"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."

"It helps," Paul Soares said. "But it definitely starts you back, though, into the early stages (of grief). But we've said all along that a landfill isn't any place to bury anybody."

Prior to his sister's disappearance and death, Soares said, he liked Mark Hacking and the two of them had a good relationship. Lori, it seemed, was happy and safe. The couple, who were about to move to North Carolina so Mark could attend medical school, seemed to have a bright future ahead of them.

"I guess if it looks too good to be true, it probably is," Soares said, adding that he hopes the recovery of Lori's body will give prosecutors more to work with in securing Mark Hacking's future behind bars.

"Whatever the maximum is that they can get, I hope they get it," he said.

Carroll hopes that the remains will shed light on the last moments of Lori's life.

"Hopefully, this will give us more answers to the things that went on that night," she said. "That will be interesting, but it might be stuff we don't want to know."

Making the case

But they may well be things police and prosecutors could use in making their case. On Friday, Salt Lake County Deputy District Attorney Bob Stott said the remains prove that a death has occurred and may well provide a definitive cause of death.

What is clear about the case to this point is this: At 10:07 a.m. July 19, Mark Hacking called Salt Lake police to report that his wife had gone jogging at dawn but never returned home and never made it to her job at a Wells Fargo Bank office in downtown Salt Lake City.

At 10:46 a.m., he called police dispatchers a second time, reporting that he had located his wife's car in Memory Grove. Officers were dispatched, and a preliminary search of the park began.

So, too, did police interviews of friends, family members and co-workers of Lori Hacking, leading police to conclude that Mark Hacking's story about his wife's disappearance was false.

As an initial police report obtained by the Deseret Morning News shows, Mark Hacking told a variety of stories about Lori's disappearance to relatives. His father, Douglas Hacking, told police that in his conversation with his son, Mark had said that when he awoke that morning, Lori's work clothes were still laid out and her lunch in the refrigerator.

But a Wells Fargo employee said Mark Hacking had called the office — also near 10 a.m. — to check on his wife and had expressed surprise that she was not there.