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.
Hellbound and Down 