Multiple entries within the journal police recovered from the vehicle driven by Audrey Elizabeth Hale to the Covenant School on March 27, 2023, when she claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members, appear to corroborate previous reporting that the killer became “obsessed” with her former middle school basketball teammates.
The Tennessee Star confirmed on June 5 it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation, and has since reported extensively about entries which refer to two of Hale’s former teammates on the Isaiah T. Creswell Middle School basketball team.
Just days after Hale’s death, The Tennessean reported that multiple former basketball teammates reported they did not hear from Hale for years after leaving middle school, but that the killer suddenly reappeared in their lives in the year prior to her attack on the school.
Paige Averianna Patton, the Nashville radio personality and former teammate of Hale who was the subject of more than a dozen journal entries, told the outlet that Hale was “timid” but developed “real camaraderie,” telling the outlet they were “like a family” while “on the court.”
Days prior to a public event headlined by Patton, who is black, Hale wrote in her journal, “Tomorrow I will see my beautiful brown girl at the happiest she has ever been. She deserves it most!”
In a later entry, Hale confirmed she attended the event, but also provided details suggesting she had minimal contact with Patton.
“The 27th was a beautiful night, just like my brown girl. She looked so beautiful that night, I could not take my eyes off her,” Hale wrote. “It’s like my soul is bound to her spirit or something.”
Of the event, Hale later wrote in the same entry, “I just wish I was more part of it.”
She continued, “for the life of me I cannot help but gaze into her beauty… so when her hand layed [sic] onto me after the show, it’s being touched by an angel.”
Hale additionally suggested that her attack on the Covenant School was partially motivated by her desire for infamy commensurate with the celebrity achieved by Patton.
“She’s famous to me; a star to many,” wrote the killer. “Little does she know now we will soon share the same fate.”
Hale wrote, “She will live a legend and I will die a shooter – hopefully to become infamous. No one will forget neither of us.”
The Star previously contacted Patton for comment about her relationship with Hale but did not receive a response.
Another classmate who does not appear to be mentioned in Hale’s journal, Mia Phillips, told The Tennessean that other basketball players “felt [Hale] was shy” and “embraced her and really befriended her.”
Phillips told the outlet that the Creswell basketball teammates largely drifted apart from Hale after middle school, as the future killer attended high school at the Nashville School of the Arts and the rest of the team did not. However, Phillips reported that Hale suddenly reappeared in the girls’ lives at a February 2022 birthday party, followed by other events.
“I’m trying to be as respectful and also as honest as possible,” Phillips told the outlet. “It felt obsessive. It felt like stalkerish behavior.”
The outlet reported Phillips recounted Hale appeared “uninvited to a birthday party,” where the outlet reported Phillips remembered the killer “acting visibly drunk” despite not consuming any alcoholic beverages in sight of the other women.
This reportedly led other partygoers to conclude that “Hale was pretending to be drunk at a party she hadn’t been invited to,” according to the outlet, citing Phillips.
Phillips similarly told the outlet that Hale tried to reunite with the girls during the funeral of Sydney Sims, another basketball teammate who died following a 2022 car accident. Hale was reportedly “infatuated” with Sims.
At one point Hale attempted to enter a vehicle with Phillips and the other teammates, prompting Phillips to recount to the outlet, “I was expressing to her that it was not the time or the place, that we were all grieving.”
Sims was the subject of multiple entries in Hale’s journal, with the killer at one point claiming Sims’ passing made her want to experience death.
“I can’t be consistent [with] anything since I left school. And since Syd died – all my efforts feel meaningless cause I don’t work enough, don’t make enough, don’t do enough,” wrote Hale in a January 20, 2023, journal entry.
The previous day, Hale wrote, “Sydney is gone but my f****** dad is still alive,” and later added, “it should be the other way around.”
Hale also wrote that Sims’ passing caused her “thoughts about death” to change “significantly” in an entry written on March 16, just 11 days before her attack on the Covenant School.
“My thoughts about death have altered significantly. I think about death every day [and] fascinated/curious with the idea of dying too much,” Hale wrote.
She admitted, “I know it’s unhealthy, but I just don’t care if it is anymore,” but later wrote, “I know how unhappy I am with all the things I wish I could do. It’s too late now. I’m ready to die.”
Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Star, and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy are plaintiffs in the ongoing lawsuits that seek to compel both the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and the FBI to release Hale’s full writings, including those some have called a manifesto.
Earlier this month, The Star published an FBI memo addressed to MNPD Chief John Drake which “strongly” advised against releasing “legacy tokens” from individuals like Hale. An FBI definition suggests both the journal obtained by The Star and those sought in the lawsuits are “legacy tokens” that should be kept from the public.
The FBI declined to confirm that it sent the memo in a statement to The Star but acknowledged that it sends such documents to local law enforcement.
Since The Star obtained the journal and a tranche of documents related to the Covenant investigation, it has published over 40 articles providing new details from police documents and new insight into Hale’s writings.
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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].
