Closer look reveals Cho's isolation
Hard-working student let few inside his world
CENTREVILLE, Va. -- They were playful geeks. The members of Westfield High's science club would fiddle with liquid nitrogen and conduct enthralling lab experiments -- including one boy who said little but diligently attended after-school meetings.
Seung-Hui Cho kept to himself, but fellow club members recognized him as intelligent and a science-loving kindred spirit.
"He was genuinely interested. It didn't seem like a resume builder," said Chris Davids , who recalled Cho from science club sessions at the high school in Chantilly, Va., a Washington suburb. "He seemed like a really bright guy. I thought he was just really shy."
In the days since Cho massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech, much has emerged about his withdrawn personality and inner rage, which bubbled to the surface in vicious college papers and his shocking final testament: a multimedia package mailed to NBC News during a lull in his rampage. The shootings stunned the rural Blacksburg campus, made headlines worldwide, and inspired national expressions of grief.
However, interviews with authorities and people from his hometown draw a more complex picture of the man who committed the worst mass shooting in US history -- though answers about what drove him to kill remain elusive.
Nearly everyone who crossed paths with Cho say he was painfully shy, including his Virginia Tech roommates. But he was academically sound, taking advanced high school classes at Westfield and gaining entry into a university where the average SAT score was 1200. Even the physician who proclaimed Cho a danger to himself in 2005 found him quite lucid, writing, "His insight and judgment are sound," according to court papers.
Cho struggled to come of age in a tight-kni t community of entrepreneurial Korean immigrants in Centreville, strivers driven by deeply felt Christianity and the quest for material success. For all Cho's accomplishments, his older sister Sun-Kyung Cho outshone him, winning admission to both Harvard and Princeton -- the ultimate validation in his community.
Once at Virginia Tech, his reticence deepened but Cho did express himself in one way: Through his computer keyboard. He typed up bizarre plays and poems. Virginia authorities have suggested there may be more antisocial writings on the hard drive seized from his dorm. Cho also made awkward and intrusive attempts to reach out to young women online. He may have sent e-mails to one of his first victims, 18-year-old Emily Hilscher , according to a police search warrant.
And Cho took the first step toward his blood-soaked final act using his computer: Three months ago he purchased a Walther P22 handgun from an online gun dealer, according to federal authorities.
"Thanks to you," Cho wrote in his final message to the world, mailed to NBC, "I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."
He recalls trying to strike up a conversation with Cho in the ninth grade.
"I said 'Hi, my name is Chris.' "He looked at me with that blank look, and then looked back at his food," said Davids, a senior history major in Blacksburg. "I was shy, so I thought he was just really shy or didn't understand English well and was shy about using it."
But despite his isolation, Choseemed to excel in the classroom: he enrolled in advanced placement Spanish and science classes. He turned his work in promptly, said fellow students. He won admission to Virginia Tech and completed three years of study. And there was the science club.
Club members whipped up homemade ice cream frozen with liquid nitrogen. They donned goggles and watched excitedly as a teacher lit hydrogen fireballs. Cho showed up every week and participated in all the experiments, said Davids.
"From what I could tell he always did his work and turned in his assignments," said Davids.
He said the few times Cho spoke often drew racially tinged comments from other students, who were unaccustomed to hearing his voice. On one occasion, Davids said that kids told Cho to "Get out of this country."
"That one moment was burned into my head, because they were so mean," said Davids. "I felt like they were talking about me, too."
Cho faced racist comments, but Davids and others said they were no more severe than the abuse heaped on many Asian students who came to Centreville as part of a 1990s wave of immigrant families who drew some hostility from locals.
"People would make catcalls to him in the hallway," said Davids. "They would call him chink or Chinatown."
Later, on the Virginia Tech campus, Davids would see Cho in the dining hall, wearing a hoodie and seated in the corner alone.
"I never saw any malice or violence from him," Davids recalled, "just shyness."
Cho's father worked long hours at a dry-cleaning businesses. The family lives in a town house in a modest cul-de-sac amid dozens of sprawling new subdivisions and strip malls. But the family appears to have kept others at arm's length.
"There's usually one or two degrees of separation between everyone in our community, but no one seems to have known the family," said Thomas Kim , a Korean issues lobbyist who lives near the Cho family in Centreville. "I've talked to a lot of the leaders in the community, trying to find out more about them, but no one seems to really have known the Chos. That's odd."
Churches are the Korean community's primary organizing force, places where many issues confronted by Koreans are aired. One perennial topic is the pressure to succeed, said local Christian pastors.
"There is a pretty strong history of Koreans here intensely pushing their children academically," said Peter Chin , pastor at Open Door Presbyterian Church in nearby Herndon, which has many members from Centreville.
As the youngest sibling, Cho had to follow in the footsteps of his sister, who rejected Harvard for Princeton and now works for a contractor with the US State Department that handles billions of dollars in aid money to Iraq. Meanwhile, Cho's silence left family members wondering about his ability.
"My grandson was shy even as a little boy and he would never run to me like my other grandchildren," Cho's maternal grandfather, Kim Hyong Shik , told Korean reporters in Seoul. "The boy was so different from his super-intelligent older sister. His extreme shyness worried his parents. I thought he might be deaf and dumb."
Esther Chang , youth pastor at the Central Korean Presbyterian Church, one of the largest Korean churches in the area, said the Virginia Tech tragedy has spurred introspection among the many families in Centreville.
"It's causing a lot of parents and a lot of children to think deeply about what's important in life," she said.
In the end, even his family seems puzzled by the boy who grew up in their midst: "My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence," said his sister in a statement.
For his first two years in Blacksburg, Cho, an English major, appears to have continued shielding himself with silence, with classmates saying they rarely heard him speak. But in the fall of 2005, he started to emerge in a different way, through writing and the Internet. His ultraviolent misanthropic writings prompted English professors to pull him out of a class and instruct him in private.
In September 2005, and again that December, he contacted female students online, as well as with text messages, cellphone calls, and once in person. Two students complained to police, but neither pressed charges. A psychological evaluation determined Cho had mental problems, but after his release from a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, Virginia Tech mental health officials said they had no contact with him. That harassment of female students, however, may have continued up to the massacre.
Police have filed a search warrant for Hilscher's laptop and cellphone, saying in court papers that Cho might have communicated with her via computer before his rampage. Hilscher, along with the resident assistant in her dorm, Ryan Clark , were Cho's first victims. After killing them, he paused for two hours, mailing off his manifesto to NBC News, then entered Norris Hall. There, he forced himself into four classrooms, gunned down terrified students, reloaded from a vest bulging with ammunition clips, and fired through doors when students tried to block him.
Searching for clues to his motives, Police seized Cho's computer and obtained warrants for his cellphone records. They said the computer contained voluminous material and could yield more information on Cho's mindset, through his writings, and on his other online activities.
"They are trying to make a connection between Cho and the first two victims, to answer the question of why" he went to the dorm first, said Corinne Geller, spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police. "The purpose of the warrants is to . . . answer the how and the why."
One website he visited was thegunsource.com, according to federal officials. The site is run by TGSCOM, Inc. of Green Bay, Wis ., and company officials confirmed that Cho used his credit card on Feb. 2 to order a Walther .22-caliber handgun. Authorities have said that Cho used two guns in the massacre, a .22-caliber pistol and a Glock 9 mm semi automatic purchased March 16 from a Virginia gun shop.
The gun was shipped to a federally licensed gun dealer in Blacksburg, where Cho picked it up on Feb. 5, according to TGSCOM, Inc. officials.
It is unclear how much more of Cho's written communications authorities will release. Many who complained about NBC airing his manifesto would just as soon never hear his chilling words again.
"This is where it all ends," says Cho in one of the video excerpts. "End of the road. What a life it was. Some life."
