Posted on 09/13/2025 6:42:37 AM PDT by libh8er
TThe 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.
The FBI’s job, and that of most law enforcement, has become a lot easier with the proliferation of cameras, , on smartphone and on homes’ doors and on businesses and on streets and highways. If not for that kind of huge assistance, chances are that it would have taken longer to capture Kirk’s killer and some of the others mentioned.
His dad turned him in.
Why is anyone else patting themselves on the back?
Unabomber’s brother turned him in.
Better question is why didn’t Kirk have Secret Service protection?
“...which often eschews releasing photos to the public early in a probe for fear of tipping off the suspect.”
Even a layman like myself could rightly surmise that the benefit of involving the public early far outweighs any benefit it might provide to the perpetrator.
Why would he?
Even more important is how sad he needed more
Patel....photo...father...custody.
Let’s be honest you don’t get to kill on live TV the close personal friend of both the VP and POTUS and get to walk away. They used every national technical means to find this guy that means every alphabet agency brought their full weight to bear and every technical tool was used behind the scenes and without the constitutional mandate for a lot of those agency’s to work inside CONUS but you can be sure they did. Totally fine with it too. Again you don’t get to murder a friend of the most powerful two men on earth and not have the entire weight of the most sophisticated intelligence communities PLURAL not comedown on you like a landslide.
Because the only reason his dad because aware his son was the suspect was because of all the images law enforcement tracked and collected from various sources, and then Patel's insistence that they be released to the public.
Without that effort and decision, the father wouldn't have had a clue.
Better question is why didn’t Kirk have Secret Service protection?
Because he legally wasn't entitled to it.
“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.”
This is one of the reasons I highly value a website like Free Republic. We crowdsource all news items, and while, like all crowdsourcing efforts, what comes out early on is often wildly inaccurate, or improbable, the concept of crowdsourcing the information means that over time (and that time frame is variable by the way) the inaccurate and improbable explanations are gradually whittled away, and the knowledge-based and rational explanations survive.
When I read something on something, I am no expert on, my first choice is to see what people on Free Republic are saying about it. They may not provide in these forums, a rational explanation right upfront, but many people have already started the process that I have not even yet entered, and it serves as a shortcut.
I highly value that, given that we have been reduced in this country to the situation that Soviet citizens found themselves in when reading copies of Izvestia (the Soviet state newspaper) and knowing full well, they were not being told the truth, had to read between the lines to find grains of truth.
Yes, the images helped.
Plus, the dad would be facing charges for harboring a fugitive (a felony) and loss of his pension if he hadn’t.
Horrible situation and clearly the kid was indoctrinated in college by some leftist loons. Likely a closet queer.
He got a 4.0, 34 on ACT, and dropped out after one semester.
99% chance he’s on SSRI meds. They all are - all the shooters and killers in schools, etc. All on these drugs with suicidal and homicidal “side effects.”
They had the car, they had the license plate, they had him walking on video and enough of his face that someone was going to recognize him. They also had a great description of what he was wearing that it was just a matter of time.
I know zero about police work and why they do what they do. Knowing all this though? An idiot could've figured out it was maybe 48 hours or less till they got him.
His father turning him in probably saved his life, for the time being.
Unabomber’s brother turned him in.
Unabomber's brother lives not far from me, he's in Lombard, IL. I don't know him personally, he's on record saying he suspected it was his brother for years before finally turning him in to the FBI. There's a vast difference between the Unabomber and this shooter.
Unabomber was completely off-grid. This shooter lived on the grid. Again, with the digital trail the shooter left behind, it was just a matter of time also even if the father didn't turn him in.
Better question is why didn’t Kirk have Secret Service protection?
Reserved for Presidents and Presidential Candidates. That's why. Charlie Kirk had his own security. BTW: What good did the Secret Service do President Trump when he was shot in the ear, and were it not for a slight head movement, he'd no longer be with us, hmm?
They got the Ukraine women killer very quickly.
99% chance he’s on SSRI meds.
How will we ever know?
What about tranny (Delta) pilots, who post hateful posts celebrating Charlie’s death? Are they on SSRI meds?
How can flyers find out, before boarding their aircraft?
True.
The DEI Secret Service agents Trump had couldn’t reholster their weapons.
Any CEO... politician... pundit... talk show host... podcaster. Open season on everyone.
Seeing lists - from both sides - of who will be next.
We will know he was on SSRIs shortly because that’ll be the defense to avoid the death penalty.
Why didn’t they have a drone in the sky to watch the roots? They are really cheap.
Matthew 23:24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
“...Robinson’s father turned in his son...”
If the father didn’t come forward, I think the killers roommate would have. Once the photos were made public, Tyler Robinson was a dead man walking.
I still want to see ANTIFA crushed to smithereens. President Trump needs to send the National Guard to Portland Oregon (the zombie hive capital of ANTIFA) and burn that damn city to the ground.
“Why is anyone else patting themselves on the back?”
Don’t pick on Kash and Cox. They’re focused on their self gratification, hoping they won’t go blind.
Patel caught flak for the delay in apprehension from his critics who claim he’s done nothing.
His decision to release the photos & footage contradicted old practices and which likely convinced the killer’s father he must be turned in.
Nor did I witness Patel grandstanding.
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