The hitman behind the Hollywood star: Woody Harrelson’s father lived a life of crime and chaos

From roles in The Hunger Games and True Detective, Woody Harrelson is one of Hollywood’s most famous faces. The 64-year-old Texas native has turned into a permanent fixture on the screen, both big and small, yet he does not have his roots in suburban tranquility like a lot of his colleagues. Here’s the story of his father, Charles, and how he became known as an infamous hitman.

Born into a working-class family in Texas, Charles Voyde Harrelson seemed at first to share a normal path with his wife Diane Lou Oswald and young sons Jordan, Woody and Brett.

But his early adulthood took a sharp detour into crime. After a brief stint in the Navy and a job selling encyclopaedias, Charles drifted into robberies and gambling, eventually turning his hand to, ahem, contract murder.

By the time his son Woody Harrelson was seven years old, Charles had effectively disappeared from the family home. Woody and his brothers were raised primarily by their mother Diane in Ohio and Texas, while Charles was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned and deported by his own impulses.

Charles’s first major conviction came in the early 1970s, when he was found guilty of the murder-for-hire of grain‐dealer Sam Degelia Jr in Texas. Sentenced to 15 years, he would serve only a fraction of that before release.

Released in the late 1970s, Charles immediately returned to violence. On 29 May 1979 he shot and killed federal judge John H. Wood Jr. outside his home in San Antonio, in what became one of the most notorious murders of the era: the first-ever assassination of a U.S. federal judge. He had been paid an estimated $250,000 by drug trafficker Jamiel ‘Jimmy’ Chagra, who feared Judge Wood’s harsh sentencing.

In December 1982 Charles was convicted of the murder and handed two consecutive life sentences. He died in prison on 15 March 2007 of a heart attack, still behind bars.

Amid all this, Woody Harrelson carved out a vastly different path. He admitted to PEOPLE that Charles “wasn’t much of a father” who “took no valid part” in his upbrining that was dominated by his mother’s presence.

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Despite all that, the kind-hearted son still called his father “one of the most articulate, well-read, charming people I’ve ever known”, adding that “I look at him as someone who could be a friend more than someone who was a father.”

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