Mark and Lori Hacking

Mark and Lori Hacking case

Memorial for Lori Hacking

The above link is for a case actively broadcast in the news during my final year with my husband.  The article is ten years after the death of Lori Kay Soares Hacking.  Her mother has done all she could to come to terms with the grief and mourning caused by the loss of her daughter and the shock of discovering Lori was killed by her husband Mark.

Thelma Soares has chosen forgiveness to help her handle the poison from negative feelings that build up from repeating and reliving the sadness over and over. She writes to Mark, who is serving a life sentence in prison, and refuses to accept any more speaking assignments on the topic of Lori's death and Mark's betrayal.



2004 was a year of madness I think, or the year to try to break free from the madness.

In 2003 my husband dragged me into the bedroom, locked us in, bent me over the corner of our bed, piled my chest high with pillows and bore down with his arm across my chest and neck until I saw little lights like stars and darkness.  I heard my daughter's voice as though from a long distance telling her father that someone was at the door who needed to talk with him. It was John Burrell.  He didn't know he saved my life.  My daughter didn't know she saved my life.  They did though.

The police can't always be there and they can't always know who's right or who is wrong.  They can spy, they can assess a situation according to the moment. Sometimes they are right and sometimes wrong.  The Hacking case among others took a great deal of man hours from a senseless crime done in the spur of a moment.

My husband was growing increasingly more violent.  The last episode was in November of 2004 when he dragged me around the house, tried to throw me down the front steps and punched me in the leg.  Other women have taken worse but this was bad enough. After years of it, I knew if there was any more of it someone would die.

I wanted so badly to keep the family together, and to have a successful marriage but I knew it wasn't going to happen.  A man who hits his wife, the mother of his children, doesn't listen or accept feedback isn't a partner or companion but a tyrant and a dictator.  If he'd been a good leader and was right I would have held my tongue and did my best to live through it, but he wasn't and he still isn't.  There is wisdom beyond his comprehension.

Some lines should never be crossed in a marriage and forgiveness does not last if promises are broken and injuries are repeated.

He will still hurt me again if he can reach me now and can get away with it, because he is a predator. Should I have remained as his victim knowing no one would help me? And what about our children?