virginiatech-university-blog

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Cho built up a persona for himself over the years, which seemed to worsen after he was rejected as an author. He would go out of his way to ensure that people could not interact with him, and wear a cap and sunglasses most of the time. People that knew him said he could speak very eloquently if he wanted to, but if he didn’t want to speak then he shut down completely and acted arrogant. He knew that he had complete control over what people knew about him, and seemed to enjoy this.

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Septic Tank Sam was the moniker given to an unidentified victim that was found inside a septic tank at an abandoned farmhouse in 1977. His body was left to decompose for months before investigators found him. When the owners of the abandoned farmhouse went to search for a pump in the septic tank, they found his body instead.

According to the autopsy, this was one of the most brutal murders to take place in Alberta, Canada at the time. Sam had been tied up and repeatedly beaten while simultaneously burned with a blowtorch over and over again. On top of that, he was sexually mangled. After his killer(s) felt that he had been adequately tortured, he was shot in the head and chest to finish the job. 

The killer(s) then put limestone in the tank with Sam in the hopes that it would speed up the rate of his decomposition, however, it did little other than leave superficial burns due to the fact that the limestone couldn’t handle that amount of flesh. 

After being exhumed in 1979, criminal reconstructionists used DNA and his bone structure in order to recreate how he might have looked before death. To this day, the case is unsolved and Septic Tank Sam is still unidentified. 

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Andy Cook, one of Cho’s dormmates, would go out of his way to try and befriend Cho, often resulting in rejection. One night, when Andy offered Cho to come to a frat party, Cho agreed, and became more open through the night as he drank more.

He told Andy’s friends about his imaginary girlfriend that he called Jelly, and she called him Spanky. They went back to a friend’s house, and Seung-Hui suddenly said, “do you want to see something cool?” before revealing a knife and stabbing the carpet repeatedly. The people around him saw it as attention-seeking.

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Medical examiners fingerprint the body of Cho Seung-Hui

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“I would ask him a question, and he would take between 10-20 seconds to respond. And then when he would respond, it would be in a whisper, that you could hardly hear. He would always speak like that.” -Cho Seung-Hui’s professor on her 1-1 tutoring sessions with Cho

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“Question Mark, he said, was his brother. And there was a Facebook profile to go along with this, and he was really obsessed with being cool on this profile. Put this picture of this weird figure, a question mark blocking the face. Said he lived on the sixth floor of Cochrane, which isn’t possible, there’s only five floors. And he was in room 666. And he’s got this girlfriend that lives in outer space and travels on a spaceship…”

“I guess – he’d built a rapport with me. When he called me he would either say, ‘This is Question Mark,’ or ‘This is Seung,” he would make sure you know. And if he said ‘This is Question Mark,’ and, you know, you kind of play along, eventually you’d get tired of it, you go ‘I know this is you, Seung,’ and he’d go, ‘No, this is Question Mark, Seung’s brother.’ And he was always very adamant about it being his brother.”

- Andy Cook, one of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho’s dormmates, speaking about the development of Cho’s persona. 

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11 years ago today on April 16th, 2007 Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University before committing suicide. 23 people were also injured but survived.