No Links Between Cho and Victims

Investigators have pored through Cho's computers and phone records and have found no links between him and his 32 victims. This means that it is increasingly likely that no one will ever entirely know why Cho went on one of the worst spree killings on a school campus in US history.

Flaherty said investigators also have been unable to answer one of the investigation’s most vexing questions: Why the spree began at the West Ambler Johnston dorm, and why 18-year-old freshman Emily Hilscher was the first victim.
He said police have searched Hilscher’s e-mails and phone records, but come up empty. Hilscher’s mother said she had not been updated on the investigation Friday night and declined to comment.
“We can’t make a link at this point,” Flaherty said. “We haven’t found anything to link Mr. Cho and Ms. Hilscher.”

So, was Hilscher simply a target of opportunity and in the wrong place at the wrong time? Possibly, though it doesn't make sense why Cho would first kill two people in Johnston Hall and then not only amble back to his dorm room to send off the package to NBC News and then return to campus to renew his murderous rampage in Norris Hall.

And the issue of whether Cho could have been stopped at any point or that campus officials could have done more will be raised in any lawsuits from victims' families, which are apparently inevitable.

UPDATE:
Cho apparently had sufficient ammo to continue his murderous rampage but committed suicide nonetheless before law enforcement could possibly take him alive. Meanwhile, Confederate Yankee points out that there are some folks who want to put Cho on the same level as those he murdered. One such person is a Virginia Tech psychology student who thinks that someone who murdered 32 people in cold blood should be remembered in the same breath as the murderer himself.

A senior Virginia Tech psychology major has identified herself in a letter to the editor in the Collegiate Times as the person who's been placing a stone at the memorial for Seung-Hui Cho.

The writer, Katelynn L. Johnson, wrote in the lengthy letter that she placed the stone at the memorial at 4 a.m. last Thursday morning in the dark to avoid drawing attention.

"I refuse to do what is popular and agree with everyone around me that only 32 people died on Monday. 33 died."She said in the letter that she intends to continue adding a stone whenever it is removed, as was the case earlier this week.

33 people died. However, 32 were murdered and the 1 other person, Cho, was responsible for that slaughter before killing himself. Conflating the numbers doesn't do any justice to those who Cho killed. The important thing to keep in mind is that these people didn't simply die - Cho brutally and methodically murdered them. Johnson just doesn't get it.