The Tennessee Star released the full diary of Audrey Hale, who murdered six people in March 2023 at a Christian school in Nashville, on Tuesday.
The journal is nearly 100 pages long, and its contents reflect that Hale, who identified as transgender, had a hatred for society and was deeply disturbed by her belief that she was born in the wrong body. The Star’s decision to publish the journal in full comes amid an ongoing legal battle between The Covenant School and families of the victims, who did not want the journal to be released, and organizations that wanted the documents to be in the public domain, according to CNN.
“Today is the day. The day has finally come! I can’t believe its (sic) here. Don’t know how I was able to get this far, but here I am,” reads an entry dated March 27, 2023, the day of the shooting. “Im (sic) a little nervous, but excited too. Been excited for the past 2 weeks. There were several times I could have been caught, especially back in the summer of 2021. None of that matters now. Im (sic) almost an hour + 7 minutes away. Can’t believe Im doing this, but Im (sic) ready… I hope my victims aren’t.”
Hale Journal (Unredacted) by Nick Pope
Hale used the word “f****t” to describe Jesus Christ and her father, fantasized about interracial sexual relations and made references to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in her diary. The diary published Tuesday does not include highly-detailed attack plans, which is contrary to what the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reportedly told a local politician was a reason for not releasing the manifesto to the public.
Hale is known to have written in many other journals beyond the one published Tuesday, according to CNN.
The Star legally obtained the diary published Tuesday in June from a source familiar with the investigation into the shooting, the outlet said. The document’s authenticity was confirmed by an attorney for the city of Nashville attending a court hearing and in a legal filing.
Authorities recovered Hale’s computers and notebooks, including the diary, shortly after the shooting, but would not release the journal or other documents to the public at the time. Several organizations filed public records requests and subsequently sued when those requests were rejected, according to CNN.
A group of Covenant School parents were allowed to intervene in the case, arguing that the records should not be released because doing so would potentially inspire copycat attacks and be a traumatic development for the victims’ families, CNN reported. Hale’s parents transferred ownership of the records to the parents’ group, which enabled its lawyers to argue that the parents owned the relevant copyright and could fight against the records’ release into the public domain.
Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles ruled in July that the school and the parents’ group held the copyright to Hale’s writings and that the journal could not be released, a decision that the Star appealed on the last day of July.
In the attack on The Covenant School, Hale shot and killed three 9-year-old schoolchildren and three adults. Metropolitan Nashville Police Department officers entered the school building and killed Hale.
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