More than three years have passed since The Tennessee Star began lawsuits against the FBI and Metro Nashville to obtain the manifestos left by the transgender school shooter Audrey Hale, who killed three 9-year-old students and three staff members at the Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023.
Last year, the FBI under Director Kash Patel agreed to release the killer’s handwritten journals in order to settle this federal litigation, which has since resulted in the release of about 1,830 pages of the killer’s writings.
One of the journals released by the FBI is notably a match for the killer’s final journal, which was previously obtained legally by The Star and released without redactions in September 2024, indicating they represent the body of writings once referenced as a manifesto by the Metro Nashville Police Department.
An analysis by The Star found these 1,800 pages reveals the killer first appeared to fantasize about committing a mass shootings in March 2019, when she wrote that she fantasized about committing a school shooting at I.T. Creswell Middle School, where she once attended.
Hale’s interest appeared to continue through much of spring 2019, with the killer declaring in an entry written sometime before the end of April 2019, “My fantasies grow as I relate to infamous school shooters.”
The killer’s fantasies first appeared to escalate in June 2019, when she wrote a fictional story about a boy who committed a mass shooting at his school.
The short story revolves around a character named Danny, who, like Hale, was intimidated by fellow school children, upset by loud noises, and “too severely shy to speak in class.” Some of the names Hale used for the story are similar to real people the killer knew after graduating from the Covenant School, during her time at I.T. Creswell Middle School and the Nashville School of the Arts.
The killer did not explicitly write that Danny was a stand-in for herself, but Hale had started to identify as transgender man only two months prior. Despite her new gender identity, the killer did not adopt the masculine name, Aiden, until sometime after March 2020.
“For those two years, 9th [and] 10th grade, Danny had been planning – mapping out a school massacre up his sleeve,” wrote the killer. “He truly believed in the core of his heart he belonged not on earth, but to burn in hell forever for hurting all the f****** w/ him.”
She later wrote that the character, “felt people in his life won’t remember him from the good guy he was – but rather [would] be better off haunting society by never forgetting the evil he committed.”
This journal entry was notably written just days before Hale’s first evaluation by VUMC. During that process, the killer expressed fear she would be committed to a mental hospital.
It was during her evaluation for commitment that a former Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) detective indicated Hale told a mental health professional she had fantasized about killing her father and experienced “recent thoughts of going into a school and shooting a bunch of people.”
A 22-year-old mental health patient at the time of her death, Hale would avoid commitment during three separate mental health evaluations.
By October 2020, Hale’s writings had moved beyond fictionalized school shooting scenarios. She was then actively planning a “mass suicide of bloodshed” at her former middle school. It was during this period that Hale claimed her interest in committing such an attack predated her interest in the Columbine High School massacre.
“I thought of killing myself [and] someone else long before I knew about Columbine or school shootings,” wrote the killer. “I was only fascinated [and] inspired when I found out about kids [unclear] like me and have had similar experiences as mentally.”
Like the fictional Danny, the killer later suggested she was motivated by a desire for fame.
She wrote at the end of the journal entry, “Think or ask what I did, I succeeded in my goal. Because I will make you impossible to forget me to a severe extent. Because you won’t forget Creswell victims gone forever.”
Later that month, Hale wrote again about her intent to attack Creswell, and indicated she was contemplating a date in April 2021 to complete the attack.
The planned attack at her former middle school did not proceed, and by early 2021, Hale was weighing whether to attack Creswell or the Covenant School.
Hale’s parents discovered her firearm purchases beginning in December 2020, and a subsequent meeting involving Hale, her parents, and her therapist resulted in her agreeing to sell two weapons. The writings show the intervention did not end her preparations, as the killer continued acquiring and concealing firearms, including weapons purchased with leftover money from her federal Pell grants.
During the final entry Hale wrote on March 27, 2023, the killer described the earlier discovery by her parents as a close call.
“The day has finally come. I can’t believe it’s here. Don’t know how I was able to get this far, but here I am,” she wrote. “There were several times I could have been caught, especially back in the summer of 2021.”
In the summer of 2021, Hale wrote an entry declaring that her high school “should have been shot up” in 2013.
“Aww man would have it been epic, if I shot up my own high school – NSA,” the killer wrote. “Yeah, kill all the gays [and] lesbians that look or dress like boys w/ their boy hair dues. Kill all the white kids.”
For the rest of 2021, and into 2022, the killer continued obtaining firearms, training, and planning. In 2022, she seemed to choose Covenant School, selecting it over the Opry Mills Mall, as well as her former middle school and high school.
In an entry that could be dated to November 2022, Hale wrote that the mall was “no longer a good target,” citing the “upgraded security” and armed guards present during her last visit.
She wrote, “all guards are armed with pistol [and] glock mags.”
Another entry, written the same month, appeared to offer more insight into the killer’s desire for fame.
“Mass shootings happen all the time now, but not actual infamous shootings. If they didn’t plan over a year, it’s no wonder they failed in casualties,” the killer wrote.
She later appeared to claim that murder was part of her nature.
“All of us mentally vulnerable are all to kill by nature. If we know who we are in awareness, it’s likely the planning is more thorough. What to expect, who will try to stop me, the amount of minutes I have. I must know all those details or I am f***** like most of them,” wrote the killer. “I have to be on the top deadliest school shooting list. Up there with Adam Lanza.”
The lawsuit brought against the FBI by Star News Digital Media Network (SNDM), which owns The Star, and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy, concluded last year after the FBI agreed to release these files.
By contrast, the Metro Nashville lawsuit was only definitively settled last month, when the Tennessee Supreme Court declined a request by Metro Nashville and a group of Covenant School parents to take up the case.
The refusal leaves in place an appellate order that instructed Chancellor I’Ashea L. Myles to “expeditiously” make the killer’s writings available, as well as other materials sought by The Star and other media outlets.
Neither Myles nor Metro Nashville has contacted The Star to complete the court’s instructions.
In 2025, The Star was nominated for the Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism for its work on the Covenant case.
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
