Prosecutors pursuing the Charlie Kirk murder suspect spent four days this week doing something they had largely avoided for months: showing their hand.

What emerged was a case built on surveillance footage, forensic evidence, and — most damaging of all — the defendant’s own text messages.

“The evidence is overwhelming,” Chief Deputy Utah County Attorney General Chad Grunander told the judge. “It’s devastating.”

The Charge and the Stakes

Tyler Robinson, 23, faces charges including aggravated murder, a capital offence in Utah. He has not yet entered a plea.

The preliminary hearing was not a trial. Its purpose was narrower: to establish probable cause that Robinson should face a jury at all. That decision now rests with Utah County Judge Tony Graf.

Charlie Kirk, 31, was shot once in the neck on 10 September last year while addressing a crowd at Utah Valley University. A close Trump ally and founder of the conservative youth organisation Turning Point USA, he left behind a wife and two children.

A Courtroom Under Pressure

Public interest was so intense that people queued overnight for wristbands granting access to one of just 14 spectator seats.

Emotion filled the room. On Friday, as video played showing the suspect running across a rooftop on the day of the shooting, Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk reportedly embraced her tearful mother-in-law. Both then turned away from the screen.

Reconstructing 48 Hours

Prosecutors traced Robinson’s movements with unusual granularity.

According to the state’s account, he left his home unusually early on the morning of the shooting — around 4am — and travelled roughly three and a half hours north to the campus in Orem.

Surveillance footage shown in court depicted a man prosecutors identify as Robinson moving casually through campus. He bought and ate Chick-fil-A. He even interacted with representatives from Turning Point USA, Kirk’s own organisation.

Later footage, they said, showed the same man returning in different clothing and walking differently — holding one leg rigid, as though deliberately altering his gait.

The Rooftop

State Bureau of Investigation Agent David Hull, who testified across two days, described what cameras captured next.

According to Hull, the footage shows Robinson rolling over a railing onto the roof of the Losee Center, lying flat, and later dropping down from the building while carrying an unidentified object.

Investigators say the fatal shot was fired from that rooftop, at a distance of roughly 415 feet.

The Text Messages

The most damaging evidence came not from cameras but from Robinson’s phone — specifically, his conversation with his former roommate and romantic partner, Lance Twiggs.

Twiggs, whose recorded April interview with a prosecutor was played in court, said the two met through mutual friends in 2023, lived together, and later began dating.

He described a relationship in which Robinson would occasionally discuss Trump or current events. Twiggs said they never talked about LGBT issues, and that he had never once heard Robinson mention Charlie Kirk.

That changed on the night of the shooting.

In messages presented by prosecutors, Robinson wrote that he had hidden his grandfather’s rifle in bushes near campus and had returned to retrieve it — only to find law enforcement swarming the area.

“There is a squad car parked right by it,” he wrote.

He then apologised to Twiggs: “Again, I am sorry for roping you into all of this. You should not have to worry about this.”

When Twiggs asked directly whether Robinson was the shooter, prosecutors say Robinson admitted it.

“I had enough of his hatred,” he wrote. “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

Notably, Robinson appeared uncertain about the weapon itself. “I don’t fully know what the gun was, because it was old… and Gramps did some modifying,” he texted.

The Engraved Bullets

Weeks before the shooting, Twiggs testified, Robinson had asked to borrow an engraving tool — ostensibly for an upcoming family hunting and camping trip.

Afterwards, Robinson referenced it directly: “Remember how I was engraving bullets?” He characterised the messages as “mostly a big meme.”

Prosecutors displayed photographs of inscribed bullets and cartridges recovered both at the crime scene and at Robinson’s residence. Among the engravings: “Hey Fascist! Catch!”

The Forensics

Robinson eventually abandoned his attempt to recover the rifle, according to his texts, and returned to the home he shared with Twiggs in St George.

Investigators found the weapon anyway.

Law enforcement testified that DNA matching Robinson was recovered from both the rifle itself and the towel it had been wrapped in.

The Defence Strategy

Robinson’s lawyers spent five days pushing back on nearly every element of the state’s case.

Their objections were procedural and substantive:

• Hearsay challenges to testimony and recorded statements
• Concerns about the potential tainting of future jurors
• Extended cross-examination of expert witnesses
• Questions about DNA testing methodology, interpretation and laboratory protocol
• Challenges to the ballistics reports and how they were analysed

The strategy was not to offer an alternative narrative. It was to create doubt — to suggest the evidence may be less airtight than prosecutors insist.

What Happens Now

Judge Graf must decide whether the state has cleared the threshold to send Robinson to trial. Given the volume of evidence presented, that outcome appears likely, though nothing is guaranteed until he rules.

Until this week, the public knew remarkably little about Tyler Robinson — a trainee electrician, a college dropout, a gamer. Four days of testimony filled in a portrait prosecutors hope a jury will one day accept: a young man who took his grandfather’s modified rifle, climbed onto a rooftop, killed a national political figure, and then tried, unsuccessfully, to disappear.