Friday, July 23, 2004

More Questions for Mark Hacking

With a nod to Kevin at Wizbang:

This story indicates that Mark Hacking has indeed been hospitalized, because of being "incapacitated with grief" A more thorough write up here. Seems he was hospitalized after police were called to respond to a "disturbance" and arrived to find Mark running around naked at a hotel a few miles from the apartment where Mark and Lori lived.

I'm no criminal psychologist, but knowing something of the workings of the human mind, I would say this would be an atypical response to this particular situation. Mark Hacking is not responding the way that families of missing persons generally behave, in that most are intimately involved with the investigation and search, even if only trying to raise money to offer as reward. One would think that this level of "grief" would only come at such time that he knows his beloved to be dead. He may truly be innocent, but he's doing a remarkable job of drawing suspicion to himself here.

I am somewhat reminded of the Susan Smith case. An analysis by law enforcement comparing the statements of the two parents revealed that while the father referred to their children as if they were alive, she used the past tense when referring to them. Police believed that this indicated she knew the children were dead. As it happened she was indeed responsible for the deaths of the children.

Analysis of statements and actions by suspects and potential suspects is truly a valuable tool for law enforcement, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if more developments point to Mark Hacking in this case.

For more about the science of statement analysis, click here.

Update: Fox News reports that police investigators have found pieces of Mark & Lori's old mattress in a dumpster, the mattress which Mark was out shopping to replace 30 minutes before he called Police to report his wife's disappearance.

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