In early September, Paul Soares wrote a letter to his brother-in-law, Mark Hacking, and sent it to the Salt Lake County Jail.

"I needed to let him know how I was feeling," Soares said in a telephone interview from his Southern California home Saturday. "He's been extremely selfish in this. This is all about Mark. But nobody made him lie. Nobody made him do all the stuff he did. He did it all of his own free will, and now we all have to suffer."

That suffering was triggered anew Friday, when Salt Lake police finally recovered the remains of Soares' sister, Lori Hacking, from a county landfill. Family members were notified shortly after the 8:20 a.m. discovery, and news of the identification confirmed through dental records followed a few hours later, Soares said.

"It's so hard," he said. "It was something that we'd been expecting, but now it really is final."

Lori Hacking, 27, was reported missing July 19 by her husband. Two weeks later, Mark Hacking was arrested and booked into jail. He has been charged in 3rd District Court with first-degree felony murder and three counts of second-degree felony obstruction of justice.

Prosecutors say Mark Hacking allegedly confessed to his brothers that he shot Lori, his wife of five years who was newly pregnant, with a .22-caliber rifle as she slept. He also said that he left his wife's body and the alleged murder weapon in separate Dumpsters.

The discovery of Lori's remains comes after 33 working days of searching the Salt Lake Valley Solid Waste Facility by police. The initial 21-day search was conducted at night with cadaver dogs. The second phase, a visual, or hand-search, by officers and firefighters with pitchfork-like rakes began Sept. 14, with the remains found on Day 12.

"It's a relief and you're glad, but it's really sad, too," said Rebecca Carroll, one Lori's best friends from high school. "It's more final. It's more real again."

Listening to "the vocabulary of the situation" through news reports Friday was difficult, Carroll said.

"It's not nice. They are talking about remains and body parts and that kind of thing, and I know it's the reality, but it's hard to listen to that when it's someone you love," she said. "It's not the person that you remember."

Searching for answers

Having the remains to bury will be helpful to all who knew and loved Lori, said Carroll, who spoke with Lori's mother, Thelma Soares, Saturday morning. Burial will go a long way in repairing the indignity Lori suffered..

"How do you just throw someone away like trash? Especially someone you love. You just don't do that. It's not right," Carroll said. "Like all of us, (Thelma Soares) is relieved to have this part of it over and to know that (Lori) will have a burial now. That part will be really good."