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The Assassination of Charlie Kirk—Why Were There Books About It Published Before His Death?
- Jayden Thompson
- Sep 13
- 11 min read
On September 10th, 2025, the nation was shocked when a graphic video of political activist Charlie Kirk being shot in the neck circulated social media. Not long after it was declared by President Donald Trump that Kirk, a longtime advocate for Trump and a voice for young Republicans across the nation, had died from a gunshot injury. A manhunt was sent out in search of the shooter, who was later identified as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, but as the manhunt stretched out, I noticed something odd.
There were books about Charlie Kirk’s murder published before his body had gone cold.
My interest started when a book started circulating around social media. Titled The Shooting of Charlie Kirk: A Comprehensive Account of the Utah Valley University Attack, the Aftermath, and America’s Response, the book was authored by Anastasia J. Casey. But what caught the public’s eye is that it was published on September 9th—the day before Kirk was shot. This was disturbing. Many wondered if it was the manifesto of Kirk’s killer. It has been speculated if the book was created using AI and the publication date was simply wrong. Amazon has since taken down the listing for the book, but it made me wonder: Why was it there to begin with? How was it possible for a book about the murder of a man to be published the day before it happened?
What is going on?
My name is Jayden Thompson. I am a self-published author of three books who has intimate knowledge of publication processes through Amazon and other distributors. This article is going to be a deep dive into the books about Charlie Kirk’s death. It should not be possible for these books to have been published as soon as they were. I do not think I will be able to prove anything. I do not have experience in journalism or investigation. But today I will be trying like hell to lay out all the information on these books I can find.
Let’s get started.
The first book that went viral by Anastasia J. Casey is now all over social media. Amazon took the page down, but I was able to find the listing still on Ingram Content Group’s stock check app.
But Casey’s book isn’t the only one out there. It’s just the one that went viral for being out on the 9th of September. But there are more that were published on the 10th and 11th.
Samuel Carter — Dancing on a Grave: How Social Media Celebrated Charlie Kirk’s Assassination (Sept. 10)
Casey D. Parisi — The Charlie Kirk Shooting: A Nation on Edge (Sept. 10)
Paul Zimmer — A Charlie Kirk Biography: Inside the Life, Vision, and Revolution of America’s Boldest Conservative Activist—Viral Footage, the Utah Shooting, and the Fight Over the Second Amendment (Sept. 10)
Arthur Clarke — THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION: The Biography of Charlie Kirk (Sept. 11)
Rowan C. Whitforde — Charlie Kirk: Youth, Power, and the Rise and Fall of a Conservative Vanguard (Sept. 11)
Robin Jerry — CHARLIE KIRK NEW MEMOIR 2025: The Life, Influence, and Tragic Death of a Conservative Voice (Sept. 11)
Kevin George — CHARLIE KIRK: THE SHOOTING OF CHARLIE KIRK AND THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE (Sept. 11)
John Robert Quinn — Echoes of a Generation: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Kirk (discovered on the 12, publication date unknown)
Anastasia J. Casey — The Shooting of Charlie Kirk: A Comprehensive Account of the Utah Valley University Attack, the Aftermath, and America’s Response (Sept. 9)
This might not seem like a cause for concern—AI could have certainly written out a book after the fact. But what disturbs me as an author is that I know the process for publishing books, and it isn’t something that takes just a few minutes or even a few hours.
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is widely regarded as the fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to publish a book. I do not think it likely for any of these books to have been published though a traditional publisher. The processes are a lot longer, and since there is more human interaction involved, I think it would be likely that someone would have flagged the content of these books long before they hit the market. For self-published authors, KDP is the best bet. It is completely free to use. It is fast, and the website’s layout is easy. The process is also fairly automated—while I have been told that human teams review each book alongside AI, these teams are looking for formatting errors, not content. Which means that a book published about the death of a man before he actually died could have gotten under the radar. While not all of these books seem to have been published through Amazon, I’m willing to bet that a good number of them were put out using KDP or similar services such as IngramSpark, another self-publishing company and distributor that is low-cost. As an author I use both of these companies for publishing, and am familiar with their processes.
What disturbs me about these books is that when publishing through Kindle Direct Publishing, the time between uploading and submitting the manuscript to the book going live on Amazon is usually around 3-4 days. For IngramSpark the process is even longer. Physical books take longer than eBooks, too. There have been stories where people have said that their books were approved by KDP earlier than that deadline. The shortest time I have heard is half a day depending on format and size, but in my experience with publishing an extremely short eBook, Amazon still took the same amount of time to review and approve the book as usual, around three days. Every author I have spoken to openly about this subject has echoed the same sentiment, with one noting it takes around 1-3 days for her books to go live. Additionally, it can take up to another 24 hours for the listing to appear on Amazon after the book is approved for publication. And as I said earlier, other distributors such as IngramSpark can take even longer, in my experience typically weeks. It does not seem possible to me that so many books about Charlie Kirk’s death came out so soon afterwards. Even with the fastest KDP revision process, that is still pushing the timeline—and none of it explains the book published on the 9th.
What’s even more disturbing is that these books somewhat accurately display what happened. These are real books—accounts on Instagram and other socials have purchased and read these books to see the content. From what I can gather from screenshots, what is written in these books is vague and seems to be written using AI. Notably, the book that sparked this whole debate—The Shooting of Charlie Kirk: A Comprehensive Account of the Utah Valley University Attack, the Aftermath, and America’s Response—says that Charlie Kirk survived the gunshot and was declared stable in the hospital hours afterwards. It also mentions the presence of a medical team and ambulance that were not there.
Another book I was able to find and preview on a site called Everand, which listed the publication date as September 11th. Strangely, this book begins its first chapter by saying the active shooter alert for Utah Valley University was put out at 8:30 PM local time, when in reality it was put out at 12:42. Another detail mentioned is that “medical teams rushed him off the stage” even though first and foremost, there was no stage, it was a tent in an outdoor venue; and secondly, there were no medical teams—Kirk’s own security were the ones who got him to safety. In the introduction, the book also says that the incident occurred in the evening even though it was still early afternoon at that point. Aside from that the book does little to mention specific details about the attack. It’s extremely vague, leading me to wonder if it wasn’t done on purpose so that the book might be written beforehand. Enough was known to say where the attack happened, who was involved, and what manner of weapon was used. Whoever wrote this book had knowledge of the attack, seemingly before it ever happened, but not enough specific details to write an accurate depiction of it.
A pressing question I have is who the authors of these books are. I haven’t been able to find much information on any of them. Samuel Carter’s Amazon author page shows an obvious AI-generated profile picture, which checks out, given that his book seems to have been written with the same technology.
A lot of people have looked into Anastasia J. Casey and were unable to find anything on her. Given that she seems to have no history as a writer, it’s safe to assume she used AI as well.
Casey D. Parisi was another dead end, but it’s interesting there are two Caseys on this list. And on that note, those two authors have similar layouts for their names, as does Rowan C. Whitforde, whose name was associated with an Audible link that when clicked, led to a “no results” page.
There is an author on Amazon named Kevin George, but I have been unable to confirm if it’s the same person who published a book regarding Kirk’s death. I hit a lead with Paul Zimmer’s Amazon page, but preliminary research has revealed nothing in terms of a website or socials. A poet by the same name is taking up a lot of space in search results.
Robin Jerry and Arthur Clarke are both decently popular authors, but I have been unable to find anything connecting them to the Charlie Kirk books other than name alone. It does not seem in character for either of these authors to have posted something like this—Jerry being a comic book writer—and neither of their lists of published works include the Kirk books. John Robert Quinn falls into the same deal.
As of the time of writing, most if not all of these books have been taken down from Amazon. However, if searched through Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, or other search engines, the listings for these books will still pop up, but when clicked on you just get an error message or “Page Not Found”.
Amazon has released a statement regarding the Casey book that read, “We have content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale, and we remove books that do not adhere to these guidelines. The title in question is no longer available for sale. Due to a technical issue, the date of publication that had been displayed for this title, while it was briefly listed, was incorrect, and we apologize for any confusion this may have caused. The title was published late in the afternoon on September 10th.”
This does not make sense to me though. Why would the date be mixed up like this? Quite a few people are claiming that it might be a result of time zones, but even if we allow for that mistake—which still seems unlikely to me—that puts the book being published in the late afternoon of September 10th. Amazon’s interface goes by Pacific Time. I’m not good at math so bear with me, but the latest it could be on September 10th PT and it still be September 9th in another part of the world is 6:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time. Amazon claims the book was released in the late afternoon of September 10th, so it’s not a problem of the book being released in one time zone or something like that. It just does not seem possible that this was the result of a simple glitch.
Aside from that fact, it still leaves us the problem of KDP taking around three days to publish a book. Even if these authors started writing the moment Charlie’s body hit the ground, it does not, in any way, make sense that there would be books published about it the day of. It’s simply not adding up. Amazon’s statement said the book was actually released on the 10th. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that. Charlie Kirk was shot at 12:23 PM local time on September 10th. If they started writing the moment they heard the news, that gives these authors about 12 hours to write their books and go through the entire publication process, including the planning and research, writing and editing, cover design, writing the blurb, filling out KDP’s three-part publication form, submitting the form, waiting for the book to make it through the approval process, getting the book approved, and the listing put up on Amazon. Granted, a shorter book makes for a quicker process, but as someone who has also published a book around the same length, it takes much longer than 12 hours to take a book from concept to publication.
And mind you, I am basing these timeframes off of eBook revision processes through KDP, which—as stated previously—take significantly less time than their physical alternatives. And since Ingram Content Group’s app shows us that Casey’s book was also published in a paperback format, we can assume that the process for writing and publishing this book took significantly longer than 12 hours. Having the book in a physical format adds a whole new slew of challenges, such as more difficult formatting—which has to be just right for it to not be flagged by Amazon’s approval system—and longer times for reviewing and approval. Twelve hours is not long enough of a time frame to feasibly pull this off.
And that’s another issue—eBook and paperbacks are published separately. They have different forms to fill out. They also have different formatting guidelines, which require different manuscripts and cover files to be uploaded. By all accounts, Anastasia Casey seems to have self-published this book, so is it really possible that one person could have created not one but two versions of her book and published both? And if she wasn’t working alone and had a team to help her with formatting and cover design, is it feasible that she was able to pull together a team of people to work on a book that quickly? And not just her—every other book that was published in this short timeframe had to adhere to these guidelines as well.
Why are there so many books?
How were they published in such a short amount of time?
How was Casey’s book somehow out on the 9th?
Why is nothing about this adding up?
I will be the first to admit that these findings are not conclusive in any way. However, I do think an investigation should be opened up into the origins and authors of these books, specifically the Anastasia J. Casey one. There is something wrong with everything that has happened. While I am grateful that Amazon took these books down so nobody was making a profit off of Charlie Kirk’s death, I do think that they are not being transparent with what happened and why that book was marked for the 9th instead of the 10th. I also think more can be done to uncover when all of these books were uploaded in response to the allegations of them being possibly written before Charlie’s assassination.
What is happening here is wrong. Charlie’s death impacted me in ways that I cannot even comprehend, and although I cannot do much, I will do everything in my power to bring everyone involved to justice. I pray that someone with more expertise and knowledge can take these findings and do something meaningful with them. These authors need to be investigated so we can have a conclusive answer on what happened here.
My prayers are with Charlie’s family. If anyone has anything else to add to what I mentioned in this article, please send me a message through email or socials and I will look into it. Thank you for reading.
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