Wow. I admit I didn't think he had anything to do with her disappearance. I thought the local news was blowing his involvement way out of proportion.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Guess someone was paying absolutely no attention to the Laci Peterson case... didn't this guy know that they seem to always look at the spouse first?
My friend Molly told me about this the other day. That's just awful.
<off topic> I know it's not the topic, but this:
quote:If Lori's body is recovered and a pregnancy is established, authorities will confer with the district attorney about bringing any additional charges, Dinse said.
It's still irritating that it's not okay for the father to kill the baby, but it's okay for the mother. How can you be charged with killing something that is not officially recognized as being human? Either the fetus has a life to lose or it doesn't.</off topic>
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Husbands are always the first suspects in a wife's disappearance with good reason.
And once his lies came to light, in addition to certain irratic behavior prior to his wife's disappearance, I was firmly in the "oh hell, another one" camp.
posted
I think my problem is my basic distrust and dislike of television news. I am more inclined to think that they are trying to make something out of nothing to keep the interest up.
Also, Mark Hacking's dad was our daughter's pediatrician until we moved. He was a very nice man. I wasn't inclined to think ill of his family right off the bat.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
As a fan of "Forensic Detectives" and similar shows, cops like to move in methodical patterns.
Random murders almost never happen - statistically low percentages. Which means the police start looking at friends, family and acquaintances of the victim for clues as to who might have done it and why.
Once immediate family and friends have been ruled out, the investigators will typically expand their search into other areas of the victim's life. Failing that, the case will often go cold unless there is some evidence to point in a new direction.
I dunno - his web of lies was coming down around his ears and finding out his wife was pregnant and she knew about the deceptions probably pushed him over the edge.
Of course, it's his own bloody fault for dancing on the damned ledge to begin with.
I mean, if the guy is mentally ill, it doesn't excuse his actions. And if he truly IS ill, once his condition improves, imagine his own shock and horror about finding out what he's done to his wife (if he did do it).
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:It's still irritating that it's not okay for the father to kill the baby, but it's okay for the mother. How can you be charged with killing something that is not officially recognized as being human? Either the fetus has a life to lose or it doesn't.</off topic>
When killing the pregnancy involves killing the mother, it is given weight as an addition to murder. You are intentionally misstating the circumstances to argue an abortion-related topic. Had he fed her abortives, that would also fall under an already established law (something akin to poisoning someone), so that would also not be similar to the abortion argument. On the other hand, cases involving a father who wants the mother to have an abortion against the mother's wishes, or vice versa, would be an applicable argument. Otherwise, it is hyperbole.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
My first thought upon hearing of the disappearence and of the plan to move to go to medical school brought to mind two other murders in which the exact same thing occurred.
posted
I find it interesting that CNN.com found that announcement (that he had been charged with her murder) important enough to bump the terror threat down to a sub-story, and make the Hacking case lead story. (While ABCNews made the murder case secondary). I wonder who decides the headlines?
posted
Well, yes, I imagine that his mental illness was a big factor in the whole thing. I don't think you can be all there and cut someone up with a knife.
But when the news broke that he had been admitted to the psych ward directly after her disappearance, I cringed because that's what the news was doing--playing on the mental illness stigma, reaffirming that people with mental illness are always violent and dangerous. I didn't immediately think that there was a necessary connection. My first thought was that the stress of having his wife go missing was the trigger that sent him over the edge.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I don't have access to a lot of news channels - so most of my understanding has come from the web and web-based offerings like ABCnews.com and CNN.com and, of course, CourtTV.com.
Insofar as I am aware, no news outlet has been playing up the possibility of mental illness as any particular aspect.
Locally, we just had a wife and her lover arrested for murdering her husband in the Frito-Lay plant. Did I mention the lover was the youth minister and the dead hubbie was some figure in their church?
posted
It was the local news that was doing all the sensationalist stuff, I think. They had reporters posted at all the locations, and they were constantly hounding family members and friends for new nibbles of information. When the families finally came out with the statement that they weren't going to make any more statements, they had analysts analyzing the statement.
I think the whole reason it made the top story slot in the first place was that Mark Hacking went to the psych ward shortly after Lori went missing.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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I'm not following your logic yet. Are you saying that in this case, the attacker was attempting to kill the pregnancy, and in the process killed the mother?
Posts: 270 | Registered: Apr 2004
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"The terror threat" isn't news anymore. After all, we've been assured that its been going on for decades and that the war on terror is ongoing (and thus it hasn't been eliminated). Everything else is just details except for attacks (in the US, that is, the news agencies have grown bored of reporting attacks outside the US).
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"All the lies and such could be symptoms of a pervasive and serious mental illness."
Only if one considers extreme narcissism and laziness to be a mental illness.
And just as he (presumably) assumed that his "trauma" upon the "disappearence" of his wife would provide alibi for him not attending medical school, he's playing with "his audience" once again by running around naked and (predictably) getting locked up in a psychiatric facility. "I didn't do it...blah blah blah."
posted
As the information slowly seeped in, it started to look more and more like he had. But at first, it seemed that the two events were not connected in a way that made him suspect.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I was just asking my brother in law about this last night. Mark Hacking was his trainer at the Neuropsychiatry institute. They were orderly-type dudes. In that vein:
quote:I don't think he's bright enough to fake a mental illness by dancing naked and drawing attention to himself.
I would not be surprised if he has been doing his dangdest to pretend to be insane.
Also, did anyone notice that Mark himself was the first to bring up parallels between his wife's disappearance and the Laci Petersen case? He knew the spotlight would be on him.
Now he's obviously a complicated individual, but I all the reports I have seen point to him being pretty well collected until after the investigation began.
There was an article implying the interest in this case is due to media favoring whites. But Lori was part Hispanic. I think it's because the last name is "Hacking". Hello.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I wonder how easy it is to fake the kind of behavior that will get you a bed in the psych ward. The social workers and psychologists who screen the patients are fairly discriminating, as there are a limited number of beds.
I'd say you have to be acting pretty consistently off-kilter to get admitted. Running around naked once wouldn't do it.
Plus, like I said before, you have to be fairly out of it to murder your wife and then lead everyone on a wild goose chase. If he was faking it, he wasn't faking most of it.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Referring to afr's previous post: I don't know, afr. I heard that a woman who was five weeks pregnant disappeared, and big warning signs went off. I assumed that she had just told her family that she was pregnant and the husband freaked, and I thought that before I ever knew a thing about the husband. Not that I'm overly cynical, but it seems like five weeks pregnant is a heckuva (and obvious) time to disappear.
posted
afr, the military ward I was in was pretty much dedicated to figuring out who was really nuts and who was trying to get out of the service with disability benefits. It is not at all an easy thing to sort out.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I'm holding that Mark was already pretty up in the sky for a while, maybe even before telling everyone he had been accepted to medical school. The irrationality of the lies he told smack of hypomania. He was probably on his way off the charts around the time Lori found out she was pregnant.
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posted
Pooka, yes, but I've been through the admittance process at the psych ward Mark stayed at. Not for myself, but with a close relation. I've also been through it down at Utah Valley hospital. It surprised me how close they came to not admitting her even in the state she was in. I can't imagine being able to pull off that kind of behavior just for show.
But I gotta go now!
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posted
Conditions for psychiatric admits are usually if a person is homicidal, suicidal, psychotic, or a combination of those.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Maybe Utah makes an exception for public nudity I think admittance decisions are also very dependent upon demand at any given time. They are paid to stay full, after all.
I don't have any reason to think he was faking, except that he has demonstrated elaborate lying, and he has extensive experience with psychiatric patients. (He wasn't treated at his former workplace, by the way).
P.S. maui babe, I meant "hacking" as in terms of "stabbing repeatedly". Not as a celebrity name.
posted
It DOES amaze me that apparently every Hatracker from Utah has, at one point or another, run into this nutjob's family.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I'll go ahead and bump this because it's over a day old. I have to wonder what happened to tuition that Mark paid for going to the U of U when he actually wasn't. The report that he forged a diploma suggests to me that he was planning to go onward with the schooling deception through medical school.
Whether he was just planning to get money from his wife for tuition, or from his dad, her knowing that he hadn't been accepted to medical school threatened a rather large racket that he had planned. Who knows if he even intended to forge a med school diploma and license? He may have even thought that with her disappearance, this would have increased the likelihood of his dad financing his education.
Anyway, to me it seems like he had a real motive. And as a broker, I'm sure she had some life insurance to boot.
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I think admittance decisions are also very dependent upon demand at any given time. They are paid to stay full, after all.
