Routh Told Deputy He Shot Kyle and Littlefield for Not Talking to Him?

PTSD comes with a lot of things but Routh must not understand using it while using it as a reason to murder 2 people.

Former Erath County sheriff’s deputy Gene Cole testified Friday that after Routh was jailed, he heard him say: “I shot them because they wouldn’t talk to me.” He said Routh said he had been riding in the back seat on the way to the shooting range. Cole, who is now a police officer elsewhere, said Routh also said, “I feel bad about it, but they wouldn’t talk to me. I’m sure they’ve forgiven me.”

Routh’s mother had asked Kyle, a former Navy SEAL whose wartime exploits were depicted in his 2012 memoir, to help her son overcome troubles that had at least twice led him to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Routh had been a small arms technician who served in Iraq and was deployed to earthquake-ravaged Haiti before leaving the Marines in 2010.

That is from AP reporting on Competence at center of ‘American Sniper’ murder trial February 14, 2015. Having hurt feelings because they wouldn't talk to him is not the same as feeling his life was threatened.

Deputy: Routh said he killed ‘American Sniper’ Chris Kyle, friend because ‘they wouldn’t talk to me’
Dallas News
Dianna Hunt
Staff Writer
13 February 2015

STEPHENVILLE — Eddie Ray Routh felt snubbed.

He’d climbed into the truck with acclaimed former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and a buddy for an afternoon at a shooting range, and nobody had a thing to say. So he shot them.

That’s the explanation he gave for the slayings while sitting in the Erath County Jail awaiting trial on capital murder charges, according to a former sheriff’s deputy who overheard the confession.

“I heard Mr. Routh say, ‘I shot them because they wouldn’t talk to me,’” former Deputy Gene Cole, now a Belton police officer, told jurors late Friday during Routh’s capital murder trial. “‘I was just riding in the back seat of the truck and nobody would talk to me. They were just taking me to the range, so I shot them. I feel bad about it, but they wouldn’t talk to me. I’m sure they’ve forgiven me.’”

The exchange on June 22, 2013, is the first glimpse from prosecutors at a possible motive for the killings.

Kyle, 38, whose bestselling book American Sniper was recently made into a blockbuster movie, and his close friend Chad Littlefield, 35, were fatally wounded at a shooting range that Kyle had designed at the upscale Rough Creek Lodge and Resort near Glen Rose, southwest of Fort Worth.
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But KVUE ABC News shows how even the PTSD is been doubted. It appears that Routh lied making a claim to the VA for PTSD compensation.

Since he was arrested for the February 2013 murders of Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield, much has been made of Routh's alleged PTSD from his time as a Marine.

But prosecutors now cast doubt on it all.

In a brief filed with the court on Tuesday that detailed other offenses, prosecutors said Routh "lied about shooting a child in Iraq, pulling dead bodies out of the water, or piled up dead bodies in Haiti or [having] seen multiple dead babies."

The filing goes on to claim that Routh told a friend "he was making false claims to [the VA] to get benefits."

On multiple occasions, prosecutors outlined that Routh smoked marijuana and used methamphetamine for at least a decade beginning in 2003 — before his military service.

The state even said Routh was high in 2013 when he is suspected of murdering Kyle and Littlefield.

"Even if he had the condition, and it was merely exacerbated by voluntary intoxication, I think the defense may have an uphill battle," said Ward.