The Undoing of Eddie

Ray Routh
Private medical information of Chris Kyle's killer reveals the authentic story behind the
"American Sniper" homicide.

The day before Eddie Ray Routh kill Chris Kyle, the i mass prolific sniper in American military
records, he woke up in his childhood home and attempted to get geared up for paintings. Several
months in advance, the 25-year-old former Marine had moved in with his parents again in
Lancaster, Texas, a small, centre-elegance suburb just south of Dallas. He has been struggling for
years with what medical doctors had identified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, his
symptoms advised he turned into stricken by more extreme intellectual contamination. He might
later inform a forensic psychologist that he believed his coworkers at a cabinet keep had been
cannibals who deliberately devoured him.
Routh was so anxious that he could not force himself to paint. Instead, his mother, Jodi, might
drop him off in the morning on her manner to her process at a basic faculty, and the store's owner
might return him home. That intended for a few hours each afternoon, Routh becomes left by
myself. "When I'd start again to the residence," Jodi recollects, "I'd be like, 'Please don't allow
me to discover him dead.' I became so afraid he turned into going to kill himself. Because that's
what he desired." At night, he would regularly climb into bed along with her. "This turned into a
6'2 Marine," she says. "A hard guy is calling for his mama."
Routh had these days come to be concerned approximately the nation of his soul, and whilst he
and his mother appear at the cabinet store on the morning of February 1, 2013, he asked if they
may pray together. In the parking lot, Jodi held her son's hand. Wiry seeing that boyhood, he had
a narrow face, a beak nostril, anxious eyes, and an unkempt beard. Before exiting the car and
slamming into the shop, he requested the Lord observe his mom and dad.
Jodi headed out of town that afternoon to pay out the weekend with her husband, Raymond, who
was constructing a feedlot device some hours away in Hereford. She took comfort in significant
that her son's lady friend could be staying at the residence with him and that his uncle would take
a look at him. But Routh had plans that his mother did not realize approximately. The following
day, Chris Kyle and his buddy, Chad Littlefield, were taking him to a capturing range.

Kyle's demise generated an outpouring of grief in Texas, where he became celebrated as a hero
in a memorial provider at Texas Stadium, the Dallas Cowboys home. It also resonated with gun
enthusiasts throughout the USA, who embraced Kyle as a celeb at foremost activities like Las
Vegas's SHOT display, the annual firearms enterprise convention.
Kyle's legend as a form of current Wyatt Earp turned into superior via his books. In his
bestseller American Gun: A History of the U.S. In Ten Firearms, he writes, "One of my proudest
possessions is a reproduction Peacemaker — the famous Colt revolver that described the Wild
West." He became especially identified for his 2012 autobiography, American Sniper,
chronicling his exploits as a Navy Seal in Iraq, where he served four tours and logged one
hundred sixty kills, a U.S. Military file.
In his videotaped confession with a Texas Ranger, Routh stated, in connection with Kyle, "I
knew if I did now not take his soul, he changed into going to take mine."
The movie variation of his tale, starring Bradley Cooper, was already in theatres in Stephenville,
while Routh's homicide trial started there on February 11, 2014. Outside the courthouse,
neighbourhood companies offered Chris Kyle baseball caps. A week earlier, Governor Greg
Abbott had declared February 2, the anniversary of the murders, Chris Kyle Day.
Routh's legal professionals argued that he became insane at the time of the killings. Their
medical expert, a forensic psychiatrist who examined Routh for 6 hours, disagreed with the
PTSD prognosis he was given years in advance through docs at the Dallas Veterans Affairs
health facility. The professional believed Routh turned into schizophrenic and cautioned he
suffered from paranoid delusions. In his videotaped confession with a Texas Ranger, Routh said,
in connection with Kyle, "I knew if I did now not take his soul, he turned into going to take
mine."
The prosecution argued that Routh was a psychopath and that his abnormal statements were
calculated to preserve him from jail. After thinking for less than two hours, the jury agreed, and
Routh was sentenced to prison without parole.
Following the verdict, the consensus turned out that Kyle, the apotheosis of a very good man
with a gun, was killed with the aid of a terrible man with a gun. Marcus Luttrell, the previous
Navy Seal whose autobiography changed into the premise for the famous movie Lone Survivor,
tweeted, "Justice served for Chris and the Littlefield circle of relatives. To Eddie Ray Routh, you
concept you had PTSD before .?? Wait till the lads in [Texas Department of Criminal Justice]
Find out you killed a TX hero."
There's an apparent attraction to such black-and-white, true vs Evil narratives. But the truth
approximately the person who killed the distinguished "American Sniper" isn't always that easy.
Recently, Jodi and Raymond Routh shared with The Trace hundreds of pages of personal
medical statistics containing statistics never delivered to light during the trial. The files appear to
corroborate the testimony of the protection's clinical expert: Routh suffered a series of psychotic
breaks and exhibited signs of schizophrenia in the two years leading as much to Kyle's murder,
raising questions on how Routh's contamination became handled at the Dallas VA.
"[The VA] have to have been greater cautious … while he turned into offering with much clearer
psychotic signs and symptoms," says Dr Amam Saleh, a forensic psychiatrist who reviewed
Routh's clinical data for The Trace. "Something changed into neglected."
In September 2007, Routh was deployed to a forward running base about 60 miles north of
Baghdad, repairing guns and working as a prison defence for six months. That changed into his
handiest war-associated experience, although in January 2010, he was sent to Haiti on a
humanitarian challenge after an earthquake there devastated the u. S. He told his mother and
father he was accountable for clearing the land of corpses, amongst them lifeless infants. There
isn't any documented evidence to confirm Routh's account, but when he returns from Haiti, Jodi
remembers, "he becomes so that messed up."
In overdue July 2011, a little extra than a year after he changed into honourably discharged from
the Marines, Routh regarded at the Dallas VA, complaining that a tapeworm — which docs
observed did not exist — turned into consuming away at his insides. This is whilst the V.A. first
diagnosed him as having PTSD, in keeping with the scientific facts, and docs prescribed him
Risperidone, an anti-psychotic, in addition to other medicinal drugs to deal with despair.
Several days later, Routh threatened to kill himself with the .357 Magnum his father kept in his
automobile. Again, he was taken to the Dallas VA, where he remained for almost weeks. The
medical notes from August three say that Routh became "psychotic." He advised the personnel at
one factor, "You are all on this game; I can see the smoke in the replicate; we are all actors."
Over the subsequent year, through 2012, Routh's signs grew worse. He changed into satisfied the
authorities were spying on him. He started having auditory hallucinations, like hearing music
that he appeared to adore. It became "picked up [from] a radio station." He got into other combat
with his father and once more threatened to kill himself, prompting his parents to get rid of all
their weapons from the residence. Routh blamed the incident on alcohol. Records from around
this time note that the V.A. provided him inpatient treatment for alcohol abuse, which the
clinicians seemed to suppose become the trigger for his psychotic episodes. Routh declined. He
additionally stopped taking his medicine, pronouncing that the medicine made him experience
like a "fucking zombie."
In early January 2013, Jodi met Chris Kyle, then 38 years antique. He'd been a civilian due to the
fact in 2009, and took a keen hobby in working with veterans affected by PTSD. He had killed
his problems with the aftershocks of war and, like many former foot soldiers, noticed therapeutic
fee in bodily exercising and going to the variety.
Brandishing a knife, Routh barricaded the front door of his lady friend's condominium and held
her and her roommate hostage. Then, finally, he believed he became protective of them from the
"evils of the arena."
Kyle's kids attended the school wherein Jodi laboured as a trainer's aide. She had heard about
Kyle's work with veterans, and sooner or later, she approached him within the car parking zone
and asked if he could assist her son. Kyle was sympathetic. He took Eddie's smartphone quantity
and promised to call him. Less than two weeks later, Jodi bumped into Kyle again. He said he is
making plans to take Routh shooting soon.
At that second, I notion it was excellent," Jodi says.
It's viable to imagine how she reached this conclusion. Each time the V.A. had launched Routh
from inpatient remedy, docs had determined he didn't pose a hazard to himself or others. Instead,
he became consistent with them, well sufficient to be loose and out inside the world.
What passed off over the following couple of weeks would seem to name into query their
judgment. On January 19, after Jodi saw Kyle, Routh suffered his most extreme psychotic ruin
yet. When it passed, he became in the condo of his new girlfriend, Jennifer Weed, whom he had
met on the Internet. Brandishing a knife, he barricaded the front door of her condominium and
held Weed and her roommate hostage. As the clinical records explain, Routh believed he was
shielding them from the "evils of the arena." Nevertheless, the roommate was referred to the
police and taken to Green Oaks Hospital in Dallas.
The clinicians there believed Routh turned suicidal and homicidal. He cried intermittently and
made a series of strange statements. "I've been dropping my fucking mind," he said. "Your
thoughts are the best ones you've got, you understand?" At one factor, he asked a medical doctor,
"You got any idea how long they been recording this? You know — this Mickey Mouse bullshit
going on throughout America?"
A physician mentioned that, besides being tormented by PTSD, Routh seemed to be in the throes
of "first-ruin schizophrenia." He stated Routh turned into "paranoid and rapidly violent"— he
had cornered a lady technician — and that he had to be hospitalized in a psychiatric ward for 5 to
ten days. He is given numerous medications, including Haldol, Paxil, and Seroquel. On January
21, he was transferred again into the care of the Dallas VA.
Just three days after he arrived at the medical institution, the V.A. organized to discharge Routh.
Jodi believed he became now not geared up — he nevertheless had crying spells and was
regarded as typically unstable. She requested her son be stored in the medical institution until he
might be admitted to a residential remedy application for PTSD in Waco. Her request is
documented inside the clinical facts, a part of an alternative with a social worker, who defined
that Routh could undergo the utility manner like every person else. Jodi begged the social
employee to "reduce the crimson tape" and get her son admitted as soon as viable. But the social
worker's fingers have been tied. The notes maintain, "I recommended her that [Eddie] might be
discharged tomorrow as his paranoia signs are not present, he isn't always S/I and not H/I,"
which means suicidal or homicidal.
Unlike Green Oaks, the V.A. did not consider that Routh might have schizophrenia, a
contamination that usually surfaces in early adulthood. The ailment is marked with the aid of
delusions and paranoia Routh had skilled, and, left untreated; it can cause violent conduct. Dr
Amam Saleh, the forensic psychiatrist, told me that massive facilities like V.A. centres
frequently treat patients based on doctors' previous conclusions instead of beginning each new
admission with an easy slate, which could blind clinicians to other feasible diagnoses.
The VA evaluated Routh to see if he was certified for extra in-depth remedies. Unfortunately,
despite his records of homicidal and suicidal thoughts, he has now not taken into consideration a
high enough chance.
Green Oaks had the benefit of inspecting Routh with fresh eyes. The VA did now not, which is
obvious in its analysis of Routh's knife episode. A spokesman for the clinic told me the incident
was brought about by a "recent binge on alcohol and marijuana and being off his psychiatric
medicines" — issues the V.A. had previously blamed for Routh's psychotic behaviour. However,
Green Oaks' data indicates that he was now not intoxicated when he arrived at the facility.
Psychotic destruction triggered with the aid of substance abuse ought to necessitate a one-of-a-
kind treatment plan rather than one that occurs clearly. In line with Dr Saleh, the latter would
require a greater competitive medicine regimen and prolonged hospitalization.
The VA information noted that in an observe-up visit five days after his discharge, Routh
exhibited no signs of hallucinations or delusions. It changed into an encouraging photograph but
only captured Routh's thoughts on that specific day. The sanatorium evaluated Routh to see if he
was certified for Mental Health Intensive Case Management. This could have provided him with
many assets, including regular at-home visits from a caseworker. But the sanatorium concluded
he did now not meet the standards for the carrier. Despite the knife incident and his history of
homicidal and suicidal thoughts, he is now not considered a excessive sufficient hazard.
The medical doctor did boom the dosages of Routh's medicinal drugs. However, the new
prescriptions, the records nation, weren't sent out till "on or about February 2, 2013," the day
Routh went to the capturing variety with Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield.
According to information reviews, Routh and Jennifer Weed entered combat that morning. She
left the house around 10 o'clock, virtually looking forward to peering at him again — Routh had
proposed the previous night without a ring. At some point, Jodi's brother, James Watson, visited
Routh. He and his nephew smoked marijuana, and Routh drank whiskey.
Using his black Ford F-350, Kyle arrived at the house with Littlefield that afternoon. But,
unfortunately, Routh hadn't told everyone they had been coming to get him, and he got into the
truck without pronouncing goodbye to his uncle. Jodi, in the meantime, changed into away
touring her husband. "If Chris had known me that day and advised me what they had been
doing," she says, "I could have stated no, it's a horrific concept."
As Kyle instructed them onto the toll road, he may want to say there was something off about
Routh, who changed into seated in the back of the truck's cab. He texted Littlefield, who changed
into using within the passenger seat.
"This dude is straight-up nuts," Kyle wrote.
Littlefield replied, "He's proper behind me; watch my six."
Around three o'clock, the institution pulled up at Rough Creek Lodge, a luxury resort 90 miles
southwest of Lancaster. The property is 11,000 acres, with massive tracts of land set aside for
searching and golf. The variety, which Kyle helped design, is down a dirt street that extends for
several miles. Before the three men established an improved deck and began to shoot, they raised
a crimson Bravo flag, signalling others to live away.
A worker drove onto the variety two hours later and located our bodies. Kyle changed into
mendacity facedown in front of the deck. He had been shot six times with a . Forty-five-quality
pistol, one of the bullets piercing his aorta. Littlefield had been shot seven times with a 9mm Sig
Sauer handgun. It become engraved with the familiar Navy anchor insignia. Routh had used
Kyle's guns to kill them.