- American soldiers killed 504 people on March 16, 1968 in the My Lai massacre.
William Calley, the army officer who was the only person convicted in connection with the mass murder of Vietnamese civilians, including children, in what became known as the My Lai massacre, has died at the age of 80.
On Monday, the Washington Post was the first to report Calley’s death, which occurred in April, according to a death certificate cited by the paper. The New York Times, citing Social Security Administration death records, also reported Calley’s death.
Neither newspaper reported the cause of death. Calls to numbers listed for Calley’s son, William L. Calley III, were not returned.
On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed 504 people in Son My, a cluster of villages between Vietnam’s central coast and a misty mountain range, in an incident known in the West as the My Lai Massacre. The killings shocked the United States and galvanized the anti-war movement.
Initially charged in an Army court martial with 102 deaths, Calley was sentenced to life in prison in 1971 for the murder of 22 civilians. He was behind bars for just three days before then-President Richard Nixon ordered his release to house arrest.
William Calley, pictured here in 1970, was the only person convicted in connection with the mass murder of Vietnamese civilians in what became known as the My Lai massacre, and has died aged 80.
According to the Army Historical Foundation, despite being told that My Lai was a hotbed of communist National Liberation Front guerrillas, U.S. forces encountered no serious armed resistance and found very few weapons. Still, they killed nearly everyone there and raped women and girls.
Four soldiers were charged with crimes related to the massacre, but only Calley was convicted.
Calley spent three years under house arrest at his Fort Benning, Georgia, apartment, where he received visits from his girlfriend, and was later paroled and discharged from the Army.
By claiming he had merely followed orders and making himself a scapegoat, Calley became a lightning rod for a country bitterly divided over the unpopular Vietnam War.
In later years, as a successful businessman in Columbus, Georgia, Calley refused to discuss My Lai with journalists or historians.
However, friends said he had admitted to the crimes he was accused of and had learned to live with them. In 2009, he issued his first public apology.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel remorse for what happened that day at My Lai,” Calley told a Kiwanis club in Columbus, Ohio. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who died, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I’m very sorry.”
William Laws Calley Jr. was born on June 8, 1943, the only child and fourth son of a Miami businessman. He attended four high schools in four years, two of them military academies. After failing college, he worked as a bellhop, dishwasher, insurance investigator and train conductor.
In 1966, Calley enlisted in the Army in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he excelled. Despite his poor academic record, Calley graduated from Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning a year before the My Lai incident.
After being discharged from the Army, Calley married Penny Vick in 1976 and went to work for his father in the jewelry business in Georgia, where he became a certified gemologist. They had one son and later divorced.