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If you wish to volunteer for the search, you are asked to go to the LDS Stake Center located at 142 W. 200 North in downtown Salt Lake. Volunteers need to be at least 18 years old. Please bring a Photo ID with you. You can also call 205-0038. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The search area for a missing pregnant woman has been expanded to include a municipal landfill and the use of cadaver dogs, police said Saturday.
"We've been out there following up on some tips and leads," Detective Dwayne Baird said after meeting for more than an hour with family members of 27-year-old Lori Hacking, who has been missing since Monday.
Baird could not provide details of the search, and there was no sign of police at the landfill Saturday.
He also said he doesn't believe investigators have interviewed the missing woman's husband, Mark Hacking, since Wednesday.
Mark Hacking, 28, has been in a psychiatric hospital since police found him running naked early Tuesday outside a motel four blocks from his apartment.
Speculation about his credibility was fueled by news that he never graduated from college or applied for medical school. He had told friends and family he was headed to medical school in North Carolina; Lori Hacking vanished days before the couple was to move.
Police have confirmed that Mark Hacking was at a furniture store buying a new mattress shortly before reporting his wife as missing. He made a credit card purchase at 10:23 a.m., then reported his wife as missing at 10:49 a.m.
Baird said police were still checking out details of the timeline provided by Hacking on the day his wife disappeared, one he said police consider puzzling.
"Because of the deception, we have to look at all aspects of what he has done," Baird said. Baird said Mark Hacking remains only a person of interest and not a suspect. He refused to say if anyone was being considered a suspect.
Baird also said a pathology lab was testing a sample of a brown, protein-rich liquid that a neighbor of the Hackings found at the bottom of his trash bin on Monday after collection rounds.
Mark Hacking has said his wife did not wake him up after coming home from an early morning jog Monday, but that account is now coming under question. A witness who initially reported seeing a jogger matching Lori Hacking's description said Friday she couldn't be certain it was the missing woman.
Mayor Rocky Anderson urged others who might have been in or near the park to come forward, even if they saw nothing unusual.
If other runners "didn't see anybody, that's highly material, too," Anderson said Saturday. "If people were up there and saw somebody, or if they didn't see somebody, it's very important we know that."
Mark Hacking still has the support of both his parents and his in-laws. Douglas Hacking said Friday his son told him he had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance.
Lori's mother, Thelma Soares said she visited briefly Friday with Mark Hacking at the hospital.
"As I walked in, he was standing, and he put his arms out, and enfolded me in his arms. I just whispered into his ear, 'Mark, didn't you know that my love for you was not conditional upon you becoming a doctor?"' she said. She said he wept but did not answer.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
