When Double Lives are Deadly

Lori Hacking seemed to be at a high point in her life. She and her husband, Mark, were happily married. She had just found out she was pregnant with their first child. They were packing up to move to Chapel Hill, North Carolina so Mark could start medical school. So, when she went missing on July 19, 2004, family and friends rallied around Mark, engaged in a massive search, and reminded themselves that Elizabeth Smart, a Utah teen who had been missing for nine months, had been recovered alive and well. So, too, might Lori.

Varkha Rani, on the other hand, was struggling. The twenty-four-year-old bride had met Jasvar Ginday through a matchmaker in India when he traveled to India to find a wife in October of 2012. In August 2013, they moved to England, Ginday’s home but — to Varkha — a place that was foreign and isolating. A month later, she had vanished. In a missing person’s report Jasvir Ginday filed with the police, he stated that he believed his wife had abandoned him after using him to relocate to the U.K.

On the surface, these two women had little in common. In reality, they were both involved with men who were leading lives filled with deception and lies. And, when these women discovered them, and made it clear those lies would be exposed, they were murdered.

Living A Double Life

Mark Hacking’s whole life was a lie. Not only was Mark lying about his acceptance to medical school, he had actually dropped out of college. Both his wife and parents thought he had recently graduated from the University of Utah; his mother in law even helped him with “term papers” and stored some of his “college textbooks” in her garage. On, July 15, 2004, Lori received a call from the University of North Carolina informing her that Mark had never applied to medical school. By July 19, she was dead.

Jasvir Ginday’s big secret was his sexual orientation. Although he had realized he was gay at age 12, he continued to pretend to be heterosexual to his family and his fiance. At the same time an elaborate wedding was being planned, he was frequenting gay bars and having relationships with men. The impetus for the murder, according to prosecutors, was Vickra’s discovery of her new husband’s secret during which she informed him that she wanted a divorce and would not participate in his deception.