Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as a transgender man when she killed six on March 27, 2023 at the Christian school she once attended, began considering attacking a school as early as 2019, journal entries released to The Tennessee Star by the FBI on Wednesday reveal.
In a journal entry dated March 11, 2019, just months after Hale determined she was attracted to other women, and just days after she wrote a written confession of her attraction to a former classmate, the killer seemed to express frustration upon realizing her feelings toward a specific individual were unrequited.
“It’s gonna be a long a** time… super long time until I can learn to forgive you,” she wrote, though FBI redactions make the subject of her journal entry unclear. “You act like f*** everyone who doesn’t like my Mr. Lover.”
She then directed her rage toward the Nashville middle school where she first developed a romantic attraction for other members of her basketball team.
“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, before calling it “actually only the rational thing to do.”
She later wrote, “If I was the school shooter of I.T. Creswell (Prep) Middle, then you’d be cured from leprocy [sic] blindness of heart.”
These journal entries notably reflect a period when Hale was considering targeting the middle school. It has been reported that Hale dropped this plan over concerns that she would be suspected of racism.
In an earlier journal, which was part of the those released by the FBI on Wednesday, Hale revealed that these former middle school basketball teammates, who were one grade ahead of Hale in school, previously reassured her that she was not being excluded from their group of friends based on race after they reunited as high school students.
During an interview with Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) detectives, her parents later suggested that Hale’s experiences at the Isiah T. Creswell Middle School were formative, and resulted in a lasting appreciation for black culture.
“She didn’t always exercise good judgment as you can both tell,” the killer’s mother told police. “She went out to this African American neighborhood. I mean I don’t know how long it took her to get out there. It was hot. But it was some kind of celebration.”
After it was noted that Hale used a bicycle to attend the event, which was held during hot weather, the killer’s father speculated at the response of locals attending the event.
He remarked, “What’s this little ol’ white girl doing here riding over here on a bicycle?”
Authorities previously stated that Hale began considering an attack on a school when she was a middle school student herself, though she would have been about 24-years-old when she wrote about becoming a school shooter.
Both The Star and its editor-in-chief, Michael Patrick Leahy, first sued the FBI to compel the release of Hale’s writings in May 2023. The Star settled the lawsuit in June, when the FBI pledged to release redacted versions of the killer’s writings.
This release comes nearly one year after The Star published a legally obtained, unredacted version of the killer’s 2023 journal.
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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 Hale” by Metro Nashville PD.
