Originally Published April 7, 2025 | Updated April 9, 2025 at 12:10 p.m. ET with additional information
Late Friday, The Megyn Kelly Show exclusively obtained the full set of chilling journals written by the Nashville Covenant School shooter from the FBI. These have never before been published or released. Moreover, they appear to have been mischaracterized by Nashville authorities when they released their final report on the deadly March 2023 shooting last week.
The documents, which number more than 1,000 pages, contain minimal redactions in instances where the FBI said it was necessary to protect identifiable details of other individuals and/or sensitive information. This same set of journals was also sent to the House Intelligence Committee with a letter that stated “Director [Kash] Patel is leading the FBI toward increased transparency with Congress in order to restore trust, and we hope these documents assist in that regard.”
The Documents
Over the weekend, The Megyn Kelly Show team reviewed notebooks dated from 2020 until just days before the 2023 shooting. We were given permission to report on but not post them. As reported in Monday’s AM Update, the information contained within the pages is dark, deranged, and newsworthy, and it provides clear insight into the depraved mind of the killer.
The documents also contain critical context excluded from the 48-page report released by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department last Wednesday. The report acknowledged the killer’s autism diagnosis; it mentioned writings retrieved from journals; and it briefly referenced her desire to transition genders but noted she had not yet done so.
In reality, the pages project a deeply disturbed individual who planned meticulously – over the course of several years – to carry out a mass shooting and then kill herself. The killer discussed her autism diagnosis, race, and her desire for “black love and acceptance.” Many of the writings were sexual in nature and expressed frustration with her virginity. The killer scribbled information about guns and her own firearms training, and other school shootings were well-documented within the pages.
The families of the victims do not wish for this information to be public, nor do we typically spend much time quoting killer manifestos. However, the public’s interest in understanding the full motivation behind this act compels its publication. What follows below is a carefully selected portion of the killer’s writings shared solely to provide the necessary context omitted by Nashville police and hidden from the public for two years.
[Editor’s Note: We have a policy on The Megyn Kelly Show to not name school shooters, but, in the interest of clarity, the shooter’s birth name was Audrey. She was born female. In the years leading up to the horrific act, she instead went by the name “Aiden” and used he/him pronouns.]
The Background
On March 27, 2023, the killer entered the Covenant Presbyterian Church and School in Nashville just after 10 a.m. and fatally shot three third grade students and three adults before being killed by police. Law enforcement initially acknowledged recovering journals from the killer’s vehicle at the school but declined to release the contents due to the ongoing investigation.
According to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, those writings did not amount to a manifesto. “Early in the investigation, it was suggested [Audrey] left behind the manifesto detailing her motives and intentions,” the report read. “By definition, a manifesto is a mission statement or other document written and disseminated by an individual or group to enumerate or expound upon the guiding principles and beliefs that inform their actions.”
The Nashville report concluded a true manifesto “is a single document that outlines all the factors, intentions, and objectives of an individual act or a series of actions.” Because the killer did not leave behind a single document but rather a trove of documents, the Nashville report opted to pick and choose from the killer’s writings. It purported to summarize them, but instead omitted critical details and sugarcoated the killer’s struggle with her gender identity as if it were irrelevant.
On Radical Gender Ideology
In fact, the killer was highly focused on gender identity. The journals contain many pages expressing the shooter’s belief that she was a man born in “the wrong body.” In early 2021, she penned an entry titled “Born a Boy, Raised as a Girl” in which she claimed she knew she should was a boy by age five:
“I was born a boy with no penis for an erection. I had to be forced to live and act as a girl. I knew nothing of my forced ‘gender role,’ for [redacted] forced me in a traditional structure to act feminine, wear a dress, not a suit, cross my legs, not stretch them out.
‘Lady like?’ What is that? Boys don’t know that. I had Barbies. [Redacted] made me a doll. Those things I liked what I was two-three. By the time I turned 5, 6-8, I knew who I was. I knew what I liked [and] what I didn’t, what I hated and what I wanted. But [redacted] wouldn’t let me be my true boy self because I was still in a girl’s body growing [and] maturing. I had to grow breast [sic], have a period, go through girl puberty – and it did not feel right at all…”
She went on to write she would watch boys and “wish” she could “be like them,” “act like them,” “dress like them,” and “do boy things.” The killer wrote that she would imagine “what I’d look like as a boy,” but she “can’t have man qualities because stupid religious views get me [sh-ted] on [and] rejected.”
The themes were similar in an entry dated April 12, 2022, titled “Let Kids Choose Their Sex.” The killer wrote:
“…I only wore some nice girl clothes as a cover up from the truth, which I denied myself all these years. And I hated all of it. It was miserable being raised a girl because I had no choice. There was a lack of education research and medicine to help society or parents better understand transgender. I didn’t know trans existed. I thought you could only be gay or bi and that’s the fate you had. But transgender is transcending way deeper to the core. There is still medicine to be approved by the FDA and so little research has been done.
If I had puberty blockers back then, I would have transitioned a long time ago but I didn’t know you could possibly change your sex. I’m mad they never told me until I was 22. I feel I’m too old and too late to be a man. Now, the process takes months to years. By the time that happens, I’m 30. Then, 10 years later, I got a bald spot on my head and look like an old man. Hell no. It’s best to start at 16 for shots, but my youth is over, way past now. And it’s over, over. How dare God hand me a training bra when I didn’t know WTF it was as a kid. I hated it. Much more, I’d like to dispose my vagina. We should all choose our gender…”
In another, she wrote, “How does it feel to grow up the gender you were born with and are comfortable and happy with it? Well, I don’t know that feeling. I never did, you senseless people that you don’t know WTF comes out of your mouth telling me I am female. Female pronouns make me feel like I want to die, especially called woman. I never was, ever. I hate being in a woman’s body. Need to die.”
Remember, the police said this had nothing to do with the shooting rampage at the Covenant School.
In a January 11, 2023, entry titled “Autism [Sh-t]” and signed “Aiden,” the killer listed the issues she attributed to her autism diagnosis, including “gender identity is [f-cked],” “really angry or sad,” and “no one gives a [sh-t] so I can’t either.”
On the next set of pages, she wrote a disturbing poem called “We Are All Fags” that read (formatting reflects how it was written):
“Lesbians (can be) cute
as long as they are feminine
Kill all the dikes
and all those girly-boy faggots
WE ARE ALL FAGGOTS
WE ARE ALL QUEERS
Let all the black police hang us”
On Race
In November 2023, radio host Steven Crowder published three pages of the documents we reviewed that he received from an anonymous source. Those pages revealed a timeline for the planned attack and messages expressing resentment against white people and their privilege (the killer herself was white).
In an entry dated June 6, 2021, the killer wrote about the two students who shot and killed 15 people at Columbine High School in April 1999. “Eric and Dylan were gods. All those little dumb [sh-ts] in other school shootings during the 1990s were not gods, just cowards. Even if maybe they had a reason, they left it a mystery,” she penned. “I realize that after knowing Columbine, I immediately became attached to it, not just the notorious outcome, but the preceding evidence leading up to it. I feel I am the reincarnation of Dylan Klebold. My thoughts of depression are forever linked to his and my experience as well.”
In a diary entry shortly thereafter, the killer wrote about how epic it would have been if she had shot up her own high school to “kill all the white kids,” “kill my own race,” “destroy all the white people who are teachers,” and “let all the black kids go, unless if I don’t like you.”
About a month later, the killer devoted several pages to why the pain of black people is different from so-called white pain. “Black people were given fate, given nothing, while white people get power in the White House, have all the privileges, even to white people like me. White people are born with privileges. Black people aren’t. Black people always had to earn and fight for their needs and wants. It was like that in history. It’s like that now,” she wrote. “Being white sucks, but being black is so cool. Black people should rule. White people should fall. Every white person who lived and died, I hate you all.”
Her message was similar in February 2023, when she wrote about her desires to “kill all you little crackers going to private fancy schools… with their daddies mustangs [and] convertables [sic].” It went on: “[F-ck] you little [sh-ts]. I wish to shoot you weak ass dicks with your mop yellow hair… Bunch of little faggots with your white privileges.”
On Politics and Guns
There was also a political bent to some of her writings. While she seemed pleased with the inauguration of Joe Biden in January 2021 as it related to Donald Trump leaving office, she expressed concern over what might happen to gun laws under his administration in a post dated February 4. “That dumbass criminal is out of office,” she wrote in reference to Trump, “but that doesn’t mean I vote for Joe Biden because I fully like him.”
“It’s one thing passing the COVID relief bill, it’s another to attack the NRA. Nothing worse than an anti-gun politician or group. They all can suck balls or burn in hell,” she continued. “How ignorant can a president possibly get? Does America think [one] person can stop the nature of violence[?] No!! Violence is never going to end… No human can stop nature – scientifically or psychologically – not even the president.”
She then waxed poetic about firearms. “Guns are revolutionary, powerful… tools. If Biden says he’s for all Americans, he doesn’t even know what the [f-ck] he’s talking about. Is he for fun owners? No. For mentally ill but highly intelligent subjects? No!! Gun control is the dumbest most ignorant thing a president can do… [You’re] literally taking away a constitutional right – the right of the people to bear arms.”
“You take away [our] guns, it’s you who are evil because you are against constitutional rights, freedom of speech, [and] belief,” she added. “Baring [sic] arms constitutes my beliefs [and] beliefs define a person. Take away that right [and] you are not for all Americans.”
On March 26, 2021, the killer penned a diatribe called “[F-ck] Assult [sic] Weapon Ban!!” that slammed “white” presidents who are “ignorant” and “trying to ban assult [sic] weapons.” She then referenced Biden directly:
“Biden is a politician who has banned assult [sic] rifles for 10 years (1994-2004). How he’s doing it again? I don’t who I should express my hellish rage more towards, either the weak and delusional gun owners who let the mentally suffering obtain those weapons (by choice of common sense legislation [and] not by carful observation of the buyer). Or like the president who has vague… and unclear goals. Biden [and] his little [f-cking] admin cocksuckers need to stop trying so hard. Cause you say ‘will save American lives.’ I say, [f-ck] that. American lives, at least 50 [percent] of them, don’t matter…”
It then took an even darker turn. “I am not God, so I am prohibited by his law not to commit mass or homicidal [sic] murder of his creation. But I can break the rules if I want cause I don’t practice religion,” she continued. “I am god-like in my thoughts [and] my intentions.”
Final Writings
In July 2022, the killer expressed the desire to have another therapy session but lamented not having the means to do so. “I need to have another session with my therapist. I need her. It’s been two months. I don’t deny needing help. I loathe the reality of my fate as an autistic, dependent, 27 year old,” she wrote.
The journals also outlined ideas about how animals are better than people, about how she hates life and money, and a wish list for the day of the attack involving hopes of “lots of blood, lots of victims, 20-plus dead.”
On February 26, 2023 – nearly one month to the day before the shooting rampage – the killer wrote about “practicing for the [fourth] time” with her shot gun. “Shooting outside is fun,” she wrote. “I love shooting my shot gun… and learning about the velocity range of the bullet.” The killer also discussed her “bad shot” and determined the “only solution is to practice more.”
One of the final pages chillingly read: “I have to kill so I can be remembered in the most horrific way possible that no one will ever forget. The end.” It was signed “Aiden,” the killer’s preferred male name.
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