Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, disagrees with the Metro Nashville Police Department’s (MNPD) conclusion that 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the self-identified transgender man who carried out the Covenant School shooting on March 27, 2023, committed the attack while she was “sane” and out of her desire for “notoriety.”
Last week, MNPD announced the conclusion of its more than two-year investigation into the shooting by releasing a 48-page report, which ultimately concluded that Hale, despite identifying as a transgender man and being a 22-year mental health patient, was “sane” and carried out the pre-planned attack based on her desire for “notoriety.”
On page 37 of the report, MNPD writes:
In short, the motive determined over the course of the investigation was notoriety…Hale longed for her name and actions to be remembered long after she was dead. She wanted absolute control of the narrative surrounding the attack, particularly her motives.
Despite MNPD’s conclusion, the report, however, revealed that the department did not work to obtain Hale’s full and complete mental health treatment history, as it said “not all of Hale’s mental health records were able to be obtained during the investigation due to factors outside of the control of the MNPD Homicide Unit.”
Page 35 of the report reads:
As detectives were preparing to obtain records from Hale’s third and final therapist, as well as an eating disorder clinic which treated her in 2017, events which occurred outside of the control of the MNPD Homicide Unit derailed the process. After information from the case file was leaked to the media, which included information regarding Hale’s medical and mental health treatment that was to be kept in the strictest of confidence, Hale’s parents no longer had confidence in the ability of the MNPD to safeguard this information. After being unable to devise a mechanism to satisfy their concerns and obtain their consent, and without any other legal mechanism being available to obtain those records, further attempts to obtain those records were abandoned.
Coupled with the writings from the killer’s 2023 journal leading up to the attack, which was exclusively and legally obtained by The Star last year, demonstrating Hale’s obsession with her transgender ideology and her expression of symptoms pointing to psychosis, Pappert said he “disagrees” with MNPD’s assessments.
“There’s two things that Metro Nashville ruled. One, Audrey Hale was a sane person, and two, she did this because she wanted to be famous. Frankly, I think I disagree with both of these assessments,” Pappert said on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“Hale’s [desire for notoriety] was a minuscule part of her reasoning from the most recent journal that we published at the Tennessee Star. That journal was more about what I would describe as her psychosis, where she was convinced that in order to be happy, she needed to complete some sort of loop as the last time she was happy was at the Covenant School. Therefore, she needed to die at the Covenant School. It was very wrapped up in an insane sounding theology that she invented for herself,” Pappert added.
Pappert went on to note that the documents and materials that continue to be withheld from the public relating to Hale, including the nearly 1,300 pages of writings from the shooter leading up to the attack, may give volume to MNPD’s claims that Hale acted out of notoriety.
“However, the caveat here is Metro Nashville and the FBI have not released the majority of Hale’s writings. We’ve poured over 90 pages over and over again. They have 1,299. So while I don’t believe it to be true, perhaps in that second to last notebook, the one that we don’t have yet, perhaps Audrey Hale was talking about how she just wants to be a rock star and this is as close as she’ll get,” Pappert said.
Watch the exchange:
Tune in now to The Michael Patrick Leahy Show – your AMERICA FIRST news talk
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
