Virginia Gov. Kaine special commission never interviewed Va. Tech counselor who removed Cho records

"(Virginia Governor Tim) Kaine's special commission on the shootings did not interview Miller, W. Gerald Massengill, the panel's chairman and a retired state police superintendent, said Wednesday."..."

• "The missing mental health records of Seung Hui Cho, who was responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, mysteriously resurfaced last week
• in the home of the former director of the university's counseling center.

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) announced Wednesday that the records, which neither the state police nor a state investigative commission had been able to locate,

• turned up as a result of pretrial discovery in two lawsuits that have been filed by families of Cho's victims.

University officials received the records last Thursday but did not inform state police 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, a state police spokeswoman....

Kaine (D) did not identify the Virginia Tech employee who had the records, but a memo written by a university lawyer identified him as Robert Miller.

• Miller headed the Cook Counseling Center at the university
• until 2006,

• the year before

• the Virginia Tech massacre, the worst mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history.

On April 16, 2007, Cho killed 32 students and teachers and wounded many more before taking his own life.

• Miller took Cho's records and those of "several other students" when

• he was transferred from the counseling center to the Human Resources Department,

• according to the memo from the Virginia Tech lawyer, Mary Beth Nash, to Kaine's office....

Lucinda Roy, a Virginia Tech English professor who encouraged Cho to get counseling, said the late and mysterious reappearance of the records adds to concern that the university has been more concerned with preserving its reputation than with providing the public with a thorough account of how Cho's case was handled. ...

• "It was always puzzling to me that they couldn't find the records and"...

Due to her safe, puzzled passivity, 32 people were murdered.

• (Continuing, Washington Post): "there was not a huge push to try to find them."

Because of Cho's odd behavior, his stalking of a fellow student and his threats to kill himself,

• Cho was detained in a psychiatric hospital in December 2005.

• A judge found him to be a danger to himself

and released him on condition that he receive mental health counseling.

• That day, at 3 p.m., Cho showed up at the Cook Counseling Center.

The long-missing records, Owczarski said, are now on file there."

• Va. Tech Shooter's Mental Files Turn Up, State Probes Failed to Find Records," by Brigid Schulte and Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post, 7/23/09, ap photo, Gov. Tim Kaine

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