Updated: 4:57 p.m.

A Virginia Tech spokesman says the university does not know how the Cook Counseling Center file for Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho wound up at the home of the center's former director.

Generally speaking, patient files "are to stay" in the counseling center, university spokesman Mark Owczarski said.

The records were found last week, state officials disclosed today. Gov. Tim Kaine said a Virginia State Police criminal investigation was under way into why the records disappeared. Removing records from the center is illegal, he said.

Cho's file is back at Cook Counseling Center; Virginia State Police have a copy of its contents, Owczarski said.

Owczarski said he also did not know how many other students' records were in Dr. Robert C. Miller's Blacksburg home.

Miller left his position at the center more than a year before the April 16, 2007 shootings in which Cho killed 32 students and teachers before taking his own life.

Miller retired from the university in 2008, Owczarski said. He had most recently been an assistant professor of neuropsychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, according to his online curriculum vita.

Updated: 12:53 p.m.

Officials have scheduled a news conference at 2 p.m. in Burruss Hall on the Virginia Tech campus.

Posted: 9:43 a.m.

RICHMOND – Missing campus mental health records of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho were found last week in the home of the former director of the university’s counseling center, state officials disclosed today.

Dr. Robert C. Miller, the former director of Tech’s Cook Counseling Center, returned Cho’s file and records of other students to the center last week, according to a memorandum from the university to the chief counsel for Gov. Tim Kaine. University officials believe the records were removed when Miller left his position at the center more than a year before the April 16, 2007 shootings in which Cho killed 32 students and teachers before taking his own life.

Cho had a history of behavioral problems and had been ordered to get outpatient treatment by a Montgomery County special justice 16 months before the shootings. But authorities investigating the shootings had not been able to find Cho’s campus counseling file, a source of consternation for families of the shooting victims.

The state has reached legal settlements with 46 families of victims who were killed or wounded in the shootings. The families of two deceased victims, Julia Kathleen Pryde and Erin Nicole Peterson, have filed lawsuits that are pending in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

Robert Hall, the attorney for the Pryde and Peterson families, said the discovery of the records raises questions about why Miller removed Cho’s file and whether his departure from the counseling center had anything to do with concerns raised about the troubled student’s behavior.

“Why did he take any patient records home, and why this kid?” Hall said in a telephone interview.

“How could he not have been aware of the state police search warrant and the commentary in the governor’s [panel] report about the disappearance of these records?” Hall said. “I guess the last question is why now? Why did he find these records now?”

Gov. Tim Kaine said this morning that he learned about the discovery of the records on Monday. His administration has notified families of the shooting victims and intends to make the records public as quickly as possible, Kaine said.

Kaine said the state will subpoena Cho’s estate to obtain copies of the records. Hall said he also intends to subpoena the records.

Kaine said this morning that Cho’s campus counseling records will be added to a public records archive the university has assembled under terms of the legal settlement with victims’ families.