If there was any doubt that Eddie Routh, the former Marine who shot and killed Chris Kyle and Kyle's friend Chad Littlefield in 2013, was profoundly disturbed, Thursday's testimony at Routh's murder trial erased it. Now, the jury is going to decide whether Routh knew that shooting Kyle and Littlefield was wrong. If he did, he fails to meet Texas' legal insanity standard.
Dr. Mitchell H. Dunn, psychiatrist at Terrell State Hospital, took most of the day to describe his interactions with Routh.
Routh, he said, was clearly psychotic. He suffered from multiple delusions: Routh thought his cop neighbor was a member of the Mexican Mafia; that two co-workers were cannibals who wanted to eat him; and, by the Friday night before he shot Kyle and Littlefield at an Erath County gun range, that a race of pig-humans was taking over the Earth.
According to Dunn, Routh told his girlfriend, whom Routh believed was one of the pig-humans, that he didn't like to see her eating bacon.
"He was thinking she was a pig hybrid. Why would you eat the flesh of your people?" Dunn said.
When Kyle and Littlefield didn't talk to Routh, he became fearful that they were pig-humans as well, he told Dunn. That made Routh nervous, he said. That Littlefield didn't do any shooting at the range only confirmed that he was a threat, Routh told Dunn.
"There was something really wrong with Eddie Ray Routh on the day of the offense, and that something wrong was a mental disease," Dunn said.
The symptoms that Routh showed couldn't be faked, Dunn said. At the time of the shootings, he did not know what he was doing was wrong. He knew murder was wrong, Dunn said, but believed he was defending himself from Kyle and Littlefield.
After Dunn's testimony, Routh informed the court that he would not be taking the stand in his own defense, ending the presentation of his case. Prosecution rebuttal evidence is expected to be presented today.
