(GoRealNewsNow.com) – In a long overdue development, a Tennessee newspaper has released 90 pages of a manifesto allegedly penned by the killer who shot three children and three staff members at The Covenant School before police killed him last year.
The Tennessee Star announced it had obtained what it calls “The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal,” which it believes Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote between January and March 2023
Hale, 28 at the time, entered The Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023, and killed three 9-year-old students along with three adults.
Although Hale was female, she identified as male and often signed her journal entries as “Aiden.”
Michael Patrick Leahy, Editor-in-Chief of the Star, in a statement accompanying the published documents, wrote:
“We legally obtained this handwritten journal – which we refer to as ‘The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal’ to distinguish it from the many journals written by Hale prior to 2023 – in early June of 2024 from a source familiar with the MNPD investigation.”
In addition, the Metro Nashville Police Department found 20 additional journals written by Hale between 2007 and 2022 at her Nashville home.
“We believe it to be authentic. In addition to our belief, the journal was confirmed as authentic in court by a Metro Nashville Government lawyer in attendance at a June 2024 court hearing,” Leahy added. “We have had a First Amendment right to publish these unredacted documents from the moment we legally obtained them.”
The newspaper had previously published about 50 articles since June 5 based on information from Hale’s journal but had not included “actual pages from that journal.” According to the Star, publishing the journal pages revealed new details.
For example, Hale would draw an octagonal symbol when discussing her planned attack on The Covenant School. The same symbol was also found on the cover of Hale’s notebook. The meaning behind the octagon remains unclear.
“Soon I will leave this world! You [and] your friends will be just fine. Does it even matter if I am alive?” Hale wrote in one passage.
Hale also wrote about wanting to transition to a male and mentioned a purported autism diagnosis while stating she was not bipolar.
Although she did not explicitly write about her motive for the attack in the published journal, she expressed frustration about the lack of respect for disabled people, gun owners, and transgender individuals in the U.S. in an entry from the month before.
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