SCHWEINFURT, Germany — The basement where former Master Sgt. John Hatley used to work out, play video games and reflect on his almost 20-year career in the U.S. Army is cold and quiet now.

Hatley, 40, left his house in Schweinfurt for the last time in mid-April to travel to a military courtroom in Vilseck. There, a jury convicted him in the premeditated execution-style murder of four Iraqi detainees and sentenced him to life in prison. According to court testimony, Hatley and two other members of his unit drove four bound and blindfolded men to a remote location, made them kneel on the ground, shot them in the head and dumped their bodies in a nearby canal.

After his conviction, Hatley’s new home became a cell at the Army’s Mannheim detention facility.

Now, his wife — as well as his mother and father — struggles with the reality that Hatley is a convicted murderer who could spend decades in jail. According to his lawyer, he’ll be eligible for parole after 20 years.

Since 2001, when the stocky Texan and his Korean-American wife, Kim, came to Germany, that Schweinfurt basement had been the place where Hatley went to lift weights, hit a punching bag and play Playstation 2 games on a big-screen television.

Large U.S. and Texas flags hang on the wall alongside the colors of his old unit — Company A, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment. The shelving on the wall holds awards, trophies, coins and a copy of the book "Band of Brothers," which is signed by members of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. There are also KIA bracelets with the names of six Company A members who died in Iraq from 2006 to 2008.

A week after his court-martial, Kim Hatley stood shivering in the basement, contemplating life without her husband. She had just 90 days to vacate the house and return to the United States.

Joining the family

The small but energetic woman was raised in New York City by Americans who picked her face out of a newspaper advertising Korean babies for adoption, she said. Kim Hatley talked passionately in a thick New York accent about her battle to free her husband and the other two Company A soldiers convicted of murder.

She’s been involved with the U.S. Army since she joined at age 17 through the delayed-entry program, she said.

"I wanted to give back to my country because I was adopted. I turned 18 in boot camp," she recalled.

Kim, now 43, served six years, working as an intelligence analyst in Germany before leaving the service to raise her son, Nick, born in July 1991.

She met John Hatley, then a staff sergeant and a veteran of Desert Shield/Desert Storm, through a mutual friend while working at the student loan company Sally Mae in Killeen, Texas, in 1997.

"On our first date, we had coffee. He was very handsome and charismatic," she recalled.

Kim Hatley quickly bonded with her husband’s large family, which she described as "a family that every child would hope to have."

Hatley’s parents, Darryl and Ann, still live in the small central Texas town where he grew up — the only son in a family that includes four daughters.

Growing up as a Baptist preacher’s son in the 1970s, John Hatley was a happy child. He played football and baseball at school and helped his dad with carpentry work to supplement the family’s income.

"He decided to join the Army in 1989," Darryl Hatley recalled with the folksy twang of a Texas preacher. "He wanted to advance his education and he just thought a lot about the service. Whatever he did, he was very dedicated to it and he loved the military."

John and Kim married seven months after they met, but soon found themselves separated by his military commitments, including a six-month stretch when he deployed to Bosnia in 1999.

Deadly deployments

Three years after the couple came to Schweinfurt, Hatley deployed to Iraq — from 2004 to 2005 — as an operations NCO with the 1st Infantry Division.

"Halfway through that mission, he was selected as Company A first sergeant. He was elated when he was given the company," Kim Hatley said.

The 2nd "Dagger" Brigade, which included Company A, had 43 soldiers killed in action during that deployment.

When John Hatley returned from Iraq, he stayed on as the unit first sergeant, distinguishing himself by keeping a lid on the sort of post-deployment problems that many units experience when they come home, his wife said.

"Infantry soldiers in garrison — there’s the clubs and whatever. Sometimes it happened where soldiers will get in a little bit of trouble. He just did an exceptional job of controlling that. He put a stop to it," she said.

John offered his time off duty and was always available if soldiers needed someone to talk to, she said.

Between deployments, he would return to Texas on leave and speak at his father’s church, Darryl Hatley said.

"The reason he was speaking at the church was not just telling about how difficult it is when he loses his boys. He told the church that, whatever you do, continue to pray for all the boys in the military," he said.

John never asked for anything for himself, he said.

"It was always for the Iraqi children and his soldiers. He realized that some of the soldiers didn’t have the support from family and friends that he had. He said, ‘Remember when you send a care package, send it for the kids,’ " Darryl Hatley said.

When the Dagger Brigade got orders to deploy to Iraq again in 2006, Kim Hatley volunteered as the Company A Family Readiness Group leader.

"With the news that violence was increasing in Iraq, the level of anxiety before the deployment was rising," she said.

Before the deployment, John Hatley went back to Texas for a weekend with his family.

"He didn’t know if he would be back or not," his father said. "This was the mindset he had when this many folks were getting killed. The picture I have is seeing him leaving us, his sisters and his mom leaving at the airport, and the expression on his face because he wanted to be home."

The six deaths of Company A soldiers during the deployment hit John Hatley hard, his father said.

"John cried when he lost a soldier because he considered [each one] his son," Darryl Hatley said, but added that his son never talked about the deaths during telephone calls home from downrange.

"He never talked about the KIAs. He is protective of his family. They come first in his life. Primarily when he talked to us from downrange it was, ‘How are you doing? Give me some details about what you are doing.’ He wanted some light stuff. He wanted to know what his sisters were doing. Everything he’d be doing if he was home with us," Darryl said.

After the unit returned, there was sadness at the loss of the six Company A soldiers, but relief that another 144 made it home safely, Kim Hatley said.

John Hatley was selected to attend the U.S. Army’s Sergeants Major Academy but declined. He planned to finish his 20 years of service by mentoring officers at East Carolina University’s ROTC program, she said.

"As much as he loves his soldiers and the Army, he’s a tired infantry soldier," Kim Hatley said. "He just wants to sit on the front porch and drink coffee and watch the sun come up. He planned to finish out his term ensuring that the next generation of officers understands the teamwork between officers and NCOs."

Legal troubles begin

But one day early last year John Hatley came home and told his wife that he’d been accused, along with two other soldiers, of killing the four detainees.

"He explained the situation that was brought up to him by the command, but he would not discuss it with me," she said.

Her dominant emotion was frustration, she said, adding: "I didn’t know what to think. I had no idea what the outcome might be. When an individual goes through this type of challenge, your mind tends to be realistic about it: prepare for the worst and hope for the best."

Testimony from fellow soldiers during the courts-martial for the three soldiers gave an indication of what happened that day in March or April 2007.

After the shootings, Hatley huddled with his troops in the motor pool of their grimy combat outpost in southwest Baghdad and told them not to talk about what just happened, according to testimony. He allegedly directed some of the junior guys to burn the blindfolds and plastic handcuffs and to wash the blood off the Bradley.

He told them that what they’d just done was for their fallen comrades, according to testimony.

Sgt. Daniel Evoy, who witnessed the execution of one of the Iraqis, said three Company A soldiers, including Staff Sgt. Karl O. Soto-Pinedo, were killed in action near the time of the incident.

"I think the first sergeant got hit hard by Staff Sgt. Soto being killed. He was pretty much his go-to guy. I think Hatley had resentment towards those guys (the detainees)," Evoy said in court.

Another soldier, Pfc. Joshua Hupp, testified that Hatley told him to get rid of evidence in the back of the Bradley.

"There were zip cuffs and pieces of cloth in the back. I threw them in a burn barrel. I was scared. I was in Iraq. You didn’t know how high it went," he said, adding that he was afraid of Hatley, the most powerful person at the combat outpost.

In a statement investigators read to the court, Hupp said he was scared and feared that Hatley would "[expletive] me up."

Trying to move on

John Hatley’s mother said the whole family was devastated when they learned of the charges, "but we love him beyond words and have complete confidence in him. He is an honorable man and always has been," she said.

In the lead-up to the court-martial, John and Kim Hatley took things day by day, Kim Hatley said.

"We have been making every day the best day of our lives as we have always done despite the challenges that we are facing," she said at the time.

While two other former Company A NCOs — Michael Leahy and Joseph Mayo — have confessed to shooting the detainees, Hatley has never admitted that he did anything wrong or apologized for what happened.

"My husband has never admitted guilt," Kim Hatley said. "He always just described it as an accusation. Whether it happened or not I don’t know because I wasn’t there, but what I can say is that we lost six soldiers and John brought back 144."

She said she can’t empathize with the dead detainees’ families because the men were never identified. Army investigators conducted a fruitless search of the crime scene and Navy divers never found the bodies in a canal.

"CID scoped the entire area knocking on doors and asking if anybody is missing a father, an uncle, a brother. Nobody is missing anybody," she said.

She also said that based on what Hatley’s fellow soldiers, their wives, and their mothers have told her, the dead men were indeed insurgents.

"They were not just regular Iraqi civilians," she said.

Darryl Hatley said his son’s conviction and its impact on his family is hard to reconcile with John and Kim Hatley’s years of selfless service.

"You can’t really believe the sentence. I’m looking at the life of an individual that I know. I’m not guessing about him as a person. I’m not guessing about him and his integrity," he said.

After the trial, the couple had a moment to embrace outside the courthouse and say goodbye to those who testified for and against him at the trial. Then Hatley was taken to Mannheim to start his sentence.

Stars and Stripes requested an interview with John Hatley through his wife, but was unable to talk to him for this story. Previous requests to talk to prisoners at the Mannheim detention facility have been denied.

Kim Hatley has already started packing up the couple’s belongings in Schweinfurt. She remains upbeat, though she was unsure where she will end up.

"The soldiers are there for me. I will return to the States fairly soon. My first priority is to try to find good employment with medical benefits because I won’t have that anymore," she said.

Her husband could be at Mannheim for a year or two but will eventually be transferred to a prison in the States such as Fort Leavenworth, Kan., which will allow more frequent visits, she said.

The convictions of Hatley, Mayo and Leahy will be automatically appealed to a higher military court. In the meantime, Kim Hatley has thrown herself into a campaign for clemency for the three soldiers — a process through which Joint Multinational Training Command chief Brig. Gen. David R. Hogg could decide to reduce their sentences.

"Myself and many others, to include soldiers and families, have set what we feel is reasonable goal of getting our boys — John, Joseph Mayo and Michael Leahy — released as soon as possible," she said.

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