(Court TV) — For more than a decade, the murder of a young man on Nashville's "Music Row," the heart of the country music recording industry, went unsolved. The victim, a former employee of a music magazine, was leaving a record company and heading to his car when a masked gunman opened fire.

Kevin Hughes, 23, was found shot several times and died from a gunshot wound to his head. His wallet, however, went untouched, leaving robbery an unlikely motive.

With no clues, no identification, and no motive — attempted robbery was an early guess, even though Hughes' wallet was untouched — Nashville authorities were stymied.   The crime that eventually became popularly known as the "Music Row Murder" remained officially unsolved, finally ending up in the Metro Nashville Police Department's cold case file.

But a lead in the case 13 years after the murder, pointing to Hughes' former boss. Richard D'Antonio, a veteran of the country music business, was stood trial for Hughes murder in September 2003 before a Davidson County jury.

Music and Murder

Just before 10:30 pm on the evening of March 9, 1989, Hughes was out with his friend Sammy Sadler, a 22-year-old country singer. The two men left the Nashville office of Evergreen Records, Sadler's music label, and headed to Hughes' car across the street. 

But before the two could make it into the car, a figure clad in dark clothing and a ski mask shot Sadler in the arm and shoulder. Hughes ran down the street, but the gunman shot him once, causing him to collapse behind a parked car. The gunman stood over Hughes and pumped two bullets into his head. 

Sadler, meanwhile, managed to escape to a nearby apartment before losing consciousness.   He was rushed to Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center in critical condition, but later recovered from his injuries. 

People driving by and some residents of the area gave police some minor details. Witnesses placed the shooter heading down an alley, away from the crime scene.   Among those who stumbled across the scene just after the shooting was Cindy Parton, a distant relative of superstar Dolly Parton.  And country legends Willy Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, who were just down the block recording tracks for an upcoming album, were two of the many bystanders who emerged once the police arrived.

The only clue left behind was a baseball-style cap that said "WW II Veteran." 

Cold Case Gets Warm

In 1993, police received their first big break in the case. Authorities in Georgia contacted them with a tip about a man named Steve Daniel, who was a friend Richard D'Antonio, Hughes' boss at Cash Box Magazine. Though at the time of Hughes murder D'Antonio had left to pursue a career as an independent record promoter, he temporarily returned to Cash Box to help out after the killing. 

According to Daniel, he had sold D'Antonio a firearm and some ammunition shortly before the shooting. Investigators arranged a telephone conversation between Daniel and D'Antonio to be tape recorded. During the call, D'Antonio allegedly asked Daniel to provide an alibi for him on the night in question. 

They also spoke to D'Antonio's ex-wife, who originally told police her husband had been home with her at the time of the shooting.   Later, however, Carolyn Cox changed her story, saying that she just couldn't lie about her ex-husband's whereabouts, no matter what he had requested of her.

Despite their suspicions, there still was not enough evidence to arrest Richard D'Antonio for the Hughes' murder and the attempted murder of Sammy Sadler. 

But in 2002, investigators made a breakthrough when they were able to match the bullets from the gun Daniel allegedly sold to D'Antonio with the bullets recovered from Hughes' and Sandler's shootings. Daniel told authorities that D'Antonio test fired the weapon in the yard adjacent to his Georgia home, and investigators managed to recover the old bullets. 

Police arrested D'Antonio in July 2002 in Las Vegas, where he working as a casino pit boss and had long left the music business behind. Following his arrest, he was transported from Nevada to Tennessee, where he was held pending trial on charges of first-degree murder and assault with intent to commit murder in the first degree.

The Prosecution's Case

Despite the fact that it took Nashville authorities 13 years to assemble sufficient evidence, prosecutors Tom Thurman and Kathy Morante insisted their case was strong. Although built primarily on circumstantial evidence, the case pointed directly at D'Antonio as the person who committed the crimes in question, the prosecution contended.

Though several people witnessed at least part of the shooting, one detail they all agreed upon was that the shooter had a unique limp as he chased down Kevin Hughes and then scurried away into the darkness.   Due to a back injury, D'Antonio reportedly had a similar walk, prosecutors argued. They called upon D'Antonio's co-workers to corroborate claims of this "loping" characteristic.

Prosecutors also pointed out that the alley the shooter was running towards when he was observed leaving the crime scene was near an office where D'Antonio worked out of in March 1989.

In the days after the shooting, witnesses recall D'Antonio acting somewhat strangely.   Even though he and Hughes had been colleagues at Cash Box – indeed, D'Antonio had been the person who hired Hughes – the defendant did not attend either of the two memorial services held in Hughes' honor.

D'Antonio, who had been the Cash Box chart director prior to Hughes, was partnered in a record promotion business with a man named Chuck Dixon.  The prosecution claimed Dixon regularly accepted large sums of money from clients eager to see their names on the independent country charts.  D'Antonio, they said, then manipulated the data he was receiving from radio stations, sometimes paying stations to report records that were never played. The connection between Chuck Dixon (who died of cancer in 2001), and the Cash Box charts was supposedly so widely known that some Nashville insiders took to calling the trade magazine "Chuck Box."  Prosecutors alleged that when Kevin Hughes signed on as chart director, he attempted to legitimize the charts. That, argued the prosecution, threatened the defendant's gravy train. 

As for physical evidence, the prosecution had the matching bullets as well as a hair recovered from the veteran cap left at the scene that matched hair from D'Antonio's cat. 

Probably the strongest evidence against Richard D'Antonio came from key prosecution witness Steve Daniel.   Not only did Daniel tell authorities about the gun and ammunition he provided to the defendant, but he allowed police to audiotape a telephone conversation between himself and the defendant.  In that call, D'Antonio "reminds" Daniel that he was at the latter's home until 11:30 pm on the night of the shooting – an alibi that Daniel now denies.  According to Daniel, D'Antonio was in Flintstone earlier that day, but left with plenty of time to make it back to Nashville in time to commit the murder.

The other pivotal witness against Richard D'Antonio was Carolyn Cox, his ex-wife.   She said that her then-husband was not home when she went to bed on March 9, 1989.  Later that night, at approximately 3:00 a.m., she claims she received a phone call from Dixon, which was very unusual. 

Cox concedes that when she was questioned by police three or four years after the murder she told authorities that D'Antonio had been home earlier that night.   But she later recanted, saying that she wasn't comfortable telling a lie her now-ex-husband had asked her to provide. 

The Defense's Case

Public Defenders Ross Alderman and Patrick Frogge did not dispute that a masked gunman shot and killed Kevin Hughes on March 9, 1989 – also wounding victim Sammy Sadler in the process. 

But they claimed the prosecution had nothing to directly tie D'Antonio as being responsible. The "loping gait" so many witnesses described could not be definitively linked to the posture or back problems the defendant may have had in 1989, they said. 

The defense also argued that the black cat hair found in the cap could have come from any black cat in the Nashville area. Since the pet was long since deceased, no testing was possible, they pointed out.  

They also seized on discrepancies from victim Sammy Sadler's description of the gunman and D'Antonio's appearance. Sadler originally told police right after the shooting that even though the assailant was wearing a ski mask, he thought the shooter was black, not white. 

The defense tried to cast reasonable doubt by implying either Chuck Dixon or even Steve Daniel would be more likely to be the gunman than D'Antonio. Daniel, they said, also had a "loping gait" after undergoing a foot operation in the late 1980s.   

D'Antonio's reason for asking his then-wife to lie for him when he claimed to be with Daniel wasn't to provide an alibi for himself, his lawyers said, but to avoid serving as a false alibi for Daniel.  

If Steve Daniel did shoot Hughes and Sadler, argued the defense, he likely did so at the bequest of Chuck Dixon.   Going on the corruption theory regarding Cash Box that the prosecution laid out, Dixon had more to lose than anyone else, the defense said.  If Hughes managed to legitimize the indie country charts, Dixon's money train was about to derail. Even though Dixon and D'Antonio were associates, nobody claims that D'Antonio was an equal partner, said the defense.  

Chuck Dixon could have murdered Kevin Hughes himself, noted the defense attorneys.   He could have conspired with other record promoters to do the deed.  And Dixon was known in 1989 to have two associates who were variously described during the trial as "henchmen" or "bodyguards" – men whom other witnesses believed were regularly armed.

The Verdict