Co-Workers: Lori Got Upsetting Phone Call

SALT LAKE CITY – The focus on Mark Hacking's possible role in the disappearance of his wife tightened Monday with reports that police found a bloody knife in the couple's apartment and Lori Hacking got an upsetting phone call at work three days before she vanished.

Also Monday, police searched a landfill near Salt Lake City as a "place of interest" in Lori's disappearance, FOX News has confirmed.

Mark Hacking (search), 28, who has been in hospitalized in the psychiatric unit where he worked as an orderly since early Tuesday, has retained high-profile attorney Gil Athay.

Lori Hacking's (search) co-workers at Wells Fargo Brokerage Service said she received a phone call at the office that prompted her to leave work early, sobbing and visibly upset.

Lori's supervisor said she received the call on July 16, believed to be from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That's where her husband had supposedly been enrolled for medical school.

Lori, 27, had been trying to arrange for housing at the campus, but her co-workers said the call from the school was to tell her that her husband had not registered at the school.

Several workers gave their accounts of the call to homicide detectives after she was reported missing the following Monday, July 19.

Also troubling were press accounts that police found a bloody knife with brown hair on it in the couple's apartment and took it away for testing.

There were additional rumors that authorities, using blood-detection techniques, had found a significant amount of blood inside the Hackings' home and unearthed a clump of brown hair in a Dumpster only two blocks from where Mark Hacking purchased a new mattress just before he told police his wife was missing. They didn't yet know whether the hair found in the trash was Lori's.

Detective Dwayne Baird, a police spokesman, wouldn't confirm or deny a Deseret Morning News (search ) report citing unnamed sources that a bloody knife with strands of brown hair stuck on it was among the evidence removed from the Hackings' apartment for testing.

"We took a lot of things out of that apartment," Baird said. He said police were still waiting on test results from a search of the apartment and surrounding area.

Baird said Mark was still a "person of interest" in the case, but he would not elaborate.

Lori Hacking vanished — seemingly into thin air — one week ago, just days after she learned she was five weeks pregnant and days before she and her husband were to move to North Carolina. Mark Hacking reported her disappearance to authorities, saying she'd gone out jogging while he was sleeping and never showed up for work that morning.

But since then, inconsistencies in his story and his bizarre behavior have intensified suspicion that he might have been involved. The couple was moving to North Carolina, where Mark had said he was going to attend medical school.

As it turned out, he had lied to his wife and family — he had not been accepted to any medical school and never even graduated from college.

He also had initially said his wife did not wake him up after coming home from an early morning jog, as she usually did, and never showed up to work. But police confirmed Friday that Mark Hacking was at a furniture store buying a new mattress just before reporting to police that Lori was missing.

Footage from a surveillance camera shows Mark Hacking looking for a mattress in one store but then leaving, apparently when he found out he couldn't take his purchase with him that day, FOX News has learned.

Instead, he wound up buying the mattress he came home with from a store across the street.

He has been under psychiatric care since police found him early Tuesday running naked around a motel not far from his home.

Lori Hacking's family and her in-laws have said they want to keep the focus on finding Lori, not Mark's inconsistent statements.

"We continue to entertain all possibilities and we are prepared for whatever the outcome may be," Douglas Hacking, Mark's father, said in a written statement given to The Associated Press. "We would like to think Mark had no part in it. Our love for him has not changed and our ultimate goal is still to bring Lori home."

The family has been holding as many as two news conferences a day since Lori was reported missing. But they have been more reluctant to face reporters since questions arose about the credibility of Hacking's husband.

"We are all exhausted and we feel we need to concentrate our efforts and our energies on finding Lori," said Thelma Soares (search), Hacking's mother.

They hired a new spokesman, Scott Dunaway — a leader in Soares' church — who said that though the family was distressed by the news reports, they were waiting for official confirmation from police before they commented publicly.

Mark Hacking's family said they'd visited him in the hospital as recently as Sunday and he was doing well, asking for video games to pass the time and inquiring frequently about the investigation. They also said they have been careful about what they've been telling him.

About 200 people attended a candlelight vigil for Lori Sunday night at Memory Grove Park, where her husband said she went jogging the day she disappeared. Lori Hacking routinely ran in that park.

FOX News' Alicia Acuna, Catherine Donaldson-Evans and The Associated Press contributed to this report.