking was sentenced to a minimum of six years in prison for first degree murder – but will likely spend his entire life incarcerated. The tragic case left lives shattered in pursuit of an image of perfection that was never real. It still stands as a cautionary tale about the poisonous consequences deception and secrets can inflict upon relationships and communities.