Into the Mind of a Killer

What was Cho Seung-Hui Cho thinking in the days and weeks leading up to the massacre at Virginia Tech? That's the big question that investigators are trying to figure out.

Was he taking a page out of the demented playbook of other mass killers like the Columbine school massacre duo?

He was definitely training for something major in the days and weeks before the massacre as he went to a rifle range to train.

Cho honed his deadly skills during at least two visits to an outdoor public firing range in the Jefferson National Forest, a short drive from the university campus, and a separate session in Roanoke, Va., in mid-March.

"When I saw him up here, he was kind of mediocre," said Randy Elmore, 54, of Pembroke, Va., who regularly visits the range.

"He wasn't that great of a gunman."

Once he wore camouflage, Elmore recalled. He would occupy shooting stalls at the edges, in either the first or 10th of the 10 booths. He never brought a target and mostly shot aimlessly at an open range, Elmore said.

Karan Grewal, 21, a Cho suitemate, told The Post the troubled gunman started working out in February - making daily visits to the university gym to pump iron.

"Even when I didn't go, I saw him getting ready to go to the gym," Grewal said.

But the loner never used free weights, since he had no one to "spot" him. "I didn't see him bench-press, ever," Grewal said.

At around the same time his workout regimen began, Cho began stockpiling guns and ammo.

On Feb. 2, he ordered a Walther P22 pistol from a Green Bay, Wis.-based Web site, thegunsource.com, paying $267 with a credit card. The gun arrived six days later at JND Pawnbrokers, across the street from the university. Cho picked up the weapon on Feb. 9.

Around March 12, Cho bought a Glock 9mm from Roanoke Firearms.

Investigators also believe Cho used eBay to buy ammunition for his slaughter.

The eBay account for Blazers5505, which has been linked to Cho, bought two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22 - one of the weapons used in the massacre. The clips were bought from a gun shop in Idaho.

Once again, we see that there is no mention of extended ammo magazines. The question still remains how Cho's mental health status was not entered into the FBI database that would have flagged him as being ineligible to purchase firearms.

More details have also come out about his family life, and the continue to reinforce the impression that he was a loner and very quiet in most aspects of his life.

In Seoul, there was never much money, never enough time. The Cho family occupied a shabby two-room basement apartment, living frugally on the slender proceeds of a used-book shop. According to relatives, the father, Seung-Tae Cho, had worked in oil fields and on construction sites in Saudi Arabia. In an arranged marriage, he wed Kim Hwang-Im, the daughter of a farming family that had fled North Korea during the Korean War.

Their son was well behaved, all right, but his pronounced bashfulness deeply worried his parents. Relatives thought he might be a mute. Or mentally ill. “The kid didn’t say much and didn’t mix with other children,” his uncle said. “ ‘Yes sir’ was about all you could get from him.”

In 1984, relatives who had moved to the United States invited the family to join them. It took eight years to get a visa. In 1992, they arrived in Detroit and then moved on to Centreville, Va., home to a bustling Korean community on the fringe of Washington. They found jobs in the dry-cleaning business and worked the longest of hours. Dry cleaning is a favored profession among Koreans — some 1,800 of the 2,000 dry cleaners in the greater Washington area are run by Koreans — because it means Sundays off for church and sparse need for proficient English, exchanges with customers being brief and redundant.

The goal, of course, was to own one’s own business. But it did not happen for Seung-Tae Cho. He began as a presser — an 8 a.m.-to-10 p.m. job — and that is what he is today. His wife worked in the same capacity until a few years ago, when she accepted a job in a high school cafeteria so the family could have medical insurance.

They lived in a nondescript row house in a modest section of town, friendly but not overly sociable. Jeff Ahn, president of the League of Korean-Americans of Virginia, said the family was uncommonly private among the throbbing Korean-American community of about 200,000 in and around Washington. They shunned the more prominent Korean-language Christian churches, and prayed at a small church outside of town.

High school did not help Seung-Hui Cho surmount his miseries. He went to Westfield High School, one of the largest schools in Fairfax County. He was scrawny and looked younger than his age. He was unresponsive in class, and unwilling to speak.

And that haunted face.

Classmates recall some teasing and bullying over his taciturn nature. The few times he was required to speak for a class assignment, students mocked his poor English and deep-throated voice.