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A federal judge in Tennessee ruled that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surrender documents, which include the ‘manifesto’ of transgender school shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who killed three adults and three nine-year old children at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville in March 2023.
The police shot Hale inside the school after she had murdered Mike Hill, 61, Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and three 9-year-olds, Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney.
At the time of the shooting in March 2023, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake had told reporters that officers had recovered a "manifesto" from Hale's car as well as other documents, including a hand-drawn map of the school, and said Hale’s manifesto would be released. It was never released.
Federal authorities had resisted releasing Hale’s manifesto, citing potential interference with enforcement proceedings. The Tennessee Star newspaper’s parent company took legal action against the FBI after denying its request for public records release laws in Tennessee under the Freedom of Information Act.
“The public has an urgent right to know why this tragedy happened,” the newspaper’s lawyers said in the federal complaint at that time.
The parent company of the Tennessee Star, a local newspaper, sued the FBI after the bureau denied its public records request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Then the tide turned.
"It has been long enough, and the public has an urgent right to know why this tragedy happened, how future events may be prevented, and what policies should be in place to address this and other similar tragedies," lawyers for the newspaper wrote in a federal complaint. "[The] FBI has no right to retain a monopoly on this information," the court ruled.
The FBI sought to have the complaint dismissed, but Judge Aleta Trauger of the Middle District of Tennessee said the bureau had failed to support its position "with sufficient clarity or detail" and ordered it to submit the manifesto to the court, so she could review the materials.
"The FBI is ORDERED to produce ex parte all documents that are potentially responsive to the defendants’ Freedom of Information Act request for in camera review, with the exception that, based on the plaintiffs’ concessions in this litigation, the FBI need not produce any documents that could not reasonably be construed to bear on Audrey Hale’s motives," Trauger wrote.
Drake said investigators had not immediately determined a motive but that they believed Hale, a former student, had targeted the school and its affiliated church. One of the child victims, Hallie, was the pastor's daughter.
The National Police Association also sued to release the same documents.
The mass shooter left behind a suicide note on a desk under one of several laptops police recovered, near a list of passwords. Law enforcement also found two "memoirs," a 12-gauge Mossberg 590 and a 20-gauge Winchester Model 1200. One of them had been sawed off, police said previously.
Law enforcement further 20 journals throughout the basement, 14 videos and a Tennessee man's driver's license in a bookcase along with photographs of the Covenant School, where the shooter was once a student, and five yearbooks.
CDM’s Senior Editor and Chief Investigative Correspondent Christine Dolan was asked to testify before the Senate Tennessee Health Committee calling for Tennessee lawmakers to demand transparency along with Andrew Thibault, who successfully filed a Freedom of Information request, which resulted in the exposure of documents that proved that PHARMA and FDA have known for nearly 20 years that some SSRI - depression and aniexty drugs - were known to cause an increase in anger, violence, murder and suicide.
Dolan and Thibault's February 2024 testimony can be found here.
The local coverage of their February 2024 testimony can be found here.
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