FYI - I noticed on Court TV today they are re-airing the trial of the guy accused of murdering Kevin Hughes. I believe it was one of the first UM stories where Kevin Hughes (who worked for Cashbox magazine and was about to go public with some illegal activities going there) was shot and killed and his friend Sammy Sadler was wounded. I can't remember the name of the accused, only that he was a crooked record promoter. Of course since Lifetime is so bad about updating cases I wasn't even aware there had been an arrest in the case.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/observer/living/people/family/6894457.htm

Crystaldawn, I watched the Court TV coverage of the trial also. It was eery to me because D'Antonio is the first person on Unsolved Mysteries who I have seen in person. I used to work as a sportsbook supervisor in downtown Las Vegas, and D'Antonio was a downtown pit boss at the time of his arrest last year. We never had any interraction, but I definitely remember him from my treks to the other nearby casinos.

The trial revealed that Kevin Hughes was a gutsy and principled young man who was fighting the corruption of the charts. D'Antonio's primary defense seemed to be that the original identification of the killer was of a black man, and D'Antonio is white, but the prosecution claimed the killer was wearing a ski mask and dark clothes, confusing the people who watched the killer flee.

This case was on A&E's Cold Case files last night. They show lots of reruns, so keep an eye out for it. I hadn't realized it was solved...so glad it was!

I just wanted to mention how much I loved the separate Nashville PD investigation into fraud in the music promotion industry. If you didn't see it, they basically took an undercover cop with a really bad voice to music promoters, who - for a hefty fee - got her song on the "charts." Some very entertaining undercover footage here! They believe this is the type of scandal that Kevin Hughes wanted to expose.

FYI - I noticed on Court TV today they are re-airing the trial of the guy accused of murdering Kevin Hughes. I believe it was one of the first UM stories where Kevin Hughes (who worked for Cashbox magazine and was about to go public with some illegal activities going there) was shot and killed and his friend Sammy Sadler was wounded. I can't remember the name of the accused, only that he was a crooked record promoter. Of course since Lifetime is so bad about updating cases I wasn't even aware there had been an arrest in the case.

They just aired this segment on the Mystery Channel here in Canada yesterday and included an update (with a female narrator) where they said that this D'Antonio guy had been arrested in 2002 and why he may have killed Hughes. I was very surprised that they found the killer in this case and that this murder was, in fact, linked to Hughes' work as I was having my doubts about that as the segment was winding down.

Yes, Richard D'Antonio was convicted and was sentenced to life in prison. I remember they interviewed him on the cold case files segment and he came up with all of these other theories and stuff but there were certain things he couldnt explain, so yeah he did it. D'Antonio either did it himself or had someone else do it but he was certainly involved.

Just giving it a bump for some good news.

Sammy Sadler, the up-and-coming country musician who accompanied Kevin Hughes the night of the murder, just released his second full-length album in almost 20 years:

http://www.sammysadler.com/music.html


The Kevin Hughes murder was the first UM episode I remember watching, and for that reason it's really stuck with me over the years. I always got so sad watching the end of the segment, with Sammy sitting in the recording studio and Robert Stack talking about how he was still unable to play guitar.

I correspond with Sammy Sadler from time to time and he truly has an outstanding attitude about the entire thing. He isn't hesitant to talk about what happened that night and I've learned a lot---he actually still has the bullet in his arm.


In any event, it makes me pretty happy to see things like this.

Pretty crazy, I live like 300 yards from where this murder occurred.

Just giving it a bump for some good news.

Sammy Sadler, the up-and-coming country musician who accompanied Kevin Hughes the night of the murder, just released his second full-length album in almost 20 years:

http://www.sammysadler.com/music.html


The Kevin Hughes murder was the first UM episode I remember watching, and for that reason it's really stuck with me over the years. I always got so sad watching the end of the segment, with Sammy sitting in the recording studio and Robert Stack talking about how he was still unable to play guitar.

I correspond with Sammy Sadler from time to time and he truly has an outstanding attitude about the entire thing. He isn't hesitant to talk about what happened that night and I've learned a lot---he actually still has the bullet in his arm.


In any event, it makes me pretty happy to see things like this.

That's nice to hear.

Kevin Hughes had what I consider my dream job, to be a music charter (for any genre of music) in the 80's. I would have just loved to chart the hits for Ronnie Milsap, John Conlee, Don Williams, Dottie West, Alabama, the Oak Ridge Boys, Dolly Parton and all of the great acts of the 80's. Kind of job I would look forward to going to every day.

The ID Channel covered this case as part of their "Fatal Encounters" series. It was interesting to hear a lot more details about the reasons behind his murder, including D'Antonio coming up to him personally and pestering him to fix the charts, even at a convention. The show repeats next Thursday at 7:00 am EST, titled Murder on Music Row.

The Kevin Hughes murder was the first UM episode I remember watching, and for that reason it's really stuck with me over the years.


I remember it as the last UM case I watched on the forbidden site, before they were all taken down :mad: :mad: :mad: :( :mad: .

Great to hear it was resolved, and like the poster above, I was very surprised to find out it was related to the music industry corruption angle - when I watched the segment I was sure that was just sensationalist speculation from UM.

Great to hear it was resolved, and like the poster above, I was very surprised to find out it was related to the music industry corruption angle - when I watched the segment I was sure that was just sensationalist speculation from UM.

Same here. It really pissed me off that that guy would resort to murder over his little scheme (and didn't he actually appear in the segment? grrr....).

The machine think a scary music

Did they ever figure out why Richard D-Antonio killed Kevin and attacked Sammy? I remember that he was a former employee, but what was his motive? Was the military hat found at the scene, ever proven to be his?

Did they ever figure out why Richard D-Antonio killed Kevin and attacked Sammy? I remember that he was a former employee, but what was his motive? Was the military hat found at the scene, ever proven to be his?

Chuck Dixon, the promoter interviewed in the segment, had d'Antonio kill Hughes. Hughes was aware of a chart-fixing scheme going on at Cashbox in which both Dixon and d'Antonio were involved, and was allegedly ready to expose it. Dixon died before d'Antonio was indicted, so he was never charged.

Sadler was shot accidentally. It was almost like a Clay Taylor sort of situation in which the gunman's actual target was initially missed and the victim's companion was shot instead.

IIRC, that hat did belong to d'Antonio because it contained cat hairs that were consistent with those of a black cat owned by d'Antonio.

Chuck Dixon, the promoter interviewed in the segment, had d'Antonio kill Hughes. Hughes was aware of a chart-fixing scheme going on at Cashbox in which both Dixon and d'Antonio were involved, and was allegedly ready to expose it. Dixon died before d'Antonio was indicted, so he was never charged.

Sadler was shot accidentally. It was almost like a Clay Taylor sort of situation in which the gunman's actual target was initially missed and the victim's companion was shot instead.

IIRC, that hat did belong to d'Antonio because it contained cat hairs that were consistent with those of a black cat owned by d'Antonio.

Wow, that's crazy! I had no idea about Chuck Dixon being behind it all.

Wow, that's crazy! I had no idea about Chuck Dixon being behind it all.

I didn't either until I did a ton of digging into it probably about a decade ago and read some of d'Antonio's appeals. It kind of makes you want to slap the guy as he goes on about Kevin being the "most fair" chart director he'd ever had.

Just watched the Fatal Encounters episode on this case. As much as some of these true crime shows today are kind of mass-produced, generic, and often conspicuously sensational, I have to say this was pretty well done. You learn a lot more about Kevin Hughes himself as well as his killer Mr. D'Antonio, and Kevin's brother Kyle is interviewed extensively throughout the segment. Det. Bill Pridemore, who was interviewed in the UM segment, also appears, as does Sammy Sadler.

I thought it was interesting that Pridemore went out of his way to say that throughout his many interviews with D'Antonio, he saw that the guy had a "soft side" and believed that he probably wouldn't have committed the shooting had he not gotten involved with such a powerful and influential individual as Dixon--who by all accounts was your basic thug.

I found a video today as well of an old Nashville news segment from 1991 highlighting a shooting at Indie Bullet magazine, which was another trade publication that ran its own music charts ("Attempted Murder on Music Row" is the title of this video). Apparently the gunman fired into the front window of the business and then fled in a getaway car. The publisher himself was in the building at the time and narrowly missed being hit. He and another employee were interviewed and stated that this was the culmination of four months of harassment and death threats, and the publisher was apparently so frightened that he had decided to close up shop and move back to his native Texas. The story concludes with a short mention of Kevin Hughes' murder, that at the time was two years old and still unsolved.

I can't help but wonder if the hit on Indie Bullet was also some of Dixon's handiwork.

I found a video today as well of an old Nashville news segment from 1991 highlighting a shooting at Indie Bullet magazine, which was another trade publication that ran its own music charts ("Attempted Murder on Music Row" is the title of this video). Apparently the gunman fired into the front window of the business and then fled in a getaway car. The publisher himself was in the building at the time and narrowly missed being hit. He and another employee were interviewed and stated that this was the culmination of four months of harassment and death threats, and the publisher was apparently so frightened that he had decided to close up shop and move back to his native Texas. The story concludes with a short mention of Kevin Hughes' murder, that at the time was two years old and still unsolved.

I can't help but wonder if the hit on Indie Bullet was also some of Dixon's handiwork.

That's an incredible find... and it probably was connected to the chart scheme.

Wow.

That's an incredible find... and it probably was connected to the chart scheme.

Wow.

I also noticed at the top of the threatening note shown on the segment, you can see the name Sadler prominently printed.

I didn't either until I did a ton of digging into it probably about a decade ago and read some of d'Antonio's appeals. It kind of makes you want to slap the guy as he goes on about Kevin being the "most fair" chart director he'd ever had.
So I had seen this segment at least 5 times before today. It is paired with carol on amazon. Carol is one of the first segments that I watched in 1989 as a kid so I just watched that full amazon episode. I had seen Kevin Hughes as an adult but I did not know that about Dixon. I got to this thread to complain about Dixon and the police that were interviewed(they were very poor) and it all makes sense now. I am glad that we know the truth but sad for Kevin and his friend that chuck Dixon basically got away with it. How did the Tennesseean newspaper report from the start that fraud was involved yet the detectives do not seem to acknowledge that in the segment?

Refresh my memory, but didn't Chuck Dixon die before he could be tried and convicted for his part in this murder?

Chuck Dixon died in 2001.

During a trial in September 2003, witness testified.

Based upon this information it sounds like Dixon died before he could be tried.

Refresh my memory, but didn't Chuck Dixon die before he could be tried and convicted for his part in this murder?

Yes.

got to this thread to complain about Dixon and the police that were interviewed(they were very poor) and it all makes sense now. I am glad that we know the truth but sad for Kevin and his friend that chuck Dixon basically got away with it. How did the Tennesseean newspaper report from the start that fraud was involved yet the detectives do not seem to acknowledge that in the segment?

Actually, Bill Pridemore and Pat Postiglione are kind of Metro Nashville PD legends--and in a good way.

From what I recall the chart fraud scheme was a lead fairly early in the investigation. It just took some time to sort out whether Kevin was complicit in such a scheme or not. Not having a clear answer for that complicated who the assailant could have been, as did the shooting of Sammy Sadler.

I also seem to remember D'Antonio's alibi for the day and evening of the shooting didn't really crack until the late '90s, when the dude from whom he bought the murder weapon told police D'Antonio left his home in Georgia in plenty of time to be back in Nashville by the time of the shooting. I think by then his ex-wife also corroborated the story by saying he didn't return home until after 11 pm, whereas I think she'd covered for him years before.

Yes.



Actually, Bill Pridemore and Pat Postiglione are kind of Metro Nashville PD legends--and in a good way.

From what I recall the chart fraud scheme was a lead fairly early in the investigation. It just took some time to sort out whether Kevin was complicit in such a scheme or not. Not having a clear answer for that complicated who the assailant could have been, as did the shooting of Sammy Sadler.

I also seem to remember D'Antonio's alibi for the day and evening of the shooting didn't really crack until the late '90s, when the dude from whom he bought the murder weapon told police D'Antonio left his home in Georgia in plenty of time to be back in Nashville by the time of the shooting. I think by then his ex-wife also corroborated the story by saying he didn't return home until after 11 pm, whereas I think she'd covered for him years before.
That makes sense. I knew next to nothing about this case in spite of having seen it several times. I wish I had known all of this. I hope all is well with mr Sadler

That makes sense. I knew next to nothing about this case in spite of having seen it several times. I wish I had known all of this. I hope all is well with mr Sadler

I messaged him about ten years ago on MySpace (lol) and at the time he seemed to be happy and doing quite well. His response to me was extraordinarily kind and I still smile when I think about it.

I also noticed at the top of the threatening note shown on the segment, you can see the name Sadler prominently printed.

I finally found out what's up with this.

The note was printed on a copy of the front of a Sgt. Barry Sadler album. It's actually pretty obvious, because there's a big old photo of Sadler with his proverbial green beret on in the midst of all the threats contained on the note.

Sadler wrote and recorded "Ballad of the Green Berets" in 1966, which went to #1 on Billboard and ended up being the theme song for John Wayne's movie. Sadler was actually still an active duty Special Forces medic at the time, fresh back from Vietnam, and often performed his tune in uniform. He was discharged in 1967 and remained connected to the Nashville music industry.

Well, long story short, Sadler murdered fellow songwriter and George Jones and Marty Robbins manager Lee Bellamy over a dispute over a woman in 1978. Even though it was found at trial Sadler planted a gun in Lee Bellamy's van to bolster his claim of self-defense, Sadler was only charged with involuntary manslaughter and served less than a month in prison and was released. He moved to Guatamala, and ended up shot in the head in a cab there in 1988. There is some contention about whether it was a hit or an accidental self-shooting. He ended up coming back to Nashville and died shortly thereafter due to complications of his injury in a Murfreesboro VA hospital in 1989.

In any event, I read in Sammy Sadler's book about the 1989 Music Row shooting that the use of Barry Sadler's image for that threatening note left for Indie Bullet magazine was probably intentional. But it appears it actually didn't have anything to do with Sadler the victim of the March 9, 1989 shooting.

I saw a reference earlier in this thread to the Clay Taylor segment. That is one I have never seen before. Probably just as rare as the McAfee segment.

LONG POST AHEAD

So, indeed being a Tennessean I have a subscription to the Nashville paper, also called The Tennessean. It has recently released a series of articles as well as an outstanding eight-part podcast on this case (which I think, unfortunately, is mostly subscriber-only):

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2024/05/21/murder-on-music-row-shots-in-nashville-disrupt-country-world/71075191007/

Although as several of you know I have always been HUGE on this one, I did initially wonder why--after the conviction of the actual killer Tony D'Antonio over two decades ago and his subsequent death in prison ten years ago--somebody was choosing to take this story on again. It's been the feature of many, many articles, tv shows, and podcasts already.

Bottom line up front: the series posits Sammy Sadler (the other man who was shot during the attack, if you don't remember the story) figures into the murder plot. Not as an innocent bystander, but as somebody who may have also had a strong motive to want Kevin dead.

Let me preface all of this by saying that I would really, really rather not believe the implications, but the notion does tie up several nagging questions and doubts I have had in the back of my mind about this case at various points.

Four or five years ago, Sammy Sadler wrote an autobiography titled A Hit With a Bullet, which chronicles his time in Nashville and certainly the shooting on March 9, 1989. In that book, he is very, very critical of the investigative team from the MNPD, Pat Postiglione and Bill Pridemore. These were the two interviewed on the UM segment. Sammy felt that the detectives treated him very poorly, remained suspicious of him throughout the investigation without cause, and withheld information from both him and his family throughout the entire investigation. It is very obvious: he does not like these guys. At all. I've read several books wherein people who are investigated by the police express similar sentiments, so I chalked it up to simply feeling bristled by procedural treatment. But something about it did bother me, especially since I have followed the careers of Postiglione and Pridemore and by all accounts, they are both highly respected in the community and appear to utterly lack blemish in their respective professional records.

Well, Bill Pridemore is interviewed extensively throughout the podcast. He openly admits that for "a long time", in his words, he thought Sammy set the shooting up himself. The reason why is because--although he ADAMANTLY denies this--Sammy was paying money to Chuck Dixon to get his singles on the Cashbox charts, which he accomplished easily while Tony D'Antonio was chart director. After D'Antonio was fired for sexually harassing female coworkers, Kevin Hughes was hired as chart director. By all accounts, until the day he was killed Kevin was making moves to legitimize the charts. Part of how he was doing this was to drop charted singles he knew were part of payola scams. March 9, 1989, was the day before the charts were published. That day, Kevin removed a number of singles from those charts--one of which was Sammy Sadler's "Tell It Like It Is." Additionally that day, he had dropped four so-called pocket stations from Cashbox's list of reporting stations--that is, stations that were "in the pocket" of a given record promoter that will then report inflated and/or fabricated plays for that promoter's records (since the early '90s, this is now accomplished remotely by computer and cannot be as easily falsified). For some reason, that afternoon Sammy Sadler left a written note for Chuck Dixon at his office telling him about the dropped stations. Although he claims he never wrote this note--and indeed repeatedly states he only met Chuck Dixon once or twice even though his own promoter was actually Dixon's business partner--it was part of the police file.

After working for a few hours, running errands (although they didn't include running over to Dixon's office, by his account), and working out, Sammy says he returned home that night only to get into an argument with his wife at the time. Wanting to get out of the house, Sammy says he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to call a friendly acquaintance, Kevin Hughes, to make plans to hang out that evening. Kevin was finalizing the charts that night and Sammy arranged to come by his office. This would've been around 8 pm, and as we now know, Tony D'Antonio was then at that time likely driving north on I-24 headed back from the Chattanooga area with the murder weapon he purchased earlier from Steve Daniel. In the UM segment, Sammy implies that it was Kevin's idea to leave the office to grab dinner. Later, he seems to imply that it was either his suggestion or a joint decision. In any event, Sammy claims they got into Kevin's car and went to a nearby Captain D's. Afterward, on the way back to the Cashbox office, Sammy requested that they swing by the office of Evergreen Records, Sammy's employer, so that he could use the phone to call his parents long-distance in Beaumont, TX and not have to personally foot the bill. This is an integral part of the story that Sammy has been telling for over 30 years, and was depicted in the segment: Sammy's on the phone in the office when they hear somebody at the front door. Sammy tells Kevin to go check it out, Kevin returns and according to Sammy says "it looks like some black guy messing around." At that point, Sammy says he hung up with his parents and headed out of the office with Kevin.

What's revealed is shocking: there is NO record of this long-distance phone call to Texas or any other call for that matter from the office of Evergreen Records on the night in question. It simply does not exist. When pressed on this in the podcast, Sammy simply says he has no explanation for it. He insists, however, that it occurred.

Sammy claims that he had just sat down in the passenger seat of Kevin's Pontiac Sunbird and hadn't even gotten the door closed when a man "came out of the shadows" and was so close to him that it prevented him from shutting the car door. He claims he saw "a mask, gloves, and a gun." He says the man fired, striking him in the posteromedial area of his right upper arm. Strangely, a large amount of Sammy's blood ended up on the left side of the driver's side seat, as though Sammy had jumped or slumped over briefly onto Kevin's side. Furthermore, Kevin's Sunbird had a center console that would serve as an obstacle over which Sammy would have to maneuver in order to do this.

Of the five witnesses that saw the shooter, Sammy was the only one to claim the assailant was anything other than a white man with a paunch. Although the shooter wore a mask, a person from a third-floor apartment was able to see through the holes in that mask that the person was white, as well as a couple that was passing through the area. Sammy was mere inches away from this person and says it was a skinny black male that shot him. The good ol' "a black guy musta done it" rears its head once again, it would seem.

Sammy claims that "Tell It Like It Is" was the last single he ever cut, but the Tennessean found that was untrue. In fact, Sammy had two or three more singles that actually made the Cashbox charts throughout the remainder of 1989 into early 1990, and they stayed on those charts longer than any other one of his singles did when Kevin was serving as chart director. I mean, it's right there in the damn magazines. What's also in the magazines are large advertisements with Sammy's photo celebrating certain singles charting--advertisements that were widely alleged to be part of the manner in which artists would pay their way onto the Cashbox charts. Sammy is stubbornly adamant that he never knew about this payola system and claims he never participated in it personally. This seems utterly implausible. It's literally right there, in black and white.

This is all just sort of scratching the surface of it, believe it or not. The fact of the matter is that many of the things Sammy Sadler has said about his time in Nashville and the events surrounding that night cannot be verified or can be outrightly refuted.

The theory is that Sammy Sadler participated in the hit on Kevin Hughes by being the man responsible for bringing him out to 16th Ave on that night. Despite what Sammy has claimed, he would have known Tony D'Antonio and there is direct evidence that he did have contact with Chuck Dixon. No matter what he says, he HAD to have been acquainted with the players involved in this case beyond a mere introduction. And like them, Sammy too would suffer if Kevin remained chart director, as evidenced by Kevin's willingness to drop Sammy's singles, for whose chart positions Sammy is suspected to have paid Chuck Dixon. It is possible Sammy was shot accidentally. The intentional shooting-of-Sammy theory holds, however, that leaving Sammy a survivor would lend him an outpouring of public sympathy and a legacy as the man who lived through the "murder on Music Row". Indeed, Sammy has given hundreds of interviews about this event, written songs about it, and even released his book about it in conjunction with an album release. He would seem to be an incredibly likeable, sympathetic character. I know I've always thought he was.

Anyway, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around all this. Just wanted to share with y'all because this is so unusual and surprising (at least to me).

Wow. My brain is trying to wrap around Sammy saying things that don't add up. Especially that phone call to his mother that only he says happened.

I never cared much for Bill Pridemore's interview in the UM segment. That comment about Kevin's job not being important enough to be killed for and basically brushing off the chart manipulation scheme when that's exactly what happened kind of made him look like stupid.

The long distance phone call to his parents on that specific night has always bothered me. It never really made any sense. It does now. Holy cow.

Wow. My brain is trying to wrap around Sammy saying things that don't add up. Especially that phone call to his mother that only he says happened.

I never cared much for Bill Pridemore's interview in the UM segment. That comment about Kevin's job not being important enough to be killed for and basically brushing off the chart manipulation scheme when that's exactly what happened kind of made him look like stupid.

wow, first off credit to MegtheEgg86 for that post. there is a lot of information there that I never knew.

The fake phone call is a massive credibility problem for Saddler's account of what happened. Most of his account from that night is centered around that phone call. If he lied about that ...oh boy is that a red flag. another display of his twisted logic is that he claims he wanted the company to foot the bill for the long distance call. Talk about DB vibes. Like that doesn't exactly make you look good man. But to cap it all, the black guy comment always bothered me. I struggled to post about it. what a hell of a way for Saddler to conveniently put the blame elsewhere away from not only himself, but also cashbox.

As for Saddler's music career... it felt like he was using the UM segment as part victim and part promo. I imagine other people in Nashville didn't want anything to do with him if they felt he was involved.

I too had a problem with Pridmore's comments in the UM segment. The only thing that I can think of now is that UM produced the segment rather quickly after the shooting. so it may have been too soon before cashbox involvement was substantiated? UM did present media coverage that alleged cashbox was involved with fraud IIRC. I would have been interested to hear other people's opinions of the case who were involved in the Nashville music scene back then. there was a song written called murder on music row that George Strait and Alan Jackson covered in 1999. the song was written long before 1999, not sure if it was inspired by or foreshadowed Kevin Hughes' murder. the lyrics are very telling about the culture that exists in that industry.

The song is talking about the death of traditional country music , not a person. The industry sold out for money and fame.

This phone call and not being able to document it sure puts a new spin on the case.

The song is talking about the death of traditional country music , not a person. The industry sold out for money and fame.

This phone call and not being able to document it sure puts a new spin on the case.

yeah I'm aware of the meaning of the song as for the way George Strait and Alan Jackson promoted it in 1999. what I'm not aware of is the exact year that it was written. It was written by Larry Cordle. I have read somewhere that it was written before Kevin Hughes was murdered, but I can't find the exact time it was written. I wasn't meaning to portray that the song had anything to do with Kevin's murder.

Interestingly enough, the podcast does weave the song into the narrative but only in as much as it relates the death of traditional country to the payola schemes that developed over time in Nashville and how Larry Cordle had some real huevos to even bring the song to the industry not only because it was seen as pointing an accusatory finger squarely at the wildly popular Garth Brooks at the time, but would be seen as an outright admission that Nashville was a complete sellout game and would embarrass a lot of people. Larry himself is interviewed and he's a real treat to hear from throughout. Apparently he wrote the song with George Jones in mind, although Jones actually declined the song when it was first presented to him. He did record a later version; I feel like it might've been a duet with someone kind of like the Strait/Jackson one.

I picked up Sadler's book again this afternoon and something curious I noted is that on the night he was shot, Sammy says he was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and rushed into surgery for eighteen hours. Now, I'm not sure which artery or arteries were damaged from the shooting, but he did apparently have a saphenous vein harvest and graft to repair the injury. But that absolutely would not have taken eighteen hours. I've been working in the operating room for nearly nine years, mostly in cardiothoracic and vascular surgery. There's no way in hell that took nearly an entire day to complete, and the surgeon who performed the surgery himself says on the podcast that while he doesn't remember exactly how long that particular procedure took him to do, he thinks it would've been about a three- or four-hour case. Most importantly, there's a supplementary report in the police file from Pridemore detailing an interview that he and Postiglione had with Sammy on March 10, 1989 at 0930 in the SICU at Vanderbilt. Sammy would've been rolled back to the OR between 2200, 2300 at the absolute latest the night before. By his account, he would've still been in surgery at the time the detectives reported they spoke with him. Just makes you wonder why he would say something like that--something that could be easily verified against other records. Throughout the podcast, though, Sammy usually chalks stuff like this up to "not believing a lot of what they (that is, the police) say."

Apparently, Pridemore and Postiglione did move on the hunch that Sammy might have been involved rather early in the investigation. Sammy says in his book that sometime between months to a year after Kevin was murdered, the detectives showed up wanting to talk to him one day. Pridemore point-blank told him something to the effect of "we think you were responsible for bringing Kevin to the shooter that night", and by his account Sammy was so disgusted and angered by this he balked and terminated the interview on the spot. Shortly thereafter, Sammy moved back to Texas to focus on continuing recuperating from the injury and to remove himself from a negative environment, he says.

Although there was early information that the shooting was somehow related to Kevin's work at Cashbox, some earlier theories that were investigated included a love triangle featuring a cheating husband that looked a LOT like Kevin Hughes (that is, a mistaken hit), and a much weaker theory about a cocaine dealer who lived within a couple of miles of the crime scene. It was actually the UM segment that turned the focus toward Tony D'Antonio. Two calls had come into the telecenter that specifically named him as the shooter, and it's strongly implied although not outrightly stated in the podcast that one of these callers was a close personal friend of Kevin's he knew during his time at Belmont (where he was attending college before he took the Cashbox job) and an industry guy who recounted on the podcast actually getting drunk one night and leaving a voice message on D'Antonio's answering machine: "We know you did it" is all he said on that message before hanging up.

There was another show that covered the case--it was called Crime Stoppers--and that show produced a call from a man in Flintstone, GA (just south of Chattanooga) named Steve Daniel who was at one time a marijuana dealer who was unknowingly the subject of an intense GBI investigation during that time period. He said that he knew something about the case and that it involved a sometime-business partner of his named "Tony D", who turned out to be D'Antonio. Daniel was reluctant to say much more at the time due to his own illegal activities. During the aforementioned GBI investigation, Daniel had his phone tapped and a conversation with D'Antonio was actually recorded in which D'Antonio asked Daniel if he remembered that time "when that boy got killed up here (Nashville)" and that on that day, D'Antonio "was down there (at Daniel's house in Flintstone) until the 11 o'clock news, remember?" In other words, D'Antonio was imploring Daniel to tell anyone who might ask that D'Antonio wasn't anywhere near Nashville during the time Kevin Hughes and Sammy Sadler were shot. This happened in 1992, although the Nashville police weren't aware of this tape nor had access to it until Bill Pridemore reignited the investigation after joining the cold case unit in 2001. After he heard the tape, he contacted Steve Daniel and went down to his home where he recovered an expended round in Daniel's backyard that was eventually found to be a match for one that had been removed from Kevin's body--D'Antonio had fired it while testing the .38 revolver Daniel had sold him the afternoon of March 9, 1989, the revolver that ended up becoming the murder weapon hours later. It was that round that ended up being the linchpin of the prosecution's case, and had it not been recovered I'm not sure the DA would've had much else in the way of non-circumstantial evidence upon which to build a case.

I think that is in part why, after all this time, the law hasn't come knocking on Sadler's door after all these years. The actual shooter was identified, tried, convicted, and died in prison. Chuck Dixon managed to escape any legal consequences because he died just as the police were planning to arrest him. Aside from several inconsistencies in Sadler's story, there's nothing like an old handgun round in a backyard to pin on him. Just some likely BS on Sammy's part, some odd coincidences (the dropped singles, for instance, as well as a paramour who claims Sammy called her everyday for over week after they met until the day of the murder, after which she never heard from him ever again), and a lot of ads sprinkled throughout several late '80s editions of Cashbox featuring Sammy--the same kind of ads even Sammy himself says he "heard" other people were paying Chuck Dixon for, even though he says he never did (he hardly knew the guy, remember?).

Oh, and believe it or not--the Sadler and Hughes families have actually never spoken since the incident. In fact, Kevin's brother Kyle maintains he suspected Sammy always knew more than what he's told about the shooting.

so after all those years, the spent .38 round remained there. that's good work by Pridemore. Thank you for posting all of this and the info about the song as well. I think the first time I heard the song was at a George Strait concert in the early 2000's and he pointed out that it was a controversial song. I would have never connected the dots back to Garth, but that does make sense. I think 99 was the right time for that song to hit the mainstream.

On the one hand I could see how, if he was completely innocent, annoyed he would be if he knew the investigators looking into his friend's murder thought he had something to do with it, but there are an awful lot of conveniences that he cannot explain.

It's so interesting that a few people featured in the UM interview could have had a hand in the murder.

I find this fascinating, but I doubt LE will ever look into it due to how much time has passed and that the killer was prosecuted and died in prison.

Wow. My brain is trying to wrap around Sammy saying things that don't add up. Especially that phone call to his mother that only he says happened.

I never cared much for Bill Pridemore's interview in the UM segment. That comment about Kevin's job not being important enough to be killed for and basically brushing off the chart manipulation scheme when that's exactly what happened kind of made him look like stupid.

My only thought about that is maybe he said that to keep Chuck Dixon and other folks from knowing they were on the trail.

LONG POST AHEAD

So, indeed being a Tennessean I have a subscription to the Nashville paper, also called The Tennessean. It has recently released a series of articles as well as an outstanding eight-part podcast on this case (which I think, unfortunately, is mostly subscriber-only):

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2024/05/21/murder-on-music-row-shots-in-nashville-disrupt-country-world/71075191007/

Although as several of you know I have always been HUGE on this one, I did initially wonder why--after the conviction of the actual killer Tony D'Antonio over two decades ago and his subsequent death in prison ten years ago--somebody was choosing to take this story on again. It's been the feature of many, many articles, tv shows, and podcasts already.

Bottom line up front: the series posits Sammy Sadler (the other man who was shot during the attack, if you don't remember the story) figures into the murder plot. Not as an innocent bystander, but as somebody who may have also had a strong motive to want Kevin dead.

Let me preface all of this by saying that I would really, really rather not believe the implications, but the notion does tie up several nagging questions and doubts I have had in the back of my mind about this case at various points.

Four or five years ago, Sammy Sadler wrote an autobiography titled A Hit With a Bullet, which chronicles his time in Nashville and certainly the shooting on March 9, 1989. In that book, he is very, very critical of the investigative team from the MNPD, Pat Postiglione and Bill Pridemore. These were the two interviewed on the UM segment. Sammy felt that the detectives treated him very poorly, remained suspicious of him throughout the investigation without cause, and withheld information from both him and his family throughout the entire investigation. It is very obvious: he does not like these guys. At all. I've read several books wherein people who are investigated by the police express similar sentiments, so I chalked it up to simply feeling bristled by procedural treatment. But something about it did bother me, especially since I have followed the careers of Postiglione and Pridemore and by all accounts, they are both highly respected in the community and appear to utterly lack blemish in their respective professional records.

Well, Bill Pridemore is interviewed extensively throughout the podcast. He openly admits that for "a long time", in his words, he thought Sammy set the shooting up himself. The reason why is because--although he ADAMANTLY denies this--Sammy was paying money to Chuck Dixon to get his singles on the Cashbox charts, which he accomplished easily while Tony D'Antonio was chart director. After D'Antonio was fired for sexually harassing female coworkers, Kevin Hughes was hired as chart director. By all accounts, until the day he was killed Kevin was making moves to legitimize the charts. Part of how he was doing this was to drop charted singles he knew were part of payola scams. March 9, 1989, was the day before the charts were published. That day, Kevin removed a number of singles from those charts--one of which was Sammy Sadler's "Tell It Like It Is." Additionally that day, he had dropped four so-called pocket stations from Cashbox's list of reporting stations--that is, stations that were "in the pocket" of a given record promoter that will then report inflated and/or fabricated plays for that promoter's records (since the early '90s, this is now accomplished remotely by computer and cannot be as easily falsified). For some reason, that afternoon Sammy Sadler left a written note for Chuck Dixon at his office telling him about the dropped stations. Although he claims he never wrote this note--and indeed repeatedly states he only met Chuck Dixon once or twice even though his own promoter was actually Dixon's business partner--it was part of the police file.

After working for a few hours, running errands (although they didn't include running over to Dixon's office, by his account), and working out, Sammy says he returned home that night only to get into an argument with his wife at the time. Wanting to get out of the house, Sammy says he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to call a friendly acquaintance, Kevin Hughes, to make plans to hang out that evening. Kevin was finalizing the charts that night and Sammy arranged to come by his office. This would've been around 8 pm, and as we now know, Tony D'Antonio was then at that time likely driving north on I-24 headed back from the Chattanooga area with the murder weapon he purchased earlier from Steve Daniel. In the UM segment, Sammy implies that it was Kevin's idea to leave the office to grab dinner. Later, he seems to imply that it was either his suggestion or a joint decision. In any event, Sammy claims they got into Kevin's car and went to a nearby Captain D's. Afterward, on the way back to the Cashbox office, Sammy requested that they swing by the office of Evergreen Records, Sammy's employer, so that he could use the phone to call his parents long-distance in Beaumont, TX and not have to personally foot the bill. This is an integral part of the story that Sammy has been telling for over 30 years, and was depicted in the segment: Sammy's on the phone in the office when they hear somebody at the front door. Sammy tells Kevin to go check it out, Kevin returns and according to Sammy says "it looks like some black guy messing around." At that point, Sammy says he hung up with his parents and headed out of the office with Kevin.

What's revealed is shocking: there is NO record of this long-distance phone call to Texas or any other call for that matter from the office of Evergreen Records on the night in question. It simply does not exist. When pressed on this in the podcast, Sammy simply says he has no explanation for it. He insists, however, that it occurred.

Sammy claims that he had just sat down in the passenger seat of Kevin's Pontiac Sunbird and hadn't even gotten the door closed when a man "came out of the shadows" and was so close to him that it prevented him from shutting the car door. He claims he saw "a mask, gloves, and a gun." He says the man fired, striking him in the posteromedial area of his right upper arm. Strangely, a large amount of Sammy's blood ended up on the left side of the driver's side seat, as though Sammy had jumped or slumped over briefly onto Kevin's side. Furthermore, Kevin's Sunbird had a center console that would serve as an obstacle over which Sammy would have to maneuver in order to do this.

Of the five witnesses that saw the shooter, Sammy was the only one to claim the assailant was anything other than a white man with a paunch. Although the shooter wore a mask, a person from a third-floor apartment was able to see through the holes in that mask that the person was white, as well as a couple that was passing through the area. Sammy was mere inches away from this person and says it was a skinny black male that shot him. The good ol' "a black guy musta done it" rears its head once again, it would seem.

Sammy claims that "Tell It Like It Is" was the last single he ever cut, but the Tennessean found that was untrue. In fact, Sammy had two or three more singles that actually made the Cashbox charts throughout the remainder of 1989 into early 1990, and they stayed on those charts longer than any other one of his singles did when Kevin was serving as chart director. I mean, it's right there in the damn magazines. What's also in the magazines are large advertisements with Sammy's photo celebrating certain singles charting--advertisements that were widely alleged to be part of the manner in which artists would pay their way onto the Cashbox charts. Sammy is stubbornly adamant that he never knew about this payola system and claims he never participated in it personally. This seems utterly implausible. It's literally right there, in black and white.

This is all just sort of scratching the surface of it, believe it or not. The fact of the matter is that many of the things Sammy Sadler has said about his time in Nashville and the events surrounding that night cannot be verified or can be outrightly refuted.

The theory is that Sammy Sadler participated in the hit on Kevin Hughes by being the man responsible for bringing him out to 16th Ave on that night. Despite what Sammy has claimed, he would have known Tony D'Antonio and there is direct evidence that he did have contact with Chuck Dixon. No matter what he says, he HAD to have been acquainted with the players involved in this case beyond a mere introduction. And like them, Sammy too would suffer if Kevin remained chart director, as evidenced by Kevin's willingness to drop Sammy's singles, for whose chart positions Sammy is suspected to have paid Chuck Dixon. It is possible Sammy was shot accidentally. The intentional shooting-of-Sammy theory holds, however, that leaving Sammy a survivor would lend him an outpouring of public sympathy and a legacy as the man who lived through the "murder on Music Row". Indeed, Sammy has given hundreds of interviews about this event, written songs about it, and even released his book about it in conjunction with an album release. He would seem to be an incredibly likeable, sympathetic character. I know I've always thought he was.

Anyway, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around all this. Just wanted to share with y'all because this is so unusual and surprising (at least to me).

Just checked on Amazon and I found the podcast. I have Prime, though, so it may only be available through that.

Wow, Meg! Just a phenomenal write up and work on this case.

The song is talking about the death of traditional country music , not a person. The industry sold out for money and fame.

This phone call and not being able to document it sure puts a new spin on the case.

I thought the song was about the seedy side of Nashville's country music scene specifically in that city but in that region too. There were lots of murders in the 80s and 90s in connection with those wanting to become famous by fraudsters who scammed them for money, others like women who got raped by men pretending to be country music agents, etc.

Tom Johnson the guy who killed Heather and almost murdered Jeremy in that motel was rumored to be the same guy in Nashville who murdered his bartender-friend and murdered a couple who moved from CA to Nashville because the guy wanted to become a country singer. "Tom Johnson" raped her and killed him. I saw a ID channel documentary on the evil history of Nashville.
How come we never hear about Memphis?! I always hear about the bad stuff of Nashville, never Memphis. both are country icon cities...

Interestingly enough, the podcast does weave the song into the narrative but only in as much as it relates the death of traditional country to the payola schemes that developed over time in Nashville and how Larry Cordle had some real huevos to even bring the song to the industry not only because it was seen as pointing an accusatory finger squarely at the wildly popular Garth Brooks at the time, but would be seen as an outright admission that Nashville was a complete sellout game and would embarrass a lot of people. Larry himself is interviewed and he's a real treat to hear from throughout. Apparently he wrote the song with George Jones in mind, although Jones actually declined the song when it was first presented to him. He did record a later version; I feel like it might've been a duet with someone kind of like the Strait/Jackson one.

I picked up Sadler's book again this afternoon and something curious I noted is that on the night he was shot, Sammy says he was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and rushed into surgery for eighteen hours. Now, I'm not sure which artery or arteries were damaged from the shooting, but he did apparently have a saphenous vein harvest and graft to repair the injury. But that absolutely would not have taken eighteen hours. I've been working in the operating room for nearly nine years, mostly in cardiothoracic and vascular surgery. There's no way in hell that took nearly an entire day to complete, and the surgeon who performed the surgery himself says on the podcast that while he doesn't remember exactly how long that particular procedure took him to do, he thinks it would've been about a three- or four-hour case. Most importantly, there's a supplementary report in the police file from Pridemore detailing an interview that he and Postiglione had with Sammy on March 10, 1989 at 0930 in the SICU at Vanderbilt. Sammy would've been rolled back to the OR between 2200, 2300 at the absolute latest the night before. By his account, he would've still been in surgery at the time the detectives reported they spoke with him. Just makes you wonder why he would say something like that--something that could be easily verified against other records. Throughout the podcast, though, Sammy usually chalks stuff like this up to "not believing a lot of what they (that is, the police) say."

Apparently, Pridemore and Postiglione did move on the hunch that Sammy might have been involved rather early in the investigation. Sammy says in his book that sometime between months to a year after Kevin was murdered, the detectives showed up wanting to talk to him one day. Pridemore point-blank told him something to the effect of "we think you were responsible for bringing Kevin to the shooter that night", and by his account Sammy was so disgusted and angered by this he balked and terminated the interview on the spot. Shortly thereafter, Sammy moved back to Texas to focus on continuing recuperating from the injury and to remove himself from a negative environment, he says.

Although there was early information that the shooting was somehow related to Kevin's work at Cashbox, some earlier theories that were investigated included a love triangle featuring a cheating husband that looked a LOT like Kevin Hughes (that is, a mistaken hit), and a much weaker theory about a cocaine dealer who lived within a couple of miles of the crime scene. It was actually the UM segment that turned the focus toward Tony D'Antonio. Two calls had come into the telecenter that specifically named him as the shooter, and it's strongly implied although not outrightly stated in the podcast that one of these callers was a close personal friend of Kevin's he knew during his time at Belmont (where he was attending college before he took the Cashbox job) and an industry guy who recounted on the podcast actually getting drunk one night and leaving a voice message on D'Antonio's answering machine: "We know you did it" is all he said on that message before hanging up.

There was another show that covered the case--it was called Crime Stoppers--and that show produced a call from a man in Flintstone, GA (just south of Chattanooga) named Steve Daniel who was at one time a marijuana dealer who was unknowingly the subject of an intense GBI investigation during that time period. He said that he knew something about the case and that it involved a sometime-business partner of his named "Tony D", who turned out to be D'Antonio. Daniel was reluctant to say much more at the time due to his own illegal activities. During the aforementioned GBI investigation, Daniel had his phone tapped and a conversation with D'Antonio was actually recorded in which D'Antonio asked Daniel if he remembered that time "when that boy got killed up here (Nashville)" and that on that day, D'Antonio "was down there (at Daniel's house in Flintstone) until the 11 o'clock news, remember?" In other words, D'Antonio was imploring Daniel to tell anyone who might ask that D'Antonio wasn't anywhere near Nashville during the time Kevin Hughes and Sammy Sadler were shot. This happened in 1992, although the Nashville police weren't aware of this tape nor had access to it until Bill Pridemore reignited the investigation after joining the cold case unit in 2001. After he heard the tape, he contacted Steve Daniel and went down to his home where he recovered an expended round in Daniel's backyard that was eventually found to be a match for one that had been removed from Kevin's body--D'Antonio had fired it while testing the .38 revolver Daniel had sold him the afternoon of March 9, 1989, the revolver that ended up becoming the murder weapon hours later. It was that round that ended up being the linchpin of the prosecution's case, and had it not been recovered I'm not sure the DA would've had much else in the way of non-circumstantial evidence upon which to build a case.

I think that is in part why, after all this time, the law hasn't come knocking on Sadler's door after all these years. The actual shooter was identified, tried, convicted, and died in prison. Chuck Dixon managed to escape any legal consequences because he died just as the police were planning to arrest him. Aside from several inconsistencies in Sadler's story, there's nothing like an old handgun round in a backyard to pin on him. Just some likely BS on Sammy's part, some odd coincidences (the dropped singles, for instance, as well as a paramour who claims Sammy called her everyday for over week after they met until the day of the murder, after which she never heard from him ever again), and a lot of ads sprinkled throughout several late '80s editions of Cashbox featuring Sammy--the same kind of ads even Sammy himself says he "heard" other people were paying Chuck Dixon for, even though he says he never did (he hardly knew the guy, remember?).


I listened to the podcast on Amazon Prime and I really enjoyed it. I felt like linking the song to the crime was a real stretch. It was interesting, but it really shouldn't have been part of the podcast about Kevin Hughes' murder.

I do agree that Sammy Sadler didn't come out looking so good after listening to this. I know that folks have angles when podcasts and docs come out. However, Sammy needs to realize that folks probably didn't want to work with him because they weren't impressed with the fact he was trading off his friend's death to get ahead, and that his daddy was essentially paying his way into Nashville instead of him working his way up like others did.

I listened to the podcast on Amazon Prime and I really enjoyed it. I felt like linking the song to the crime was a real stretch. It was interesting, but it really shouldn't have been part of the podcast about Kevin Hughes' murder.

I do agree that Sammy Sadler didn't come out looking so good after listening to this. I know that folks have angles when podcasts and docs come out. However, Sammy needs to realize that folks probably didn't want to work with him because they weren't impressed with the fact he was trading off his friend's death to get ahead, and that his daddy was essentially paying his way into Nashville instead of him working his way up like others did.
I would imagine that people in the industry suspected that cash box and Sammy sadler were involved, especially if there were corruption tips reported to the media straight away after Kevin's murder. I doubt anyone wanted to be involved with Sadler and the UM segment does him no favor if you view it through the lens of him being a suspect.

I don't think murder on music row is related to Kevin Hughes and is mostly a metaphor for the way country music turns its back on older artists in favor of a newer style. I am interested to listen to the podcast one day.