45 slain in '04: Domestic violence is a factor in many Utah slayings

In July what was initially a missing person report in Utah quickly captured national attention as a murder investigation that rivaled the Laci Peterson homicide in its bizarre twists of alleged deception and calculated cruelty.

Lori Hacking, was reported to be newly pregnant and was distraught over catching her husband in a web of fantastic lies. Police say she was shot and killed as she slept in her apartment on July 19. Hacking's husband, Mark, was eventually charged with her death, a week after he led police and the community on a search for his missing wife.

Her badly decomposed body was found Oct. 1 in the Salt Lake Valley Solid Waste Facility.

The Hacking case was by far the most high-profile murder investigation in what was another disturbing year of domestic-violence-related homicide in the Beehive State.

Records compiled by the Deseret Morning News show 45 people were killed in Utah in 2004.

That number could rise as some investigations were pending. Ogden police were trying to determine whether a man found dead with a gunshot wound Dec. 28 was the result of foul play. And an elderly woman severely beaten in a home invasion robbery in West Valley City Dec. 16 remained in critical condition. There were 44 homicides in Utah in 2003, according to statistics from the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI). The 10-year average of homicides annually for the state is 54 homicides.

For the second year in a row, October was the deadliest month with nine slayings. Four people were killed in the first nine days of the month and then five in 10 days at the end of October.

There were no homicide cases in June, marking only the second time since 1992 that Utah has gone a month without a slaying.

Utah continues to have one of the lowest murder rates in the nation. The state averaged 2.5 homicides per 100,000 people in 2003, according to the latest statistics, released in October by the FBI Uniform Crime Report.

A gun was used in 25 of the homicides, and death by beating or abuse happened in 11 cases.

BCI defines homicide as "the willful, non-negligent killing of one human being by another." Only first-degree felony homicides are counted in its statistics. Slayings that were classified as manslaughter or determined to be self-defense are not included. Also, BCI does not include homicides that occur on federal land or Indian reservations, while the Morning News does include those homicides in its statistics.