Sister: Wife of UCLA shooter "could do anything she dreamed of"
LOS ANGELES -- The path to the campus shooting death of a UCLA professor began nearly 2,000 miles away in Minnesota.
There, a former student with a grudge, Mainak Sarkar, killed his estranged wife.
Sarkar then made the long drive to Los Angeles where he found his former mentor, engineering professor William Klug, and shot him before turning the gun on himself, authorities said Thursday.
Both victims were on a "kill list" police found at Sarkar's Minnesota apartment, according to Los Angeles police. A third person on the list, another UCLA professor, was spared because he was not on campus Wednesday when Sarkar arrived with two semi-automatic pistols, police said.
The investigation unfolded rapidly based on a note Sarkar left in the office where he killed Klug. It asked anyone who read it to check on Sarkar's cat in St. Paul, Minnesota.
At Sarkar's apartment, authorities found his list of three planned targets. They checked the home of the woman in the nearby town of Brooklyn Park and found her body.
Authorities did not publicly identify the unharmed professor or the woman. Law enforcement sources told CBS News the woman on the list was Ashley Hasti, 31. She and Sarkar married in 2011, the Hennepin County Clerk's Office confirmed to CBS News.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner said Friday Hasti's death was a homicide caused by multiple gunshot wounds.
"Because this was an unwitnessed death, a more accurate date and time of death cannot be determined," the coroner said in a statement.
Family members told CBS Minnesota Sarkar had been noticeably absent from family gatherings. They said Hasti had kicked Sarkar out of the house, and that the pair had been living separately for some time.
Her sister posted a message on Facebook Friday, calling Hasti "the smartest, coolest, and funniest person I knew. She could do anything she dreamed of."
"I always looked up to her because she did everything I wanted to do, but was too shy to even try," Alex Hasti wrote.
She said she was "still in a state of shock," but said she was sending "all my love and prayers to the family and friends of William Klug at this time.
"Two other things I want to say regarding things I've seen on social media: No, he wasn't a Muslim or religious at all," Alex Hasti wrote. "And yes Dr. Drew, you were a huge inspiration to Ashley on her journey in the medical field."
Hasti's grandmother described her as a world traveler who was close to becoming a doctor. Jean Johnson said Hasti was smart and spent her late teens and early 20s visiting China, India and Tibet.
She spoke fluent Chinese and knew French, and also dabbled in stand-up comedy, according to her grandmother.
Johnson said the 31-year-old Hasti was a year away from finishing medical school at the University of Minnesota and hoped to work with children.
She said Hasti met Sarkar while she was studying at Scripps College in Claremont, California, in 2009 and 2010, when he was a student at UCLA. Sarkar was quiet and never showed signs of a temper, according to Johnson.
"I thought he was OK," Johnson said. "I don't know if Ashley just said that's it and he flipped out or what. I have no idea what his problem was."
Johnson told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune the couple "just didn't get along" and that they split about a year after they married. They didn't get a divorce because Hasti couldn't afford one.
"The only enemy she had was him, I guess," Johnson told the newspaper. "I never thought he would do something like that."
She said Hasti hadn't mentioned any animosity with Sarkar since the two split.
University of Minnesota officials told CBS Minnesota Hasti enrolled at the university's medical school in 2012 and was still a student there. She also received her undergraduate degree from the school in Asian Language and Literature from the college of liberal arts in 2008.
Gordy Aune Jr., who lives three doors away and is the neighborhood watch commander, said Hasti lived with her father and that they kept to themselves.
After killing Hasti, Sarkar made the long drive to Los Angeles, where he found his former mentor, Klug, and shot him before turning the gun on himself, investigators said.
CBS Los Angeles reported a bicyclist found a 2003 Nissan Sentra Friday afternoon that police believe Sarkar used to drive from Minnesota to L.A.
Police searched it for bombs and found no explosives but a handgun and cans of gasoline were in the trunk.
The gas apparently was used to avoid using credit cards and making fuel stops as Sarkar drove cross-country, and his car was spotted in Denver the day before the UCLA killing, Los Angeles police Capt. William Hayes said.
Sarkar parked in a neighborhood where he once lived and took a bus to campus on a route he would have used while attending UCLA, Hayes said.
Investigators planned to examine the bus surveillance video.
Sarkar had disparaged Klug online and the professor knew of his contempt, but police have not uncovered any death threats, Beck said. The writings contained "some harsh language, but certainly nothing that would be considered homicidal," he said.
A blog post written in March by someone identifying himself as Sarkar asserted that Klug "cleverly stole all my code and gave it (to) another student" and "made me really sick."
Beck said the investigation showed Sarkar's claims of stolen code are "a making of his own imagination."
Sarkar, 38, and Klug, 39, once were close. In his 2013 dissertation about using engineering to understand the human heart, the student thanked the professor "for all his help and support. Thank you for being my mentor."
Sarkar grew up in Durgapur, India, an industrial town where his father worked as a clerk in a cement manufacturing company. Residents there remembered Sarkar as a diligent student.
A former classmate at Durgapur's Bidhan Institute -- where Sarkar studied for two years after high school before attending the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur -- said he was "totally stupefied" by the news of the shooting.
"Mainak was a very good student. In school, he looked so innocent and was well-behaved," said Mridul, who like many people in India uses only one name. But Mridul said Friday he was not in touch with Sarkar after he left for a life in the United States.
Sarkar's LinkedIn page shows he obtained a master's degree at Stanford University after graduating in 2000 from the Indian Institute of Technology with a degree in aerospace engineering.
He most recently was listed as an engineering analyst at a Findlay, Ohio, company called Endurica. Company president Will Mars said Sarkar left in August 2014.
It's unclear what he had been doing since.
Colleagues, family and friends described Klug as a kind, devoted father and teacher. He is survived by his wife and two children, a nine-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl.
On campus Thursday night, hundreds of students, staff and faculty gathered for a vigil for Klug, holding up their cellphones like candles to light up the night sky.
"Bill was so much more than my soul mate," his wife, Mary Elise Klug, said in a statement. "I will miss him every day for the rest of my life."