On Tuesday, The Tennessee Star and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy released 90 pages of writings left by Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale. The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal, which was handwritten by Hale between January and March of 2023, can be downloaded here.
The journal was legally obtained by The Star from a source familiar with the investigation in June 2024. It was recovered from Hale’s vehicle by officers with the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD), along with a spiral notebook, after her March 27, 2023 attack on the Covenant School, where she murdered three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members before she was killed by MNPD officers.
Between June 5 and September 3, The Star published approximately 50 articles that are based on The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal but do not contain the actual pages from that journal. Tuesday’s publication of The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal provides further evidence supporting those 50 articles, but also reveals new information, including the octagonal symbol Hale drew when writing about her planned attack on the Covenant School or her gender identity.
Hale, who was 28-years-old when she died, was born a biological female, but identified as a transgender male at the time of her attack. She often signed journal entries using the name Aiden.
The octagonal symbol first appears on the journal’s cover. Within its pages, the distinctive shape next appears on the first page, opposite where the killer wrote, “Why does my brain not work right? Cause I was born wrong!!!”
Hale’s symbol appears throughout the journal, including in an undated entry apparently written in mid-March 2023, when the killer wrote about the attack she planned later that month.
“Soon I will leave this world! You [and] your friends will be just fine. Does it even matter if I am alive?” Hale later added the octagonal symbol, and above it wrote, “No regrets by the gun!!!”
The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal and the spiral notebook were initially called a “manifesto” after the attack by Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake.
“In the manifesto, there’s several different writings about other locations, there were locations, [it] talks about the school, there was a map of the school, a drawing of how, potentially, she would enter and the assaults that would take place. It’s quite a bit of writing to it, I have not read the whole entire manifesto. Our team and the FBI have been working on this,” Drake stated.
While The Star has not obtained this spiral notebook, which is said to contain writings of her operational plan of attack, a portion was leaked and subsequently published by conservative commentator and comedian Steven Crowder last year.
MNPD officers, accompanied by agents from the FBI and the ATF, seized 20 additional journals written by Hale between 2007 and 2022 at the Nashville residence she shared with her parents during a legally authorized search on the afternoon of March 27, 2023, Those journals are said to contain about 1,000 pages. In addition, numerous videos, a suicide note, and duplicate thumb drives containing information she may have wanted police to find were seized that afternoon.
Rather than an ideologically driven composition, the “manifesto” — comprised of The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal, the spiral notebook found in her car, and the 20 journals written between 2007 and 2022 seized from her residence — is better understood as a collection of writings in which Hale sporadically wrote her thoughts in the months and years preceding her devastating attack.
“Our reporting on the Covenant Killer investigation has served the public interest,” Michael Patrick Leahy, the Editor-in-Chief of The Star, said on Tuesday.
“We legally obtained writings by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, MNPD investigation documents, and MNPD crime scene photos from a source familiar with the MNPD investigation in June 2024. These documents and photos have helped us inform the public about the underlying reasons for this heinous attack, and have helped drive the public discussion of what should be done to prevent such acts of violence in the future. We have documented a massive failure of the mental health system as a root cause of Hale’s reprehensible actions,” Leahy added.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Leahy said, “We have had a First Amendment right to publish these documents from the moment we legally obtained them in June 2024.”
We legally obtained this journal – which we refer to as The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal to distinguish it from the many journals written by Hale prior to 2023 – in early June of 2024 from a source familiar with the MNPD investigation. We believe it to be authentic. In addition to our belief, the journal was confirmed as authentic in court by a Metro Nashville Government lawyer in attendance at a June 2024 court hearing, and in a court filing submitted on June 14, 2024 by MNPD Lieutenant Alfredo Alevado. . .
On April 24, 2023, in compliance with the Tennessee Public Records Act, we formally requested of MNPD, a department within the Metro Nashville Davidson County Government, that they release all of the writings of Audrey Elizabeth Hale they had obtained as part of their investigation into the March 27, 2023 murders. Metro Nashville Government denied that request one day later on April 25, 2023, and in May 2023 we filed suit against Metro Nashville Government in Davidson County, Tennessee Chancery Court to obtain those writings, as provided for by the Tennessee Public Records Act. The case was assigned to Judge I’Ashea Myles. In this matter we are well represented by America First Legal and their outstanding local counsel, Nick Barry.
In May 2023, MNPD provided Judge Myles with all of Hale’s writings obtained through their investigation for her in-camera review. On July 4, 2024, Judge Myles released her decision in the case, which was to deny our request, on two grounds: (1) MNPD’s assertion that they were conducting an ongoing investigation into the murders was a statutory exception to the Tennessee Public Records Act which would have allowed our request and (2) The assertion of ownership of Hales’ writings and a subsequent copyright claim stemming from that purported ownership by an intervening group created a non-statutory exception to the Tennessee Public Records Act.
On July 31, 2024 we appealed the trial court’s ruling to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. We expect to win our appeal.
Both Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), which owns and operates The Star, and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy are plaintiffs in both the Tennessee lawsuit which sought to compel MNPD to release Hale’s writings, as well as the federal lawsuit seeking the same from the FBI.
On June 10, prior to announcing her ruling, Judge Myles ordered Leahy to appear in court on June 17 and explain why articles about the contents of Hale’s journal, which were published by The Star between June 5 and June 10 should not subject him to contempt of court charges. At that June 17 hearing, Myles ultimately reversed course, instead holding a “landscaping” hearing about the status of the case, and ignoring the original purpose of the hearing.
In his statement, Leahy explained how these actions had a chilling effect on his First Amendment rights:
On June 10, 2024, five days after we began publishing articles based on The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal, Judge Myles issued a Show Cause Hearing Order to me, requiring me to show up in her courtroom on June 17, 2024 and explain to her why I should not be held in contempt of court for violating a court order. This was a surprising development, given that I have never violated any court order in this case and that the judge never produced the court order upon which the Show Cause Hearing Order was based.
When I appeared in court on June 17, 2024, Judge Myles changed the purpose of the hearing – claiming it was for her to determine “the landscape” of the case – and again refused to identify to my counsel the court order she thought I might be violating. Judge Myles ended that hearing by stating that she would take under consideration both a) her final ruling and b) whether or not she would appoint a “special prosecutor” to investigate and prosecute me for contempt of court – even though there is absolutely no evidence before the court that I have done anything that could be considered contempt of court. This statement, combined with the June 10 Show Cause Hearing Order and the June 17 Show Cause Hearing, have combined to create a chilling effect on my First Amendment rights.
While Judge Myles issued her final ruling on the case itself on July 4, 2024, she has provided no information as to whether she intends to appoint a “special prosecutor” to investigate me. This “Sword of Damocles” has been held over my head by Judge Myles since June 17, 2024, and we have held off on publishing The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal, in part, until our legal defense financial resources have reached a sufficient level such that I can hire counsel to represent me in the event Judge Myles seeks to resurrect this false claim against me. Our legal defense financial resources have just recently reached that level of sufficiency. I am pleased to announce that we are once again ably represented by Daniel Horwitz on the limited issue in which he represented us at the June 17 Show Cause Hearing.
The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal left by Hale in her vehicle and seized by MNPD on March 27, 2023 and legally obtained by The Star in June 2024 provided several revelations about the killer and how she spent the months prior to the attack on the Covenant School.
In various entries that referenced her mental health, Hale confirmed her desire to transition genders, revealed a purported autism diagnosis, claimed she was not “bi-polar,” and wrote that she once called a phone number associated with a Suicide Prevention Helpline five times in one day.
Hale also referenced her therapist in a possible allusion to her status as a 22-year mental health patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), where police documents obtained by The Star reveal she was twice evaluated for commitment.
In other entries, Hale wrote extensively about her gender identity, including a three-page entry the killer titled, “My Imaginary Penis,” in which she wrote about expressing sexual fantasies with stuffed animals.
“I can pretend to be them [and] do the things boys do [and] experience my boy self as Tony,” wrote Hale, adding that she became engrossed in the activities and lost track of time.
“God, I am such a pervert,” she wrote. “I waste too much time in my fantasies.”
Hale also wrote various entries about the attack she planned at the Covenant School, revealing she considered several dates before settling on March 27.
Though the journal offers scant evidence of a political ideology or motive for the attack, Hale wrote a political rant in an entry dated one month prior, when she complained the United States fails to respect the rights of disabled people, gun owners, and transgender people.
“So now [because] of you, I wish death on myself cause of the pure hatred of my female gender.” Hale later wrote, “with no rights, anyone’s country is a s***** dictatorship.”
Hale also confirmed, in various entries, that she had been considering attacking the Covenant School for some time.
In her final journal entry, which Hale appears to have written the morning of her attack, the killer wrote, “There were several times I could have been caught, especially back in the summer of 2021.”
Hale wrote in another entry, “For 5 years I planned to die,” and other journals found in the killer’s home reportedly suggest she began contemplating an attack as a middle school student. Hale was 28 at the time of her death.
Since it first obtained Hale’s journal and a portion of police documents related to the Covenant case, The Star has published more than 100 articles that analyze the killer’s own words or provide new details about the police investigation, including the existence of an FBI memo which “strongly” advised MNPD against releasing “legacy tokens” from killers like Hale. The term would appear to include her writings.
While the FBI declined to confirm it sent the memo, the federal agency told The Star it does send such materials to local law enforcement.
In his statement, Leahy noted that, despite having the First Amendment right to publish Hale’s journal since The Star legally obtained it in June 2024, practical, financial, and legal considerations have accounted for the three month delay between the time the journal was legally obtained and its publication:
Until just recently, the lack of legal representation to address a second potential legal issue also prohibited our publication of The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal. Though they have not registered their copyright claim with the federal government, the intervening group that purports to own Hale’s writings also purports to hold the copyright to those writings. We consider the ownership claim to be dubious at best and the copyright claim to be without merit. We also believe that the fair use doctrine would prohibit the successful litigation of any copyright infringement claim that might be brought against us for publishing this journal. Nonetheless, we chose not to publish the journal until we had secured proper legal representation in the event a frivolous copyright infringement claim were to be brought against us in federal court. I am pleased to announce today that, in the event a copyright infringement claim is brought against us, we are now represented by the Dhillon Group, the premiere law firm in the country representing conservative groups and organizations.
Leahy is expected to appear in a number of media outlets this week to provide further insights to the public on the Covenant Killer investigation.
The MNPD crime scene photos contained in this article were legally obtained by The Tennessee Star in June 2024 from a source familiar with the MNPD investigation.
A “Tennessee Star” watermark was added to the unredacted photos so that readers can be assured of their trustworthy authenticity.
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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].
I am also glad to see the contents left this killer’s mind and it had nothing to do with being abuse at the school but she was a self hating white female and she wanted to kill more people than she actually did she also wanted her thoughts be made public because she told her friend so the day of the attacks. Other killers left manifestos that were publicly released including Dylan Roof and Vester Flannigan who shot two white male and female couple to death almost 10 years ago. Allison Parker was only 24 years old the cameraman was her fiancee in VA.
Strange that this manifesto gets released exactly when another mass shooting occurs.
I smell B.S.
It looks like the prop department at the FBI was given the assignment to recreate Arthur Fleck’s journal.
Fake.
This seems like a prop.
Oh my God….We’re supposed to believe this is real.
Are you serious?
Are all TN judges as incompetent and arbitrary as Judge Myles appears to be? We have some pretty awful judges here in MA, but I don’t know of any who are in the same league as this one.
Anyone who considers themselves “transgender” is seriously mentally ill above all else and belongs in a mental institution. The whole idea is ridiculous and based on intense hate of oneself which is a short step from intense hate of others. As I write this there has been another school shooting in Georgia with 4 dead and 9 wounded, no doubt we will have to wait a year or more to learn the details that are important to the case. The shooter being seriously mentally ill for instance as we saw in this case, or their religion, immigration status, race or any of the other things the left decides cannot be a valid reason for the crime but all too often are what stands alone as the cause of the crime.
The octagonal shape is obviously looking down the barrel of a gun… Note the spiral, black dot in the middle, etc…
For the Octagonal symbol, you might look at the Movie Series, Resident Evil, which features the “umbrella corporation” and this looks like their logo in the movie.
Michael is correct is the fictional Unberella Corporation from the Resident Evil game and movies. Not sure why she used it but it is not Occult symbols at all since I have study that for years in criminology.
Would it be wise to think that trans-genderism is part of a mental health issue ? It appears that way.
Her therapists should be held accountable at some level. 22 journals and these “therapist” had no clue at how dangerous she was to everyone around her? Even after several episodes where there was an attempt to have her committed? Oh, and looks like radioactive symbol to me.
Kudos to you for publishing this and thankful that you have legal representation. It’s reprehensible that lawfare has been directed at you. It’s a typical tactic, mostly done by Democrats, to squelch civil rights and bankrupt individuals or organizations. There needs to be massive consequences for those engaged in this illegal lawfare.
Kudos to you for publishing this and thankful that you have legal representation. It’s reprehensible that lawfare has been directed at you. It’s a typical tactic, mostly done by Democrats, to squelch civil rights and bankrupt individuals or organizations. There needs to be massive consequences for those engaged in this illegal lawfare.
Wow, thank you so much for publishing this.
The public has a right to know. As many have pointed out, other manifestos, public records, random writings, texts, etc have been released for other shooters. Why was this one withheld? I think we all know why.
I almost feel sorry for her, except that she somehow thought she was justified in satisfying her suicide wish by taking innocent lives along with her. She was clearly deeply troubled, obsessed, and needed intense counseling. I feel a bunch of warning signs were probably ignored and there is a whole lot of CYA going on.
Thank you again for this.
Shame on you. You’re not serving the public. You’re disrespecting the families, survivors and the school who all asked for these not to be released. You’re no hero or servant.
The spiritual meaning of an octagon is the connection between earth and heaven, or life and death. It’s used in multiple religions, cults, and cultures. Probably used as a symbol for her planned suicide by cops.
Looks like Hale is a Resident Evil fan. I wouldn’t waste time overthinking the octagonal symbol. The symbol is just the logo of the Umbrella Corporation, a fictional company in Resident Evil lore that is responsible for developing the virus that causes the zombie outbreak.
We must stop the transgender craze. We should have stopped this entire MUSS by not allowing homosexuality to become widely acceptance.
Man, this was one screwed up young woman. How did she get so twisted?
God only knows.
This murderer needed severe counseling and perhaps deserved to be locked up. She was no doubt driven to her tragic Opus by the norms of an ever-expanding Liberal community. Born wrong. If that’s not the most egocentric and narcissistic thing I’ve ever heard–
How much of this has been “edited” by our fine “Law Enforcement” and “Legal” system?
Judge I’Ashea L. Myles is a straight up DEI hire. She’s not running a court; she’s running a circus.
Amen. Myles is a know nothing that believes she knows it all. This “Judge” has no business in a court room. She views this horrific crime as an opportunity to further her career and her desire for fame and fortune. Sick.
Do you see any other reference to the Resident Evil series in her writings? I see their is an Aiden character somewhere in the series. I don’t know much more than surface on RE myself.
“It’s not a mental illness” they said…
That’s the symbol for Umbrella Corporation in Resident Evil game/movie series.
Governor Lee had to have seen the Manifesto, So why did he force a special session on us to take our guns? Why has there been no investigation on what Vanderbilt was doing for 20 years? Did Vanderbilt settle with the school?
certainly more to be investigated here…..
Who is claiming copyright protection and ownership of copyright ? Seems a specious claim.
This is a direct result
of celebrating mental illness
rather than treating it
Thank you for doing real journalism.
The public should hear important information like this to help solve why these issues happen and how to stop them.
I appreciate that you used her correct pronouns. We must live pursue and live in truth.
I believe this is what Audrey was struggling with. She wished to be a boy but knows it’s impossible to do so.
As always, good work TN Starr and we appreciate all you do.
This trans business, IMHO, is a MENTAL ILLNESS, Vandy should be looked at harder for letting this go on as long as it did, esp. when she (Audrey) claimed she thought of suicide the past 4 years…. the ball was dropped by many on many occasions. and this needs to be addressed!
The only thing I do not agree with is your tracking of who downloads the manifesto…why do you need name and address?
The octagon symbol is the symbol of the Unberella Corp. from the Resident Evil series.
Audrey/Aiden stole it.
As far as that octagonal symbol is concerned, I would look in the direction of occult/wicca/witchcraft symbology. Very similar to the New Forest Coven symbol, but may be a derivative.