Transgender-identified school shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, in a journal entry released this week by the FBI, shows that the killer cited the race of the predominantly white student body at the Covenant School as early as 2021.
An entry from one of the killer’s later journals, but first published in 2023, suggested she maintained the racial animosity until shortly before killing six at the Christian elementary school she once attended on March 27, 2023.
In a 2021 list of “advantages” to attacking the Covenant School, the killer wrote at the top of the page that it was “a [predominantly] white school (white [people] I hate!!!).”
Hale expressed similar animosity toward white people in a February 3, 2023, journal entry, apparently from the killer’s operational notebook, which reportedly contained detailed plans for the attack, that was published by conservative pundit and comedian Steven Crowder in November 2023.
“Kill those kids!!! Those crackers going to private schools with those fancy khakis [and] sports backpacks [with] their daddies Mustangs,” wrote the killer. “I wish to shoot your weak*** d**** [with] your mop yellow hair.”
She added, “wanna kill all you little crackers!!! Bunch of little f****** [with] your white [privileges].”
The killer also referenced race in her list of “advantages” and “disadvantages” to attacking her former middle school, where she developed obsessions with her basketball teammates more than a decade earlier.
While the white race of most Covenant School students was considered an “advantage,” Hale wrote that the predominantly black student body was a “disadvantage” to an attack.
“Black friends [and] black community will hate me,” wrote the killer. She listed, “Black community in despair [and] suffering (I don’t want to cause that) = don’t want to harm them = dread.”
In their 2023 interview with Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD), her parents suggested Hale developed an interest in black culture in conjunction with the obsession over her former teammates. Her mother said the teammates later cut ties with the killer.
“I’m imaging that Audrey would call them too much, text them too much, that kind of thing. And so it seemed — you know, it seemed to be okay. It seemed like she had kind of let that go. I don’t think she ever did,” Hale’s mother told MNPD detectives.
The killer additionally listed her hatred of religion as a reason to attack the Christian elementary school she once attended, writing “Christian school (hate religion)” among her reasons.
In journal entries from years prior, she wrote that her religion and views on gender and sexual identity were opposing forces.
“I have suppressed and hid my real gender identity for so long, and a big contributor to it – the nemesis of my true peace within myself – is my spirituality of being a Christian,” wrote Hale, who was born a biological woman but identified as a transgender man, in a journal entry dated to 2018 or 2019.
She wrote in another, “I feel my Christianity is being crucially at threat [and] hangs on a [slender rope] in the balance. It is my sexuality that wants me to cut the rope.”
The new writings come after the FBI pledged to release them to settle Biden-era lawsuits against the agency, which sought to compel their release, including the litigation brought by Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Star, and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy.
The Star published an unredacted version of the killer’s final writings in September 2024, and was nominated for the Dao Prize in Best Local Journalism for its reporting 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].
