Does evidence support a claim that Charlie Kirk murder investigators "confirmed" they found a bullet in Kirk's body and a second bullet at the scene of the shooting? No, that's not true: Investigators have made no such public disclosures ahead of the October 30, 2025 hearing scheduled in the case. The claim was published and promoted by a clickbait website and a Facebook page operated from Vietnam and Thailand. The text of the claim was determined to be AI-generated and it provided no documentary, eyewitness or official evidence by which to independently corroborate the claim.
The claim appeared in an October 12, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) where it was published on the page of The World Daily with text that began: "A single bullet found at the Charlie Kirk murder scene is now at the center of the investigation." It continued:
Forensic experts have confirmed it does not match the rifle linked to the accused, Tyler James Robinson. The discovery challenges the official narrative that Robinson acted as a lone gunman using a vintage Mauser rifle.
Investigators are re-examining evidence, including multiple unidentified DNA profiles found on the weapon and its wrappings. The powerful .30-06 rifle should have caused a catastrophic exit wound, yet the bullet was found lodged under Kirk's skin. The case against Robinson now hangs in the balance as this single piece of evidence raises serious questions.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot taken at TheWorldDaily Facebook page.)
There is no such announcement on the public web pages of the Utah County Attorney, (archived here) which is prosecuting the accused killer of Charlie Kirk.
In an October 14, 2025 email to Lead Stories, Utah Bureau of Investigation Sgt. Mike Alexander said any comments on evidence discoveries would be handled by the Utah County Attorney.
Lead Stories reached out to Utah County's attorney assigned to handle public information requests, Chris Ballard, and will update this fact check, as relevant, when he or his office responds.
The World Daily page on Facebook is managed from the U.S., Vietnam and Thailand, according to its transparency report:
This alone does not mean the story is fake, but in recent weeks Lead Stories has debunked many other fake stories originating from Facebook pages managed overseas and linking to low quality fly-by-night websites which could be characterized as "made-for-advertising" or MFA sites.
In this case, the post on The World Daily post links to a version of the "second bullet" story on topnewsaz.com. The story cites no named sources, provides no links to documents or reports and declares another bullet was found. The site mixes fake stories about topics in the news with multiple clickbait items about celebrities in bikinis. The example below is not a montage. The "flaunts her huge size" stories overlap on topnewsaz.com, using the exact same wording, but substituting in different names and ages.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot from topnewsaz.com.)
An AI text detector found that the topnewsaz.com story about the purported second bullet at the Charlie Kirk murder scene was mostly made up by generative ai technology, which can be prompted to write journalism-style text for fake news sites. The detector, GPTZero, tracks patterns common to Chat GPT, GPT 4, Gemini, Claude and LLaMa models. The GPTZero system grades its findings on a 100-point scale and declared an 80% probability the second bullet story was AI generated. Here's GPTZero's analysis of the text from topnewsaz.com:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of report generated by GPTZero.)
The Kirk investigation was closely followed in October of 2025, both by metropolitan Salt Lake City area media and by national media.
Lead Stories used key word searches to seek corroboration for the claim that investigators said they found a second bullet at the murder scene.
The Google News index of thousands of news sites turned up no reporting on such an announcement (search archived here.)
Lead Stories also searched the Yahoo News index of its publishing partners and news services. That search (archived here) also showed no credible reports of such an announcement by Utah investigators of the Kirk murder.
Lead Stories also reached out to Katherine Nester, the defense attorney for Kirk's accused killer, to ask if in her review of evidence collected from the scene she found any reference to a second bullet. We will update this story with her response, if relevant, when she replies.
