Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said he believes Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s (VUMC) connection to Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the Covenant School killer, is the “biggest part” of the unraveling story.
On June 7, The Star was the first to report that Hale was a 22-year patient of VUMC from 2001 until the time of the horrific school shooting on March 27, 2023.
This week, The Star retrieved metadata from a Microsoft Word document authored by an investigator with the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) containing notes summarizing 75 pages of documents retrieved from VUMC following a June 1, 2023, search warrant for materials related to its treatment of Hale.
In the notes, the MNPD investigator claims Hale expressed suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation to VUMC staff, including, “Thoughts of killing Dad in and struggles with mental health. Recent thoughts of going into a school and shooting a bunch of people.”
Pappert, who has reported extensively on The Star’s obtaining of dozens of documents related to the case of Hale, said VUMC’s connection to Hale and apparent failure to act on the killer’s threats about killing her father and committing a school shooting is “possibly the biggest part of this story.”
“There was no confirmation that Audrey Hale had any sort of relationship with Vanderbilt University Medical Center until our reporting and now the dam has burst. Now, police documents have revealed to us that she had a 22-year history of mental health treatments. That is so unsettling to me because there may be other troubled individuals like Audrey Hale who are lifelong mental health patients that are still somehow going to fall through the cracks. I think that the public is going to be very interested in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center connection. I think it is possibly the biggest part of this story,” Pappert said on Thursday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Pappert further said that The Star’s obtaining of the notes summarizing documents retrieved from VUMC relating to Hale is significant as such evidence reveals that VUMC was aware of the violent threats made by Hale.
“The notes themselves reveal that Hale experienced and expressed to the mental health professionals suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation. She talked about wanting to kill her father and most startlingly and most depressingly – it seems like something could have been done to prevent this – Hale expressed an interest in shooting a school,” Pappert said.
On Wednesday, a VUMC spokesman returned a request for comment from The Star in regard to its treatment of Hale, saying, “Under federal (HIPAA) and state privacy rules and regulations, without permission VUMC is not in a position to confirm or deny that any particular individual presently receives or previously received health care from VUMC.”
VUMC’s comment on Wednesday was the first time the institution has replied to multiple inquiries from The Star since the revelations connecting Hale to VUMC have surfaced.
Pappert said he believes VUMC’s Wednesday comment was sent by direction from the institution’s legal counsel, as The Star’s reporting on the matter has attracted a national interest.
“We have been trying to get a response from Vanderbilt University Medical Center since June 4. I went back to my emails and phone and looked all the way back to find the earliest attempt, and we have finally received a response after emailing the CEO of Vanderbilt University Medical Center that might have had something to do with it. We received a very simple response that I think they could have sent a lot earlier,” Pappert said.
“The reason why we sent so many comment requests that went unanswered was probably because these lawyers are saying, ‘This is going to go away, The Tennessee Star is a very small publication.’ They now have likely learned that is not true and that this is a major national news story. The Tennessee Star’s editor-in-chief Michael Patrick Leahy is all over national radio and television talking about it,” Pappert added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
