After Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale opened fire at her Christian elementary school, killing six people, she wrote in her diary that she wanted the Columbine shooters to feel proud.
“I want the genocide to end the way Eric would have wanted it to. [Harris] & Dylan [Klebold] According to photographic evidence from the book, Hale scribbled at the bottom of a lined page in the diary: “They'd be so proud.” The Tennessee Star obtained and published the information.
“April 1999, the year Columbine/NBK was born…(April 20, 1999). The year Aiden was born…(March 27, 1923!),” Hale wrote in another entry, referring to her chosen male name, Aiden.
Hale, a 28-year-old transgender artist, was shot and killed by police on March 27, 2023, after breaking into Covenant School and shooting three nine-year-old children and three adult staff members.
She had planned the “massacre” for months and documented her suicidal thoughts in a diary that was at the center of a bitter legal battle between the publishers of the Tennessee Star and the victims' families.
“I agree [I don’t care] “If I'm the shooter and people die, I die too,” Hale scribbles on another page. “If I die, I will kill…My only true motivation is mass suicide and death (infinite).”
The diary is filled with incoherent tweets, doodles, descriptions of self-loathing, and even plans to attack a private school.
Hale's final diary entry, written on the day of the shooting, reads “Deadly Day” next to a drawing of a gun.
“Today is the day. It's finally here! I can't believe this day has come. I don't know how I got here but here I am,” she wrote.
“I'm a little nervous, but I'm also excited. I've been excited for the last two weeks,” she continued, “Especially in the summer of 2021, there were a few times where I thought I might get caught, but now it doesn't matter because I'm nearly an hour and seven miles away.”
“I can't believe I'm doing this but I'm prepared. I hope my victims don't do this,” Hale scribbled callously.
The statements were part of 90 pages of notes from Hale that were published by The Star on Tuesday.
The local newspaper obtained the journal entries in June 2024 from a source familiar with the investigation into Hale and claims it has a First Amendment right to publish the findings.
But the parents of the three children murdered by Hale — William Kinney, Evelyn Diekhaus and Harry Scruggs — begged a judge to bar the media from publishing the killer's writings.
“I will not stand by and allow this shooter's writings to be published in any form. This mass murderer cannot speak from the grave,” William's mother, Erin Kinney, wrote in a sworn statement.
Lawyers for the family argue that because Hale's parents handed over their estate to the victims' families after the shooting, they own the copyright to the works.
Free speech groups and media outlets, including the Star, have also called on law enforcement to release all of Hale's books, arguing that the public has a right to know the motive behind the senseless killing.
The entry released on Tuesday was one of 20 diaries that Hale kept along with his suicide note and unpublished memoirs.
