The gunman who massacred 32 at Virginia Tech university posted to NBC news on the day the shootings a video on which he read a “rambling and profanity-laced” manifesto of grievances, and digital photographs of him brandishing weapons.

In another extraordinary development, it also emerged that Cho Seung Hui was declared “mentally ill” and an “imminent danger to others” by a judge nearly 18 months before Monday’s attacks.

The package, timestamped in the two-hour window between Monday’s first and second shootings, was sent to NBC News head Steve Capus.

It contained digital photos of the gunman holding weapons and a manifesto that “rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even.” Capus said Cho talks to the camera in the videos. In one instance, he makes a vague reference to the massacre, Capus said. “This didn’t have to happen,” Cho says.

He adds: “You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option.

“The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.”

Among the materials are 23 QuickTime video files showing Cho talking directly to the camera, Capus said. He does not name anyone specifically, but he talks at length about religion and his hatred of the wealthy.

The production of the videos indicated that Cho had worked on the package for some time, because he not only “took the time to record the videos, but he also broke them down into snippets” that were embedded paragraph by paragraph into the main document, Capus said.

The package also includes several photographs showing Cho in different locations, sometimes posed against a white, cinderblock wall. In some of the photographs, Cho is holding handguns “consistent with what we’ve heard about the guns in this incident,” Capus said.

Other photographs show Cho holding a knife, and some show hollow-point bullets lined up on a table, Capus said.

The package bore a US Postal Service stamp recording that it had been received at a Virginia post office at 9:01am Monday, about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho shot two people in the West Ambler Johnston residence hall on the Virginia Tech campus and shortly before Cho entered Norris Hall, where he killed 30 more people.

Capus added: “The statement is hard to follow, kind of rambling. He speaks about hatred.” The NBC executive said that it was “disturbing, very angry, profanity laced.”

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