The FBI this week released to The Tennessee Star the latest portion of writings by Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a biological woman who identified as a transgender man when she killed six at the Christian school in Nashville on March 27, 2023, which were left in a journal the killer kept from 2019-2020.
One entry includes an illustration of the killer standing next to a figure she called the “Devil,” making her the second transgender mass shooter to leave such a drawing behind, after Annunciation Catholic School killer Robin Westman left a similar image in a notebook posted in a video to social media prior to his August 27 attack in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In a journal entry dated December 31, 2019, the Covenant killer titled her illustration, “The Devils Apprentice.”
The killer dedicated more than half of the page to her drawing, which depicted a robed figure, labeled “Me,” standing next to a horned creature holding a pitchfork. Hale labeled the creature, “Devil,” with emphasis on the word “evil.”
Hale notably drew herself and the “Devil” wearing robes containing inverted crosses and the number six repeated three times.
The similarity was first noted by Dan Lennington, the attorney at the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty who represented Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), which owns and operates The Star, as well as Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy, in their litigation against the FBI to compel the agency’s release of Hale’s writings.
1/ We need more attention to the explicit demonic references in the Nashville & other trans-shooting manifestos. I've spent some time w/ these docs: the images & third-person dialogues are exceedingly troublesome. Thanks to @TheStarNewsNet @FDRLST for covering. Links below… pic.twitter.com/3txghHkWxz
— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) September 9, 2025
While many Christians view the inverted cross as a symbol of Saint Peter, who early Christian texts say considered himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus after he was sentenced to death under Nero, the Roman emperor, the website Christianity.com notes, “it has been common for the upside-down cross to be employed as a symbol of atheism, humanism, and the occult,” since around the 1950s.
The number 666 is similarly identified in the biblical Book of Revelation as the “number of the beast,” but has been adopted by groups as disparate as rock musicians, who view it as a symbol of rebellion, and the Aryan Brotherhood, a racist prison gang, as a tattoo used to signify membership.
In her journal entry on the same page, Hale wrote, “The Devil is the king of Evil. I have become his secret apprentice as he is teaching me the ways of the Dark Force and the Dark Side.”
The killer then seemed to blame the devil for her desire to commit mass violence.
“He is infesting my mind with revenge on a grand scale, to great for my own ability. If I am to one day commit the most infamous school shooting, I will need the Devil’s power,” wrote Hale.
While the image drawn by Hale was released after the conclusion of a lawsuit filed more than two years ago by SNDM and Leahy, the journals written by Westman were posted by the killer, and reported by the press on the same day as the attack.
The 20 minute video of him flipping through the manifesto while whispering “I know you exactly what I’m doing” and other disturbing phrases. pic.twitter.com/zpx2LNsOu8
— Champagne Joshi (@JoshWalkos) August 27, 2025
Unlike Hale, Westman did not include a journal entry with his drawing, but instead included five lines of text written using the Cyrillic alphabet on the page, which was located in an unused portion of the journal.
The image itself appears to depict Westman staring into a mirror as a horned creature or demon stared back.
Translated to the English alphabet using an online tool, Westman wrote above the drawing, “Who am I? When will this end? Help me! I don’t want.” Underneath he wrote, “Kill yourself,” with an additional third word that could not be deciphered.
His drawing is one of the final pages from the journal shown by Westman in the nearly 21-minute video. After showing the drawing, Westman flipped to a page that appeared to contain the layout of a church sanctuary and a list of bands, before concluding the video by recording a blank page.
The Monday release of Hale’s writings by the FBI to The Star revealed the killers have at least one commonality in addition their mutual identification as transgender, similar drawings, and attacks on Christian elementary schools, as both expressed a desire to kill President Donald Trump.
Hale included the president in a “fantasy kill list,” while Westman twice wished death on Trump in words written on the weapons and equipment he used during the attack.
The writings by Hale released by the FBI this week come from one of several journals the killer wrote over more than a decade. The Star first released the killer’s unredacted 2023 journal in September 2024, which contains the entries written moments before her attack.
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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].
