Nashville Shooter's Manifesto Released
The scribblings give a glimpse into the mind of a deeply troubled person who hated herself and was obsessed with a middle school friend.
The Tennessee Star released one of the 21 journals from the Nashville Trans Shooter. The other 20 journals, dating back to 2007, were found in her home later, but the 2023 journal, along with a spiral-bound notebook, were discovered by police in the shooter’s car and have been widely called her “manifesto.”
To put the journal into some perspective, we now know that the shooter was a patient with Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital for 22 years, both outpatient and inpatient. From the time she was six years old, she was in therapy with Vanderbilt-connected therapists for an unnamed “emotional disorder.” Back in 2023, a family member had said that the shooter was a high-functioning autist. In her journal, the shooter mentions that a doctor had also diagnosed her as bipolar, but she rejected that idea. She also routinely blames her “autistic brain” for her failures, like when she failed to make money with her art. She seems to use autism as an excuse for not growing up and taking responsibility for herself. [Author’s Note: Autism is not typically referred to as an “emotional disorder,” so there may be something else at play here. Also, as an autistic woman who is the mother of a couple of autistic kids, I never allowed my kids to think this way. As I’ve written before, autism and mental illness are not an excuse to be evil.]
She was on medications:
Escitalopram (anti-depressant AKA Lexapro),
Buspirone (anti-anxiety),
Hydroxyzine (an antihistamine also used as an anti-anxiety),
a sodium chloride nasal spray (for stuffy or dry noses, likely to treat a side effect of the Hydroxyzine),
and Lorazepam (anti-anxiety).
Lorazepam, AKA Ativan, is the scariest one on this list. It is a benzo that can be habit-forming and can cause suicidal ideation, among other things. It probably should not have been given to someone with a long history of depression and suicidal ideation. Plus, having Lexapro and Lorazepam at the same time is a bad idea, as they each enhance the side effects of the other. There is no indication as to how long she was on any of the medications, only that those were the ones prescribed at the time of her death. It seems possible that the Lorazepam was new. According to the TN Star, the first four came from a nurse practitioner, but the Lorazepam came from a different psychiatrist.
Interestingly, Vanderbilt got into the Gender Conversion game in 2018, and it was a huge money maker. The shooter was forced into an intensive outpatient program in 2019 after she had made comments during therapy about violent fantasies. It was after completing that program that she suddenly decided she was trans - in complete opposition to the family's beliefs.
For what it’s worth, Vanderbilt may be in deep trouble because of this tragic event. Their records show that they knew she was a danger to the community, both for her threats to kill her father and her threats to shoot up a school. Yet they did not report her to the authorities like they were supposed to.
After reading through the journal (which can be downloaded here), it’s clear that this is a very disturbed person. The journal reads like a 14-year-old girl in her edgy phase with a deep-seated depression, but she was 28 when she wrote this. The writing gives off the vibe of someone who never really grew up. This fits with the information we learned early on from some of her classmates. One classmate said she had “a child-like obsession with staying a child.”
She hates herself and clearly has a case of body dysmorphia. Besides a salacious three-page essay about her “imaginary penis” and a mild obsession with butt stuff, there are multiple references to how much she hates being a girl. She wished puberty blockers had been around when she went through puberty and wished she could change her body.
While she clearly fought with her mom, she seemed to harbor a particular hatred for her father. Several times, she called him a “bastard” and wished she no longer had a father, even going so far as to say that she would kill him.
She's also completely obsessed with a girl from her middle school basketball team named Paige. In fact, most of the journal seems to be a love letter to the object of her obsession, which is especially sad because Paige told CNN that she hadn’t talked to her since they were kids. Then, out of the blue, Paige got an Instagram message that morning, which turned out to be the shooter’s suicide note.
Based on information previously available, it seems that the shooter was a shy girl in middle school, but the middle school basketball team girls took her under their wing and made her feel accepted in ways that no one had before or since. This seems to have led to her obsession with several of the girls from the team. Teammate Sydney Sims’s death the previous August threw the shooter for a loop. She often refers to “Syd” and how she believes Syd wants her to be happy and is waiting for her on the other side. She also seems to believe that because she can’t love the object of her obsession the way she thinks Paige would want, she’s better off dead. This leads to her obsession with her own death.
She wrote several times that she wanted to be infamous. She planned the shooting meticulously, as previously released pages from the spiral-bound notebook proved. It is for this very reason that she remains nameless here.
The Tennessee Star and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy have done fantastic work and taken on legal risk to get us the information we have today. If you can, please consider donating to their legal fund, as they are likely going to face repercussions for publishing this journal.
Lorraine Yuriar is a wife, mother, and lifelong conservative, currently stuck in a very blue state.
Real mental illness was there. Yet there was no help for this wayward young lady. The hated was very deep.
Thankfully my daughter graduated from high School last year. The school was closed again for a bomb scare yesterday. They get scares about once every two months. When my daughter was in the 9th grade her and her classmate had a boy tell them that if he had a pistol he would bring it to school and kill my daughter and her friend. Not only did the principal do nothing about it but threatened my daughter with suspension if she told me. The boy got 3 days of detention. Never left class. This is the same school where the principal's neice is known to be sleeping with the boy students. That's also being covered up because she's not only related to the principal, but both of the boys are sons of a sherrifs deputy. The boys both had nude videos of the woman on their phones and we're showing it to several kids on the school bus. Anyone who reported it was met with disciplinary action for our kids for 'telling' on the boys. Go figure.