ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A computer programer who methodically hunted down six people and killed them at a remote village last year was sentenced Friday to 634 years, one of the longest prison terms in Alaska history.
Louis Hastings, now 40, earlier pleaded no contest to the March 1, 1983 ambush-style slayings that claimed the lives of roughly half the year-round population of McCarthy.
Hastings, whose last job was as a computer programmer for Stanford, University in California, showed no emotion when the sentence was passed.
Alaska does not have a death penalty.
'I don't think I have any choice but to insure you never walk again as a free man,' Superior Judge Ralph Moody said after rejecting a move to have Hastings declared insane at the time of the killings.
The defense said Hastings, suffering chronic depression and failing in his career and marriage, devised a suicidal fantasy of wiping out McCarthy and then sabotaging the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which he believed was spurring growth that would destroy Alaska.
In the fantasy, he expected to die along with his victims, his lawyers said.
'If you really distill it down, Mr. Hastings thought he was going to be the savior of the Alaska wilderness,' public defender John Salemi argued.
Judge Moody, relying in part on the testimony of pysychiatrists called by the prosecution who said Hastings had personality disorders but was not insane, rejected the argument that Hastings suffered temporary insanity.
'This man was attempting to get a message across as an environmentalist...and he chose the wrong manner to do it,' said Moody, who compared the ambush to a terrorist act.
Assistant District Attorney Stephen Branchflower had argued the slayings were not a suicidal outburst, but a carefully planned attack.
Police testified Hastings methodically hunted his six victims through the one-time mining community, coldly murdering each of them.
Psychiatrists for the state questioned Hastings' claim that he planned to die, noting that he surrendered without a fight when state troopers tracked him down outside McCarthy.
Three McCarthy residents attended the sentencing, but refused to answer reporters' questions.
'It's over. That's all,' said one man who asked not to be identified. 'We will miss the people.'
