Cho: 'You Had a Hundred Billion Chances'
BLACKSBURG, Va. — In Cho Seung-Hui's twisted and tortured mind, the Columbine killers were martyrs on a par with Jesus Christ. And the world had forced him to join their ranks.
NBC / AP
An image that was part of a package Cho Seung-Hui apparently mailed to NBC News on Monday between his first and second attacks.
Friendless by choice, he accepted Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as his brothers and dreamed that his violent acts would bear "children."
"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," the 23-year-old Cho growled in a harsh monotone on a self-made video mailed to NBC News after he began his deadly assault on the Virginia Tech campus. "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."
In a package addressed by his murderous alter ego, Ismail Ax, Cho left his final message to the world: a series of videos, pictures, and writings filled with violent, expletive-filled language at a world he felt was slowly killing him. It didn't explain why he did it.
It did show his anger.
"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscience," he said in a video manifesto, which was accompanied by photos showing him aiming the two handguns he used to snuff out the lives of 32 students and teachers, and then himself.
"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," he said.
The package, which was opened at NBC's headquarters in New York two days after the deadliest one-man shooting spree in modern American history, bore a Postal Service stamp showing that it had been mailed at a Virginia post office at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho first opened fire. That would 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, and the second fusillade, at a classroom building.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," he says, apparently reading from a manifesto. "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."
Some of the pictures 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 him looking angry, holding a gun to his temple.
NBC said the package contained a 23-page written statement, 28 video clips, and 43 photos. The package was sent by overnight delivery and arrived at NBC Tuesday afternoon, the president of NBC News, Steve Capus, said. It was opened yesterday and had the wrong ZIP code, the network 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.
"I didn't have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled," he says. "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."
Mr. Capus said the network notified the FBI yesterday around noon. The FBI asked NBC to hold off reporting on it so that the bureau could look at it first, and NBC complied, finally breaking the story just before a police announcement of the package at 4:30 p.m., he said. Mr. Capus said it was clear Cho videotaped himself because he could be seen leaning in to shut off the camera.
A state police spokeswoman, Corinne Geller, cautioned that while the package was mailed between the two shootings, police have not inspected the footage and have yet to establish exactly when the tape was made.
A law enforcement official said Cho's letter also refers in the same sentence to President Bush and John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed last year to having killed child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the press.
The video came to light on the same day that more troubling signs about Cho's past began to emerge. Earlier yesterday, authorities disclosed that in 2005, two women complained that they had received calls and computer messages from Cho.
