Leaping to conclusions, one can presume that this guy isn't so subtle a murderer as Scott Peterson or O.J. Simpson. . . with this guy's last name, you'd think he'd be more careful. And murder, of course, is the logical answer for any "underachiever." What an odd story.

Missing Jogger's Husband Hospitalized
July 23, 2004 08:07 AM EDT

SALT LAKE CITY - Around the time Mark Hacking called police to report that his pregnant wife never returned from her morning jog, he was at a furniture store buying a new mattress, according to news reports.

Hacking, 28, has not appeared publicly since Monday, the day he said his 27-year-old wife, Lori, vanished. Family members say he has since been hospitalized for stress. The Deseret News and television station KSTU reported Thursday that police found Hacking at a hotel about a half-mile from the couple's apartment early Tuesday. The station said he was running around naked outside the motel and was hospitalized. Police said only that they were called to a disturbance involving Hacking and that the matter was turned over to medical personnel. Detective Dwayne Baird said police considered Hacking a person of interest in the case but not a suspect, and that he had been interviewed as recently as Wednesday.

Lori Hacking was five weeks pregnant when she disappeared just days before the couple was to move to North Carolina, where Mark Hacking said he was going to attend medical school. But he had lied to his wife and family - he never graduated from college, nor was he accepted to any medical school, authorities said Thursday.

Meanwhile, The Salt Lake Tribune and KSL TV reported that Monday morning, in the minutes before he called police to report his wife missing, Mark Hacking was buying a new mattress. The owners of a Salt Lake furniture store told the Tribune that Hacking came in about 9:45 a.m. Lisa Downs, the wife of store owner Chad Downs, said the credit-card purchase went through at 10:23 a.m.. Police have said Hacking called them and reported his wife missing at 10:49 a.m.

Friends told the Tribune that he had called them about 10 a.m. about his wife's disappearance and said he had twice run his wife's usual jogging route, three miles each way.

Police removed a number of items from the couple's apartment Monday. They would not say what they have taken from the apartment, but television news footage showed paper bags, boxes and a box spring being removed. Police impounded a large trash bin from behind the apartment complex.

Mark Hacking's family and in-laws said they were stunned to learn Wednesday that he had not graduated from college or been accepted at a medical school, as he had claimed. Thelma Soares, Lori Hacking's mother, said that she was certain her daughter had not known about the discrepancies. "Up to the time when I spoke with her last, she was deceived also," she told KUTV-TV.

Douglas Hacking said even though his son is incapacitated by grief, they spoke of the deception Wednesday night at the hospital. "He has two older brothers who are high achievers, a physician and the other is an electrical engineer," he said. "He felt under some pressure to excel as well.