Covenant School trans shooter plotted Nashville attack for years, kept notebooks with plans: final report
FIRST ON FOX: Nashville police have released their final report on the Covenant School massacre – a targeted March 2023 attack on a Christian school by a transgender shooter who killed three third-graders and three adults.
Rather than a highly anticipated manifesto, the report found that killer Audrey Hale left behind numerous notebooks, art books and computer documents about her plans to commit the attack and gain notoriety, partly inspired by the Columbine school shooting in 1999.
Hale, the 28-year-old attacker and biological female, began "fantasizing" about and researching mass shootings as far back as 2017, according to investigators. A year later, she wrote "detailed fantasies" about shooting up the Isaac T. Creswell Middle Magnet School for the Arts, killing her father and killing her psychiatrist.
"In this case, a manifesto didn't exist," the document reads. "Hale never left behind a single document explaining why she committed the attack, why she specifically targeted The Covenant, and what she hoped to gain, if anything, with the attack."
Instead, her motives were scattered across those many notebooks and other writings, investigators found. They included an image showing more than two-dozen notebooks seized from Hale's car and bedroom. They also said she left a suicide note addressed to her parents.
Because of Hale's consistent diaries over a period of years, police said they were able to collect far more information about her than in a typical investigation.
The Covenant School was attached to a church that Hale once attended. The 9-year-old victims included the pastor's daughter Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney. Police identified the adults as 60-year-old Head of School Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Mike Hill, 61.
The killer also had plans for "B" and "C" targets – the Opry Mills Mall and a stretch of Belmont Boulevard near Belmont University campus in Nashville. If her parents discovered her plans, she decided she would kill them and attack the Belmont target, according to investigators.
She spent months practicing at the firing range and painted the phrase "Dark Abyss" on her clothes and guns. That was the name she had given to her depression.
But the attack was delayed multiple times, including once after the death of a close friend in a car crash.
Hale, who began using the name "Aiden Williams" in the years before her death, was killed by responding officers in harrowing bodycam video.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
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