(The Lion) — The transgender shooter who took six lives during an attack at a Nashville Christian school was seeking fame and notoriety, the final police report on the incident says.

The 48-page report, released Wednesday by Metro Nashville Police, also says 28-year-old Audrey Hale planned the attack for years while hiding her mental issues from professionals.

Hale, who went by the male name “Aiden,” was killed by police during the March 2023 Covenant Christian School rampage that left three children and three other adults dead.

Hale hoped to gain “notoriety” from the “planned, calculated attack,” and that she left material behind she hoped would be found and released afterward, according to the report, which concluded Hale was sane and capable of adjusting her actions that she knew were “morally reprehensible.”

According to the report’s summary, Hale:

• Wanted books, documentaries, movies to be made about her life and her attack;

• Wanted her firearms to be placed in a museum and her bedroom to be left as it was when the attack occurred as a memorial to her;

• Wanted to mentor other shooters to show how they could succeed with proper planning; and

• Wanted to show off her superiority to others.

An analysis of 90 pages of her writings revealed “how transgender orthodoxy can encourage suicidal tendencies – and worse – in a way that turns gender identity into a kind of religion,” according to a 2024 report published by The Lion.

Police say Hale acted alone and had no prior interaction with the victims. She “considered them as ‘innocents’ and victims on par with herself,” the police report says.

The shooter chose the location because it was “a soft target” and because “she had a personal connection to the school,” having attended from ages 6-10, “and felt she had to die somewhere that made her happy.”

In addition to chronicling how she withheld information from mental health providers that could have raised alarm about a possible attack, Hale left detailed timelines, plans and diagrams about the attack.

The report describes Hale as increasingly lonely and having a strained relationship with her father, as well as a love-hate relationship with her mother.

She was autistic, battled depression and weight gain, and identified as a lesbian.

About one year before the shooting, she began using a male name and pronouns and said she wanted to transition genders, although no evidence was found of any physical changes at the time of her death.

As early as 2018, she wrote that “killing a bunch of children” would make sure she was no longer ignored. She actively planned an attack against Creswell Middle School in Nashville but later reneged because many of its students are black and she didn’t want to be labeled a “racist,” even though she “had no qualms about killing anyone.”

She considered multiple other Nashville schools before settling on Covenant, which she attended from 2001 to 2005.

Hale confessed “suicidal ideations and homicidal fantasies” to a therapist in 2019 and was referred for an intensive outpatient program, which brought some improvement in her anxiety and depression, but after her therapist retired, she soon regressed, even though she was seeing another therapist, the report says.

Hale then became even more committed to violence, believing that a shooting would give her own death more meaning. She began accumulating firearms and training with them, actions that ultimately led to the Covenant rampage.

The report concludes that “despite all her assorted mental health disorders, Hale was certainly sane.

“She was capable of adjusting her plans as needed, manipulating others into seeing her as meek and nonthreatening, and fully understood her attack was not only criminal but morally reprehensible.”

Killed at the school that day were: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old; Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

Hale “felt she would be a failure if she killed less than 10 people during the attack,” the report says. “In that respect, she did fail, in no small part due to the actions of the faculty and staff at The Covenant.”