More than a month after six people, including three children, were killed at a private Christian school at Nashville by a transgender male alumnus, Audrey Hale, law enforcement has announced that the shooter’s writings will be released, hopefully shedding some light on the motivations. 

“The investigation has advanced to the point that writings from the Covenant shooter are now being reviewed for public release. That process is under way and will take a little time,” a Nashville metropolitan police spokesman told Fox 17 on Thursday. 

For weeks, elected officials and community members have been calling for release of these documents. Senator Hagerty said it was “perplexing” that this had not been done. “I want to be sensitive to our law enforcement officers that are going through this, but it’s certainly taken a long time to figure out whether and what information can be released,” Mr. Hagerty told Fox News on Monday. “I think people do deserve to know what took place, what was in the mind of this sick person that committed these heinous murders.”

Nashville police conducted a search of the shooter’s home shortly after the attack. Journals, laptops, and notes — along with a suicide letter — written by Hale were seized from the shooter’s home. Other items taken include cellphones and multiple Covenant school yearbooks. Nashville law enforcement previously stated that Hale was being treated for an “emotional disorder.”

Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents parts of Nashville, asked the Department of Justice to investigate the motivations of Hale and promptly release the information to the public. In a letter sent on March 29, Mr. Ogles speculated that the shooter could be motivated by anti-Christian sentiments. 

“We urge you, as head of the Department of Justice, to immediately offer the full resources of federal law enforcement to the victims and community of this attack and open a hate crime investigation,” Mr. Ogles wrote to the attorney general. 

Congressman Tim Burchett, who represents the eastern part of the state, promptly called for the release of Hale’s manifesto over concerns that the shooter’s identity as a transgender person could have played a role in these killings. 

“Our trans youth are troubled,” Mr. Burchett told Fox News on the same day of the shooting. “If they don’t get the help they need they can grow up to have some serious issues, but I obviously don’t believe they’ll all grow up to be shooters like this.”

“We need to know what was going through this person’s head, and the manifesto should be made public,” he added. 

Some politicians are defending law enforcement’s lack of transparency. Metro Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston told the New York Post that the FBI will not allow for the release due to the likelihood of inspiring another shooter. 

“What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction,” Ms. Johnston said. “It was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned. That document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous,” she said.

Violent criminals who commit mass murder — whether on the scale of the Oklahoma City bombing or a school shooting — have often left these manifestos behind, knowing they likely would never face the inside of a courtroom. 

The two perpetrators of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, left behind thousands of pages of documents describing their upcoming attack. They also recorded hours of videos of themselves discussing their motives and tactics for attacking their school. Many of those documents were not released until 2006, however. 

More recent examples of school shootings and terror attacks have shed new light on these manifestos, with social media playing a critical role in allowing journalists and officials to discover the motives of these killers. 

Last year, after the shooting at Robb elementary school at Uvalde, the shooter’s social media accounts were quickly found. There was no manifesto left behind by the killer, Salvador Ramos, but officials did discover a number of Facebook messages he had sent to a friend in Germany who he told about his planned attack.