EXCLUSIVE: 'He'd Rather Take the Death Penalty Than Sit Behind Those Bars Forever.'
-Father of Veteran Who Killed American Sniper Chris Kyle Tells How he is Already Mourning the Loss of his own Son
- Ex-Marine Eddie Ray Routh shot and killed Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield at a shooting range where they were trying to help him tackle his PTSD
- Routh will go on trial in February shortly after full release of American Sniper, the movie tipped for Oscars which tells story of Kyle's life
- Killer's father has told Dailymail.com how his son was struggling with PTSD and says scandal-plagued Veterans Affairs department let him down
- Marine had served in Iraq but was traumatized by hurricane relief efforts in Haiti where he put hundreds of bodies into mass graves
- If found guilty of murders he faces life without parole but has told his father he would rather die than be locked up forever
- His family have written to Kyle and Littlefield's bereaved relatives to apologize for his actions
- Marine's father, Raymond, says: 'We lost three people that day.'
Daily Mail UK
Only the posture is the same - rigid back, shoulders squared, eyes front.
One is a young Marine, immaculate in his dress uniform, full of focus and promise. The other is a dead-eyed kid in an orange jumpsuit, posed up for a mugshot.
One is a hero. One is the killer of a hero.
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Custody: Eddie Ray Routh's mugshot, taken after he shot both Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield at a shooting range near Chalk Mountain, Texas, where they had been trying to help him with his PTSD
Marine: Eddie Ray Routh photographed for his graduation into the Marine Corps
Movie depiction: Bradley Cooper plays Chris Kyle, the dead SEAL, in American Sniper, which is on limited release and goes on full release this month
Anguish: Raymond Routh is under no illusion that his son will ever be free again, saying that three families suffered loss when Eddie Ray shot Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield
Raymond Routh is under no illusion which version of his son Eddie Ray holds most prominence in the public conscience. It isn't the one displayed in the front room of his north Texas home.
On 2 February 2013 Eddie Ray Routh, 26, shot dead Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, 38, and Kyle's friend, father-of-one, Chad Littlefield, 35, at a shooting range near Chalk Mountain, Texas.
The SEAL with 160 confirmed kills and his friend were trying to help PTSD sufferer Routh assimilate to civilian life.
Now, shortly before the full release of 'American Sniper,' a movie already tipped for Oscars, Eddie Ray's father has broken his silence.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Mr Routh, 55, has told of the layers of guilt and grief that torment him and revealed that they have torn apart his marriage of 33 years.
He has shared his anguish for the families of Kyle and Littlefield; his conviction that their deaths could have been prevented had his son received adequate psychiatric from the Department of Veterans Affairs and his fear that the release of 'American Sniper' just three weeks before Eddie Ray stands trial will be his son's 'downfall' and ensure that justice will not be served.
He said:
'I am so sorry for the Kyles and the Littlefields. We wrote them letters of apology after it happened but you can't talk to them because there's anger, there's hurt. They want justice. How do I explain I want justice for my son too?'
Victim: Chad Littlefield, Chris Kyle's neighbor and workout buddy was shot shot and killed by Routh at the shooting range where he and the ex-SEAL were trying to help the veteran with his PTSD
Mentor: Chris Kyle, America's deadliest sniper, was trying to help Eddie Ray Routh with his PTSD after the ex-Marine's mother approached him to ask for help with his PTSD
Crime scene: Kyle and Chad Littlefield were found murdered at the gun range at the Rough Creek Lodge, Glen Rose, Texas. Eddie Ray Routh fled in Kyle's pick-up truck before turning himself in
Because, according to Mr Routh there were no villains on the shooting range that day - only victims.
He said:
'It ain't just their loss. We all lost. We lost three people that day.
'Whatever happens I'm pretty sure I've lost my son forever.'
There is a bleak inevitability in Mr Routh's assertion. Although prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty the only two outcomes are life without parole or life in a psychiatric ward.
Mr Routh knows that, if he had the choice, his son would choose the death penalty. He has told his father as much.
He said:
'When you've grown up like Eddie - in the woods, hunting and fishing, always being outside you don't want to be behind bars, you can't be.
'We don't talk about the trial; we don't talk about much like that. But I know he'd rather take the death penalty than sit behind those bars forever. He has said that.'
Promise: Eddie Ray Routh on the day of his graduation. He went on to serve in Iraq and Haiti and was honorably discharged but struggled with PTSD
Bond: Eddie Ray Routh hugs his father Raymond on the day of his graduation
Love of life: Pictured on a beach enjoying the sunshine in a picture taken before he began to struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder
Memories: Raymond Routh keeps albums of pictures of a happy family life before his son suffered PTSD and killed Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield. This picture was taken a year after Eddie Ray became a Marine
For his father's part, Mr Routh clings to the hope that his son's sentence might somehow be a salvation of sorts.
He explained,
'I'm hoping for the best. I'm hoping to get him medical help. That's my main concern.'
Eddie Ray's decision to enlist was made the day terrorist planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York.
His father recalled,
'He came to me that day and said: 'I want to be a US Marine will you sign the papers for me?'
He was 16. His father signed him up for Junior Marines and told him if he wanted to progress to the real deal he'd have to graduate High School - a far from certain prospect at the time.
'He just didn't want to do his work and he had girls on his mind,' he said.
But with his military ambition came a newfound focus. Seven days after he graduated in 2006 he was in boot camp in San Diego.
Mr Routh treasures the pictures of the day he, his wife and Eddie Ray's sister, Laura, flew to San Diego to watch him pass out as a private the following summer.
In September 2007 he deployed to Iraq where he served as an armorer fixing weapons as well as guarding prisoners in Balad Air Base, just north of Baghdad.
Childhood: Eddie Ray Routh grew up in Texas, in a happy family
Focus: Eddie Ray Routh went on to join the Junior Marines and focus on his dream of serving in the Corps
An American flag, neatly folded and mounted in a wooden frame, hangs on the wall of Mr Routh's home.
Pointing to it he said:
'Ed flew that in Iraq on my wife's birthday and mine - I'm 31 October she's 30th October. So he flew that for us then he sent it home.'
Eddie's tour lasted two years. Then, at the beginning of 2010, he was dispatched along with thousands of other Marines to Haiti to help in the humanitarian efforts that followed the devastating earthquake that hit on 12 January.
Mr Routh said:
'It wasn't the same Ed who came back from that. He was different.
'He wasn't prepared for what he was doing out there - fishing hundreds of bodies - men, women, children - out of the ocean, piling them up and throwing them into mass graves.
Quote:
He just wouldn't talk, couldn't talk. Sometimes he would look okay then you could see he was back in the zone, in a sort of daze, like a deer in the headlights. He was back seeing whatever he had seen
Raymond Routh
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'It was overwhelming. My son asked me "Why did they do this?" I told him it was to help stop disease.
'He had PTSD before he was off the ship. But 24 hours after he got back he was back at home. Just dumped. Just sitting on the porch.
'He just wouldn't talk, couldn't talk. Sometimes he would look okay then you could see he was back in the zone, in a sort of daze, like a deer in the headlights. He was back seeing whatever he had seen.'
Honorably discharged after reaching the rank of corporal, he returned home to Texas. But Eddie struggled to find and hold down jobs and his behavior became increasingly erratic.
Mr Routh said:
'He would be fine for a couple of weeks then he would just lose it.'
On one occasion, Mr Routh said, Eddie Ray and his mother were sitting on the back porch when the 'pop-pop-pop' of a nail gun from a neighbor fixing his roof saw Eddie Ray throw himself to the ground, as if under enemy fire in one of the mortar attacks he had experienced in Iraq.
According to Mr Routh he and his wife sought medical help from Dallas VA and Eddie was put on a plethora of medications - up to 11 at one point Mr Routh said.
'But they would give him drugs then say come back in a couple of weeks. They weren't seeing him, living with him, monitoring him. They didn't know what was going on.'
Outdoors: Eddie Ray Routh grew up with a love of the great outdoors. He has told his father that he would choose death over being in prison for life
Vacation: A family memento of downtime spent near his base at Camp Lejeune when he was serving in the Corps
Career: Eddie Ray Routh was given an honorable discharge from the USMC after serving for seven years. But after that
Memento: Raymond Routh keeps the dog tags which his son cherished as a Marine
The official diagnosis of PTSD didn't come until after a troubling episode that saw Eddie Ray hospitalized for three weeks in Dallas VA.
Mr Routh recalled,
'We were down at the lake. We'd been going down there since he was nine years old, hunting and fishing. We would go there ever weekend if we could get away with it.
'It was all good but I don't know, something triggered him and he was telling me he was Dracula, that he was a vampire and wanted to suck people's blood.
'He was talking just as calm as you and me talking now but he was gone, in his eyes he was gone. I had a .357 pistol and I pulled it away from him three times. He kept going for it and saying he would hurt himself.
'The third time I emptied all the bullets and threw them in the lake.'
Mr Routh took Eddie Ray to hospital and after a two-hour wait his son was admitted.
Mr Routh recalled, 'He asked me,
'Why aren't you scared of me? I'm a Marine?'
'I told him, 'I'm not scared of you because you're my son.'
But he was scared for him and, he said, scared he said for the absence of any support or consistent psychiatric care.
He claimed that on one occasion a doctor simply shut the door on him as he pressed for counseling for his son.
In the recent scandals that plagued the VA, the Dallas VA was singled out for particular criticism. According to the VA Inspector General, the paucity of care 'put lives at risk.'
The week after Eddie Ray shot dead Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield a letter from Dallas VA arrived at the Routh household informing Eddie that, two years after his diagnosis with crippling PTSD, the VA were finally recognizing his disability status. His first benefit check arrived a day later.
Mr Routh points to an official envelope sitting amid the clutter on the coffee table in the living room of the home in which he lives alone save for a terrier - a dog named 'Dog.'
He said:
'That's a check for him there. If he had had that the first year he could have paid for his own doctor. He could have got help.'
Instead, his father reflected, both he and wife Jodi, 57, spent the two years after Eddie Ray's honorable discharge trying to help their son cope with the PTSD, which, according to Mr Routh, was becoming more and more pronounced, and troubling.
Custody: Routh during a court appearance last year. He is still being treated for PTSD in prison and his trial will begin in February
Ultimately it was their efforts to help him that led directly to Chris Kyle.
Kyle himself had struggled to adapt to civilian life. In his autobiography he wrote of how he resented his wife, Taya, for giving him an ultimatum to leave the Forces or lose her and his family.
He began 'pounding back beers,' he became depressed. He was, he wrote, 'going downhill and gathering speed'. As a sniper he had the most kills in American military history. As a civilian who was he?
One way he sought to re-create a role for himself was in helping other veterans facing the same issues. He co-ran FITCO Cares, mentoring veterans, often through physical pursuits like hunts or trips or target training.
Kyle was local and he was well known. Jodi worked on the special-ed program at the Midlothian, Texas school which Kyle's children attended.
On 25 January 2013 she plucked up the courage to approach him in the school parking lot and tell him about her son Eddie Ray.
Mr Routh recalled,
'I was trying to get him into the Amarillo VA at the time. They have a good reputation but we were getting nowhere.
'My wife asked Chris Kyle that morning and asked him to help.
Apology: The Rouths have written a letter of apology to Chris Kyle's bereaved family. He was helping Eddie Ray Routh tackle PTSD after the Marine's mother approached him at his children's school, where she worked
In combat: Kyle and Routh both served in Iraq. Kyle became a wanted man for the Sunni insurgents he was targeting, had a price put on his head and was dubbed the Shaitan - devil - of Ramadi
Sienna Miller and Bradley Cooper star in American Sniper;
'Chris said he had some work to do right then but he would think about it and he would do what he could.
'A week later he called and all that went down.'
Sighing Mr Routh admitted, 'She has blamed herself. She's asked herself was it her fault? All she did was ask but she can't let that go, that question.'
Pausing he added, 'I ask myself, did I let my son down? Did I fail my son?'
Ultimately they could not reconcile their guilt and grief with themselves or each other. Thirty-three years after marrying the woman with whom he fell in love when he saw her across the street Mr Routh and Jodi are in the midst of divorce.
Eddie Ray is currently in jail in Erath County where the shootings took place. He is not in a psychiatric facility. He speaks to his father two or three times a week.
They talk about hunting and fishing. They don't talk about the past. They don't talk about the future. They are locked in a permanent present.
For Mr Routh just hearing his son's voice brings some relief from what he described as a 'Groundhog day' existence of anger, guilt, regret and grief.
Quote:
Every day I wake up, I make my coffee and I go to the window and I pray for some relief from this.If my son would have got killed in Iraq I could have had a closure. But we're living this day after day after day.
Raymond Routh
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But he said: 'Every day I wake up, I make my coffee and I go to the window and I pray for some relief from this.
'If my son would have got killed in Iraq I could have had a closure. But we're living this day after day after day.'
Eddie Ray has been baptized in jail and, according to his father finds some solace in religion.
He said: 'I had a real hate for God for a while but I know it ain't God, it's the circumstances we're in.
'But how do you let it go and move forward? It don't ever go away.
'How can you send our people overseas to fight for us and see things nobody is ready to see and then not look after them when they get back?
'My son did a tragic thing. But there's something wrong with him.
'I don't know what the trial will bring. We can't know. But after it's done I don't want any other parent to be going through what we are. Does it have to take at a tragedy, a killing or a suicide for the VA to do something?'
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