New Tech gunman records fail to predict bloodshed

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) - Recently discovered mental health records released on Wednesday contain no obvious indications that the Virginia Tech gunman was a year and a half away from committing the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history.

The records contain previously unseen handwritten notes from three separate counselors who talked to Seung-Hui Cho in 2005. In one report Cho denied having any suicidal or homicidal thoughts. On April 16, 2007, Cho killed 32 students and faculty members on the Blacksburg, Va., campus and took his own life.

University officials have said Cho talked to two different therapists during telephone triage sessions in the fall, then made one court-ordered 45-minute in-person visit that December.

Cho denied the homicidal thoughts in the 45-minute telephone sessions and in the meeting with counselor Sherry Lynch Conrad on Dec. 14, 2005. Cho met with her at Cook Counseling Center after being detained in a mental hospital overnight because he had expressed thoughts of suicide to people he lived with after a girl told him to stop leaving her messages.

However, Conrad, after speaking with him wrote: "He denies suicidal and/or homicidal thoughts. Said the comment he made was a joke. Says he has no reason to harm self and would never do it."

The forms filled out were based on statements Cho made about the way he was feeling. They indicated he said he was depressed and had feelings of anxiety, but the records don't contain any evidence that they saw serious warning signs to believe Cho would commit violence. On the hospital evaluation form, it said: "There is no indication of psychosis, delusions, suicidal or homicidal ideation."

Relatives of the victims, however, said the counseling center files showed he slipped through the cracks and that therapists didn't discuss the case.

"They definitely weren't paying attention, and that's what led to April 16th," said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin was wounded but survived.

"It just sounded like he was going through a McDonald's," said Michael Pohle, whose son Michael Pohle Jr. was killed. "It just looked like he was passed through from one person to another person and there was no collaboration going on."

The missing files were released almost five weeks after they were discovered at the home of the former director of the university's counseling center.

Cho's meeting with Conrad was his last contact with the counseling center. She wrote that she gave him emergency contact numbers and encouraged him to return the next semester in January, but he didn't make an appointment, telling her that he wasn't sure what his schedule would be.

Edward J. McNelis, an attorney for Conrad and the counselors who spoke with Cho by phone, said he had advised them not to comment because they are named in civil lawsuits filed by two of the victims' families.

A telephone message left for Conrad was not returned.

The files first turned up July 16, when former Cook Counseling Center director Robert C. Miller found them in his home while preparing for those civil suits, which name him as a defendant.

Miller said in a court filing that the Cho records were in a manila folder along with several others, and he packed it up with his personal documents in late February or early March 2006 when he transferred from the center to another position at the university.

The files were released by Virginia Tech following the approval of Cho's family. It was their decision whether to release them because of privacy laws.

"My mother, father and I all agree that it is the correct thing to do to release the newly discovered medical records of my brother," Cho's sister, Sun Cho, said in a letter authorizing the release.

University spokesman Mark Owczarski said with the release of the records, the school was seeking to provide the victims' families "with as much information as is known about Cho's interactions with the mental health system."

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said in a statement he was pleased that the Cho family wanted the records released and that his administration remained committed to openness about events surrounding the mass shootings.

"We will never fully comprehend what led Seung-Hui Cho to carry out his assault on his fellow students and instructors," Kaine said. "His actions were by nature inexplicable, and I don't expect the questions surrounding the tragedy will ever really end."

Robert Hall, attorney for the families who have sued, noted that the file contained no mention of discussions former English Department Chairwoman Lucinda Roy had with Miller about Cho. She consulted the counseling center director when she was trying to tutor Cho that fall after his disturbing writings and bizarre behavior got him kicked out of class.

"It's like there are parallel universes," he said, one in which the faculty is concerned and tries to get help for a seriously disturbed student and another in which the school therapists appeared to know little about Cho's troubles.

Lori Haas, whose daughter Emily Haas was injured, said she was more concerned about the circumstances under which the records were found more than two years after the shootings.

"I'm just suspicious of the manner in which information has been dribbled out," she said.

Roger O'Dell, whose son Derek O'Dell was injured, said he hoped the records could be helpful in altering treatment of troubled individuals.

"There are lessons to be learned," he said.

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Associated Press Writer Steve Szkotak in Richmond contributed to this report.