The Crime Resource Room

A pregnant 27-year-old woman, Lori Hacking, is missing in Utah, and her husband is behaving bizarrely. The case is eerily reminescent of the Laci Peterson case, although the origin of the husband's behavior is markedly different.

The last person who supposedly saw Hacking alive was a woman claiming she saw Hacking stretching at a nearby park, where Hacking normally jogged each morning. Her testimony is crucial because police will focus most intensely on events following the last confirmed sighting. If the woman is incorrect, then the last sighting, save for Hacking's husband, would be the previous afternoon. It opens up the situation considerably.

And it appears the woman is backing down:

Also Friday, the only reported witness to see Lori Hacking on the morning she disappeared backtracked, telling KSL NewsRadio she no longer thinks the woman she saw stretching at a city park was the missing jogger.

My interest here is on the intersection of the media and the witness. Is this the first time she's spoken to the media? Had police asked her not to talk to media? Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unstable, especially when you're dealing with people or contexts that you are not familiar with. This woman (as far as we know) did not personally know Hacking. It's quite possible she saw someone else entirely. But it's also possible she saw Lori. If the media has extensively interviewed her, if she's been bombarded with attention, it would be normal for her to begin to waver or question herself, even to develop false "memories" about it. In this situation, both a false positive and a false negative can have a major impact on the case.

It's a good example of why we should be aware of the impact of media coverage on police investigations.