‘Stand strong — there will be a brighter day’

Controversy over release of materials
Many parents were at the Blacksburg campus. Among them was Read, who urged television stations to stop broadcasting Cho’s gruesome, hate-filled videos and photographs.

Police said they were disappointed that NBC News, which received the materials in the mail Wednesday, chose to broadcast them. NBC and other major networks pledged to scale back their use of the material.

The videos revealed a man angry at the world but offered little explanation of why, other than rambling tirades against rich kids, “snobs” and people who had wronged him.

As experts analyzed the disturbing materials, it became increasingly clear that Cho was almost a classic case of a school shooter: a painfully awkward, picked-on young man who lashed out with methodical fury at a world he believed was out to get him.

“In virtually every regard, Cho is prototypical of mass killers that I’ve studied in the past 25 years,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston and co-author of 16 books on crime. “That doesn’t mean, however, that one could have predicted his rampage.”

When criminologists and psychologists look at mass murders, Cho fits the themes they see repeatedly: a friendless figure, someone who has been bullied, someone who blames others and is bent on revenge, a careful planner, a male. And someone who sent up warning signs with his strange behavior long in advance.

Among other things, the South Korean immigrant was sent to a psychiatric hospital and pronounced an imminent danger to himself. He was accused of stalking two women and photographing female students in class with his cell phone.

And his violence-filled writings were so disturbing that he was removed from one class and professors begged him to get counseling. Cho rarely looked anyone in the eye and did not even talk to his own roommates.

Videotaped rants
He described himself in his video diatribe as a persecuted figure like Jesus Christ. Cho, who came to the United States at age 8 in 1992 and whose parents worked at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington, also ranted against rich “brats” with Mercedes Benzes, gold necklaces, Cognac and trust funds.

U.S. officials told NBC News that Cho’s parents, who were described as very upset, were still in the country. Their location was not disclosed; the officials said they were being moved around under police protection because of potential threats.

Classmates in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, where Cho grew up, said he was teased and picked on, apparently because of shyness and his strange, mumbly way of speaking.

A 2002 federal study on common characteristics of school shooters found that 71 percent of them “felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack.”

Cho “would almost be a poster child for the pattern that we saw,” said Marisa Randazzo, a former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service and co-author of the study, which was conducted jointly with the Education Department.

A great-aunt of Cho’s who lives in South Korea said Thursday that he did not speak much as a child and after the family emigrated to the United States.

“Normally sons and mothers talk. There was none of that for them. He was very cold,” the woman, Kim Yang-soon, said in an interview with AP Television News. “When they went to the United States, they told them it was autism.”

Neither school officials, who have his educational records, nor police, who have his medical records, have mentioned such a diagnosis. Autistic individuals often have difficulty communicating, but such a diagnosis would not necessarily explain his violence.

Progress in investigation
Investigators are “making some really great progress” into determining how and why the shootings happened, Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police, said Friday. She said they hoped to have something to tell the public next week.

Law enforcement sources told NBC News that investigators were checking video from several security cameras “in the vicinity of the post office” in Blacksburg where Cho dropped off his Express Mail package to NBC News on Monday morning.

One tape appears to show Cho about 9:03 a.m., presumably leaving the post office, officials said, although they said they had yet to conclude that it was definitely him.

Police filed a search warrant for a laptop and cell phone used by one of the first victims, Emily Hilscher, who was shot in a dormitory.

“The computer would be one way the suspect could have communicated with the victim,” the warrant said, but it offered no basis for a belief that Cho might have been in contact with her.

Kaine also appointed an independent panel that includes former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to look into how authorities handled the shootings.

Ridge said Friday that the group would look into how students were notified of the dangers, especially the two-hour time lapse between the first shootings and officials issuance of the first e-mail warnings, and whether privacy laws and the need to communicate for safety conflicted.

“This was out-and-out murder,” Ridge said. “This was a horribly, horribly deranged young man.”

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