NEWSWEEK COVER: The Mind of a Killer

NEW YORK, April 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Virginia Tech sophomore Derek O'Dell saw the shell casings popping out of the pistol as Cho Seung-Hui opened fire. "I saw his eyes, too," O'Dell recalled to Newsweek. "That's probably the scariest thing. There was nothing there, just emptiness almost. Like you can look in people's eyes and you can see life, their stories. But his-just emptiness." O'Dell's comments are part of the April 30 Newsweek cover package, "The Mind of a Killer" (on newsstands Monday, April 23) that reconstructs the day of the shootings, the worst massacre in U.S. history, that claimed 32 lives.

The package includes a report by Science Editor and Columnist Sharon Begley examining the science of violence and exploring research on what causes individuals to commit violence. Newsweek reports that scientists who study criminal violence-that committed outside of wars and civil conflicts-now believe that its roots are equally planted in the biology of an individual, the psychology that reflects the interaction of innate traits and experiences, and the larger culture. No single cause is sufficient, none is deterministic. "It's like a kid piling up a tower of blocks," says Loyola University, Chicago, psychologist James Garbarino, who has studied school shooters. "Eventually, it falls over. You could point to the final block and say, that one's the cause. But it's an accumulation of risk factors."

Newsweek reports that Cho had a life and a story but he seemed determined not to share it with anyone, except in dark dreams and then in a final spasm of killing. "Cho was a smart student who could understand the meaning of the Bible," recalled his boyhood pastor at Centreville (Va.) Korean Presbyterian Church, in an interview with Newsweek. Watching the TV replay the clip of Cho spewing his hateful rant at the camera, his boyhood pastor was in a state of near disbelief. "This is not Seung," he told himself. For one thing, he had never seen Cho complete sentences. "I felt him a little autistic and advised his mother to take him to hospital. But she did not agree with me," he tells Newsweek. "I now repent for not urging her strongly." (Medical experts say there is no link between autism and violence.)

Cho was a particular trial to the codirector of Virginia Tech's creative- writing program, Lucinda Roy. Roy tells Newsweek that she 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. (A police source says that Roy did not ask for help, but rather suggested she would take Cho "under her wing.") Newsweek reports that Roy ran into the higher-education version of "Catch-22."

Also in the cover package, Senior Editor Jerry Adler provides an in-depth look at the history and business of the 9mm, the preferred gun of choice for both police officers and everyday criminals. It was also Cho's weapon of choice. Newsweek reports that when Cho armed himself with a 9mm Glock for his rampage he was standing in a tradition of bloodshed stretching back more than a century.

And New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg writes an essay on his efforts to combat gun crime in conjunction with 13 U.S. mayors as part of coalition started last year called Mayors Against Illegal Guns. "Combating gun crime hasn't been a priority of this Justice Department or Congress. Actually, that's understating it. Congress is undermining our local efforts by handcuffing our police departments. Hard as it is to believe, right now federal law prevents our police officers from looking at all the data on guns used in crimes in our region. Where and when were they bought-and by whom?"

Bloomberg writes that the coalition's goal is finding creative ways to rid U.S. streets of illegal guns. "The question is, can't we protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners while also doing more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals? Of course. It's not an either-or; a middle ground exists," he writes.

(Read entire cover package at http://www.newsweek.com/)

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