Search for Lori's body resumes at S.L. landfill

The search for Lori Hacking resumed Friday night, with dogs and handlers returning to the refuse pile where police believe the body of the missing pregnant woman will be found.

Police believe Lori Hacking, 27, was killed by her husband Mark Hacking on the morning of July 19. Mark Hacking allegedly confessed to his brothers that he shot his wife with a .22-caliber rifle as she slept and then put her body in a Dumpster.

Mark Hacking is being held in the Salt Lake County Jail on $1 million bail. He is charged with one count of first-degree felony murder and three counts of second-degree felony obstruction of justice.

Twenty-one previous searches of the landfill have been unsuccessful, although Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse said some landmarks — specific articles of trash which police believe would have been in the Dumpster where Lori's body was left or in the truck that transported it to the waste facility — have been located, he said.

"I can't tell you what that means, whether we are going to find her, knowing that these kinds of land searches are not usually successful; on the other hand, we know we are confident that we are are looking in the right place, and we're hopeful that we'll be successful," Dinse said.

Based on weight, which is how the dump measures the amount of daily deposited volume, police believe about 4,000 tons of trash was deposited onto a 30-foot-high pile at the Salt Lake Valley Solid Waste Facility, 6030 W. California Ave. (1400 South), on July 19, Dinse said.

"Now what we have gone through ... I estimate it's about one-half to two-thirds, three-quarters possibly," Dinse said.

The process of sifting through the garbage has been to loosen the tightly compacted refuse — about 1,200 pounds of garbage is squeezed into each cubic foot — and then allow cadaver dogs to examine it. So far, Lori Hacking's body has not been found.

Police have promised Lori Hacking's mother, Thelma Soares, that they would continue to look for Lori until she is found. However, Dinse acknowledged that at some point, the department will have to decide if it can continue to spend resources in that way.

"It's important to us (to find Lori)," Dinse said. "At some point we are going to have to say we can only search so much, there's only so much that we can do."

Once police believe they have sufficiently completed the search with dogs, there is a plan for a second "visual search," Dinse said. That essentially means officers will pick through the garbage by hand. Dinse did not know when such a search would be put into effect.