The messages that prosecutors say were exchanged between Tyler Robinson and Lance Twiggs on the day of Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination last year began with goofy expressions of love.<\/p>\n
The tone of the exchanges between the couple abruptly shifted when Mr. Robinson said that he was the person who had fatally shot Mr. Kirk, a conservative activist, during an event at Utah Valley University, a four-hour drive from the apartment complex in southern Utah where Mr. Robinson and Mr. Twiggs lived together.<\/p>\n
\u201cyou werent the one who did it right????\u201d Mr. Twiggs asked Mr. Robinson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am, I\u2019m sorry,\u201d Mr. Robinson replied.<\/p>\n
The text messages between the men, along with a handwritten note Mr. Robinson left that had not previously been made public in full, offered the most illuminating view yet into their relationship and what the authorities say were Mr. Robinson\u2019s state of mind and actions in the hours before and after the shooting.<\/p>\n
The evidence suggests that he had spent at least several days planning the killing, and that he tried to cover his tracks by retrieving a rifle he stashed in a wooded area and asking Mr. Twiggs to delete their text exchanges.<\/p>\n
The messages were laid out in court on Thursday, the fourth day of a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to try Mr. Robinson for aggravated murder. The law-enforcement authorities had previously disclosed many of the messages in earlier filings.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Mr. Robinson, 23, targeted Mr. Kirk because of the prominent activist\u2019s political beliefs, and the state is seeking the death penalty; Mr. Robinson has yet to enter a plea.<\/p>\n
His lawyers sought, unsuccessfully, to preclude the video interview and texts from being presented in this hearing, though they did not specifically contest the authenticity of the messages. The defense had sought to question Mr. Twiggs during the preliminary hearing, but the judge allowed his testimony solely through a prerecorded video.<\/p>\n
In the video interview with prosecutors that was played on Thursday, Mr. Twiggs said that Mr. Robinson had left their home in St. George, Utah, at about 4 a.m. on Sept. 10, the day of the shooting, saying he had a long day of electrician work.<\/p>\n
At 4:30 p.m., roughly three hours after Mr. Kirk was fatally shot and as a massive manhunt was underway, Mr. Robinson texted Mr. Twiggs: \u201cI love you! Mwah mwah,\u201d giving no indication that anything was amiss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you moresies mwah mwah mway,\u201d Mr. Twiggs replied.<\/p>\n
At 11 that night, Mr. Robinson sent an apparently scheduled text message to Mr. Twiggs to \u201cdrop what you are doing\u201d and look under Mr. Robinson\u2019s keyboard, where he had left a note disclosing his plans to kill Mr. Kirk, according to prosecutors\u2019 account of the evidence recovered.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuna, If you are reading this per my text, then I am so sorry,\u201d the note read, referring to Mr. Twiggs by a name he sometimes used at the time. \u201cI left the house this morning on a mission and set an auto text. I am likely dead, or facing a lengthy prison sentence.\u201d It continued: \u201cI had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert Draper contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The messages that prosecutors say were exchanged between Tyler Robinson and Lance Twiggs on the day of Charlie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1699,1698,9,24,63,74710,134,136,135,111452],"class_list":["post-291806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-charlie-1993","tag-kirk","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-robinson","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-tyler-2003"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}