![]() He needed help, but I didn’t realize how much help. ![]() “I didn’t see him as a super-motivated, change-the-world-type guy. He was “more of a Forrest Gump-type guy than a serial killer,” Xeriland told CNN. ![]() Routh seemed to be a “nice guy,” who was “quirky and had his own weird style,” Xeriland said. He offered Routh odd jobs such as cutting the grass and repairing Xeriland’s garbage disposal and fence. The men struck up an acquaintance in their suburban Dallas neighborhood in the fall of 2011, and Xeriland, also a former military man, could tell Routh was struggling financially. The same day of the killings, Tim Xeriland had been waiting for Routh to come finish mowing his lawn, a job Routh had started a week earlier but hadn’t finished. In a panicked 911 call, Laura Blevins tells a dispatcher that her brother had been “acting weird” and was recently in a mental hospital. There, according to the original arrest warrant, he told his sister and his brother-in-law, Gaines Blevins, that he’d killed Kyle and Littlefield at Rough Creek Lodge shooting range, 70 miles away. The following February, he arrived at his sister Laura Blevins’ Midlothian home in Kyle’s black Ford pickup. He would be placed in protective custody and sent to Green Oaks Hospital in Dallas for mental evaluation. The former Marine was suffering from PTSD, though his family didn’t understand what he was going through, according to a September 2, 2012, police report. Routh left the house, threatening to “blow his brains out,” she said. His mother told police that Routh had just had an argument with his father who said he was going to sell Routh’s gun. He was crying and smelled of alcohol, police said. Six months before a hunting guide found Kyle and Littlefield’s bodies in Glen Rose, police caught up with a shirtless, shoeless Routh walking the streets of his hometown. John will attempt to make the case that his client is not guilty by reason of insanity. Thus, little is known about Routh, except that attorney J. His family members and those close to him declined interview requests from CNN. Since July 24, 2013, when District Court Judge Jason Cashon filed a gag order in the case, nobody associated with Routh’s trial has been permitted to speak to the media. After becoming aggressive with guards and refusing to give up a spork and dinner tray, he was placed on suicide watch under 24-hour surveillance in the Erath County Jail.Īccording to court documents, prosecutors say that on the day of the killings Routh threatened his girlfriend, Jennifer Weed, with a knife and told her, “Get the f*** out of my house.” Routh was smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol that morning, a prosecution document says. ![]() Shortly after his apprehension, Routh confessed to authorities and family members that he killed both men, police said. The two men had picked Routh up that fateful day and, as a form of therapy, took him to a remote 11,000-acre resort with a gun range in Glen Rose, Texas. He faces murder charges in the February 2, 2013, deaths of Kyle, 38, and Littlefield, 35. “At the end of the conversation, (Kyle) said, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to help your son.’ She actually cried at that point because it was the first time in over a year that anyone had said that,” Beil told CNN.Įddie Ray Routh, 27, grew up in the Dallas suburb of Lancaster, about 20 miles east of Midlothian, Kyle’s hometown. At that point, she had been trying to get (her son) care at the VA, and he was only getting worse,” according to Laura Beil, author of the ebook “The Enemy Within: The Inside Story of Eddie Routh, the Man Accused of Killing Legendary ‘American Sniper’ Chris Kyle.”Īfter the deaths of Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, Beil, who also is a contributing editor for Men’s Health magazine, spent almost four months with Eddie Routh’s family detailing the Marine’s struggles after serving in Iraq and Haiti. “She approached Chris Kyle as he was dropping off his children and asked him if he would help her son. Kyle, of course, wrote “American Sniper,” the basis for the blockbuster Clint Eastwood film, and she had heard that The New York Times best-selling author worked with fellow veterans having a hard time adjusting to life back home. Jodi Routh was an aide at the same Midlothian, Texas, elementary school that Chris Kyle’s children attended. He showed no progress in two years, and his erratic behavior continued to spiral out of control. After her son was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in July 2011, he had been in and out of Veterans Affairs clinics, she said. ![]()
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