Police Find Remains of Lori Hacking in Landfill

Police found Lori Hacking’s body in a landfill Friday after picking through the trash for weeks in a search for the young woman who police say was slain by her husband.

The state medical examiner’s office used dental records to identify the remains about six hours after they were discovered.

“It means everything to us to find Lori’s mortal remains so that we might lay them to rest with dignity,” Hacking’s parents, Eraldo and Thelma Soares, said in a statement.

The discovery came on the 33rd working day of a search of 4,600 tons of garbage. Investigators had used cadaver dogs and garden rakes to comb through the trash.

Hacking, a 27-year-old assistant stockbroker, had not been seen since July 18. Her 28-year-old husband, Mark Hacking, reported her missing the following day, saying she never returned from a morning jog.

While he was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit, he allegedly confessed to his brothers that he shot his wife while she was sleeping and disposed of her body, the weapon and a mattress in a trash bin. He was charged with murder and jailed on $1-million bail.

Authorities believe Hacking was killed after she learned her husband was not enrolled in medical school in North Carolina, even though they were packing to move there.

Searchers had concentrated on a football-field size stretch of the landfill, going through compacted garbage 20 feet deep. They found the remains among trash that included newspapers from July 16 to July 19, the weekend Hacking disappeared.