But the actor clearly has mixed feelings about him, adding: \u2018My father is one of the most articulate, well-read, charming people I\u2019ve ever known . . . I look at him as someone who could be a friend more than someone who was a father.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\nAfter trying to escape from jail using a homemade ladder, Charles was moved to the bleak ADX Florence \u2018supermax\u2019 prison in Colorado \u2014 America\u2019s highest security facility \u2014 where he died of a heart attack in 2007, aged 69.<\/span><\/p>\nWoody\u2019s grim family connection might have remained an intriguing but obscure piece of Tinseltown trivia were it not for a new investigation \u2014 presented as an enthralling ten-part podcast, Son Of A Hitman \u2014 on the music streaming service Spotify.<\/span><\/p>\nIt examines not only the Harrelson family\u2019s belief that Charles didn\u2019t kill Judge Wood but also Charles\u2019s own claims to have had CIA links and to have been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.<\/span><\/p>\nInvestigative journalist Jason Cavanagh spoke to Woody\u2019s two brothers for the podcast series, but the actor declined to talk to him \u2014 although Cavanagh strongly suspects he has listened to it.<\/span><\/p>\nFor a man who has insisted that his father\u2019s conviction for killing Judge Wood was a \u2018travesty\u2019, it will have made uncomfortable listening.<\/span><\/p>\nJordan and Brett Harrelson, Woody\u2019s brothers, tell Cavanagh they have no doubt that their father \u2014 whom Brett describes as \u2018intimidatingly intelligent and super-suave cool\u2019 \u2014 killed people.<\/span><\/p>\nHis sons say they never saw him without a gun and knew he wasn\u2019t a man to be crossed.<\/span><\/p>\nIt seems Charles Harrelson was a villain out of Hollywood Central Casting \u2014 a man with intense blue eyes who beat up women, smuggled and used drugs, cheated at high-stakes poker and would \u2018kill anyone for $500\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\nMany thought him intelligent \u2014 although, as one lawyer noted, clever assassins don\u2019t boast of their executions or carry a business card that reads, \u2018Killer for hire\u2019. Charles, a bigmouth and conman, did both.<\/span><\/p>\nHe was at least 6 ft 3 in tall and good-looking. \u2018We had more witnesses that slept with him than we could shake a stick at,\u2019 Ray Jahn, chief prosecutor in the Judge Wood case, tells the podcast. \u2018He was very personable with the women.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\nThe charm, the lawyer adds, concealed a determination to dominate. He was an \u2018outright psychopath\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\nBorn in Texas in 1938, Charles was the son of a rancher and had a brother, Claude, who later joined the police. There were several officers in the extended family and he once quipped: \u2018I don\u2019t know where they went wrong, but I don\u2019t hold it against them.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\nCharles and Claude were \u2018sworn enemies\u2019 and he was reportedly delighted when his brother was shot dead by a prisoner.<\/span><\/p>\nHe started gambling when he was 12 years old, served in the U.S. Navy, sold encyclopaedias and became a dental equipment engineer.<\/span><\/p>\nAfter being jailed for armed robbery at the age of 22, he started collecting debts for Las Vegas gamblers and organised poker games with deep-walleted players, whom he cheated.<\/span><\/p>\nHis other source of income was as a killer for hire. He had links with the Mafia and the once notoriously corrupt Teamsters union.<\/span><\/p>\nHe also boasted of his exploits in the late 1950s with Jack Ruby \u2014 the man who later killed JFK\u2019s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald \u2014 and claimed to have been trained by the CIA.<\/span><\/p>\nMost shockingly, he insisted that it was he who shot JFK from the infamous \u2018grassy knoll\u2019 in Dallas on November 22, 1963.<\/span><\/p>\nTall stories or not, police believe he was responsible for at least a dozen murders in Texas. But he evaded justice until 1968, when he was accused of shooting and strangling Houston carpet salesman Alan Berg.<\/span><\/p>\nCharles\u2019s girlfriend, Sandra Sue Attaway, testified against him, claiming she unwittingly helped to lure Mr Berg to a bar, where he was abducted at gunpoint. His body was thrown into a swamp.<\/span><\/p>\nSandra Sue told the court how, one year into their relationship, Charles began hitting her in the face and warned her that if she ever dared leave him, he would find and kill her.<\/span><\/p>\nMr Berg\u2019s sister recalled Charles\u2019s eyes \u2014 so blue they seemed to have no pupils \u2014 as \u2018cold as ice . . . there was nothing in [them].\u2019<\/span><\/p>\nThe new podcast suggests Mr Berg may have been killed because of an unpaid gambling debt.<\/span><\/p>\nCharles was acquitted thanks to a notoriously corrupt celebrity defence lawyer, Percy Foreman.<\/span><\/p>\nHe wasn\u2019t so lucky in 1973, when he was convicted of killing grain dealer Sam Degelia with two gunshots to the back of the head in what may also have been punishment for an unpaid gambling debt.<\/span><\/p>\nWoody has said it was this trial that finally alerted him \u2014 at the age of 11 or 12 \u2014 to what his father did for a living when he heard a report on a car radio.<\/span><\/p>\nCharles Harrelson was sentenced to 15 years, but was released after five for good behaviour.<\/span><\/p>\nIt was only a year later that Judge Wood was killed. Several tip-offs put the FBI on to Harrelson and he was captured in 1980 after a six-hour standoff. Hallucinating on injected cocaine, he put a gun under his chin and threatened to kill himself.<\/span><\/p>\nIt emerged that he had written a \u2018final testament\u2019 in which he admitted killing both Judge Wood and President Kennedy. Later he would insist he hadn\u2019t killed the judge but lied about it so his sons would benefit from a bounty allegedly put on Mr Wood\u2019s head by drug-trafficker Jimmy Chagra.<\/span><\/p>\nAt the trial, prosecutors said Chagra had hired him to kill John Wood so the judge wouldn\u2019t preside over Chagra\u2019s trial.<\/span><\/p>\nThe jury was persuaded by three key pieces of evidence. First, the stock of the same type of rifle used to murder Judge Wood was found in a swamp and police were able to prove it had been bought by Harrelson\u2019s third wife, Jo Ann.<\/span><\/p>\nSecond, the FBI had secretly recorded prison and phone conversations which revealed Charles had received a $250,000 payment from Jimmy Chagra. In a further bizarre twist, the money was collected from Chagra by one of Jo Ann\u2019s two daughters.<\/span><\/p>\nThe prosecutors\u2019 final ace was an eyewitness who claimed she had seen Charles acting suspiciously shortly before the judge was shot.<\/span><\/p>\nThe new podcast essentially challenges the prosecution case over the Wood conviction, alleging that Harrelson\u2019s defence lawyer made a string of errors.<\/span><\/p>\nThe \u2018eyewitness\u2019 testimony was technically invalid as it had been obtained under hypnosis; and many of the secret recordings had been illegally obtained.<\/span><\/p>\nFurthermore, key testimony was ignored from an informant who claimed Charles had been the fall guy for a conspiracy involving the judge\u2019s real killers.<\/span><\/p>\nThese, he said, included another alleged contract killer and a crooked defence lawyer who resented Judge Wood\u2019s success against his clients.<\/span><\/p>\nNone of this information is new and in 1998, the evidence looked set to win Charles a retrial and possibly his freedom, after a sympathetic judge agreed to a hearing.<\/span><\/p>\nIt was Woody Harrelson who had paid for the legal challenge. But he then blew it for his father.<\/span><\/p>\nOne day, at a gym near the courthouse, Woody bumped into the judge who would oversee the hearing and they ended up playing a one-on-one game of basketball (Woody had starred in the 1992 basketball film White Men Can\u2019t Jump, while the judge coached the U.S. Paralympics team).<\/span><\/p>\nThe encounter \u2014 which both men insisted was entirely innocent \u2014 was picked up by the media. Realising he could now be accused of bias, the judge recused himself from the Harrelson case.<\/span><\/p>\nHe was replaced by a judge who refused to grant a retrial. Woody Harrelson was reportedly racked with guilt that he had apparently scotched his father\u2019s hopes of freedom.<\/span><\/p>\nJordan Harrelson, Woody\u2019s older brother, believes the boys suffered greatly from their father\u2019s absence and his conduct. They saw him only on annual prison visits.<\/span><\/p>\nAs a youth, Woody became prone to explosive anger and was sent to a school for \u2018troubled kids\u2019. He later became a committed Christian before discovering a talent and passion for acting.<\/span><\/p>\nCharles and Woody shared the same birthday and the actor has spoken of how, in some respects, they have much in common.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen, in 1987, Charles got married by proxy from prison (to fourth wife Gina), Woody stood in for him at the wedding ceremony. His brother Jordan believes the actor is \u2018in denial\u2019 about their father\u2019s true nature.<\/span><\/p>\nCharles was undoubtedly a killer. But Son Of A Hitman raises enough doubts to at least question the verdict on Judge Wood\u2019s death.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd for Woody, it can only twist the knife over any lingering guilt he may feel about that fateful basketball game.<\/span><\/p>\nSource<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hollywood star’s father was an expert marksman and a real life contract killer who was convicted of killing a U.S. federal judge <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History","category-Miscellaneous"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211345,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211341\/revisions\/211345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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