Covenant School killer Audrey Hale wrote extensively about a former classmate and friend who died suddenly following a 2022 vehicle accident, seemingly detailing fantasies in which they would reunite after Hale’s death.
The Tennessee Star confirmed on Wednesday it obtained dozens of pages of Hale’s writings that were recovered from her vehicle after her March 27, 2023 attack that claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adults working at the school.
Hale, who was 28 at the time of her death, wrote extensively through the journal about Sydney Sims, a former middle school and high school classmate who The New York Post reported died following a 2022 vehicle accident.
There are no entries within the journal which indicate Hale maintained regular contact with Sims (pictured above) after both graduated high school, but a former classmate of both women told the Post last year, “After Sydney’s tragic death, Audrey was really heartbroken over it … I just feel like she took it differently than some of us did. She was still posting about Sydney almost daily” to social media.
According to the classmate, Hale admired Sims to the point of “infatuation.” She told The Post, “That’s specifically who [Hale] really, really looked up to.”
In an undated entry early in the journal, which Hale seems to have started in January 2023, she wrote, “I know Sydney is waiting for me. My time is coming soon to leave this realm behind – all my pain.” She then wrote, “no more wounds to heal, because we will become whole.”
Earlier on the same page, she wrote, “In time, we will be together again… in a better place. When our time is up in this world.”
Hale appeared to reference Sims, or at least reuniting after death, just two pages later.
“Love will find me once my body loses me (I will be whole again),” Hale wrote, adding, “our hearts will truly be together again.”
Later in the entry, Hale wrote, “your body glows soft as an angel down here. You look perfect. I imagine you in Heaven.”
Hale also referenced Sims in two subsequent January 2023 entries, including one that again referenced her passing and physical pain.
“Sydney is gone but my f****** dad is still alive,” Hale wrote on January 19, 2023. She then wrote, “it should be the other way around.”
None of Hale’s writings reviewed by The Star indicate mistreatment from Hale’s father, and later in the entry, Hale appeared to express frustration with her father over his apparent desire for her to accept Sims’ death.
“Father is delusional,” Hale wrote. She continued, “tells me ‘it gets better’ you don’t feel good every damn day.” Elsewhere in the entry, Hale wrote, “everything hurts.”
In a January 20, 2023 entry, Hale wrote, “Syd would want me to be happy, but I can’t be.”
Hale again referenced Sims in a lengthy journal entry, dated February 7, 2023, in which she wrote about a range of topics related to her life.
She wrote, “I can’t be consistent [with] anything since I left school. And since Syd died – all my efforts feel meaningless cause I don’t work enough, don’t make enough, don’t do enough.”
The last entry that could reference Sims, which also seems to contain evidence of the “infatuation” reported by the Post, appears to have been written within two weeks of Hale’s attack on the Covenant School, when she wrote, “maybe, just maybe you’ll give a kiss to me in heaven. God knows I can’t get it down here.”
Hale was a biological female who identified as a transgender male. In another entry, Hale called herself the “most unhappy boy alive” and lamented, “I will be of no use of love for any girl if I don’t have what they need: boy’s body / male gender.”
Star News Digital Media, Inc., the parent company of The Star, and editor-in-chief Michael Patrick Leahy are plaintiffs in lawsuits which seek to compel the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and the FBI to release Hale’s full writings, including those some have called a manifesto.
On Wednesday, The Star published an FBI memo sent to MNPD Chief John Drake in May 2023 which “strongly” advised against releasing “legacy tokens” left by people like Hale and raised the precedent for their destruction.
An FBI definition suggests both the writings obtained by The Star and those sought in the lawsuits are considered “legacy tokens” by the federal agency.
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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].
