Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale made a list of activities to complete prior to March 27, 2023, when she committed the devastating attack which claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adults.
The Tennessee Star confirmed on Wednesday it obtained dozens of pages of Hale’s writings that were recovered from the vehicle she drove to the school from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation.
One of the pages obtained by The Star contains a list Hale titled “Week Before Death Day (March 20th-26th).”
Hale’s list contains seven activities that she apparently sought to complete before her attack on the school.
The first item on Hale’s list was a visit to a popular Nashville book and game store. Hale then wrote that she wanted to play a video game about skateboarding.
Third on Hale’s list was, “Look at all my toys [and animals,” likely referencing the stuffed animals she described using to simulate heterosexual intercourse in another entry, titled “My Imaginary Penis.”
Hale’s fourth entry involved viewing two films by director Gus Van Sant, who has been praised for his exploration of “gay identities explicitly” in cinema. One of his movies, “Milk,” is described by Birmingham LGBT as “an emotional biopic of gay rights activist Harvey Milk,” who was accused of being a sexual predator that targeted young men.
The fifth item on Hale’s list was a visit to a gun range.
Sixth, Hale wrote that she wanted to watch a number of her favorite movies, including My Friend Dahmer, a 2017 dramatic retelling of the high school years of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Some critics questioned whether the film romanticized the killer, who admitted to killing 17 men before he was caught, with one critic noting, “The movie continuously suggests that if it were for a different upbringing, a nurturing family, friends who didn’t take advantage of his sociopathic behavior and therapists who recognized his pain, Dahmer could have and would have been ‘just like you.'”
The only item from Hale’s list which she did not signify completing was the final, seventh item. Hale wrote that she planned to listen to music “that I have not listened to yet.”
Hale claimed elsewhere in her writings that she planned her attack on the Covenant School for five years, and she reportedly began considering a school attack as a middle school student.
In the last entry in Hale’s journal, titled “Death Day,” Hale wrote, “I’m a little nervous, but excited too. Been excited for the past 2 weeks.” She also claimed she “could have been caught” preparing for her attack multiple times, “especially back in the summer of 2021.”
Both Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Star, and editor-in-chief Michael Patrick Leahy are plaintiffs in lawsuits to compel the full release of Hale’s writings by the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and the FBI, including those called a manifesto by some.
The Star on Wednesday published an FBI memo sent to MNPD Chief John Drake that “strongly” warned against releasing “legacy tokens” from individuals like Hale. According to an FBI definition, “legacy tokens” likely refer to all of Hale’s written materials, including those obtained by The Star and those sought in the lawsuits.
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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].
