Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as a transgender man when she killed six at the Christian school she once attended on March 27, 2023, wrote a journal entry to mark her evaluation for potential commitment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in 2019, as revealed new entries released by the FBI to The Tennessee Star last week.
Though The Star last year broke that Hale was evaluated for possible commitment at VUMC, during which time police notes indicate she told a medical professional that she fantasized about killing her father, this entry is the first which reveals how the killer experienced the evaluation in her own words.
With the preceding page redacted by the FBI, the killer began describing her trip to VUMC on June 20, 2019, when she wrote that she had to withdraw from her classes at the Nossi College of Art and Design in Nashville due to her mental state.
On the next page, Hale described what led to the decision.
“I was referred to Vanderbilt Mental Hospitalization yesterday and had to go for an assessment at their psychiatric base center,” wrote Hale.
She then expressed her fear of commitment, writing, “I was kind of scared that they would make me stay over there for a week which didn’t happen.”
When the killer’s parents were later interviewed by Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD), they claimed their daughter was not committed due to concerns related to her purported diagnosis with autism spectrum disorder.
She wrote, “At first I was also angry at my therapist for believing I needed more intensive care. I was also just angry at my life too and where my life holds right now,” before ultimately expressing optimism that her treatment, following the visit to VUMC, would be successful.
“I’ll just have to be hopeful for the good that will come out of it. Maybe, just maybe, my depression will hold off its weight on me and I can return being a more loving person rather than an angry, resentful person who hates those who hurt me,” wrote the killer.
Hale, who was a 22-year mental health patient at the time of her death, notably did not write about her apparent admission, during this evaluation, that she engaged in violent fantasies about her father, as was determined by former MNPD Detective Bobby Samuels in the investigative document titled, “Vandy Psych,” which was written after Samuels successfully obtained a search warrant for Hale’s files from the institution.
“Thoughts of killing Dad in and struggles with mental health,” wrote the detective, citing page 38 of the VUMC documents. “Recent thoughts of going into a school and shooting a bunch of people.”
Samuels next wrote Hale considered herself misunderstood, “and felt like she needed to prove a point.” The former detective wrote, “Homicidal thoughts with a plan.”
He later wrote, “Has homicidal thoughts, such as shooting a school… Homicidal thoughts of killing her father.”
Despite Hale apparently sharing these homicidal fantasies with a mental health professional at VUMC in 2019, her father was not informed by the hospital in a potential violation of Tennessee’s duty to warn law.
Her father was not informed of the homicidal ideation until months after Hale committed the attack, when MNPD detectives interviewed the parents as part of their investigation.
“She wanted to create a diversion after the incident to make it out of the school but to come back and harm dad, I believe kill you is what she,” said one detective, before he was interrupted by another investigator.
The second investigator informed the parents, “We’ll be open, it was, she wanted to kill you.”
Hale’s mother replied that the revelation was new information, and that she never displayed “any kind of rage” the parents thought would rise to the level of murder.
At the time of the attack on the Covenant School, Tennessee’s duty to warn law required medical professionals to inform a patient’s intended victim of homicidal plans. Those who violated the law could have been sued in civil court.
The law was successfully strengthened through legislation passed last year, when State Representative Jason Zachery (R-Knoxville) said the attack on the Covenant School was a direct motivation during an appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“I had a friend reach out to me who lives in Nashville, whose children went to the Covenant School,” said Zachery. “They reached out and asked if they could come to Knoxville to talk about something that they had discovered, and so we met at Panera on Cedar Bluff in Knoxville and they literally laid out duty to warn, duty to report, and it requires a mental health practitioner to report If somebody makes a threat against a clearly identified victim. But then it stops. it’s super vague, super short.”
Zachery told Michael Patrick Leahy, the editor-in-chief of The Star, that the Covenant father and others provided a recommended change to the law in order to require medical professionals to report homicidal fantasies to law enforcement.
The FBI released this latest tranche of the killer’s writings after more than two years of litigation by Leahy and Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), which owns and operates The Star, which sought to compel the federal agency to release the killer’s writings. The lawsuit was settled in June, when the FBI pledged to release redacted versions of the killer’s writings.
The Star first published a legally obtained, unredacted version of Hale’s 2023 journal 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].
Image “Audrey Elizabeth Hale” by Nossi School of Fine Art and “VUMC” is by VUMC.
