The True Toll of Conspiracy Theories

By Eva Terry

Sunday, December 14, 2025

 

It was a sunny September afternoon. I was standing in the crowd at Utah Valley University with my VoiceMemos app rolling when I watched Charlie Kirk’s body jerk backward. He closed his eyes and fell out of his chair.

 

It was the gunshot heard from every phone, viewed by millions almost immediately. I heard it with my own ears. I saw what it did with my own eyes. And I, along with everyone else, want justice for the Turning Point USA founder and slain father of two.

 

Tyler Robinson currently sits in Utah County Jail, facing six felony charges and a Class A misdemeanor. The 22-year-old turned himself in to authorities in Washington County the night after the shooting.

 

Though he has not pleaded one way or the other (and will likely not do so until May at the earliest), the case against him is strong, and empirical evidence points its iron finger at Tyler Robinson.

 

He had a motive, he was seen on camera, the gun’s trigger had his DNA, and he confessed to his parents before turning himself in to the FBI.

 

The bolt-action rifle used in the killing belonged to Robinson’s grandfather. His own family told authorities he had shifted politically to the left; during a family dinner shortly before Kirk was assassinated, Robinson brought up the UVU event and said the 31-year-old was “full of hate and spreading hate.”

 

Yet since Kirk’s death on September 10, there has been a steadily growing, insatiable thirst for conspiracy — and it is not without consequence.

 

The conspiracies germinated immediately following the shooting. In Robinson’s hometown, three days after Charlie Kirk was killed, I interviewed a mother of two young sons. In earnest, she told me it was not Robinson who’d killed Kirk; it was a TPUSA donor with grievances. In our brief conversation, she referenced a plane that took off from the Provo Airport around the time of the shooting and added that she’d seen the video of him being shot, and the bullet path defied logic. “We live in a world where there’s a lot of stuff going on with the government, and I think we just need to take our precautions and do our due diligence as citizens, not jump to conclusions as far as damning him and convicting [Robinson],” the woman told me.

 

About a week later, outside UVU’s student- and community-made vigil, I spoke with a man who told me he’d driven down from Washington State that morning to check out the grounds for himself. As an ex-military guy, he didn’t think Robinson was the culprit either. An inexperienced kid wouldn’t be capable of taking apart the gun that quickly, and his escape route didn’t make sense, he told me. I’m not sure what he discovered when I pointed him in the direction of the amphitheater, but I hope it was worth the twelve-hour drive.

 

Enter Candace Owens.

 

I have neither the word count nor the will to explain the accusations Owens makes across her 40-plus episodes on Charlie’s murder. It suffices to say that in her mind, TPUSA is guilty, his wife Erika is guilty, Jews are guilty, the FBI is guilty, Mormons are guilty, France is guilty, and Egypt is guilty. They’re all in on it; they’re lying to you, she says.

 

Guilty of what? We’re not sure. And guilty why? That, too, we don’t know.

 

The people bearing the deepest grief and trauma from Charlie’s murder — Erika and the staff at Turning Point — have been recast as villains in Owens’s universe. With an audience of millions, she declared, “Charlie Kirk was betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA and some of the very people who eulogized him on stage.” Candace Owens has flipped the truth on its head.

 

TPUSA asked Owens to join a special livestream event on Monday to address her claims against them, but she now says she will instead offer a rebuttal on her own show.

 

Though conspiracy theories are nothing new, they are newly mainstreamed. As journalist Andy Ngo recently reasoned, self-styled journalists like Candace Owens who peddle conspiracy theories as hoaxes and innuendo are not harmless. “News” with no guidelines, no accountability, and no guardrails reduces a situation to fiction.

 

This is not to suggest the traditional press is faultless. The original sin of journalism is that it profits from tragedy, mayhem, and dirty laundry. But in exchange, it offers the simple reward of knowing what’s going on. What happened? Who did it? Why?

 

But Owens and those pushing conspiracy theories around Charlie Kirk’s death are counterfeiting knowledge, jeopardizing the judicial process and skewing public perception.

 

When I asked a friend what he’d heard about Robinson recently, he said he’d seen that he was at Burger King when Kirk was shot. He added, “Didn’t Tyler plead not guilty in court or something?” Both claims are easy to verify as false.

 

The Manhattan Institute recently published a study that found a disturbing positive correlation between believing in conspiracy theories and justifying political violence. And it makes sense: If you believe your government conspires against its own citizens and shoots the people who defend it, there is fertile ground for disobeying its laws against killing, looting, and burning. The left has discredited the U.S. government for decades, saying it’s built on slavery, racism, sexism, and colonialism. And perhaps this indictment provides solid justification for Antifa to act the way it does.

 

When institutional distrust and paranoid ideologies breed, their offspring is ugly. It has been ugly for the left; it is starting to look ugly for the right.

 

What do conspiracy theories do on a human level? A few days ago, Erika Kirk re-entered the national spotlight, and in an interview with Fox News, she said the conspiracy theories about herself and TPUSA are a “mind virus.” “Just know that your words are very powerful,” she said. “We have more death threats on our team and our side than I have ever seen. We have kidnapping threats — you name it, we have it. And my poor team is exhausted.”

 

But conspiracy theories wound more than their targets. They take a toll on the believer; they exacerbate helplessness and make it difficult to forgive.

 

I was surprised at Owens’s reaction on her own podcast to Erika Kirk’s interview with Jesse Watters last month. With an earnestness reserved only for the widow of a murdered husband, Erika said she has never been angry with God for her new reality. “I know that He uses everything, even what the enemy meant for evil,” she said.

 

But Owens disagreed. In what she called a “hypercritical” self-assessment, she said she cannot forgive Robinson, “because I cannot forgive until I know what happened.” Then she resumed untangling her cold spaghetti slop of who conspired to kill Charlie.

 

But perfect knowledge is not a prerequisite for forgiveness, or it would be an impossible task. In fact, the Creator of the human experience proclaimed on the cross at Calvary, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

 

It’s natural to want the complicated universe to make sense. It’s what drives scientific discovery, honest journalism, and a thorough judicial system. But truth cannot be reliably discovered on a podcast-a-day schedule, especially when the shows are incentivized to shock and awe. Fortunately, while the wheels of justice turn slowly, they do turn — and despite the distractions from Owens and her fellow conspiracy theorists, justice will ultimately be served for Charlie Kirk.