A newly released journal entry written by Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, made public last week by the FBI to The Tennessee Star, reveals that the killer viewed her sexuality, and specifically her status as a self-identified transgender person, as an opposing force to her Christian faith.
Written more than three years prior to her March 27, 2023, attack on the Covenant School, where she killed six, Hale dated the entry May 6, 2019, and while she began by discussing religion, she concluded by writing about school shooters.
“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,” wrote Hale.
Just seven days earlier, on April 29, 2019, the killer wrote in her journal about purportedly experiencing gender dysphoria, and her decision to identify as a transgender man.
“I feel I have gender dysphoria. I think I know where I am on the LGBTQ spectrum. I am transgender,” wrote Hale. “All of the symptoms, or at least most of them, I feel represented my feelings.”
She wrote in the April journal entry, “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,” and said she felt as though, “the Devil has cursed me with having something f***** up like this, considering this is one of the ‘sinful acts of nature’ of God’s terms in the Bible.”
The killer would again relate “the devil” to her gender identity in the May journal entry.
She wrote, “I can sense the devil every day taunting me to think about ending my life – that I am worthless in beautiful people [and] useless of others time – friends I have that I really can’t call them that or lean on to.”
While she twice described transgenderism as an opposing force to Christianity, and suggested the devil was tempting her throughout various entries written in 2018 and 2019, Hale nonetheless came to the conclusion that God would not cease loving her due to her sexuality in the May journal entry.
“I ask… would God still love me if I am gay? I think… He does. He never lets me down. His love never fails,” wrote Hale.
Despite her conclusion, Hale would conclude the entry by describing her fantasy of attacking a school.
She wrote, “My fantasies grow as I relate to infamous school shooters. I either leave a mark on those I know [and] don’t know by being remembered as a heartless crime I committed, or, I am not remembered by what I have done that’s been self sacrificing, though God has never left me.”
This was not Hale’s only journal entry to reference plans to commit a school shooting during this period. The first entry to contain such references was dated March 11, 2019, and was written shortly after she began identifying as a lesbian.
“It’s not like me who says f*** all racists that bullied me in middle school who didn’t understand me, so I fantasize to be a school shooter at I.T. Creswell,” wrote the killer, referencing the middle school she attended a decade prior.
The next month, Hale would complain that society does not adequately sympathize with those who commit such shootings.
“I hate how people don’t accept school shooters for their chronic psychiatric condition,” she wrote, adding, “In a way I think like them.”
These entries all notably occurred in the months before Hale wrote a journal entry describing her evaluation for potential commitment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), where a Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) investigative document suggests the killer told a mental health professional that she fantasized about killing her father and committing an act of mass violence.
Nonetheless, Hale’s father was not informed of his daughter’s homicidal fantasies until months after her death, when the parents were interviewed by MNPD investigators.
These entries were released following more than two years of litigation from both The Star editor-in-chief, Michael Patrick Leahy, and Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Star. The lawsuit was settled in June, when the FBI pledged to release redacted versions of more of the killer’s writings.
An unredacted version of Hale’s 2023 journal was legally obtained by The Star last year and was exclusively published in 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].
This is a tragic situation. It’s important to understand the struggles people face but also to remember the impact on the victims and community.
Tragic to see her inner conflict turn into violence. Shows how badly we need stronger mental health support.
Her/His mental illness drove this whole problem. The so called doctor’s failure to help or lock up this person helped her/him to kill. After YEARS of treatment, what we all have to show for it is death, and a coverup as to why this happened.