← Crime & Justice with Donna Rotunno
Crime & Justice with Donna Rotunno
Tyler Robinson Hearing: Lance Twiggs' Testimony & the Alleged Confession Note
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Foreign. This is crime and Justice. And I'm Donna Rotuno. I just got back after five days in Utah covering the preliminary hearing in Provo of Tyler Robinson, the accused killer of Charlie Kirk. And it was a very long week filled with a lot of courtroom drama, starting with, of course, as we have seen as this case has progressed, the judge and his very deliberate decisions. There had been many issues brought to the court before the preliminary hearing started and during the preliminary hearing. And again, we watched the defense fight about evidentiary issues. We watched the defense talk about cameras in the courtroom. And we continue to watch the fight over what the public could and could not see, which created a very interesting backdrop for the week, as Erica Kirk, Charlie Kirk's parents, and other members of their family joined and proceeded to go into the courtrooms almost every single day. In addition, on a couple of the days, Don Trump Jr. And his wife attended court with Erica Kirk and Charlie's family. And it really was a very interesting thing to watch as the family members came together and took a very specific stance on the way they thought these proceedings should go forward. And they asked the judge for transparency, and they asked the judge to make sure every piece of evidence was put out to the public. And I couldn't help but think that not only do they want the world to see what happened to Charlie, but they want the world to know that there is actual evidence in this case against Tyler Robinson. Because in the backdrop of all of this has been these conspiracy theories that are popping up online. And even watching some of the coverage online as we were waiting to cover it outside, I'm watching comments coming through online, and I'm watching people's belief about what evidence shows versus what it actually shows, and the fact that people are looking at actual evidence and then trying to say that that evidence doesn't exist, or the fact that Tyler Robinson was never on the campus at Utah Valley University when he truly was on the campus. And so there were all of these things that were sort of happening in the background. And I feel like for the Kirk family, their main goal is to make sure that the proper person is as convicted of this crime and that the evidence will show that the proper person is the one on trial. So I found it really compelling to watch all of that unfold, even in the midst of what was happening in the courtroom, when it came to the prosecutors and the defense. And so let's kind of break down the days in which court took place and the fact that now here we are at the end of day five, and everything Just kind of wrapped up. And we found out that the judge is not going to be ruling on this issue until end of September, which will put us at a year since Charlie Kirk was murdered.
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So let's get into it a little bit in terms of what the evidence showed and what took place in that courtroom. So the prosecutors called, I think it was a total of six witnesses. The defense called three. And in. In a more global perspective, what we're able to see now is that the things that the defense is trying to kind of tailor tailor their defense to seems to be ballistic evidence and DNA evidence. And so they're basically trying to say that the evidence the prosecutors put on when it comes to the gun and the fired bullet that actually killed Charlie Kirk is that the bullet cannot conclusively be attached back to the weapon that everyone believes was used in this crime, which was the rifle that was found in a forest area not far from the campus. And so the defense had made a big deal prior to the preliminary hearing about this, this bullet, and it created a big storm of media attention because they claimed that the bullet did not match. Well, that's not the case. What the ATF agent said was that the bullet match is inconclusive. So that does not mean that it wasn't fired from the gun, but it also doesn't mean that it was, but it means that it could be, and it means that it couldn't be. So, you know that that piece of evidence is just one more small thing to think about in the case when you look at it in conjunction with all of the other evidence. So we've watched the defense really try to attack that, and I thought that that attack may be pretty helpful at a trial. I'm not so sure that it was helpful at a preliminary hearing. So we're going to see how they argue that later. To the judge doing the same with DNA, basically trying to say you don't know when Tyler Robinson's DNA or Lance Twig's DNA was actually placed on those items. But again, those items are found on the campus, on the roof around the gun. And so, you know, all of these pieces of evidence, one by one, you may be able to attack. But when you look at them in the totality of the circumstances regarding what happened that day, I think it's much more difficult to deal with. What was probably the most explosive evidence really came in through Lance Twigs himself. And let's remember who Lance Twiggs is. Lance Twigs was the boyfriend of Tyler Robinson. They had met when they became roommates back a couple of years ago, and they started a dating relationship while they were roommates and they were gamers and they were. Had some jobs. Neither one of them was still in school, and they had this relationship. There's been talk about Lance Twigs being transgender, Lance Twigs being furry. There's pictures of him in these, like, animal costumes. But what we saw for the first time outside of those photos that we had seen in the news, was Lance Twigs actually sit down, and it seemed to be, like, on a zoom recording. And he sat down with investigators on this case, and there was investigators who testified about him coming in and him having a conversation and sitting down. Now, we have to remember there's been a lot of talk about Lance Twiggs and the immunity that he received. And what kind of immunity was that? Well, it was use immunity. And what use immunity means is that anything he says while he's talking to investigators could not be used against him. So if he implicated himself in any way, if he said, I knew that Tyler was going to kill Charlie Kirk, I knew that he was going over to Utah Valley University that day. He had talked about this. I knew what he transcribed onto those bullets. Then he would put himself in a position where maybe he was an accessory to this or there was some conspiracy to commit murder or that he had some duty to report him. And so that's what his immunity was for, is that if during that conversation, he admitted to being part of this crime in any way. Now, what we saw in his videotape statement that he gave and that was played in court was none of that. There was. There was no implication of him at any point. Now, there are about 20 minutes of that tape that we did not see. So we saw about 17 minutes of it, and there was about 20 minutes that we did not see. So what's on the rest of that tape? We don't know. The judge ruled that it was not relevant for purposes of preliminary hearing. And remember, preliminary hearing is a probable cause standard. What that means is probable cause that a crime took place and that they can prove the elements of that crime at a low standard of probable cause. And so that's what it means. It's not beyond a reasonable doubt like it was at trial. And there's been a lot of talk this week about the fact that that preliminary hearing in Utah was really very unusual compared to other jurisdictions in the United States. If we look at other high profile cases, let's talk about Luigi Mangione. In Luigi Langioni's case, he was charged, indicted. Very quickly, Utah does not have an indictment process. So what that means is they cannot go to the grand jury, put a detective on the stand, have the detective say, as part of my investigation, I learned A, B and C. And then the grand jury comes back and says, okay, that's enough. This case can, can be formally charged and you can move forward to trial. So Utah does not have that process. But again, normally preliminary hearings are very quick. Put a couple of witnesses on, you can put an officer on, and the officer can testify to everything he found, everything he recovered, what happened when they sent pieces of information out for testing. He can tell you about cell phone records that they recovered. He can tell you about text messages that he read. He can tell you about statements that other people gave him. And so in Utah, the state's attorneys decided not to do this hearing. Maybe that has to do with the fact that they want all of this out in the world in a very transparent way. But in this case, they decided to put on this very long five day hearing and call several witnesses, which is their right to do. The defense also has a right to call witnesses, which they did in this case. And it was very unusual because that doesn't happen quite often. I think maybe it's a mistake to play your hand prior to trial. But nonetheless, they decided to call those witnesses. So let me go back to Lance Twiggs a little bit here and his, his testimony. So Lance was very relaxed. He did not in any way, shape or form come across as somebody who was being forced. He really didn't even seem to be somebody who was overly bothered by the fact that he's talking about his partner who is now going to be charged with this crime and probably never going to see him again. So it was very. To me, it was very devoid of any emotion. And I guess I figured that there would be emotion one way or another, either extreme sadness or maybe defiance toward the police, like, I don't want to be here and you're forcing me to do this. But there was none of that. He was extremely cooperative. And so I don't know if it's a situation where he really, truly did not know anything about this or did not realize anything Tyler was planning to do. But at the end of the day, he really did come across as someone who was fairly devoid of. Of any emotion. And so he was asked several questions about what he knew about this. And he. All he was able to tell us was that the day of the murder, he received a text message from Tyler. Tyler telling him to look under his keyboard in his room by his computer. And what did he find? He found a note. And the note was a confession of sorts. Now, we don't know exactly what was in that note because the whole note was not admissible for purposes of preliminary hearing. And he had taken a photograph of that note. I think there's some information about maybe he. He tried to get rid of the actual note, but he had taken a photo of it. And then he talked about what happened after that and how there were text messages between the two of them. He asked Tyler Robinson if he did it. Tyler Robinson said yes, he did it, and asked why. And Tyler said, because he was. Can't. You can't negotiate certain hate. And that basically Charlie to be taken out. And so there's this conversation. But then what was very strange about it is, is he says then after that conversation ends, that he goes to bed. And it's not until the next day when he wakes up in the afternoon, that he sees Tyler Robinson. And I don't know, I'm. I'm thinking just in common terms, think about you and your own life. And if somebody that you're having a relationship with tells you that they're involved in not just a shooting, but a shooting of a figure that is well known, polarizing in some ways, and someone who is now all over, not only just national. Not only national news, but world news. And you just go to bed and don't really confront them about it until the next day. That's the part of his testimony that a lot of us find the most questionable. So I think that's what we're going to see. Be attacked fairly vigorously by the defense once this case does go to trial. And, you know, we all believe that it's going to. We'll see. So that was pretty much the most explosive parts of what happened in this preliminary hearing. But what Tyler Robinson does is Tyler Robinson takes all of the evidence that was presented by agents, by officers, by police from the university where this happened, and he's able to kind of put a bow on everything. So there's surveillance of a figure that looks like Tyler Robinson showing up to Utah Valley University. And what does Lance Twig Say Lance Twigg says, yes, I think that's him. It looks like him. And then they show two more pictures and says, yeah, that's definitely looking more like him. And I recognize those shoes. And I haven't seen that hat before, but I think that shirt. And so there's. There's definitely an identification of the surveillance. And we also know that they identified the car that that person came out of. And then what does Lance do? Lance talks about the fact that in the text messages, Tyler Robinson talks about his grandfather's rifle and how he used the rifle and how he has to go back and get the rifle. And if he gets the rifle, no one will ever be able to identify that it was him. What does he then talk about? He talks about the fact that he remembers that Tyler wanted to engrave bullets. And he remembered a lot of detail about this. And I found this probably the most compelling in anything that he talked about because he said that Tyler asked him to get a Drammel. He went, he told him where the Dremel was and he was going to use that to engrave bullets. And lo and behold, what do we find out from the officers that testify there were bullets in that gun unfired, and what were they engraved? So, you know, these are the types of things that Tyler's testimony was able to do. It was able to wrap up with a bow. A lot of the things that the officers had already testified to. He's able to talk about what happens after the fact and the conversations that they have. The fact that he knows he's going to turn himself in with a sheriff friend of the family. So it's sort of the sequence of events. And then he can then corroborate what was already known we didn't hear about in the preliminary hearing, which I'm not surprised because again, it's a low standard, but I'm sure we will at trial is I'm sure they have cell phone data, cell phone data placing Tyler Robinson at or around the Utah Valley University campus. My guess is we're not going to see that Tyler, that Lance Twiggs phone was anywhere near that campus. And so those are the types of things that I think we're going to see moving forward in terms of what happens at trial. So now what are we waiting for? We are waiting for the judge to say the words finding a probable cause, which is about as simple as it could be. And I think probably after day two, the judge could have said that because there was plenty of information and evidence presented that would have brought the case to the level of probable cause, but we are now waiting. And what the judge has decided, in very Judge Graph fashion, is the judge is asking both sides to brief their positions. I mean, this is unprecedented and unheard of. In a preliminary hearing, both sides are going to do that. The state proffers are due in July, the defense in August, and the judge is going to have them come back on September 1st. They're going to argue all three sides. And then I don't, I don't see any other attorneys arguing because they don't have a standing in that position, but both sides are going to argue. And then the judge says he's going to make a decision. Now, we also know, in Judge Graff fashion, that he will not make that decision on that day. What's he going to do? He's going to take a date to rule. So it is very possible that we will not hear the words finding a probable cause until after September 10, 2026, which will be one year after Charlie Kirk was murdered on the Utah Valley campus. So we'll see what happens September 1st. But I do not see any world in which he makes a ruling on that day. And my guess is he will at least take a couple of weeks to make that decision. So we will stay tuned to that case. We will watch what happens. We know that there is a lot more evidence, even though there was already a mountain that came out. I was honored to be out in Utah, being able to be on the ground and paying attention right there to what was happening and being able to bring it all back to you. We had a couple of great podcasts with great guests while we were out there. I hope you join us for more. And we will be back with another episode of Crime and Justice. Thank you.