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Prosecutors in the murder case against Aaron Hernandez did not produce a murder weapon, detail a motive, or call an eyewitness to testify, but instead relied on digital evidence — surveillance footage, text messages, and cellphone location data — in their two-month effort to convince jurors that the former New England Patriots tight end killed Odin Lloyd in 2013.

The result has been a trial of unusual length, in a case that legal experts describe as “highly circumstantial.” Closing arguments are anticipated on Tuesday or Wednesday, after the defense presents its case.

The government rested Thursday, after calling 131 witnesses in nine weeks of testimony. None of them was in the North Attleborough park when Lloyd was shot. None of them testified about why Hernandez killed Lloyd, other than to say Hernandez appeared aggressive and gave the victim an icy stare two days before the shooting.

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The .45-caliber Glock used that fired the fatal shots was never recovered — but a Glock representative viewed surveillance video from the night of the shooting and testified that an object in Hernandez’s hands was a gun of the same make and model. Prosecutors followed his testimony with statements from Hernandez’s fiancee that he instructed her to remove a box from their home the day after Lloyd was found dead.

“The numerous items of evidence is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, leaving the last few pieces for the jury to finish the picture — which they may or may not do,” said Hartford attorney Richard Banbury, a former prosecutor in Connecticut.

Without a so-called “smoking gun” on which to hang its case, the government instead used more than 100 hours of surveillance footage, scores of text messages and extensive phone records gathered during the investigation to thread together their case.

Referring to the volume of video evidence, Banbury said: “You wouldn’t have seen that 20 years ago. The digital world affects everything, including prosecutions.”

Prosecutors used surveillance video from a dozen different locations in an effort to establish that Hernandez picked up the victim in Dorchester, Mass., drove back to the industrial park in North Attleborough where Lloyd’s body was found, and returned home minutes later carrying what the government identifies as a gun and defense lawyers say could be an iPad or a remote control.

There are some gaps in the state’s evidence — it is impossible, for example, to identify the car going toward and away from the industrial park around 3:30 a.m. based solely on headlights. Prosecutors had to pair it with other videos, like that of Hernandez’s fiancee removing a large black trash bag from her home the day after the slaying.

Former FBI agent and University of New Haven criminal justice professor Michael Clark said prosecutors have obviously “worked really hard to establish the fact that he had a weapon, and it walked out the door with his fiancee.”

“The question is whether the jury is going to buy into it,” Clark said.

Obtaining surveillance footage, he said, has become one of the first steps in a criminal investigation. No matter the crime, he said, “the first thing you do is start looking around for surveillance.”

Clark mentioned the trial of admitted Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, which has coincided with the Hernandez trial. That case, too, is expected to go to a jury this week. Clark said the marathon bombing case represents one of the best uses of surveillance video to advance an investigation.

“They were able to take video from almost the entire city and go through it and find photos of these guys walking right down the street,” he said.

Banbury referenced the Tsarnaev case, also, saying that while that one was the marathon crime, the Hernandez case was a marathon trial. He said 40 days of testimony is “very, very unusual.”

The lead prosecutor, Bristol County Assistant District Attorney William McCauley, has a reputation for being painstakingly thorough. That became apparent during the investigation, when Bristol, Conn. detectives spent months helping Massachusetts authorities interview hometown friends and relatives of Hernandez and the two other men with whom he is accused of killing Lloyd – to such a degree that residents of the neighborhood where co-defendants Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz used to spend most of their time began guessing whose door police would knock on next. Defense attorneys, who say the crime scene investigation was shoddy, also have accused prosecutors of flooding the jury with irrelevant details. A typical murder trial in Bristol County lasts two to three weeks. Prosecutors needed two months to present their case against Hernandez.

People familiar with the case attribute that, in part, to the volume of video and cellphone evidence. They also say the extent to which the case included evidence from Connecticut and Florida added a layer that delayed the process, as did the government’s heavy focus on Hernandez’s alleged efforts to conceal the crime.

The former Patriot’s high-powered legal team refused to stipulate to anything, meaning that prosecutors had to put witnesses on the stand to testify to the authenticity of phone numbers and bank records. Often, murder defendants do not have the resources to pay for the defense Hernandez could afford.

In a high-profile murder case, Clark said, “The prosecution is going to move slowly and carefully.”

“They’re short that murder weapon, so they’re going to be very meticulous,” he said.

While prosecutors are relying on jurors’ ability to connect the various pieces of evidence, the defense strategy focuses on highlighting the gaps between them.

Defense lawyer James Sultan said Friday that the government’s case has “not just gaps but gaping holes.”

Defense attorneys have said they do not anticipate calling more than a day’s worth of witnesses. They are expected to call people to support their claims that the police investigation was incomplete and sloppy, and also to shift the blame onto Hernandez’s two co-defendants.

A defense case that short could indicate that Hernandez’s lawyers “may be thinking that their best defense is that the government’s case is not as strong as they may have hoped,” Clark said.

The government’s case against Hernandez includes an assertion that he exhibited a consciousness of guilt after learning that he was a target in the police investigation. Prosecutors charge that he helped his co-defendants flee back to Connecticut — and funded a trip south to Florida for one of them after the slaying. They say he ordered his fiancee, Bristol, Conn., native Shayanna Jenkins, to get rid of evidence in his house.

“There may well have been sufficient evidence to charge and even convict Hernandez as an accessory after-the-fact to murder,” defense lawyers said in court documents filed last week. “But he is not on trial for that offense.”

They suggested in opening statements, and are expected to reiterate in closing arguments, that mere presence at the scene of the crime is not enough for conviction. The state does not need to prove Hernandez pulled the trigger. He is charged with murder by joint venture, a legal theory that allows prosecutors to seek murder convictions against multiple individuals without naming one as the gunman. Ortiz and Wallace are being held on murder charges.

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Hernandez, who has not expected to testify, has maintained his innocence. Multiple prosecution witnesses testified that in the days after the slaying, he denied involvement and said he was completely innocent.

“The court will instruct the jury that they cannot consider denial or statements of innocence as consciousness of guilt,” Bristol County Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh said Friday, amid protests from prosecutors during a hearing to finalize jury instructions.

The jury can return a guilty verdict on first-degree or second-degree murder. Besides murder, Hernandez is accused of two illegal firearms counts.

Even if he is acquitted on all charges, he will return to jail, where he is being held awaiting trial on double murder charges stemming from a 2012 double homicide in Boston. Prosecutors at one point had suggested that they were exploring Lloyd’s knowledge of the Boston shooting as a possible motive, but Garsh prohibited them from introducing the other charges as evidence at trial.