By Brigid Schulte and Rosalind S. Helderman , The Washington Post|July 23, 2009
The missing mental health records of Seung-Hui Cho, who was responsible for the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, at Virginia Tech in 2007, resurfaced last week in the home of the former director of the university's counseling center.
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced Wednesday that the records, which neither the state police nor a state investigative commission had been able to locate, turned up as the result of pretrial discovery in two lawsuits that have been filed by families of Cho's victims. University officials received the records July 16 but did not inform state police of the development until Monday and did not provide copies of the records to state police until Tuesday, five days after they were recovered, according to Corinne Geller, spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police.
Neither state officials nor the university have revealed the contents of the records, but the governor said he hopes they will be made public within days, either with permission from Cho's estate or through a subpoena.
Kaine did not identify the Virginia Tech employee who had the records, but a memo written by the university's counsel revealed that he is Robert Miller, who headed the Cook Counseling Center until 2006, one year before the shootings that left 32 students and teachers dead and injured many more. Miller took Cho's records, along with those of "several other students," when he was transferred from the counseling center, according to the memo from Virginia Tech's Mary Beth Nash to Kaine's office.
The records may help shed light on Cho's troubled mental state as well as clarify whether Virginia Tech counselors complied with a court order seeking mental health treatment for the student. Relatives of victims, who have long argued that the university allowed a dangerously unbalanced student to fall off its radar screen, expressed new concern about how the school handled the case.
Virginia Tech families whose children were killed or injured in the attack said they were particularly disturbed that the documents turned up during a records search for two pending lawsuits, rather than during previous state investigations. Kaine's special commission on the shootings did not interview Miller, chairman Gerald Massengill said Wednesday.
"The words that come to mind are cover-up, collusion, obstruction," said Mike Pohle, whose son was killed in the shootings. "I'm spinning. Who knows what could be in those records, but this is just potentially more information that says: Virginia Tech, you failed to do your job."
