Lonely search for answers

The Virginia Tech massacre The parents remember, as they waited for word about their children on April 16, 2007, how cold it was in Blacksburg that evening. And for some, how chilly the words were when they finally came.

They remember all the unanswered questions that night, and the evenings that followed, as Virginia Tech officials repeated "we will prevail" -- but never phoned.

Over the past six weeks, they've found some answers about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, poring through an online archive Tech created for them.

The thousands of pages, which the school is making public tomorrow, confirm that on the day Tech senior Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and professors, university officials acted to protect themselves while delaying a warning to the campus -- and that the official reason for the delay was mistaken, a Richmond Times-Dispatch examination of those documents has found.

Tech records also show university officials pushing to quickly close a fund set up for victims and families, even as the school's leaders shifted attention back to a $1 billion fundraising campaign put on hold after the massacre.

Feeling abandoned by Tech, some families of the dead as well as the survivors have turned to each other for support as they push the state to correct mistakes in the official account of the day. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said last year he would consider correcting the report if families could show him where it was wrong, but details of how that would happen haven't been determined.

"This is a tragedy that happened to the school as well. But everybody's a Hokie until something bad happens to you," said Chris Hammaren of Westtown, N.Y., the stepfather of Caitlin Hammaren, who was murdered at Tech.

"My daughter loved the school. We loved the school," he said. "They alienated us. They pushed us away. I want the truth out."

. . .

Mike and Tricia White of Smithfield were frantic because they hadn't been able to reach their daughter, Nicole, all day. They arrived just before midnight April 16 at the Inn at Virginia Tech, the spot designated for families to gather.

Tricia White remembers Tech officials hustling her to an elevator as another parent, his face contorted in grief, stepped out.

"I said, 'I'm not going in there, I'm not going where you've taken him,'" Tricia White recalls, her body tensing as if she were again bracing herself against the pressure to step through the metal doors.

But they led her on anyway. And then into a room. To wait.

"I yelled out, 'Where is Virginia Tech? I left my daughter here. Where is my daughter?'" White remembers.

The uproar drew a woman to the room. "I'm from Virginia Tech," the woman said. "What is it you want?"

"I said: 'I . . . WANT . . . MY . . . DAUGHTER!'" White remembers.

The woman said her husband worked at a local hospital. She said she'd call. White remembers the hours creeping by -- 1 a.m., 2 a.m. -- as the woman talked on the phone but had no answers.

But White thinks the answer was there to be found: "They knew Nicole was dead."

After all, others knew. About 3:30 a.m., someone from ABC's "Good Morning America" called to ask Mike White about his dead daughter. He called them "vultures'' and hung up.

It wasn't until 10 a.m. April 17 that Tech Police Chief Wendell R. Flinchum told the Whites. Even then, it wasn't official enough for the state: To confirm Nicole's death, the Whites were shown a photo of their daughter, lying on a slab in the morgue.

. . .

Joseph and Mona Samaha of Centreville, who had been trying to call their freshman daughter, Reema, all day, made it to the Inn at Virginia Tech earlier that evening, after a five-hour drive from Northern Virginia.

Police officers were waiting by the door.

"They asked us if we knew anything about Reema. They gave us a list of numbers for four hospitals and said, 'Here's the number for the morgue, make your own calls,'" Joseph Samaha remembers. "We called around, but nobody had Reema on their list."

About 7:30 p.m., it was a student rescue-squad member who approached the Samahas. He overheard them talking and happened to know Reema through a Lebanese student group.

"He said, 'I'm sorry for your loss.' He said, 'You don't know me, but I'm sorry for your loss. Reema didn't make it,'" Samaha said.

. . .

Tech officials knew by shortly after 2:30 that afternoon that the gunman killed 32 people. At about that time, they began planning a convocation for the next day.

Two officials took time to jot a note about why they had issued no alert after Cho's first two shootings that morning -- it appeared to be a domestic dispute, they wrote mistakenly.

By 7:10 p.m., according to top officials' meeting notes obtained by The Times-Dispatch, the university's most senior officials knew that all but six of the dead had been identified, though they didn't personally know the names.

By 9 p.m., they knew the name of the one hardest to identify: the I.D.-less, ever-silent Cho.

Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said the anguish of that night continues to be deeply felt by the university and its leaders.

"We share the pain and agony of the many families who didn't have answers," Hincker said. "We didn't have the official death information, either. It was torture. Moreover, we were prevented from such confirmation until we got official word from the coroner's office."

The state medical examiner, responsible for making the formal, official identification of the dead, shut down operations at 10:30 p.m., even as state police continued with the grim work of telling families the bad news police officers so often must: that they had lost a child. A spokesman said the medical examiner's office has no role in death notifications.

Hundreds of parents flocked to the Inn, hoping for word that their sons and daughters were all right, Vice President for Student Affairs Edward F.D. Spencer said.

"I've been at Tech for 27 years, but nothing prepared me for that," said John E. Dooley, vice president for outreach and international affairs, who spent 48 straight hours at the Inn.

"Everybody did the best they could for the families," he said. "We held them, we fed them, we comforted them, we prayed with them."

Members of a dozen families, who gathered recently to review documents in the archive and share memories, remember that night at the Inn differently, as do several others who have talked to The Times-Dispatch in recent months. It was the parents who supported one another from the outset, said William O'Neil, who learned of son Daniel's death at about 11:30 p.m. from a USA Today reporter who called and asked for a statement.

"We had to seek each other out," he said.

. . .

The next day's convocation -- where Nikki Giovanni declared: "We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. . . . We are the Hokies. We will prevail" -- barely registered in their shock, several families say. None knew then that the poet had insisted Cho be removed from her English class because his strange behavior had frightened students.

Tech President Charles W. Steger met with a group of families the next day, Wednesday.

"I asked what we all wanted to know," said Peter Read of Annandale, whose daughter, Mary, was slain in Norris Hall. "Who's taking responsibility for this thing -- for not closing the school."

There was no answer, he said.

On Wednesday, too, Andrew Goddard reached Richard J. Ferraro, Tech's assistant vice president for student affairs. Ferraro couldn't tell Goddard anything about what the university could do to help his injured son, Colin. But the Tech official asked Goddard if he would mind trying to find out which students were being treated at that hospital.

"The hospitals would not tell university officials the names of the injured students," Hincker said. "We were extremely frustrated. We used back channels to get information. . . . As soon as we learned names, we had people visiting."

Goddard, formerly employed in emergency relief work, was appalled that the university didn't know and would ask worried parents for such help.

"Any human being knows what to do," he said. "You don't need to be a college professor."

. . .

At a meeting of Tech's most senior officials that Friday, April 20, one member's notes quote Steger saying, "Important that we not let this event define us."

On the afternoon of the shooting, key alumni fundraiser Gene Fife e-mailed Tech Vice President for Development Elizabeth A. Flanagan. He suggested scrapping an upcoming gala party to launch a still-behind-the-scenes $1 billion fundraising campaign.

By April 24, Tech officials had picked Oct. 20 as the new day for the fundraising kickoff that originally was scheduled for April 27.

"On the day I was burying my son, they were talking about their gala," said Michael Pohle, whose son, Michael, died in Norris Hall.

By April 30, Flanagan announced the October campaign kickoff to top officials. Notes from the meeting say she added: "healing concert offered for Sept. 6 we could charge for outsiders."

"We selected October; the only other date would have been April of the following year. Do you wait six months? Do you wait a year? Nobody had any . . . idea," Hincker said.

. . .

On May 9, Steger asked top officials to coordinate any testimony they might give to the state investigation panel convened by the governor. "Don't want people sending commission incomplete or partial info or speculating," an official's note says.

Another top official's notes, dated May 15 and headed "Script Outline," reiterated points that other Tech officials noted the day of the massacre and immediately afterward -- that they had had no reason to think Cho's first two killings were anything other than a domestic dispute and that it was impossible to secure the campus.

At a May 17 meeting, top Tech officials were already talking about closing the special fund set up to receive donations for victims and families, with Flanagan warning: "will take criticism from families that we should leave fund open," according to one official's notes.

Tech officials said the lawyer that the university named to administer the fund wrestled with the desire of some families to keep the fund open and the needs of others for financial help after the shooting.

On June 30, as Tech's most senior executives again discussed closing the fund, one official's notes quoted Steger: "We're tired & don't have expertise to manage . . . We need to get out of the business as soon as possible . . . as soon as perhaps July 1, close fund & accept no more gifts. By Aug 1 disburse all $ -- no more $ avail for counseling."

As part of last summer's settlement with families, Tech agreed to keep the fund open for five years. Now, it is still making payments to some injured students.

. . .

In early August, Steger's office started calling families, arranging appointments for parents to call him to talk. Parents say he appeared to have scheduled 10-minute calls, one after the other.

"He said, 'I'm sorry for your loss.' I started off by saying, 'Today is Aug. 9 and my son was murdered on your campus April 16, and this is the first time you contact me?'" O'Neil recalled.

"He said, 'I'm sorry you feel that way.'"

Pohle remembers asking Steger why they didn't warn the campus and hanging up when Steger said Tech officials did the best they could.

On Aug. 15, Tech sent out forms for the Hokie Spirit Fund, giving victims and families until Sept. 15 to agree to the fund's proposed distribution. The lawyer appointed to manage disbursements said he would listen to anything victims or families cared to say, but the amounts to be disbursed would not change.

Weeks later, on Oct. 20, Tech launched the public phase of its capital campaign.

"You can't just wash it away and pretend it didn't exist or happen," campaign leader Fife commented at the time.

"On the other hand, you can't just wallow in it forever."

Contact David Ress at (804) 649-6051 or dress@timesdispatch.com.

Contact Carlos Santos at (434) 295-9542 or csantos@timesdispatch.com.

Staff writer Jeremy Slayton contributed to this report.