Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as a transgender man when she killed six at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023, complained in two newly released journal entries about her father’s interest in “dumb politics” and President Donald Trump.
Though Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) determined the killer was sane and motivated by a desire for fame in its April report on the Covenant investigation, the journals seem to suggest that Hale’s mental state deteriorated over years, including the weeks prior to her 2019 evaluation for commitment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), where MNPD documents obtained by The Tennessee Star last year revealed that Hale told a staff member she fantasized about killing her father.
Journal entries released to The Star by the FBI last week offer new insight into Hale’s frustrations with her father, which ranged from her fantastic claims of demonic possession, to more mundane complaints about his consumption of political media.
Hale seemed to celebrate her father securing new employment in an entry written on May 17, 2019, when she celebrated that his time in the family home would diminish.
“In a sense [redacted] was there but not really doin’ s*** – going on the internet, watching that dumb politics Donald Trump bulls*** more than once a day,” wrote Hale.
Though the names were redacted by the FBI, the killer wrote about an individual who she lived with during a period when the killer lived in her family home with only her parents.
The killer then listed a series of grievances against her father, ranging from his preferred meal for lunch to his alleged bathroom habits, before eventually attributing his purported faults to her paternal grandmother, who she seemed to indicate hoarded miscellaneous items.
“I blame [redacted] for that. I hated coming over to her trashy house to visit when she was alive,” wrote Hale. “Papers all over, nasty fridge, dirty bathroom f***** smells like mildew [and] mice poop.”
Hale next referenced her father’s consumption of political media in a nearby, though undated, entry, which appears to have also been written in May 2019.
Expressing her dismay at the thought of her father taking a sick day from work, she wrote, “You call in sick means you’ll stay home ALL DAY watchin’ that politics bulls*** [with] those talking head ear infection creators.”
Less than one month after writing these entries, Hale wrote another journal entry about her evaluation for potential commitment at VUMC, where a document referencing patient notes, written by the former MNPD detective who filed the subpoena for the notes from VUMC, claims the killer told a medical professional that she fantasized about killing her father.
In a potential violation of Tennessee’s duty to warn law, this mental health worker neglected to inform the Hale family of their daughter’s homicidal fantasies, and they were not informed she entertained such ideas until a police interview conducted months after the killer’s death.
“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,” said one MNPD investigator.
A second told Hale’s father, “We’ll be open, it was, she wanted to kill you.”
As written at the time of the attack, Tennessee’s duty to warn law required doctors to inform intended victims of a patient’s violent plans. The law has since been strengthened to require reports be made directly to law enforcement, with State Representative Jason Zachery (R-Knoxville) attributing the change to lessons learned from the attack on the Covenant School.
The FBI released these journal entries following more than two years of litigation against the agency from both Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy and Star News Digital Media, Inc (SNDM), the parent company of The Star, which had settled their lawsuit in June, as the FBI pledged to release redacted versions of more of the killer’s writings.
The Star exclusively published the killer’s unredacted 2023 journal last September after the outlet legally obtained it, as well as a series of MNPD investigative documents, earlier that year.
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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].
