Officials Face Growing Pressure to Release Nashville School Shooter’s Manifesto

Audrey Hale, 28, is seen in surveillance footage at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., where Hale shot and killed six people on March 27, 2023. Nashville Police Department

Law enforcement officials are facing increasing pressure to release the manifesto of Nashville, Tennessee, school shooter Audrey Hale, with a U.S. lawmaker accusing the federal government of delaying its release.

Local officials said that Hale, a female who used transgender pronouns, left behind a suicide note, journals, and other materials. However, none of that has been released to the public, and a motive hasn’t been publicly identified in the case.

“It’s been very perplexing to all of us involved,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) told Fox News on April 24. “It seems that certain information is flooded into the marketplace immediately if it fits the narrative, so to speak. If the information does not fit the narrative, it seems to get suppressed.”

The Tennessee Republican said that even he doesn’t “know what’s in the manifesto,” adding that “it’s certainly taking a long time to figure out whether and what information should be released.”

“I think people do deserve to know what took place, what was in the mind of this sick person that committed these heinous murders,” he said. Three adults and three 9-year-old children died in the attack at The Covenant School.

Hagerty was responding to a question by a Fox News host about the manifesto being called “too dangerous to release.” The question appeared to refer to comments by Nashville Metropolitan Council member Courtney Johnston, who told the New York Post on April 20 that the manifesto is a “blueprint on total destruction” and said “that document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous.”

Johnston didn’t elaborate on its contents and said the entirety of the manifesto won’t be released to the public.

“I personally don’t want to know the depths to which her psychosis reached,” Johnston said, referring to Hale. “When I’m told by an MNPD [Metro Nashville Police Department] high-ranking official that it keeps him up at night, I’m going to defer to that person in that agency that I don’t need to read that.”

MNPD “is leading this investigation ... any and all information that may or may not be released will be at the direction of MNPD,” an FBI spokesperson told The Epoch Times on April 24.

MNPD officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

More Calls for Release of Manifesto

Like Hagerty, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and several other Republicans have also called for the document to be released to the public.

The shooter’s notes “could maybe tell us a little bit about what’s going on inside of her head,” Burchett told the New York Post. “I think that would answer a lot of questions.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) told the paper that if the documents don’t make it to the public, “then we need to investigate why.”

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 23, 2021. Sarah Silbiger-Pool/Getty Images

Hale, 28, was a former student at The Covenant School, where she fatally shot three children and three adults on March 27, officials said. Police identified the victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Hallie Scruggs, 9, William Kinney, 9, Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61.

Hale was killed by police within minutes of the first call of an active shooter.

Since the shooting, a range of conservative commentators have publicly called for Hale’s manifesto to be made public and have accused the federal government of delaying its release as part of a coverup to keep the public from knowing about the dangers of transgenderism. About a week after the Nashville mass shooting, a 19-year-old male who reportedly identified as female was arrested in Colorado with detailed plans for several school shootings.

Over the weekend, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy reacted to reports indicating that the FBI is slow-walking the manifesto’s release.

“It’s a shame that President Biden has not yet even reached out or visited the victims or their families. ... They better release that manifesto,” he told Fox News.

“This was a hate crime under any other guise,” he said, adding that he plans to “go down to Nashville ... to make sure that we actually get that released.”

Assessing Shooter’s Mental Health

Days after the shooting, Nashville Police Chief John Drake said that Hale was suffering from mental health issues and was under a doctor’s care for an unspecified emotional disorder. Her parents didn’t know that she had multiple weapons hidden in the house, Drake added.

The Metro Nashville Police Department said in a statement earlier this month that Hale’s writings would be “under careful review by the MNPD and the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit based in Quantico, Virginia,“ while the ”motive for Hale’s actions has not been established and remains under investigation by the Homicide Unit in consultation with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.”

From that statement, it isn’t clear when—or if—Hale’s writings will be released. But the department said that Hale “considered the actions of other mass murderers,” without elaborating.

FBI officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.