Brother by Another Mother: Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart & Matthew McConaughey as Rustin Cole in True Detective. Photo: TV footage.
On September 1, 1980, police outside Vanhorn, Texas, engaged in a six-hour shootout with a fugitive and murder suspect. It was Charles Void Harrelson, the father of Hollywood first grader Woody Harrelson.
Crazy and hallucinating from a cocaine injection, Charles Harrelson convinced himself that there was a bomb hidden in the muffler of his car. He pulled over to the side of the road and started firing at the car with a pistol, blowing up a tire.
Harrelson — shirtless, in cutoff jeans and gold chains — was holding himself hostage. With a pistol under his chin, he threatened to kill himself and claimed, among other things, that he had killed John F. Kennedy. He was imprisoned in 1973 for murder and released five years later for good behaviour. In 1981, he was sentenced to two life sentences for the murder of District Judge John H. Wood, Jr., the first federal judge to be assassinated in the 20th century.
Now, the life and crimes of Charles Harrelson are back in the spotlight after it has been revealed that he may have fathered not one, but two Hollywood celebrities.
Speaking on Kelly Ripa's Let's Talk Off Camera podcast, Matthew McConaughey said Woody Harrelson, son of Charles Harrelson, his True Detective co-star and close friend, could be his half-brother. The connection was made when McConaughey's mother said she «knew» Harrelson's father. The couple is even considering having a paternity test for further investigation.
Police photograph of Charles Harrelson, May 1960. Photo: Wikipedia
«You know where I start and where it ends and where it starts and I end has always been like a dark line,» McConaughey said. “And that's part of our bromance, right? My kids call him Uncle Woody. His children call me Uncle Matthew. And you see our photos, and my family thinks that many of his photos are me. His family thinks that many of my photos are of him.
“A few years ago in Greece we sat and talked about how close we are and our families. And my mom is there, and she says, «Woody, I knew your dad.» Everyone knew about the dots my mom left behind after «knew.» The couple appeared together in an EDtv movie as well as the critically acclaimed TV series True Detective. And, in the case of art that clearly mimics life, they've just finished filming the future Apple TV+ a comedy series called Brother by Another Mother in which they play fictional versions of themselves living together on a ranch in Texas.
McConaughey, however, said he was wary of taking a paternity test. «Look, it's a little easier for Woody to say, 'Let's do [DNA tests]' because what's the skin in that for him?» He said. “It’s a little more difficult for me because he asks me to take a chance and say: “Wait, are you trying to tell me that my father may not be my father after 53 years of believing in this?” I got a little more. skin in the game.
His reluctance is easy to understand: if the test proves that he is related to Charles Harrelson, then this is quite a legacy. As detailed in journalist Jason Kavanagh's Son of a Hitman podcast, Charles V Harrelson was a ruthless criminal: a contract killer; beater woman; scammer; drug dealer and user; and a debt collector.
In one wild story, he even smuggled guns into Cuba with Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald. The sister of one of the murder victims described Harrelson as «cold as ice … there was nothing in his eyes.»
Studying the story, even Kavanagh thought to himself, «Is he the personification of evil?»
But did Charles Harrelson really kill Judge Wood? Questions hang over his guilt: the testimony of a witness under hypnosis; convenient rifle butt; and a course of action that does not suit a man. In an archived interview reproduced in Son of an Assassin, Woody Harrelson said, «I think it was an unfair trial… I'm not saying my father is a saint, but I think he's innocent of it.»
Woody also said that he believed his father was an undercover CIA operative. «I shouldn't be getting into this now,» Woody said. «We're going to have trouble here… I know it's true.»
Charles Harrelson being interviewed in the Visitor's Room of the Harris County Jail, 1980. Photo: Bettmann
Following true crime podcasts such as Serial and In the Dark—investigations that have decoupled both crime and law enforcement—Son of a Hitman is Jason Kavanagh's first podcast project.
Kavanagh already knew about Woody Harrelson's father («I took it as tabloid fodder,» he says), but seriously considered investigating the story after meeting Woody's younger brother (and fellow actor) Brett Harrelson.Charrelson's three sons — Jordan, Woody and Brett — grew up mostly fatherless. He was in prison and got out of it. But they didn't necessarily believe that he had committed the crime for which he ultimately received a life sentence. “They had questions,” Kavanagh says.
Charles Harrelson, born in 1938 and raised in Lovelady, Texas, served in the Navy as a sonar, occasional salesman, and repairer of dental equipment. . He was also a professional gambler and a self-proclaimed «expert card mechanic». “I could put any hand in any position you want just by opening a new deck of cards and shuffling them,” he once said.
Woody Harrelson and wife Laura Louis before their father's hearing in Denver, 1998. Photo: AP
Harrelson was a notorious womanizer and one ex-girlfriend Sandra Sue Attaway describes how she instantly fell in love with him. The Texas Ranger calls him «a crook with character.»
«Almost everyone I spoke to said he was incredibly smart and incredibly charming,» says Jason Kavanagh.
>Harrelson was first tried for the 1968 murder of Alan Berg, a Houston carpet salesman. It was alleged at the time that a rival carpet salesman named Frank DiMaria hired Harrelson to kill Berg. Sandra Sue Attachaway, who testified against Harrelson, claimed to have helped lure Berg to a bar, where Harrelson forced him into a car at gunpoint and shot him in the head. Berg's skeletal remains were found in a swampy ditch six months later. The next morning, a photograph of a policeman holding Berg's skull was published on the front page of the newspaper. (DiMaria was found not guilty of involvement in Berg's murder.)
As part of his investigation, Kavanagh tracked down Frank DiMaria and a brief phone conversation is included in the podcast. “I have nothing to say about this,” DiMaria says of her connection to Harrelson. “Nothing at all.”
DiMaria is kind of warm and intimidating at the same time, and quickly hangs up. “When I talked to Frank DiMaria, I realized that I need to be careful,” Kavanagh says. «I'm in Houston, I'm alone and no one knows exactly where I am…»
Charles Harrelson is taken away after being found guilty of committing a dirty deed in San Antonio, Texas. Photo: Bettmann
Cavanagh planned to visit DiMaria, but Alan Berg's brother David bluntly warned him, «Don't go there to try to talk to him. Just don't do it.»
“Going into this, I knew that I would see this intersection of different worlds that are potentially dangerous,” Kavanagh says. “The FBI, the CIA, organized crime and Hollywood are a lot of people who have an interest in not revealing the full picture. One person told me that he knew how to «disappear people». He can do it.”
Harrelson was found not guilty of Berg's murder thanks to his famous lawyer, Percy Foreman, who represented organized crime figures James Earl Ray, the man who killed Martin Luther King, and Jack Ruby.< /p>
«How Harrelson allowed it and how he even got involved with Foreman, I don't understand,» Kavanagh says in the podcast.
Harrelson was then tried for the murder of a Texas grain merchant named Sam Degelia. According to the prosecution, Harrelson was hired by a business partner of Degelia who wanted to receive a life insurance payout. Degelia was found in the barn with two shots to the head. An accomplice recalled Harrelson saying, «Isn't it hell when your buddy kills you to get insurance?»
The jury stalled, and Harrelson had to wait three years in prison before being retried. . One prison guard recalls that Harrelson always had money and status in prison. He even paid a guard to have sex with another inmate's sister.
Harrelson was found guilty in a retrial. On the way out of court, one of the jurors heard him whisper to Harrelson, «I'm sorry, that's the best thing I could do.» Harrelson was sentenced to 15 years, but only served five.
U.S. District Judge John Wood Jr., shot to death as he left his apartment on January 29, 1979. Charles Harrelson was found guilty of murder. Photo: Bettmann
On May 29, 1979, Harrelson, according to the official version of events, carried out the sniper execution of Judge John Wood. It was the morning of Jamiel «Jimmy» Chagra's drug trial.
Chagra was a drug dealer from El Paso, Texas who accounted for 85 percent of the marijuana imported into the United States during the 1970s. According to Son of a Hitman, Chagra made $100 million in a decade.
Wood was checking for a flat tire outside his home when he was shot in the back. It was the first assassination of a federal judge in over a century and was the largest FBI investigation outside of the Kennedy assassination.
The Texas Rangers were the first to report Harrelson to the FBI as a potential suspect. When Harrelson was arrested in September 1980, he was already a fugitive on gun charges and severely malnourished. In a cocaine stupor, Harrelson wrote confession notes in his hotel room. He claimed to have orchestrated a deal whereby his three sons would be paid $100,000 each, and that he did not kill anyone who was «unworthy.»
process,” Harrelson wrote. «My marker should say 'He contributed to the ZPG — Zero Population Growth.'
“He was hallucinating and was convinced that FBI agents were surrounding his hotel, which he most likely was,” Kavanagh says. «But it's hard to know where the hallucination ends for him and reality begins.»
Two days later, after a manic six-hour standoff, Harrelson was arrested. The trial began in September 1982 and lasted two and a half months with 94 witnesses.
Evidence against him included recorded conversations between Jimmy Chagra and Chagra's brother Joe; butt connected with the purchase of Harrelson's wife; and an eyewitness subjected to hypnosis. Kavanagh calls the FBI's decision to use hypnosis a «questionable judgment» that hypnotic testimony will never be accepted in court. Speaking on the podcast, even witness Chris Lambros herself says that «acceptability was pushed to its absolute limits» to secure conviction. And long-range sniping doesn't match Harrelson's other known and alleged assassinations.
Charles Harrelson was sentenced to two life sentences. Jimmy Chagra was later acquitted of murder but served 24 years for drug dealing. Harrelson died in 2007 in Florence's supermax prison. Jason Kavanagh says that during his investigation, he constantly tried to find out if Harrelson really killed Max John.
“My opinion has changed — I don’t know if I’m just a simple witness!” He's laughing. “When I talked to people involved in this, I swayed wildly from one corner to another. Sometimes I go down the rabbit hole and come up with my own elaborate conspiracy theories — because I've heard a few crazy ones! You're trying to figure it out, and then some new piece of evidence comes up. I'm just presenting the evidence as it comes up and let the audience make up its mind.»
The biggest conspiracy of all, of course, is the Kennedy conspiracy. Could Charles Harrelson really be the man behind the grassy hill? When someone gets excited about John F. Kennedy, it's usually an indication that they've lost the story.
President John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Texas Gov. John Connally drive a car moments before Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. Photo: Reuters
“I spoke to people who knew Charles Harrelson and believe that he was in Dallas, at Dealey Plaza, on the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy,” Kavanagh says. “I also spoke with the FBI agent who led the investigation into Judge Wood and was on the committee to select Kennedy Kennedy. He said unequivocally, «Of course not.» But this is the line of the company — Lee Harvey Oswald did it. I have heard the arguments for and against, and there will be more information…”
No less interesting is the reaction of Harrelson's sons. In a way, it's set up in the sense that they don't know the whole story. Kavanagh says it was «a little tricky» to tell them the details of who he really was. In an interview for the podcast, Brett Harrelson thinks there is an «irony» in his father's sentencing that it may be the only murder he didn't commit.
«I think he probably didn't did. «Kill Judge Wood,» Brett says. “But I think the state should have found someone, and I think he would be the easiest to convict. Some heavy shit.”
Older brother Jordan seems to be more resigned to his father's guilt. “Do I believe he did it? Do I believe he could do it? Jordan asks himself. «Yes. Yes.»
Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson in the 1994 film Natural Born Killers by Rex < p>Although Woody Harrelson does not give interviews on the podcast, he has already spoken about learning that his father was a murderer.
“I was 11 or 12 years old when I heard his name mentioned on the car radio,” Woody told The Guardian in 2012. listened to the radio and they were talking about Charles V Harrelson and his trial for murder and blah blah blah blah and I sit and think there can't be another Charles V Harrelson. I mean, it's my dad! It was a wild realization. Then the woman got into the car, saw my face and realized that something was wrong. She was a very kind lady.”
Woody also admitted to spending «a couple million» trying to get his father free. “I tried for years to get him out. To give him a new trial,” Woody said. «I don't know he deserves a new trial… he's just a son trying to help his father.»
But has Woody heard the podcast? “I got in touch with Woody's longtime assistant,” Kavanagh says. “They know about the project. Has Woody listened to all the episodes… I haven't heard any direct feedback, but I have a feeling he's probably listening.”
With three more episodes to go, Kavanagh says the investigation is heading towards something. “revelations” about the murder of Judge Wood, especially about an informant that the FBI initially turned down (“I think because I’m not a cop, people told me things they wouldn’t tell the FBI under oath,” Kavanagh says). Even if there's no definite conclusion, Son of an Assassin is a dark and gripping thing. I ask Kavanagh what he himself thinks of this man.
“I think that during his life he did terrible things,” he says of Harrelson. “And I think he is someone who lived by his own moral code and had a bizarre philosophy about the world and life. Definitely a unique and fascinating character.”
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