Did Woody Harrelson’s Father Destroy a Texas Decide in 1979?

In 2021, the internet turned its attention to Woody Harrelson, the well-known actor recognized for his roles in “Cheers” and later on “The Starvation Games” trilogy, and a darkish chapter of his loved ones history. 

The reemergence of a 2017 San Antonio Convey-Information story highlighted the “crime of the century” for the metropolis, when Charles Harrelson, the actor’s father, shot and killed U.S. District Judge John H. Wooden Jr. on May perhaps 29, 1979.

According to the report, “a drug trafficker and flamboyant gambler initially from El Paso, Jamiel ‘Jimmy’ Chagra, compensated Harrelson $250,000 to kill Wooden due to the fact Chagra feared a demo and sentencing by ‘Maximum John.’ Wood attained the moniker for his popularity of supplying rough sentences to drug traffickers.”

The report described Charles as “a card gambling felon and accused hit man with ties to arranged crime, [who] was the father of actor Woody Harrelson and satisfied Jimmy Chagra in Vegas in 1979 soon after being paroled in an unrelated murder circumstance.”

Woody Harrelson tackled his connection with his father in a 1988 interview with Men and women magazine. In accordance to the profile, Charles abandoned his spouse and children in 1968. But Woody, who was estranged from his father for components of his lifestyle, grew nearer to him following his conviction:

While the dealer who was accused of selecting him was acquitted on a retrial, Harrelson obtained everyday living. Woody intently followed the demo of his father, whose birthday he shares, in the papers and calls the conviction “a travesty.” He thinks his father was a victim of prejudicial pretrial publicity and points out that the trial choose was one of the murdered man’s pallbearers.

Woody denies that his anger about the proceedings stems from filial affection. “I do not really feel he was a great deal of a father,” he states of the person he realized mainly by rare letters. “He took no valid section in my upbringing.” Yet due to the fact Charles Harrelson’s imprisonment, father and son have developed nearer. Woody visits the jail once a calendar year, and in 1987, when Charles obtained married by proxy (to a lady he experienced acknowledged on the outdoors), his son stood in for him. “This could possibly seem odd to say about a convicted felon,” Woody says, “but my father is just one of the most articulate, effectively-read, charming people today I’ve at any time regarded. Even now, I’m just now gauging no matter whether he deserves my loyalty or friendship. I look at him as somebody who could be a buddy much more than another person who was a father.”

Background.com additional that Woody funded his father’s appeals, even enlisting the assistance of controversial lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Charles died in prison on March 15, 2007, at the age 69, reportedly as a result of heart disease.