Claudia Moscovici 
The most dangerous social predators are, unfortunately, also the most common and the best camouflaged. Charismatic psychopaths rely upon their natural trademarks—glibness, magnetism and charm—to lure others into their lives. Romantic relationships with such individuals tend to have one thing in common: they initially appear to be absolutely perfect, the very picture of happiness and the envy of all your friends. Charismatic psychopaths give their partners flowers and say all the right things to win their trust and love. They often engage in ostentatious public displays of affection that leave other women drooling, wishing they too could have such romantic partners. But we must remember the age-old adage: what seems too good to be true usually is. If social predators weren’t especially alluring and didn’t behave exceptionally well at first, they wouldn’t trap so many victims into their dangerous nets. They also wouldn’t be able hold on to the partners they inevitably come to mistreat. Few women are so masochistic as to be enticed into a romantic relationship by overt and immediate signs of abuse. Yet many remain trapped in abusive relationships with psychopaths because of the lure of the initial honeymoon period and the vain hope that they can somehow recapture it. In her international study of 75 women who got romantically involved with psychopaths, entitled, appropriately enough, Women Who Love Psychopaths, Sandra L. Brown, M.A. observes:
The early days of being wooed and lured by a psychopath are the most exciting times that women remember. The psychopath uses his personality as a drawing card and has been consistently described as: charming and engaging conversationalist, agreeable, seemingly insightful, sweet, twinkling eyes, a compelling talker, funny, a great storyteller, fun to be with, delightful, exciting, companionable, loyal and protective, enthusiastic and upbeat, sensitive. From this list of traits, it’s easy to see why women are enamored with his personality. From this list of A+ qualities what’s not to like? (188-9)
As it turns out, what’s not to like is absolutely everything about this dangerous and sometimes deadly charmer. His image of perfection is only a mask, set up to ensnare his target into a vision of her dream come true, which eventually turns into a nightmare. This is precisely what happened to Lori Kay Soares and Rachel Entwistle, two young women who believed that they had married their dream lovers. In actuality, however, they fell into the clutches of psychopathic partners who killed them for the flimsiest of reasons. The most common question people ask when they hear or read about such cruel and senseless crimes is: why did he or she do it? Once again, psychopaths don’t have rational or comprehensible motives. They don’t steal primarily for money, which they could get through honest means. They don’t rape primarily for sex, which they could get voluntarily. They don’t kill their spouses primarily for freedom, which they could get through a legitimate divorce. They have malicious motivations. They harm others primarily for pleasure and fun: for the sport of it. Hurting others, sometimes even killing them, gives psychopaths the greatest rush of euphoria and power. This constitutes their only real purpose in life. Fooling their families, their partners, their colleagues, their buddies, the media and even the police into thinking that they’re decent, caring human beings—or, when caught, that they feel genuine remorse or have been victimized themselves—offers the extra bonus. It’s the icing on the cake, so to speak. It also enables psychopaths to sometimes get away with their evil deeds. In describing these infamous true crimes, which many readers may have already followed on the news, I will also introduce Hervey Cleckley’s exposition of psychopathic traits, by revisiting his groundbreaking work, The Mask of Sanity.
Mark and Lori Hacking
Mark Douglas Hacking and Lori Kay Soares appeared to be the perfect couple. They were both in their late twenties and had been together for ten years. Their seemingly idyllic relationship was the envy of Lori’s friends. From the moment they met on a trip in Lake Powell, Utah in 1994, Mark and Lori become practically inseparable. Mark seemed crazy about his wife. He was an outgoing, fun-loving young man who appeared to have a promising future ahead of him. The couple planned to move to Chapel Hill, where Mark was supposed to attend medical school. Lori was expecting their first child. According to family and friends, the couple was looking forward to the birth of their baby and to their promising life together in North Carolina. But tragedy struck on July 19, 2004, when Lori went out for a walk and didn’t return. That morning, Mark called Lori’s work to inquire about her whereabouts. Her colleague, Brandon Hodge, told him that she didn’t come to work yet. This struck him as somewhat unusual, since Lori was punctual. Mark responded that his wife went jogging earlier that morning. He claimed it was the last time he saw her. Although Lori had been missing for only a few hours, Mark sounded very concerned. He told Hodge that he went jogging for three miles on the trail his wife took, but couldn’t find her. About half an hour later, Mark called the police to report his wife as missing. They informed him that a person must be gone for at least 24 hours for them to start an official search.
Lori’s family, friends and colleagues, however, were sufficiently alarmed to assist Mark in the search for his wife that very day. On the following day, Lori’s parents held a press conference. They asked for the public’s help in finding their missing daughter. Since Lori was extremely well liked in the community, 1,200 people volunteered to look for her. Mark claimed that he felt too distraught to join them. Police found him wandering around a local motel wearing nothing but a pair of sandals. He was admitted to the University of Utah psychiatric unit to recover from his apparent anxiety attack. The police, however, expressed skepticism. They wondered if Mark had faked his nervous breakdown to avoid a more thorough interrogation. Their initial inquiries led them to believe that he might have been involved in his wife’s disappearance. Upon questioning Lori’s family, colleagues and friends, they discovered that, in fact, the marriage wasn’t going well lately. The couple had fought earlier that week after Lori found out that Mark had deceived her about whom he was and what he was planning to do in life.
Dr. Douglas Hacking, Mark’s father, told the police that his son had lied to his wife about graduating with honors in psychology from the University of Utah. He had also deceived her about being accepted to the University of North Carolina Medical School. Lori discovered the lies by accident, when she called the medical school from work to ask about financial aid for her husband. Some of her colleagues stated that she was visibly upset during that conversation. She left work early that day, probably to confront Mark, they speculated. For a few days, however, the relations between the couple improved. As it turns out, Mark succeeded in persuading his wife of yet another lie. He told her that the reason he wasn’t in the University of North Carolina’s records was because of a computer malfunction. Apparently, however, Lori didn’t buy that excuse for long. She proceeded to verify his claim. Afterwards, the situation went from bad to worse. A few days later, the couple had another altercation.
The extent of the deception led investigators to suspect that if Mark lied so easily and for so long to his wife and others about his education and life plans, he could just as easily be lying to them about his lack of involvement in Lori’s disappearance. In addition, the evidence they found at the Hackings’ residence led them to conclude that they were dealing with a homicide, not a missing person case. From that point on, they considered Mark to be “a person of interest.” Inside the Hackings’ apartment, they collected a receipt for a new mattress and bedding, a bloody knife found in the drawer of the couple’s bedroom, clothing and a letter supposedly written by Lori warning her husband that she’d leave him “if things didn’t change.” Outside, they gathered a cut up mattress that matched the box spring found in the trash bin of University of Utah hospital, where Mark worked. They also removed a clump of dark hair matching Lori’s from a dumpster outside a gas station near the hospital. In addition, the surveillance tapes taken from various locations—the hospital, a Mormon church near the park where Lori supposedly went on a walk and a convenience store—told a different story from the one Mark shared with the police.
The tapes revealed that on the morning when Mark told police he was searching for his wife in the park, he was actually buying a new mattress at a local store. In addition, the seat of Lori’s car was adjusted for a tall person rather than for her petite frame. Mark was six feet tall, while Lori was only 5’4”. More significantly, Mark’s two brothers told investigators that he had confessed to murdering his wife. Mark told them that on the evening of July 18th, Lori confronted him about his newest lie, concerning the supposed computer malfunction. He finally admitted to her that he had deceived her for years about his education. This revelation resulted in a heated argument. Lori then went to bed and Mark began packing his belongings. During this process, he came across a .22-caliber rifle. Around 1:00 a.m., he shot his sleeping wife in the head. He then wrapped up her body in garbage bags and disposed of it in a local dumpster about an hour later. He also cut up the mattress (with the knife that the police removed from his bedroom drawer) and discarded it in the dumpster near the hospital, where it was later found.
Because the investigators couldn’t find Lori’s body for a few months, the prosecution team charged Mark with first-degree murder without seeking the death penalty. Two months later, on October 1, 2004, they found Lori’s remains in the Salt Lake County Landfill. Her husband pleaded “not guilty” at the arraignment hearing. During the April trial, however, Mark confessed that he had murdered his wife. As he described how he killed Lori and disposed of her body, he showed no signs of emotion. Lori’s family expressed not only grief, but also a sense of perplexity. They couldn’t understand what might have led this seemingly adoring husband to kill the woman who was, by all accounts, the love of his life. They were also puzzled by the fact he disposed of her body in such an irreverent fashion, literally as one does of a pile of garbage.
Dangerous Liaisons/Legături Periculoase, Editura Vremea, http://www.edituravremea.ro/leg–turi-periculoase–cum-s–recuno–ti-un-psihopat–i-s–scapi-din-mrejele-lui
