Quick Hit:

The full "manifesto" left behind by Audrey Hale, the Covenant School shooter, has been released, revealing details about her mental state and the planning behind the attack that killed six people in March 2023.

Key Details:

• The full 90-page "manifesto" of Audrey Hale, the Covenant School shooter, has been released.
• Hale's writings reveal her struggles with mental health, gender identity, and her planning of the deadly attack.
• The documents provide insight into the events leading up to the March 2023 attack that killed three children and three adults. 

Diving Deeper:

The Tennessee Star has published the full "manifesto" left behind by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the transgender shooter who carried out the deadly attack on the Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023. The release of this 90-page document offers new insights into Hale's troubled mind and the events leading up to the tragic attack that resulted in the deaths of three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members.

The "manifesto," which includes Hale's 2023 journal, was legally obtained by The Tennessee Star from a source familiar with the MNPD investigation in June 2024. The journal was discovered in Hale's vehicle by officers after the attack, alongside a spiral notebook. The writings, spanning from January to March 2023, detail Hale's internal struggles with mental health and gender identity. Hale, born a biological female, identified as a transgender male and often signed journal entries with the name "Aiden."

Hale's journal reveals her distress over her mental state, writing, "Why does my brain not work right? Cause I was born wrong!!!" Throughout the entries, Hale expresses a deep sense of alienation and dissatisfaction with her life. In one chilling entry written in March 2023, just weeks before the attack, she declared, "Soon I will leave this world! You [and] your friends will be just fine. Does it even matter if I am alive?" This entry also features a recurring octagonal symbol that Hale associated with her planned attack.

While the journal offers limited evidence of a political motive, Hale did express grievances against various societal issues, including the treatment of disabled people, gun owners, and transgender individuals in the United States. However, these entries were sporadic and not indicative of an overarching ideological motivation for the attack.

Hale's final journal entry, written on the morning of the attack, suggests she had been planning the event for years, stating, "There were several times I could have been caught, especially back in the summer of 2021." Other journals found in Hale's home indicate that she had been contemplating such an act since her middle school years.

The release of these documents by The Tennessee Star has reignited public discussion about the failures of the mental health system and the need for preventative measures to avoid such tragedies in the future. Michael Patrick Leahy, Editor-in-Chief of The Tennessee Star, emphasized the public's right to know the underlying reasons for this heinous act, stating, "Our reporting on the Covenant Killer investigation has served the public interest."