On June 04, 2012, I posted a brief article on Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle titled “The Universe Has a Good Laugh.” I had just read Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s second book, “Service, A Navy Seal At War,” and recounted a brief incident provided by Luttrell. That article has become one of the most-read—and most controversial–things I’ve ever written.
The controversy roils around a brief story in the book about Kyle’s shooting of two armed robbers one cold January day at a gas station. An excerpt from my original post (and Luttrell’s book):
On a bitterly cold morning in early January of 2009, the war, in a sense, found Chris again. What happened to him not far from his home outside Dallas never made the news, since the town involved didn’t want the publicity, but the incident certainly would have made national headlines had a reporter ever gotten a tip about it.
Self-proclaimed debunkers of the incident have claimed it occurred in Cleburne, TX and reported that law enforcement officials of that community and surrounding county have either claimed to have no knowledge of the incident or denied that it happened there. There are many problems with this particular assumption, not the least of which being there appears to be no basis for placing it in Cleburne. Neither Kyle, Luttrell, or anyone else is known to have identified any specific place, and Luttrell only placed it “not far from his [Kyle’s] home outside Dallas.” Depending on the route one takes, Cleburne is from 50 to 60 miles SW of Dallas.
Michael J. Mooney of D Magazine, on March 18, 3013, published a profile of Kyle. His account, provided directly by Kyle, is more explicit:
There’s a story about Chris Kyle: on a cold January morning in 2010, he pulled into a gas station somewhere along Highway 67, south of Dallas. He was driving his supercharged black Ford F350 outfitted with black rims and oversize knobby mudding tires. Kyle had replaced the Ford logo on the grill with a small chrome skull, similar to the Punisher emblem from the Marvel Comics series, and added a riot-ready aftermarket grill guard bearing the words ROAD ARMOR. He had just left the Navy and moved back to Texas.
Two guys approached him with pistols and demanded his money and the keys to his truck. With his hands in the air, he sized up which man seemed most confident with his gun. Kyle knew what confidence with a gun looked like. He was the deadliest sniper in American history. He had at least 160 confirmed kills by the Pentagon’s count, but by his own count—and the accounts of his Navy SEAL teammates—the number was closer to twice that. In his four tours of duty in Iraq, Kyle earned two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with Valor. He survived six IED attacks, three gunshot wounds, two helicopter crashes, and more surgeries than he could remember. He was known among his SEAL brethren as The Legend and to his enemies as al-Shaitan, “the devil.”
He told the robbers that he just needed to reach back into the truck to get the keys. He turned around and reached under his winter coat instead, into his waistband. With his right hand, he grabbed his Colt 1911. He fired two shots under his left armpit, hitting the first man twice in the chest. Then he turned slightly and fired two more times, hitting the second man twice in the chest. Both men fell dead.
Kyle leaned on his truck and waited for the police.
When they arrived, they detained him while they ran his driver’s license. But instead of his name, address, and date of birth, what came up was a phone number at the Department of Defense. At the other end of the line was someone who explained that the police were in the presence of one of the most skilled fighters in U.S. military history. When they reviewed the surveillance footage, the officers found the incident had happened just as Kyle had described it. They were very understanding, and they didn’t want to drag a just-home, highly decorated veteran into a messy legal situation.
Kyle wasn’t unnerved or bothered. Quite the opposite. He’d been feeling depressed since he left the service, struggling to adjust to civilian life. This was an exciting reminder of the action he missed.
That night, talking on the phone to his wife, Taya, who was in the process of moving with their kids from California, he was a good husband. He asked how her day was. The way some people tell it, he got caught up in their conversation, and only right before they hung up did he remember his big news of the day: ‘Oh, yeah, I shot two guys trying to steal my truck today.’
I recommend you read the entire Mooney article, which gives a very good overview of the kind of man Chris Kyle was. Having read Kyle’s book, I have no difficulty believing the incident occurred just as Kyle related it. Mooney had the same impression. Kyle’s nonchalance in informing his wife also rings entirely true.
Mooney notes that Kyle did not want to go into detail about the shooting, which is of a piece with the reluctance Kyle expressed in speaking about himself in general.
Mooney adds this toward the end of his profile:
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 Highway 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 10 miles in either direction. Nobody had heard of anything like that happening.
Interestingly, Cleburne is between 28-34 miles SW of Ft. Worth, so it seems that even Mooney had a little difficulty with the concept of what is “not far.” In addition, Highway 67 is a road running south and west from Dallas through Cleburne and beyond. In the broad expanse of Texas south of Dallas, there are far more communities and hundreds of gas stations. If the shooting did not, in fact, take place in or near Cleburne—and there is no apparent definitive information that places it there—it is hardly surprising that local law enforcement might have no information about it.
What about the Texas Rangers or the State Department of Public Safety (essentially the Highway Patrol)? Wouldn’t they know about such a thing anywhere in the state? Not necessarily. Generally speaking, local crimes, even shootings, are not handled by state law enforcement agencies. They’re called in only under specific circumstances. Otherwise, they’d have no involvement and no knowledge. Individual troopers or rangers chatting with local officers might get wind of this and other things, but institutionally, there would be no knowledge.
Mooney’s account provides one interesting bit of information: the local police apparently spoke with someone in the DOD that interceded on Kyle’s behalf. Here we need to briefly review normal police procedure.
Usually, any incident of any significance requires at least notation on radio call logs, and usually, a written incident report of some kind. This would normally be true of any shooting incident, which would require that detectives be called and the police chief or sheriff be notified.
However, add in the intercession of the Pentagon/DOD on behalf of a man involved in any number of black operations, and normal procedure might well be changed, particularly in a part of the nation where law enforcement officers are often themselves veterans and are unashamedly patriotic. If the two ex-criminals were well known to the police, who would have considered their sudden and unexpected—though richly deserved–demise a net positive for the community, changing protocol would be easier still.
And if this is the case, would anyone expect the authorities to admit the incident four years later? Notice Mooney’s formulation:
The Cleburne police chief says that if such an incident did happen, it wasn’t in his town. Every other chief of police along Highway 67 says the same thing.
Language matters. This is not a clear, definitive denial, rather it sounds much more like a careful, political non-denial denial.
But what about the press? Wouldn’t they inevitably cover any shooting? Consider that the media generally does its best to avoid reporting on successful citizen self-defense shootings as they tend to effectively contradict the anti-gun narrative. This too, would not be impossible, perhaps, not even improbable.
Mooney concludes:
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.
Why would he lie indeed. This was a man that earned multiple bronze and silver stars as well as other decorations. His post-military life was, by all accounts, happy and prosperous. Adding what, in the full story of his exploits, would be a relatively minor tale, would add little or nothing of value to his reputation. This does not mean that Kyle could not have told a fable, but there seems little or no advantage in it.
Ultimately, the truth is important, but one lesson my years in law enforcement taught me is that it’s not possible to know everything about everything. There are some things one will never know with certainty, and I’m content with knowing this is probably one of them. I’ve repeatedly acknowledged the controversy and linked to the writings of those who believe it a lie. Readers can, to whatever degree it’s important to them, decide for themselves.
Perhaps the final word should belong to Kyle, who said, according to Mooney:
Once, he posted to his tens of thousands of Facebook fans: ‘If you don’t like what I have to say or post, you forget one thing, I don’t give a shit what you think. LOL.’
I can just see Kyle looking down on this controversy and laughing out loud. If you don’t, I don’t give a shit either Chris. Godspeed.
interesting story. chris kyle sounds like a true Texan. I am proud to be a fellow Texan.
Amen, Mike.
yet no victims were ever named. Did these two have no family? What a convenient absence of facts for the gun nutters willing to believe such silliness.
What a bunch of bullshit ,the Department of Defense has no authority over local law enforcement, Kyle was a citizen. No police jurisdiction is going to call some random number (who could be anyone on the other end playing games) and then let a guy go just because of his military status. Vets get arrested all the time, none of them have fancy little numbers to call. Total bullshit.
if they had guns and tried to rob him then why would he be in jail or need cia ops to clear him…
I had a 30/30 lever pulled on me and it was logged as a dui… we won’t get into chasing four minors and all that crap because he was a third striker so it didnt matter..
“Kyle wasn’t unnerved or bothered. Quite the opposite. He’d been feeling depressed since he left the service, struggling to adjust to civilian life. This was an exciting reminder of the action he missed.”
So he missed killing? In service to your country, you’re branded a hero. As a civilian, you’re a murderer.
Geez. people. If these guys were criminals (obviously they were if they were carjacking him at gunpoint), then chances are they were already familiar with local law enforcement. Law enforcement was probably instructed by DOD to make it go away. Local law enforcement probably made up a story that these two guys killed each other in a drug deal gone bad, or a carjacking gone wrong, or whatever. Two criminals being killed during criminal activity? That’s not going to raise any eyebrows. Victims are rolled into the morgue, the medical examiner says “yup, they were shot and by God they’re dead.” The details don’t really matter. I would imagine Chris’s death was likely ordered by the very government that trained him. Awfully easy to pay a four-year Marine to blow away Chris Kyle, who wouldn’t stop talking about things they felt he shouldn’t be. Plead the Marine out on a PTSD defense and if that doesn’t work, oh well. Let the Marine go down for capital murder. Who cares? Nobody would believe him, anyway. His own defense is PTSD, so he admits that he’s unstable. He’s basically screwed no matter what and Chris Kyle is dead. Mission accomplished, as far as the government is concerned.
You guys are true idiots. The Pentagon is the largest propaganda machine operating in the world today. Chris Kyle is a psychopathic liar. He lied as about punching Ventura, lied about the gas station nonsense and likely fabricated stories about his war experience. It’s amazing how gullible you people are. You fools are the same people who gobbled up stories about the West in the 1800s and actually believed the folk lore. Kyle was a sniper, which means he HID IN PROTECTED POSITIONS and pulled a trigger when told by a superior. KYLE HIMSELF DESCRIBED HIMSELF AS A MONKEY WITH A GUN, on a late night talk show. No wonder it’s so easy for Washington to start a war, fools like you guys belive anything that glorifying war because you have no other things to be proud of as a nation( poor education, health care, crumbling infrastructure, lose of status world wide, no good scientist, discoveries,) The mark of a dying civilization is that all they can celebrate is their ability to do violence. You will be bankrupt and finished soon.
I can’t speak on the events at the Texas gas station but I do know a Vietnam veteran that shot a man stealing his car battery (would have been his third battery) in Columbus, OH in the late sixties. After the shoot the veteran called the police to inform them of the killing. When officers arrived they asked the veteran if the thief had a gun. He told them he didn’t know nor care he just wasn’t going to let him steal his third battery in the same number of days. So one of the officers obtained a small revolver from an ankle holster and placed it in the dead thiefs hand and then said “yep, he had a gun”. The veteran never spent the first day in court. It can and does happen. And to anyone that has never had the opportunity to serve this great nation in the military but have plenty of derogatory comments for and about us…FUCK YOU and you’re welcome.
Nice story. Might be true, might be utter BS. I know Chris Kyle’s was. It’s just red meat that certain types want to believe is true so badly they suspend logic and common sense.
Welcome for what? Do your job and go home like everybody else. Expecting ticker tape when you enter a room is childish.
Chris Kyle was a bullshitter. Obviously.
GunSarj, really? Does your job involve leaving your familiy and friends for a year and be put in harm’s way on a daily basis? If you do cheers to you, if not STFU and show some respect to the men and women that protect your freedom…your freedom to be a internet asshat.
Nobody is “put in harms way” to “protect our freedom” on the other side of the world. . . because military service is voluntary for the likes of wannabe, gung-ho heroes…looking for imaginary weapons in Iraq,
Pretty sure people defending their county in Iraq pose no threat to my “freedoms”, nor have any interest whatsoever in my country other than wanting them out of THEIR countries.
ANY death discovered by police is initially handled as a homicide investigation, and the facts are sorted out after. There is no such thing as making a shooting death “Go away”.
Dear Jimmy:
You’re quite correct. Normally, any unexpected, unattended death is treated as a homicide, however, speaking from experience, you’d be amazed at the things that can “go away” when the right people desire it. Do I know that’s what happened here? No. I merely mention the possibility.
Mike,
You write
“Consider that the media generally does its best to avoid reporting on successful citizen self-defense shootings…”
Not even Kyle, known to be a liar on another very big deal, has claimed any element of self-defense in this. The most that can be said it that h clams to have killed a couple of punks who were sitting in his truck preparing to steal it. This is not remotely “self-defense.”
-dlj.
Dear David etc.:
The story is that Kyle was approached by two armed thugs that threatened his life and tried to steal his vehicle. That is indeed self-defend under Texas law. You did read the story and related links?
Kyle was a liar, that’s a fact… Also there’s no secret number you can call because your a sniper that makes dead bodies/people disappear, anyone with a HS education knows that. Dude did his job in the military then got fat headed and started adding more bs in his life story…
Busted lying atleast 5 times that made it into his book, or told reporters. He became a complete idiot.. I respect his service but not him… That’s a fact!! A,mom a veteran of 9 yrs, anyone I’ve talked to who was in the military concerning this BS, their response; they roll their eyes.
Liar,.,.,.
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so if you believe this story…. you believe that in America, an army vet who has recently returned from war. Can Shoot 2 robbers in the middle of the day, on camera and when questioned by the police, pull out a cell phone, make a call to a “superior” who then tells the police who you are and to let you go and…. boom, just like that it never happened? No police reports, No Homicide detectives, No Obituary’s?, No coroners report?, Not even in the newspaper? Literally just disappeared like it never happened? And this all happened because the police didn’t want to stress out a vet who just returned home?? Riggggggght. Sorry people, This is not how things work in this country! Even if you are a war vet, you can make something like this disappear out of the convenience of not wanting to bother you with media attention,
Dear Luke J Hansmeyer:
One need not believe the “story” as you’ve described it. There was never a claim by Marcus Luttrell or anyone else that the original account took place in Cleburn, TX. No specific place was named. Therefore, anyone speaking to Cleburn authorities and being told it didn’t happen there means little or nothing. As I’ve noted, I’ve acknowledged the controversy and linked to those that have other views. Readers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions.
Are things, serious things, covered up in America. Indeed they are. Was this an example? I’ve no idea.
Thanks for your comment.
Mike your ************. ******************. Really you think this kid did what he said he did??? My god I’ve been to so many sites from Navy Seal sites to news reports, not counting reading his stupid book and almost walking out if the movie, and even other Seals think this dude was just telling sea stories!!! Even the owner of the Navy Seal bar who went by the name of Mother, a well respected Seal even said kyle never hit or got into an argument with Ventura… Then it turned into him just killing people throghtout the US, like he’s a contract killer. Seriously getting out of hand with the BS.
Busted Liar!!!
Dear Whocareswhatthisliarsaid:
At SMM, we do not engage in crude name calling, nor do we engage in ad hominem attacks. Therefore, I have removed the same from your comment. You’re welcome to comment here, but stick to logic and persuasion, please.
Censorship is worse than offending language.
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