Mainak Sarkar was in a Ph.D program for ten years. He killed his wife in Minnesota and then drove 2500 kms to Los Angeles and shot dead his advisor at University of California.  among the first discoveries that have been made is that the woman who was found shot to death in a Minnesota home was married to Sarkar but was separated from him. Authorities tracked down Ashley Hasti when they found a note on Sarkar after his murder-suicide of Ph.D advisor William Klug in which he had asked those who found his body to take care of his cat left behind in a Minnesota apartment.

When the police reached there they found a "kill list" with three names on it - two UCLA profs and Ashley Hasti. When they rushed to Hasti's home, they found her dead from gunshots. Sarkar and Hasti had married on June 14, 2011, but the marriage reportedly lasted only a year and they were separated at the time of her death.