The FBI on Monday released to The Tennessee Star more pages from the journals written by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who killed six at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023. The newly released pages feature an entry where Hale included President Donald Trump on a “fantasy murder list.”
Containing just four names, including two that were redacted by the FBI prior to their release of the journal, Hale included Trump as the first name in her second column of those who she would like to kill, potentially suggesting she added the name after writing a subsequent journal entry.
Hale also included “Creswell Middle Prep,” in an apparent reference to Isiah T. Creswell Middle School, where she played on a school basketball team about a decade prior. She reportedly considered attacking the school, but later determined to attack the Christian elementary school she once attended, fearing she would be accused of racism if she attacked the predominantly black middle school.
The journal which includes the “fantasy murder list” was labeled 2019-2020 by the killer, and Hale dated the preceding page to November 5, 2019, nearly three years after Trump was elected to the White House in 2016.
Drawing a line to separate the journal entries, Hale on the same page began a journal entry dated November 12. Though the FBI redacted the name, the killer in this entry seemed to write about a desire for her father to die.
“Eliminated from the world permanently. Our worlds would relieve of worry [and] stress from [redacted],” wrote the killer.
Claiming another person, whose identity was redacted, would not object to her father’s absence, she wrote, “I sense it in his soul like I feel it in mine, full of hate, rage [and] desirable violent acts to certain people, because these people shouldn’t be living if they are not sacrificing for their loved ones, or kids, respect [and] love their wife/girlfriend, and provide for the f***** family. If someone can’t do that they are pretty g****** useless.”
The Star reported last month that Hale previously referenced Trump in another entry that appeared to be about her father in May 2019, around the time she was considered for commitment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), where police notes claim she told a staff member that she fantasized about killing her father and committing a school shooting.
In a journal entry about the prospect of her father returning to the workforce, the killer wrote, “In a sense [redacted] was there but not really doin’ s*** – going on the internet, watching that dumb politics Donald Trump bulls*** more than once a day.”
She also complained about his consumption of political news in a later journal entry about her father potentially taking a sick day from work, writing, “You call in sick means you’ll stay home ALL DAY watchin’ that politics bulls*** [with] those talking head ear infection creators.”
Hale, a biological woman, wrote in other entries that she considered her parents opposed to her identity as a transgender man. Based on their religious and political views, the killer’s parents said in a 2023 police interview that they were indifferent to her gender identity, but claimed that she did not understand the medical process associated with transgenderism.
It was also in this interview when the detectives informed Hale’s father about her suicidal thoughts for the first time.
“She wanted to create a diversion after the incident to make it out of the school but to come back and harm dad, I believe kill you,” one MNPD investigator told the parents.
Another directly told Hale’s father, “We’ll be open, it was, she wanted to kill you.”
Both Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy, and Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), which owns and operates The Star, sued the FBI in May 2023 to compel the federal agency to release Hale’s writings.
Filed by Dan Lennington and the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty, the litigation was only concluded earlier this year, after FBI Director Kash Patel was confirmed to his position and agreed to release redacted versions of the killer’s writings.
Hale filled the pages of around a dozen journals over the course of a decade or more, and The Star first legally obtained the killer’s 2023 journal from a source familiar with the investigation last year. The Star exclusively released the unredacted journal, which included entries written up until moments before her attack on the Covenant School, in September 2024.
