Lori Soares with her mother.
In the summer of 2004, a beautiful young woman named Lori Soares Hacking was reported missing by her husband to Utah police – he told them she had gone running and never returned.
Authorities soon discovered that husband Mark Hacking had structured a life of lies to his wife and family, regaling them with tales of a earning a college degree and being accepted to medical school. In reality, he was pretending to leave the apartment to go to school, only to return once his wife was at school to work more diligently on video games.
Lori stumbled upon the truth that Mark had not been accepted to medical school (or applied, for that matter). Only days later, she went missing.
Mark’s brothers wrangled the truth from him and got him to turn himself in. He confessed to shooting his wife while she slept.
This case was detailed in a true-crime book titled Every Woman’s Nightmare: The True Story Of The Fairy-Tale Marriage And Brutal Murder Of Lori Hacking. Ann Rule also covered this in her book Kiss Me, Kill Me.
Mark Hacking was sentenced to life in prison in Utah, though he is eligible for parole in 2034. While he reportedly a well-behaved prisoner, he still enjoys some ill-gotten gains by supplying “murderabilia” sites with his autographs and drawings (at post time, several handwritten items purportedly by Mark Hacking are being peddled at roughly $50-75 each – no information on how these sites acquired these items).
Scott Hacking, one of Mark’s brothers who urged his confession, is a Utah physician. Lance Hacking is an electrical engineer in Austin, Texas.
Mark’s father, Douglas Hacking, is still a popular pediatrician in Utah. He also serves as a medical missionary on relief trips overseas through the LDS church. He is still married to Mark’s mother, Janet Hacking.
Lori’ mother, Thelma Soares, still lives in Utah. She created a scholarship in Lori’s name at the University of Utah for women who need financial assistance for their education. She sometimes speaks to domestic violence charities.
Lori’s father, Eraldo Soares, lives in California (the Soares’ were already divorced at the time of Lori’s murder). Mr. Soares lobbied for the successful Utah bill known as “Lori’s Law”, which requires that those convicted of murder in Utah serve a minimum of 15 years . He returned to Utah in 2006 to assist in the search for missing child Destiny Norton.
The Soares family had Lori’s married name removed from her headstone.
Felony Follow-Up 
What never ceases to amaze me about murderers is the fact that they kill to get money usually or in this case, to cover up lies that have been told. But after the murder, they get caught and end up without the money they killed for and with Mark Hacking, his lies still ended up being revealed.
With Hacking, I wonder what lies he would have told Lori once they got to North Carolina. I sort of wished Lori had not found out when she did about Mark’s lies. She would have found out eventually but I wished it was later and of course I wished she wasn’t murdered for discovering the truth.
Being the habitual liar that he is, Mark probably would have said that there was a mix up with his transcript or some other lie as to why he wouldn’t be attending medical school or he would have bought textbooks and pretended to do homework. After all, they had been lying for years about attending school. He would have continued to carry out his ruse.