Va.Tech Gunman's Motives Still a Mystery

In this undated photo released by the Virginia State Police, Cho Seung-Hui is shown. Seung-Hui, 23, is identified by police as the gunman suspected in the massacre that left 33 people dead at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Monday, April 16, 2007, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.But nearly two weeks after the shootings, Cho is as much a question mark as ever, And investigators are losing sleep over the possibility that the whys and wherefores may never come. (AP Photo/Virginia State Police) (AP)

When his disturbing writings got him kicked out of class, Roy, then head of the English Department, took him on as a private tutor. But Cho rebuffed all efforts to reach out to him.

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood," Cho says in the video manifesto that appears to have been merely his last and most troubling creative-writing project. A tale, in the words of Shakespeare's Macbeth, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

At 9:45 a.m. April 16, Cho was firing the first of what would eventually be more than 170 shots in Norris Hall. At that time on a normal Monday, he would have been in the final minutes of Fritz Oehlschlaeger's "Bible as Literature" course.

Reporters have asked the professor what significance to attach to Cho's use of the name "A. Ishmael" in the return address on the package he mailed to NBC. In the Bible, Ishmael was the patriarch Abraham's first, but illegitimate, son. The class covered Genesis, including the story of Ishmael.

Oehlschlaeger sees little point in rational questions about behavior that is "transparently illogical."

"You're trying to create narratives that make sense," he says, "and the narratives you're creating are only about you, not about him."

This week, police expanded their search of Cho's dorm, checking the kitchen and common rooms, even removing ceiling tiles looking for clues.

After a rapid start, Flaherty says the investigation is settling into the tedious phase of "reviewing, re-reviewing, interviewing, re-interviewing." The most surprising finding so far, he says, is the realization that Cho, for all his computer trails, was such a cipher.

"I guess the thing that is most startling to me ... is a young man who's 23 years old that's been here for a while that seemed to not know anybody," he says.

Others left behind are pondering the lack of answers.

When doctors removed the bandages from her son Colin's gunshot wounds, Anne Lynam Goddard says she "had my nose right in there." If there is evidence that might explain why Cho targeted Colin's French class, she wants to know.

But Goddard recognizes now she may never have answers.

"There's a lot of things I don't understand in life," she says. "Like why some people suffer and some don't."

In a statement issued on behalf of her family, Cho's sister, Sun-Kyung, seemed as much at a loss as others.

"We feel hopeless, helpless and lost," she wrote. "This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person."

It turns out, no one did.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: AP writers Matt Apuzzo and Vicki Smith also contributed to this report.