[This post has been updated.]
STEPHENVILLE — Defense attorneys for a Lancaster man accused of killing former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and another man in February 2013 rested their case Thursday afternoon.
Eddie Ray Routh, 27, is charged with capital murder in the shooting deaths of Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, who took him to Rough Creek Lodge and Resort in hopes of helping him with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Routh, a former Marine corporal, confessed to killing the men but pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Defense attorneys have said that Routh was in a state of psychosis at the time of the killings. And a forensic psychiatrist testified Thursday that Routh suffers from schizophrenia.
He was exhibiting signs of psychosis in the weeks leading up to and on the day of the shooting deaths of Kyle and Littlefield, testified Dr. Mitchell H. Dunn, a forensic psychiatrist.
Dunn spent more than six hours interviewing Routh in April 2014 to determine his state of mind when he shot Littlefield and Kyle on Feb. 2, 2013. Routh had recently been released from the VA hospital after a psychotic episode.
Routh’s friends and families testified that his behavior in the weeks before the killings was increasingly erratic. He acted as if he believed that someone was going to hurt him and that the government was listening to him.
He described seeing neighbors and friends as turning into pig-human hybrids, Dunn testified. Routh also believed that two of his coworkers were cannibals and were going to harm him.
And on the day Kyle and Littlefield picked up Routh at his Lancaster home, he believed they were going to assassinate him.
“He thought he was going to die if he didn’t take care of business and kill them first,” Dunn said.