View Cho video

The gunman who shot dead 32 people at Virginia Tech university paused during his killing spree to post a video manifesto of his grievances to a television station, it emerged last night.

“You just loved to crucify me. When the time came, I did it. I had to,” Cho Seung Hui declared in the video in which he rails against Christianity and hedonism.

The package contained several videos and 43 digital photographs, 11 showing him brandishing the two pistols he used in the massacre. It was posted to NBC at 9.01am on Monday, after he had killed his first two victims and minutes before he killed another 30. Some sections of the tapes were broadcast last night.

Speaking closely to the camera and wearing a baseball cap turned back to front, Cho says: “I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters that you f***. I did it for them.”

He adds: “You just love inducing cancer in my brain. You love tearing my heart and raping my soul.” The diatribe mentions “martyrs like Eric and Dylan” — apparently a reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers who killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado eight years ago tomorrow.

“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,” he adds. “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.” Much of the rant, some of it recorded in his car after the first killings, is incoherent, filled with obscenities, and rails against the rich. “Your Mercedes wasn’t enough you, brats,” he says in a cold monotone.

In the videos he sounds like an American. Although he was born in South Korea, he moved to the US in 1992 with his parents when he was aged 8.

“Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs. You had everything.”

The production of the videos is uneven, with Cho’s voice so soft that at times it is hard to understand him. But they indicate that Cho had worked on the package for some time. Steve Capus, the NBC news president to whom the package was addressed, said that Cho 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.

In the first two of the 43 photographs enclosed, Cho looks like a normal, smiling college student. In the rest, he presents a stern face; in 11, he aims the Glock 9mm pistol and Walther P22 handgun he used in the massacre at the camera. Some of the pictures show him smiling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand.

He wears a khaki, military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a black baseball cap which is on backwards. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows him looking angry and holding a gun to his temple. The package was sent by overnight delivery but did not arrive at NBC until yesterday morning. It had apparently been delayed because it had the wrong postal code, NBC said.

An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC’s attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho’s arm after the bloodbath, “Ismail Ax,” NBC said. The return address was “A Ismail”.

Cho killed two people at 7.15am on Monday before murdering another 30 in a shooting spree two hours later in a lecture hall on the other side of the university campus.

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

In another extraordinary development, it also emerged yesterday that Cho was declared mentally ill and an “imminent danger to others” by a judge almost 18 months ago.

Special Judge Paul Barnett, in a district court near Blacksburg, was asked to determine Cho’s state of mind after he had been reported for stalking two female students. The two contacted campus police in November and December 2005 after Cho sent them “annoying messages”. Cho’s flatmate had also contacted university police to express concerns that Cho was suicidal. But Cho was released for outpatient treatment after a doctor certified that, while he was mentally ill, “he does not present an imminent danger to himself or others”.

Video message

"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”

"You just loved to crucify me. When the time came, I did it. I had to”

"I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me”

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