A day after the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department denied The Tennessee Star’s request for mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s manifesto, an official says the department has entered a “stage” of considering how to release the controversial documents.
“The investigation is now at the stage that we are beginning the close review/preparation process for the public release of written material,” Metro Nashville PD spokeswoman Brooke Reese wrote in an email Wednesday to The Tennessee Star.
Reese did not provide a timeline on when the documents — and in what form — would be released.
Nearly a month after Hale, a 28-year-old woman who identified as a transgender male, stormed into The Covenant Presbyterian School and shot and killed three 9-year-olds and three adults before being shot dead by Nashville police officers, the “close review/preparation process’ feels like a slow walk of information critical to the public’s understanding of the heinous crime.
On Tuesday, the police department rejected The Tennessee Star’s open records request, because the case “remains open,’ despite the fact that Hale died in the March 27 incident.
The police department’s denial raised more questions about why local and federal law enforcement officials have been slow to release the transgender Hale’s “blueprint of destruction” at the Christian private elementary school.
Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO of Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network, asked Governor Bill Lee and Nashville Mayor John Cooper to request that the Metro Nashville Police Department “immediately release the manifesto and all related written documents obtained in the search of the residence and vehicle of the murderer Audrey Hale because it is in the public interest to do so.”
As The Tennessee Star reported Wednesday, Tennessee Republicans are calling for the release of the manifesto before entering into a special legislative session focused on gun control. That session was called by Lee, who is seeking to implement “Order of Protection” laws, commonly known as Red Flag Laws.
State Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has filed a public records request with the Metro Nashville Police Department to obtain information about the manifesto.
During a search of the house Hale shared with her parents, authorities seized 20 journals, five laptops, a suicide note and various other notes written by Hale as well as two memoirs, five Covenant School yearbooks and seven cellphones, a search warrant shows.
Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston has said the FBI has already ruled the manifesto would not be released in its entirety.
“What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned,” she told The New York Post.
The Star News Network has also filed a Freedom of Information Request seeking Hale’s manifesto from the FBI, which is assisting local law enforcement officials in the investigation.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Image “Audrey Elizabeth Hale at Covenant School: by Metro Nashville Police Department.
Give.Me.A.Break!! We all know why this manifesto is “controversial. Had this woman went on and on about how Trump and the MAGA republicans stoked her to do this mass murder, it would have already been released and headlining all the lapdog liberal news stations, 24/7.
But since it most likely shows how the Democrats groom these transgenders, and make them mentall unstable with their rhetoric and dog whistle call to arms, it’s now “controversial”.
We were told in the beginning it would be released. I understand the FBI has their hands all over this manifesto. So, you know the FBI is protecting Biden and the Democrats. Just release it in it’s entirety. NO blacking out anything. WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW.