33 Hours: How a fateful photo release led to the rapid capture of Charlie Kirk's assassin

The FBI and local law enforcement have a storied history of killer manhunts that proves the timetable for arrests are often unpredictable. It took five days to capture Luigi Mangione after he gunned down United Health Care's CEO outside a Manhattan hotel, and about the same time to apprehend the Tsarnaev brothers after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Unabomber Ted Kaczynski roamed free for 17 years and 314 days before his capture in 1996, while Centennial Park bomber Eric Rudolph was arrested six years and 10 months after detonating a bomb that marred the 1996 Summer Olympics just a few months after Kaczynski's apprehension.

Those benchmark manhunts are a reminder of how remarkably quick Utah authorities and the FBI raced from a few morsels of evidence on a college building rooftop to the capture of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson in just 33 hours after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was gunned down by an assassin's bullet during an outdoor university event Wednesday.

"This is a remarkable investigative timeline and people should remember that this tragedy was not part of a scripted, one-hour TV crime show, yet was brought to a logical conclusion within a 48-hour time period," retired FBI Executive Assistant Director Chris Piehota told Just the News on Friday evening.  

Piehota and other law enforcement experts credited FBI Director Kash Patel's insistence to release security footage photos of the alleged killer -- well before police had an inkling of his identity -- as the linchpin that harnessed the power of public crowd-sourcing to solve the case.

"The speed at which the investigation progressed from attack to arrest proved what many of us former and current law enforcement believe: that law enforcement needs to evolve into an advanced use of the citizenry as a force multiplier," retired FBI Special Agent Jonathan Gilliam told Just the News. 

FBI agents on the ground in Utah had extracted usable photos of Robinson from security footage and held them for about a half day before Patel learned of their existence and ordered them released to the public midday Thursday.

Less than 12 hours and 11,000 public tips later, Robinson's father turned in his son.

Experts said the decision required deciding against the grain of historical police thinking, which often eschews releasing photos to the public early in a probe for fear of tipping off the suspect. 

"This institutional inbreeding stems from the lack of trust that law enforcement has for the general population, and while that lack of trust has a strong valid foundation, in time-sensitive investigations like the Charlie Kirk investigation, the old way is the wrong way," Gilliam said.

Piehota agreed: "The FBI Director’s decision to release digital footage to the public accelerated the investigation and led to the identification, surrender, and custodial detention of the shooting suspect."

Gilliam said some in the newest generation of police executives are beginning to appreciate that crowd-sourcing can create a massive army of sleuths quicker than a suspect can find an escape route where they won't be noticed.

"Over the past decade, technology and information sharing has exponentially advanced to the point that a single picture can be seen and further disseminated by millions of people in seconds," he noted. "Yet law enforcement has failed to evolve into a streamlined system that uses this technological advance. 

"There is no reason that the public should be waiting for days for the dissemination of identifiable evidence in a critical and time-sensitive emergency such as an assassin roaming the streets of a city," he added.

Law enforcement experts also praised the way that multiple layers of police worked seamlessly together, from the FBI and DOJ in Washington to Utah state police and the local sheriff's and campus police offices.

Robinson's speedy arrest is "a remarkable feat that highlighted the leadership, mission focus, and investigative capability of our law enforcement community," Piehota said.

Here are just a few of the key developments in that 33-hour timeline.

Wednesday, September 10, 2025:

•  2:23 pm ET - Charlie Kirk is shot at Utah Valley University.
• 4:08 pm ET - Just the News is first to report that Kirk has died at a hospital.
• 6:30 pm ET- Utah police and FBI hold first press conference on Kirk's death

Thursday, September 11, 2025: 

• 11:00 am ET - Director Patel learns of photo evidence and orders its release.
• 11:58 am ET - FBI releases first photos of the alleged shooter
• 9:50 pm ET - Governor Spencer Cox holds Press conference updating on the alleged shooter
• 9:59 pm ET -  FBI Releases video of shooter running off
• Midnight ET - U.S. Marshals apprehend Robinson in western Utah after his father and youth minister contact authorities.

Friday, September 12, 2025

• 7:52 am ET - Sources confirm to Just the News suspect in custody
• 8:06 am ET - President Donald Trump confirms a suspect is caught during a Fox News interview.
• 10:03 am ET - Utah Gov. Spencer Cox hosts press conference announcing the capture of Robinson.