Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 190, Ed. 1 Sunday, February 8, 2015 Page: 6 of 38
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STATE
6A
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Denton Record-Chronicle
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From Page 1A
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Routh
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He asked if she was with him “in
hell,” then drove olf into the fad-
ing light.
“I’m terrified for my life,” she
breathlessly told a 911 dispatch-
er. “I don’t know if he’s being
honest with me.”
It wasn’t long before she got
her answer.
Routh, a 27-year-old Iraq
War veteran, is scheduled to
stand trial Wednesday, charged
with capital murder in the slay-
ings of Chad Littlefield and for-
mer Navy SEAL Chris Kyle,
whose memoir American Snip-
er is now an Academy Award-
nominated movie. The two men
had taken the ex-Marine to a
shooting range in an attempt to
help him battle post-traumatic
stress disorder and other per-
sonal demons besetting him.
Routh’s attorneys are plan-
ning to argue that he was insane.
Many expect PTSD from his
Iraq tour and a relief mission to
earthquake-stricken Haiti to be
another narrative thread in that
defense.
But with Kyle’s personal sto-
ry the subject of a blockbuster
currently packing them in at
cinemas near and far, Routh’s
defenders wonder whether he
can get a fair trial.
i
Wi i
A
r
s
AP
An undated family photo shows Eddie Ray Routh and his
mother, Jodi. The Iraq War veteran who was battling post-
traumatic stress disorder and other personal issues is sched-
uled to stand trial in Stephenville for the 2013 killings of Chris
Kyle and Chad Littlefield.
m
■>
t
V
Men’s Health magazine before a
judge imposed a gag order in the
case.
course, ‘Eddie, this is a war. You
kill them before they can kill
you.’”
“He wasn’t prepared for what
he was doing out there,” his fa-
ther told London’s Daily Mail
for an article published last
month. “Fishing hundreds of
bodies — men, women, children
— out of the ocean, piling them
up and throwing them into mass
graves.”
Routh left the Marines as a
corporal that summer and float-
ed around — a brief stint with a
military contractor, doing odd
jobs for a real estate agent, cabi-
net-making, building storage
units. He was diagnosed with
PTSD the following summer,
according to medical records
viewed by Men’s Health.
His drinking, which had be-
gun in his teens, got worse.
In September 2012, Routh
was transported to Green Oaks
Hospital for psychiatric care af-
ter his mother told police he’d
threatened to kill himself and
family. Police had found him
wandering — barefoot, shirtless
and reeking of alcohol.
Our response was, of
Paul Moseley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/AP file photo
A 2012 photo shows Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL who wrote the best-seller “American
Sniper.” Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield were fatally shot at a shooting range southwest of
Fort Worth on Feb. 2, 2013.
A few months later, his par-
ents told the magazine, he called
home and suggested that some-
thing bad had happened while
he was out on patrol.
“How would you feel if I shot
a kid?” they said he asked.
But family and friends say
Routh was more disturbed by
what he saw during a later de-
ployment — in earthquake-rav-
aged Haiti.
In January 2010, Routh was
attached to the 22nd Marine Ex-
By most accounts, he was a
middling student and a bit of a
troublemaker. Kc Bernard, a
former security guard at Midlo-
thian High, remembers Routh
as a decent defensive lineman,
but easy to anger.
“He had a chip on his shoul-
der,” says Bernard, who recalls a
heart-to-heart with Routh out-
side the school gym after the
teen had had a falling out with
his parents.
“I know for a fact that his
home life wasn’t great,” says Ber-
nard, who now teaches social
studies in Dallas. “They did not
get along.”
But by senior year, Routh
knew what he wanted to do with
his life. Although a photo in the
2006 Midlothian High year-
book shows a buzz-cut Routh
chatting with an Army recruiter,
he had his heart set on the Ma-
rines.
years apart.
And, most importantly, both
ended up in the military and
went to war.
After a brief stint in college
and a flirtation with rodeo bronc
riding, the 6-foot-2, 230-pound
Kyle joined the Navy and qual-
ified for its elite special forces
unit. As a sniper with SEAL
Team 3, he would rack up, by his
own count, more than 300 kills
and earn two Silver Stars, the
military’s third-highest honor
for valor.
The father of two left the Na-
vy in 2009, following four tours
in Iraq. Three years later, he
published his best-selling mem-
oir, American Sniper.
Routh’s path would be paved
with far less glory.
“I want to be one of the few
and the proud,” he told the pho-
tographer.
Not long after graduation,
Routh — also 6-2, but about 50
pounds lighter than Kyle — was
off to boot camp in California.
By September 2007, he was in
the Middle East.
In a conversation with his
parents shortly before deploy-
ing, he reportedly expressed
concerns about having to use his
weapon.
“He said, ‘Dad, how are you
going to feel about me if I have to
kill somebody?”’ his mother, Jo-
di Routh, told a writer from
Although it appears that Kyle
and Routh hadn’t met before
that fatal day in February 2013,
they had a lot in common.
Both had attended high
school southwest of Dallas in the
town of Midlothian, the self-
proclaimed “Cement Capital of
Texas.” Each had played football
for the Midlothian Panthers and
been involved with the Future
Farmers of America, though 14
peditionary Unit as part of Op-
eration Unified Response, sent
to the island nation. They found
a country in ruins, with about a
quarter million dead — many of
them stacked in rotting piles
along the muddy roads.
Routh talked of being forbid-
den by an officer to give his ra-
tions to a starving boy — and of
things much worse.
See ROUTH on 7A
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 190, Ed. 1 Sunday, February 8, 2015, newspaper, February 8, 2015; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124779/m1/6/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .