Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale created duplicates of materials she wanted to be discovered by Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD), a detective told the killer’s parents in a June 12, 2023 interview, according to a transcript obtained by The Tennessee Star.
The interview was conducted by three MNPD detectives, who were investigating the Covenant case, and included both Ronald and Norma Hale, the parents of Audrey Hale, and their attorney David Raybin.
One of the investigators told Ronald and Norma Hale their daughter left a number of flash drives and two journals in the vehicle she drove to the Covenant School, where she claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members before she was heroically shot by police.
The detective explained, “I do not think that [Audrey Hale] wanted us to find” the journals she left in the family home. He contrasted the approximately 18 journals recovered from the Hale family home with the two journals police recovered from the vehicle.
“I believe what she left for us, because she left her keys in the car on the seat. She didn’t take her keys in the school,” the detective explained, adding that Audrey Hale left “the phone and flash drives and two journals” in the unlocked vehicle.
Elsewhere in the interview, the same detective told Ronald and Norma Hale that she duplicated the contents of her flash drives.
“It’s almost like if one’s corrupt here’s another one.” The detective confirmed, “You know, we believe she wanted us to have those.”
The flash drives apparently contained mundane videos of Audrey Hale, including video of the killer playing basketball. Other videos featured her talking into the camera, but according to the detective, showed Audrey Hale “manipulating a rifle and charging a rifle and breaking one down.”
During the course of the investigation, the detectives additionally told Ronald and Norma Hale their daughter “felt close” to those behind the Columbine High School attack in 1999, and created her own version of the Columbine Tapes.
Michael Patrick Leahy, who is the editor-in-chief of The Star and the CEO of Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), vowed to appeal after Tennessee Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea L. Myles ruled against him on Thursday in the lawsuit to compel Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to release Audrey Hale’s writings.
Both Leahy and SNDM remain plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit against the FBI which similarly seeks the full release of Audrey Hale’s writings, including those sometimes called a manifesto.
Last month, The Star published an FBI memo which “strongly’ advised MNPD Chief John Drake against releasing any “legacy tokens” from killers like Audrey Hale. An FBI definition suggests both the journal obtained by The Star and those sought in the lawsuits are considered unfit for public release by the federal agency.
The FBI declined to confirm it sent the memo in a statement to The Star, but stated that it sends such “products” to local law enforcement.
Since The Star obtained Audrey Hale’s journal and a tranche of police documents, it has published more than 60 articles that include the killer’s writings or provide new details about the Covenant investigation, including the revelation the killer was a 22-year mental health patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
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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].
Photo “Audrey Elizabeth Hale” by Nossi School of Fine Art.
“Unfit for public release” says an unelected bureaucracy to their EMPLOYERS under whose LAWFUL authority they are to operate? This is absurd and criminal impudence toward a free and independent People and the law passed and enacted by their duly elected officials.