Survivors and relatives of victims of the Virginia Tech massacre want Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to reopen a state investigation of the tragedy, saying newly discovered psychological records of gunman Seung-Hui Cho provide a "whole new light" on the shootings.
Kaine, speaking yesterday on his monthly phone-in show on Washington radio station WTOP, was cool to the request. But Kaine said the records could be reviewed by staff members to determine whether the state's findings should be changed.
"I think what the governor needs to understand is the truth needs to be established," said Suzanne Grimes, who lives outside Pittsburgh and whose son, Kevin Sterne, was injured seriously in the April 16, 2007, rampage. "These missing records give a whole new light. Someone's hiding something, and what else are they hiding?"
Cho shot and killed 32 people before committing suicide.
Cho's records from the Virginia Tech mental-health center were discovered about two weeks ago in the Blacksburg home of the facility's former director, Dr. Robert C. Miller. State police are conducting a criminal investigation to determine why they were taken from the center, which is legally responsible for keeping them.
"Obviously, these records are critical," said Kaine, who appointed a commission led by a former state police superintendent, Col. W. Gerald Massengill, to investigate the massacre. "They shouldn't have been removed from the counseling center. I want to know why. I want to know why they were not found until now."
In a written statement issued yesterday, 65 survivors and their relatives urged Kaine to reconvene the study panel, urging, as a legacy to the dead and injured, an "accurate, complete and through accounting of what happened before, during and after" the shootings.
Lori Haas of Richmond, whose daughter, Emily, survived the massacre, said concerns about the Cho records complicate survivors' emotional recovery.
"I think these kinds of things are difficult for the families," Haas said. "But it's exactly what we've been asking for from day one: a truthful, thorough, accurate accounting."
Haas and Grimes made their statements in interviews yesterday with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Massengill said in an interview yesterday that it is up to the governor to decide whether to call back the panel. Massengill, like Kaine, cited as a possible complication in doing so additional time demands on the panel's volunteer members.
Massengill also said that while he did not know the specific contents of the Cho mental-health records, he was not sure "anything too significant [would] come out" of them. Massengill described the documents as including "triage," a term for the process of determining medical treatment based on available resources.
In a letter yesterday to Virginia Tech employees, university President Charles W. Steger said it is the school's "strong desire" for Cho's psychological records to be made public as soon as possible, but their release is up to the lawyer of the gunman's estate.
A Virginia Tech spokesman, Larry Hincker, said in a statement that reopening the investigation is Kaine's call and that the contents of the Cho records "should drive [that] decision."
Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or omeola@timesdispatch.com.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com.
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