Reports surfaced on Monday claiming that Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as a transgender man during the March 27, 2023, attack where she killed six, harbored hatred toward white people, following news that the FBI conditionally released her writings to an independent journalist, barring publication of the actual pages.
This release came months after The Tennessee Star obtained Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) case files, which revealed that Hale’s parents attributed her feelings on race to her years in Metro Nashville Public Schools.
Last year, The Star obtained and published Audrey Hale’s 2023 journal, originally labeled a manifesto by police, which revealed the killer’s deep focus on transgenderism, mental health diagnoses, and an obsession with friends she had largely lost contact with after middle school.
On Monday, about 10 months after The Star obtained the killer’s 2023 journal, journalist and commentator Megyn Kelly said she received the entirety of the 1,299 pages written by Audrey Hale, which she reported also included entries expressing hatred toward white people.
“Being white sucks, but being black is so cool. Black people should rule. White people should fall, every white person who lived and died. I hate you all,” Audrey Hale reportedly wrote. Kelly did not assign dates to the killer’s entries.
Audrey Hale reportedly wrote in other entries of her desire to “kill my own race” and “destroy all the white people who are teachers.”
The killer’s parents, Ronald Hale and Norma Hale, were questioned about their daughter’s animosity toward white people during their July 2023 interview with MNPD, according to the transcript of the interview The Star legally obtained in June 2024.
Ronald Hale and Norma Hale were first questioned about their daughter’s feelings on race by former MNPD Detective Bobby Samuels, who left the department and Tennessee at the beginning of 2024 when he asked the parents about two of the members of Audrey Hale’s middle school basketball team.
The former teammates are black, and The Star previously reported that the killer obsessed over them until the March 2023 attack, which ended with her death.
“They were very kind to her,” said Norma Hale of two particular teammates that befriended her daughter more than a decade earlier. “They would invite her over at Christmas, exchange gifts.”
These teammates were a year older than Audrey Hale, and the killer’s mother seemed to suggest that Audrey Hale felt abandoned when they moved on with their lives, resorting to repeatedly sending messages and calling to maintain some level of communication.
“But I would notice that all of a sudden Sydney and Taylor or whatever, they had — they got new phone numbers,” Norma Hale told the MNPD detectives. “I’m imaging that Audrey would call them too much, text them too much, that kind of thing. And so it seemed — you know, it seemed to be okay. It seemed like she had kind of let that go. I don’t think she ever did.”
After Audrey Hale received some degree of social acceptance from her middle school basketball team, which largely consisted of black students, Ronald Hale and Norma Hale suggested their daughter developed an appreciation for black culture.
“She didn’t always exercise good judgment as you can both tell. And 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,” Norma Hale recollected.
“I can only imagine the brothers out there celebrating and going,” said Norma Hale, before her husband finished the thought. “What’s this little ol’ white girl doing here riding over here on a bicycle?”
Though Audrey Hale attended the Covenant School until the fifth grade, a private, Christian institution in Nashville, the killer’s parents explained to detectives that they wanted their daughter to attend a public school that would cater to her innate artistic talent.
Norma Hale told the detectives, “We wanted her to go to this arts magnet in middle school. And the thing is, they change locations. So when she went in 5th grade, they moved out to Bordeaux. And so a lot of—unfortunately, a lot of the white children who had gone to the school when it was over.”
She added, “I think, somehow, maybe in her mind — you know, she felt because of being in this school, and on this athletic team, and these girls, you know, liked her and were on the team… she felt accepted.”
The decision by the FBI to conditionally release the documents to Kelly came about one week after MNPD concluded its investigation and released its final 48-page report on the Covenant killings, ending more than two years of investigation.
It also comes as Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), which owns and operates The Star, and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy continue their active federal lawsuit against the FBI, which seeks to compel the agency to release the killer’s full writings.
After the agency released them conditionally to Kelly, attorney Dan Lennington at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which represents Leahy and SNDM in the lawsuit, contacted the Department of Justice (DOJ) to demand answers. The FBI previously argued that not one page of the killer’s writings was fit for public release, prompting a federal judge to sequester the 1,299 pages for a private review in April 2024.
In response to Lennington’s inquiry, a Department of Justice attorney on Monday claimed to have no knowledge of the decision.
The Star additionally contacted MNPD Public Affairs Director Don Aaron, who did not directly answer when asked whether the agency consulted MNPD prior to its decision to release the killer’s writings, but referred The Star to the DOJ and FBI. In response to a Monday press inquiry, the FBI referred The Star to the DOJ.
Among the MNPD investigative documents obtained by The Star at the same time it obtained the killer’s 2023 journal last year was also a memo sent by the FBI, which “strongly” advised MNPD Chief John Drake against releasing any of the killer’s “legacy tokens,” which the FBI defines as any item left by a mass killer to explain their actions.
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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].
