William Calley, the only American convicted for Vietnam war My Lai massacre, dead at 80
- The 1968 My Lai massacre was the most notorious episode in modern US military history.
William Calley, a former US Army lieutenant convicted of war crimes in a Vietnam-era tragedy called the My Lai massacre, has died at age 80, according to media reports.
The Washington Post on Monday first reported Calley’s death, which happened in April, according to a death certificate the newspaper cited. The New York Times, citing Social Security Administration death records, also reported Calley’s death.
Neither outlet reported a cause of death. Calls to numbers listed for Calley’s son, William L. Calley III, were not returned.
In 1971, Calley became the only member of the US Army found guilty of war crimes over the My Lai massacre, one of the darkest chapters in US military history.
It occurred on March 16, 1968, when Calley’s brigade entered the village of My Lai based on faulty intelligence that enemy Viet Cong soldiers were disguised among the civilians there.
Calley, age 24 at the time, ordered soldiers to kill villagers even though they had found no evidence of enemy combatants.