Mark Hacking : The Serial Liar

salt lake city is the capital of the state of utah the state itself is one of the most diverse in the union it has everything from dry deserts to snowy mountains the city was founded in 1847 by settlers led by brigham young they were members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints and they were trying to escape the persecution they were experiencing on the east coast the city was planned around a massive temple built in what is now called temple square they petitioned for the area to be recognized as the state of deseret in 1849 but were denied the government established a much smaller area as the utah territory in 1850 salt lake city had major growth with mining jobs and when the trans-continental railroad was completed just north of the city now it's considered the crossroads of the west having i-15 and i-80 both pass through the city president james buchanan actually declared the utah territory in rebellion after brigham young refused to step down as governor over disagreements over the church's original observation of polygamy the president sent troops but the city had been deserted the church eventually abandoned its practice of polygamy in 1890 paving the way for utah to become a state in 1896. mark hacking spent his entire life spinning a massive web of lies after five years of marriage he was living the life of a completely different person and eventually his wife discovered that he was no longer the man she married he tried to spin more lies but it wasn't working so he took one last drastic step to ensure his house of cards didn't come tumbling down this is monsters [Music] mark hacking was born on april 24th 1976 to doug and janet hacking the hackings were members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints and had a large family mark had three brothers lance scott and chad as well as three sisters tiffany sarah and julie they lived in orem utah about 40 miles or 65 kilometers south of salt lake city doug was a pediatrician who is well respected in the town mark was considered a clumsy kid who loved to be the center of attention while camping with the boy scouts he rolled into an extinguished fire pit while he was sleeping and woke up covered in ash when all the other boys started laughing mark lavished in the spotlight he then started setting up situations where he would have accidents to make other kids laugh these were the first accounts of mark's deceit which would eventually become a much bigger part of his life by his teens mark was lying excessively in order to inflate his own ego it seemed to work and he was known to be popular he met a girl named laurie when he was in the 11th grade and she was in the 10th both at orem high school laurie sowaris was born on december 31 1976 in california and was put up for adoption she was adopted at four months old by eraldo and thelma sowaris who had previously adopted a boy named paul they lived in fullerton california for the first 10 years of laurie's life until geraldo and thelma got divorced eraldo and paul remained in california but thelma wanted to be closer to the lds community in utah so she and laurie moved to orem lori who was also popular in high school went camping with some friends at lake powell when she was 15 years old it was on this trip that she met mark hacking though she didn't really pay much attention at first it wasn't until mark tried to adjust a log in the campfire with his bare hands and got burned that she really got to know him lori took it upon herself to treat his wounds and the pair got to know each other from that point on friends said the two were inseparable they dated throughout the rest of high school when he graduated from orem high school mark volunteered to go on a mission for the lds church becoming a mormon missionary is like boot camp for convincing people that what you're telling them is true it's just the nature of proselytizing this training also prepared them for repeated rejection since they would more often than not have people slam the door in their face this is why mormons tend to do well in sales jobs and also part of the reason that utah has more multi-level marketing activity per capita than any other us state for mark's mission god decided he needed to work in winnipeg manitoba canada winnipeg and orem couldn't be more different he was leaving warm mountainous utah for cold flat manitoba mark didn't care where he went though as his goal was to get away from utah for a while he wanted freedom and he couldn't get it at home where everyone was watching ready to report any indiscretion to the church it shouldn't come as any surprise that missionaries end up in trouble while away from home they're usually fresh out of high school and have zero experience in the world outside of the church they're not supposed to do anything that the other young adults in the area they've been sent to are doing apart from drinking or smoking they can't watch movies read or listen to music unless it's from the church they're expected to get up at 6 30 in the morning and do nothing but work until 10 30 at night these temptations became too much for mark and he began smoking dating and watching movies of course mark still had a girlfriend back in utah but mark seemed to assume the departure to another country meant the relationship was on hold one of the other elders that was on the mission with mark said that he never heard a mention lori the whole time he was in winnipeg eventually the church learned of mark's extracurricular activities and he was sent home early from his mission having a young adult gets sent home from their mission put a lot of shame on a family but it seemed mark had told his friends and family that he had been sent home because he was injured in an accident so they believed he hadn't done anything wrong lori's friends said she always seemed a little troubled by the reason mark gave for coming home early after lori graduated from high school she began attending weber state university in ogden utah about 35 miles or 56 kilometers north of salt lake city going to a state school instead of a mormon school meant that lori was able to test the waters of a world outside of the church but she would never stray far after a year at weber lori transferred to the university of utah in salt lake city while studying in their business program she spread her wings and traveled to washington dc for an internship her and her best friend also took trips to savannah georgia and celebrated a new year's eve in new york city's times square lori was about to graduate from the university of utah with honors when she and mark got married at the mormon temple in bountiful just northeast of salt lake city weddings at the temple are reserved for people who are deemed worthy so it seems that mark's early return from his mission didn't affect his worthiness the marriage ceremony in the temple consists of stripping off your clothes and having all of your body parts washed of sin specifically the head eyes nose neck shoulders arms legs feet and loins then you have to have olive oil touch all of those body parts then you put on some white garments that have had a symbol sewn over the right knee the navel and both nipples this is a straight up cult if someone brought me into their quote unquote temple and explained that they wanted me to do this i'd be like this is a cult i'm out pair that with the fact that there are things that go on in the temple that members aren't allowed to tell non-members super culty after a honeymoon in las vegas ironically nicknamed sin city lori moved into mark's apartment and they began their married life together they became the managers of the apartment complex in exchange for free rent lori said she was happy that mark cleaned up after himself after hearing horror stories of husbands who leave their socks lying around wherever she did notice that he would occasionally tell a small lie nothing serious but it always kind of concerned her mark was still in college and was planning to go to medical school mark and laurie shared mostly different interests when mark wasn't in school or at home playing nintendo he liked to spend time outdoors in the mountains lori preferred indoor activities like scrapbooking or going to the movies mark finally got lori to start going running with him this would be an important addition to their daily routine that was pretty unremarkable otherwise lori would go to work at wells fargo as a financial assistant and mark would go to school using their free time to go to city creek canyon to go running and even entering a few 10ks soon mark was ready to go to medical school and the couple prepared to move across the country so he could attend the university of north carolina chapel hill school of medicine on the morning of july 19 2004 mark began calling family members telling them that he was concerned that laurie had gone out to city creek canyon that morning to go running but didn't return he was calling them from memory grove park where he was walking around asking people if they had seen her soon family members joined him at the park they eventually found her car parked nearby and knocked on the door of the house it was parked in front of unfortunately the residents hadn't seen her at 10 07 am that day mark called the salt lake city police to report laurie missing a few minutes later he called lori's employer and told them that she was missing and that he had located her car then he called the police again at 10 46 am and again reported lori missing some people shrugged it off as stress and panic but authorities weren't so quick to do that they immediately thought mark was suspicious police and volunteers showed up and began searching the park the media began reporting that a jogger had gone missing and by that evening mark was on the news he said quote usually when she runs in the morning i go with her i just didn't today end quote the one day you don't go running with her she goes missing how convenient as more friends and family arrive to help look for lori none of them had any thought that mark could be involved in her disappearance most people that knew them saw them as the perfect couple they never seemed to be at odds with each other lori was happy and excited that mark was going to medical school and she had even told some of her friends and relatives that she was five weeks pregnant authorities searched mark and lori's apartment as well as both of their vehicles when they searched lori's vehicle they found that the driver's seat was back way too far for a person of lori's height the mirrors were also adjusted for a much larger person in mark's car they found blood in the back of the car and handprints around the back door consistent with a person bracing themselves as they loaded something heavy into the back seat they also found a receipt for the purchase of a new mattress at a nearby mattress store time stamped on july 19th at 10 23 am so mark had called the police to report lori missing then he went and bought a new mattress took it to his house and then called police again to report laurie missing that seems suspicious when a detective asked him about the receipt he said that lori had gotten a stain on their old mattress a week prior so he threw the mattress away when they asked what they'd been sleeping on between then and now he claimed that they had just been sleeping on the box spring the detectives found that to be extremely unlikely also why would you feel the need to buy a new mattress after realizing that your wife is missing it made absolutely no sense in the apartment they found laurie's purse which happened to have her wallet and keys in it how did she drive to the park without her keys i wonder in the master bedroom they found the brand new mattress all made up with sheets that were still covered in creases like they had just been removed from their package in the bedside table they found multiple knives one of which being a hunting knife with blood and fibers on it in the second bedroom they found a folded up letter written to mark from lori when investigators went to wells fargo to interview her co-workers they told them exactly what mark said when he called the mourning of lori's disappearance one of the employees answered and mark asked him how lori was doing the employee told him that she hadn't arrived yet and gave the phone to their manager then mark told her manager that she had gone running that morning and she must have never come back laurie's manager was concerned and told mark to hang up and call the police which he already had he had already called the police that morning to report laurie missing so why now was he calling her at work acting like he didn't know she was missing the investigators wondered the same thing lori's manager also told detectives that lori left work the previous day in tears she had called the university of north carolina to ask a question about financial aid and was apparently given some bad news when they put the timeline together they realized that mark would have had to have made the call to wells fargo while he was shopping for a new mattress mark's behavior was becoming more and more baffling based on the blood evidence and the hunting knife homicide detectives were brought in and the case quickly became a suspected murder though the police department tried to keep that quiet for now as investigators asked mark more and more questions he could tell that they suspected he had done something to his wife they learned that the blood was lorries and were sure that he killed her but they didn't have a body which meant they couldn't prove that she was dead they did find out that the university of utah had surveillance cameras on their dumpster 24 7 and they had told investigators that they had caught someone dumping something large into the dumpster on the night before lori was reported missing as they uncovered more evidence that pointed to him having murdered lori mark began to panic and racked his brain to try to come up with some way to secure his freedom mark had spent his entire life hiding from his problems by lying it started when he was young in order to get attention but it really took hold when he had to convince people close to him why he had come home early from his mission it would still be his go-to 10 years later in the early morning hours of july 20th mark was found running around the parking lot of a downtown hotel wearing nothing but sandals he had begun drinking earlier that day and when he arrived at the hotel he downed a handful of barbiturates and wrote a note on his palm pilot that read quote this is justice end quote then he stripped off his clothes before putting his sandals back on and running around the parking lot screaming at the top of his lungs sounds awfully deliberate doesn't it well that's because it was mark didn't want to kill himself mark decided he was going to bite the bullet confess to what he had done and get himself an insanity defense unfortunately for mark he knew as much about acting insane as he did about getting away with murder when police arrived on the scene they recognized mark and they knew exactly what he was doing one clue was that he was completely naked except that he had put his sandals back on to protect his feet if he was out of his mind he wouldn't have been concerned about his feet he would have just stripped off all of his clothes and started running around they didn't arrest him or even initiate a psych hold they called and had his brother pick him up mark admitted himself into the university of utah psychiatric unit for observation while mark was now resting comfortably in a psych facility police were uncovering mountains of evidence they found a mattress in the dumpster of the church ward across the street from their apartment which matched the box spring in mark's bedroom the one that now had a brand new mattress and sheets on it they noticed that part of the top of the mattress was cut out and removed for some reason this was the same time that the media began digging into mark's life they knew that he and lori were about to move so he could go to medical school at the university of north carolina so they called the school to get a comment instead of a comment they were informed that mark hacking wasn't enrolled in any program at the school and he had never even applied this explained what lori was crying about the previous day when she called the university of north carolina they informed her that her husband wasn't enrolled there and they didn't even have an application on file mark's lies were starting to unravel once the investigators learned about that they called the university of utah and asked about the status of mark hacking as a student the school revealed that mark hadn't been attending classes for two years he had not graduated anything on the day his wife and mother-in-law were supposed to attend his graduation ceremony mark claimed he was sick and even ingested something to make himself throw up when mark said he was feeling better later that day thelma suggested that he put on his cap and gown and she took pictures of him outside his apartment thelma showed those pictures to authorities realizing later that she had never actually witnessed his graduation it turned out that mark would pretend to go to school but then he would return home and spend the day playing nintendo he worked a night shift job as a hospital orderly which gave him the scrubs and the hospital access to maintain his lie that he was going to school and headed toward a medical degree since they knew that mark had dumped evidence in at least three dumpsters they sent a team to the local landfill to start searching for a body a landfill is actually extremely organized and they know where garbage from various trucks is placed on various days they were able to narrow down the location to one section but it was still a lot of garbage and it had been thoroughly compacted they had to work layer by layer with rakes to pull up compacted garbage and check it for human remains before moving it to the side the landfill reeked of decomposing waste and it was close enough to the great salt lake that there were seagulls everywhere mark's family didn't want to believe that he had murdered lori but eventually the evidence became too overwhelming two of mark's brothers lance and scott went to the psychiatric hospital and asked him to tell them the truth he didn't have anywhere else to hide his lies had been revealed and he was now out of options he broke down and finally told the truth possibly for the first time since he was a little boy on july 16th shortly before lori left for work she called the university of north carolina to discuss financial aid options it was then that the school informed her that her husband was not enrolled and in fact he had never applied her coworkers saw her leaving work in tears when she confronted mark at home he told her there was a computer error and he was able to clear it up mark was used to just creating a new lie to explain away a previous lie when questions arose and having everyone just believe him this time though lori called the university of north carolina back to check on the status of mark's enrollment she made the call after hours so she left a message and was expecting a return call on monday she was suspicious of mark and he knew his secret life was about to be exposed she had been suspicious of mark many times before and now she was sure that he was lying at some point that weekend both lori and mark attended a going away party held by her co-workers and they said she seemed to be in better spirits she was likely just putting on a brave face because by sunday night at the apartment the couple had a fight about mark's life she knew he had been lying for years and she wanted him to change or leave she was especially upset at the idea of having to raise their child without a father which is what she would do if he didn't change mark distracted himself with nintendo games while lori went to bed in tears before she went to sleep though she wrote him a letter explaining that he needed to change she said quote i hate coming home from work because it hurts to be home in our apartment i can't imagine life with you if things don't change i got someone i don't want to spend the rest of my life with unless changes are made end quote when mark was finished with his video games he read the letter mark's mormon upbringing taught him that he was in charge of the household and there was no greater offense than for a man to be insulted in his own home by a woman women are seen as second-class citizens in the lds church they don't even get to go to heaven if they aren't married they're only allowed access to paradise if they're with a man it really is a horrible horrible misogynistic belief system and every woman on the planet deserves better than that laurie had looked him in the eyes and called him a liar he saw that as an attack on his manhood forget the fact that he was in fact a [ __ ] liar everything about his life not even just with her but before her was a lie but no that's not the point a woman was questioning a man let's focus on that [ __ ] he knew that when she got up in the morning she was going to call her mom and tell her about his lies then the news would spread and he would be the talk of the mormon community that would mean his father a doctor with three other successful sons would find out that he was not only not going to medical school but he wasn't even a college graduate doug had scheduled time off from his practice to help his son and daughter-in-law move across the country and now he would know it was all an elaborate lie in mark's mind lori had essentially killed the version of him that he had created with his lies she was a murderer and she needed to atone for her sin he walked into the second bedroom set the letter on a shelf and picked up his 22 caliber rifle he walked into the master bedroom where laurie was fast asleep in their bed completely defenseless he pointed the rifle directly at the back of her head and pulled the trigger lori was dead and mark somehow believed that this would be the answer to his problems he set down the gun and walked to a nearby convenience store where he bought a pack of cigarettes now he was free to smoke and drink and do whatever he wanted without laurie there to catch him he already had been for some time but he had to constantly make sure it was hidden from lori now he was free mark pulled laurie off the bed and wrapped her body in garbage bags then he used a hunting knife from the bedside table to cut the blood-soaked top of the mattress off he shoved the mattress top and the bloody sheets into garbage bags and loaded them into the back of his dodge durango with lori's body he set the rest of the mattress on top of his suv and drove across the street to his church ward where he dropped the mattress carcass into the dumpster behind the building he drove to the university of utah psychiatric hospital and backed up to the dumpster behind that building he lifted laurie's body into the dumpster and dropped her in to him now she was just garbage that he needed to get rid of he knew the dumpster would be picked up the following morning and soon she would be forever buried in the massive landfill just outside the city back at the apartment mark began the process of cleaning up which he did a horrible job of he claims to have wiped the blood from the hunting knife and put it back in the drawer but when detectives found it it still had blood and fibers from the mattress on it he had also left the bloody pillow that laurie was sleeping on in the apartment he wadded it up and threw it away he thought the bedroom was clean but there were tiny specks of blood all over after working through the night to dispose of the evidence and clean the apartment mark had decided he was going to use the old classic wife went missing story obviously we'll never know the amount of people who kill their spouse claim they went missing and get away with it because well they got away with it but it does seem like the story ends in an incarcerated spouse more often than not this seems to be a common story for husbands as the classic masked intruders killed my husband is the common story for wives which also seems to not usually work well mark thought he would claim lori went missing play the grieving husband and then moved to north carolina on his own to start a whole new life as a single man he assumed everyone would believe that he was a poor grieving husband who just wanted to get away from the painful memories and start over fresh except that mark was not as good of a murderer as he thought he was his plan was to go to memory grove park and pretend to be looking for lori but he also wanted to make sure he replaced the mattress as soon as possible i guess he didn't think anyone would notice that he went and bought a mattress right in the middle of looking for his missing wife in the early morning hours when it was still dark he drove laurie's car using his own key not thinking to take her purse with him to an area near the park and then walked back home then he went to the mattress store and purchased a new mattress but while he was there he called the police for the first time to report laurie missing he was still there when he called laurie's work and pretended to not know she wasn't at work then he took the mattress home put it on the box spring put on a new set of sheets and drove his own car to the park to start looking for lori once there he started calling family members and then called police again to report her missing once police arrived they quickly began logging evidence against mark it was obvious almost immediately that he had killed his wife and was pretending she was missing in the psychiatric hospital mark was sure that he was setting himself up for a perfect insanity defense but the doctors weren't fooled they knew that mark wasn't insane he simply had a personality disorder he was obviously a sociopath and that did not explain away the murder of his wife mark thought that because he worked as an orderly at that very hospital he would be able to replicate what he saw there he didn't realize that psychiatric disorders are much more complicated than just what you see on the surface doctors knew his behavior didn't match that of a psychotic break so when the police came to place mark under arrest they didn't protest mark was transferred to the county jail where he successfully convinced the doctor there that he was suicidal something that's not hard if you tell a doctor during booking that you're suicidal they kind of have to take it seriously mark hacking was afraid of what might happen to him in general population so he was happy to have his own cell then even though he had confessed to murdering lori a confession that was 100 admissible in court he pleaded not guilty through his high-profile lawyer that his parents hired for him mark managed to stave off boredom by making friends with other inmates in the county jail one of whom you might recognize from one of my other videos brian david mitchell brian kidnapped and raped elizabeth smart in 2002 and claimed that he was a prophet of god who was told by god to take the 14 year old elizabeth at knifepoint and make her his wife maybe mark was trying to get tips on how to act for an insanity defense who knows mark claimed that they had had a singing competition but never revealed who won ah what a fun time in jail after you've murdered your wife while mark sat in jail awaiting trial teams of police were still searching the dump the evidence against mark was bad but a body would make it a slam dunk little by little grid by grid police worked around the clock to pick through all of the garbage that had been put in the landfill the day the dumpster at the church ward was emptied they continually got their hopes up when they would find a bag containing dark hair but it would end up being garbage from a barber or hair salon on october 1 2004 sergeant j.r nelson pulled a rake across a garbage bag and found more hair this was long curly dark hair just like laurie's he knelt down and pulled back more of the garbage bag and saw flesh and bone amongst the hair he stood up and yelled to the other searchers lori's remains had been found at the medical examiner's office they were able to use parts of the jaw to confirm they were lori hackings through dental records otherwise the garbage compactor did a very good job of destroying any evidence they couldn't even determine that she had been shot in the head since all that was left was just skull fragments they simply had the remains as a means of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that laurie was dead and not just missing they also weren't able to prove that lori was pregnant at the time of her death mark admitted to knowing she was pregnant at the time he killed her but the district attorney said that wasn't enough to charge him with fetal homicide the defense could easily argue that he and lori could have been mistaken about the pregnancy mark was charged with first-degree murder for the death of lori the idea of getting away with the perfect murder and starting a new life in north carolina gradually faded and mark began to accept that his future would positively include prison time his lawyer explained that the jury was going to hear how he admitted to pointing a rifle at his wife's head as she was sound asleep and murdered her in cold blood after a lifetime of lies even the best lawyer in the world couldn't change that on april 15 2005 mark finally bit the bullet and changed his plea to guilty in the state of utah for some reason the maximum punishment for first-degree murder is five years to life which seems extremely low he had a year added to his sentence for the use of a firearm during the murder so he was sentenced to six years to life in prison obviously many people especially laurie's family were appalled at the idea that mark could be out of prison in only six years the good thing is that six years is only the amount of time when he could possibly be up for parole the utah board of pardons has gone on record saying that they have set mark hacking's first possible parole hearing for 2035 which essentially gives him a more fitting sentence of 30 years to life mark thought he could live a life of lies and never have his family find out what was going to happen after they moved to north carolina what was going to happen when he was supposed to graduate medical school what was going to happen when he was supposed to start working as a doctor at some point he should have known he was going to get caught but mark was a sociopath who thought he could keep adding on lies to cover his own ass he only thought of what was going to happen right now how to keep the lies going right now he was even attached to the person he had become in his lies feeling like lori exposing him was killing that person and her doing that was wrong not his years of lying it takes a special kind of person to be so deeply selfish that they would wind up in mark's position then you add to that how easy it was for him to pick up a gun and kill his wife and unborn child without hesitation that makes him a monster if you're the victim of domestic abuse please reach out to someone for help please talk to your local battered women's shelter or call the national domestic abuse hotline at 1-800-799-safe that's 1-800-799-7233 or you can go to thehotline.org to chat with someone online the great thing about this website is that at any time hitting the escape key twice will take you to a google search page that way if your abuser is nearby you won't get caught looking for help if you're having feelings of harming yourself or someone else or even just need someone to talk to please contact your local mental health facility call 9-1-1 or call mental health america who operate the national suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-2 that's 1-800-273-8255 they're available 24 hours a day seven days a week and we'll talk to you about any mental health issue you might be facing thanks so much for watching this video you can help us out by hitting the like button or leaving us a comment you can also subscribe to the show to ensure you don't miss an episode if you'd like to support the show you can do that by checking out our merchandise at teespring you can also discuss the channel and the episodes on our subreddit are forward slash this is monsters you can find more ways to support our show and how to find us on social media by visiting this is monsters.com thanks again and be safe you

Channel: this is MONSTERS

Views: 547,771

Keywords: True crime, mark hacking, lori hacking, lds, murder

Id: 6QIAFSSNFHA

Length: 32min 48sec (1968 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 31 2022