Audrey Hale ‘expressed a desire to primarily kill children’
The transgender-identified shooter who murdered six people at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, chose the school for its young, defenseless students, its Christian identity and geographic isolation, believing these factors would maximize notoriety and “time to kill,” investigators say.
A report released last week by the Metro Nashville Police Department on the Covenant School massacre in March 2023 shows the now-deceased shooter, Audrey Hale — a 28-year-old woman who used “he/him” pronouns — had multiple notebooks, art sketchbooks and computer documents that detailed her attack plans.
Hale had hoped to gain publicity from the tragic shooting, the report noted, and investigators believe she was inspired by the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, as evidenced by her writings.
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The shooting resulted in the deaths of three third-grade students and three adult staff members: Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, all 9; and Katherine Koonce, 60; Cynthia Peak, 61; and Mike Hill, 61.
While Hale “gender identified as a male and used he/him as preferred pronouns,” the report finds Hale “openly identified as lesbian” and describes Hale as “a biological female at the time of her death.”
Investigators refer to Hale throughout the report as a female, according to Tennessee law, which states that “a person’s gender identity must correspond with their biological sex or with information present.”
Hale was known to have made “statements about wanting to transition genders” and went by the masculine name “Aiden Williams” in the years leading up to the shooting. But investigators say there was no evidence that Hale “initiated or was undergoing a transition at the time of her death, including medical documentation.”
According to investigators, while she was still in the early stages of planning the attack, Hale had been “fantasizing” about and researching Columbine and other mass shootings since 2017. A year later, she wrote “detailed fantasies” about shooting up the Isaac T. Creswell Middle Magnet School for the Arts. She also wrote about murdering her father and her psychiatrist.
Hale initially planned to attack Creswell MS on April 13, 2021, a date investigators say Hale selected to honor the Columbine attack, which occurred on April 13, 1999. But on April 8, Hale changed the target from Creswell to the Covenant School, which, according to the report, she chose because it was more “geographically isolated … which she felt would give her more time to kill” and is a private Christian school, which would bring her “more notoriety.”
Investigators say Hale was also “afraid she would be seen as racist” if she attacked Creswel MS “due to the student body … being predominantly black,” which “would affect how much control she had over the narrative after her death and allow others to state her motive.”
Authorities found a lack of any allegations of bullying by Hale, eliminating that as a possible motive for the shooting. Instead, investigators concluded Hale’s motive was notoriety and not mere suicide driven by depression from personal disappointments.
Hale did not target anyone specifically beyond their ages and the “potential level of notoriety she would obtain from their deaths,” the report states. “She felt the murders of children would greatly increase her renown. She also felt targeting a school or location known for economic affluence would garner her more attention. Beyond those factors, she didn’t care who she killed. In short, she killed those she encountered along her path without regard of any other factors.”
In fact, investigators say Hale “openly expressed a desire to primarily kill children,” but limited her “viable targets” only to those over 7 years of age. “ “She felt the younger children were too young to understand the difference between good and evil or how the world was structured, which made killing them especially cruel,” the report added.
However, the report appeared to contradict its findings, stating that Hale “reiterated her belief that the race, religion, gender, or other demographical categories of her victims wouldn’t matter, provided most of her victims would be children. She openly acknowledged none of those she would kill were guilty of anything and denied any personal motivation for targeting them. She felt their deaths were necessary to give her death meaning.”
That stark assessment also took into account the faith of her victims, whom Hale believed “were too young to effectively fight back or flee far” despite concerns about the school’s layout.
“She believed the Christian faith of those within would make them meek and afraid, which further assuaged Hale’s self-doubts,” the report states. “The age of the children and the school being considered a Christian school made her recognize the instant notoriety the attack would bring.”
Meanwhile, authorities say a so-called “manifesto” that was “leaked” last September was, in fact, not authentic. The document, initially reported by YouTuber Steven Crowder and the Tennessee Star, “didn’t exist,” according to the report.
“Hale never left behind a single document explaining why she committed the attack, why she specifically targeted The Covenant, and what she hoped to gain, if anything, with the attack,” the report states.
Crowder has since deleted social media posts on X regarding the supposed “manifesto.” Star News Digital Media, which owns and operates The Tennessee Star, continues in its legal efforts to compel Nashville police and the FBI to release the entirety of Hale’s writing, which the Star claims number more than 900 pages in total.
