Wife of slain UCLA professor shares her grief
LOS ANGELES -- Hundreds of students gathered at the UCLA campus Thursday night to remember a professor who, authorities say, was shot and killed by a former student, who then took his own life.
The crowd gathered for a vigil Thursday night in Bruin Plaza, where the base of the bear mascot statue was covered with colored notes paying tribute to William Krug.
The 39-year-old engineering professor was shot in a campus office Wednesday by one of his former students, Mainak Sarkar, who then turned the gun on himself, authorities said.
Sarkar claimed Klug had stolen his computer code. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck says Sarkar was mentally unstable and the theft was all in his mind.
Colleagues, family and friends described Klug as a kind, devoted father and teacher. He is survived by his wife and two children, a 9-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl.
"Bill was so much more than my soul mate. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life," Klug's wife, Mary Elise Klug, said in a statement. "Knowing that so many others share our family's sorrow has provided a measure of comfort."
Authorities said that, days before the shooting, Sarkar also shot and killed a woman in Minnesota.
She was identified as Ashley Hasti. She and Sarkar married in 2011, the Hennepin County Clerk's Office confirmed to CBS News. It was unclear whether the couple was still married at the time of the shooting; she was living at a different address from him at time of her death.
CBS Minneapolis reported University of Minnesota officials said 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.
After killing her, 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.
Detectives said they were still searching Friday for the vehicle Sarkar drove to L.A.
Both victims were on a "kill list" police had found at Sarkar's Minnesota apartment. A third person on the list, another UCLA professor, was spared because he wasn't on campus Wednesday when Sarkar arrived with two semi-automatic pistols, police said.
Authorities didn't publicly identify the unharmed professor.
Criminal profilers say Sarkar's behavior fit a distinct pattern, reports CBS News correspondent Carter Evans.
Mary Ellen O'Toole, a forensic behavioral consultant, told CBS News, "This shooter is what I call an injustice collector. ... My sense is ... what we'll find is that this individual's life was falling apart back in Minnesota ... and he was blaming these two professors from years ago."
The investigation was aided by 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.
Hasti's grandmother, Jean Johnson, said Hasti and Sarkar only remained together for about a year, but didn't get a divorce because Hasti couldn't afford one.
"They just didn't get along," Johnson told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "The only enemy she had was him, I guess. I never thought he would do something like that."
She said she hadn't mentioned any recent animosity with Sarkar.
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 had shown Sarkar's claims of stolen code are "a making of his own imagination."
Sarkar, 38, and Klug, 39, were once 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's LinkedIn page shows he obtained a master's degree at Stanford University after graduating in 2000 from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur 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.