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First published 1831 No. 52,909 $1.20 (inc GST)
Thursday April 19, 2007
A killer’s final words:
You caused me to do this
HEAD TO COME
CONFIRMED DEAD
BELIEVED DEAD
Emily Jane Hilscher
Ryan Clark
Christopher James Bishop
Jocelyne Couture-Nowak
Daniel Perez Cueva
Kevin Granata
Jessica Wilson
Kelly Boito
Caitlin Hammaren
Jeremy Herbstritt
Ross Abdallah Almeddine
Jarrett Lee Lane
Matthew Joseph LaPorte
Liviu Liberescu
Mademba Beye
Amanda Cahall
G V Loganathan
Daniel O’Neil
Juan Ramon Ortiz
Mary Karen Reed
Reema J Samaha
Lauren McCain
Ananeya Abebe
Elizabeth Yeomans-Horowitz
Henry Lee
Maxine Turner
Partahi Lumbantoruan
Austin Cloyd
Rachael Hill
UNKNOWN
Semeon Seyfou
Brian Bluhm
Cho Seung-hui
SMH GRAPHIC: 19.4.07
Michael Gawenda
Herald Correspondent
in Washington and agencies
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AFTER gunning down his first
two victims, Cho Seung-hui sat
down to write a bitter manifesto,
a rant against ‘‘rich kids’’,
‘‘debauchery’’ and ‘‘deceitful
charlatans’’.
It was not a suicide note but an
expletive-filled riff against the
rich and privileged, and it named
people, including university
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ISSN 0312-6315
9 770312 631049
officials, who he thought had
kept him down, police sources
said. Cho indicated in the letter
that the end was near and that
there was a deed to be done.
‘‘You caused me to do this,’’
one of the notes said.
It might be the closest thing the
world gets to an explanation for
the murders Cho had just
committed, or the 30 more he was
about to commit at Virginia Tech
on Monday in the worst mass
shooting in American history. He
was silent and friendless – a ghost,
a man known to no one.
Cho’s many other writings –
poems, a novel, two plays – were
disturbing and confounding. So
much so that one of his teachers,
Lucinda Roy, approached
university officials and police.
Fellow students, meanwhile,
wondered aloud whether he
might become a ‘‘school shooter’’.
It is little wonder that people
around Cho were scared and
worried. For a look into the mind
of the mass murderer, consider
the two plays – works that blend
violence, sexual imagery and
paranoia into a disjointed,
terrifying whole.
The plays are filled with
diatribes against Catholic priests
and Michael Jackson, along with
references to government
conspiracies to kill Marilyn
Monroe and John Lennon.
In Richard McBeef, the mother
of a 13-year-old named John,
who claims his stepfather tried to
molest him, slaps her husband’s
face and hits him on the head
with her shoe.
‘‘You fat piece of pork,’’ she
yells at her husband.
‘‘Oh my god,’’ she yells. ‘‘You
are a pedophile.’’
‘‘No. No ... Honey-poo,’’ he
responds, before making a graphic
suggestion that they have sex.
John rants about the need to kill
his stepfather, Richard: ‘‘I hate
him. Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick.
Dick must die.’’
At one point, John’s mother
grabs a chainsaw and brandishes
it at Richard, who retreats to a car
parked in the family’s garage. John
later joins Richard in the car and
says: ‘‘Today is one fruity day.’’
Then Richard kills his stepson.
‘‘When we read Cho’s plays, it
was like something out of a
nightmare,’’ wrote Cho’s former
classmate, Ian MacFarlane, now
an AOL employee, in a blog
posted on an AOL website.
‘‘The plays had really twisted,
macabre violence that used
weapons I wouldn’t have even
thought of.’’
Cho appears first to have
alarmed a noted Virginia Tech
poet, Nikki Giovanni, in a
creative writing class in 2005.
Giovanni said Cho took
pictures of fellow students during
class and wrote about death.
‘‘Kids write about murder and
suicide all the time. But there
was something that made all of
us pay attention closely. None of
us were comfortable with that,’’
she said. The students once
recited their poems in class. ‘‘It
was like, ‘What are you trying to
say here?’ It was more sinister.’’
Days later, many students
stayed away from a class. She
asked why the others did not
show up and was told that they
were afraid of Cho.
‘‘Once I realised my class was
scared, I knew I had to do
something,’’ she said.
Continued Page 9
No IR deal, say Rudd’s state mates Video ref rules against Telstra
Mark Davis
Political Correspondent
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KEVIN RUDD’S push for a national workplace system for the private sector has been dealt a blow
by his state allies, with the NSW
and Queensland governments
refusing to hand industrial relations powers to Canberra if
Labor wins the federal election.
NSW’s Minister for Industrial
Relations, John Della Bosca, said
he was willing to work cooperatively with federal Labor to
‘‘harmonise’’ state and federal industrial laws. But after cam-
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the small business
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paigning in last month’s state
election against a federal
takeover of the state award system, Mr Della Bosca made it clear
NSW would not refer its legislative powers on industrial relations
to the Commonwealth.
‘‘Unlike the NSW Opposition,
the Iemma Government is not
prepared to refer its powers to
Work Choices,’’ he said.
And Queensland’s Minister for
Industrial Relations, John Mickel,
has also ruled out any referral,
saying Queensland’s industrial
system still covers up to 40 per
cent of the state’s employees. ‘‘We
are operating under a dual [federal
and state industrial] system now
Editorial,
and there is no reason not to
Letters
continue to operate under a dual
Page 12
system into the future.’’
Mr Rudd said on Tuesday
that federal Labor would create
a uniform national industrial
system for private sector
employment, leaving state
industrial systems to cover
public sector and local
government employees.
He said this would be
achieved either by the
states referring
Continued Page 4
A rebuff for Rudd ... John Della Bosca.
Jacquelin Magnay
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TELSTRA may walk away from
its $90 million National Rugby
League sponsorship after the
Federal Court rejected the company’s bid to stop its rivals showing match highlights at no cost.
The telecommunications giant
took a huge hit when it failed to
stop Premier Media Group,
known as Fox Sports and owned
by the media moguls Rupert
Murdoch and James Packer, from
broadcasting highlights online
and selling the footage to Telstra
rivals Vodafone and Hutchison.
The interim court decision,
watched closely by media
organisations and sporting
bodies seeking to exploit additional revenue, means nonrights holders on rival websites
can continue to show about two
minutes of NRL action without
penalty and for an unspecified
time after the event if they are
reporting news.
The matter has been stood
over for a full hearing on April 27,
meaning yesterday’s decision is
not the final word.
But Telstra, which signed the
NRL deal in March, said ‘‘it
would not sit back while it believes its NRL new media rights
are unfairly exploited’’.
A Telstra spokesman said if
non-rights holders were allowed
to show extensive footage as
highlights it would have ‘‘dramatic repercussions for the code
and the clubs in the longer term’’.
The NRL will now have to
choose which party it will side
with during the full hearing. This
is likely to be Telstra, in order to
defend its contractual obligations, rather than with News
Ltd, its half-owner.
Continued Page 2
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