“Police have charged Barry Sadler, known for his rendition of ‘The Ballad of the Green Berets,’ with the murder of a songwriter,” reported the Associated Press in June 1979. “Sadler, 38, is charged with second degree murder in the Dec. 1 shooting death of songwriter Lee Emerson Bellamy.” Eleven years after the murder charge, Sadler was sitting in the back of a taxi in Guatemala when an unknown assailant pressed a gun against his temple and shot him dead.
