This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
SALT LAKE CITY-- The search by volunteers
looking for missing jogger Lori Hacking was temporarily called off
today, but will resume later with specialized teams, a family
spokesman said.
Scott Dunaway said the decision was not
related to any change in the direction of the police investigation
into Hacking's disappearance. Hacking, 27, has been missing since
July 19, when her husband Mark Hacking reported she had not returned
from a morning jog in City Creek Canyon.
Lori Hacking, a Wells Fargo employee who was
five weeks pregnant, is now feared dead, and her husband has become
the focus of the police investigation. Hundreds of Utahns have
volunteers to help search for her in the week since she vanished.
Dunaway said this morning the length of time
Lori Hacking has been missing has dampened the family's hopes of
finding her alive. "They understand the reality of eight days," he
said.
Meanwhile, police returned with night lights
and cadaver dogs Monday night to search the Salt Lake County
landfill, which already had been searched before.
At the time of Lori's disappearance, the couple were packing to
move to North Carolina. But after she vanished, police and family
members learned that besides lying about being accepted to medical
school, Mark Hacking had not even graduated from college.
Mark Hacking, a 28-year-old nightshift hospital orderly, has been
at a psychiatric hospital since police found him running around naked
in sandals the night after the search for his wife began. Police
refused to say whether he was being held involuntarily.
His family has hired defense attorney D. Gilbert Athay, who said
Monday he has spoken to Hacking many times since being hired
Thursday. He refused to characterize the conversations.
Three days before she disappeared, Lori
Hacking may have uncovered her husband's deceptions.
She received a phone call at her work,
started crying and went home early, said a colleague at Wells Fargo
Institutional Brokerage and Sales.
"I could hear her say things such as, 'But
he's already been accepted. He's already applied. This can't be
correct,' said Darren Openshaw, a Wells Fargo employee who overheard
the phone call about 2:15 p.m. on July 16.
Openshaw said he believes the caller was
from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.