His casket was draped with the American flag and placed on the giant star at the fifty-yard line.
Randy Travis played “Whisper My Name” and “Amazing Grace.” Joe Nichols played “The Impossible.” Kyle’s friend Scott Brown told a story about how they contemplated buying a bar one day and how the sniper decided the perfect name for the place would be Valor. Then Brown played a song he wrote by the same name.
The public heard stories about what Kyle was like as a little boy. What he was like in training. What he was like at war. What he was like as a friend and business partner. Some people talked about the times they saw him cry. Fellow SEALs told stories about his resolve, his humor, his bravery. There were tales of his compassion, his intelligence, his dedication to God.
“Though we feel sadness and loss,” one of his former commanders said, “know this: legends never die. Chris Kyle is not gone. Chris Kyle is everywhere. He is the fabric of the freedom that blessed the people of this great nation. He is forever embodied in the strength and tenacity of the SEAL teams, where his courageous path will be followed and his memory is enshrined as SEALs continue to ruthlessly hunt down and destroy America’s enemies.”
Aside from a few brief patriotism-inspired outbursts, the crowd was ghostly silent. Though there were nearly ten thousand people in attendance, you could hear individual footsteps on the field. You could hear the quivering in each voice.
A young sailor stood on stage and thanked Kyle’s parents for raising him the way they did. Then the young man read a letter the parents had written for the memorial.
“A parent’s love is forever,” the letter began. “We shared Chris’s laughter, his smile, his pranks, his jokes, and his stories. Always a story to be told, and only in the way Chris could express so vividly.” The letter addressed Kyle directly and spoke eloquently of his parents’ belief that their son had a purpose on this planet. “God anointed you with the name Protector,” his parents wrote. “Your life embodied the full meaning of that. You were tender to the young, compassionate with the wounded, and sympathetic for the less fortunate. The Lord had his hand on you from the moment you were born. You were destined for greatness.”
Taya stood strong, surrounded by her husband’s SEAL brothers, and told the world about their love. Jeff Kyle stood next to her on stage in his crisp Marine uniform. Just days earlier, Jeff’s wife had given birth to a baby girl. She was due on March 5, but arrived early—in time to meet her uncle Chris before he died. At one point, as Taya eulogized her husband and broke down in tears, Jeff offered her a white glove from his hand.
She made sure to talk about Chad Littlefield, and what a great friend he’d been to her husband. “In the craziness of life, Chad came along with his quiet, large presence and an easy smile, complete with a rugged beard and dimples, and blessed Chris with a friendship,” she said. “That was the one thing Chris needed more than anything.”
She talked a bit about the tumult of their relationship. “I don’t need to romanticize Chris,” she said. “Because our reality is messy, passionate, full of every extreme emotion known to man, including fear, compassion, anger, pain, laughing so hard we doubled over and hugged it out, laughing when we were irritated with each other, and laughing when we were so in love it felt like someone hung the moon for only us.”
She stopped to wipe her face with Jeff’s glove and spoke to her children in words beautifully pitched for their ears. “My sweet angels, we will put one foot in front of the other and remember how silly Dad was. We will hug each other tightly just like Dad would do with us. We will pray the prayers he prayed with us. We will remember that your dad has so much pride in your manners, your good sportsmanship, and your friendship to each other, and we will continue them all. We will remember that his Baby Girl and his Bubba mean the world to him and he didn’t just talk about that. He loved you, and he lived his life to show you.”
Then, in front of thousands of people, reporters from all over the globe, and a slew of cameras, she spoke directly to her husband.
“God knew it would take the toughest and softest-hearted man on earth to get a hardheaded, cynical, hard-loving woman like me to see what God needed me to see, and he chose you for the job,” she said, her cracking voice filling the stadium. She spoke of how he taught her to love, to have faith, to be independent, to raise their children with respect and old-fashioned values, and even to curb her anger. Before continuing her list, she added as to that last item: “By the way, sorry that took so long.”
Before leaving the stage, she looked at the casket on the fifty-yard line. Through the tears, she said, “I love you, Chris. I love you. I love you.”
When the ceremony ended, uniformed pallbearers carried out the casket to the sounds of mournful bagpipes. Taya walked behind them with her children, hand in hand.
The next day, the casket was driven to Austin. There was a procession nearly two hundred miles long—the Department of Public Safety says it was almost certainly the longest in American history. People lined the road in every town, waving flags and saluting. American flags were draped over every single bridge on I-35 between the Kyle home in Midlothian and the state capital.
As the family and friends drove for hours through the rain, the line of people along the highway never stopped. Thousands of people stood there, cold and wet, happy to do it. There were men in suits standing next to men in overalls. There were little girls with pigtails, their cheeks painted red, white, and blue. There were parents, pointing out the hero to their children as the casket drove by.
He was laid to rest in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, rarefied grounds for any Texan. He could have been buried in Arlington National Cemetery, with all the pomp and circumstance that comes with it. But that isn’t what he would have wanted. Jeff told reporters that, if it had been up to his brother, he’d be fine being buried beneath an old oak tree in a pasture somewhere.
Kyle didn’t want to be remembered as the sniper, or The Legend, his brother said. “He just wanted to be known as Chris Kyle.”
PEOPLE WILL TELL STORIES ABOUT CHRIS KYLE for generations to come. Tales of his feats in battle, and of his antics and noble deeds, will probably swell. In a hundred years, people won’t know which stories are completely true and which were embellished over time. And, in the end, it may not matter too much because people believe in legends for all their own reasons.
Since her husband’s death, Taya has been overwhelmed by the number of veterans who want to tell her that Chris Kyle saved their lives. A man with a two-year-old girl wept recently as he explained that his daughter would not have been born had it not been for Chris Kyle rescuing him in Iraq. Years from now, men will still be telling stories about the moments when they were seconds or inches from death, when they thought it was all over—only to have a Chris Kyle bullet fly from the heavens and take out their enemies. They’ll tell their grandchildren to thank Chris Kyle in their prayers.
Because his legend is so large, because he personally protected so many people, there will surely be men who think they were saved by Kyle but who owe their lives to a different sniper or to another serviceman. Of course, there will be no way to know for sure. Kyle credited his SEAL brothers any chance he could, but he also knew that he was an American hero, the most accomplished sniper the country has had, and he knew the complications that came with that reputation.
During the interview in which he discussed the gas station incident, he didn’t say where it happened. Most versions of the story have him in Cleburne, not far from Fort Worth. The Cleburne police chief says that if such an incident did happen, it wasn’t in his town. Every other chief of police along Route 67 says the same thing. Public information requests produced no police reports, no coroner reports, nothing from the Texas Rangers or the Department of Public Safety. I stopped at every gas station along 67, Business 67 in Cleburne, and ten miles in either direction. Nobody had heard of anything like that happening.
A lot of people will believe that, because there
are no public documents or witnesses to corroborate his story, Kyle must have been lying. But why would he lie? He was already one of the most decorated veterans of the Iraq War. Tales of his heroism on the battlefield were already lore in every branch of the armed forces.
People who never met Kyle will think there must have been too much pressure on him, a war hero who thought he might seem purposeless if he wasn’t killing bad guys. Conspiracy theorists will wonder if maybe every part of his life story—his incredible kills, his heroic tales of bravery in the face of death—was concocted by the propaganda wing of the Pentagon.
And, of course, other people—probably most people—will believe the story because it is about Chris Kyle. He was one of the few men in the entire world capable of such a feat. He was one of the only people alive who might have had the connections to make something like that disappear (he did work regularly with the CIA). People will believe it because Chris Kyle was incredible, the most celebrated war hero of our time, a true American hero in every sense of the word. They’ll believe this story because there are already so many verified stories of his lethal abilities and astonishing valor, stories of him hanging out with presidents, ribbing governors, and knocking out bullies and former football stars and billionaires and cocky frat boys.
They’ll believe it because Chris Kyle is already a legend, and sometimes we need to believe in legends.
Acknowledgments
Every step of this project was a collaboration. Every person involved played an important role. Thank you to everyone who was kind to me, in either a personal or professional capacity, while I was reporting, writing, and editing. I know it’s not easy for the people around me, and for that I’m sorry.
I’m especially grateful to Taya Kyle for being so unbelievably kind and understanding, and to all of Chris’s friends who took the time to share their stories with me. While the world lost a hero, you lost so much more.
This book would not have been possible if not for the following people: Tim Rogers, Zac Crain, Krista Nightengale, Wick Allison, Halley Homen, and everyone else at D Magazine; David Patterson and Anissa Stocks at Foundry + Media; John Parsley and Ben Allen at Little, Brown; Elisa Rivlin; Brandon Thibodeaux, one of the finest photographers in the country; and George Getschow at the Mayborn, to whom I will always owe beer.
Above all, I am thankful to all the men and women who have dedicated their lives to keeping the rest of us safe and free enough to do things like read and write books.
Photos
Retired U.S. Navy SEAL Christopher Scott “Chris” Kyle stands in his home under the American flag. (Brandon Thibodeaux)
Chris Kyle sits for a portrait in his home outside of Dallas in March 2012. Kyle is known as the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history. (Brandon Thibodeaux)
Chris Kyle sits for a portrait in his home just two months after the release of his bestselling book. (Brandon Thibodeaux)
Funeral motorcade for slain veteran Chris Kyle. (© Jeff J. Newman Photography, 2013)
A Vietnam veteran eyes the funeral motorcade on February 12, 2013. (© Jeff J. Newman Photography, 2013)
Austin onlookers as Chris Kyle’s funeral procession passes by. (© Jeff J. Newman, 2013)
A San Antonio man waits for the funeral motorcade. (© Jeff J. Newman, 2013)
A view of the motorcycle honor guard from atop Interstate 35. (© Jeff J. Newman, 2013)
View from a camera perch moments before the funeral service of slain “American Sniper” Chris Kyle. (Photo courtesy of Jim Slaughter, 2013)
View from camera perch, just before Chris Kyle’s funeral procession. (Flags for Chris Kyle © Jim Trahan)
Bagpiper plays “Amazing Grace” as the procession passes by. (Photograph © Phillip G. Brown Fine Art Photography. All rights reserved. Used by permission.)
Young girl and friend embrace as they look on at the funeral motorcade. (Photograph © Phillip G. Brown Fine Art Photography. All rights reserved. Used by permission.)
Residents awaiting the procession where Texas State Highway 29 and Interstate 35 cross. (Photograph © Phillip G. Brown Fine Art Photography. All rights reserved. Used by permission.)
Eddie Ray Routh, twenty-five, was charged in connection with the murder of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield. (Erath County Police Department)
The front and back pages from the program at Chris Kyle’s memorial ceremony. (Photographed by Tara Nieuwesteeg, 2013)
About the Author
MICHAEL J. MOONEY is a staff writer at D Magazine. He also writes for GQ, Outside, Grantland, and SB Nation. He is a graduate of the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, and is on the advisory committee of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. His stories have appeared in The Best American Crime Reporting and multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He lives in Dallas with his fiancée, Tara, and their retired racing greyhound.
michaeljmooney.com
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Acknowledgments
Photos
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Michael J. Mooney
Author photo by Tara Nieuwesteeg
Cover design by Kapo Ng; photograph by Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Contributor/MCT via Getty Images
Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
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First ebook edition: April 2013
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Portions of this ebook were previously published in D Magazine.
ISBN 978-0-316-27823-2
The Life and Legend of Chris Kyle: American Sniper, Navy SEAL Page 6