In the chaotic hours after an assassin’s gunshot rang out at Utah Valley University last Wednesday, Tyler Robinson texted his roommate and romantic partner back home 250 miles away and said, “Drop what you’re doing, look under my keyboard.”
There in their nondescript apartment in the fast-growing conservative Utah city of St. George lay a note from Mr. Robinson saying, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I’m going to take it.”
It would take 33 hours and a frantic manhunt that roped in top-ranking Trump administration officials before Mr. Robinson, 22, was finally apprehended. In the end, it was Mr. Robinson’s own mother who recognized her eldest son’s image on the news and began a painstaking series of phone calls that ended with him in custody.
Criminal charges filed on Tuesday portray Mr. Robinson as a left-leaning assassin with pro-L.G.B.T.Q. views who spent a week planning a murder that has inflamed America’s political hatreds and led to vows of retribution from the highest echelons of government and even talk of civil war.
But court papers and interviews reveal the wrenching realizations that unfolded in private, as Mr. Robinson’s partner and parents in the red-rock deserts of southern Utah realized that the onetime straight-A student and scholarship winner appeared to be the black-clad figure being hunted by law enforcement.
“You weren’t the one who did it right????” Mr. Robinson’s partner wrote to him last Wednesday.
“I am,” Mr. Robinson replied. “I’m sorry.”
Utah prosecutors said that Mr. Kirk was targeted “based on his political expression,” but they did not offer a more detailed motive on Tuesday as they charged Mr. Robinson with aggravated murder and announced they would seek the death penalty.
Mr. Robinson was raised in a Republican family — the accused described his father as “a pretty diehard maga” — but his political views had intensified and moved to the left over the past year, particularly when it came to gay and transgender rights, officials have said.
Mr. Robinson’s roommate and romantic partner was transitioning from male to female gender, and Mr. Robinson told his family he believed Mr. Kirk had been spreading hate.
“I had enough of his hatred,” Mr. Robinson wrote to his partner in a text message after the shooting, according to court papers.
Utah officials said that Mr. Robinson’s romantic partner had known nothing about any plans to kill Mr. Kirk and had been cooperating with investigators. Investigators have not said whether the relationship was a motive in targeting Mr. Kirk, an outspoken critic of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
Beau Mason, Utah’s public safety commissioner, said investigators were still working to unravel Mr. Robinson’s personal relationships and excavate his extensive online life to fully understand what might have driven him.
“Who did he speak to, who did he talk to?” Mr. Mason said in an interview. “It’s the same thing for digital: What interactions did he have online, what websites did he visit, what may have influenced him in any way? You don’t know what’s out there until you search for it.”
The search ultimately led investigators to St. George, where Mr. Robinson had returned after dropping out after one semester at Utah State University, nearly 400 miles north, near the Idaho border. He had been in his third year of an electrician-apprentice program at Dixie Technical College.
The couple spent much of their time cloistered inside playing video games, neighbors said. They had a small friend group and often used the Discord messaging platform to arrange times when they could meet online to play video games, according to a friend who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Mr. Robinson never indicated in those Discord chats he wanted to harm anyone, including Mr. Kirk, the friend said. After the shooting, however, he alternately joked about being misidentified as the killer and confessed to Mr. Kirk’s shooting in different areas of the platform.
In texts to his partner after the shooting, Mr. Robinson was by turns apologetic, defiant and affectionate as he mulled whether he could retrieve the rifle used to kill Mr. Kirk and make the 250-mile drive back home to St. George. He seemed convinced he could get away with it.
“I am still ok my love, but am stuck in orem for a little while longer yet,” he said, referring to the city near Provo that is home to Utah Valley University.
“Shouldn’t be long until I can come home, but I gotta grab my rifle still. To be honest I had hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you.”
The partner appeared stunned.
“Why?”
“Why did I do it?” Mr. Robinson replied.
“Yeah.”
He responded, “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
The texts suggest that Mr. Robinson stayed close to the shooting scene even as throngs of local and federal law enforcement officers rushed in. He mentioned seeing a police car parked by the wooded spot where he left the rifle, and expressed regret he did not drive back immediately to retrieve the gun.
“I had to leave it in a bush where I changed outfits,” he wrote, adding, “I might have to abandon it and hope they don’t find prints.”
Mr. Robinson kept texting, worrying about how he would tell his parents about the missing rifle and telling his partner that the cryptic messages he engraved on bullet casings were “mostly a big meme.”
There were no further responses from his partner included in the court records filed on Tuesday.
“Delete this exchange,” Mr. Robinson wrote.
Like millions of other Americans, Mr. Robinson’s mother in southern Utah had been following Mr. Kirk’s shooting. On Thursday, she noticed that the images of the gunman that were released to aid the manhunt looked disturbingly familiar.
She called Mr. Robinson, the eldest of her three sons, to ask where he was. He told her he was home sick and had been there since the day of the shooting, according to court records.
Mr. Robinson’s mother then showed the photo to her husband, who agreed that the gunman looked like their son.
Mr. Robinson’s father also believed that the rifle, which investigators found in a wooded area near the campus, resembled a gun given to their son as a gift. They messaged their son on Thursday and asked him to send a photo of the rifle. The son did not respond.
His parents convinced Mr. Robinson to come to their family home on a quiet suburban street in Washington, Utah, just outside St. George. He was the gunman, Mr. Robinson implied, according to court documents. But he could not go to jail. Instead he wanted to kill himself.
His parents reached out to a family friend they knew through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who is also a retired deputy sheriff, and began trying to negotiate Mr. Robinson’s surrender.
The retired deputy quickly called Sheriff Nate Brooksby of Washington County and, his voice shaking, reported that he believed he knew who had killed Mr. Kirk.
“I never could have fathomed what came out of his mouth,” Sheriff Brooksby said in an interview on Tuesday, recalling the phone call.
Sheriff Brooksby then called Sheriff Mike Smith of Utah County, where the shooting occurred, to break the news.
“I’m explaining to him, ‘Hey, I’ve got the shooter in Washington County, we’re negotiating on getting him to surrender,’” Sheriff Brooksby said. “He said, ‘Wait, wait, wait, what are you talking about?’ I repeated myself. He said, ‘Hang on,’ and he put me on speakerphone.”
Sheriff Brooksby said that Mr. Robinson had been afraid of being apprehended by a SWAT team or being shot by law enforcement, and agreed to a low-key end to a fevered manhunt.
The retired deputy drove Mr. Robinson and his parents to the sheriff’s office in Hurricane, Utah, and Mr. Robinson was escorted into an interview room to wait while investigators from the command center scrambled to get on a plane and fly down to southern Utah.
Sheriff Brooksby said Mr. Robinson had seemed “quiet and somber” and asked for a lawyer.
“The intense law enforcement pressure backed him into a corner,” Sheriff Brooksby said. “He knew it was inevitable that he was going to get caught.”
Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting from St. George, Utah.
Jack Healy is a Phoenix-based national correspondent for The Times who focuses on the politics and climate of the Southwest. He has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s journalism school.
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