SALT LAKE CITY – Police have seized surveillance equipment from the psychiatric hospital where Mark Hacking (search) worked as an orderly and the convenience store where he was seen twice the night his wife, Lori, presumably died.
Hacking, 28, is accused of killing Lori Hacking (search), 27, while she slept and dumping her body in a trash bin. Authorities believe the bin is at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute (search), Hacking's former employer.
The equipment taken from the hospital was a digital recorder for surveillance cameras, according to court files unsealed Friday.
Investigators are reviewing the hospital's digital video recorder from midnight to noon July 19, the day Lori Hacking disappeared, according to police affidavits used to obtain search warrants.
One affidavit released Friday says the hospital trash bin was under video surveillance, which showed "an object" was dumped there. The document, however, didn't reveal what the object was or who was seen dumping it.
Court files released earlier this week say police received a tip from an unidentified witness that led them to a county landfill in the search for Lori Hacking's body, which still has not been found. Police and cadaver dogs returned to the landfill Friday night to resume the search.
The latest search warrants were unsealed at the request of prosecutors, who said they didn't have to be kept secret any longer because Hacking has been charged with murder.
The court filings show detectives used a warrant to glean information about Hacking's use of the hospital's computer network.
Investigators poured over the couple's finances and credit reports, according to other warrants, and also seized television footage of Hacking giving interviews July 19 to four Salt Lake stations at the park where he said his wife went jogging.
They took images from surveillance cameras in a convenience store where Hacking was seen twice the night his wife presumably died — first with her, then returning to the store alone after 1 a.m. for a pack of cigarettes and driving off in his wife's car.
Other surveillance recordings were taken from cameras around Salt Lake's Mormon Temple Square that point in the direction of the jogging park.
Police have taken dozens of items from the couple's apartment, their vehicles and Mark Hacking's workplace locker, earlier court files showed. They include a hunting knife, a piece of bloodstained carpet, a personal computer, and a stained pillow retrieved from a trash bin outside the apartment.
Hacking has been grieving and praying, according to family members who visited him at jail Friday and Thursday.
His mother, Janet Hacking, told reporters she was praying for Lori Hacking and hoped her parents and siblings could "forgive us and pray for us."
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