The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) on Monday declined to provide additional details to The Tennessee Star about the firearms legally purchased by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the biological woman who identified as a transgender man when she killed six at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023.
MNPD declined to provide the information just days after a source told The Star that a police captain ordered officers not to complete standard evidence documentation procedures during the search of Hale’s residence and that the FBI absconded with certain evidence without any chain of custody documenting its transfer.
After the attack in 2023, MNPD stated that Hale had legally purchased seven firearms, but The Star has only been able to determine the fate of five of the weapons based on MNPD statements, public reporting, and police documents The Star obtained from a source close to the investigation in June 2024.
Hale used three of the guns during the attack, including two 9mm handguns and one AR-15 rifle. These were recovered from her body after MNPD fatally shot the killer.
One more weapon was recovered from the Hale family residence by law enforcement, and according to an inventory of evidence published by The Star last year, this firearm is a Mossberg 590 12 gauge shotgun. Hale also paired the weapon with a Browning sleeve for transportation.
Photos of the shotgun, obtained by The Star, appear to reveal the killer created a label for the firearm, naming it “Slugger.”
Hale also wrote on the rifle the name Aiden, which she began using when identifying as a transgender man, as well as the words “Dark Abyss.” Those words also appeared repeatedly in the 90-page 2023 journal The Star obtained, which is part of the killer’s manifesto that reportedly contains about 1,000 pages and was written over a decade or more.
The MNPD police interview conducted with Hale’s parents additionally reveals that one of Hale’s handguns was apparently discovered by her family, who persuaded the future killer to relocate the weapon outside the family home and later to sell the firearm.
Only one additional weapon appears in the inventory list from the Hale residence, but MNPD photographs obtained by The Star reveal it was stored openly in an office shared by both parents and appears to belong to her father.
This means that two weapons remain unaccounted for by the police department.
The Star asked MNPD on Monday for the exact model numbers of the seven firearms owned by Hale, whether she was in possession of these items at the time of her death, and whether Hale named or added art to the other firearms, but MNPD Spokesman Don Aaron told The Star the department would not comment.
Aaron stated, “I expect that information will be in the final case report.”
The development came only days after MNPD said it knew “nothing” about the claim. Its officers were ordered not to produce forms detailing specific pieces of evidence, and Aaron confirmed that the investigation would continue.
Since June 2024, The Star has asked MNPD to indicate when the case would finish at least five times, but the department has yet to provide a firm estimate.
Only months after the shooting, Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Star, filed state and federal lawsuits seeking to compel both MNPD and the FBI to release Hale’s writings.
The federal lawsuit remains ongoing, though the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently confirmed that under the Trump administration, the FBI is now considering a settlement offer that would require the release of the lawsuit. A chancery court judge ruled against SNDM and other plaintiffs last year, and multiple plaintiffs immediately announced plans for an appeal, including SNDM.
In the portion of police documents The Star obtained last June, which included the killer’s 2023 journal, was an FBI memo sent to MNPD that “strongly” advised local police from releasing “legacy tokens,” which an earlier FBI document defined as any item that could explain a mass killer’s actions.
MNPD did not confirm receipt of the memo but told The Star that the FBI division that authored it assisted with the Covenant investigation. Similarly, the FBI did not confirm sending the memo, but acknowledged it sends such communications to local law enforcement.
The FBI later denied the memo’s existence in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, despite The Star publishing the memo last year.
Hale’s 2023 journal was published in its entirety by The Star last September.
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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].
Sounds like Ms. Bondi needs to be called in here. No room for corruption on government.
KASH PATEL will get to the bottom of this BS.
Some of the FBI have forgotten or were hired under the Obama /Biden administration’s & don’t know their mission.
Some must be fired. They are ideologues.
Nothing to see here. If any wrongdoing occurred, taxpayer funded employees will fix it…… ROTFLMAO.