Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, and Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Star, said Metro Nashville is continuing to withhold the will of Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale despite a recent Tennessee Supreme Court decision clearing the way for the release of records related to the 2023 mass shooting.
During Thursday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Pappert and Leahy discussed the ongoing records battle and the significance of the will, which the Metro Nashville Police Department reportedly identified in its final investigative report as a document left by Hale.
“The will in question was written by Audrey Hale, and we know it was written by Audrey Hale for a couple reasons,” Pappert said.
Pappert pointed to Hale’s suicide letter, which he said explicitly instructed her parents to read the will.
“She wrote in her suicide letter, ‘Please read my will,’” Pappert said.
According to Pappert, Metro Nashville’s final report also confirmed that Hale left a will containing instructions concerning her possessions and writings.
“They said she left a will and it had specific instructions on what to do with her toys, her stuffed animals, her electronics, and her writings, as well as the videos and thumb drives that she left behind,” Pappert said.
The alleged existence of the will is significant because of a dispute over who owns Hale’s writings. Hale’s parents previously told the court that she died intestate, meaning without a will, before purportedly assigning rights to her writings to the Covenant Parents Trust.
Pappert said the timeline raises questions because Hale’s parents notified the court on June 12, 2023, that they had assigned their rights to Hale’s writings to the group, while a probate filing seeking to open Hale’s estate as intestate was not filed until June 15.
The Star has spent more than three years seeking access to Hale’s writings and related records. In February, the Tennessee Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s broad order withholding the records and instructed the Davidson County Chancery Court to review Hale’s writings, with redactions limited to actual school-security information.
The Tennessee Supreme Court subsequently declined to accept an appeal from Metro Nashville, the Covenant School and a group of Covenant parents, leaving the appellate ruling intact.
Despite the rulings, Leahy said Metro Nashville has not yet produced the requested records.
“We haven’t gotten anything from the Metro Nashville government yet,” Leahy said.
Pappert criticized the length of the litigation, particularly the copyright argument used to prevent the release of Hale’s writings.
“These are public records. It is absurd it took three and a half years. It’s a slap in the face to the public,” Pappert said.
Leahy said The Star is seeking additional records from Metro Nashville, including the will and documents concerning an FBI “legacy token” memo that addressed the release of writings created by mass shooters.
Pappert said he wants to know how Metro Nashville handled the memo, who received it, and whether it influenced the department’s decisions concerning the Covenant investigation.
“We also asked for a lot of other materials related to the Covenant investigation, but not the killer’s writing itself,” he noted.
Pappert also discussed records concerning Hale’s history of mental health treatment, saying previously obtained documents indicate she was evaluated for inpatient commitment and allegedly told a mental-health professional she was considering killing her father and potentially committing a mass shooting.
“I think that there were a lot of failures in the case of Audrey Hale before she ever bought the first gun using Pell Grant money, by the way, and I think that is what the powers that be do not want exposed,” Pappert said.
Leahy said Metro Nashville needs to comply with the state courts’ decisions and release the requested records.
“They need to start producing these documents. The public needs to know,” Leahy said.
Pappert predicted the fight over the records would continue.
“I think they’re going to continue to delay, and Michael Patrick Leahy is not going to let that bone go,” Pappert said.
Tune in now to The Michael Patrick Leahy Show – your AMERICA FIRST news talk!
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
And the coverup continues. We want the whole truth. Psych records are most important.