That night, Routh was transferred to a jail in Erath County, where the murders took place. He has been on suicide watch since then. He is permitted to write letters and make phone calls, although Jen has not heard from him in months. She still loves him, and does not know whether she should stop considering herself engaged. Routh is facing charges of capital murder.

Not long after the murders, he sent me a brief letter, written in pencil: “I need out of the box I’m in. If you could help let me know. Want to go back overseas to help the world.”

Chad Littlefield’s memorial service took place at a Baptist church in Midlothian. The turnout exceeded expectations, and Taya Kyle was among those present. Three days later, Chris Kyle’s service was held, in Cowboys Stadium. It was an overcast day. Patriot Guard riders lined up outside, holding American flags. Todd and Sarah Palin attended. Although nearly seven thousand people had gathered inside the stadium, it was eerily silent. The Jumbotron flashed a series of photographs; in most of them, Kyle was holding a firearm. A soundtrack set the mood: Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” was paired with images of Kyle’s childhood; AC/DC’s “Back in Black” accompanied battlefield shots; “You Raise Me Up,” by Josh Groban, played behind pictures of Kyle with Taya and their kids. The montage was followed by bagpipes, bass drums, and pallbearers.

Positioned in the middle of the stage was Kyle’s battle cross: a geometric arrangement of his boots, his helmet, and his Kevlar jacket (with the Punisher logo). Nobody who stepped to the lectern that day—including Randy Travis, who sang “Amazing Grace”—introduced himself. A chaplain asked God to “help us to forgive our enemy who stole Chris’s life,” and begged for “sure justice, Father, implemented through our governmental authorities, as it is demanded by the laws of our great state and our great country.” Texas executes more prisoners than any state in the U.S.

The chaplain referred to Kyle as a “husband, father, son, brother, friend, teammate, and righteous, mighty, victorious warrior.” Several of Kyle’s former SEAL teammates spoke about him. “What made him a legend was his heart,” one of them said.

Taya eventually went up. She told me that she never considered not giving a eulogy: “I wanted to say it to him, and wanted to say it loud.” At the lectern, she said that she was “not a fan of people romanticizing their loved ones in death,” and characterized her relationship with Kyle as “messy, passionate, full of every extreme emotion known to man.” She went on, “The messy, painful, constantly changing, messy ride was rolled up into the deepest, most soul-changing experience that only one man, Chris Kyle, could bring. Chris was all in, no matter what he did in life.”

The next morning, Kyle’s family and friends travelled to Austin for a state burial; the funeral procession is said to have stretched two hundred miles. Since then, Taya has made Kyle’s causes her own. (This will include mounting a defense against Jesse Ventura, who has decided to pursue damages against Kyle’s estate. A trial is expected to begin later this year.) Taya said of Kyle, “His heart and spirit can be very contagious.” In April, she appeared at a daylong seminar for educators in Texas, which detailed the kind of training required for a concealed-handgun license. (Kyle believed that classrooms would be safer if some teachers were trained to carry weapons.) More recently, she addressed the annual convention of the National Rifle Association, in Houston. Wearing a navy-and-gray dress, with Kyle’s dog tags dangling from her neck, she spoke at length about her husband, saying, “He loved his fellow-man enough to take on the immense responsibility of using his gun—the only effective tool he had—to stop the evil coming at them.” Guns, she suggested, were part of the fabric of Kyle’s identity. After he returned from war, Kyle was “blessed to be able to serve countless numbers of veterans during hunts and shoots.” She added, “He discovered a new use for guns: healing.”

Joe Washam, the Army sergeant who had joined Kyle on the antelope hunt, told me that, after Kyle’s murder, the idea of using guns for healing was being subjected to a “backlash.” In January, Washam had participated in another “wounded warriors” event—a deer hunt on a “beautiful piece of property” near Fort Hood. He shot a ten-point buck from about seventy yards away. The owner of the property invited Washam to stay the night. The next morning, they went duck hunting. His host, Washam said, “went above and beyond. He let me onto his property to shoot a rifle, he didn’t check my credentials or anything, and then he let me shoot a big, monster buck.” Before he left, his host invited him to come back with some of his veteran friends.

The day after Kyle and Littlefield were murdered, Washam’s phone rang. It was the landowner, rattled by the news. “That scares me,” the landowner said. “I brought a complete stranger here.” Washam told me, “That’s what I’m worried about moving forward, that people are going to paint a scarlet letter on us—that we’re not to be trusted because we all have P.T.S.D. and we’re all fucked up in the head.” Washam assured the landowner not to worry, saying, “I will bring guys I trust with my life.”

In early May, I flew to northern Texas to see Raymond and Jodi Routh. They had just bought a house in a town, an hour outside Amarillo, where Raymond continues working with cattle-feed equipment. I got there in the late morning; Raymond had already put in a few hours’ work. Inside the house, the walls were bare, except for protruding nails from the previous owner. Jodi had been planning to move from Lancaster to join Raymond at the end of the academic year, but, after the killings, she couldn’t bear the idea of facing Kyle’s kids and has not returned to the school since. “I just didn’t want them to have to see me,” she said. “I didn’t think it was fair to the children.”

We spent much of the day on their back patio. There was a tree house in one corner and a brick barbecue pit in another. Jodi and Raymond smoked Marlboro Lights while Girley, Routh’s dog, lay at my feet. Raymond went inside whenever Jodi needed a Kleenex to dry her tears. They know that their son faces one of three possibilities: execution, life without parole, or life in a psychiatric ward. “Is Eddie guilty of what happened?” Jodi asked. “He is. He did it.”

Raymond said, “Are we ever going to get our son back? No. We know this.”

“But we gotta keep them from giving him the death penalty,” Jodi said.

Raymond brought up the telephone conversation in which Routh had hinted that he might have shot a child in Iraq. He said, “It’s just like I told him, ‘I need you back.’ And then when he gets back I ain’t got my son no more. I got a body that looks like my son. But that ain’t my son. And that’s what the people don’t understand from the V.A. And that’s what I told them down there, too. ‘I don’t want this. I want my son back.’ ‘Well, make him take these pills and bring him back in two weeks.’ That’s too goddam long.”

Jodi looked out and said, “All I can think about in my mind is that, if they would have left him in the hospital, then those two men wouldn’t be dead today. And, you know, it’s not like I want to beat on the V.A., that’s not at all what my intention is. My intention is that they step up and give these men—”

“The help they need,” Raymond interrupted.

“The treatment they deserve,” Jodi continued. She said that a forensic psychologist had recently assessed Routh’s capacity to stand trial, though he had not received mental-health assistance from the V.A. since January. She said of veterans, “It’s not just that they deserve it. They’ve already earned it. They’ve already served their time. They’ve already done what they were asked to do.” Jodi wiped her tears. The Marines had trained her son for war, she said, but they never “untrained” him for normal life. Shaking her head, she added, “And we’re some of the lucky ones. Because we had our kid back, you know? He didn’t come home in a body bag.” ♦