The CEO and Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association (NRA) claims he didn’t directly participate in the mutilation and burning of a house cat, which served as the basis for a no-contest pleading he and four frat brothers entered in a 1980 case.

Doug Hamlin, who was elected by the NRA board earlier this year, acknowledged the act of animal cruelty happened. However, he said he wasn’t “directly involved” with it. He said he took responsibility for the act as the head of the fraternity’s chapter.

“I do not in any way condone the actions that took place more than 44 years ago,” Hamlin said in a statement. “I took responsibility for this regrettable incident as chapter president although I wasn’t directly involved.”

While it is unclear exactly what role Hamlin played in the killing of the cat, the ordeal–recently resurfaced by The Guardian–could spell trouble for his tenure at the top of the nation’s largest gun-rights organization. It also comes after the NRA board picked Hamlin as part of an effort to move on from previous CEO Wayne LaPierre after he was found liable for diverting millions of the non-profit’s funds toward personal expenses.

The NRA declined to make Hamlin available for an interview about the incident, but the ordeal was widely covered by local and even national news outlets at the time. Reports from The Michigan Daily and Ann Arbor News provide significant details on what happened and Hamlin’s apparent role. Their reporting began with initial accounts of the mutilation followed through the sentencing of Hamlin and the other frat brothers, as well as a lawsuit stemming from an attempted coverup–though there are some conflicting reports on specific details.

Numerous contemporary reports agreed on what the frat brothers did to BK, the cat’s nickname, and what motivated them. As 1979 ended, some in the Alpha Delta Phi house at the University of Michigan wanted BK gone because the cat didn’t always use their litter box. Some of the frat members told the brother who primarily cared for BK to give the cat away before the house got back from Thanksgiving break. When that didn’t happen, a group of them tortured BK to death.

“According to police, the incident occurred Dec. 6, when the five captured their fraternity house cat because it failed to use its litter box,” Nick Katsarelas wrote for The Michigan Daily on March 12, 1980. “They cut off its paws, hung it from a tree, and then set the animal on fire. The screams from the tortured animal were heard by a passerby, who notified police.”

There is some dispute over whether all five of the men helped in torturing the cat, though. Several accounts say only three of the five carried out the mutilation, while the other two were aware of the plan and did nothing to stop it.

“We dealt with it in our own way. It happened late Thursday night, and by the next Tuesday the other three (actual killers) were out of the house,” one of the five men anonymously told the Ann Arbor News on April 24th, 1980. “We got it because we went to knowing they were going to kill it and we should have stopped it and we didn’t.”

An Associated Press report about the same anonymous interview published by the St. Joseph Gazette the day before claims all five men talked about killing the cat, but two went to sleep before the killing actually happened.

BK’s death created a tremendous backlash from the local community, with The Daily reporting 5,000 people signed a petition calling on them to do so. Animal rights activists even wore armbands in BK’s honor after news of the killing got out.

Hamlin wrote a letter to the Ann Arbor News that, similar to his latest statement on the incident, placed blame for the actual killing on the other men involved. He pledged the fraternity would do volunteer work for the Humane Society, which had offered a cash reward for information on the cat’s killing, as a way to make amends.

“We would like to express our concern involving the incident (concerning the cat) that occurred on Thursday, the 6th of December,” Hamlin wrote on December 18th, 1979. “We, the members of Alpha Delta Phi, offer our sincerest apologies for the irrational, senseless behavior attributable to a small minority of this houæ. Those members involved have been dealt with and severely punished and also regret their unreasonable actions.”

Hamlin and the other four men were expelled from Alpha Delta Phi over the incident a short time later.

After six weeks, the city prosecutor decided to press charges against the former frat brothers. The five men then agreed to plead no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty under a local ordinance after the city prosecutor initially threatened to bring them up on state felony charges, according to The Daily. At sentencing, District Court Judge S. J. Elden laid into the men.

He described BK’s killing as “unconscionable and heinous,” the college paper reported. Judge Elden said the five men’s actions were “cold and calculated” as well as “unexcusable and unexplainable.” He said he was particularly outraged that “once the act was discovered, it was covered up.”

Judge Elden singled out Hamlin during his sentencing remarks. “You had the ability to prevent this from ever happening,” he told Hamlin.

Another man put Hamlin at the center of the coverup effort. The fraternity’s cook at the time of the incident, a man named Earl Carl, filed a lawsuit against Hamlin and two other men connected to the frat, alleging they attempted to intimidate him into not discussing the cat’s killing and then fired him when he wouldn’t agree to keep quiet.

“l had cause to leave,” he told the Ann Arbor News on February 9th, 1980. “In mid-December, I knew there was a cover-up (that Hamlin initiated.)”

The News reported that Carl claimed it was Hamlin in particular who told him and members of the frat not to talk to the Humane Society or the police. Carl also alleged in his suit that Hamlin threatened him after Carl told him he would answer questions if asked. Carl claimed Hamlin then told him he couldn’t work at the house anymore. The News later reported Carl sought $300,000 for emotional distress and breach of contract.

The Reload could not locate any reporting on the outcome of that suit.

The incident received nationwide attention, with stories and letters to the editor about it popping up in places like Reading, Pennsylvania, and Boca Raton, Florida. It has also lived on inside the pages of the University of Michigan’s student paper, with multiple mentions in the decades since.

Reactions to the gruesome ordeal were visceral. They spanned from letters to the editor of The News calling the act “despicable,” “sick,” and “moral lunacy” to outright death threats sent to the five men. The response “puzzled” the anonymous member of the five who spoke to The News.

“It’s beyond me how a person will call and say ‘I’m going to blow your legs or something else off,’ and treasure an animal’s life more than a human’s,” he said. “We all accepted our guilt, and I’m not trying to justify it but the American public knew people were getting napalmed in Vietnam and no one said much. The TV news showed a film on the Detroit Humane Society with piles of dog and cat carcasses about the same time. Let’s be fair.”

Hamlin also decried the response in comments he made at the sentencing.

“We did everything we thought we could do to resolve this thing,” he said, according to The Daily. “We think that now it’s gone a little too far.”

Judge Elden disagreed. The Daily reported he was more perturbed that some of the men involved weren’t remorseful about their role in the mutilation of BK, instead believing themselves to be victims.

“When one tampers with community values, one must be prepared for community action like this,” he said.

Ultimately, he sentenced the men to the harshest punishment allowable under the statute. He required the five to pay $360 in fines and fees as well as 200 hours of community service with an animal welfare organization, according to The News.

The paper reported Hamlin had agreed to work off his sentence with the National Fund for Animals. After paying the fines and completing the community service, the men’s records were set to be expunged. But not everyone at the time was satisfied with the court sentence being the end of the story.

One letter to the editor of The Reading Eagle, titled “Remember,” implored readers to remember the names of those who killed BK and to think of the cat’s “agonizing death each time” they see them.

However, Hamlin said the nearly 45-year-old incident should not define his life. He said since graduating college, he has served in the military and lived an upstanding life.

“Since that time I served my country, raised a family, volunteered in my community, started a business, worked with Gold Star families and raised millions of dollars for charity,” he said. “I’ve endeavored to live my life in a manner beyond reproach. My focus now is on protecting the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.”

Hamlin has no plans to resign as head of the NRA over the incident. The gun-rights group is hosting an event where Hamlin will share a stage with Former President Donald Trump in Savannah, Georgia, on October 22nd as the Republican nominee makes his final push to regain the presidency.