Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, is questioning the motive behind the Metro Nashville Police Department’s (MNPD) reported defiance to chain of custody protocols during the March 27, 2023 search of Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s residence.
On Saturday, Pappert reported that a source familiar with the Covenant shooting investigation told The Star that an MNPD captain, who led the department’s search of the killer’s residence, ordered police officers not to complete the required evidence documentation form for some of the items obtained during the search conducted on the day of the March 27 attack.
The source further told The Star that items not properly documented were carted away by the FBI, and that no chain of custody exists for the digital evidence associated with the undocumented items obtained during the search of Hale’s home.
In the hours after the March 27, 2023 shooting, MNPD Chief John Drake confirmed that Hale had purchased seven firearms, however, according to an evidence log of what was obtained after a search of the killer’s residence, only five firearms were accounted for.
The same source told The Star that firearms were “plainly visible” in the killer’s bedroom when police conducted their search.
With this in mind, Pappert is questioning why two of Hale’s firearms appear to be unaccounted for.
“That is the million dollar question…There were seven firearms total. That is not some number we picked from the back of our heads. That’s from the Chief of Metro Nashville Police,” Pappert said on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“It does make you wonder about what a possible motive could be. This surely has to be against the law to not have a chain of custody for evidence,” Pappert added.
Looking towards the future, Pappert said he believes that there will be a “reckoning happening” regarding the FBI’s involvement in the case with incoming director Kash Patel, who has openly spoken in the past criticizing the FBI overhauling investigations because, as Pappert noted, “they think they know better than the American people.”
“Kash Patel…did an interview where he said directly, it is the FBI that swoops in and keeps these materials from coming out because they think they know better than the American people,” Pappert said.
“I think that there’s a reckoning happening, the sand is ticking out of the hourglass and these people know it,” Pappert added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
