On Tuesday, over a year after the fatal Covenant School shooting in Nashville, the Tennessee Star and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy released 90 pages of writings left behind by Audrey Hale. The writings were done between January and March of 2023, leading up to the 27, 2023 shooting that saw three 9-year-old children and three staff members killed. Hale was fatally shot by police in the school.
The Star said that the journal was legally obtained from a source familiar with the investigation in June 2024, and the notebook was recovered from Hale’s vehicle by the Metro Nashville Police Department alongside a spiral-bound notebook following the shooting.
The red, lined-page notebook features the name "Aiden" written on the cover. Aiden was the name that the trans-identifying school shooter went by.
The journal opens with the words "Darkness" and "Everything hurts" written on the inside cover, and "Why does my brain not work right?? Cause I was born wrong" written on the first page. "Nothing on Earth can save me," it added. "Never-ending pain. Religion won't save me." Many of the opening pages feature drawings of broken hearts, writing about loving someone, and the abbreviation P.A.P. frequently written in a heart. Hale also frequently wrote of wanting to die.
Another page includes the phrases, "No brown girls, no love," and "brown love is the most beautiful kind," and the following page states, "Audrey is not my name but when you say it I am just as the little 1 I was back then. I can be a kid again with you alongside you even if I can’t really be w/ you."
"Love cannot be real if my Autism is. Love cannot exsist (sic) or fails to be in this real. Too bad I was loved by your heart to short in time. It felt like a dream. If there is no love, there is no life. And no like is feeling dead, its only natural wanting to die," another page stated, along with the line "I’m OK with being gone forever," accompanied by arrows pointing towards a cloud covering a sun.
One entry dated January 16, 2023 stated, "I’m so sorry Nikki. I didn’t mean to plan my massacre on the 17th. I’m going to be a terrible sh*t for leaving you. How bad my heart hurts. Tomorrow is my last day on Earth. I love you. I am so sorry, Audrey, with Aiden written in parenthesis. A note added to the bottom of the page on the following day read, "PS - Not leaving yet. I couldn’t do it. I don’t want to ruin your day. I’ll wait as planned."
Another page following Hale pulling out of plans for a January 17 massacre featured Hale planning when to next carry out the attack, with one note stating that it had to have "27" or "17" in the date. "I want to do it in February," Hale wrote, adding the date 2/17/23 and noting that there are "no birthdays on that day."
On one page, Hale drew two figures having anal sex and wrote, "can’t butt sex a beautiful young brown girl, w/ a big a** and a small a**hole, if I had a penis, it (sic) be big + rock hard, too bad I am a sad boy born w/ a puny vagina." On the page following that, Hale wrote about wishing Hale’s father was dead, and being "the most unhappy boy alive." Hale wrote it’s a "terrible feeling to know I am nothing of the gender I was born of."
Multiple pages featured the phrase "white nothingness," and one page stated, "society + politics are scum in this world that nature should wipe clean." Another page read, "w/o my creativity, I am useless + meaningless to society. I am of no society. And I have society b/c society ignores to see me. I’m a queer; I am meant to die."
A February 20, 2023 entry read, "I was actually identified as a male today and it felt right." Hale added, "I SHOULD NOT BE IN THIS BODY.," with the page later stating, "when I’m called a lady or ma’am — damn it it makes me not want to exsist (sic). The body in me exsists only to me. I’m just damn tired of being called + identified by a gender I am not. AT ALL." Another page stated, "If God won’t give me a boy body in heaven, then Jesus is a f*ggot."
In the month ahead of the shooting, Hale declared that March 27, 2023 would be Hale’s "Death Day." A March 2 entry about a "brown girl" saw Hale write that the girl "will live a legend and I will die a shooter — hopefully to become infamous. No one will forget either of us. She will be the blessing, and I will be the horror to inflict pain."
An entry dated March 11, 2023 was titled "My Imaginary penis." Hale wrote, "My penis exsists (sic) in my head. I swear to God I am a male. I think about sexual fantasies, about how if my d*ck was real I’d f*ck the girl I love in the a**. I want to know what thats like, but I never will because I was damned to be born this way."
Hale wrote about being raised as a girl, as Hale biologically was, saying it was "torture." Hale wrote of Hale’s mother, "I might have told her once in childhood I wish I was a boy when she made me put my shirt back on as a kid. But would say 'your a girl, and that’s how you were born,' some kind of bullsh*t like that. It made me mad." Hale expressed hate towards Hale’s parents' conservative religious beliefs and how they would not pay "a cent" for hale to receive "transgender treatment."
"Children who were able to successfully take puberty blockers and never enter a torchured (sic) puberty, those little f*ggots don’t know how good they f*cking have it. I’d kill to have parents who would let their child be happy no matter how different it is to their viewpoints or don’t agree, or scared of it.
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