Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote in the journal police recovered from her vehicle about her social isolation and inability to live independently.
The Tennessee Star confirmed last week it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a source close to the Covenant investigation, including the lengthy entry titled “My Brain… This Life.”
In this densely written, undated entry spread over two pages, Hale wrote about mental health issues with her “brain,” which she elsewhere connected to her purported autism diagnosis and decision to identify as a transgender man despite being a biological female.
At the end of the entry, Hale wrote, “how trapped I am in my self that I can’t get along or understand how life should or could work, to do it on my own.”
She then wrote “adult life sucks” and is “more complicated than it should be,” while “death is simple” compared to mental state.
“No one seemed to notice me – the real me. All of me. All of my good and bad,” Hale wrote. “I can’t exist here, I exist somewhere else. Anywhere but here.”
She concluded the entry, “I feel so sad.”
A student of Nossi College of Art and Design between approximately 2014 and her graduation in 2022, Hale wrote earlier in the entry that obtaining her degree was “the only ‘normal’ to achieve” in her life.
“I make no impact,” Hale wrote elsewhere in the entry, adding that all her “success was overcoming [her] darkness.”
Hale wrote a “freelance failure” list in a separate entry that indicated she failed to obtain regular income as an artist or creative professional after obtaining her degree from Nossi.
“You’ll always miss 100 [percent] of the shots you [don’t] take,” wrote Hale. She then wrote, “I took all of them and missed 99 [percent].”
While in college, Hale reportedly received money from the federal Pell Grant program. She reportedly used the funding to buy the weapons and ammunition she used to claim the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023.
Both Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Star, and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy are plaintiffs in ongoing lawsuits against the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and the FBI. The lawsuits seek to compel the full release of Hale’s writings, including those some have called a manifesto.
The Star recently published a May 2023 memo sent by the FBI to MNPD Chief John Drake that “strongly” advised against releasing “legacy tokens” from individuals like Hale. An FBI definition suggests the agency considers both the writings by Hale obtained by The Star and those sought in the lawsuits “legacy tokens” that should be withheld from public consumption.
In a Monday statement to The Star, the FBI declined to confirm it sent the memo but did confirm it sends “products,” including information, to local law enforcement in furtherance of mutual goals.
Since obtaining Hale’s writings, The Star has published dozens of articles including Hale’s own words.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
