Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has the opportunity under the new leadership of Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino to reform its standard when investigating mass killers, specifically its policy regarding legacy tokens.
In May 2023, nearly two months after the Covenant School shooting, the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit sent a memo that “strongly” advised the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) not to release documents like the manifesto left by the killer, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a biological woman who identified as a transgender man when she carried out the shooting.
The memo said that releasing “legacy tokens,” which the FBI defined in 2018 as any records left by a mass killer that could explain their actions, would contribute to future attacks, fail to provide closure to victims and their families, and “facilitate false narratives and inaccurate information,” potentially leading “to unintended consequences for the segment of the population more vulnerable or open to conspiracy theories.”