Making of a Massacre

Cho was a particular trial to the codirector of the creative-writing program, Lucinda Roy. In a series of media interviews last week, Roy wearily described trying to help, or get help for, Cho. She found him "arrogant" and "obnoxious," and so withdrawn that she felt as if she were speaking to a "hole." Yet she tried to tutor him one-on-one and offered to walk him to counseling. He refused to go with her, saying only that he would think about it. Alarmed, Roy waved red flags around the Virginia Tech bureaucracy. She tells NEWSWEEK that she notified the Division of Student Affairs, the Cook Counseling Center, the Schiffert Health Center, the Virginia Tech police and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. (A police source who did not wish to be identified discussing a sensitive matter says that Roy did not ask for help, but rather suggested she would take Cho "under her wing.")

Roy ran smack into the higher-education version of "Catch-22." To encourage students to seek help and to protect their privacy (after 18, they're adults for all purposes save drinking beer), universities will not release much, if any, personal or health information about a student, even to his parents. Short of a direct threat of violence, a university will not insist on the student's getting help.

Cho was not threatening violence to anyone—not exactly. However, he was creeping out at least two female students. First, the otherwise stone-silent Cho began chatting up one woman by instant message. Then he went to pay her a visit. In a rare, revealing conversation with a roommate, John Eide, Cho explained that the reason he went to see the girl was "to look in her eyes to see how cool she was." "When he looked in her eyes," the roommate recounted to CNN, "he saw promiscuity." At the girl's room, Cho introduced himself as Question Mark. "That really freaked the girl out," said Eide.

The woman called the campus cops. On Nov. 27, 2005, Cho was interviewed by police, but the female student did not press charges. The matter was referred to the Office of Judicial Affairs, the university's disciplinary system, which did nothing. Undeterred, Cho began bothering another girl, who also called the cops. Again: no charges. A police source who read the police reports said that the incidents seemed minor and did not qualify as "stalking." Cho, apparently, was shaken enough after the second incident to tell a suitemate, Andy Koch, that "he might as well kill himself." Koch called the police.

This time, Cho was swept into the community mental-health system. A judge ordered him confined briefly at the Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Radford, Va., as "an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness"—the boilerplate legal language a judge uses for temporary involuntary commitment. The next day a psychiatrist noted that Cho's "affect is flat and mood is depressed." But Cho denied that he was suicidal, and the psychiatrist concluded that "his insight and judgment are normal." He was released that same day. Eric Earnhart, a spokesman for the facility, says, "We have no wish to impede the investigation and are cooperating fully with authorities, and therefore we have no comment."

It is not clear whether Cho followed his court-ordered treatments. He may have received counseling and medication. In any case, there were no further reported incidents that year. But his addled mind still churned. In the fall of 2006, he wrote a play titled "Richard McBeef" for Prof. Ed Falco's playwriting class. The protagonist, a 13-year-old boy named John, reacts with disgust when his stepfather, Richard, rests his hand on John's lap. "I will not be molested by an aging, balding, overweight pedophiliac step dad named Dick!" says John. "Get your hands off me you sicko!" Back in his room, John mutters to himself, "Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick." John does try to kill Dick, by stuffing a breakfast bar down his throat, but instead Dick kills John with a "deadly blow."