John Liebert, William Scott 🚀 235

👯 February 2, 2015

Join us tonight as we discuss the very difficult subject of traumatic stress. What does it do to the mind? How can it be tamed or caged or cured? Can it? John Liebert, MDCM psychiatrist and author William Scott discuss.

Meanwhile, from Wounded Minds: Understanding and Solving the Growing Menace of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, here is John’s prologue to “The American Sniper”: Double Homicide by fellow OIF veteran. Who was Eddie Routh?

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##Chapter 7 Eddie Routh: The Double Murder at a Gun Range

Former Navy SEAL Christopher Kyle had a plan. The heavily-decorated sniper, whose bestselling book American Sniper (New York: Morrow, 2012) described his experiences as a sniper with the most kills in the military, believed that by helping veterans with PTSD work through their issues by relating to other vets in a familiar surrounding, he could effect some form of remedy.

At least, he believed, he could provide a therapy to relieve their immediate anxiety. However, when Kyle and his buddy Chad Littlefield took combat veteran and PTSD sufferer Eddie Ray Routh to a gun range at the upscale Rough Creek Lodge, Glen Rose, Texas on February 2, 2013, things went horribly wrong.

Both Kyle and Littlefield were killed when Routh, seemingly without provocation, turned his weapon on them and left them for dead, lying in pools of blood while he took their pickup and tried to escape. Why would Routh, now in police custody, turn a weapon on brother veterans trying to help him?

As with most cases of psychotic murderers with apparent suicidal intent, the absence of any records of their case management leaves few facts, numerous clues for speculation, and a plethora of questions in the wake of their crimes. As is typical in such cases, salient background facts are initially kept from the public while police assemble evidence during the investigation.

Then background facts may or may not make it to the surface once the flood of civil litigation from responsible parties begins, especially those who demand answers to what the nature of the psychotic killer’s case management revealed, particularly with respect to a psychologist’s or psychiatrist’s duty to warn and duty to protect, the legal standard in California and many other states.

The Eddie Ray Routh case began when near dusk on February 2 the bodies of Christopher Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, were discovered, lying on the ground in pools of blood, their backs riddled with bullets, on the shooting range at the resort outside Dallas/Fort Worth. A short time later Routh showed up at his sister and brother-in-law’s house in a shiny black pickup truck.

His sister said that he was behaving and talking strangely. He told them in an off-handed matter of fact way that he and two other people were out shooting target practice and he couldn’t trust them so he killed them before they could kill him. “I traded my soul for a new truck”, he said.

Routh’s sister, Laura Blevins, told police Eddie had been paranoid for a long time, thinking everybody was out to get him. “My brother,” she said, is “out of his mind saying people were sucking his soul and that he could smell the pigs. He said he was going to get their souls before they took his.”

When Blevins asked her brother whom he killed, Routh told her it was Christopher Kyle and a friend. She was shocked and pressed him for more information, asking him if he was kidding, but he repeatedly denied it was drama. He had indeed committed the crime.

John and Bill also coauthored Hearts of Darkness: Why Kids Are Becoming Mass Murderers and How We Can Stop It.

William B. Scott is the author of The Permit (Checkmate Justice Book 1) 🚀