Users who are viewing this thread

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
norris_001.jpg

Roy Norris
bittaker_201.jpg

Lawrence Bittaker
mackvan_002.jpg
mackvan_001.jpg

7b.jpg

Bittaker bought a 1977 GMC cargo van, which they came to call "Murder Mack", because it had no side
windows in the back and a large passenger side sliding door.
bittaker_101.jpg

February 6, 1981 - Los Angeles, California: Lawrence Bittaker, 40, accused in the rape and torture deaths of five teenage girls, wears a grin on his face during testimony in court. Earlier in the day Bittaker broke down and began crying as he denied under questioning that he had killed any of the girls. During the second day of testimony in his own defense, Bittaker again attempted to discredit the testimony of his confessed alleged accomplice, Ray Norris, 32, who pleaded guilty to the killings in a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty.
bittaker_100.jpg

February 4, 1981 - Superior Court Judge Thomas Fredericks (R, top) reversed his earlier ruling and let cameras and microphones into the Lawrence Bittaker (L, top) torture-murder trial. It was apparently the first time California broadcasters and photographers have been allowed to record a felony trial without consent of the defendant. Judge Fredericks last week denied a request by NBC to film the proceedings following a Jan. 25 decision by the US Supreme Court saying states have the right to permit television camera in the courtroom. Fredericks said it was up to the California Judicial Council to make the change permitting cameras and tape recorders in court. The Council amended the rules 2/3 as part of an ongoing "cameras in the courtroom experiment," saying the consent of both prosecution and defense attorneys was no longer necessary.
The victims
lynette-ledford.jpg
andrea-hall.jpg
leah-lamp.jpg

victims_001.jpg

Shirley Ledford, 16, Andrea Joy Hall, 18, and Jacqueline Leah Lamp, 13.
jackie-gilliam.jpg
cindy-schaeffer.jpg

victims_002.jpg

Jackie Doris Gilliam, 15 and Lucinda Schaefer, 16.

Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Lewis Norris, also called The Tool Box Killers, are two American serial killers who together kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered five young women over a period of five months in California in 1979.
Lawrence Bittaker
Shortly after his birth, Bittaker was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. George Bittaker. George worked in aircraft factories, which required the family to move often, from Pennsylvania to Florida to Ohio and finally to California.
Bittaker, who had a tested I.Q. of 138, dropped out of high school in 1957 after several run-ins with juvenile authorities and police. Shortly thereafter he was picked up for car theft, leaving the scene of a hit-and-run accident, and evading arrest. He was imprisoned in the California Youth Authority until he was 19.
The FBI arrested Bittaker in Louisiana several days after his release for violating the Interstate Motor Vehicle Theft Act. Convicted in August 1959, he was sentenced to 18 months in an Oklahoma federal reformatory. His behavior there soon got him transferred to a Missouri medical center. He was released after serving six months of his sentence.
In December 1960 he was arrested in Los Angeles and in May 1961 was sentenced to 1–15 years in a state prison. A psychiatric evaluation determined Bittaker to be paranoid and borderline psychotic with little control over his impulses. Despite these findings, he was released in 1963.
He was picked up two months later for parole violation and suspected robbery and was again incarcerated in October 1964. While in prison he was again given a psychiatric evaluation and again determined to be borderline psychotic.
In July 1967 he was arrested and convicted of theft and leaving a hit-and-run accident. He was sentenced to five years but was released in April 1970. However, in March 1971 he was picked up for burglary and parole violation. He was sentenced to six months or up to 15 years in October. He served three years of that sentence.
He was arrested again when he stabbed a supermarket employee in the parking lot of the business. Bittaker had stuffed a steak down his pants, and the employee had followed him outside and tried to stop him. The man survived, and Bittaker was convicted of attempted murder. He met Norris while in prison at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo.
In 1976 Bittaker was hired as the manager for the Holiday Theater in the Reseda area of the San Fernando Valley.
He was given another psychiatric evaluation, which rejected the borderline psychotic finding, saying instead that he was a classic sociopath. Another psychiatrist called Bittaker a sophisticated psychopath. Despite the psychiatrists' warnings, he was released in November 1978 and moved to Los Angeles.
Roy Norris
At 17, Norris dropped out of school and joined the Navy. He spent most of his service stationed in San Diego and served four months in Vietnam. He saw no combat while there.
Back in San Diego, Norris was arrested on November 1969 for attempted rape. Three months later, out on bail before his trial, he was arrested again. He had tried to attack a woman in her home. Police arrived before he could harm her. At this point, Norris was discharged from the Navy for psychological problems.
In May 1970, while still out on bail, he attacked a female student on the San Diego State University campus. He had jumped the woman from behind, hit her on the head with a rock, and then slammed her head several times on the concrete. The woman survived, so Norris was only charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He was sent to Atascadero State Hospital as a sex offender and spent five years there. When released, he was considered no further danger to others.
Three months after his release, Norris attacked and raped a 27-year-old woman. Convicted of forcible rape, he was sent to the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo. While there, he met and befriended Bittaker. Norris claims Bittaker saved his life twice in prison, which bound him to Bittaker according to the "prisoner's code."
Norris was released on January 15, 1979, and moved in with his mother in Los Angeles, where it is believed they began an incestuous relationship. Bittaker contacted Norris and they continued their prison friendship on the outside.
Murders
Bittaker and Norris hatched a plan to rape and kill local girls. Bittaker bought a 1977 GMC cargo van that they came to call "Murder Mack" because it had no side windows in the back and a large passenger-side sliding door. From February to June 1979, they gave their plan a test run. They drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, stopped at beaches, talked to girls, and took their pictures. When the pair was arrested, police found close to 500 pictures among Bittaker's possessions.
On June 24, 1979, they claimed their first victim, 16-year-old Cindy Schaeffer. They picked her up near Redondo Beach, Norris forcing her into the van. He duct taped her mouth and bound her arms and legs. Bittaker drove the van to a fire road on San Gabriel Mountains out of sight of the highway. Both men raped the girl, and then Bittaker wrapped a straightened wire coat hanger around her neck. He tightened the wire with vise-grip pliers, strangling her to death. They wrapped her body in a plastic shower curtain and dumped it in a nearby canyon.
They picked up 18-year-old Andrea Hall hitchhiking on July 8. Norris hid in the back of the van and Bittaker talked her into the van. After she had gotten in, Bittaker offered her a drink from a cooler in the back. When she went to the cooler, Norris jumped her, bound her arms and legs, and taped her mouth shut. They took her to the fire road and raped her several times. Bittaker dragged her from the van, and Norris left to get beer. When he returned, Hall was gone and Bittaker was looking at Polaroid pictures of her. He had stabbed her with an ice pick in both ears and strangled her. He threw her body over a cliff.
On September 3, while driving near Hermosa Beach, the pair spotted two girls on a bus stop bench and offered them a ride. Jackie Gilliam, 15, and Leah Lamp, 13, accepted their offer. The girls became suspicious when Bittaker parked the van near a suburban tennis court. Lamp went for the back door and Norris hit her in the head with a bat. A short scuffle broke out, but with Bittaker's help Norris subdued the teens and bound them both. Bittaker then drove them to the fire road. They kept the girls alive for two days, raping and torturing them the whole time with a wire hanger and pliers. They even made an audio recording of the events. Eventually Bittaker stabbed Gilliam in both ears with an ice pick. When she didn't succumb to her injuries, both men took turns strangling her until she died. Bittaker then strangled Lamp while Norris hit her in the head with a sledgehammer seven times. They dumped the bodies over a cliff, the ice pick still in Gilliam's head.
They kidnapped Shirley Sanders on September 30, macing her and forcing her into the van. Both raped her, but she escaped. Police showed her pictures of the men, and she identified them as Lawrence and Roy.
They kidnapped 16-year-old Shirley Lynette Ledford[1] on October 31, raping her and torturing her while driving around Los Angeles instead of heading to their usual mountain spot. Bittaker stabbed the young girl several times and also tortured her with the pliers. During her torture, her screams and pleas were tape-recorded as Bittaker repeatedly beat her elbows with a sledgehammer, all the time demanding that she not stop screaming; he eventually strangled her with a wire hanger, using the pliers to twist a cinching loop around her throat. Instead of tossing her body over a cliff, they left it on a random lawn in Hermosa Beach to see the local reaction in the newspaper. The body was found the next day and caused quite a stir, being only days since the arrest of "Hillside Strangler" Angelo Buono.
Norris had been telling prison friend Jimmy Dalton all about the murders. Dalton thought the stories were lies until Ledford's body was found. He talked to his lawyer and they went to the Los Angeles Police Department with information about Norris.
At the trial, both Norris and Bittaker were charged with murder, kidnapping, forcible rape, sexual perversion and criminal conspiracy. Bittaker was convicted of rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder on February 17, 1981, and sentenced to death. As of October 2012,Bittaker remains on death row, where he still receives mail; he responds to the letters, signing with his nickname, "Pliers" Bittaker. Norris was also sentenced but was spared execution in return for his testimony against Bittaker. Norris was denied parole in 2009 and will be eligible in another ten years.
Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker
Background information​
Birth name​
Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker
Also known as​
The Toolbox Killer
Born​
September 27, 1940 (age 72)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Conviction​
Attempted murder,
Burglary,
Crime scene getaway,
Grand theft auto,
Murder,
Parole violation,
Rape,
Suspicion of robbery,
Theft,
Torture
Sentence​
Death
Killings​
5
Country​
United States
State(s)​
California
Date apprehended​
November 20, 1979
Roy Lewis Norris
Background information​
Birth name​
Roy Lewis Norris
Also known as​
The Toolbox Killer
Born​
February 2, 1948 (age 64)
Greeley, Colorado
Conviction​
Forcible rape,
Kidnapping,
Murder,
Parole violation,
Torture
Sentence​
Life imprisonment
Killings​
5
Country​
United States
State(s)​
California
Date apprehended​
November 23, 1979

 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
Albert Fish
220px-Albert_Fish_1903.JPG

tumblr_mdp8dphzcS1rytk2ro1_500.jpg

image.png

Background information
Birth name Hamilton Howard Fish
Also known as The Gray Man, The Werewolf of Wysteria, The Brooklyn Vampire, The Moon Maniac, The Boogey Man
Born (1870-05-19)May 19, 1870
Washington, D.C.
Died January 16, 1936(1936-01-16) (aged 65)
Ossining, New York
Cause of death Electrocuted, Sing Sing Correctional Facility
Conviction Grand larceny,
Murder,
Theft
Sentence Death
Killings
Number of victims 4 (known)
Country USA
State(s) New York
Date apprehended 1934
Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936) was an American serial killer. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac and The Boogey Man. A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he "had children in every state, and at one time put the figure at around 100. However, it is not clear whether he was talking about rapes or cannibalization, less still whether he was telling the truth. He was a suspect in at least five murders in his lifetime. Fish confessed to three murders that police were able to trace to a known homicide, and he confessed to stabbing at least two other people. He was put on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd, and was convicted and executed by electric chair.

Early life
He was born Hamilton Howard Fish in Washington, D.C. on May 19, 1870, to Ellen (1838-?) and Randall Fish (1795–October 16, 1875). His mother was born in Ireland. He said he had been named after Hamilton Fish, a distant relative. His father was 43 years older than his mother and 75 years old at the time of his birth. Fish was the youngest child and had three living siblings: Walter, Annie, and Edwin Fish. He wished to be called "Albert" after a dead sibling and to escape the nickname "Ham & Eggs" that he was given at an orphanage in which he spent much of his childhood.
His family had a history of mental illness. His uncle suffered from religious mania. A brother was placed in the state mental hospital. His sister was diagnosed with a "mental affliction". Three other relatives were diagnosed with mental illnesses and his mother had "aural and/or visual hallucinations". His father had been a river boat captain, but by 1870 he was a fertilizer manufacturer. The elder Fish died in 1875 at the Sixth Street Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Washington, D.C. of a myocardial infarction. Fish's mother then put him into Saint John's Orphanage in Washington, where he was frequently treated sadistically. He began to enjoy the physical pain that the beatings brought. Of his time at the orphanage, Fish remarked, "I was there till I was nearly nine, and that's where I got started wrong. We were unmercifully whipped. I saw boys doing many things they should not have done."
By 1880, his mother had a government job and was able to remove Fish from the orphanage. In 1882, at age 12, he began a relationship with a telegraph boy. The youth introduced Fish to such practices as drinking urine and eating feces. Fish began visiting public baths where he could watch other boys undress, and spent a great portion of his weekends on these visits.
Throughout his life he would write obscene letters to women whose names he acquired from classified advertising and matrimonial agencies.
By 1890, Fish had arrived in New York City, and he said that at that point he became a male prostitute and he also began raping young boys. In 1898, his mother arranged a marriage for him with a woman nine years younger than himself.They had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry Fish.
First incarceration
Throughout 1898 he worked as a house painter. He said he continued molesting children, mostly young boys under the age of six. He later recounted an incident in which a male lover took him to a waxworks museum, where Fish was fascinated by a bisection of a penis. After that he became obsessed with castration. At the age of 41, during his stay in St. Louis, Albert Fish began sexually molesting a mentally retarded man named Kedden. Fish attempted to castrate the 19-year-old with a pair of scissors after tying him up, but the agonized look on the man's face frightened Fish and he fled the city after binding the wound and leaving him a $10 bill. Fish then increased the frequency of his visits to brothels, where he engaged in sadomasochism. In 1903, he was arrested for grand larceny and was sentenced to incarceration in Sing Sing.

In January 1917, Fish's wife left him for John Straube, a handyman who boarded with the Fish family. Fish then had to raise his children as a single parent.
After that he began to have auditory hallucinations. He once wrapped himself up in an area rug, saying that he was following the instructions of John the Apostle.
It was around this time that Fish began to indulge in self-harm. He would self-embed needles into his groin and abdomen. After his arrest, X-rays revealed that Fish had at least 29 needles lodged in his pelvic region. He also hit himself repeatedly with a nail-studded paddle and inserted wool doused with lighter fluid into his anus and set it on fire.
Early attacks and attempted abductionsIn 1910, Fish attacked Thomas Bedden in Wilmington, Delaware. Later, around 1919, he stabbed a mentally retarded boy in Georgetown, Washington, D.C..
Fish chose as his victims people who were either mentally handicapped or African-American, explaining that he assumed these people would not be missed when killed. Fish tortured, mutilated and murdered young children with his "implements of Hell": a meat cleaver, butcher knife, and a bone saw.
On July 11, 1924, Fish found eight-year-old Beatrice Kiel playing alone on her parents' Staten Island farm. He offered her money to come and help him look for rhubarb. She was about to leave the farm when her mother chased Fish away. Fish left, but returned later to the Kiels' barn, where he tried to sleep but was discovered by Hans Kiel and forced to leave.
In 1924, at the age of 54, Fish, suffering from religious psychosis, felt that God was commanding him to torture and castrate children.
Shortly before his abduction of Grace Budd, Albert Fish attempted to test his "implements of Hell" on a child acquaintance named Cyril Quinn. Cyril and his friend were playing boxball on the sidewalk when Fish asked them if they had eaten lunch. When they said that they had not, he invited them into his apartment for sandwiches. However, while the two boys were wrestling in Fish's bedroom, they discovered Fish's "implements of Hell" hidden under his bed. They became frightened and ran out of the apartment.
Second incarceration
Fish remarried on February 6, 1930, in Waterloo, New York, to Estella Wilcox, but divorced after only one week. Fish was later arrested in May 1930 for "sending an obscene letter to a woman who answered an advertisement for a maid."[18] Following that arrest and one in 1931, he was sent to the Bellevue psychiatric hospital for observation.
Grace Budd murder
Grace Budd (1918–1928)On May 25, 1928, Fish saw a classified ad in the Sunday edition of the New York World that read: "Young man, 18, wishes position in country. Edward Budd, 406 West 15th Street." On May 28, 1928, Fish, then 58 years old, visited the Budd family in Manhattan under the pretense of hiring Edward; he later confessed that he had planned to tie Edward up, castrate him, and leave him to bleed to death. He introduced himself as Frank Howard, a farmer from Farmingdale, New York. Fish promised to hire Budd and his friend Willie, and said he would send for them in a few days. However, he failed to show up but sent a telegraph to the Budd family apologizing and set a later date. When Fish returned, he met Grace Budd. He apparently changed his intended victim from Edward Budd to Grace Budd, and quickly made up a story about having to attend his niece's birthday party. He convinced the parents, Delia Flanagan and Albert Budd I, to let Grace accompany him to the party that evening. The elder Albert Budd was a porter for the United States Equitable Life Assurance Society. Grace had a younger sister, Beatrice, two older brothers, Edward and George Budd, and a younger brother, Albert Budd II. Grace left with Fish that day, but never returned home.
The police arrested Charles Edward Pope on September 5, 1930, as a suspect in the kidnapping. He was a 66-year-old apartment house superintendent, and was accused by his estranged wife. He spent 108 days in jail between his arrest and trial on December 22, 1930. He was found not guilty.
The letter
Six years later, in November 1934, an anonymous letter was sent to the girl's parents that led the police to Albert Fish. Mrs. Budd was illiterate and could not read the letter herself, so she had her son read it to her.The unaltered letter is presented below verbatim, complete with Fish's misspellings and grammatical errors:
Dear Mrs. Budd. In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1–3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them – tortured them – to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head—bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. near—right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick – bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.
Capture and final incarcerationThe letter was delivered in an envelope that had a small hexagonal emblem with the letters "N.Y.P.C.B.A." standing for "New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association". A janitor at the company told the police he had taken some of the stationery home but left it at his rooming house at 200 East 52nd Street when he moved out. The landlady of the rooming house said that Fish had checked out of that room a few days earlier. She said that Fish's son sent him money and he had asked her to hold his next check for him. William F. King was the lead investigator for the case. He waited outside the room until Fish returned. Fish agreed to go to headquarters for questioning, then brandished a razor blade. King disarmed Fish and took him to police headquarters. Fish made no attempt to deny the Grace Budd murder, saying that he had meant to go to the house to kill Edward Budd, Grace's brother.[23] Fish said it "never even entered [his] head" to rape the girl, but he later admitted to his attorney that, while kneeling on Grace's chest and strangling her, he did have two involuntary ejaculations. This information was used at trial to make the claim the kidnapping was sexually motivated, thus avoiding any mention of cannibalism.
Postcapture discoveries
Billy GaffneyA 4-year-old child named Billy Gaffney was playing in the hallway outside his family's apartment in Brooklyn with his 3-year-old friend, Billy Beaton, and Billy's 12-year-old brother on February 11, 1927. When the 12-year-old withdrew into the Beatons' apartment, both of the younger boys disappeared; Billy Beaton was soon found on the roof of the apartment house. When asked what happened to Gaffney, Beaton said "the boogey man took him." Gaffney's body was never recovered. Initially, serial killer Peter Kudzinowski was a suspect in the boy's murder. Then, Joseph Meehan, a motorman on a Brooklyn trolley, saw a picture of Fish in the newspaper and identified him as the old man that he saw February 11, 1927, who was trying to quiet a little boy sitting with him on the trolley. The boy was not wearing a jacket and was crying for his mother and was dragged by the man on and off the trolley. The younger Beaton had described the "boogey man" as an elderly man with a slim build, gray hair and a gray moustache, which matched Fish's description.[27] Police matched the description of the child to Billy Gaffney. Detectives of the Manhattan Missing Persons Bureau were able to establish that Fish had been employed as a housepainter by a Brooklyn real estate firm during February 1927 and that on the day of Billy Gaffney's disappearance he had been working at a location only a few miles away from where the boy had been abducted. Fish confessed the following in a letter to his attorney
I brought him to the Riker Ave. dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took him ... I took the boy there. Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes. Threw his shoes in the dump. Then I walked back and took trolley to 59 St. at 2 A.M. and walked from there home. Next day about 2 P.M., I took tools, a good heavy cat-of-nine tails. Home made. Short handle. Cut one of my belts in half, slit these half in six strips about 8 in. long. I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears – nose – slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood. I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of stones. Then I cut him up. I had a grip with me. I put his nose, ears and a few slices of his belly in the grip. Then I cut him thru the middle of his body. Just below his belly button. Then thru his legs about 2 in. below his behind. I put this in my grip with a lot of paper. I cut off the head – feet – arms – hands and the legs below the knee. This I put in sacks weighed with stones, tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water you will see all along the road going to North Beach. Water is 3 to 4 ft. deep. They sank at once. I came home with my meat. I had the front of his body I liked best. His monkey and pee wees and a nice little fat behind to roast in the oven and eat. I made a stew out of his ears – nose – pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good. Then I split the cheeks of his behind open, cut off his monkey and pee wees and washed them first. I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put in the oven. Then I picked 4 onions and when meat had roasted about 1/4 hr., I poured about a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals I basted his behind with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy. In about 2 hr., it was nice and brown, cooked thru. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I ate every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was as sweet as a nut, but his pee-wees I could not chew. Threw them in the toilet.
Elizabeth Gaffney, along with Detective King and two other men, visited Fish in Sing Sing to speak to him personally about her son's death, but Fish refused to speak to her. He then began to weep, and asked to be left alone. After two hours of asking him questions through his lawyer, James Dempsey, Mrs. Gaffney gave up, still unconvinced that Albert Fish was her son's killer.
Francis McDonnell
During the night of July 14, 1924 8-year-old Francis McDonnell was reported missing by his parents. He had failed to return home after playing catch with friends in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Staten Island. A search was organized and his body was found in a wooded area near his home. He had been sexually assaulted then strangled with his suspenders. Fish later stated that he had intended to dismember the boy, but heard someone approaching and fled.
McDonnell's friends told the police that he had been taken by an elderly man with a gray mustache. A neighbor also told the police he had observed the boy with a similar looking man walking along a grassy path into the nearby woods. Francis’s mother, Anna McDonnell, said she had seen the same man earlier that day. She told the reporters:
He came shuffling down the street mumbling to himself and making queer motions with his hands ... I saw his thick gray hair and his drooping gray mustache. Everything about him seemed faded and gray.
This led to the mysterious stranger becoming known as "The Gray Man". The murder would remain unsolved until the murder of Grace Budd.[9] When several eyewitnesses, among them the Staten Island farmer Hans Kiel, positively identified Albert Fish as the odd stranger seen around Port Richmond on the day of Francis McDonnell’s disappearance, Richmond County District Attorney Thomas J. Walsh announced his intention to seek an indictment against Fish for the boy’s murder. At first Fish denied the charges. It was only in March 1935, after the conclusion of his trial for the Budd murder and his confession to the killing of Billy Gaffney, that Fish confirmed to investigators that he had also murdered Francis McDonnell. When news of this disclosure broke the New York Daily Mirror would state that it solidified Fish as "the most vicious child-slayer in criminal history".
Trial and execution
The trial of Albert Fish for the murder of Grace Budd began on March 11, 1935, in White Plains, New York with Frederick P. Close presiding as judge, and Westchester County Chief Assistant District Attorney, Elbert F. Gallagher, as prosecuting attorney. Fish's defense counsel would be James Dempsey, a former prosecutor and the one-time Mayor of Peekskill, New York (1932–1933). The trial lasted for 10 days. Fish pleaded insanity, and claimed to have heard voices from God telling him to kill children. Several psychiatrists testified about Fish's sexual fetishes, which included sadism, masochism, cunnilingus, anilingus, fellatio, flagellation, exhibitionism, voyeurism, piquerism, cannibalism, coprophagia, urophilia, pedophilia and infibulation. Dempsey in his summation noted that Fish was a "psychiatric phenomenon" and that nowhere in legal or medical records was there another individual who possessed so many sexual abnormalities.
The defense's chief expert witness was Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist with a focus on child development who conducted psychiatric examinations for the New York criminal courts. Over two days of testimony, Wertham explained Fish's obsession with religion and specifically his preoccupation with the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22:1–24). Wertham said that Fish believed that similarly "sacrificing" a boy would be penance for his own sins and that even if the act itself was wrong, angels would prevent it if God did not approve. Fish had already attempted the sacrifice once before but had been thwarted when a car drove past. Edward Budd had been the next intended victim, but he turned out to be larger than expected so he settled on Grace. Although he knew Grace was female, it is known that Fish perceived her as a boy. Wertham then detailed Fish's cannibalism, which in his mind he associated with communion. The last question Dempsey asked Wertham was 15,000 words long, detailed Fish's life and ended with asking how the doctor considered his mental condition based on this life. Wertham simply answered "He is insane".[9] Gallagher cross-examined Wertham on whether Fish knew the difference between right and wrong. He responded that he did know but that it was a perverted knowledge based on his views of sin, atonement and religion and thus was an "insane knowledge".The defense then called two more psychiatrists, who supported Wertham's findings.
The first of four rebuttal witnesses was Menas Gregory, the former head of the Bellevue psychiatric hospital, where Fish had been treated in 1930. He testified that Fish was abnormal but sane. Under cross examination, Dempsey asked if coprophilia, urophilia and pedophilia indicated a sane or insane person. Gregory replied that such a person was not "mentally sick" and that these were common perversions that were "socially perfectly alright" and that Fish was "no different from millions of other people", some very prominent and successful, who suffered from the "very same" perversions. The next witness was the resident physician at The Tombs, Perry Lichtenstein. Dempsey objected to a doctor with no training in psychiatry testifying on the issue of sanity, but Justice Close overruled on the grounds that the jury could decide what weight to give a prison doctor. When asked whether Fish's causing himself pain indicated a mental condition, Lichtenstein replied, "That is not masochism", as he was only "punishing himself to get sexual gratification". The next witness, Charles Lambert, testified that coprophilia was a common practice and that religious cannibalism may be psychopathic but "was a matter of taste" and not evidence of a psychosis. The last witness, James Vavasour, repeated Lambert's opinion.
Another defense witness was Mary Nicholas, Fish's 17-year-old stepdaughter. She described how Fish taught her and her brothers and sisters several games involving overtones of masochism and child molestation.
None of the jurors doubted that Fish was insane. But ultimately, as one later explained, they felt he should be executed anyway. They found him to be sane and guilty, and the judge ordered the death sentence. Fish arrived at prison in March 1935, and was executed on January 16, 1936, in the electric chair at Sing Sing. He entered the chamber at 11:06 p.m. and was pronounced dead three minutes later. He was buried in the Sing Sing Prison Cemetery. Fish is said to have helped the executioner position the electrodes on his body. His last words were reportedly.
I don't even know why I'm here.
According to one witness present, it took two jolts before Fish died, creating the rumor that the apparatus was short-circuited by the needles that Fish had inserted into his body. These rumors were later regarded as untrue, as Fish reportedly had died in the same fashion and time frame others do in the electric chair.
At a meeting with reporters following the execution, Fish's lawyer, James Dempsey, revealed that he was in possession of his now deceased client's "final statement". This amounted to several pages of hand-written notes that Fish had apparently penned in the hours just prior to his death. When pressed by the assembled journalists to reveal the document's contents, Dempsey refused, stating:
I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read.
Victims Known
Francis X. McDonnell, age 8, July 15, 1924
Emma Richardson, age 5, October 3, 1926
Billy Gaffney, age 4, February 11, 1927
Grace Budd, age 10, June 3, 1926
Suspected
Yetta Abramowitz, age 12, 1927
Mary Ellen O'Connor, age 16, February 15, 1932
Benjamin Collings, age 17, December 15, 1932





 

sniper.masiello

Dont run..... You'll only die tired....
there was a letter he wrote and read aloud in the court room to a mother of a little gir about how he treated her like a princess, bathed he, dressed her, had a tea party with her, then killed her, and ate her.... He goes on to thank the mom and praise her for birthing and raising such a beautiful little creature and not to worry because he didnt hurt her or rape her, and that she was so pretty and delicious that he just couldnt contain himself.... I cant find the letter.... Or else id post it here....
 

NightMare

My gift to you, a Nightmare of terror
That letter is in the already post about Alber Fish in the section called "Serial Killers." There you can read the part about the letter he sent.
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
That letter is in the already post about Alber Fish in the section called "Serial Killers." There you can read the part about the letter he sent.
this is the serial killer threads and i searhed for it and there was no other posing about albert....
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
Margie Velma Barfield

velma-barfield.jpg

velma-barfield-1.jpg

velma-barfield-2.jpg


A.K.A.: "Death Row Granny"

Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Poisoner
Number of victims: 5 - 7
Date of murders: 1969 - 1978
Date of arrest: May 13, 1978
Date of birth: October 23, 1932
Victims profile: Husbands, fiances, and her own mother
Method of murder: Poisoning (arsenic)
Location: Robeson County, North Carolina, USA
Status: Executed by lethal injection in North Carolina on November 2, 1984

Summary:
After two marraiges ended with the death of her husbands, by 1977 Barfield was in a relationship with Stuart Taylor, who was a widower and tobacco farmer. As she had been doing for years, she forged checks on Taylor's account to pay for her addiction to prescription drugs.
Fearing that she had been found out, she mixed an arsenic based rat poison into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill and Velma volunteered to nurse him. As his condition worsened she took him to hospital where he died a few days later.
Unfortunately for her there was an autopsy which found that the cause of Taylor's death was arsenic poisoning and Velma was arrested and charged with his murder.
At the trial her defense pleaded insanity but this was not accepted and she was convicted. The jury recommended the death sentence. Velma appeared cold and uncaring on the stand and actually gave the District Attorney a round of applause when he made his closing speech.
Barfield later confessed to the 1974 murder of her own mother (in whose name she had taken out a loan) and of two elderly people, John Henry Lee (by whom she was being paid as a housekeeper/caregiver) and Dollie Edwards (a relative of Stuart Taylor). Velma always attended the funerals of her victims and appeared to grieve genuinely for them.
The body of her late husband, Thomas Barfield, was later exhumed and also found to contain traces of arsenic. Velma denied that she had killed him.
Her motives for these four murders were the same. She had misappropriated money from her victims and then according to her, tried to make them ill so she could nurse them whilst finding another job to enable her to repay the money. Needless to say, the jury was less than impressed by this defense.
Barfield gained notoriety as the "Death Row Granny," becoming the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962, and the first since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

Velma Margie Barfield
Velma Barfield made international headlines when she became the first woman to be executed in America since 1962 and first since the re-introduction of the death penalty in 1976. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.
She was put to death at 2.00 a.m. on the 2nd of November 1984 at the Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, a somewhat plump, 52 year old, grandmother, who had murdered four people.
Velma was addicted to drugs, not the hard drugs like heroin or cocaine, but rather prescription drugs such as tranquilizers, sleeping pills, anti-depressants and barbiturates.
Her addiction stemmed from a nervous breakdown and she had a history of overdosing and subsequent hospital treatment, with four admissions between 1972 and 1975.
Background
She was born on the 23rd October 1932 in North Carolina, the oldest girl and second of a large family of nine children. She claimed her father beat and raped her and her sisters although this was disputed by other relatives. She dropped out of school and by nineteen had two children, a son, Ron and a daughter, Kim by her first husband, Thomas.
To begin with the marriage was happy and they seemed like a normal family unit. All began to deteriorate when Thomas suffered head injuries in a car crash in 1966 and became unable to work. Velma got a job in a store to make ends meet and support the family.
Thomas rapidly become an alcoholic and Velma began to take anti-depressants and tranquilizers to get her through the daily stress of what had become a miserable life. Ultimately she had a breakdown and became addicted to the various drugs.
Thomas died in 1969 in a house fire, which may not have been an accident and Velma re-married in 1970 to Jennings Barfield who was dead within 6 months - the cause - arsenic poisoning.
Her limited employment opportunities could not support her drug habit so she took to forging cheques and then killing the people she had defrauded.
The crimes
By 1977 she was in a relationship with Stuart Taylor who was a widower and tobacco farmer. As usual she forged checks on Taylor's account to pay for her addiction.
Presumably Taylor began to get suspicious, because fearing that she had been found out, she mixed an arsenic based rat poison into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill and Velma volunteered to nurse him. As his condition worsened she took him to hospital where he died a few days later.
Unfortunately for her there was an autopsy which found that the cause of Taylor's death was arsenic poisoning and Velma was arrested and charged with his murder. At the trial her defense pleaded insanity but this was not accepted and she was convicted.
The jury recommended the death sentence. Velma appeared cold and uncaring on the stand and actually gave the District Attorney a round of applause when he made his closing speech.
She subsequently confessed to the murders of her mother in 1974 (in whose name she had taken out a loan) and of two elderly people, John Henry Lee by whom she was being paid as a housekeeper/carer and Dollie Edwards through whom she met Stuart Taylor (he was related to Dollie).
Velma always attended the funerals of her victims and appeared to grieve genuinely for them. Her late husband, Thomas's body was later exhumed and also found to contain traces of arsenic but Velma denied that she had killed him.
Her motives for these four murders were the same. She had misappropriated money from her victims and then according to her, tried to make them ill so she could nurse them whilst finding another job to enable her to repay the money. Needless to say, the jury was less than impressed by this defense.
Death row
On death row at Raleigh Velma, now off the drugs, she expressed remorse for the years that the pills had blurred her judgment and destroyed her moral compass. However she could not really explain why she had killed.
She became a "born again" Christian whilst awaiting trial and during the next six years that she spent on death row did a lot to help and counsel other female inmates.
Appeals to save her dragged on through various courts and there were many representations on her behalf by religious leaders.
Her final appeal was filed on October 30th 1984 in the North Carolina Supreme Court on the grounds that she was incompetent at her original trial by virtue of her drug addiction.
This was rejected by the court. There had been many appeals on her behalf, the Supreme Court having rejected them on three occasions.
The Governor of North Carolina, James B. Hunt, declined to grant clemency and was unimpressed by her religious conversion and good behavior on death row. (The same argument for commutation was trotted out in the case of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas in 1998)
It is claimed by some, that Hunt could not reprieve her without looking "soft" on crime during the run up to the state elections in 1984. She began to accept her death and instructed her attorney, Jimmy Little, to drop all appeals the day before she was due to be executed saying that she wanted to "die with dignity".
She clearly had little fear of what lay ahead and is quoted as saying "When I go into that chamber at 2.00 a.m. it's my gateway to heaven"
Execution
Under North Carolina law she was allowed the choice of execution by lethal gas or lethal injection and, not surprisingly, she chose the latter. She could not face her last meal and asked a guard to get her Coca-Cola and Cheeze Doodles instead.
She dressed in her own pink pajamas for the execution and was made to wear a diaper. A stethoscope and heart monitor were taped to her chest. The wheeled gurney (see below) was taken to her cell and she was secured to it with straps over her body and legs. Catheters were inserted into her arms and a saline drip started before she was wheeled into the execution chamber a few minutes before 2.00 a.m.
Three syringes were attached to each of the IV lines and these were operated by three volunteers. One of the IV lines was, in fact, a dummy so that none of the three volunteers could be sure if he had actually killed her or not.
She was pronounced dead at 2.15 a.m., the execution having gone without any hitches. At 2.25 a.m. her body was whisked away by a waiting ambulance, past the crowds of pro and anti capital punishment demonstrators who had assembled outside the prison. She had requested that her organs be used for transplant purposes.
In fact this was not possible as heart had not been beating for 10 minutes and could not be restarted, although attempts were made to, by the transplant team. Her corneas and some skin tissue were able to be used.
Conclusion
So was Velma Barfield a monster and serial killer or just a poor demented soul who's brain was befuddled by drugs and who always needed more money to pay for them? My own answer is somewhere in between. As many before her she, no doubt, found that murder came quite easily once she had committed the first one and it offered a simple and permanent solution to the problem of being found out by those she was defrauding.

Margie Velma Barfield (née Margie Velma Bullard) (October 29, 1932 – November 2, 1984) was a serial killer, convicted of six murders. She was the first woman in the United States to be executed after the 1976 resumption of capital punishment and the first since 1962. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.
History
Velma Barfield was born in rural South Carolina, but grew up near Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her father reportedly was abusive and she resented her mother who did not stop the beatings. She escaped by marrying Thomas Burke in 1949. The couple had two children and were reportedly happy until Barfield had a hysterectomy and developed back pain. These events led to a behavioral change in Barfield and an eventual drug addiction.
Thomas Burke began to drink and Barfield's complaints turned into bitter arguments. On April 4, 1969, after Burke had passed out, Barfield and the children left the house, returning to find the home burned and Burke dead. Only a few months later, her home burned once again, this time with a reward of insurance money.
In 1970, Barfield married a widower, Jennings Barfield. Less than a year after their marriage, Jennings died on March 22 1971 from heart complications, leaving Velma a widow once again.
In 1974, Barfield's mother, Lillian Bullard, showed symptoms of intense diarrhea, vomiting and nausea, only to fully recover a few days later. During the Christmas season of the same year, Lillian experienced the same illness as earlier that year, resulting in her death only hours after arriving at the hospital on December 30, 1974.
In 1976, Barfield began caring for the elderly, working for Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Montgomery fell ill and died on January 29, 1977. A little over a month after the death of her husband, Dollie experienced identical symptoms to that of Velma's mother and she too died (March 1, 1977), a death to which Barfield later confessed.
The following year, 1977, Barfield took another caretaking job, this time for 76-year old Record Lee, who had broken her leg. On June 4, 1977, Lee's husband, John Henry, began experiencing racking pains in his stomach and chest along with vomiting and diarrhea. He died soon afterward and Barfield later confessed to his murder.
Another victim was Rowland Stuart Taylor, Barfield's boyfriend and a relative of Dollie Edwards. Fearing he had discovered she had been forging checks on his account, she mixed an arsenic-based rat poison into his beer and tea. He died on February 3, 1978, while she was trying to "nurse" him back to health; an autopsy found arsenic in Taylor's system. After her arrest, the body of Jennings Barfield was exhumed and found to have traces of arsenic, a murder that Barfield denied having committed. Although she subsequently confessed to the murders of Lillian Bullard, Dollie Edwards, and John Henry Lee,she was tried and convicted only for the murder of Taylor. Singer-songwriter Jonathan Byrd is the grandson of Jennings Barfield and his first wife. Byrd's song "Velma" from his Wildflowers album gives a personal account of the murders and investigation.
Prison and execution
During her stay on death row, Barfield became a devout born again Christian. While she had been a devout churchgoer all of her life and had often attended revivals held by Rex Humbard and other evangelists, she later said she'd only been playing at being a Christian.
Her last few years were spent ministering to prisoners, for which she received praise from Billy Graham. Barfield's involvement in Christian ministry was extensive to the point that an effort was made to obtain a commutation to life imprisonment. After a Federal court appeal was denied, Barfield instructed her attorneys to abandon plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984 at the Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. She released a statement before the execution, stating "I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain, all the families connected, and I am sorry, and I want to thank everybody who have been supporting me all these six years." Barfield declined a last meal, having instead a bag of Cheez Doodles and a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola. Barfield wore pink pajamas and an adult diaper as she was put to death.
Barfield's execution raised some political controversies when Governor Jim Hunt, who faced a bout with incumbent Jesse Helms for his Senate seat (which Hunt lost), rejected Barfield's request for clemency.
Barfield was buried in a small rural North Carolina cemetery, near her first husband, Thomas Burke.

Death Sentence: The True Story of Velma Barfield's Life, Crimes and Execution
By Jerry Bledsoe & Velma Barfield
HallMemoirs.com
Book Reviews
Amazon.com - In 1984, Velma Barfield became the first woman since 1962 to be executed in the United States. Her crimes were unusual: Barfield was convicted of the 1978 arsenic poisoning of her fiancé, Stuart Taylor, and she admitted killing three other people with poison, including her own mother.
But her path to execution was circuitous, involving appeal after appeal to various high courts, a grassroots movement to prevent her death, a jailhouse spiritual epiphany, and subsequent "recollections" of childhood abuse and torment that she claimed eventually led to her abuse of prescription tranquilizers, which in turn clouded her judgment and enabled her to perform murderous crimes. Death Sentence, however, is as much about the people she left behind as it is about her fate.
Jerry Bledsoe chooses Barfield's son, Ronnie Burke, as his protagonist. Burke is a greatly sympathetic character whose sense of horror and shame leaps from the pages. Burke watches his own life fall apart as his mother undergoes a transformation in prison, while he uses every last ounce of his strength to try to save her life.
He feels duty bound to help her, but nearing the end of the appeals process, he begs her to just quit and accept her ultimate penalty. Yet at her funeral, divorced and in the beginning stages of alcoholism, he cries and begs her forgiveness, apologizing for not doing more to save her.
Openly critical of the death penalty, Bledsoe focuses a surgically precise camera on the process of state-sponsored execution and its effects, and the result is a grim but gripping and suspenseful tale. --Tjames Madison
From Booklist, October 1, 1998 - Poisoning fiance Stuart Taylor only began Velma Barfield's last round of troubles. "I only meant to make him sick," she told son Ronnie Burke. Imagine his chagrin when he turned his mom in and then found she was in the crosshairs of county attorney (and minion of justice extraordinaire) Joe Freeman Britt's prosecutorial sights.
Thus a woman with lots of problems was pitted against a crusading, highly successful death penalty proponent. Barfield had a history of polite drug dependency and mild-to-moderate financial indiscretion when her propensity for poisoning came to light.
Her conviction for murdering Taylor (she also murdered her mother in what amounts to a subplot here) comes about halfway through the book, the rest of which concerns her and her family's travails in dealing with her crimes and the imprisonment, appeal processes, and execution plans that followed her conviction.
This may not be instructive reading, but it is certainly taut and engrossing on the nature of justice and the death penalty as well as on guilt and responsibility. [Mike Tribby Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved ]
Book Description - In February 1978, Stuart Taylor was rushed to the hospital. He died the following day, while his distraught fiance, Velma Barfield, held vigil at his bedside. When an autopsy revealed the true cause of his death--arsenic poisoning--Velma became the prime suspect.
Confronted by her trusting son, she shocked him and her family by saying, "I only meant to make him sick." But more horrifying revelations were to come. Velma had killed before--and among her victims was her own mother!
Thus began her family' s long nightmare. Velma Barfield' s name would become known around the world in the debate about women and capital punishment.
But nobody would know the agonies her family suffered, especially her son, who harbored secrets that only he knew--until now. Deeply moving, unfolds with the page-turning suspense of a psychological thriller, while raising questions that still tear at America's conscience.
Synopsis - "New York Times" bestselling author Jerry Bledsoe's newest true-crime masterpiece tells the inside story of an infamous case that raises questions about the death penalty. 8-pages of photos.

No Reprieve: Jerry Bledsoe's 'Death Sentence' traces the trials and tribulations of Velma Barfield
By Laura Argiri
Spectator Online
Why read Jerry Bledsoe's Death Sentence (Dutton, $24.95), which is substantial and no cordial of cheer and reassurance? Because it's genuinely instructive; if you're like most of us, it'll tell you things you don't already know. And because it's timely: In our current social climate, amidst the freshest expressions of our violent, pragmatic American group-soul, it's very timely.
In the glare of recent events - barbaric praise addressed to the murderer of a doctor who did abortions, the heckling of mourners at Matthew Shepard's funeral - the execution of Velma Barfield is easy to remember.
November 2, 1984, is memorable firstly because of the media-flogged anticipation that built like a migraine prodrome throughout this state all that autumn. Secondly, because of the demonstrators on one side, with signs scrawled, "Bye-bye, Velma!" and carrying on in their out-of-hand Halloween party glee, and because of the demonstrators on the other side, mourning this multiple murderer like the last martyr.
The execution night demonstrators were oddly assorted, perhaps not as formulaically as one might think. There were Christian groups in both ranks. Some people who might ordinarily find the death penalty unobjectionable in itself were keenly sympathetic with Velma Barfield for any number of reasons: because she was a woman, because she was an elderly woman, because of the misery she had suffered.
Sharp polarization was what she consistently inspired after her conviction: tearful empathy, angry revulsion. The outcome of her clemency appeals became an issue in the Hunt-Helms campaign, with the Helms contingent stongly in favor of her death, much of the Hunt following for leniency and Hunt himself declining clemency in opposition to the Helms side's expectations.
Some events just lend themselves to a polarization of passion in which facts, even unequivocal ones, are less important than their impact, and Right and Left may be equally hysterical and repulsive in their reactions. And after the fact, after the trials and appeals and execution, many were haunted by a queasy, scab-picking How could she? And Why, why did she, really?
In Death Sentence, Jerry Bledsoe illumines many issues that had emerged only partially at the time of the execution. One is the ferocity of Barfield's multi-drug addiction. "In the nine years between Thomas' death and her arrest," writes Bledsoe, "she would get prescriptions from more than two dozen doctors, not only for Valium but for nearly two dozen other drugs, most of them also addictive, including barbiturates, narcotics, sleeping pills, stimulants and antidepressants, all of them prescribed by doctors trying to be helpful, and all of them dangerous and unpredictable when combined with Valium."
It was her misfortune that she could stay vertical after a dose that would render most of us comatose. It was also an expensive habit, with only a fragile economy to support it. Velma, born poor, had achieved a comfortable life in her marriage to Thomas Burke. The life and the marriage destabilized abruptly when Thomas discovered alcohol.
Velma became upset when Thomas started attending Jaycee meetings and having a beer or two with the guys afterward. Her anxiety was not misplaced, for Thomas took very little time to become a full-time drunk. He died after a fire which she later admitted setting.
With her addictions gaining ground, her employment as a live-in caregiver was probably the worst she could have had. Unwell, needy, she was saddled with the needs of aged and ill people.
This was hard and depressing work, worse for a depressive. Unstable, she now endured an extra dimension of instability, a nervous existence at the mercy of employers whose satisfaction was the only thing between her and the street.
When Velma's overdoses and lapses did not elicit dissatisfaction, her habit of getting hold of their checkbooks and writing herself checks without their consent did. Not wanting to be fired, not feeling free to quit these jobs, usually having nowhere of her own to go, Velma resorted to arsenic.
Arsenic was the instrument of the end for her second husband, Jennings Barfield, when he was about to divorce her, and for Stuart Taylor, the last person she dated. She dosed her mother to keep her from discovering a check she'd written on her. As methods go, hers was desperate, unclever and clearly marked: Velma needing drugs, Velma needing money for them, Velma doing what was expedient to get it. Then discovery and endangerment and their fallout in the form of death after nasty death by "gastroenteritis."
What kind of tragedy was hers? A tragedy of ignorance, Bledsoe clarifies: the pharmaceutical industry's naivete about addiction and idiosyncratic reactions. A tragedy of class, of a poor woman's indenture to slightly-better-off members of the rural bourgeoisie.
A tragedy of thwarting: a nervous, fragile soul blundering through a world of bad luck; a woman who just wanted a nice house and nice husband, not an outrageous demand to make on life, and lost the things she wanted. A tragedy of capacity: We do not come into the world with equal resilience, and some of us are quicker than others to proceed to desperate remedies.
And perhaps a tragedy of individual temperament. Bledsoe's very keen and full account of Barfield's trials demonstrates that any murder can be seen as a crime of passion by someone who, however mistakenly or momentarily, believed that there was no alternative. Velma Barfield was someone who came to that point rather early and rather often, and had a body count to show for it. Arsenic poisoning, too, is a murder method of such cruelty and built-in premeditation that it is hard to find the execution of an arsenic poisoner unconscionable.
Yet Bledsoe's description of the pink pajamas this woman wore to her death is affecting. I remember how the mental image of those pajamas, described in the news after the execution in a violation of the last privacies, troubled me in dreams long after the demonstrators retired and the nation's eye turned elsewhere: an effective emblem of the woman's common humanity, her reasonable desire for a comfortable life.
Bledsoe's treatment of Velma Barfield's history and family are focused and intensive. Since the Barfield poisonings hit the news and well through the trials, I had wondered what went on in the bosom of that family. Bledsoe makes that clear: much worthy striving, much that was not ideal.
Read this book, and you will meet the whole clan and respect some of them. Though depicted with great particularity, they are all EverySoutherner, whom many of us also are or know very well: hard-bitten, hard-working, a full range of courtesies and brutalities ready for use as needed. Bledsoe also makes it clear that Barfield's fall did not go unregarded. Her son, Ronnie Burke, had been conscious of her problems from early adolescence. He and his sister Pam watched their mother with anguished concern, with continuous attempts to intervene.
The fact that the interventions did not succeed does not diminish their efforts. The teenaged Pam advising Jennings Barfield not to marry Velma, the teenaged Ronnie visiting Velma's doctors to urge them to stop prescribing - both are important parts of this picture. This book may do what the true crime genre rarely attempts if it provides them with deserved validation and some measure of healing.
What in this book is least absorbing? Probably the energy spent on Velma's spiritual awakening in prison - almost predictable on the part of convicted murderers. One who vocally maintained his or her atheism... now, would be interesting. What would have been a worthwhile addition?
A little diversion into arsenic poisoning as a topic unto itself - its striking popularity as a murder method in North Carolina, its incidence as a female crime and its frequency as a crime against kin or lovers.
And much could have been made of the remarkable similarities between Barfield and her fellow Tarheel and arsenic poisoner Blanche Taylor Moore. Moore, a sharper and tougher customer in many respects, had no drug involvement but did to death a father, a mother-in-law, a lover and two husbands: all people connected with intimacy and dependency and, apparently, resentment of no minor caliber. Someday Bledsoe might find that particular thorny outback of Love & Death worth exploring as well.

North Carolina Department of Correction News
November 1998
Death Sentence, the new book from best-selling true crime novelist and former Greensboro News and Record reporter Jerry Bledsoe, recounts the life of Velma Barfield who was executed in North Carolina in 1984.
Death Sentence begins by introducing District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt, already famous for his death penalty prosecutions, and Ronnie Burke, Barfield’s son who receives two phone calls.
In the first, Burke learns his mother has been arrested in the death of her fiancé, Stuart Taylor. Hours later he receives the news that she has confessed to the murders of Taylor, her own mother and two elderly people she nursed.
After this introduction, Bledsoe retraces Barfield's life, turning to her childhood in Robeson County where she suffered at the hands of an abusive father and resented her mother who did not stop the beatings. She escaped the brutality by marrying Thomas Burke. Their marriage produced two children and much happiness until Barfield had a hysterectomy and developed back pain – events that resulted in behavior changes and drug addiction.
The marriage soured as her husband began to drink and Barfield began to complain. Complaining turned into bitter arguments. Then in April 1965, Barfield and the children left the house where Thomas had passed out drunk and later returned to find Thomas dead and their home burned.
From this initial suspicious death, Bledsoe traces the series of deaths that followed Barfield, the pain suffered by the families of the victims and the suffering of her own children.
The story then turns from Barfield to District Attorney Britt. The trial unfolds with Britt piecing together the case against Barfield for the murder of Taylor and presenting evidence that she killed her mother, her second husband Jennings Barfield, John Henry Lee and Dollie Edwards. The trial concludes with a dramatic cross-examination by Britt of Barfield that helps seal her fate.
While the first half of the book paints a picture of Barfield the killer, the second half tells a story of Barfield the victim. Barfield enters the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in chapter 17 and spends the next 16 months becoming drug free and undergoing an alleged religious conversion.
As the book traces the defense attorneys’ efforts to halt the execution, it describes the suffering of Ronnie Burke. It also recounts the suffering of the victims’ families as they read news accounts arguing against Barfield’s execution.
In the closing chapters, Bledsoe helps people see the complexity of concerns correction staff confront in carrying out an execution. The book mentions a number of correction employees including Nathan Rice (now retired), Jenny Lancaster, Skip Pike, Carol Oliver and Patty McQuillan.
The book presents two very different views of Barfield, with the first half of the book portraying the prosecution of the case and the second half describing the appeals by her attorneys. It also documents the complexities of the execution process and the impact it can have on those who are a part of it.

Celebrating Our Judgment
By Fylvia Fowler Kline
Seventh Day Adventist Church
In 1978 Velma Barfield was arrested for murdering four people, including her mother and fiance. She was on death row, confined in a cell by herself. One night a prison guard tuned into a 24-hour Christian radio station.
Down the gray hall, desperate and alone in her cell, Velma listened to the gospel message and accepted Jesus as her Saviour. The outside world began to hear about Velma Barfield and how she had changed.
During the six years she was on death row she ministered to many of her cellmates. Many were touched by the sadness of her story and the sincerity of her love for Christ as well as the beauty of her Christian witness in that prison. Just before her execution, Velma wrote “I know the Lord will give me dying grace, just as He gave me saving grace, and has given me living grace.”
Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” On earth Velma Barfield paid the price for her crimes. The hideous nature of sin is that while we can be forgiven them and freed from them, we, like Velma Barfield, must still face the consequences of our sins. At least until Christ returns, sin is here to stay.
Sin cannot be eradicated. And for being born into this world, each of us has a price to pay. This does not mean that we receive a death sentence the moment we are born. Although we cannot avoid the consequences of our sins, in Jesus we can overcome them. At the judgment hall, Jesus’ blood washes away our sins and clothes us in His righteousness. [Fylvia Fowler Kline is assistant director of the Stewardship Department for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists]

Unsolved Mysteries
Female Serial Killers - True Crimes
Margie Velma Barfield (1969-1978) a 53-year old grandmother, killed 7 husbands, fiances, and her own mother in Lumberton, North Carolina. She burned some victims to death while they slept (made to look like smoking in bed), arranged prescription drug overdoses for others, and resorted to arsenic made to look like gastroenteritis for others. She was executed by lethal injection in 1984, the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1976.

Death Penalty News
For clues about how the coming weeks might play in Texas, rewind to North Carolina, 1984. It was there that "Death Row Granny" Margie Velma Barfield, a born-again Christian who was posthumously praised by Billy Graham for her impact on other prisoners, became the 1st woman to be put to death in the modern era of the capital punishment. The portly, bespectacled 52-year-old private nurse and former Sunday school teacher was convicted of lacing her boyfriend's food with rat poison. She later admitted to poisoning 3 others, including her mother.
Her case also became a last-minute political issue in a tough U.S. Senate election in which liberal Democrat Gov. Jim Hunt challenged Republican incumbent Sen. Jesse Helms. Political analysts said Hunt was doomed to be hurt politically regardless of what he did. Had he commuted Barfield's sentence, he risked alienating his conservative pro-death penalty constituency.
Some analysts said at the time that his refusal to show compassion toward the woman may have persuaded liberal, anti-death penalty voters to stay away from the polls. Joe Freeman Britt, the former prosecutor who sent Barfield to death row, remembers the pressure that mounted in North Carolina. "There were all these Velma Barfield support groups that grew up all around the nation, all over North Carolina, European countries -- England, France, Finland," Britt recalled. "Everybody involved in the case got tons of letters every day about it from all over the world. That then generated a certain political pressure in the case."
But unlike Tucker's jailhouse conversion, Britt said, Barfield had always professed to being a God-fearing, church-going woman. He said Barfield bolstered her image as a devout Christian by asking her employers -- the families who hired her to care for ailing, elderly relatives whom she later poisoned -- for Wednesday nights and Sundays off so she could go to church.
Once imprisoned she, too, began leading Bible studies and counseling troubled female felons. She also uttered a deathbed apology.
The image the media portrayed most often was that of a grandmother kneeling in prayer in prison, Britt added, and some of the victims' relatives had a difficult time believing she was capable of the crimes. Britt, however, said he was unfazed by arguments that Barfield should not be executed because of her Christianity -- a claim of which he was skeptical. "I probably brought more people to the Lord than Billy Graham," he said of his work as a prosecutor. "I mean when they go to prison, they all find the Lord...I hope it's true. I hope they do that. And if (Tucker has) had this experience, that's wonderful. It prepares her better for the judgment under the law."
Although death penalty opponents had predicted a public outrage if North Carolina proceeded with the execution of Barfield, Britt said that never materialized. "I think the biggest flap came from other parts of the country and particularly overseas...," he said.

Margie Velma Barfield
Born 23/10/1932, en Cumberland County, North Carolina, Margie Bullard would look back on her childhood as a cruel period of "permissible slavery," made worse by the attentions of a father who began molesting her at age thirteen.
The stories are refuted categorically by seven siblings, who deny all charges of abuse in any form, by either parent, and it must be granted that Margie's early development seemed normal for the given time and place. Dropping out of high school in her junior year, she eloped with Thomas Burke at seventeen, settling in Paxton, where she bore two children without incident.
The trouble started after fifteen years of marriage, when Burke's luck turned sour almost overnight. Discharged from his job and subsequently injured in a car crash, he began drinking heavily to drown his sorrows, the ever-present liquor an affront to Margie's fundamentalist religion.
Marriage became a sort of guerrilla warfare, with Margie hiding her husband's whiskey, sometimes pouring it down the sink, finally committing him to Dorothea Dix Hospital, in Raleigh, as an alcoholic. Working at a local mill to support the family, she relied on prescription tranquilizers for peace of mind.
Thomas came home from the hospital sober and sullen, bitter at his wife's "betrayal." In 1969, when he burned to death in bed, authorities dismissed the death as accidental, caused by careless smoking, but later, with the advantage of hindsight, there would be dark suspicions of foul play.
In 1971, Margie married Jennings Barfield. He lasted six months, his sudden death ascribed to "natural causes," but exhumation and autopsy in 1978 would reveal lethal doses of arsenic in his system.
By the time she murdered Barfield, Margie was already dependent on prescription drugs, carelessly mixing her pills, with the result that she was four times hospitalized for overdose symptoms. In contrast to her addiction, she maintained an active interest in religion, teaching Sunday school at the local Pentecostal church on a regular basis.
Short on cash, Margie was writing rubber checks to cover her "medical" expenses, and her several trips to court produced judicial wrist-slaps. In 1974, she forged her aged mother's name to a $1,000 loan application, panicking when she realized the bank might try to contact the real Lillie Bullard for verification. Margie eliminated the problem by feeding her mother a lethal dose of insecticide, and again the death was attributed to natural causes.
Two years later, Margie Barfield was employed by local matron Dollie Edwards as a live-in maid. A fringe benefit of the job was Dollie's nephew, Stuart Taylor, who began dating Margie on the side, but their romance did not stop Barfield from poisoning her employer in February 1977. Her motive remains unclear -- there were no thefts involved -- and physicians ascribed the sudden death to "acute gastroenteritis."
Margie next moved in with 80-year-old John Lee and his wife Record, age 76. After forging a $50 check on Lee's account, she sought to "make him sick" and thereby gain some time to cover the shortage, but her plans obviously went awry.
First poisoned in April 1977, John Lee lost 65 pounds before his eventual death, on June 4. After the funeral, Margie began feeding poison to Lee's widow, but she gave up her job in October 1977, leaving a frail survivor behind.
Moving on to a Lumberton rest home, Barfield was twice caught forging checks on Stuart Taylor's account. He forgave her each time, but they argued fiercely after her third offense, on January 31, 1978.
That night, Margie spiked his beer with poison, keeping up the dosage until Taylor died on February 4. Relatives rejected the diagnosis of "acute gastroenteritis" and demanded a full autopsy, resulting in the discovery of arsenic.
Under interrogation, Margie confessed the murders of Taylor, her mother and second husband, Dollie Edwards and John Lee. Aside from the motiveless Edwards slaying, they were all "accidents," bungled attempts to cover up for forgery and theft.
A jury deliberated for less than an hour before convicting Barfield of first-degree murder, and she was executed by lethal injection on November 2, 1984.

Margie Velma Barfield (1969-1978) a 53-year old grandmother, killed 7 husbands, fiances, and her own mother in Lumberton, North Carolina. She burned some victims to death while they slept (made to look like smoking in bed), arranged prescription drug overdoses for others, and resorted to arsenic made to look like gastroenteritis for others. She was executed by lethal injection in 1984, the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1976.

Death Sentence: The True Story of Velma Barfield's Life, Crimes, and Execution
By Jerry Bledsoe
SINOPSIS
On February 3, 1978, North Carolina farmer Stuart Taylor was rushed to the hospital. His forty-six-year-old fiancee, Velma Barfield, a devout Sunday school teacher, held vigil at his bedside. But prayers couldn't save him. An autopsy revealed that arsenic had killed him.
To those who knew her, Velma was a devoted mother and grandmother, a sweet and selfless caregiver. But her life was a fragile web of lies that unraveled with alarming speed, exposing a deeply disturbed woman addicted to prescription drugs, driven to bouts of suicidal despair. And murder.
Turned over to the police by her son, Velma stunned her family by admitting to having murdered four people over the course of ten years--including her own mother. But there were secrets she held back...secrets not known until now.
At her trial, facing "the world's deadliest prosecutor," Velma's angry defiance assured her the death sentence. But after freeing herself from drugs on death rown, she found redemption and a new reason to live. And her looming execution attracted the world's attention.
In this eye-opening account of a tragic American story, Jerry Bledsoe takes us from the peaceful beauty of rural North Carolina to the grim finality of the execution chamber, where last-minute appeals for clemency from influential allies went unheeded. On a foggy November night, with the eyes of the nation on her and the families of her victims awaiting justice, Velma calmly faced her own death from poison. But only after a shocking final confession to her son...

Barfield, Margie Velma
Born October 23, 1932, in Cumberland County, North Carolina, Margie Bullard would look back on her childhood as a cruel period of "permissible slavery," made worse by the attentions of a father who began molesting her at age thirteen.
The stories are refuted categorically by seven siblings, who deny all charges of abuse in any form, by either parent, and it must be granted that Margie's early development seemed normal for the given time and place. Dropping out of high school in her junior year, she eloped with Thomas Burke at seventeen, settling in Paxton, where she bore two children without incident.
The trouble started after fifteen years of marriage, when Burke's luck turned sour almost overnight. Discharged from his job and subsequently injured in a car crash, he began drinking heavily to drown his sorrows, the ever-present liquor an affront to Margie's fundamentalist religion. Marriage became a sort of guerrilla warfare, with Margie hiding her husband's whiskey, sometimes pouring it down the sink, finally committing him to Dorothea Dix Hospital, in Raleigh, as an alcoholic. Working at a local mill to support the family, she relied on prescription tranquilizers for peace of mind. Thomas came home from the hospital sober and sullen, bitter at his wife's "betrayal."
In 1969, when he burned to death in bed, authorities dismissed the death as accidental, caused by careless smoking, but later, with the advantage of hindsight, there would be dark suspicions of foul play.
In 1971, Margie married Jennings Barfield. He lasted six months, his sudden death ascribed to "natural causes," but exhumation and autopsy in 1978 would reveal lethal doses of arsenic in his system.
By the time she murdered Barfield, Margie was already dependent on prescription drugs, carelessly mixing her pills, with the result that she was four times hospitalized for overdose symptoms. In contrast to her addiction, she maintained an active interest in religion, teaching Sunday school at the local Pentecostal church on a regular basis. Short on cash, Margie was writing rubber checks to cover her "medical" expenses, and her several trips to court produced judicial wrist-slaps.
In 1974, she forged her aged mother's name to a $1,000 loan application, panicking when she realized the bank might try to contact the real Lillie Bullard for verification. Margie eliminated the problem by feeding her mother a lethal dose of insecticide, and again the death was attributed to natural causes.
Two years later, Margie Barfield was employed by local matron Dollie Edwards as a live-in maid. A fringe benefit of the job was Dollie's nephew, Stuart Taylor, who began dating Margie on the side, but their romance did not stop Barfield from poisoning her employer in February 1977. Her motive remains unclear -- there were no thefts involved -- and physicians ascribed the sudden death to "acute gastroenteritis." Margie next moved in with 80-year-old John Lee and his wife Record, age 76. After forging a $50 check on Lee's account, she sought to "make him sick" and thereby gain some time to cover the shortage, but her plans obviously went awry.
First poisoned in April 1977, John Lee lost 65 pounds before his eventual death, on June 4. After the funeral, Margie began feeding poison to Lee's widow, but she gave up her job in October 1977, leaving a frail survivor behind. Moving on to a Lumberton rest home, Barfield was twice caught forging checks on Stuart Taylor's account. He forgave her each time, but they argued fiercely after her third offense, on January 31, 1978. That night, Margie spiked his beer with poison, keeping up the dosage until Taylor died on February 4.
Relatives rejected the diagnosis of "acute gastroenteritis" and demanded a full autopsy, resulting in the discovery of arsenic. Under interrogation, Margie confessed the murders of Taylor, her mother and second husband, Dollie Edwards and John Lee. Aside from the motiveless Edwards slaying, they were all "accidents," bungled attempts to cover up for forgery and theft.
A jury deliberated for less than an hour before convicting Barfield of first-degree murder, and she was executed by lethal injection on November 2, 1984.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans

Velma Barfield
By Denise Noe
Stuart Taylor's Agony
Big, hulking, Stuart Taylor was happy as he drove his girlfriend, plump and bosomy 46-year-old Velma Barfield, to a revival meeting of the famous preacher Rex Humbard. Although Stuart was not extremely religious, he knew that his girlfriend was a devoutly pious Christian and she would love hearing the respected evangelist in person. Stuart was aware that there were contradictory aspects of Velma’s personality. She was living out of wedlock with him, a move that had shocked her children. She also had a criminal record for forgery, a fact that Taylor had discovered by accident and led him to decide he did not want to legally marry her. However, as Christians say, it’s a Fallen World and many people do not live up to their own ideals.
Both Stuart and Velma were crisply attired in their Sunday best as they settled into chairs at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The service had just begun when a wave of nausea rolled over Stuart. “I’m feeling sick,” he whispered to Velma. “Maybe it’s something I ate.”
As Humbard preached, Stuart began feeling worse. Fierce pains gripped his stomach. “I’ve got to go to the truck and lie down,” he told his sweetheart in a weak voice.
The 56-year-old farmer rushed out of the packed room and into the coolness of the evening air. He opened up his truck and lay down on a seat. The feelings inside him grew worse. He could hardly think as words were pushed out of his mind by sheer awful physical pain.
Still miserable with nausea when the meeting was finished and Velma got into the car with him, Stuart lay back and writhed in pain as she drove them home.
“Stop,” he said at one point, his skin clammy with sweat.
She pulled over to the side of the road. A pale and sweaty Stuart stumbled out of the vehicle and vomited on the dirt.
At home, he was in too much pain to sleep. In the wee hours of the morning, Velma phoned his pregnant daughter, Alice Storms, to tell her of her father’s disturbing condition. It was Alice’s husband, Bill, who answered the phone. Velma apologized for waking him up but said she thought it important that Stuart’s daughter know that he was frighteningly sick. Later, Alice phoned to ask Velma about Taylor’s illness. They both concurred that it was probably just the flu.
Still later, Velma visited one of her boyfriend’s best friends, a man named Sonny Johnson. “Stuart’s sick and he wants to see you,” an obviously distressed Velma told him.
Johnson rushed over to see his friends. He found an ashen-faced, weakened Stuart Taylor, lying in bed with a washbasin beside it to throw up in. “Could you take care of the pigs for me until I’m over the flu?” Stuart requested.
His friend assured him that he would.
Stuart’s condition got worse. His chest, stomach and arms were all racked by pain and he vomited incessantly. He felt like he was on fire from inside.
The next day, Velma drove her terribly sick lover to the hospital. While the doctors examined and tried to treat the man, she discussed what she knew of his medical history. She was not well-informed about it but she knew he was a heavy drinker.
After answering the physician’s questions, Velma called Alice. She in turn phoned her brother Billy who went to the hospital.
Together with Velma, he heard a doctor say his father’s dreadful condition was “gastritis.” The doctor prescribed medicine and told Velma she could take Stuart home that night, which she did.
Sonny Johnson again visited his friend at the latter’s large, white, steeple-topped farmhouse that afternoon. Stuart had finally improved. He still looked wan but was sitting up in bed, chatting and smoking. He asked Johnson to talk to him from the doorway because he didn’t want to transmit his flu.
The next day was a Friday. At around 8 p.m., Stuart had taken a drastic turn for the worse. Velma phoned John McPherson, a neighbor and friend. “Stuart needs an ambulance!” she told him in a voice that sounded full of fear. McPherson called an ambulance, then drove to the house himself.
He found Stuart Taylor looking terrible. The room had a nauseating odor because the sick man had suffered an attack of diarrhea in his bed. The arms and legs of the sweaty and chalk-faced man thrashed around and he made incoherent moaning noises. From time to time, he screamed. Velma had surrounded the bed with chairs, their backs to the bed, to prevent him from falling out of it.
The rescue squad worked quickly and efficiently to bundle him into the ambulance. Its siren wailed as it raced to the hospital. His concerned lover followed in Stuart’s truck.
Doctors rushed to his side but Taylor died an hour after arriving at the hospital.
In the waiting room were Stuart’s children, Alice and Billy, and the girlfriend who had nursed him through the illness, Velma Barfield. The doctor said he was puzzled by the man’s sudden death and suggested an autopsy.
Both Alice and Billy asked Velma what she thought. “If you don’t do it,” she said, “you’ll always wonder.”
Stuart Taylor’s adult kids told the physician to perform an autopsy.
"You've Gor to Stop Her!"
Velma Barfield and her adult son Ronnie Burke sat with Stuart’s grieving family at his funeral. Velma placed a comforting arm around Alice and said the words so commonly repeated under such circumstances by believers in an afterlife: “He’s in a far better place.”
As Ronnie left the service, he looked at another person there and observed, “You know, it’s the saddest thing but it seems like everybody my mother ever gets close to dies.” How could the good Lord allow this to happen to a faithful Christian like Velma Barfield?
Earlier that same Sunday, a phone call had awakened Lumberton Police Detective Benson Phillips. The caller was weeping and babbling. The detective could not easily make out her slurred, shrill words. He was able to gather from some of the sounds: “Murder! . . . I know who did it! . . . You’ve got to stop her! You’ve got to stop her!”
The sleepy police officer sighed. A crank call, he thought. Just what he needed to start the day. He had heard of no murder in the small town of Lumberton and he would have if one had been committed since he investigated all homicides.
However, he suggested she call him at the station before he hung up the phone.
When he got there, he found, as he expected to, no homicide reports. The nutty morning caller faded from his thoughts as he got on with his day’s work.
Then she phoned. According to Jerry Bledsoe’s Death Sentence, “This time she was calmer, more coherent. She still didn’t want to give details, but Phillips gradually coaxed them from her. She revealed that she was calling from South Carolina, but she couldn’t give her name. She didn’t want anybody to know that she had called. The man who had been murdered, she said, was the boyfriend of Velma Barfield, who had killed him just as she had killed her own mother. The caller admitted that she could offer no proof, but she was sure, too, that Velma’s boyfriend and mother weren’t the only ones. Too many other people close to Velma had died, she said, including two elderly people Velma had worked for, but she didn’t know their names. When Phillips pressed for evidence, she could offer none.
How did she know about all of this? Phillips asked.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘Velma is my sister.’”
****
Phillips was utterly baffled by this strange caller. He did not trust her but then again, he could not quite dismiss her out of hand. He had to do some checking to make sure. He called the Lumberton hospital and inquired if anyone had died over the weekend.
Yes, he was told, Stuart Taylor. It seemed to be a death by natural causes. Was an autopsy being performed? Phillips asked. Regional medical examiner Dr. Bob Andrews had performed an autopsy but did not yet have all the results back.
Phillips was intrigued and disturbed but also in an awkward position. As Bledsoe, wrote, “He had discovered that Taylor had been brought to the hospital from the countryside near St. Paul’s. That would put any investigation under the jurisdiction of the sheriff. He had no responsibility. Still, he made a note to call his old friend Wilbur Lovett at the sheriff’s department on Monday to tell him about it.”
In the meantime, Dr. Andrews, who knew nothing of the detective’s suspicions or those nagging doubts that Phillips related to Sheriff Lovett, was puzzling over the results of his autopsy. Stuart Taylor had seemingly died of gastroenteritis. It was odd for a man as healthy as Taylor to be killed by that alone and Dr. Andrews determined to look further. Finding an inexplicable abnormality in some liver tissue, he put some of Taylor’s tissue samples into plastic bags. Then he mailed it to North Carolina’s chief medical examiner and asked for more tests.
Dr. Andrews was still waiting for the results of those tests when he spoke with a distraught Alice Storms. Her father had been so hale and hardy. What was it that had killed him? She had a right to know!
So Dr. Andrews phoned North Carolina’s chief medical examiner, Page Hudson. Hudson did not know about the tissues Andrews had sent for examination. However, he asked Andrews for details about the death. Andrews told him about the girlfriend, Velma Barfield, who had brought Stuart Taylor to the hospital and described Taylor’s symptoms.
Hudson instantly grasped the situation. “Where’d she get the arsenic, Bob?” he asked.
Serial Poisoner?
Soon authorities took a second look at the death certificates of the several people close to Velma Barfield who had died. Even when an autopsy had been performed, no special test had been done for poison. Rather, with stunning regularity, those she knew expired of “gastroenteritis.” The investigators were pretty certain they were dealing not only with a murderer but a serial murderer.
The police always do best if they can get a confession. What would be the best way to obtain one from Velma? They decided to surprise her. They would pick her up for questioning on one of the multitude of bad checks she had written, then confront her with Stuart Taylor’s death.
Since the checks had been written in Lumberton, Benson Phillips would question her. Sheriff Lovett and homicide investigator Al Parnell were present as well. They went over the checks. This was well-ploughed territory for Barfield and she appeared nonplussed.
Then Phillips began discussing her poor boyfriend, Stuart Taylor, who had so recently and tragically died. “Do you know he was killed by arsenic?” the detective asked.
The plump grandmother appeared stunned by this news.
Phillips pressed on, asking for details about their relationship. He was especially interested in knowing if Barfield had reason to be angry with Taylor.
“Y’all think I poisoned Stuart, don’t you?” she gasped in outrage. The two of them were in love, she maintained, and planning to wed. She had nothing to gain by killing him. It was dreadful for them to suggest such a thing. Why, she was the one who had nursed the poor man through his illness! She was the one who had rushed him to the hospital! Now they were trying to throw dirt on all her good work. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
“Would you take a lie detector test?” Lovett asked.
Certainly. She had nothing at all to hide.
They told her a polygraph examination would be arranged and that she was free to go. Just as she got up to exit, Parnell sprung on her, “Velma, you know, this can go all the way back to your mother.”
She glared at the investigator, made no remark, and left in a huff.
That Saturday morning, Ronnie Burke was visiting his in-laws when his mother, Velma Barfield, phoned their house and asked to speak to her son.
Ronnie Burke was a 26-year-old man with multiple responsibilities. He had a wife and a 3-year-old son. He worked full-time and went to college full-time at Pembroke State University where he sought a business administration degree. He would receive it in just a couple of months. Burke was often pressed for time and sleep but he wanted to become the first member of his family to earn a four-year college degree, partly because he knew how much that would please his mother. For quite awhile, Burke had been concerned for his mother. She had suffered far more than her share of grief through the deaths of so many people she cared about. He also knew that she was taking more drugs than the doctors had prescribed for her.
His mother sounded overwrought. The police had taken her to the station, she told him.
Oh no, he thought. She was back to writing bad checks to cover drug bills.
Then a shock went through him.
“They wanted to talk about Stuart,” Mom informed him. “They said he was poisoned. They seem to think I had something to do with it.”
Some cop had really goofed this time, Burke thought. Burke knew that Taylor had died five weeks previously. His Mom had been devastated. He did not know who might have poisoned the man but he knew it could not possibly be his mother.
He told his Mom that he would be going home soon and she should meet him there. This was a frightful mistake but Burke was certain it could be straightened out. The cops would learn they were barking up the wrong tree. He was anxious to comfort his mother and let her know things would work out as they should in the end.
Burke, his wife, and toddler dwelled in a modest duplex on the outskirts of Lumberton, North Carolina. When Velma arrived there, he comforted her just like he had intended to. He did not believe she would need a lawyer. Attorneys are terribly expensive, after all, and he and his mother were people of very limited means. The police would realize soon that she could not have had anything to do with Stuart’s death and just drop it. There was no need to worry, he assured her.
That Monday, Burke was at work when a woman phoned. She would not say who she was but told him, “I’m a friend of your mother’s.”
What did she want to tell him?
“I’ve heard she’s going to be arrested today,” she said. “I thought you ought to know.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, they’re going to charge her with Stuart’s death. . . . I know someone who works in the sheriff’s department.”
It did not seem possible that the police could go so wrong, Burke thought. Yet, Mom had told him that they suspected her. Could the cops be about to arrest an innocent woman for murder? That sort of thing happens in the movies but not in real life.
Burke told his supervisor he had to leave to attend to a family emergency. He drove to the Lumberton Police Department and talked to Wilbur Lovett. They were not planning to arrest her that day, the sheriff told him, but they did consider her a suspect. He could not disclose why and Burke left Lovett’s office even more outraged and upset than he had been when he walked in.
From there he drove to the home in which his mother was living. Velma Barfield resided with Mamie Warwick, a senior citizen who allowed Velma to live rent-free in exchange for her doing some household chores. Burke found his Mom taking a nap. She was in bed as he spoke to her, telling her that the cops still suspected her in Stuart Taylor’s death. Velma said she could not possibly do anything like that. Then she started sobbing. Finally, she stopped crying and told her son something he had never expected to hear. Her words were soft, almost a whisper, yet unmistakably clear.
“I only meant to make him sick,” she said.
With that, Burke felt like the floor had been cut out from under him.
So it had been an accident. But his mother had caused it. She would have to go to the police and explain.
Velma wept quietly as she sat in the passenger seat of her son’s car, being driven to the sheriff’s department. Burke could not be present while she was questioned. She said she did not want a lawyer.
Dejected but certain he had done the right thing, Burke phoned his sister to break the sad news to her. They agreed to meet at her home. In times of crisis, families need to be together and Velma’s sisters, Arlene and Faye, would eventually drive in to join their niece and nephew.
The phone rang and Burke spoke to investigator Al Parnell.
“It’s worse than we thought,” Parnell said.
Burke was dumbstruck, wondering how could it possibly be any worse?
“There are other people. . . . Other people she’s killed,” Parnell told a stunned Ronnie Burke. Parnell went on to relate that Velma Barfield had confessed to killing two people to whom she had been a paid, live-in caregiver and her own mother, Burke’s grandmother, Lillie Bullard.
When Burke repeated what he had been told to his sister and aunts, a pandemonium of tears and screaming broke out in the little house.
Burke recalled the loving mother who had fed and clothed him, bandaged his cuts and wiped his runny nose, been a conscientious grade mother for him and his sister, taken him to church and taught him right from wrong, disciplined him and encouraged him always to do his very best. That image was impossible to reconcile with the poisoner of four people.
Just what kind of person was Velma Barfield?
Daddy's Little Girl
On October 29, 1932, Margie Velma Bullard was born. Her parents, siblings, and friends would always call her Velma. She was the second child and first daughter of farmer Murphy Bullard and his homemaker wife, Lillie. They would have nine children all together.
When Velma was born, the Bullards lived in an unpainted wooden house in rural South Carolina. The home had neither electricity nor running water. Unlike many farm families, they did not even have an outhouse. Rather, “the necessary” was taken care of with chamber pots and trips to the woods. Murphy’s parents lived in the home and so did his sister, Susan Ella, who was disabled because an arm and leg had been shriveled by polio.
As the Great Depression worsened, Murphy Bullard found it impossible to eke out a living from the sale of the cotton and tobacco he grew. He sought and found work as a logger in a sawmill owned by Clarence Bunch. Through Bunch, Murphy was able to move his family into a tiny house closer to town. Here his third child would be born.
Then Murphy got a job in a Fayetteville textile mill and moved his family back into his parents’ home. His father died shortly thereafter and his mother followed her husband to the graveyard in less than a year’s time.
The Bullard family was organized along traditional, patriarchal lines. Murphy Bullard was the undisputed king of whatever shabby castle his family occupied and Lillie was the submissive wife. He was an easily angered and hard-drinking man when he did not get his way and a strict, unbending disciplinarian with his many children. He did not spare the rod or, in this case, the strap and the Bullard youngsters often had smarting backsides.
One thing that especially galled him was a kid with a “smart mouth” and both his oldest child, his son Olive, and the daughter who had been born next, Velma, were known in the family for their tendency to give Dad back-talk. However, Olive believed that Velma did not get punished nearly as often or as severely as he did which led to a lot of conflict between the two youngsters. He was convinced that their father favored Velma. She was just as convinced that their mother favored Olive.
Velma disliked her mother’s submissive attitude toward their father. Decades later, she wrote in her memoirs, Woman on Death Row, “I seemed to accept Daddy’s high-tempered ways because I thought that’s the way men are. Mamas should love their children and stand up for them, and Mama never stood up for me, or for any of us.” Every time Velma got a beating from her dad, she was at least as upset with the passive Mom who saw and did nothing as she was with the aggressive dad who actually inflicted it.
Lillie Bullard believed she had to step carefully in her own household to deal with her husband’s temper. She herself was frequently in danger of being on the receiving end of Murphy’s fists because he was a hysterically jealous man. He was also himself flagrantly unfaithful which inevitably added to family tensions.
A 7-year-old Velma started school in the fall of 1939. At first, she loved it. A smart girl, she got good grades and teachers’ compliments. School also offered a respite from her crowded home life, her father’s strap, and her often-ill mother’s gripes and demands.
However, the child soon began having difficulty with her schoolmates. Velma did not wear the new, store-bought, pretty dresses that so many other girls did. Her shoes were sturdy and worn. Other children sometimes made fun of her garments and of the plain lunches of cornbread with a side of meat that she brought. Velma began sneaking out of the sight of the other kids to eat. Then she began pilfering coins from her father’s pants pockets to buy candies from a little store that was across the street from the school.
The child stole $80 from an elderly neighbor. Murphy Bullard laid the strap on long and hard, apparently curing her of the desire to steal at least during her childhood since there are no other reports of such youthful indiscretions.
As Velma grew, she was assigned more and more chores. She had to help out on the farm and care for her younger brothers and sisters. She resented the amount of work she had to do but did not openly rebel for fear of angering her stern dad. “I really never felt like my Mama or Daddy ever wanted me except for the work I did,” she would say later . “I always felt that they just really wanted me to be a slave.”
Not everything was bad in the youngster’s life, however. Her father could be loving with his kids and lead them in ventures that were lots of fun. Murphy Bullard often organized baseball games with his children and others. Velma was often the only girl in the game and enjoyed playing shortstop. She also liked swimming when her dad led the kids on excursions to a local pond.
Despite his harsh discipline, Velma was often happy to be a daddy’s girl. A 10-year-old Velma was walking through the business district of Fayetteville with her father. She admired a dress in a department store window. It was covered with pink flowers and had a wide ruffle at the hem. She told her dad how much she loved that dress and, to her very pleasant surprise, he marched straight in and bought it for her!
Sadly, later in her life, Velma may have become a daddy’s girl in the most negative possible way. She told a reporter from The Village Voice that her father had entered her bedroom and raped her. Prior to that, there had been confusing episodes when he felt her up and she was not sure if it was sexual or not.
Several of Velma’s brothers and sisters furiously disputed her claim that she was an incest victim. While her family had many of the traits characteristic of incestuous families such as a severe power imbalance between husband and wife and a father who drank heavily, it is not possible to say with certainty if her accusation was true or false. Velma certainly could lie and was a champion manipulator throughout much of her life. A claim of sexual abuse can be an easy way to play upon people’s sympathies.
In 1945, Murphy Bullard decided he was tired of working in the mill and wanted to go back to full-time farming. He bought more acres and, with that purchase, a small but far more modern home for his family. After only a year, he realized he could not support his large brood on what he could make from his crops. He returned to supplementing farm income with work in a mill.
Later, he got a job at a textile plant in the town of Red Springs and moved his family there. The house they moved into lacked the modern conveniences of the one they had lived in for the last couple of years.
Velma was now in high school. She no longer got the good grades she had achieved in elementary school. However, she found one activity that she enjoyed at Parkton Public School and that, surprisingly, was basketball. Although it was not standard in that era, Parkton had a girls’ team and Velma found the fast-moving sport a good way to work off energy. Then her mother insisted that Velma quit the team. Lillie had recently given birth to twins and needed her eldest daughter’s help with housework more than she ever had. Velma was terribly disappointed and saddened by her Mom’s demand.
Meanwhile, Velma and a high school boy named Thomas Burke had developed a mutual crush. A year older than she, Thomas was a thin-faced, jug-eared, dark-haired and lanky youth with a tender streak and a good sense of humor. The two found each other regularly at school to make friends and flirt.
No dating would be allowed until Velma was 16, her father told her when she expressed a wish to begin seeing Thomas outside of school. Then her 16th birthday rolled around but her father seemed to have changed his mind. He still did not want his daughter going out. After much pleading, Velma got Murphy to agree to her dating. He placed firm restrictions on her, saying she usually had to double date and always had to be home by 10 p.m. on the dot. Although she chafed under these restrictions, Velma went along with them. She did not have much choice if she was to avoid her father’s wrath.
Battling Over Booze
When she was 17, Thomas proposed marriage and Velma accepted. She had a tremendous row with her father, at the end of which Murphy Bullard broke down in tears. Velma had never seen her father, so steadfastly and traditionally masculine, cry before. But she still wanted to be with Thomas.
Both Thomas and Velma quit school shortly after marrying. Thomas Burke held different jobs, in a cotton mill, as a farm laborer, and then driving a delivery truck. Velma worked for a while in a drugstore but Thomas disliked having her work outside the home so she quit.
The newlywed Burkes were residing in a small Parkton home where Velma’s family had once lived when the young wife got pregnant in 1951. On December 15 of that year, she gave birth to Ronald Thomas. His sister, Kim,was born on September 3, 1953.
Velma Burke adored taking care of her babies. She was an indulgent and protective mother who frequently read to her youngsters and could not stand to be separated from them even for brief periods. She wanted both children to grow up to be ardent Christians and regularly took them to a Baptist church.
When her children started school, Velma Burke quickly became known as one of the most involved mothers. She was “grade mother” for the classes of both her youngsters and always available for class field trips and the like. She and her children joked that they had “automatic arms” because whenever a teacher asked the class if someone’s mother would be willing to assist with a project, their arms instantly shot into the air. Velma Burke could always be counted on. She often drove children in the classes her kids attended on field trips and the youngsters would fight to ride with her because she was so much fun.
Around this time, Velma got another paying job. Apparently Thomas did not object. The family needed some extra cash. She took the midnight to 8 a.m. shift at a textile plant. Thomas began a job as delivery driver for Pepsi-Cola. The family now had enough funds to move into a more comfortable house in Parkton. The Burkes enjoyed several good years.
In 1963, Velma began having medical problems and had to undergo a hysterectomy. They were not as distraught as some couples might have been because both Velma and Thomas agreed that the two children were all they wanted.
The surgery appeared to have a drastic, and negative, affect on Velma. She was alternately nervous or depressed and often snappish. She began worrying that the fact that she could no longer get pregnant made her seem less womanly and, therefore, less attractive to her husband. She started to have more physical problems and was especially troubled by lower back pain.
Thomas Burke decided to join the Jaycees. He went off to their weekly meetings while Velma sat at home with the kids. She began to resent his evening absences.
Even more, she resented his drinking. Velma was a firm teetotaler who agreed with her church that alcoholic beverages were the devil’s drinks. Thus, she was deeply upset when she found out that Thomas was regularly going out with his male friends for a few beers.
In 1965, Thomas had an accident as he was driving his three-year-old Ford Galaxy. As described in Death Sentence, “The car left the highway, hit a culvert, sailed into the air and landed on its wheels in the driveway of a house. Thomas’ head banged the steering wheel and he was knocked unconscious.”
He had a concussion and would ever after suffer severe headaches. He always maintained that he had not been drinking but had only been tired and had fallen asleep at the wheel. His wife would not buy it. She was certain he had been drunk and redoubled her nagging on the subject.
Thomas resented her noisy attempts to talk him into abstaining from booze. He drank no more than most of the guys he hung around with. Why was his wife trying to run his life?
Their battles over booze became an almost daily affair. Usually, Velma started them, upset because Thomas had liquor on his breath. A shouting, name-calling match would follow and the children were inevitably frightened and disturbed by their argumentative parents. Ronnie was especially concerned because he feared his dad would eventually settle the disputes the way so many other men did-- with his fists.
To his credit, however, Thomas never employed brute strength in his many and furious arguments with his wife.
Thomas was arrested for drunken driving in 1967. As a result he lost his driver’s license and, with it, his job at Pepsi-Cola. He was devastated. The shame and despair plunged him into a depression and he drank more than ever to dull a pain that was caused by his drinking. The Burke kids no longer invited friends over to their home because they did not want the other kids to hear their parents fight or see their dad wiped out from booze.
A mill hired Thomas and he was able to ride to work in a carpool (even if the word was not in common use at the time).
The household tension was taking a great toll on Velma. She was ever more worried and frantic and had been drastically losing weight. One day, Ronnie came home to find his mother lying on the kitchen floor in a dead faint.
He was able to help her back to consciousness but insisted on a trip to the hospital. Doctors there recommended she remain hospitalized for a week. She was given vitamins and sedatives before being released with a prescription for a mild tranquilizer, Librium.
When she got home, she eventually began taking more Librium than was prescribed. She also went to another physician and got a prescription for Valium. Velma Barfield had begun the avocation of “doctor shopping” that she would pursue up until her arrest for murder. It was a pattern of going to doctors and getting prescriptions without telling one doctor that she was seeing another. Thus, she took medicines that were not supposed to be taken in conjunction with each other.
Even as she constantly and loudly fretted about her husband’s alcohol use, Thomas and her teenaged kids worried about her use of prescription medicines. She was taking too much, sometimes leaving her as groggy as a drunkard.
One day in April, the Burke house caught on fire. The only person home was Thomas Burke. Both youngsters were at school. Velma said she had been at the laundromat when she came home to see the house in flames.
Thomas Burke died of smoke inhalation.
At the hospital, Velma collapsed when she was told of her husband’s death. Ronnie and her sister caught her before she could fall to the floor.
Jennings Barfield
A few months after this loss, Velma Burke experienced great joy and triumph through the achievement of her son. Ronnie was graduating from high school as salutatorian. His mother sat proudly among the spectators as he spoke at the commencement. He chose the subject nearest to his heart: his mother. In his speech, he paid tribute to her as the reason for all of the good qualities he possessed. Velma cried as she listened to his public praise. What a joy to be so appreciated by one’s grateful son and to have everyone know it.
However, the Burke family continued to have bad luck. There was another fire at their home. This time, no one was inside and no one was hurt. But the house was gutted. While they waited for the insurance to pay for the damage, the Burkes moved back in with Velma’s parents, Murphy and Lillie Bullard.
Soon after Thomas’ death, Velma began dating a widower named Jennings Barfield. Barfield was a man who had taken early retirement due to numerous health problems. He suffered from diabetes, emphysema, and heart disease. He had lost his wife close to the time Velma had lost her husband and the two were probably initially brought together by a mutual desire to comfort each other in grief. Then a romance grew and deepened and wedding bells were in the air.
They were married on August 23, 1970. It was a church wedding, something Velma felt she had missed out on in her youthful elopement to Thomas Burke. Velma moved into the small home in Fayetteville that her groom shared with his teenaged daughter, Nancy.
The newlyweds were soon having troubles, partly because of Velma’s penchant for overdoing it with prescription medications. Jennings found his wife in a semi-conscious state and took her to the hospital. The doctor on duty said she had overdosed. They separated, then reconciled when she promised to quit taking so many pills. She broke her word and went back to the emergency room with another overdose. Both Velma and Jennings confided to others that they believed the marriage had been a mistake. Divorce seemed in the offing with it just a question of who would leave first.
It never actually came to that, however.
Jennings Barfield died on March 21, 1971, apparently of the heart failure that had troubled him for years.
Widowed again, Velma did not appear to be coping well. She was despondent and listless, often medicating herself into oblivion and spending much of her time in bed. “After Jennings’s death,” she would recall, “I felt emptier and more depressed than ever. I kept going to my doctors. I had prescriptions from at least two, and usually three, doctors at a time. . . . No matter how many pills any one doctor prescribed, they never lasted until time for the next refill.”
She worked at Belk’s department store but her performance there was being badly affected by her mood swings and evident drug dependency. Her boss was a sympathetic man so, instead of firing her, he put her in the stockroom where she could not alienate customers with a snippy or brusque manner.
Adding to Velma’s despair was a separation from her son. The Vietnam War was raging and Ronnie felt it was only a matter of time before he was drafted so he decided to sign up. He had second thoughts after Jennings Barfield’s death and his mother begged him to attempt to persuade the military that he needed to be allowed to stay with his sick mom. He made a sincere effort in that direction. Doctors wrote to the Army telling of Velma Barfield’s precarious health and asking that Ronnie be permitted to honorably opt out of his contract. It did not work and he was ordered to report to Fort Jackson in South Carolina.
When it seemed like things could not get worse, they did. Velma’s house once again caught fire! Velma went into hysterics. She was simply inconsolable. Why did such things keep happening to her?
She and her daughter once again moved back in with Murphy and Lillie Bullard. It was just in time-- for Velma was fired from Belk’s. She had been coming in late and unable to perform her duties when she was there. Unemployment led Velma’s chronic depression to deepen. It got even blacker when she learned that Murphy Bullard had lung cancer. His death at 61 plunged her into a horrible grief. Life hardly seemed worth living. Her father was dead and her son could be sent to Vietnam and be killed.
It seemed that she would lose Ronnie even if he did not die because he told her he was planning to marry. She did not give her son and his prospective bride her blessing. Instead, she was crushed. She told her son, “I’ve always been the most important woman in your life and now you’re going to have her and you won’t even want me to come around at all!”
Ronnie tried to reassure her that his love for his future wife did not take away from his love for his mother. His earnest reassurance did nothing to ease her jealousy of the young woman who was to share his life. But neither did mom’s jealousy dissuade Ronnie from going ahead with the plans for his wedding.
In March 1972, Velma Barfield was arrested for forging a prescription. She pleaded guilty in April and got off with a suspended sentence and a fine. Then, finally, she got some genuinely welcome news: Ronnie was discharged from the Army!
Grandma and Dottie
Despite the bright spot of Ronnie’s return, Velma was still having a great deal of trouble. After her father’s death, she and her mother fell into a pattern of frequent quarreling. Velma claimed that Lillie was constantly ordering her about. The older woman expected to be waited on hand and foot and the grown-up Velma was not going to be treated like a slave by anyone. Lillie, for her part, was dismayed by Velma’s frequent use of pills and her tendency to sometimes simply pass out from taking too many.
Lillie got dreadfully sick during the summer of 1974. Her stomach was racked by painful cramps. She began throwing up uncontrollably and suffering a violent diarrhea. It got so bad that Velma drove her mother to the hospital. The doctors could not determine the cause of the sudden illness. However, Lillie was better after a few days and went home.
On August 23, a man Velma had been dating was killed in a traffic accident. (Velma was not present so this death, at least, was probably just a melancholy coincidence.) He had made Velma Barfield the beneficiary of his life insurance policy and she received a check for $5,000.
That Christmas appeared, as that holiday so often does, to be a time of sharing, forgiveness and reconciliation. Both Lillie and Velma enjoyed bustling about in the kitchen, making a big turkey dinner along with a variety of rich desserts for their big extended family. Everybody at Grandma Bullard’s house kidded around and laughed, then opened presents.
However, Lillie pulled one of her sons aside to talk to him about something odd that troubled her. She had gotten a letter from a finance company telling her that a loan was overdue on her car and it would be repossessed if she failed to promptly pay it. Lillie had not taken out any loan on the car and she owned it free and clear! Her son saw no problem. It was probably just one of those paperwork snafus, nothing to fret about.
A couple of days later, Lillie got terribly sick. She was nauseous, then vomiting. That was followed by an awful attack of diarrhea. Her insides felt like they were burning up. She told Velma that she had hideous pains in her belly and upper back. Her arms and legs flailed about her. She threw up again and threw up blood.
Velma phoned her brother Olive who immediately drove over. He was appalled to see their mother so sick and called an ambulance. The rescue squad allowed Velma to ride in the ambulance with her mother.
Lillie Bullard died two hours after arriving at the hospital.
Early in 1975, Velma was once again in hot water with the law. She had written another string of bad checks. She was convicted on seven counts of writing bad checks. The judge sent her to prison for six months. She was released after serving three.
Awhile after obtaining her freedom, Velma started to look for jobs as a caregiver for elderly, sick people. In 1976, she was living with and working for Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Montgomery was 94, bedridden and incontinent. He was a diabetic and had lost his vision to that disease as well as both legs that had been amputated. He could not feed himself. Eighty-four year-old Dollie was in somewhat better shape but she was a cancer survivor who had had a colostomy. At first, Velma seemed pleased to be able to move into their comfortable brick ranch house. She got along well with both Edwardses and found a church she liked attending, the First Pentecostal Church in Lumberton.
As time wore on, tensions surfaced between the caregiver and her employers. Dollie often thought Velma was falling down on the job and told her so in no uncertain terms. Velma complained that Dollie was a demanding nitpicker. Their quarrels got more frequent and more heated.
Montgomery died in January 1977. Velma stayed on to aid Dollie. The two continued to bicker.
It was February 26, a Saturday, when Dollie got sick. She told her visiting stepson, Preston Edwards, that she believed she must have the flu. Vomiting and diarrhea plagued her. He came to see her the next night and was horrified by how weak and pale she looked. She had to go to the hospital, he said. An obliging Velma Barfield called an ambulance. Dollie was treated by doctors in the emergency room and sent back home without having spent the night there. She took a turn for the worse the next day and was back in the hospital by Tuesday. She died that evening.
Now Velma had no livelihood. That did not last long. She was soon caring for another ailing and elderly couple, 80-year-old farmer John Henry Lee and his 76-year-old wife, Record. Record was the one needing special assistance for she had recently broken her leg and was hobbling around on crutches when she could manage to get around at all.
The position seemed quite suitable to Velma. The Lees lived in a brick house in a rural area on the outskirts of Lumberton. They were willing to let Velma have Sundays and Wednesdays evenings off so she could attend church services.
Problems started surfacing. Record Lee loved to gab and the incessant chitchat got on Velma’s nerves. She and her husband often argued and Velma disliked being present during their fights.
Then there was a check that puzzled Record. She knew she had not signed it. John Henry called the cops but the case stalled because no one could think of anyone who might have forged Record’s name.
On April 27, John Henry got sick. His stomach was upset and he developed diarrhea. His condition worsened and Velma called an ambulance. The medics rushed the sweaty, gray-faced man to the hospital. He gradually recovered and was released on May 2, after he had spent four days there. Doctors were mystified about the source of the sickness but thought it was probably a virus.
“Throughout May, John Henry continued to be sick,” according to Death Sentence. “For a few days he would be perfectly okay, then the vomiting, the diarrhea, the cramps, the cold sweats, would start again. His weight continued to drop drastically. His daughters were very grateful for the attentiveness that Velma showed him. She was so sweet to him, so caring. They felt themselves lucky that she was there.”
He took a turn for the worse and Velma called another ambulance for him. There was little the hospital could do for the dehydrated, terribly sick man. He died on June 4.
Some time after the funeral of John Henry Lee Velma Barfield moved into the home of Stuart Taylor. Before Taylor became ill at the Rex Humbard revival meeting, Velma had visited his daughter, Alice, and asked to see a picture of her father that she had taken as a joke. It was his “dead” picture. Stuart Taylor had stretched out on a couch, closed his eyes and folded his hands across his chest to simulate the image of a man in a coffin. Velma laughed along with Alice and Stuart when Alice brought the photograph to her.
Later, the memory of that shared laughter would cause Alice to shudder.
Velma's Trial
The prosecutor in Velma Barfield’s case was a large, blustery man named Joe Freeman Britt. He was an ardent advocate of capital punishment who had been called “the world’s deadliest prosecutor.” During one period of seventeen months, Britt had prosecuted thirteen first-degree murder trials and won convictions in all of them. That was a record and got him a mention in a Newsweek article.
Defending the accused serial poisoner was Bob Jacobson. He was a short, freckled lawyer and one of the few in Lumberton who would accept court-appointed cases. He had never previously tried a death penalty case.
Velma was being tried for one count of first-degree murder, that of Stuart Taylor. Her defense was that she did not mean to kill, only to render her victim ill while she attempted to cover up thefts by returning money she had pilfered from him. If true, she was guilty only of second-degree murder and the death sentence would not even be at issue.
Because the question of intent was so crucial, Britt argued that the jury was entitled to hear of other poisonings she had committed and their results. Jacobson argued that that would be prejudicial since she was only being tried for the death of Taylor.
The judge in the case was Henry McKinnon. He ruled that the evidence linking Velma to the deaths of John Henry Lee, Dottie Edwards, and her own mother, Lillie Bullard, be admitted.
First, the prosecutor put on both medical personnel and family who testified to the horror of Stuart Taylor’s death. Britt also brought out the fact that his life could have been saved had the antidote for arsenic poisoning British antilewisite, or BAL, been administered. However, to do that, the doctors would have had to have been informed that Taylor had been poisoned with arsenic -- and the one person who knew that, Velma Barfield, did not tell them.
Defense attorney Jacobson asked doctors about the effects of the various drugs Velma had been taking and their possible interactions with each other. Some of the physicians who testified about treating Stuart had also treated Velma and prescribed medications for her. Their testimony showed that she was on drugs that could have badly impaired her judgment and were addictive.
Jacobson put Velma on the stand in her own defense. He knew he was taking an enormous risk in doing so but felt he had to let her explain her own confused thinking to the jury. She did well on direct examination, saying that she had given her boyfriend poison to make him sick but not to kill him. She said she did not tell doctors what she had done because she feared being returned to prison. He also brought out her extensive use of various medications, her combining a wide variety of drugs, and her dependency on them. She admitted forging checks because she was addicted to drugs and could not pay for them out of her own limited resources.
In the opinion of Britt, Velma Barfield was a cold-blooded and cunning murderer who hid behind a sweet little old lady and pious Christian masks. He would tear those masks off and show the jury who she really was. When he cross-examined her, he began with no pretense of being amiable or friendly. In his stance, manner, and voice, he bristled with hostility.
She bristled right back and that was precisely what he wanted. At one point, she seemed to be trying to argue that she had not killed her victims. Rather, people coincidentally happened to die after she poisoned them! After all, the first autopsies all indicated natural deaths.
“What I would like, your Honor,” Velma began during this astonishing statement, “to say to the jury and all, these autopsies – let me say first of all, when a person dies . . . and they ask for an autopsy to be performed, is it not true that we have an autopsy performed to find out the reason of the death? . . . So I don’t believe it killed them really. That is exactly the way I feel about it.”
A stunned Britt asked, “Beg your pardon?”
“I don’t think it killed them.”
At another point, Velma seemed oddly arrogant and snippy.
“You made Mrs. Edwards sick with Singletary’s rat poison, did you not?”
“No, I thought it was roach and ant poison.”
“So you knew these compounds would certainly make people sick?”
“I knew it would make them sick,” the witness replied.
“You knew it would kill them, too, didn’t you?”
“No, I did not.”
The defense put on several medical witnesses to testify to Velma’s lengthy history of chronic and overlapping drug use. None of them could say that she had been rendered insane in the legal sense by drugs but they testified that her judgment could have been terribly clouded.
Right after the prosecutor gave his summation to the jury, Velma made a gesture of silent applause, repeatedly putting her hands together without actually clapping. Her attorney and family were crestfallen. Britt was elated. With that single, uncalled for sarcasm, he was certain that Velma Barfield had as good as signed her own death warrant.
The jury came back with a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. Then it found the “aggravating circumstances” to recommend the death penalty. Judge McKinnon fixed her punishment at death.
Death Row for One
Like most states, North Carolina had no “row” of women waiting to be executed. When she was sentenced, Velma Barfield was the only female in the state doomed by the law. She was housed in the Central Prison’s section for mental cases, especially assaultive inmates, and prisoners considered prone to escape.
Early in her prison stay, Velma went through drug withdrawal. She had been supplied with many of her accustomed medications during her trial. Her first days as a condemned prisoner were spent without them and she showed the classic symptoms of cold turkey: lack of appetite, insomnia, nausea, cold sweats, and splitting headaches. The doctor who treated her gave her anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications. Then gradually, over a period of over a year, she was weaned off of them.
To the extent possible, Velma made her cell into a home. She put up photographs of her children and grandchildren along with knick-knacks she crocheted and inspirational religious slogans. Velma did not usually smoke but she usually had a pack of Salem’s so that she could light one up while having a bowel movement on her cell toilet. Velma, whose victims had usually suffered a horrendous diarrhea before death, did not want to offend her guards with the odor of her own excrement.
****
Velma’s radio was usually tuned into a Christian program. Velma claimed that she had become a born-again Christian while in jail.
Although she had been a churchgoer and professed to love Jesus all her life, Velma said that she recognized that she had never been a true Christian. Her Christianity had been a matter of form and gesture. Then, while at her lowest ebb and awaiting trial for her life, she had finally, genuinely, opened her heart to Jesus and received forgiveness and salvation. She was listening to a sermon by J. K. Kinkle when the message of God’s love hit home for the first time. “All my life I was weighted down by my sins because I couldn’t do better,” she wrote in her autobiography. “It never occurred to me that Jesus really did pay the price, that Jesus alone bore the extreme punishment – death – for my sins, not just for my “good” neighbors. And, even more glorious, Jesus is willing to be my friend even now. I can talk to Him, and He will listen.”
Her conversion was greeted with skepticism by many, including the families of her victims. After all, she had spoken of Jesus and salvation when they knew her and when she was poisoning their loved ones. Her Christian faith had always been a fraud, they believed, and it continued to be one. It was just a ploy to try to save her life.
However, many people were favorably impressed by Velma’s claim to be, for the first time in her life, filled with the Holy Spirit. Tommy Fuquay, a Pentecostal Holiness minister, believed that she was a true Christian. “I don’t think I had ever seen anybody who had the repentant spirit she had,” he commented. “I could see her growing and her attitude changing. The faith in her just grew and grew each time I would see her.”
The famous evangelist Billy Graham and his wife Ruth would come to believe Velma Barfield was their sister in Christ. Ruth Graham kept in frequent touch with Velma by mail.
Velma found meaning in her limited life by helping other prisoners. She was dismayed to discover how many inmates were functionally illiterate. She often wrote letters for them.
Special rules applied to Velma because of the death sentence and included no contact with the other inmates. However, the prison authorities frequently broke this rule because they found that she could be a positive influence on other prisoners. Assistant superintendent for treatment and programs at the prison, Jennie Lancaster, put a 15-year-old named Beth into the cell next to Velma’s. Lancaster asked Velma to try to help the girl who had been convicted as an accessory to murder.
Velma put her hand through the bars of her own cell and toward the next one so that Beth could hold hands with her. Beth took Velma into her confidence, pouring out her fears, while Velma prayed aloud for her and tried to comfort. For the first time in her life, Velma was known by her first name and Beth was the first prisoner to call her Mama Margie. She would not be the last. Other inmates often came to Velma for advice and words of reassurance.
Letter writing for herself and others consumed much of Velma’s time. She wrote to her family and to supporters she had never met. She also kept up with her crocheting. Velma prayed and read the Bible on a daily basis. Her son and daughter visited and sometimes brought her grandchildren with them. Together with a pastor, she worked on her memoirs, Woman on Death Row.
"Gateway to Heaven"
Any death sentence is automatically appealed. In June 1990, the Supreme Court turned down her appeal because it found no unconstitutional element in the way North Carolina’s death penalty statutes read.
A new attorney was handling Velma’s case. He six foot tall, 200 pound, longhaired and thickly bearded 30-year-old Richard Burr. He was the lawyer for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee and dedicated to aiding prisoners under a death sentence. Velma was the first doomed prisoner he would defend. Two hundred other condemned would follow.
On September 17, the Supreme Court turned down another appeal filed by Burr on Velma Barfield’s behalf. Her best shot would be in North Carolina’s state courts, Burr concluded, but he had no license to practice in North Carolina.
Thus, a short and slender 36-year-old named Jimmie Little became her lawyer of record with Burr assisting him. Little had once been a public defender. He also had a reputation for being willing to stick his neck out. He had fought for his interpretation of free speech when he was a student at the University of North Carolina by opposing the ban on communist speakers at state campuses. As an Army officer during the Vietnam War, he had vocally opposed America’s being in that conflict.
Little went to the Bladen County Superior Court. He filed a motion asking for a hearing to determine whether or not his client was entitled to a new trial. There were several complaints behind this motion but the chief one was “ineffective assistance of counsel.” Thus, Velma was pitted against Bob Jacobson, her previous attorney. Little argued that Jacobson had failed in his duty to make appropriate motions and to put on helpful psychiatric witnesses.
The judge ruled against Velma and set another execution date. Her lawyers soon got a stay and filed more appeals. Over the next six years, several appeals were filed and turned down, several execution dates were set and avoided.
Both Ronnie and Kim continued to visit. As mother and son realized time was running out, Ronnie Burke brought up the painful subject of his father’s death in one of their conversations. He was palpably terrified of the answer but had to ask the question.
“Did you kill him?” Ronnie asked.
“I’m sure I probably did,” she sadly replied. Slowly, the story spilled out. Her memory was fuzzy but she believed that he had been drunk and asleep and she lay either a cigarette or a match at the foot of the bed, then shut the door.
She also admitted to the minister who helped her write Woman on Death Row, that she had murdered Jennings Barfield.
Once the appeals had been exhausted, Velma and her supporters had a thin ray of hope in the form of clemency from North Carolina’s governor. That governor was James Hunt who was running against famous incumbent Jesse Helms for the U.S. Senate. The governor refused Velma’s request for clemency saying her victims had been “literally tortured to death.” Hunt tersely denied that the senate race had played any part in his decision.
As she prepared for death, Velma was able to speak over the phone with Billy Graham. “Velma, in a way I envy you,” the famous pastor told her, “because you’re going to get to heaven before I do.”
Later she spoke to the Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, who comforted Velma by saying, “Don’t think of it as the execution chamber. Think of it as the gateway to heaven.”
As they do at all American executions, demonstrators both for and against capital punishment gathered outside the prison before Velma’s death. Opponents held lit candles and hummed Amazing Grace, Velma’s favorite hymn. A festive mood prevailed among the capital punishment supporters. They held signs saying, “Velma’s going to have a hell of a time” and “Bye-Bye Velma” and chanted “Die, bitch, die!”
In her cell, Velma took a final communion. They put on an adult diaper underneath the cotton pajamas in which she had chosen to die.
“Velma, it’s time,” she was told.
Velma requested and got permission to put a robe on. Then she checked her hair in the mirror and stepped into the hallway. She was taken to a “preparation room” and asked if she had any last words. She did. “I want to say that I am sorry for all the hurt that I have caused,” she began in a firm voice. “I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain – all the families connected – and I am sorry, and I want to thank everybody who has been supporting me all these six years. I want to thank my family for standing with me through all this and my attorneys and all the support to me, everybody, the people with the prison department. I appreciate everything – their kindness and everything that they have shown me during these six years.”
Then the condemned prisoner was escorted to her “gateway to heaven.” That gateway was a tiny, sterile room with a gurney in it. Velma got up on that gurney, then lay flat down on it. Needles connected to IV leads were inserted into her arms. She would receive something to make her sleep, then a poison to stop her heart.
There were two lines into Velma but three executioners. One of their thumbs would press upon a plunger that was connected to a dummy so no one would know for certain that he or she had taken a life.
“Velma,” she was told, “Please start counting backward from one hundred.”
Obediently, Velma began, “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight . . . “ Her voice slurred into silence and she started to snore. Her breathing got lighter and lighter with each breath. Then her skin turned an ashen gray. The monitor connected to her heart showed a flat line. At 2:15 a.m., on November 2, 1984, Velma Barfield, serial murderer and born again Christian, loving mother and killer of her children’s father and grandmother, was dead.
Bibliography
Barfield, Velma, Woman on Death Row, World Wide Publications, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1985.
Bledsoe, Jerry, Death Sentence, Penguin Putnam, New York, NY 1998.
Jones, Ann, Women Who Kill, Beacon Press, Boston, 1996.
Kelleher, Michael D. and Kelleher, C. L., Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, 1998.
Schoen, Elin, Village Voice, “Does This Woman Deserve to Die?” June 5, 1984.
CrimeLibrary.com

State v. Barfield, 259 S.E. 2d 510 (N.C. 1979)
Prior to January 1978, defendant and Stewart Taylor had been going together. On occasion, defendant stayed with Taylor at his home in St. Pauls, North Carolina. At the time of his *310 death, Taylor was fifty-six years old.
He had been in fairly good health until the evening of 31 January 1978, four days before his death. On that evening, defendant and Taylor went to Fayetteville to attend a gospel sing. While at the performance, Taylor became ill. The couple left and returned to St. Pauls. At approximately 2:30 the following morning, Taylor began vomiting and having diarrhea. He continued to be ill throughout the day.
On the next day defendant took Taylor to Southeastern General Hospital in Lumberton **519 where he was treated. At the time he was examined by an emergency room physician, Taylor was complaining of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, as well as general pain in his muscles, chest and abdomen.
His blood pressure was low. His pulse was weak and rapid. He was dehydrated and his skin was ashen in color. After receiving intravenous fluids and vitamins, as well as other treatment, Taylor was released from the hospital and defendant took him back to his home in St. Pauls where she fed him.
The next day, 3 February 1978, an ambulance was summoned to Taylor's home. The attendants found him to be in great pain. His blood pressure was very low, his breathing was rapid, and his skin was gray. During the trip to the hospital, Taylor was restless and moaning. While he was in the emergency room, he was given intravenous fluids.
A tracheotomy was performed but he died in the emergency room approximately one hour after he was brought in. One of the attending physicians, Dr. Richard Jordan, was "not satisfied" as to the precise cause of death. After talking with two of the attending physicians, members of Taylor's family requested that an autopsy be performed.
The autopsy was performed by Dr. Bob Andrews, a pathologist. During the course of the autopsy, toxicological screenings were performed on samples of Taylor's liver and blood.
Though the normal human body contains no arsenic in the blood or in liver tissue, Taylor's blood was found to have an arsenic level of .13 milligrams percent. His liver had an arsenic level of one milligram percent. These findings led Dr. Andrews to conclude that Taylor died from acute arsenic poisoning.
On 10 March 1978, Robeson County Deputy Sheriffs Wilbur Lovette and Al Parnell talked with defendant at the Sheriff's Department in Lumberton. After having been given her Miranda *311 warnings, defendant executed a written waiver indicating that she understood what her rights were and that she was willing to make a statement as well as answer questions without the presence of an attorney.
The conversation between defendant and the deputies related to a number of checks that had been forged on the account of Stewart Taylor. During the interview, the officers produced a check dated 31 January 1978 in the amount of $300.00.
Defendant stated that she had seen the check before; that she had cashed the check; and that while she had "filled out" the check it was signed by Taylor himself. While she talked with the officers, defendant produced two checks from her pocketbook which were dated 4 November 1977 and 23 November 1977.
Both checks were drawn on Taylor's checking account and were payable to her. They were in the amounts of $100.00 and $95.00, respectively.
The State introduced evidence obtained through handwriting analysis which tended to show that the three checks were not written by Stewart Taylor; and that the checks had been cashed by defendant at a branch of First Union National Bank in Lumberton.
During the interview with the deputies, defendant denied that she had forged any checks on Taylor's account. Defendant was asked by the officers if she knew the cause of Taylor's death.
Upon being told that the autopsy had indicated that arsenic poisoning was the cause of Taylor's death, defendant began crying, stating that "You all think I put poison in his food." She then proceeded to deny that she was in any way involved with Taylor's death. After making that denial, defendant was taken home. The investigation continued through the weekend.
On Monday, 13 March 1978, defendant returned to the sheriff's department accompanied by her son, Ronald Burke. After she was again advised of her constitutional rights, she executed another written waiver. She then made a lengthy statement in the presence of Deputies Lovette and Parnell.
In her statement, she admitted that before 1 January 1978 she had forged some checks on Taylor's account which he found out about when his bank statements came in the mail; that upon finding out about the forgeries, Taylor talked with her and **520 threatened to "turn her in" to the authorities; that she forged another check on Taylor's account on 31 January 1978; that the *312 forgery bothered her because Taylor would find out about it; that on that day, she and Taylor went to Lumberton because she had an appointment with her doctor; that after they left the doctor's office, they stopped at a drug store ostensibly for her to purchase some hair spray; that instead she purchased a bottle of Terro Ant Poison; that the next day, 1 February 1978, she put some of the poison in Taylor's tea at lunchtime; and that later that same day, she put more of the substance in Taylor's beer.
Defendant told the officers that she felt sure that what she had done was wrong but that she had not told anyone at the hospital about it on the two occasions that Taylor had been taken there for treatment.
She stated that she gave Taylor the poison because she was afraid that he would "turn her in" for forgery. She further stated that she used the money she got out of the 31 January check to pay bills for doctors and medicine.
She concluded by confessing that she had given poison to other persons besides Taylor and that they too had died. Deputy Lovette then advised defendant that there was a possibility that a number of bodies would be exhumed.
He asked her if arsenic would be found in the bodies. When she answered affirmatively, Deputy Lovette asked her in which bodies arsenic would be found.
Defendant admitted that while she lived and worked in the home of John Henry Lee as a housekeeper and nurse's aide in early 1977 she found a checkbook for an account in the joint names of Lee and his wife, Record; that she wrote a check on the account in the amount of $50.00; that Mr. and Mrs. Lee found out about the forgery and asked her about it; that she then purchased a bottle of poison, pausing to read the label which said "May be fatal if swallowed" and that she gave Mr. Lee poison three times once in his tea and twice in his coffee.
The state introduced other evidence which tended to show: On or about 28 April 1977 Mr. Lee, 80 years old, became ill. Until then he had been in good health and attended to numerous chores around his home. On 29 April 1977, he was taken to the hospital complaining of vomiting and diarrhea.
Though he was released from the hospital on 2 May 1977, he continued to be ill throughout the month of May, complaining of vomiting, diarrhea, and general pain through his body. On 3 June 1977, he was taken to the *313 hospital again where the attending physician, Dr. Alexander, observed that he was critically ill. Deep blue in color, his skin was cold and wet with perspiration. He was confused and unresponsive and his blood pressure was subnormal. On 4 June 1977 he died.
Though no autopsy was performed at the time of Mr. Lee's death, his body was exhumed pursuant to a court order on 18 March 1978 and taken to the office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill where an autopsy was performed.
Toxicological screenings revealed that the liver contained an arsenic level of 2.8 milligrams percent and the muscle tissue contained an arsenic level of 0.3 milligrams percent. Dr. Page Hudson, Chief Medical Examiner of the State of North Carolina, testified that in his opinion Mr. Lee's death was caused by arsenic poisoning.
Defendant admitted to the officers that she had poisoned Mrs. Dolly Taylor Edwards; that in early 1976 she moved into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery Edwards in Lumberton as a live-in helper; that Mr. Edwards died on 29 January 1977; that in late February 1977 she drove to St. Pauls where she purchased a bottle of poison; that she noticed on the bottle the words "Could be fatal if swallowed"; that returning home she put some of the poison in Mrs. Edwards coffee and cereal; and that shortly afterwards Mrs. Edwards became ill, suffering from nausea and general weakness in her body.
The state introduced evidence that Mrs. Edwards was taken to the hospital on 27 February 1977, was treated and released. Her condition did not improve and she was again taken to the hospital on 1 March 1977 **521 where she died later that evening. The attending physician, Dr. Henry Neill Lee, Jr., testified that Mrs. Edwards was dehydrated and suffered from nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting.
In her statement to the deputies, defendant said that she knew that the poison was responsible for the death of Mrs. Edwards; that after Mrs. Edwards died, she threw the bottle of poison into a field behind the Edwards residence; and that she did not know why she gave the poison to Mrs. Edwards.
Officer Lovette testified that during the course of his investigation he went to the field behind the Edwards home and *314 found an empty bottle of Singletary's Rat Poison which still bore the original label. He initialed the bottom of the bottle and kept it in his sole possession until the time of trial.
Though no autopsy was performed on the body of Mrs. Edwards at the time of her death, pursuant to a court order, her body was exhumed on 18 March 1978 and sent to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill where an autopsy was performed. During the autopsy, toxicological screenings were conducted on samples of Mrs. Edwards' liver tissue and muscle tissue. In the liver tissue, there was found an arsenic level of 0.4 milligrams percent.
In the muscle tissue, there was found an arsenic level of .08 milligrams percent. Dr. Page testified that in his opinion Mrs. Edwards' death was caused by arsenic poisoning.
Defendant further admitted in her statement to the deputies that she had poisoned her mother, Lillie McMillan Bullard; that during 1974 she lived with her mother in Parkton, N. C.; and that while she lived with her mother she forged her mother's name to a note in favor of the Commercial Credit Company of Lumberton. (Other testimony indicated that the note was in the amount of $1,048.00.)
She further told the deputies that she was afraid that her mother would find out about the note; that she bought a bottle of poison and the bottle bore the warning "Can be fatal if swallowed"; that one day at dinnertime she put some of the poison in some soup and a soft drink and gave both to her mother; that later in the evening on the same day she gave her mother a soft drink which contained a dose of the poison; that Mrs. Bullard began to vomit and have diarrhea; and that she was taken to Cape Fear Valley Hospital in Fayetteville on 30 December 1974 where she died shortly after her arrival.
The attending physician, Dr. Weldon Jordan, testified that Mrs. Bullard was restless and gasping for breath when she was brought into the hospital; that she was in shock; and that he was unable to discern any blood pressure.
Upon the death of Mrs. Bullard, an autopsy was performed with the permission of her family, including defendant. No toxicological screenings were conducted at that time. Pursuant to a court order the body of Mrs. Bullard was exhumed on 18 March 1978 and taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in *315 Chapel Hill.
Dr. William Frank Hamilton testified that he performed toxicological screenings upon samples of hair, muscle tissue and skin which had been taken from the body; that the hair sample revealed an arsenic concentration of .6 milligrams percent; that the muscle tissue had an arsenic level of .3 milligrams percent; that the skin sample had an arsenic level of .1 milligrams percent; and that in his opinion, Mrs. Bullard's death was caused by arsenic poisoning.
Although defendant did not admit any involvement in the death of her husband, Jennings L. Barfield, his body was exhumed pursuant to a court order on 31 May 1978. It was taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill where an autopsy was performed.
Toxicological screenings indicated that varying levels of arsenic were present in his body tissue. Dr. Neil A. Worden testified that he treated Mr. Barfield when he was brought to the emergency room of the Cape Fear Valley Hospital in Fayetteville on 22 March 1971.
At that time Mr. Barfield complained of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and aching throughout his body. Mr. Barfield had **522 been brought to the emergency room for the first time at about 11:00 p. m. on 21 March 1971. At that time he was treated and released.
However, he returned to the hospital at 5:00 the next morning at which time he was given intravenous fluids. By the time that Dr. Worden first saw him at about 8:00 a. m., Mr. Barfield was in shock; his blood pressure was low; his pulse was rapid; and his complexion was ashen. Dehydrated and gasping for air, Mr. Barfield appeared to Dr. Worden to be in great pain.
Dr. Hamilton testified that the cause of Mr. Barfield's death was arsenic poisoning. At the close of the state's evidence, defendant made a motion to dismiss. Upon the court's denial of the motion, she presented evidence which tended to show:
During the month of January 1978 defendant was under the care of five doctors none of whom knew she was under the care of the others. She had been seeing the doctors for some time and had obtained prescriptions for a number of drugs from them.
Among the drugs she was taking at that time were: Elavil, Sinequan, Tranxene, Tylenol III, and Valium. She had a history of drug abuse and had been admitted to the hospital at least four times for overdoses.





 

NightMare

My gift to you, a Nightmare of terror
this is the serial killer threads and i searhed for it and there was no other posing about albert....
Well, now don't I feel like an Ass!:oops: Albert Fish is only my favorite serial killer of all time! I was just reading about him and I guess it was some place else!! Sorry! I even commented on it, must have been on DR I guess! But the letter he sent to the mother of the young girl he killed. He had ran an ad in the paper looking for a young man to help with farm work but when he got to the victims house to talk to the brother, he liked the little girl so much that he decided to kill her instead of her older brother. He told the mother that he was going to his niece's birthday party and that the little girl was welcome to go. He took her to an abandend house and had her play out side while he prepared. He called her in to the house and when she entered the room he was in she saw that he was naked and she tried to get away but her caught her and she cried and kicked and screamed but he killed her quickly. He said, "I did not fuck her though I could have if I wanted to. She died a vergin." He then cut her up and took her, "to my rooms" and said, "It took me nine days to eat her entire body. Her sweet little ass was the best part."
I will look for the letter if you like. I am getting old and I guess I don't remember thing as well as I use to! They actually found him through the letter he sent. The only good thing about the letter, the little girls mother could not read or write so the older son read the letter but I don't think he ever told the mother what the letter said. I have some good info on this guy. Look into his history, he use to love the pain he caused! He loved to torture children and listen to their screams. I am currently wrting a book and this guy's life is what I based my killer on.
So again, sorry for the fuckupery, I won't be so quick to point my finger again!
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
ok additions added to thread
ADDITIONS
tumblr_lfevmaAE3O1qacl3yo1_500.jpg


tumblr_lwtpxgWujj1r151ov.png


StolenNov4.jpg


tumblr_mb6qabEHyM1qcjwkqo1_1280.jpg

— Albert Fish - Letter to the Budd family 6 years after the death of their daughter Grace Budd


tumblr_m9fq4rcwMl1r904o3o1_500.jpg

The Skull of Grace Budd was discovered buried with other pieces of her skeleton beside a wall behind the cottage.

tumblr_m6hp869DQo1rygukvo1_250.jpg

tumblr_m6hp869DQo1rygukvo2_250.jpg

tumblr_lz557sNOMl1r9cp0qo1_500.png

The house where Albert Fish killed Grace Budd…then and now.


tumblr_m472lkPihl1qmfv0mo1_250.jpg

Grace Budd
 

NightMare

My gift to you, a Nightmare of terror
Awesome job! Thanks for the pic's, I don't have pictures of the house or the origonal letter so that will make a nice collection for my files! Good thread, thanks for all your hard work!
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
Seung-Hui Cho
tumblr_m9fpegAKNy1rp2ik6.jpg

The Virginia Tech Massacre

Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Shooting rampage
Number of victims: 32
Date of murders: April 16, 2007
Date of birth: January 18, 1984
Victims profile: Ryan Clark (22) / Emily Hilscher (19) / Minal Panchal (26) / G. V. Loganathan (53) / Jarrett Lane (22) / Brian Bluhm (25) / Matthew Gwaltney (24) / Jeremy Herbstritt (27) / Partahi Lumbantoruan (34) / Daniel O'Neil (22) / Juan Ortiz (26) / Julia Pryde (23) / Waleed Shaalan (32) / Jamie Bishop (35) / Lauren McCain (20) / Michael Pohle Jr. (23) / Maxine Turner (22) / Nicole White (20) / Liviu Librescu (76) / Jocelyne Couture-Nowak (49) / Ross Alameddine (20) / Austin Cloyd (18) / Daniel Perez Cueva (21) / Caitlin Hammaren (19) / Rachael Hill (18) / Matthew La Porte (20) / Henry Lee (20) / Erin Peterson (18) / Mary Karen Read (19) / Reema Samaha (18) / Leslie Sherman (20) / Kevin Granata (45)
Method of murder: Shooting (a .22 caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol, and a 9 mm Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol)
Location: Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
Status: Committed suicide by shooting himself the same day


Seung-Hui Cho (January 18, 1984–April 16, 2007), also known as Cho Seung-Hui or Seung Cho was a mass murderer who shot and killed 32 people and wounded many more.

The shooting rampage, termed the "Virginia Tech massacre," took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University—commonly known as Virginia Tech—in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States.

He committed suicide after law enforcement officers breached the doors of the academic building in which he had killed 30 of his 32 victims and wounded many more, both faculty and students. Cho was a South Korean national with permanent resident status in the United States and was a senior English major at Virginia Tech.

Childhood and adolescence

In September 1992, Seung-Hui Cho immigrated to the United States at age 8 with both of his parents and his older sister, Sun-Kyung Cho. Cho's family lived in Detroit, Michigan before moving to Centreville, an unincorporated town located in western Fairfax County, Virginia about 25 miles (40 km) west of Washington, D.C. Cho was a permanent resident of the United States and a South Korean national whose permanent address was in Centreville.

Behavior as a young child

Cho's maternal great-aunt, Kim Yang-soon, described Cho as "cold" and a cause of family concern from as young as 8 years old. According to Kim—who met him only twice—Cho was extremely shy and "just wouldn't talk at all." He was otherwise considered "well-behaved," readily obeying verbal commands and cues. The aunt said she knew something was wrong after the family's departure for the United States because she heard frequent updates about Cho's older sister, but little news about Cho.

During a New Year's telephone call in 2006, Cho's mother told the elderly aunt that Cho might have autism, a developmental disability marked by profound social isolation and delayed speech acquisition. No autism diagnosis could be verified with Cho's parents, and no records or other evidence have surfaced to indicate such a diagnosis was made or relied upon by U.S. school authorities. Cho's relatives thought that he was mute or even mentally ill. According to Cho's uncle, Cho "didn’t say much and didn't mix with other children."

Behavior in elementary school

Cho studied at Poplar Tree Elementary School in Chantilly, an unincorporated section of Fairfax County. According to Kim Gyeong-won, Cho's friend in elementary school for three years (and currently a student of Seoul's Kyung Hee University), Cho finished the school's three-year program in one and a half years. Cho was noted for being good at mathematics and English, and teachers pointed to him as an example for other students.

Kim met Cho in fifth grade, attending the same classes and riding the school bus together. There were only three Korean students in the school. Back then, he said, nobody hated Cho and he "was recognised by friends as a boy of knowledge... a good dresser who was popular with the girls." Cho kept a distance from others because he chose to do so. Kim added that "I only have good memories about him."

Behavior in middle school and high school

Cho attended secondary schools in Fairfax County, including Stone Middle School in Centreville and Westfield High School in Chantilly.

In middle school and high school, Cho was teased and picked on for his shyness and unusual speech patterns. In English class at Westfield High School, he looked down and refused to speak when called upon, said Chris Davids, a high school classmate. After one teacher threatened to give him a failing grade for not participating, Cho began reading in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said. "The whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, ‘Go back to China.’"

Another classmate, Stephanie Roberts, stated that "There were just some people who were really cruel to him, and they would push him down and laugh at him. He didn't speak English really well, and they would really make fun of him." Cho was also teased as the "Trombone Kid" for is habit of walking to school alone with his trombone, other students recall crueller names and that most of the bullying was because he was so alone.

Christopher Chomchird and Carmen Blandon, former classmates of Cho, stated that they heard rumors of a "hit list" of other students Cho wanted to kill; Blandon stated that she saw the "list" as a joke at the time. Cho graduated from Westfield High School in 2003.

To address his problems, Cho's parents took him to church. But he was bullied in his youth group, especially by "the rich kids." In a interview with Newsweek magazine a pastor at Centreville Korean Presbyterian Church said that Cho was an intelligent student who understood the Bible but he was concerned over Cho’s difficulty speaking; until he saw the video Cho sent to NBC, he never saw him complete a sentence. The pastor also recalled that told Cho's mother that he speculated Cho was a little autistic and he asked her to take him to a hospital but she declined.

Demeanor at Virginia Tech

Cho was an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, majoring in English, although he had told others he was a business major. At the time of the attacks, he was living in Suite 2121 in Harper Hall, a dormitory just west of West Ambler Johnston Hall, with five roommates.

Relationship with professors

Professor/Professional Poet Nikki Giovanni, who taught Cho in a poetry class, stated that she had him removed from her class because she found his behavior menacing. She recalls being bothered by a "mean streak" and described Cho's writing as "intimidating." When informed of the massacre, she remarked, "I knew when it happened that that's probably who it was," and "I would have been shocked if it wasn't."

Giovanni insisted that Cho be removed from her class in 2005, about six weeks after the semester had started in September; Cho had intimidated female students by photographing their legs under their desks and by writing obscene, violent poetry. Giovanni said, "I was willing to resign before I would continue with him."

Giovanni wrote a letter to then-department head Lucinda Roy, who removed Cho from the class. Roy alerted student affairs, the dean's office, and the campus police, but each said there was nothing they could do if Cho had made no overt threats against himself or others.

Roy described Cho as "an intelligent man" but stated that he seemed to be an awkward and very lonely and insecure student who never took off his sunglasses, even indoors. She described his behavior as at times "arrogant" and "obnoxious". Roy says she tried several different ways to help him. Roy would not comment at length on Cho’s writings, saying only that in general they “seemed very angry.”

She said that he whispered, took 20 seconds to answer questions, and took cell phone pictures of her in class. After becoming concerned with his behavior and the themes in his writings, Roy started meeting with Cho to work with him one-on-one. She said she was concerned for her safety when she met with him. Roy told her assistant that if she uttered a name of a dead professor, a secret emergency code, the assistant was to call security. After notifying the legal authorities about his behavior, Roy urged Cho to seek counseling, but he never attended.

When Virginia Tech creative writing professor Lisa Norris who taught Cho in both Advanced Fiction Writing and Contemporary Fiction inquired about Cho from the school's associate dean for Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Mary Ann Lewis, she was not told that Cho was suffering from mental health issues, nor about police reports.

Norris wrote, "My guess is that either the information was not accessible to her or it was privileged and could not be released to me." Lewis told professor Norris to recommend that Cho seek counseling at the on-campus Cook Counseling Center, which she had already done.

Relationship with students

Fellow students described Cho as a "quiet" person who "would not respond if someone greeted him." Student Julie Poole recalled the first day of a literature class last year, when the students introduced themselves one by one: when it was Cho's turn, he did not speak. The professor, she said, looked at the sign-in sheet, and where everyone else had written their names, Cho had written a question mark. "We just really knew him as the question mark kid," Poole added.

According to a CNN interview with both his roommates, Andy Koch and John Eide, Cho demonstrated repetitive behavior such as listening repeatedly to Collective Soul's "Shine" and writing the lyrics "Teach me how to speak; Teach me how to share; Teach me where to go" on his dormitory room wall.

Andy described two unusual incidents, one in which Cho stood in the doorway of his room late at night taking photographs of him, the second in which he repeatedly placed harassing cell phone calls to Andy as "Cho's brother, Question Mark", a name Cho also used when introducing himself to girls with whom he was allegedly obsessed. Koch and Eide searched Cho's belongings and found a pocket knife; they did not find any items that they deemed seriously threatening.

In the fall of 2005, Cho told Koch and Eide that he had an imaginary girlfriend he called "Jelly", a supermodel that lived in outer space who called Cho by the name "Spanky". Due to Cho's troubling behaviours during 2005-06, Koch and Eide who had tried to befriend Cho, gradually stopped talking to him and told their friends, especially female classmates, not to visit their room.

Andy Koch and John Eide also stated that that Cho was involved in at least three stalking incidents, two of which resulted in verbal warnings by campus police. The first stalking incident occurred on Sunday November 27 2005.

According to Koch, after the incident Cho claimed that he had AIMed the girl online and found out where she lived. He then went to her dorm room to see if she was "cool", but only found "promiscuity" in her eyes. Eide added that when Cho visited the girl he said, "Hi, I'm Question Mark" to her, "which really freaked her out."

The girl called campus police; she complained that Cho sent her annoying messages and he had made an unannounced visit. Two uniformed members of campus police visited Cho’s dorm late Sunday evening and verbally warned him not to contact the girl again, no further contact was made.

The final stalking incident occurred on Tuesday December 13 2005. Cho frightened a friend of Koch by writing on her door board a line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene II, in which Romeo laments to Juliet:

My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself. . . . Had I it written, I would tear the word.

The young woman contacted the campus police and again Cho was verbally warned. No further contact was made. Later on Tuesday, Cho texted Koch saying, "I might as well kill myself now." Worried that Cho was suicidal, Koch contacted his father for advice and they both contacted campus authorities. The campus police returned to the dorm and escorted Cho to Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Radford, Va.

Psychiatric evaluation

According to Virginia law, "A magistrate has the authority to issue a detention order upon a finding that a person is mentally ill and in need of hospitalization or treatment." The magistrate also must find that the person is an imminent danger to himself or others.

On December 13, 2005, Cho was temporarily detained for a psychiatric assessment, as he was suspected to be mentally ill and a danger to himself or others by a Montgomery County, Virginia district court. Virginia Special Justice Paul Barnett certified in an order that Cho "[presented] an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness," and directed that as a "Court-ordered Out-Patient he follow all recommended treatments."

Following a psychiatric evaluation and medical exam which noted Cho's flat affect and depressed mood, he was ordered to undergo outpatient care and was released on December 14, 2005. Some reports state that Cho is believed to have been taking psychiatric medications for depression, but there is no record of this.

“Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was “involuntarily committed” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.””

Cho was not involuntarily committed and was still legally eligible to buy guns under Virginia law. A Virginia state official and other law experts have argued that under United States federal law, Justice Barnett's order meant that Cho had been "adjudicated as a mental defective" and was thus ineligible to purchase firearms under federal law.

In a New Year's call in 2006, Cho's parents told the elderly aunt that he might have autism, a developmental disability marked by profound social isolation and delayed speech acquisition. However, no autism diagnosis could be verified with Cho's parents, and no records or other evidence have surfaced to indicate such a diagnosis was ever made, let alone relied upon, by U.S. school authorities.

Virginia Tech massacre

Around 7:15 a.m. EDT (11:15 UTC), Cho allegedly killed two students, Emily J. Hilscher and Ryan C. "Stack" Clark, on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, a high-rise co-educational dormitory.

Police had not positively stated that Cho was the perpetrator of that shooting in addition to the later one, although forensic evidence confirmed that the same gun was used in both shooting incidents.

Within the next two and a half hours, Cho returned to his room to re-arm himself and mailed a package containing pictures, digital video files and documents to NBC News. At approximately 9:45 a.m. EDT (13:45 UTC), Cho then crossed the campus to Norris Hall, a classroom building on the campus where, in a span of nine minutes, Cho shot dozens of people, killing 30 of them.

As police breached area of the building where Cho attacked the faculty and students, Cho committed suicide in Norris 211 with a gunshot to his head. The police identified Cho by matching the fingerprints on the guns used in the shootings with immigration records. Cho's rampage occurred on April 16, 2007, just four days before the 8th anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

Preparation

Weapons

During February and March 2007, Cho began purchasing the weapons that he later used during the killings. On February 2, 2007, Cho purchased his first handgun, a .22 caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol, from TGSCOM Inc., a federally-licensed firearms dealer based in Green Bay, Wisconsin and the operator of the website through which Cho ordered the gun. TGSCOM Inc. shipped the Walther P22 to JND Pawnbrokers in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho completed the purchase transaction and picked up the handgun.

Cho bought a second handgun, a 9 mm Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol, on March 13, 2007 from Roanoke Firearms, a licensed gun dealer located in Roanoke, Virginia. Cho was able to pass both background checks and successfully complete both handgun purchases after he presented to the gun dealers his U.S. permanent residency card, his Virginia driver's permit to prove legal age and length of Virginia residence and a checkbook showing his Virginia address, in addition to waiting the required 30-day period between each gun purchase.

He was successful in completing both handgun purchases, even though he failed to disclose on the background questionnaire information about his mental health history leading to court-ordered outpatient treatment at a mental health facility.

On March 22, 2007, Cho purchased two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22 pistol through eBay from Elk Ridge Shooting Supplies in Idaho. Cho purchased additional ammunition magazines from the Wal-Mart and Dick's Sporting Goods stores. Based on a preliminary computer forensics examination of Cho's eBay purchase records, investigators suspect that Cho may have purchased an additional 10-round magazine on March 23, 2007 from another eBay seller who sold gun accessories.

Motive

During the investigation, the police found a note in Cho's room that in which he criticized "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans." In the note, Cho continued by saying that "you caused me to do this." Early reports also speculated that Cho was obsessed with fellow student Emily Hilscher and became enraged after his romantic overtures were rejected.

During the investigation, law enforcement officials could not find evidence that Cho knew Hilscher or the other students killed during the rampage. According to Heather Haugh, Hilscher's roommate, she also knew of no connection between Hilscher and Cho.

Aftermath

Investigation

Through ballistics examination, law enforcement investigators determined that Cho used the Glock 19 pistol during the attacks at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and at Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus.

Police investigators found that Cho fired 170 shots during the bloody killing spree, with evidence technicians finding at least 17 spent ammunition magazines at the scene. During the investigation, federal law enforcement investigators found that the serial numbers were filed off both the Walther P22 and the Glock 19 handguns used by Cho during the killing spree.

Investigators also learned that Cho practiced shooting during mid-March at a firing range in Roanoke, about 40 miles from the Virginia Tech campus. According to former FBI agent Brad Garrett, "This was no spur-of-the-moment crime. He's been thinking about this for several months prior to the shooting."

In the aftermath of the spree killing, Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine appointed a panel to investigate the campus shootings. Governor Kaine also invited former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to join the panel to review Cho’s mental health history and how police responded to the shootings. The panel plans to submit a report of its findings in approximately two to three months. To help investigate and analyze the emergency response surrounding the shootings at Virginia Tech, Governor Kaine also hired the same company that investigated the Columbine massacre.

Reaction of Cho's family

Cho's older sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, a 2004 graduate of Princeton University who works as a contractor for the United States Department of State, prepared a public statement on her family's behalf, publicly apologizing for her brother's actions and lending prayers to the victims and the families of the wounded and killed victims. "This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person," she said in the statement issued through a North Carolina attorney. "We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence." Cho's grandfather stated, "My grandson Seung-Hui was very shy. I can't believe he did such a thing."

Media package sent to NBC News

During the time period between the two shooting events on April 16, Cho visited a local post office near the Virginia Tech campus where he mailed a parcel to the New York headquarters of NBC News containing video clips, photographs and a manifesto explaining the reasons for his actions. The package was delayed in its delivery to NBC News because of an incorrect ZIP code in the address of the parcel.

Release of material

Upon receiving the package on April 18, 2007, NBC contacted authorities and made the controversial decision to publicize Cho's communications by releasing a small fraction of what it received.

After pictures and images from the videos were broadcasted in numerous news reports, students and faculty from Virginia Tech, along with relatives of victims of the campus shooting, expressed concerns that glorifying Cho's rampage could lead to copycat killings. The airing of the manifesto and its video images and pictures were especially upsetting to those persons affected by the shootings. Peter Read, the father of Mary Read, one of the students who was killed by Cho during the rampage, asked the media to stop airing Cho's manifesto.

Police officials, who reviewed the video, pictures and Cho's manifesto, concluded that the contents of the media package had marginal value in helping them learn and understand why Cho committed the killings.

Dr. Michael Wellner, who also reviewed the materials, believed that Cho's rantings offer little insight into the mental illness that may have triggered his rampage. Wellner stated that "These videos do not help us understand [Cho]. They distort him. He was meek. He was quiet. This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character."

During the April 24, 2007 edition of the Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC News President Steve Capus stated NBC decided to show two minutes of 25 minutes of video, seven of 43 photographs and 37 sentences of 23 pages of written material. He also stated that the content not shown included "over the top profanity" and "incredibly violent images." He expressed hope that the unreleased material is never made public.

Contents

In his manifesto, Cho mentioned the Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold with respect and denigrated former teachers John Mark Karr and Debra Lafave. In one of the videos, Cho said:

“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 fucked, I did it for them… When the time came, I did it. I had to.”

Pete Williams, a MSNBC justice correspondent, opined that Cho lacked logical governance, suggesting that Cho was under severe emotional distress. In the video, Cho also railed against materialism and hedonism while, in another video, he compared himself to Jesus Christ, explaining that his death will influence generations of people.

Media organizations, including Newsweek, Reuters and the Associated Press, even raised questions and speculated the similarity between a stance in one of Cho's videos, which showed him holding and raising a hammer, and a pose from promotional posters for the South Korean movie Oldboy, a revenge story about a businessman who was kidnapped away from his wife and infant daughter by an unknown assailant and imprisoned in a small room for 15 years.

Writings

Plays

In 2006, Cho wrote a short, profanity-laden one-act play entitled "Richard McBeef" in connection with a class assignment. The play was about John, a 13-year-old boy whose father reportedly died in a boating accident, and Richard McBeef, John's stepfather who was an ex-football player. When the stepfather touched John during an attempt at a father-to-son talk, the boy started claiming suddenly that his stepfather was molesting him.

John accused his stepfather Richard of murdering his father, and John repeatedly said he will kill Richard. John, Richard and Sue, John's mother, became involved in a major, irrational argument. Richard retreated to his car in search of solitude, but John, despite claiming repeatedly that Richard was abusing him, joined him in the car and began harassing his stepfather. The play ended with John trying to shove a cereal bar down his stepfather's throat and Richard, who had been passive who up until this point, reacting "out of sheer desecrated hurt and anger" and "swinging a deadly blow" at the boy.

In a second play, "Mr. Brownstone," written by Cho for another class assignment, three 17-year-olds (John, Jane and Joe) were in a casino while they discussed their deep hatred for Mr. Brownstone, their 45-year-old mathematics teacher. The three characters claimed that Mr. Brownstone mistreated them (using the phrase "ass-rape").

John won a multi-million-dollar jackpot from one of the slot machines and Mr. Brownstone, amid volleys of profanity, reported to casino officials that the three characters were underage and had picked up the winning ticket. Mr. Brownstone told the casino officials that he had won the jackpot and that the minors took it from him. "Mr. Brownstone" was also the name of a Guns N' Roses song about heroin, and one page from Cho's play consisted of lyrics from the song.

Reactions to writings

Edward Falco, a playwriting professor at Virginia Tech, has acknowledged that Cho wrote both plays in his class. The plays are less than 12 pages long and have several grammatical and typographical errors. Falco believed that Cho was drawn to writing because of his difficulty communicating orally. Falco said of the plays, "They're not good writing, but at least they are a form of communication."

Another professor who taught Cho characterized his work as "very adolescent" and "silly", with attempts at "slapstick comedy" and "elements of violence."

Classmates believed "the plays, were really morbid and grotesque." Former classmate Ian MacFarlane stated, "When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of." After reading "Richard McBeef," Stephen Davis, a senior in Cho's class, stated that he turned to his roommate and said, "This is the kind of guy who is going to walk into a classroom and start shooting people."

Novelist Stephen King examined Cho's plays and wrote an essay for Entertainment Weekly. The essay read, in part:

“For most creative people, the imagination serves as an excretory channel for violence: We visualize what we will never actually do (James Patterson, for instance, a nice man who has all too often worked the street that my old friend George used to work). Cho doesn't strike me as in the least creative, however. Dude was crazy. Dude was, in the memorable phrasing of Nikki Giovanni, just mean. Essentially there's no story here, except for a paranoid a--hole who went DEFCON-1. He may have been inspired by Columbine, but only because he was too dim to think up such a scenario on his own.

On the whole, I don't think you can pick these guys out based on their work, unless you look for violence unenlivened by any real talent.”

According to a CBS report, "Cho Seung-Hui's violent writing [and] loner status fit the Secret Service shooter profile." Violent writing was one of the most typical behavioral attributes of school shooters, according to a 2002 US Secret Service study. "The largest group of [school shooters] exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays or journal entries (37 percent)," the report concluded. Some also showed an interest in violent video games (12 percent), violent movies (27 percent) and violent books (24 percent).

Name

The different ways that the media had rendered Cho's name led to some confusion among the American public. The university and many news media organizations originally used Cho Seung-hui, the Korean ordering of the perpetrator's name, due to the fact that Cho held South Korean citizenship.

Normally, news organizations ask the subject and/or his or her family members about preferred naming orders. However because Cho was dead and his family was unavailable, Virginia Tech followed the advice of a state trooper of Korean origin working on the case and used the Korean naming order.

The Korean rendering became standard in English-speaking countries in the first few days following the massacre due in part to its usage by wire services Reuters and the Associated Press.

In response to the Korean ordering of Cho's name in press reports, some Korean-Americans asked news organizations to use Western order because they felt that the media tried to exaggerate Cho's "foreign-ness." The Asian American Journalists Association issued a press release asking media to avoid such "racial identifiers."

National Public Radio, ABC News, and The Los Angeles Times broke from the Reuters/AP standard and used the Western ordering of Cho's name, Seung-Hui Cho, because Cho was a resident of the United States since 1992 and several documents revealed Cho's name written in the Western order.

For example, Cho had written the Western ordering of his name on a speeding ticket and a mental health form. The ordering Seung-Hui Cho was also used in his school records, and Cho wrote his plays under the name "Seung Cho."

On April 20, 2007, Sun-Kyung Cho's written statements showed that Cho's family used the ordering Seung-Hui Cho. Media organizations which had previously used the Korean order have now generally changed their presentation of the perpetrator's name to the Western order in response to the family's statement.

Seung-Hui Cho (January 18, 1984 – April 16, 2007) was a senior-level undergraduate student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University who killed 32 people and wounded 17 others on April 16, 2007, in the shooting rampage which came to be known as the "Virginia Tech massacre." Cho later committed suicide after law enforcement officers breached the doors of the building where the majority of the shooting had taken place. Cho's body is buried in Fairfax, Virginia.

Born in South Korea, Cho arrived in the United States at the age of 8 with his family. He became a US permanent resident as a South Korean national.

In middle school, he was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder known as selective mutism, as well as major depressive disorder. After this diagnosis he began receiving treatment and continued to receive therapy and special education support until his junior year of high school. During Cho's last two years at Virginia Tech, several instances of his abnormal behavior, as well as plays and other writings he submitted containing references to violence, caused concern among teachers and classmates.

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine convened a panel consisting of various officials and experts to investigate and examine the response and handling of issues related to the shootings. The panel released its final report in August 2007, devoting more than 30 pages to detailing Cho's troubled history. In the report, the panel criticized the failure of the educators and mental health professionals who came into contact with Cho during his college years to notice his deteriorating condition and help him. The panel also criticized misinterpretations of privacy laws and gaps in Virginia's mental health system and gun laws. In addition, the panel faulted Virginia Tech administrators in particular for failing to take immediate action after the first shootings. Nevertheless, the report did acknowledge that Cho was still primarily responsible for not seeking assistance and for his murderous rampage.

Background

Cho and his family lived in a basement apartment in Seoul, South Korea. Cho's father was self-employed as a bookstore owner, but made minimum wages from the venture. Seeking better education and opportunities for his children, Cho's father emigrated to the United States in September 1992 with his wife and three children. Cho was eight years old at the time. The family first lived in Maryland, then moved to the Washington metropolitan area after learning that it had one of the largest Korean communities in the country, particularly in Northern Virginia. Cho's family settled in Centreville, an unincorporated community in western Fairfax County, Virginia about 25 miles (40 km) west of Washington, D.C. Cho's father and mother opened a dry-cleaning business in Centreville. After the family moved to Centreville, Cho and his family became permanent residents of the United States as South Korean nationals. His parents became members of a local Christian church, and Cho himself was raised as a member of the religion, although he "railed against his parents' strong Christian faith." According to one report, Cho Seung-hui had left a note in his dormitory which contains a rant referencing Christianity and denigrating "rich kids." He stated that "Thanks to you I died like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people." Cho's remains are buried in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Family concerns about Cho's behavior during childhood

A few members of Cho's family, those who remained in South Korea, had concerns about his behavior during his early childhood. Cho's relatives thought that he was selectively mute or mentally ill. According to Cho's uncle, Cho "didn’t say much and did not mix with other children." Cho's maternal great-aunt, Kim Yang-soon, described Cho as "cold" and a cause of family concern from as young as eight years old. According to Kim, who met him twice, Cho was extremely shy and "just would not talk at all." He was otherwise considered "well-behaved", readily obeying verbal commands and cues. The great-aunt said she knew something was wrong after the family's departure for the United States because she heard frequent updates about Cho's older sister but little news about Cho During an ABC News Nightline interview on August 30, 2007, Cho's grandfather reported his concerns about Cho's behavior during childhood. According to Cho's grandfather, Cho never looked up to him to make eye contact, never called him grandfather, and never moved to embrace him.

Behavior in school

Cho attended Poplar Tree Elementary School in Chantilly, an unincorporated, small community in Fairfax County. According to Kim Gyeong-won, who met Cho in the fifth grade and took classes with him, Cho finished the three-year program at Poplar Tree Elementary School in one and a half years. Cho was noted for being good at mathematics and English, and teachers pointed to him as an example for other students. At that time, according to Kim, nobody disliked Cho and he "was recognized by friends as a boy of knowledge;... a good dresser who was popular with the girls." Kim added that "I only have good memories about him." An acquaintance noted that "Every time he came home from school he would cry and throw tantrums saying he never wanted to return to school" when Cho first came to America in about the second grade.

Cho attended secondary schools in Fairfax County, including Ormond Stone Middle School in Centreville and Westfield High School in Chantilly, and by eighth grade had been diagnosed with selective mutism, a social anxiety disorder which inhibited him from speaking. Through high school, he was teased for his shyness and unusual speech patterns. Some classmates even offered their lunch money to Cho just to hear him talk. According to Chris Davids, a high school classmate in Cho's English class at Westfield High School, Cho looked down and refused to speak when called upon. Davids added that, after one teacher threatened to give Cho a failing grade for not participating in class, he began reading in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth. [...] The whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, 'Go back to China.'" Another classmate, Stephanie Roberts, stated that "there were just some people who were really cruel to him, and they would push him down and laugh at him. He didn't speak English really well, and they would really make fun of him." Cho was also teased as the "trombone kid" for his practice of walking to school alone with his trombone. Other students recall crueler names and that most of the bullying was because he was alone. Christopher Chomchird and Carmen Blandon, former classmates of Cho, stated that they heard rumors of a "hit list" of other students Cho wanted to kill. Blandon stated that she saw the "list" as a joke at the time. While several students recalled instances of Cho being teased and mocked at Westfield, most left him alone and later said they were not aware of his anger. Cho graduated from Westfield High School in 2003.

In 1999, during the spring of Cho's eighth grade year, the Columbine High School massacre made national news. Cho was transfixed by it. "I remember sitting in Spanish class with him, right next to him, and there being something written on his binder to the effect of, you know, ' 'F' you all, I hope you all burn in hell,' which I would assume meant us, the students," said Ben Baldwin, a classmate of Cho. Also, Cho wrote in a school assignment about wanting to "repeat Columbine". The school contacted Cho's sister, who reported the incident to their parents. Cho was sent to a psychiatrist.

Selective-mutism dignosis

Immediately after the incident, reports carried speculation by family members in Korea that Cho was autistic. However, no known record exists of Cho ever being diagnosed with autism, nor could an autism diagnosis be verified with Cho's parents. The Virginia Tech Review Panel report dismissed an autism diagnosis and experts later doubted the autism claim.

More than four months after the attack, the Wall Street Journal reported on August 20, 2007 that Cho had been diagnosed with selective mutism. The Virginia Tech Review Panel report, also released in August 2007, placed this diagnosis in the spring of Cho's eighth grade year, and his parents sought treatment for him through medication and therapy. In high school, Cho was placed in special education under the 'emotional disturbance' classification. He was excused from oral presentations and participation in class conversation and received 50 minutes a month of speech therapy. He continued receiving mental health therapy as well until his junior year, when Cho rejected further therapy.

To address his problems, Cho's parents also took him to church. According to a pastor at Centreville Korean Presbyterian Church, Cho was a smart student who understood the Bible, but he was concerned about Cho's difficulty in speaking to people. The pastor added that, until he saw the video that Cho sent to NBC News, he never heard him say a complete sentence. The pastor also recalled that he told Cho's mother that he speculated Cho was autistic and he asked her to take him to a hospital, but she declined.

Forbidden by federal law to disclose (without Cho's permission) any record of disability or treatment, Westfield officials disclosed none of Cho's speech and anxiety-related problems to Virginia Tech.

The lack of speech that resulted in the diagnosis of selective mutism could have been an early indication that Cho was developing schizophrenia. One symptom of schizophrenia is what is known as "poverty of speech," referring to a marked deficit in the amount of talking in which the person engages. In addition, Cho's manifesto provides evidence of both paranoid and grandiose delusions. Such symptoms are also associated with schizophrenia, and it has been argued that Cho was schizophrenic.

Demeanor at Virginia Tech

In his freshman year at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Cho enrolled as an undergraduate major in business information technology a program that included "a combination of computer science and management coursework offered by the Pamplin College of Business." The program was listed as No. 6 on the "list of majors with the highest median starting salary after graduation." By his senior year, Cho was majoring in English. Virginia Tech declined to divulge details about Cho's academic record and why he changed his major, citing privacy laws.

At the time of the attacks, Cho lived with five roommates in Suite 2121, a three-room dormitory at Harper Hall, located just west of West Ambler Johnston Hall on the Virginia Tech campus.

Relationsgip with professors

Professor and acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni, who taught Cho in a poetry class, stated that she had him removed from her class because she found his behavior "menacing." She recalled that Cho had a "mean streak" and described his writing as "intimidating." After Giovanni was informed of the massacre, she remarked that " knew when it happened that that's probably who it was," and "would have been shocked if it wasn't." Giovanni insisted that Cho be removed from her class in 2005, about six weeks after the semester began in September. Cho had intimidated female students by photographing their legs under their desks and by writing obscene, violent poetry. Giovanni offered that "[she] was willing to resign before [she] would continue with him." Because of her concerns about Cho, Giovanni wrote a letter to then-department head Lucinda Roy, who removed Cho from the class. Roy alerted the student affairs office, the dean's office, and the campus police, but each office responded that there was nothing they could do if Cho made no overt threats against himself or others.

Roy described Cho as "an intelligent man," and stated that he seemed to be an awkward, lonely and insecure student who never took off his sunglasses, even indoors. She described Cho's behavior as "arrogant" and "obnoxious" at times, and that she tried several different ways to help him. Roy declined to comment about Cho’s writings, saying only in general that the writings "seemed very angry". She added that Cho whispered his response after taking 20 seconds to answer questions, and he also took cell phone pictures of her in class. After Roy became concerned with Cho's behavior and the themes in his writings, she started meeting with Cho to work with him one-on-one. As Roy worked with Cho, she became concerned for her safety. She told her assistant that, if she uttered the name of a dead professor (which served as a duress code), the assistant was to call security. After Roy notified legal authorities about Cho's behavior, she urged Cho to seek counseling. Roy said that, to her knowledge, Cho never followed through with the request.

When Virginia Tech creative writing professor Lisa Norris, who taught Cho in both Advanced Fiction Writing and Contemporary Fiction, inquired about him from Mary Ann Lewis, associate dean for Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, she was not told that he was suffering from mental health problems or about prior police reports concerning the harassment of female students. Norris noted that, "my guess is that either the information was not accessible to her or it was privileged and could not be released to me." Lewis told Norris to recommend that Cho seek counseling at the on-campus Cook Counseling Center, which she had already done.

Relationship with students

Fellow students described Cho as a "quiet" person who "would not respond if someone greeted him." Student Julie Poole recalled the first day of a literature class the previous year when the students introduced themselves one by one. When it was Cho's turn to introduce himself, he did not speak. According to Poole, the professor looked at the sign-in sheet and found that, whereas everyone else had written out their names, Cho had written only a question mark. Poole added that "we just really knew him as the question mark kid".

Karan Grewal, who shared a suite with Cho at Harper Hall, reported that Cho "would sit in a wood rocker by the window [in his room at the dormitory]; and stare at the lawn below". According to Grewal, "Cho appeared to never to go [sic] to class or read a book during his (Cho's) senior year," adding that Cho just typed on his laptop, went to the dining hall and clipped his hair in the bathroom, cleaning up the hair afterwards. Grewal also reported that he witnessed Cho riding his bicycle in circles in the parking lot of the dormitory.

Andy Koch and John Eide, who once shared a room with Cho at Cochrane Hall during 2005 and 2006, stated that Cho demonstrated other repetitive behaviors, such as listening repeatedly to "Shine" by the alternative rock band Collective Soul. Cho wrote the song's lyrics "Teach me how to speak; Teach me how to share; Teach me where to go" on the wall of his dormitory room. Koch described two further unusual incidents, including one where Cho stood in the doorway of his room late at night taking photographs of him (Koch) and a second incident where Cho repeatedly placed harassing cell phone calls to Koch as "Cho's brother, 'Question Mark'", a name Cho also used when introducing himself to girls. Koch and Eide searched Cho's belongings and found a pocket knife, but they did not find any items that they deemed seriously threatening to them. Koch also described a telephone call that he received from Cho during the Thanksgiving holiday break from school. During that call, Koch said that Cho claimed to be "vacationing with Vladimir Putin", with Cho adding "Yeah, we're in North Carolina." In response, Koch told him "I'm pretty sure that's not possible, Seung." Because of Cho's behavior, Koch and Eide, who had earlier tried to befriend him, gradually stopped talking to him and told their friends, especially female classmates, not to visit their room.

Koch and Eide also stated that Cho was involved in at least three stalking incidents, two of which resulted in verbal warnings by the Virginia Tech campus police. The first stalking incident occurred on November 27, 2005. After the incident, according to Koch, Cho claimed to have sent an instant message online to the female student by AOL Instant Messenger and found out where she lived on the campus. Eide stated that Cho then visited her room to see if she was "cool", adding that Cho remarked that he only found "promiscuity in her eyes". Eide added that, when Cho visited the female student, Cho said, "Hi, I'm Question Mark" to her, "which really freaked her out." The female student called the campus police, complaining that Cho had sent her annoying messages and made an unannounced visit to her room. Two uniformed members of the campus police visited Cho’s room at the dormitory later that evening and warned him not to contact the female student again. Cho made no further contact with the student.

The final stalking incident came to light on December 13, 2005. In the preceding days, Cho had contacted a female friend of Koch via AIM and wrote on her door board a line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene II, in which Romeo laments to Juliet.

"By a name, I know not how to tell who I am. My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word".

The young woman was initially unconcerned by Cho's AIM messages and the Shakespearean graffiti he left on her door board, until she was contacted by Andy Koch via AIM. Koch told her that Cho was involved in an earlier stalking incident and that, "i think he is schophrenic" [sic]. Upon Koch's encouragement, the young woman contacted the campus police, who again warned Cho against further unwanted contact. After that warning, Cho made no further contact with the second female student.

Later the same day, Cho sent a text message to Koch with the words, "I might as well kill myself now." Worried that Cho was suicidal, Koch contacted his father for advice, and both of them contacted campus authorities. The campus police returned to the dormitory and escorted Cho to New River Valley Community Services Board, the Virginia mental health agency serving Blacksburg.

Psychiatric evaluation

Court-ordered psychiatric assessment

On December 13, 2005, Cho was found "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization" by New River Valley Community Services Board. The physician who examined Cho noted that he had a flat affect and depressed mood, even though Cho "denied suicidal thoughts and did not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder." Based on this mental health examination and because Cho was suspected of being "an imminent danger to himself or others", he was detained temporarily at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Radford, Virginia, pending a commitment hearing before the Montgomery County, Virginia district court.

Virginia Special Justice Paul Barnett certified in an order that Cho "presented an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness", but instead recommended treatment for Cho as an outpatient. On December 14, 2005, Cho was released from the mental health facility after Judge Barnett ordered Cho to undergo mental health treatment on an outpatient basis, with a directive for the "court-ordered [outpatient] to follow all recommended treatments." Since Cho underwent only a minimal psychiatric assessment, the true diagnosis for Cho's mental health status remains unknown.

Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was "involuntarily committed" or ruled mentally "incapacitated".

Because Cho was not involuntarily committed to a mental health facility as an inpatient, he was still legally eligible to buy guns under Virginia law. However, according to Virginia law, "A magistrate has the authority to issue a detention order upon a finding that a person is mentally ill and in need of hospitalization or treatment." The magistrate also must find that the person is an imminent danger to himself or others. Virginia officials and other law experts have argued that, under United States federal law, Barnett's order meant that Cho had been "adjudicated as a mental defective" and was thus ineligible to purchase firearms under federal law; and that the state of Virginia erred in not enforcing the requirements of the federal law.

Family efforts

The Virginia Tech Review Panel report shed light on numerous efforts by Cho's family to secure help for him as early as adolescence. However, when Cho reached 18 and left for college, the family lost its legal authority over him, and its influence on him waned. Cho's mother, increasingly concerned about his inattention to classwork, his classroom absences and his asocial behavior, sought help for him during summer 2006 from various churches in Northern Virginia. According to Dong Cheol Lee, minister of One Mind Presbyterian Church of Washington (located in Woodbridge) Cho's mother sought help from the church for Cho's problems. Lee added that "[Cho's] problem needed to be solved by spiritual power ... that's why she came to our church – because we were helping several people like him." Members of Lee's church even told Cho's mother that he was afflicted by "demonic power" and needed "deliverance". Before the church could meet with the family, however, Cho returned to school to start his senior year at Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech Massacre

Around 7:15 a.m. EDT (11:15 UTC) on April 16, 2007, Cho killed two students, Emily J. Hilscher and Ryan C. "Stack" Clark, on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, a high-rise co-educational dormitory. Investigators later determined that Cho's shoes matched a blood-stained print found in the hallway outside Hilscher's room. The shoes and bloody jeans were found in Cho's dormitory room where he had stashed them after the attack.

Within the next two and a half hours, Cho returned to his room to re-arm himself and mailed a package to NBC News that contained pictures, digital video files and documents. At approximately 9:45 a.m. EDT (13:45 UTC), Cho then crossed the campus to Norris Hall, a classroom building on the campus where, in a span of nine minutes, Cho shot dozens of people, killing 30 of them. As police breached the area of the building where Cho attacked the faculty and students, Cho committed suicide in Norris 211 with a gunshot to his temple. Cho's gunshot wounds destroyed his face, frustrating identification of his body for several hours. The police identified Cho by matching the fingerprints on the guns used in the shootings with immigration records. Before the shootings, Cho's only known connection to Norris Hall was as a student in the sociology class, which met in a classroom on the second floor of the building. Although police had not stated positively at the time of the initial investigation that Cho was the perpetrator of the Norris Hall shootings and the earlier one at West Ambler Johnston Hall, forensic evidence confirmed that the same gun was used in both shooting incidents.

Preparation

Weapons

During February and March 2007, Cho began purchasing the weapons that he later used during the killings. On February 9, 2007, Cho purchased his first handgun, a .22 caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol, from TGSCOM Inc., a federally-licensed firearms dealer based in Green Bay, Wisconsin and the operator of the website through which Cho ordered the gun. TGSCOM Inc. shipped the Walther P22 to JND Pawnbrokers in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho completed the legally-required background check for the purchase transaction and took possession of the handgun. Cho bought a second handgun, a 9mm Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol, on March 13, 2007 from Roanoke Firearms, a licensed gun dealer located in Roanoke, Virginia.

Cho was able to pass both background checks and successfully complete both handgun purchases after he presented to the gun dealers his U.S. permanent residency card, his Virginia driver's permit to prove legal age and length of Virginia residence and a checkbook showing his Virginia address, in addition to waiting the required 30-day period between each gun purchase. He was successful at completing both handgun purchases, even though he had failed to disclose information on the background questionnaire about his mental health that required court-ordered outpatient treatment at a mental health facility.

On March 22, 2007, Cho purchased two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22 pistol through eBay from Elk Ridge Shooting Supplies in Idaho. Based on a preliminary computer forensics examination of Cho's eBay purchase records, investigators suspected that Cho may have purchased an additional 10-round magazine on March 23, 2007 from another eBay seller who sold gun accessories.

Cho also bought jacketed hollow-point bullets, which result in more tissue damage than full metal jacket bullets against unarmored targets by expanding upon entering soft tissue. Along with a manifesto, Cho later sent a photograph of the hollow point bullets to NBC News with the caption "All the [shit] you've given me, right back at you with hollow points.

Motive

During the investigation, the police found a note in Cho's room in which he criticized "rich kids", "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans". In the note, Cho continued by saying that "you caused me to do this." Early media reports also speculated that he was obsessed with fellow student Emily Hilscher and became enraged after she rejected his romantic overtures. Law enforcement investigators could not find evidence that Hilscher knew Cho. Cho and one of his victims, Ross Alameddine, attended the same English class during Autumn 2006. Also in one video, he mentions "martyrs like Eric and Dylan", apparently referring to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of Columbine High School massacre.

Aftermath

Crime investigation

Through ballistics examination, law enforcement investigators determined that Cho used the Glock 19 pistol during the attacks at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and at Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus. Police investigators found that Cho fired 170 shots during the killing spree, with evidence technicians finding at least 17 empty magazines at the scene. During the investigation, federal law enforcement investigators found that the serial numbers were illegally filed off both the Walther P22 and the Glock 19 handguns used by Cho during the rampage. "Investigators also say Cho practiced shooting at a firing range in Roanoke, about 40 miles from the campus, in mid-March." According to a former FBI agent and ABC consultant, "This was no spur-of-the-moment crime. He's been thinking about this for several months prior to the shooting."

Review of Cho's medical records

During the investigation, the matter of Cho's court-ordered mental health treatment was also examined to determine its outcome. Virginia investigators learned after a review of Cho's medical records that he never complied with the order for the mandated mental health treatment as an outpatient. The investigators also found that neither the court nor New River Valley Community Services Board exercised oversight of his case to determine his compliance with the order. In response to questions about Cho's case, New River Valley Community Services Board maintained that its facility was never named in the court order as the provider for his mental health treatment, and its responsibility ended once he was discharged from its care after the court order. In addition, Christopher Flynn, director of the Cook Counseling Center at Virginia Tech, mentioned that the court did not notify his office to report that Cho was required to seek outpatient mental health treatment. Flynn added that, "When a court gives a mandatory order that someone get outpatient treatment, that order is to the individual, not an agency ... The one responsible for ensuring that the mentally ill person receives help in these sort of cases ... is the mentally ill person."

As a result, Cho escaped compliance with the court order for mandatory mental health treatment as an outpatient, even though Virginia law required community services boards to "recommend a specific course of treatment and programs" for mental health patients and "monitor the person's compliance." As for the court, Virginia law also mandated that, if a person fails to comply with a court order to seek mental health treatment as an outpatient, that person can be brought back before the court "and if found still in crisis, can be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 180 days." Cho was never summoned to court to explain why he had not complied with the December 14, 2005 order for mandatory mental health treatment as an outpatient.

The investigation panel had sought Cho's medical records for several weeks, but due to privacy laws, Virginia Tech was prohibited from releasing them without permission from Cho's family, even after his death. The panel had considered using subpoenas to obtain his records. On June 12, 2007, Cho's family released his medical records to the panel, although the panel said that the records were not enough. The panel obtained additional information by court order. Like the perpetrators of both the Columbine and Jokela school massacres, Cho was prescribed the antidepressant drug Prozac prior to his rampage, a substance suspected by Peter Breggin and David Healy of leading to suicidal behaviors. However, it is likely that Cho never complied in filling or taking this prescription; the toxicology test from the official autopsy later showed that neither psychiatric nor any kind of illegal drugs were in his system during the time of the shooting.

In August 2009, Cho's family allowed Virginia Tech to release the records, along with those found in July 2009, to the public. Previously, they were only given to the panel.

Investigative panel reports

In the aftermath of the killing spree, Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine (D) appointed a panel to investigate the campus shootings, with plans for the panel to submit a report of its findings in approximately two to three months. Kaine also invited former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to join the panel to "review Cho’s mental health history and how police responded to the tragedy." To help investigate and analyze the emergency response surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings, Kaine hired the same company that investigated the Columbine High School massacre.

The panel's final report devoted more than 30 pages to detailing Cho's mental health history. The report criticized Virginia Tech educators, administrators and mental health staff in failing to "connect the dots" from numerous incidents that were warning signs of Cho's mental instability beginning in his junior year. The report concluded that the school's mental health systems "failed for lack of resources, incorrect interpretation of privacy laws, and passivity." The report called Virginia's mental health laws "flawed" and its mental health services "inadequate". The report also confirmed that Cho was able to purchase two guns in violation of federal law because of Virginia's inadequate background check requirements.

Reaction of Cho's family

Cho's older sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, a 2004 graduate of Princeton University who works as a contractor for the U.S. State Department, prepared a statement on her family's behalf to apologize publicly for her brother's actions, in addition to lending prayers to the victims and the families of the wounded and killed victims. "This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person," she said in the statement issued through a North Carolina attorney. "We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence." Cho's grandfather stated, "My grandson Seung-Hui was very shy. I can't believe he did such a thing."

In an article acknowledging the anniversary of the massacre, the Washington Post did a follow-up on the family, reporting that they had gone into hiding for months following the massacre and, after eventually returning home, had "virtually cut themselves off from the world." Several windows in their home have been papered over and drawn blinds cover the rest. The only real outside contact they have maintained is with an FBI Agent assigned to their care and their lawyer, refusing even to contact their own relatives in South Korea.

Media package sent to NBC News

During the time period between the two shooting events on April 16, Cho visited a local post office near the Virginia Tech campus where he mailed a parcel with a DVD inside to the New York headquarters of NBC News, which contained video clips, photographs and a manifesto explaining the reasons for his actions. The package, addressed from "A. Ishmael" as seen on an image of the USPS Express Mail envelope (incorrectly printed as "Ismail" by The New York Times) and apparently intended to be received on April 17, was delayed because of an incorrect ZIP code and street address. The words "Ismail Ax" were scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm.

Release of material

Upon receiving the package on April 18, 2007, NBC contacted authorities and made the controversial decision to publicize Cho's communications by releasing a small fraction of what it received. After pictures and images from the videos were broadcast in numerous news reports, students and faculty from Virginia Tech, along with relatives of victims of the campus shooting, expressed concerns that, "to understand a person's motives is to glorify them", and that glorifying Cho's rampage could lead to copycat killings. The airing of the manifesto and its video images and pictures was upsetting to many who were more closely-affected by the shootings: Peter Read, the father of Mary Read, one of the students who was killed by Cho during the rampage, asked the media to stop airing Cho's manifesto.

Police officials, who reviewed the video, pictures and manifesto, concluded that the contents of the media package had marginal value in helping them learn and understand why Cho committed the killings. Dr. Michael Welner, who also reviewed the materials, believed that Cho's rantings offer little insight into the mental illness that may have triggered his rampage. Dr. Welner stated that "These videos do not help us understand Cho. They distort him. He was meek. He was quiet. This is a PR tape of him trying to turn himself into a Quentin Tarantino character."

During the April 24, 2007 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC News President Steve Capus stated NBC decided to show two minutes of 25 minutes of video, seven of 43 photographs, and 37 sentences of 23 pages of written material or 5 of the 23 PDF files that were last modified at 7:24 a.m., after the first shooting. He also stated that the content not shown included "over the top profanity" and "incredibly violent images". He expressed hope that the unreleased material is never made public.

Contents

In his manifesto, Cho mentioned the Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, denigrated former teachers, and made threatening messages to then-U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In one of the videos, Cho said:

You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people. Do you know what it feels to be spit on your face and to have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on a cross? And left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can?...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 fucked;, I did it for them... When the time came, I did it. I had to...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 had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your Vodka and Cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.

Pete Williams, a MSNBC justice correspondent, said that Cho lacked logical governance, suggesting that Cho was under severe emotional distress. In the video, Cho also railed against deceitful charlatans on campus, rich kids, materialism, and hedonism while, in another video, he compared himself to Jesus Christ, explaining that his death will influence generations of "defenseless people". Media organizations, including Newsweek, MSNBC, Reuters and the Associated Press, even raised questions and speculated the similarity between a stance in one of Cho's videos, which showed him holding and raising a hammer, and a pose from promotional posters for the South Korean movie Oldboy, a film based on the manga of the same name about a businessman who was kidnapped away from his wife and infant daughter by an unknown assailant and imprisoned in a small room for 15 years. Investigators found no evidence that Cho had ever watched Oldboy, and the professor who made the initial connection to Oldboy had since discounted his theory that Cho was influenced by the movie.

Writings

Plays

Richard McBeef

In 2006, pursuant to a class assignment, Cho wrote a short one-act play entitled Richard McBeef. The play focused on John, a 13-year-old boy whose father had died in a boating accident, and John's stepfather, ex-football player Richard McBeef (whom John constantly refers to as "Dick"). When Richard touches John's lap during an attempt at a 'father-to-son' talk, the boy abruptly claims that his stepfather is molesting him. John then accuses his stepfather of having murdered his actual father and repeatedly says that he will kill Richard. John, Richard and Sue (John's mother) are suddenly embroiled in a major argument. Richard retreats to his car to escape the conflict, but John, despite claiming repeatedly that Richard was abusing him, joins his stepfather in the car and harasses him. The play ends with John trying to shove a banana-flavored cereal bar into his stepfather's throat; Richard, hitherto a passive character, reacts "out of sheer desecrated hurt and anger" by "swinging a deadly blow" at the boy.

Mr. Brownstone

In a second play, Mr. Brownstone, written for another class assignment, Cho depicted three 17-year-olds (John, Jane, and Joe), who sit in a casino while discussing their deep hatred for Mr. Brownstone, their 45-year-old mathematics teacher. The three characters claim—using the phrase "ass-rape"—that Mr. Brownstone mistreats them. John wins a multimillion-dollar jackpot from one of the slot machines, and Mr. Brownstone, amid volleys of profanity from the students, reports to casino officials that the three characters were underage and had illegally picked up the winning ticket. Mr. Brownstone tells the casino officials that it was he who had really won the jackpot, and that the minors had taken the ticket from him. "Mr. Brownstone" was also the name of a Guns N' Roses song about heroin, and one page from Cho's play consisted of lyrics from the song.

Short fiction paper

Approximately one year before the incident at Virginia Tech, Cho also wrote a paper for an assignment in the "Intro to Short Fiction" class that he took during the spring 2006 semester. In that paper, Cho wrote about a mass school murder that was planned by the protagonist of the story but, according to the story, the protagonist did not follow through with the killings. During the proceedings of the Virginia Tech panel, the panel was unaware of the existence of the paper written by Cho for his fiction writing class.

When information surfaced about the paper, the Virginia Tech panel learned at that time that only the Virginia State Police and Virginia Tech had copies of the unreleased paper in their possession. The Virginia State Police reported that, although it had a copy of the paper, Virginia law prevented them from releasing the paper to the panel because it was part of the investigative file in an ongoing investigation.

Virginia Tech, on the other hand, had known about the paper, and officials at the school discussed the contents of the paper among themselves in the aftermath of the shootings. According to Governor Kaine, "[Virginia Tech] was expected to turn over all of Cho's writings to the panel" during the proceedings of the Virginia Tech panel.

After some members of the Virginia Tech panel complained about the missing paper, Virginia Tech decided to release a copy of the paper to the panel during the latter part of the week of August 25, 2007. Although the Virginia Tech panel has since received the paper written by Cho for the fiction writing class, the precise contents of that paper have not been released to the public.

Reaction to writings

Edward Falco, a playwriting professor at Virginia Tech, has acknowledged that Cho wrote both plays in his class. The plays are fewer than 12 pages long and have several grammatical and typographical errors. Falco believed that Cho was drawn to writing because of his difficulty communicating orally. Falco said of the plays, "They're not good writing, but at least they are a form of communication." Another professor who taught Cho characterized his work as "very adolescent" and "silly", with attempts at "Slapstick comedy" and "elements of violence". Novelist Stephen King examined the plays written by Cho, stating that they had no significance in an essay for Entertainment Weekly.

Classmates believed "the plays were really morbid and grotesque." Ian MacFarlane, Cho's former classmate, stated that, "when we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of." When Stephen Davis, a senior who was also in Cho's class, read "Richard McBeef", he turned to his roommate and said "this is the kind of guy who is going to walk into a classroom and start shooting people." Anna Brown, another student in the class, sometimes joked with her friends that Cho was "the kind of guy who might go on a rampage killing."

According to CBS News, "Cho Seung-Hui's violent writing [and] loner status fit the Secret Service shooter profile," referring to a 2002 U.S. Secret Service study that was conducted after the Columbine massacre, with violent writing cited as one of the most typical behavioral attributes of school shooters. The U.S. Secret Service concluded the study by saying that "[t]he largest group of [school shooters] exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays or journal entries," while other school shooters showed an interest in violent video games, violent movies and violent books.

Users of YouTube created filmed adaptations of "Richard McBeef". Something Awful created a parody "CliffsNotes" entry describing Richard McBeef.

Wikipedia.org

The Virginia Tech Massacre was a school shooting that unfolded as two separate attacks approximately two hours apart on April 16, 2007, on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States.

A shooter killed 32 people and wounded many more before committing suicide, making it the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, was a South Korean who had moved to the U.S. at eight years of age. At the time of the shootings, he was a senior majoring in English at Virginia Tech. He had a history of incidents at the school, including allegations of stalking, referrals to counseling, and a 2005 declaration of mental illness by a Virginia special justice.

Attacks

Cho used two firearms during the attacks; a small-bore .22 caliber semiautomatic handgun, and a 9mm semiautomatic Glock handgun. The shootings occurred in separate incidents, with the first at West Ambler Johnston Hall and the second at Norris Hall.

West Ambler Johnston shootings

At approximately 7 a.m., Cho was seen loitering near the entrance to West Ambler Johnston Hall, a co-ed dormitory that houses 895 students. The hall is normally locked until 10 a.m., and it is not clear how Cho gained entrance to the facility. Cho shot his first victims around 7:15 a.m. EDT in West Ambler Johnston Hall.

A young woman, Emily J. Hilscher of Woodville, Rappahannock County, Virginia, and a male resident assistant, Ryan C. Clark of Martinez, Columbia County, Georgia, were shot and killed in Room 4040, the room Hilscher shared with another student. Cho left the scene and soon thereafter mailed a package to NBC News, postmarked 9:01 a.m., containing various writings and recordings.

Norris Hall shootings

About two hours after the initial shootings, Cho entered Norris Hall, which houses the Engineering Science and Mechanics program, and chained the three main entrance doors shut. He then went to the second floor and began shooting students and faculty members.

By the end of this second attack, some nine minutes later according to police, 30 people lay dead in four classrooms and a second-floor hallway. Police reports indicated that Cho fired about 170 rounds in the attack at Norris Hall, and still had ammunition when he killed himself.

Five professors were killed in the attack. Eleven students were killed in the intermediate French language class in Norris Room 211. Nine students were killed in an advanced hydrology class in Room 206. Four students died in an elementary German language class in Room 207. One student in a solid mechanics class in Room 204 was killed. Erin Sheehan, an eyewitness and survivor of Norris 207, told reporters that the shooter "peeked in twice" earlier in the lesson and that "it was strange that someone at this point in the semester would be lost, looking for a class." Shortly thereafter, Cho began shooting. Sheehan said that only four students in the German class were able to leave the room on their own, two of them injured; the rest were dead or more severely wounded.

Virginia Tech student Jamal Albarghouti used his mobile phone to capture video footage of part of the attack from the exterior of Norris Hall; this was later broadcast on many news outlets.

Student Nikolas Macko described to BBC News his experience at the center of the shootings. He had been attending an issues-in-scientific-computing mathematics class (near the German class) and heard gunshots in the hallway. At least three people in the classroom, including Zach Petkewicz, barricaded the door using a table. At one point, Macko said, the shooter attempted to open the classroom door and then shot twice into the room; one shot hit a podium; the other went out the window. The shooter reloaded and fired into the door, but the bullet did not penetrate into the room. Macko stated there were "many, many shots" fired.

It took police nearly five minutes to gain entrance to the barricaded building; an officer finally shot out a dead-bolt lock leading to a stairwell. As police reached the second floor, they heard Cho fire his final, suicidal shot. Cho was found dead in Jocelyne Couture-Nowak's classroom, Room 211, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the temple.

In the aftermath, high winds related to the April 2007 nor'easter prevented emergency medical services from using helicopters for evacuation of the injured. Victims injured in the shooting were treated at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in Radford, Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital in Roanoke, and Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem.


Resistance

Several people tried to help others during the attack, including:

Professor Liviu Librescu held the door of his classroom, Room 204, shut while Cho attempted to enter it. Librescu was able to prevent the shooter from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows, but was eventually shot five times and killed.

Couture-Nowak tried to save the students in her classroom, Room 211, after looking Cho in the eye in the hallway. Colin Goddard, one of the five known survivors of the French class, told his family that Couture-Nowak ordered her students to the back of the class for their safety and made a fatal attempt to barricade the door.

In Room 206, Waleed Shaalan, a Ph.D. student in civil engineering and teaching assistant from Zagazig, Egypt, though badly wounded, distracted Cho from a nearby student after the shooter had returned to the room. Shaalan was shot a second time and died.

Also in Room 206, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan protected fellow student Guillermo Colman by diving on top of him; Colman's various accounts make it unclear whether this act was intentional or the involuntary result of being shot. Multiple gunshots killed Lumbantoruan, but Colman was protected by Lumbantoruan's body.

Student Zach Petkewicz barricaded the door of Room 205 with a large table, while Cho shot several times through the door. No one in that classroom was killed.

Katelyn Carney, Derek O'Dell, and their friends barricaded the door of Room 207, the German class, after the first attack and attended to the wounded. Cho returned minutes later, but O'Dell and Carney prevented him from re-entering the room. Both were injured.

Matthew Joseph La Porte, an Air Force ROTC student, is reported to have attempted to tackle Cho from behind but was fatally injured in the attempt.

Hearing the commotion on the floor below, Kevin Granata and another professor, Wally Grant, brought 20 students from a nearby classroom into an office, where the door could be locked, on the third floor of Norris Hall. He and Grant then went downstairs to investigate. They were both shot by Cho. Grant was wounded and survived, but Granata died from his injuries. None of the students locked in Granata's office were injured.

Victims

During the two attacks, the shooter's bullets killed 27 students and 5 faculty members and wounded many more.

1. Ryan Clark (22) Martinez, Georgia
—senior in Psych/Biology/English

2. Emily Hilscher (19) Woodville, Virginia
—freshman in Animal Sciences

3. Minal Panchal (26) Mumbai, India
—masters student in Architecture

4. G. V. Loganathan (53) Erode, Tamil Nadu, India
—professor of Engineering

5. Jarrett Lane (22) Narrows, Virginia
—senior in Civil Engineering

6. Brian Bluhm (25) Louisville, Kentucky
—masters student in Civil Engineering

7. Matthew Gwaltney (24) Chesterfield County, Virginia
—masters student in Environmental Engineering

8. Jeremy Herbstritt (27) Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
—masters student in Civil Engineering

9. Partahi Lumbantoruan (34) Medan, Indonesia
—PhD student in Civil Engineering

10. Daniel O'Neil (22) Lincoln, Rhode Island
—masters student in Environmental Engineering

11. Juan Ortiz (26) Bayamón, Puerto Rico
—masters student in Civil Engineering

12. Julia Pryde (23) Middletown, New Jersey
—masters student in Biological Systems Engineering

13. Waleed Shaalan (32) Zagazig, Egypt
—PhD student in Civil Engineering

14. Jamie Bishop (35) Pine Mountain, Georgia
—German instructor

15. Lauren McCain (20) Hampton, Virginia
—freshman in International Studies

16. Michael Pohle Jr. (23) Flemington, New Jersey
—senior in Biological Sciences

17. Maxine Turner (22) Vienna, Virginia
—senior in Chemical Engineering

18. Nicole White (20) Smithfield, Virginia
—junior in International Studies

19. Liviu Librescu (76) Ploieşti, Romania
—professor of Engineering

20. Jocelyne Couture-Nowak (49) Truro, Nova Scotia
—professor of French

21. Ross Alameddine (20) Saugus, Massachusetts
—sophomore in English/Business

22. Austin Cloyd (18) Champaign, Illinois
—freshman in Int'l Studies/French

23. Daniel Perez Cueva (21) Woodbridge, Virginia
—junior in International Studies

24. Caitlin Hammaren (19) Westtown, New York
—sophomore in Int'l Studies/French

25. Rachael Hill (18) Richmond County, Virginia
—freshman in Biological Sciences

26. Matthew La Porte (20) Dumont, New Jersey
—sophomore in Political Science

27. Henry Lee (20) Roanoke, Virginia/Vietnam
—freshman in Computer Engineering

28. Erin Peterson (18) Centreville, Virginia
—freshman in International Studies

29. Mary Karen Read (19) Annandale, Virginia
—freshman in Interdisciplinary Studies

30. Reema Samaha (18) Centreville, Virginia
—freshman in Urban Planning

31. Leslie Sherman (20) Springfield, Virginia
—junior in History/Int'l Studies

32. Kevin Granata (45) Toledo, Ohio
—professor of Engineering

Perpetrator

The shooter was identified as 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean citizen with U.S. permanent resident status living in Virginia. An undergraduate at Virginia Tech, Cho lived in Harper Hall, a dormitory west of West Ambler Johnston Hall.

A spokesman for Virginia Tech has described him as "a loner." Several former professors of Cho have stated that his writing was disturbing, and he was encouraged to seek counseling. He had also been investigated by the university for stalking and harassing two female students. In 2005, Cho had been declared mentally ill by a Virginia special justice and ordered to seek outpatient treatment.

According to Cho's grand aunt in South Korea, Cho's parents had offered autism as an explanation for his behavior. The notion that autism was the cause of Cho's behavior has been thrown into doubt, as there is no record of a diagnosis. Cho's flat emotional affect was evident through middle and high school years, during which he was bullied for speech difficulties. "Relatives thought he might be a mute. Or mentally ill," reported the New York Times. Cho's underlying psychological diagnosis remains a matter of speculation. Media outlets routinely compared Cho's motives and mental state to those of the Columbine killers, despite the fact that Harris and Klebold's motives and mental states were not even similar to each other.

Early reports had suggested that the killing resulted from a domestic dispute between the killer and his supposed former girlfriend Emily Hilscher, whose friends said had no prior relationship with Cho. In the ensuing investigation, police found a suicide note in Cho's dorm room, which included comments about "rich kids," "debauchery," and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.

On April 18, 2007, NBC News received a package from Cho time-stamped between the first and second shooting episodes. It contained an 1,800-word manifesto, photos, and 27 digitally recorded videos, in which Cho likened himself to Jesus Christ and expressed his hatred of the wealthy.

Some family members of the victims were upset that the photos and video sent by the killer were broadcast and canceled interviews with NBC in protest. A Virginia State Police spokesman said he was "rather disappointed in the editorial decision to broadcast these disturbing images," adding that he regretted that "[people who] are not used to seeing that type of image had to see it."

Fox News, which replayed NBC's information extensively, defended NBC's release of the materials. Bill O'Reilly asserted that while he sympathized with the victims' families, it was necessary for "evil" to "be exposed" and to inspire lawmakers to take corrective action.

The American Psychiatric Association, however, urged the media to withdraw the footage from circulation, arguing that publicizing it "seriously jeopardizes the public’s safety by potentially inciting 'copycat' suicides, homicides and other incidents." NBC defended itself by stating its staff had intensely debated releasing the footage before deciding to broadcast it and asserted it had covered this story with extreme sensitivity.

Responses to the incidents

University response

Virginia Tech canceled classes for the rest of the week and closed Norris Hall for the remainder of the semester. The University also offered counseling assistance for students and faculty and held an assembly on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. Additionally, the Red Cross dispatched several dozen crisis counselors to Blacksburg to help Virginia Tech students cope with the events.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger stated at the first news conference that authorities initially believed the first shooting at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory was a domestic dispute and that the shooter had left campus. Authorities identified a "person of interest" in the first shooting, Karl Thornhill, who was Emily Hilscher's boyfriend.

Hilscher's roommate, Heather Haugh, told authorities that Thornhill owned firearms and had taken both girls to a shooting range. Thornhill was pulled over while leaving Tech's campus after the first shooting, and made authorities suspicious by contradicting Haugh's account. Because authorities quickly apprehended him, they determined that the threat of further violence was minimal and consequently did not justify additional action by the University.

As Thornhill was being questioned, reports of shooting at Norris Hall came in, indicating that the police had not apprehended the perpetrator. Thornhill has subsequently been released, but remains an important witness in the case, according to police.

After the incident, Virginia Tech announced that the students killed during the massacre would be posthumously awarded their degrees during commencement ceremonies. Because of the incident's impact, university officials also gave students options to abbreviate their semester coursework and still receive a grade.

Criticism of Virginia Tech response

Some students blamed the university, saying that administrators should have immediately notified the community and locked down the campus. Virginia Tech currently has no text messaging capability to augment student and staff email as some educational institutions do.

Governor Timothy Kaine of Virginia appointed an independent review panel to "provide a thoughtful, objective analysis of the circumstances leading up to, during, and immediately after Monday's horrible events." The panel is led by Retired Virginia State Police Superintendent Colonel Gerald Massengill and includes, among others, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and Gordon Davies, Director for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia for 20 years.

It should be noted that Virginia Tech President Charles Steger received a standing ovation from students during the convocation ceremony, and while many outsiders and some members of the Virginia Tech Community questioned his actions during the crisis, he has garnered overwhelming support from students on campus since the incident.

Student response

Some Virginia Tech students questioned why the University had not been locked down after the first shooting. The University first informed students via e-mail at 9:26 AM, over two hours after the first shooting, warning them of the danger and canceling classes.

After becoming aware of the incident, students communicated with their family and peers about their conditions, using telephones or social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook A Christianburg resident and member of a local volunteer firefighting squad said he found dead bodies with their cell phones and PDAs still ringing. Many students created Facebook memorial pages for fellow students.

Fearing retribution from other students, Kim Min-kyung, a student at Virginia Tech, said students of South Korean descent were gathering in groups for support. Lee Seung-wook, head of Virginia Tech's Korean Student Association, said he was worried about possible repercussions the incident may bring to Asians, especially Koreans.

A student-led emergency-response relief group called "Hokies United" was activated immediately to help the Virginia Tech student body and families of the victims through a Hokies Memorial Fund. Hokies United is an alliance of student organizations that combine efforts; key players include the Student Government Association, the Class System, the Student Alumni Associates, Fraternity and Sorority life, the Residence Hall Federation, and many others.

Law enforcement response

After the second attack, the Virginia Tech Police, along with the Blacksburg Police Department, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office and the Virginia State Police immediately responded following their active shooter protocols. Local SWAT teams were activated and responded.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also joined the investigation. Bureau spokesman Richard Kolko said that there was no immediate evidence to suggest a terrorist incident, but that the agency would explore all avenues. Former FBI terrorism task force member Mike Brooks told CNN.com that perhaps the school's warning system should not rely so heavily on e-mail to notify a campus comprising more than 2,600 acres, hundreds of buildings and 26,000 students, faculty and staff.

At the time of the incident, Virginia Tech police had been investigating an alert system based on cellphone text messaging. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) immediately responded to the incident with 10 agents on-scene identifying the weapons and performing forensics.

Government response

Virginia's U.S. Senators John Warner and Jim Webb both offered their condolences. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine returned early from a trip to Tokyo, Japan, and declared a "state of emergency" in Virginia, allowing the governor to immediately deploy state personnel, equipment, and other resources to help out in the aftermath of a shootings.

On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate observed a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims. The Senate also approved a resolution on Monday night extending condolences to the victims of the shooting.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy postponed by two days the scheduled April 17, 2007 testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales concerning the firings of eight United States prosecutors. In a statement, Gonzales said that the Justice Department would provide support and assistance to the local authorities and victims as long as they were needed.

According to a spokesman, President George W. Bush was said to be horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia. Bush and his wife Laura also attended the convocation at Virginia Tech on 17 April. Bush stated that the nation was "shocked and saddened" by the shooting. He also pledged assistance to law enforcement and the local community. The White House issued a statement saying "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed."

The White House flag flew at half-staff, and Bush also requested all flags be so flown until sundown on Sunday, April 22, 2007.

The Internal Revenue Service and Virginia Department of Taxation granted six month extensions to individuals affected by the massacre.

Responses from other educational institutions

In addition to official condolences from many universities, both inside of the United States and abroad, many universities have initiated examinations of existing and possible local response procedures.

Radford University provided free temporary housing for the Virginia State Police officers investigating the incident. East Carolina University pledged $100,000 in general assistance funds.

At the annual Blue and White football game at Penn State, students displayed a large "VT" in tribute to the victims.

Administrators at Emmanuel College in Boston fired adjunct professor Nicholas Winset over a reenactment of the shooting during a classroom discussion. There is debate on whether the firing was justified.

South Korean response

When the citizenship of the shooter became known, South Koreans expressed shock and a sense of public shame. A candlelight vigil was held outside the Embassy of the United States in Seoul. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun expressed his deepest condolences. South Korea's ambassador to the United States asked Koreans living in America to fast for repentance. The foreign minister, Song Min-soon, also mentioned that safety measures have been established for Koreans living in the U.S., in apparent reference to fears of possible reprisal attacks against Koreans in the U.S. A ministry official expressed hope that the shooting would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."

Some commentators contrasted the lack of a backlash in the U.S. to the South Korean public's virulently anti-American response when a U.S. military vehicle in South Korea accidentally killed two girls. News reports noted that South Koreans seemed relieved that American news coverage of Cho focused not on his nationality but rather on individual aspects, such as his psychological problems.

Cho family response

Some family members expressed sympathy for the victims' families and described Cho's history of mental and behavioral problems. Cho's maternal grandfather was quoted in The Daily Mirror referring to Cho as a person who deserved to die with the victims. On Friday, April 20, Cho's family issued a statement of grief and apology, written by his sister, Sun-Kyung Cho.

Historical context

This incident is the deadliest shooting on a college campus, exceeding the 16 deaths of the University of Texas at Austin shooting by Charles Whitman in 1966. It is the second deadliest school-related killing in U.S. history, behind the 1927 Bath School disaster which claimed 45 lives, including 38 school children, through the use of explosives.

With a death toll of 32 victims plus the killer, this is the deadliest single-perpetrator shooting in United States history, surpassing the Luby's massacre of 1991, in which 24 people were killed. Internationally, it is surpassed by the 1982 massacre in South Korea of 57 innocent people by off-duty police officer Woo Bum-kon and the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in the Australian state of Tasmania where 35 people were killed by shooter Martin Bryant. Although deadlier shootings have occurred in the U.S., they have occurred during times of war or insurrection that predate WWII, largely involving militias or military groups.

In the media package sent to NBC, Cho discussed "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" apparently referring to the Columbine High School gunmen. The Virginia Tech massacre occurred just four days before the eight-year anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

Gun control debate

The massacre reignited the gun control debate in the United States, with proponents of gun control legislation arguing that guns are too accessible, citing that Cho, a mentally unsound individual, was able to purchase two semi-automatic pistols. Proponents of gun rights and the Second Amendment argued that Virginia Tech's gun-free "safe zone" policy ensured that none of the students or faculty would be armed, guaranteeing that no one could stop Cho's rampage. Others said that adequate communication between government entities could have prevented Cho from acquiring the weapons, without compromising Second Amendment rights.

Background

Law enforcement officials have described finding a purchase receipt for at least one of the guns used in the assault. The shooter had apparently waited one month after buying his Walther P22 .22 caliber pistol before he bought his second pistol, a Glock 19. Cho used a 15-round ammunition magazine in the Glock. The serial numbers on the weapons were filed off, but the ATF National Laboratory was able to reveal them and performed a firearms trace.

Virginia Tech has a blanket ban on possession or storage of firearms on campus, even by state licensed concealed weapons permit holders. However, this policy has been challenged in recent years: In April 2005, a student licensed in Virginia to carry concealed weapons was discovered possessing a concealed firearm in class. While no criminal charges were filed, a university spokesman said the University had "the right to adhere to and enforce that policy" as a common-sense protection of students, staff and faculty as well as guests and visitors."

Virginia bill HB 1572, intended to prohibit public universities from making "rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit … from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun" was introduced into the Virginia House of Representatives by delegate Todd Gilbert. The university opposed the bill, which died in subcommittee in January 2006. Spokesman Larry Hincker responded, "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

The sale of firearms to permanent residents in Virginia is legal as long as the buyer shows proof of residency. Additionally, though, Virginia has a law that limits purchases of handguns to one every 30 days. Federal law requires a criminal background check for handgun purchases from licensed firearms dealers, and Virginia checks other databases in addition to the Federally-mandated NICS. Federal law also prohibits those "adjudicated as a mental defective" from buying guns, and Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment.

“Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was “involuntarily committed” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”

The federal law defines adjudication as a mental defective to include "determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority" that as a result of mental illness, the person is a "danger to himself or others." Because of gaps between federal and Virginia state laws, the state failed to report Cho's legal status to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and thus failed to prevent Cho's purchases. The week following the incident, Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell called for changes in state law to close those gaps.

U.S. media response

The response to how gun control affected the massacre was divided.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, an American gun control group, said that it was easy for an individual to get powerful weapons and called for "common-sense actions to prevent tragedies like this from continuing to occur" and also noted that the 15-bullet magazines were illegal to manufacture from 1994 to 2004 under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. The New York Times ran an editorial calling for more gun control, saying that it was a "horrifying reminder that some of the gravest dangers Americans face come from killers at home armed with guns that are frighteningly easy to obtain."

The Conservative Voice contrasted the Virginia Tech massacre with the Appalachian School of Law shooting in 2002, when a disgruntled student killed three students before he was subdued by two other students with personal firearms they had retrieved from their vehicles, declaring that "All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last ten years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen—a potential victim—had a gun."

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine condemned this debate, saying it was "loathsome" that "People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and use it as a political hobbyhorse." Kaine said on April 17, 2007: "To those who want to make this into some sort of crusade, I say take this elsewhere."

International response

The Virginia Tech shootings sparked commentary and editorials critical of U.S. gun control laws and gun culture around the rest of the developed world. In the UK, a Times editorial asked, "Why ... do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"

The Swedish paper Göteborgs-Posten commented that "without access to weapons, the killings at Virginia Tech might have been prevented" because "the fundamental reason is often the perpetrator's psychological problems in combination with access to weapons." In Japan, the Asahi Shimbun commented that "the mass shooting.... reminded us once again how disturbingly common gun fatalities are in the United States," and went on to note, "Humans become enraged and desperate, and a gun in the hands of an enraged or desperate individual could be a sure recipe of disaster or tragedy."

Other international commentators predicted little chance of tougher gun laws or changes to the U.S. gun culture. BBC's Washington correspondent Matt Frei wrote "America is at its most impressive when it grieves and remembers. But will the soul-searching ever produce legislation and will it make schools safer?" He found that many students wished that the victims had been armed to stop the shooter, exerting "self defence in the face of a rampaging menace".

He further predicted that "[d]espite this week's bloodbath there will be no overwhelming demand for gun control in this country." Similarly, The Economist described both sides of the debate saying, "... Virginia Tech, like many schools and universities, is a gun-free zone. Gun advocates are daring to say that if Virginia Tech allowed concealed weapons, someone might have stopped the rampaging killer. To gun-control advocates, this is self-evident madness." The Economist also concluded: "The Columbine killings of 1999 failed to provoke any shift in Americans' attitudes to guns. There is no reason to believe that this massacre, or the next one, will do so either."

In addition to the international media response, while many non-U.S. governmental officials refrained from commenting on gun control in connection with the incident, some governmental officials criticized the U.S. gun control policies.

Most notably Australian Prime Minister John Howard said tough Australian legislation introduced after a mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996 had prevented a problematic gun culture in Australia: "We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country."

Wikipedia.org

Virginia Tech massacre timeline

The following is a timeline of events from the Virginia Tech massacre. All times are in Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4). TriData Corp, a division of defense contractor System Planning Corp., will develop the official detailed timeline of the Virginia Tech massacre. The official timeline will be used by the eight-member panel appointed by Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

Background
2003
June
Cho is graduated from Westfield high school.
2005
Fall
Andy Koch, Cho's suitemate, took Cho out to some parties at the start of the fall semester in 2005. At one party, Cho did get tipsy enough that he opened up and began talking about his virtual love life. He said he had an imaginary girlfriend named Jelly, and that she was "a supermodel that lived in space." Jelly had a nickname for Cho -- Spanky.
Fall poetry class
Prof. Nikki Giovanni requested that Cho change his behavior of photographing female students legs under the desk or leave her class. Cho responded, "You can't make me."
Removed from poetry class
Lucinda Roy, co-director the creative writing program removed Cho from Prof. Giovanni's class and tutored him one-on-one. When Cho refused to go to counseling, Roy notified the Division of Student Affairs, the Cook Counseling Center, the Schiffert Health Center, the Virginia Tech police and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.
Fall writing class
Prof. Lisa Norris, who had Cho in her class, alerted the associate dean of students, Mary Ann Lewis who could find "no mention of mental health issues or police reports" on Cho.
Sunday, November 27
A female student files a report with the Virginia Tech campus police indicating that Seung-Hui Cho had made "annoying" contact with her on the internet, by phone and in person. The investigating officer refers Cho to the school's disciplinary office, which is separate from the police department.
Monday, December 12
Another female student, a friend of Andy Koch, filed a report with the Virginia Tech campus police complaining of "disturbing" instant messages from Cho. She requested that Cho "have no further contact with her."
Tuesday, December 13
Virginia Tech campus police notifies Cho that he is to have no further contact with the female student. That same day Andy Koch, Cho's roommate, alerts Virginia Tech campus police that Cho had sent him an instant message stating, "I might as well kill myself." Koch notifies campus police. Campus police take Cho to a voluntary counseling evaluation, which leads to a court ruling declaring Cho "an imminent danger to self or others," and in turn leads to transport to Carilion St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital where psychologist Roy Crouse determines he "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." Special Justice Paul M. Barnett certifies the finding and orders follow-up treatment.
Wednesday, December 14
Cho is released from Carilion St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital.
2006
Fall
Cho enrolled in Professor Brent Stevens's English 3984 class, "Special Studies: Contemporary Horror. - 'not for the faint of heart' ." In that class he analyzed "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and explored in papers and a "fear journal" how "horror has become a masochistic pleasure." Other texts included From Hell by Alan Moore and "Men, Women and Chainsaws." Cho later sold these texts on eBay.
2007
Friday, February 2
Cho orders a handgun online. He purchases the .22 caliber Walther P22 on the Internet from TGSCOM, Inc.
Friday, February 9
Cho picks up the .22 caliber Walther P22 from J-N-D Pawnbrokers pawnshop in Blacksburg across the street from the school.
Monday, March 12
Cho rents a burgundy Kia Sedona van from Enterprise Rent-A-Car at the Roanoke Regional Airport that he keeps for almost a month. Cho videotaped some of his diatribe in the van.
Tuesday, March 13
Cho purchases a 9 millimeter Glock 19 handgun and a $10 box of 50 9-mm full metal jacket practice rounds.
Thursday, March 22
Cho shows up at the PSS Range, which is advertised as “Roanoke’s only indoor pistol range” and charges $10 per hour. Cho spends an hour practicing, buying four ammunition magazines for the Glock 19. Range employees, investigators later say, remembered a young Asian man videotaping himself inside a van in the parking lot.
Thursday, March 22
Using the handle "Blazers5505" on eBay, Cho purchases two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22 from "bullelk14" of Elk Ridge Shooting Supplies in Idaho.
Friday, March 23
Cho purchases three additional 10-round magazines from "oneclickshooting", another eBay seller.
Saturday, March 31 (April 7, April 8 and April 13)
Cho purchases additional ammunition magazines, ammunition and a hunting knife from Wal-Mart.
-- unknown date
Cho purchases additional ammunition magazines from Dick’s Sporting Goods and chains from a Home Depot.
Sunday, April 8,
Cho spends the night at the Hampton Inn in Christiansburg, Virginia videotaping segments for his manifesto-like diatribe.
Friday, April 13
Bomb threats to Torgersen, Durham, and Whittemore Halls are called in anonymously. An additional bomb threat, this time to engineering school buildings, was found at the shooting scene at Norris Hall. Virginia Tech police chief Wendell Flinchum has stated that the bomb threats are not linked to the April 16, 2007 massacre; however, a written bomb threat similar to the ones that were phoned in was found in Cho's dorm room.
Sunday, April 15
Cho phoned his family in Fairfax county.
Event

Monday, April 16
5:00 a.m.: While in Suite 2121 of Harper Hall, Joe Aust, one of Cho's five roommates, notices that Cho is awake and at his computer.
Around 5:30 a.m.: Karan Grewal, one of Cho's other roommates, notices Cho, clad in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, brushing his teeth and applying acne cream after Grewal finished an "all-nighter" of study in Suite 2121. Grewal does not see Cho after this point.
Before 7:00 a.m.: Cho was seen waiting outside an entrance to West Ambler Johnston Hall.
Before 7:15 a.m.: Emily Hilscher is dropped off at her dormitory by her boyfriend, Karl D. Thornhill, with whom she has spent the night.
7:15 a.m.: A 9-1-1 emergency call to Virginia Tech campus police reports a shooting at West Ambler Johnston Hall, leaving Ryan Christopher Clark, the resident advisor, dead and Emily Hilscher fatally wounded in Room 4040, which housed Hilscher.
Between 7:15 am and 9:01 am: Cho returns to his dormitory room to reload and leaves a "disturbing note."
7:30 a.m.: Investigators from VT PD and Blacksburg PD arrive.
Between 7:30 am and 8:00 am: Heather Haugh, Emily Hilscher's friend and roommate arrives to meet her to go to chemistry class together. When she asks about Hilscher, Haugh is questioned by detectives and gives them the information that Hilscher would usually spend weekends with her boyfriend, Karl Thornhill, at his off-campus townhouse. She explains that on Monday mornings Thornhill would drop off Hilscher and go back to Radford University where he was a student, and that Karl Thornhill is an avid gun user. This leads the police to seek him out as a "person of interest."
8:00 a.m.: Classes at Virginia Tech begin.
8:25 a.m.: Virginia Tech leadership team meets to develop a plan on how to notify students of the homicide. Meanwhile, police stop Karl Thornhill, in a vehicle off-campus and detain him for questioning.
9:00 a.m.: Virginia Tech leadership team is briefed on the latest events in the ongoing dormitory homicide investigation.
9:01 am: Cho mails a package to NBC headquarters in New York, containing pictures of him holding weapons, an 1,800-word manifesto-like diatribe in which he expresses rage, resentment and a desire to get even and a video clip in which he alludes to the coming massacre.
9:05 am: Jocelyne Couture-Nowak's Intermediate French Class in Norris 211 begins.
Around 9:05 a.m. to 9:15 a.m.: Cho is seen in Norris Hall, an Engineering building. Using the chains he had purchased at Home Depot, Cho chains the building's entry doors shut from the inside in order to stop anyone from escaping.
9:26 a.m.: E-mails go out to campus staff, faculty, and students informing them of the dormitory shooting.
Around 9:30 am: A female student walks into Norris 211 and alerts the occupants that a shooting occurred at West Ambler Johnston.
9:32 a.m.: Students in the engineering building, Norris Hall, make a 9-1-1 emergency call to alert police that more shots have been fired.
9:35 a.m.: Police arrived three minutes later and found that Cho had chained all three entrances shut.

Between 9:30 and 9:45 am: Using the .22 caliber Walther P22 and 9 millimeter Glock 19 handgun with 17 magazines of ammunition, Cho shoots 60 people, killing 30 of them. Cho's rampage lasts for approximately nine minutes. A student in Room 205 noticed the time remaining in class shortly before the start of the shootings.
Around 9:40 a.m.: Students in Norris 205, while attending an issues in scientific computing class, hear Cho's gunshots. The students, including Zach Petkewicz, barricade the door and prevent Cho's entry.
9:40 a.m.: After arriving at Norris Hall, police took 5 minutes to assemble the proper team, clear the area and then break through the doors. They use a shotgun to break through the chained entry doors. Investigators believe that the shotgun blast alerted the gunman to the arrival of the police. The police hear gunshots as they enter the building. They follow the sounds to the second floor.
9:41 a.m.: As the police reached the second floor, the gunshots stopped. Cho's shooting spree in Norris Hall lasted 9 minutes. Police officers discovered that after his second round of shooting the occupants of room 211 Norris, the gunman fatally shot himself in the temple.
9:50 a.m.: A second e-mail announcing: "A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows" is sent to all Virginia Tech email addresses. Loudspeakers broadcast a similar message.
10:17 a.m: A third e-mail cancels classes and advises people to stay where they are.
10:52 a.m.: A fourth e-mail warns of "a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall," saying the shooter has been arrested and that police are hunting for a possible second shooter. The entrances to the campus buildings are locked.
12:00 p.m.: At a press conference, authorities said there may have been more than 21 people killed and twenty-eight injured.
12:42 p.m.: University President Charles Steger announces that police are releasing people from buildings and that counseling centers are being set up.
4:01 p.m.: President George W. Bush speaks from the White House regarding the shooting.
7:30 p.m.: A confirmation that there have been at least 31 deaths at Norris Hall, including the shooter.

Aftermath

Tuesday, April 17
9:15 a.m.: Virginia Tech Police Department releases name of shooter as Cho Seung-Hui and confirms the death toll of 33.
9:30 a.m.: Virginia Tech announces that classes would be canceled "for the remainder of the week to allow students the time they need to grieve and seek assistance as needed."
2:00 p.m.: A convocation ceremony is held for the University community at the Cassell Coliseum. Speakers included (in order) Virginia Tech VP for Student Affairs Zenobia L. Hikes, Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine (who had returned from Japan), President George W. Bush, local religious leaders (representing the Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian communities), Provost Dr. Mark G. McNamee, Dean of Students Tom Brown, Counselor Dr. Christopher Flynn, and poet and Professor Nikki Giovanni. First Lady Laura Bush was also in attendance.
8:00 p.m.: A candlelight vigil is held on the University Drillfield.
Wednesday, April 18
8:25 a.m.: A SWAT team enters Burruss Hall, a campus building next to Norris Hall. No explanation is immediately available. Virginia Tech's public affairs office states that police are responding to a "suspicious event".
4:37 p.m.: Local police authorities announce that television network NBC received correspondence from Cho, some of which included images of him holding weapons, writings, audio recordings and videos; this information was immediately submitted to the FBI. It is believed that the package was timestamped between the first incident at West Ambler Johnson and the second shooting at Norris Hall, raising the possibility of the material being drafted by Cho during the 2 hour interval.
Thursday, April 19
9:49 a.m.: Virginia Tech announces that all students killed on Monday will be granted posthumous degrees in the field in which they were studying. These degrees will be given to the families at the regular commencement exercises that they would have participated in with their friends.
Friday, April 20
All Day: VA Governor Kaine declares a statewide day of mourning. Alumni encourage display of the Virginia Tech school colors: orange and maroon.
Monday, April 23
William Massello, an assistant state medical examiner, said autopsies of Cho's 32 victims revealed that he fired "more than 100" bullets into them. "Some were hit once; some were hit several times, more than once. We had two, three, four, maybe even as high as six." The initial autopsy of the Virginia Tech gunman found no gross brain function abnormalities that could explain the rampage that left 32 people dead.


The Shooter

000.jpg

000a.jpg

000b.jpg

001.jpg

Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman responsible for the shootings at Virginia Tech, mailed photographs, video and writings to NBC News, apparently sending the material between the two attacks on campus that killed 33 people, including himself. The following images and passages may be disturbing.
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
002.jpg

002a.jpg

002b.jpg

002c1.jpg

002c2.jpg

002c4.jpg


"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."
"I didn’t have to do this. I could have left, I could have fled, but no, I will no longer run. If not for me, for my children, for my brothers and sisters . . . I did it for them."
004a.jpg

"Do you know what it feels like to be spit on your face and have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave?"

005a.jpg

005b.jpg

"You just loved crucifying me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terrorizing my heart and ripping my soul all the time."

006a.jpg

"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic, bored life you were extinguishing."

007a.jpg

"Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and impaled upon a cross and left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life."

008.jpg

"Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can, just because you can? You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats, your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs, your trust fund wasn’t enough ..."

009b.jpg

010.jpg

"When the time came I did it, I had to."
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
Virginia Tech shootings

virginia001.jpg

On April 16, 2007, a gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech
in Blacksburg, Va., killing at least 30 people in the deadliest shooting rampage
in U.S. history, according to government officials. A student captured video of
police responding to gunfire at Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus.


virginia002.jpg

An injured occupant is carried out of Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus.
Police tape hangs in the trees in front of Norris Hall on the campus of Virginia Tech.

The shootings spread panic and confusion, with witnesses reporting students
jumping out the windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire.

virginia003.jpg

Police carried an unidentified person out of Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus
in Blacksburg, Va., on April 16, 2007.

virginia004.jpg

Blacksburg police officers ran from Virginia Tech's Norris Hall on April 16, 2007.

virginia005.jpg

Ambulances waited on the Virginia Tech campus after the April 16, 2007, shootings.

virginia006.jpg

State and local police waited for a building to be cleared by police
on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16, 2007.

virginia008.jpg

Students watched from the doorway of McBryde Hall on the Virginia Tech campus
as police entered the area on April 16, 2007.

virginia010.jpg

Virginia Tech students gathered in front of the War Memorial to mourn the victims on April 16, 2007.

virginia012.jpg

Candles and flowers were left as part of a makeshift memorial
outside Virginia Tech's Norris Hall on April 17, 2007.

virginia013.jpg

Dan Flynn hugs his daughter Lauren, a freshman at Virginia Tech, near Norris Hall
on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16, 2007. +

virginia014.jpg

Students console each other before the start of a memorial service inside the
Virginia Tech football stadium on April 17, 2007.

001.jpg

Injured occupants are carried out of Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

002.jpg

Police leave the back area of Norris Hall, the site of a shooting on the campus
of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

003.jpg

Area law enforcement officers take up position on Clay Street on the Virginia Tech campus.

007.jpg

Gabriel Averill, 27, and his friend, Christyne Fitzgerald, 23, left, comfort each other
as they watch the news about the shootings at Virginia Tech at Sharkey's
Wings & Rib Joint in Blacksburg, Va

009.jpg

Susan Hylton of Vienna, Va., hugs her daughter, Mary McFillin, after Hylton arrived
on campus to pick up her daughter. McFillin, 19, is a student at Virginia Tech.

004.jpg

Police tape hangs in the trees in front of Norris Hall on the campus of Virginia Tech.

011.jpg

Law enforcement officers take cover behind a tree during the investigation
of a shooting at the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.

013.jpg

An occupant is carried out of Norris Hall at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.,
after a gunman opened fire Monday.

016.jpg

An unidentified man sits handcuffed under the Drill Field review stand while officials
check Burruss Hall for safety following a shooting incident on the Virginia
Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
001.jpg

Mourners visit the makeshift memorial in front of Burruss Hall on the campus of Virginia
Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Saturday, April 21, 2007. The memorial has grown daily since
a gunman killed 32 students and faculty in a rampage.

004.jpg

A memorial for Virginia Tech shooting victim, Caitlin Hammaren, is seen on the steps
of Burruss Hall on the school's campus in Blacksburg, Va., Thursday, April 19, 2007.

008.jpg

Jessica Palazzolo holds a photo of shooting victim Maxine Turner outside the Media
Center in the Virginia Tech campus Thursday, April 19, 2007 in Blacksburg, Va.

011.jpg

A projected photo montage of some of those killed at Virginia Tech is seen during a memorial
service on the Millersville University campus in Millersville, Pa., Wednesday, April 18, 2007.
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
Virginia Tech victims

001.jpg

Ross Abdallah Alameddine, 20, of Saugus, Mass., was a sophomore who had just
declared English as his major.

002.jpg

Christopher James Bishop, 35, worked with his wife in the foreign languages
department at Virginia Tech.

003.jpg

Brian Bluhm, 25, was formerly of Detroit, according to friend Michael Marshall.
His death also was announced before the Kansas City Royals-Detroit Tigers
baseball game at Comerica Park.

004.jpg

Ryan Clark, 22, of Martinez, Ga., a biology and English major.

005.jpg

Austin Cloyd, 19, from Champaign, Ill., and Blacksburg, Va., was a freshman
majoring in international studies and French.

006.jpg

Jocelyn Couture-Nowak, a French instructor at Virginia Tech.

007.jpg

Daniel Perez Cueva, 21, was killed in his French class, according to
his mother, Betty Cueva, of Peru.

008.jpg

Kevin Granata, 45, a professor of engineering science and mechanics, served in the military and later conducted orthopedic research in hospitals before coming to Virginia Tech, where he and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics.

009.jpg

Matthew Gwaltney, 24, of Chester, Va., was a graduate student in civil and environmental
engineering, according to his father and stepmother, Greg and Linda Gwaltney.

010.jpg

Caitlin Hammaren, 19, of Westtown, N.Y., was a sophomore majoring in international studies and French, according to officials at her former school district.

http://murderpedia.org/male.C/images/cho_seung_hui/victims/011.jpg[/img]
Jeremy Herbstritt, 27, of Bellefonte, Pa., was a graduate student in engineering.

012.jpg

Rachael Hill, 18, from Glen Allen, Va., was a freshman studying biology.

013.jpg

Emily Jane Hilscher, 19, from Woodville, Va., was a freshman majoring in animal sciences.

014.jpg

Matthew La Porte, 20, was a freshman from Dumont, N.J.

015.jpg

Jarrett Lane, 22, was a senior civil engineering student who was valedictorian of his high
school class in tiny Narrows, Va., just 30 miles from Virginia Tech.

016.jpg

Henry Lee, Virginia Tech student

017.jpg

Liviu Librescu, 76, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer, was known for his research,
but his son said he will be remembered as a hero for protecting students as the
gunman tried to enter his classroom.

018.jpg

G.V. Loganathan, 51, was born in the southern Indian city of Chennai and had been a
civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech since 1982.

019.jpg

Partahi Lumbantoruan, 34, of Indonesia, was a civil engineering doctoral student,
according to Kristiarto Legowo, a spokesman for the Indonesian foreign ministry.

020.jpg

Lauren McCain, 20, of Hampton, Va., was an international studies major.
 

b2ux

Banned
This user was banned
021.jpg

Daniel O’Neil, 22, was a graduate student in engineering and played guitar and wrote
his own songs, which he posted on a website, www.residenthippy.com.

022.jpg

Juan Ramon Ortiz, 26, was a graduate student in engineering from Bayamon, Puerto Rico,
according to his wife, Liselle Vega Cortes.

023.jpg

Minal Panchal, 26, wanted to be an architect like her father, who died four years ago.

024.jpg

Erin Peterson, 18, of Chantilly, Va., Virginia Tech student.

025.jpg

Michael Pohle, 23, of Flemington, N.J., was expected to graduate in a few weeks with
a degree in biological sciences, said Craig Blanton, Hunterdon Central’s vice principal
during the 2002 school year, when Pohle graduated

026.jpg

Julia Pryde, 23, Middletown, N.J., was a graduate student in biological engineering.

027.jpg

Mary Karen Read, 19, considered a handful of colleges, including nearby George Mason
University, before choosing Virginia Tech. It was a popular destination among her
Annandale High School classmates, according to her aunt Karen Kuppinger.

028.jpg

Reema Samaha, 18, a freshman from Centreville, Va., was seeking to major in urban planning
and minor in international relations or French.

029.jpg

Waleed Mohammed Shaalan, 32, a native of the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, had gone
to Virginia Tech last year to study for a Ph.D. in civil engineering.

030.jpg

Leslie Sherman, 20, of Springfield, Va., was a sophomore majoring in history and international studies.

031.jpg

Maxine Turner, a 22-year-old senior from Vienna, Va., started a sorority of engineers to help women in a tough field make friends. Turner, who was studying chemical engineering and already had job offers, had a deep bench of good friends and a variety of interests, from the Tae Kwan Do Club to German. She died in her German class.

032.jpg

20-year-old Nicole White was killed in Monday's shootings.

va-tech-victims-killed.jpg

vatech-victims.jpg
 
Back
Top