Head of Va. Tech Inquiry Hopes for Valuable Lessons

RICHMOND, May 9 -- He has responded to blizzards, hurricanes, grisly crime scenes, race riots, terrorist attacks and violent shipyard and coal mine labor disputes.

But starting Thursday, retired Virginia state police superintendent W. Gerald Massengill, 64, will face what may be his most challenging task yet: investigating the circumstances surrounding the April 16 massacre at Virginia Tech.

Massengill will head an eight-member panel that will sift through thousands of pages of documents and conduct dozens of interviews as it seeks to answer how and why Seung Hui Cho was able to gun down 32 people before killing himself.

Massengill will be operating under a national spotlight and mounting political pressure to produce a report that explores several controversial issues connected to the incident, including police procedures, the state's mental health system and gun control.

In an interview this week, Massengill said he will rely on his experience overseeing some of the state's biggest crises, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon and, a year later, the Washington area sniper shootings.

"When you come out of things like that, you look back and say: 'What can we learn from it? What can we do to help people in the future if these things were to happen again?' " he said.

Republicans and Democrats applauded the selection of Massengill by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D). "When they named Gerald as head of the panel, the panel instantly had credibility," said Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), chairman of the state's Crime Commission.

After starting his career in 1967 as a trooper patrolling Isle of Wight, Va., Massengill quickly rose through the ranks.

He gained a reputation for being diligent, organized, methodical and so nice he defied the stereotypical image of an uptight state trooper. "I knew instantly he needed to be in a significant position of leadership," said former police superintendent M. Wayne Huggins, who made Massengill one of his top deputies in 1994.

Despite his folksy charm, Massengill wasn't the type of trooper someone would want to pass while speeding.

As head of the Agency's Bureau of Fielder operations between 1994 and 2000, Massengill had what many consider a religious fervor to crack down on aggressive drivers, saturating highways with troopers on the alert for violators. During a particularly aggressive push by Massengill, deaths on Virginia interstates fell by one-third from 1999 to 2000.

In 2000, Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) named Massengill superintendent.