Cho's manifesto: 'You gave me only one option'

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Midway through his murderous rampage, the Virginia Tech gunman went to the post office and mailed NBC a package containing photos and videos of him brandishing guns and delivering a snarling, profanity-laced tirade about rich "brats" and their "hedonistic needs."

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," Cho Seung-Hui, 23, says in a harsh monotone. "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 said the package contained a rambling and often-incoherent, 1,800-word video manifesto on CD, plus 43 photos, 11 of them showing Cho aiming handguns at the camera.

The package arrived at NBC headquarters in New York two days after Cho killed 32 people and committed suicide in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

It bore a Postal Service time stamp showing it had been mailed at a Blacksburg post office at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho first opened fire.

That would help explain one of the biggest mysteries about the massacre: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, where two people died, and the second fusillade, at a classroom building, where the others were gunned down.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, a South Korean immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds 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."

Earlier in the day, authorities disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho was accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.

The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that appeared well before Cho opened fire. His twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.

Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.

He refers to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" — a reference to the teenage killers in the Columbine High massacre.

The package was sent by overnight delivery but did not arrive at NBC until yesterday morning, apparently because it had the wrong ZIP code, NBC said.

An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath, "Ismail Ax," NBC said.

NBC News President Steve Capus said the network received the package around noon and notified the FBI, but held off reporting on it at the FBI's request, so that the bureau could look at it first. NBC finally broke the story just before police announced the development at 4:30 p.m.

Capus said it was clear Cho videotaped himself, because he could be seen leaning in to shut off the camera.

State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller cautioned that, while the package was mailed between the two shootings, police have yet to establish when the images were made.

Cho repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt. "You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he says, apparently reading from his manifesto. "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."

One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho's problems was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her introduction to creative writing class in late 2005. Students told Giovanni that Cho was taking photographs of their legs under the desks with his cell phone. She said she considered Cho "mean" and "a bully."

Lucinda Roy, professor of English at Virginia Tech, said she also relayed her concerns to campus police and other college units after Cho displayed antisocial behavior and handed in disturbing writing assignments.

But she said authorities "hit a wall" in terms of what they could do "with a student on campus unless he'd made a very overt threat to himself or others."