Tearful ending — Mark Hacking gets 6-to-life prison term

A tearful Mark Hacking, who said he still loves his wife but couldn't explain why he murdered her last summer as she slept, was sentenced Monday to six years to life in prison by a judge who called him "the poster child for dishonesty."

Hacking, 29, fooled his family and thousands of volunteer searchers into believing his wife, Lori, 27, disappeared while jogging in Memory Grove on July 19. The investigation later showed he had been leading an elaborately constructed double life — pretending to attend and then graduate from the University of Utah and pretending to be entering medical school in North Carolina.

Court documents disclosed he shot his wife after she learned of his duplicity and dumped her body in a trash bin. Lori's badly decomposed body was found in the county landfill by police Oct. 1 after a 33-day search.

Hacking pleaded guilty to first-degree felony murder in April.

"Mark Hacking is the poster child for dishonesty in its most extreme form," 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg said as she pronounced the sentence, adding she will recommend to the Board of Pardons that Hacking serve "a very, very long time."

This is the strongest sentence Utah's "indeterminate sentencing" rules allow for a first-degree felony committed with a weapon. How long Hacking spends in prison is up to the state parole board. Prosecutors said they did not have evidence to charge him with a capital crime, which could have resulted in the death penalty.

Shortly before her death, Lori had confided to friends that she was about five weeks pregnant, according to a home pregnancy test.

"I killed her and my unborn child," Hacking said, weeping. "I put them in the garbage. I can't explain why I did it. I know I wasn't myself that night, but that's no excuse."

Hacking described his wife as "his heart and soul" and said he still loves her and misses her every day.

"I am tormented every waking minute for what I have done," he said. "I deserve to be in prison, probably for the rest of my life."

Thelma Soares, Lori's mother, also wept as she delivered an eloquent and emotional statement in court about the loss of her beloved daughter and her unborn grandchild.

"He now tells me he's sorry, but his words ring hollow," she told the judge.

Turning to Hacking, Soares cried out in an anguished voice, "How could you do that, Mark? How could you do that to me?"