GUNMAN'S LAST WORDS

The Baltimore Sun

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Aiming two black handguns at the camera and muttering rambling accusations, the college student who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus Monday before killing himself made sure that his voice would be heard after the worst mass shooting in the nation's history.

"This didn't have to happen," Cho Seung-Hui, 23, said in one clip from what anchorman Brian Williams described as a "multimedia manifesto" mailed to NBC News in the two hours between the bursts of gunfire that morning.

Last night, on the NBC Nightly News, the network broadcast some of what it received. In an image evocative of a video game character stance, Cho wears a backward black ball cap, military-style vest and black gloves and aims two guns.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," Cho says in the video. "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

NBC's Williams said the network received the package yesterday and immediately notified authorities. The package was mailed from Blacksburg at 9:01 a.m. Monday - after two students had been shot to death in a dormitory and before the mass killings in a lecture hall. The package was incorrectly addressed to NBC News' New York headquarters at "30 Rockefeller Ave.," rather than plaza, and had an incorrect ZIP code.

The network said the package contained a rambling and often profane video and 43 photographs, including 11 that showed him aiming guns at the camera.

In addition to analyzing the material that NBC received, investigators were delving into the mind of the killer in other ways - researching his troubled past and poring over the writings that the senior English major left behind in his dorm room and in his classes.

Col. W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, would not describe the documents left in Cho's dorm, but in the video mailed to NBC, Cho rails against rich "snobs," their materialism and their "debaucheries."

Police also sought Cho's medical records, saying that they "may provide evidence of motive, intent, and designs," according to an application for a search and seizure warrant.

A December 2005 court report obtained yesterday says that Cho's behavior triggered an order to have him detained and evaluated for suicide risk. In the report, a physician wrote that Cho's "affect was flat and mood is depressed." It said: "He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment are normal."

The Dec. 14 report states that the physician deemed Cho mentally ill, but did not believe he was a danger to himself or others and could be released from psychiatric commitment after just a day.

Cho's behavior that fall also had alarmed at least two female students who accused him of stalking them, and members of the English department faculty, police said yesterday.

That November, a young woman told police that Cho had been calling her and had approached her. The next month, another woman told police that Cho was contacting her via computer instant messages.

Neither woman wanted to press charges, said Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum. Both called Cho's behavior "annoying but not threatening," he said.

Neither woman was among Monday's victims, Flinchum said. He said Virginia Tech police had no further contact with Cho after the two incidents.

Gov. Tim Kaine has formed an independent panel to investigate Monday's rampage and the events leading to it.

Eight wounded students remained hospitalized yesterday at Montgomery Regional Hospital, which treated 17 people after the shootings, CEO Scott Hill said. Kaine has declared tomorrow a statewide day of mourning.

Police released more details yesterday about the university's dealings with Cho.

In 2005, about the same time the harassment complaints were filed, Flinchum said, then-English department chairwoman Lucinda Roy "informally shared her concerns" about Cho's work in a poetry class. Flinchum said the creative writing students were encouraged to be imaginative and artistic and that authorities saw no direct threat of violence.

But Roy pulled him out of the class and taught him on her own. She "chose to reach out to him out of concern for his mental health and well-being," Flinchum said.

The application to seize Cho's medical records notes that Roy had referred Cho to a university health center for psychiatric care "and she believes that he did in fact seek treatment at that facility."

Other students who encountered Cho didn't know what to make of his classwork - even as recently as last semester, when he took a playwriting class with Professor Ed Falco.

Late Tuesday, a classmate posted two of Cho's plays, called Richard McBeef and Mr. Brownstone, on the Internet. A review of those documents shows they are filled with profanity and themes of sexual abuse and violence.

"They were very macabre and morbid," classmate Stephanie Derry, a 2003 graduate of Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, said in an interview yesterday. "They contained no direct threats to the school or the environment, but they were just so violent."

At the end of Richard McBeef, the main character, a 13-year-old boy, tries to suffocate his stepfather with a half-eaten banana cereal bar. The final line of the play is a description of the stepfather's response: "A deadly blow" to the stepson.

"Members of the class commented that they didn't know how to read it," Derry said. "They didn't know if it was supposed to be a serious drama or a comedy, because it was just so outrageous that it kind of made you want to laugh."

When asked how Cho reacted to the critiques, Derry said that Cho "shrugged and made a half-smile. He never said what he intended."

Cho never spoke during the semester, she said. "When the professor called the roll and got to his name, he just nodded," Derry said.

The 5-foot-8, 150-pound South Korean native wore jeans and T-shirts to class "just like the rest of us," she said. His only signature item of clothing: a maroon Virginia Tech hat.

Two young men who shared a three-bedroom suite with Cho this school year have characterized him as antisocial and quiet, yet in other ways a typical student. He appeared to be working on school projects and downloading music and music videos on his computer, said sophomore Joe Aust, 19, of Westminster.

But in the months leading to the shooting rampage, Cho was legally buying guns for himself. Over the Internet, he bought a Walther P22 pistol and filled out paperwork and picked up the gun Feb. 9 from JD Pawn in Blacksburg, said owner Joe Dowdy.

He waited a month, as required by Virginia gun laws.

On March 13, he bought a 9 mm Glock Model 19 from Roanoke Firearms, said owner John Markell.

Both owners said Cho was unremarkable and unmemorable.

"Unfortunately not," Dowdy said when asked whether Cho showed any signs of being troubled.

Roger Depue, former director of the FBI's behavioral science unit, watched the televised excerpts of Cho's videos last night and said he seemed to fit a category of mass killers with "inadequate" personalities. "He's a person who is nobody and is never going to be anybody," Depue said.

The package Cho sent to the network also was typical, he said. "This is a material manifesto put together for two purposes," he said. "The first, to provide a rationale to explain why he did what he did and who's to blame. Second, it's vanity - he's wanting to go down in history."

Last night, Virginia Tech students watched as NBC's images of Cho brandishing his weapons played on a giant screen in Poor Billy's, a bustling seafood restaurant and pub in downtown Blacksburg, where many students live.

Lauren Angus, a Spanish major and hostess at Poor Billy's, grew flustered as she began speaking about the week.

"I was just so ready for this to be over, and now this comes out and it's like opening a wound," said Angus, a junior. "And the part that bothers me the most about it is that he's getting just what he wanted out of this. He wanted everybody to see, and here it is."

Lucas Jones, a lifelong Blacksburg resident, said that while he didn't enjoy the images, they still served a purpose.

"At least we got to see what his twisted logic was," he said. "I mean, there's nothing he could have said to justify his actions, but at least we got to hear him try to explain himself."

Philip Pack, who will enroll in Virginia Tech's osteopathic medicine program in the fall, said he was disturbed to see Cho, but "it definitely adds more to the story."

"He was so mentally ill that he killed two people and then was able to compose himself enough to go to the post office and mail something and then go kill 30 more people," Pack said, noting that Cho almost certainly changed clothes before going to the post office, since he was pictured wearing a vest.

"We were all trying to get over this, and I think this kind of hit us harder than we'd already been hit."

julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com melissa.harris@baltsun.com bradley.olson@baltsun.com

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Video excerpts

Excerpts from the video that Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC News:

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

"I didn't have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled. But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you [expletive]. I did it for them."

"You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terror in my heart and ripping my soul all this time."

"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."

"Do you know what it feels like to be spit on your face and have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon a cross and left to bleed to death for your amusement?"

"You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. And you want to inject as much misery in our lives because you can, just because you can. You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."

"When the time came, I did it. I had to."

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