Charles Harrelson

• 1. Introduction

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  Charles Harrelson went to prison for the murder of federal judge John H. Wood Jr., who was shot dead on the 29th of May 1979 in the parking lot outside his townhouse in San Antonio, Texas. No federal judge in the 20th century had been assassinated before Wood. Harrelson, an American contract killer and organized crime figure, was also the father of the actors Woody and Brett Harrelson. Who paid for the judge's death? Did Harrelson fire the shot, or did he only claim the credit to collect a fee? And why did he once tell police he had killed a president as well?

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• 2. A Record Before the Judge

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  Lovelady, Texas, is where Charles Voyde Harrelson was born on the 23rd of July 1938, to Alma Lee and Voyde Harrelson. His working life was unusual. He sold reference books in California and also earned a living as a professional gambler. He married several times, and his wives included Nancy Hillman Harrelson, Diane Lou Oswald, Jo Ann Harrelson and Gina Adelle Foster.

  In 1960 he was convicted of armed robbery. Years later, he claimed he had been involved in dozens of murders, beginning in the early 1960s.

  Percy Foreman defended him when he was tried for the 1968 murder of Alan Harry Berg. A jury in Angleton, Texas, acquitted him on the 22nd of September 1970. The victim's brother, David Berg, later told the story in a memoir titled Run Brother Run.

  Another 1968 killing was a murder for hire. Sam Degelia Jr., a grain dealer from Hearne, Texas, and a father of four, was killed in McAllen, Texas. Harrelson was paid for the job. His first trial ended with a deadlocked jury. Pete Scamardo, tried in the same case, was found guilty as an accomplice and received seven years of probation.

  Harrelson was retried in 1973, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years. He served five of them. Early release for good behavior put him back on the street in 1978, with one more killing ahead.

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• 3. Maximum John

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  Judges earn nicknames slowly, and the one attached to John H. Wood Jr. was "Maximum John." He had a reputation for handing down long sentences in drug cases. On the day he was killed, an El Paso drug dealer named Jamiel Chagra was supposed to appear before him, although that trial had been delayed. Chagra was the man who hired Harrelson. Harrelson's wife at the time, Jo Ann, was implicated in the killing as well.

  The case came apart through a strange arrest. Someone phoned police to report a man firing a gun at imaginary FBI agents while on drugs. That man was Harrelson.

  An anonymous tip pointed investigators further. So did a tape recording of a jailhouse conversation between Jamiel Chagra and his brother, the attorney Joe Chagra. Together they led to a murder charge against Harrelson.

  At trial, Harrelson denied killing the judge. He said he had merely taken credit for the murder so that he could claim a large payment from Jamiel Chagra. The jury did not accept it, and he received two life terms. The sentence rested largely on Jamiel's talk with his brother, a recording that would shape more than Harrelson's fate.

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• 4. The Chagra Brothers

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  Joe Chagra, the attorney, took a plea bargain that carried a ten-year sentence. Under its terms he would testify for the prosecution, but not against his own brother. Without his testimony, Jamiel Chagra was acquitted of the murder.

  Jamiel's defense lawyer was Oscar Goodman, then a public defender and later the mayor of Las Vegas. Even so, Jamiel later admitted in a plea bargain that he had played a role in the murder of Judge Wood. He also admitted his part in the attempted murder of a U.S. attorney.

  Jo Ann Harrelson paid a heavy price too. She received consecutive terms totaling 25 years, on multiple convictions of conspiracy and perjury tied to the assassination.

  In 2003, Jamiel Chagra reversed course and recanted his earlier statements. He now claimed that someone other than Harrelson had shot the judge. Harrelson's son Woody then tried to have the conviction overturned and win his father a new trial. The attempt failed. Jamiel Chagra died of cancer in July 2008.

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• 5. The Kennedy Claim

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  A six-hour standoff with police ended in September 1980, when Harrelson surrendered. He was reportedly high on cocaine. During the standoff he threatened suicide and declared that he had killed both Judge Wood and President John F. Kennedy.

  After his arrest he gave a television interview and tried to explain. He said: "At the same time I said I had killed the judge, I said I had killed Kennedy, which might give you an idea to the state of my mind at the time." He also called his statements "an effort to elongate my life."

  Joseph Chagra later testified at Harrelson's trial about the same boast. According to him, Harrelson claimed to have shot Kennedy and drew maps showing where he hid. Chagra said he did not believe it. The AP reported that the FBI "apparently discounted any involvement by Harrelson in the Kennedy assassination."

  The idea lived on anyway. In his 1989 book Crossfire, Jim Marrs wrote that some theorists believe Harrelson is the youngest and tallest of the "three tramps" arrested shortly after the shooting in Dallas. Marrs said Harrelson was involved "with criminals connected to intelligence agencies and the military." He also suggested a link to Jack Ruby, through a third party named Russell Douglas Matthews, who was known to both men. The forensic artist Lois Gibson matched photographs of Harrelson to the youngest-looking of the three tramps.

  In 1982, Harrelson told Dallas station KDFW-TV: "Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy, alone, without any aid from a rogue agency of the U.S. government or at least a portion of that agency? I believe you are very naive if you do." Prison would be where he spent the rest of his life.

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• 6. Prison Years

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  The 4th of July 1995 found Harrelson at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he and two fellow inmates, Gary Settle and Michael Rivers, tried to escape. They used a makeshift rope. A guard in the prison's tower fired a warning shot, and the three men surrendered.

  After the attempt, Harrelson was moved to the supermax prison ADX Florence in Colorado. He did not sound unhappy about it. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: "there are not enough hours in a day for my needs as a matter of fact... The silence is wonderful."

  On the 15th of March 2007, at the age of 68, Harrelson was found dead in his cell. The cause was a heart attack.

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• 7. Father and Sons

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  Woodrow Tracy Harrelson was born on the 23rd of July 1961, and the world knows him as the actor Woody Harrelson. By his account, his father vanished from the family's Houston home in 1968. That left Woody's mother, Diane, to raise Woody and his two brothers. Woody lost track of his father until 1981, when news broke of the arrest for Judge Wood's murder.

  In a November 1988 interview, Woody said he visited his father regularly in federal prison. His feelings were mixed. He described his father this way: "My father is one of the most articulate, well-read, charming people I've ever known." He continued: "Still, I'm just now gauging whether he merits my loyalty or friendship." Then he added: "I look at him as someone who could be a friend more than someone who was a father."

  In April 2023, the actor Matthew McConaughey, a long-time friend of Woody, raised a surprising possibility. He said he and Woody might be half-brothers, which would make Charles Harrelson his father too. According to McConaughey, his mother claimed to have known Woody's father around the time McConaughey was conceived. The two actors discussed taking a DNA test to be certain.

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• 8. Echoes in Culture

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  A 10-episode podcast called Son of a Hitman was released by Spotify Studios on the 5th of May 2020. High Five Content produced it, and the journalist Jason Cavanagh hosts it. The series investigates whether the three murder charges against Harrelson were legitimate. It also examines the possibility that he was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

  Fiction touched the Wood case years earlier. Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel No Country for Old Men is set in 1980. In it, the sheriff says: "Here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge." The line refers to the murder of Judge Wood.

  Woody Harrelson acted in the 2007 film adaptation of the novel. It premiered two months after his father died.

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