Nashville Police refuse newspaper's request to release shooter manifesto

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department refused a request from The Tennessee Star to release the manifesto of mass shooter Audrey Hale on Tuesday on the basis that the case remains open.

Audrey Hale, a transgender individual, killed three students and three faculty members at a Christian school that authorities insist the shooter once attended. Authorities later discovered Hale's writings, confirming that the attack was planned over several months.

"In the collective writings by Hale found in her vehicle in the school parking lot, and others later found in the bedroom of her home, she documented, in journals, her planning over a period of months to commit mass murder at The Covenant School," authorities indicated in early April.

The Star reported that authorities had recovered 20 journals, five laptops, a suicide note, two memoirs, seven cellphones, five Covenant Presbyterian School yearbooks, and myriad other notes.

Michael Patrick Leahy, the CEO of Star News Digital Media, the parent company of the newspaper, had sent the open records request on Monday, saying at the time that "I call upon Governor Bill Lee and Mayor John Cooper to request that the Metro Nashville Police Department immediately release the manifesto and all related written documents obtained in the search of the residence and vehicle of the murderer Audrey Hale because it is in the public interest to do so."

The department denied the request the following day, citing the state's Rules of Criminal Procedure. The department sent the newspaper a standard response form that included a checked box asserting that the state regulations barred release of the records.

The contents of the writings may shed light on the shooter's motivations. 

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.