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Officers to Search by Hand for Lori Hacking

Officers to Search by Hand for Lori Hacking


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Debbie Dujanovic ReportingOut of room and out of options, investigators are starting over in the search for Lori Hacking. Their focus is still the landfill, but they're making a tactical decision to go back to the beginning.

Detectives still believe Lori Hacking's body is out there. They just can't find her. They've already searched through trash for seven weeks, now they're changing their approach, going through each piece by hand.

Chopper 5 was overhead today as the heavy equipment rolled in. Machines were scooping up trash and spreading it out thin. Spreading out the garbage is the first step; tomorrow morning new officers and more of them will start hand picking through each piece of trash

Dwayne Baird, Salt Lake City Police Department: "This time the officers will be going through it by hand and looking through each piece of material, and loading it to be removed from that area to another location."

For nearly two months they've searched the landfill for Lori's body -- so far, nothing. They used cadaver dogs to sniff through the pile for human remains, but never got through the whole area they'd set out to search. And instead of staying the course, they've decided to change tactics. The dogs won't search anymore, and instead more people will be brought in -- other officers, fire fighters, medics all offering to join the search.

Dwayne Baird: "I think it has to do with the fact that it's Lori Hacking and they want to find her and put this case to rest. And they want to help the family and make sure we do everything we can to bring her home to her family."

The search for Lori began in July. Her husband was arrested in connection with her murder -- accused of putting her body in a dumpster near his workplace. Reality is, police say they don't know for sure if Lori Hacking's body is at the landfill, but they're not ready to walk away from their only good lead.

Salt Lake police say they did find a few items that may have been dumped in the same trash bin as Lori, but they didn't lead to anything. As for no longer using cadaver dogs, they say it got tricky with scheduling, and this new approach is more methodical.

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