Hastings dropped out of university, and worked as a freelance computer programmer for several years before moving to Alaska.[3] Hastings told Dr. Martin Blinder "I wanted to go where the air and water were still clear, where there were still hills on which man had not yet set foot. I wanted to be part of the earth's quietude. I wanted to return to nature, to pristine beauty. The Gulf of Alaska would be my Walden Pond."[3] He lived in Anchorage, but spent a year moving back and forth to McCarthy.[5]
In Alaska, Hastings married an Aleutian wife but the marriage faltered after six months as his business also began to fail.[3] He began planning his attack, which he foresaw as needing to hijack a gasoline truck and drive it into the critical Pumping Station #12 where he'd set it alight hoping to congeal the viscous oil flow and permanently clog the pipeline.[3]
It was important to Hastings that his body be consumed in the blaze and never identified as he didn't want family to know he'd been the perpetrator.[3] It was to avoid identification of his remains, that he set out hoping to kill all the other residents of McCarthy and then attack the regular mail plane and use it to dump the 20+ intended corpses in a crevasse, so his own body would be assumed to be missing alongside them and would not be considered related to the planned coming explosion.[3]
Hastings made a short list, later found in his cabin, reminding himself to bring his silencer, his Ruger-14, flares, clothing and ammunition.[6]
When Hastings arrived at Christopher Richard's cabin at 8:30am, he was invited in for coffee but shot Richards in the neck and near his eye - causing Richards to stab Hastings in his left leg while Hastings begged "Look, you're already dead, if you'll just quit fighting I'll make it easy for you". Richards survived and ran out of the cabin to wave down a neighbour to bring him to the airstrip where he hitched a ride on a departing plane to Glennallen, Alaska, where he reported the shooting. An unknown resident also phoned in an emergency to State Police.[7]
At some point, Hastings killed Harley B. King whose snowmobile was marked with bullet holes on the trail leading to the airstrip.[8]
Hastings killed Les and Flo Hegland who owned the cabin near the airstrip, and Maxine Edwards' body was found in the same cabin.[9] Hastings hid in the cabin awaiting the mail plane and shot at anyone approaching the airstrip.[7] At some point Hastings had also killed Tim Nash and Amy Lou Ashenden Nash, and their bodies were recovered at the airstrip where he intended to load the corpses.[1][8][3]
Hastings wounded Donna Byram in the arm when she ran out to warn the mail plane not to land.[7] Hastings then took a snowmobile headed for the highway hoping to hijack the necessary gasoline truck even without the McCarthy murders completed.[3] But a police helicopter intercepted him before he reached the highway; according to Hastings it swooped low and fired several shots at him causing him to surrender - police only stated that he was captured "without incident".[3][7] The Associated Press ran a photo of a police officer seated next to one of the corpses in the snow.[10] Police seized his computers, which contained a list of approximately 200 public officials, police officers and others - leading to speculation it may have been a hit list.[4]