The violent life of Woody Harrelson’s (and possibly Matthew McConaughey’s) hitman father
On September 1, 1980, police outside of Vanhorn, Texas were locked in a six-hour standoff with a fugitive and suspected assassin. He was Charles Voyde Harrelson – father of Hollywood A-lister Woody Harrelson.
Crazed and hallucinating from injecting cocaine, Charles Harrelson had convinced himself there was a bomb hidden in the muffler of his car. He pulled over to the side of the highway and began blasting at the car with his gun, blowing his tyre.
Harrelson – shirtless and wearing cutoff jeans and gold chains – held himself hostage. With his gun under his chin, he threatened to kill himself and claimed – among other things – that he killed John F. Kennedy. He was jailed in 1973 for murder and released after five years for good behaviour. In 1981, he was given two life sentences for the assassination of a 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 was revealed he may have fathered not one, but two, Hollywood A-listers.
Speaking on Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, Matthew McConaughey said that Woody Harrelson, Charles’s Harrelson’s son and 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 duo are even considering doing a paternity test to investigate further.
“You know, where I start and where he ends, and where he starts and I end, has always been like a murky line,” the McConaughey said. “And that’s part of our bromance, right? My kids call him Uncle Woody. His kids call me Uncle Matthew. And you see pictures of us and my family thinks a lot of pictures of him are me. His family thinks a lot of pictures of me are him.
“In Greece a few years ago, we’re sitting around talking about how close we are and our families. And my mom is there, and she says, ‘Woody, I knew your dad.’ Everyone was aware of the ellipses that my mom left after ‘knew.’ It was a loaded K-N-E-W.”
The pair have appeared together in the film EDtv as well as the critically lauded series True Detective. And, in a case of art apparently imitating life, they’ve just finished shooting a forthcoming Apple TV+ comedy series called Brother from Another Mother, in which they play fictionalised versions of themselves living together on a ranch in Texas.
McConaughey, though, said he was wary about doing a paternity test. “Look, it’s a little easier for Woody to say, ‘Come on, let’s do [DNA tests],’ because what’s the skin in it for him?” he said. “It’s a little harder for me because he’s asking me to take a chance to go, ‘Wait a minute, you’re trying to tell me my dad may not be my dad after 53 years of believing that?’ I got a little more skin in the game.”
His reluctance is easy to understand: if a test proves he is related to Charles Harrelson, then that’s quite the legacy to inherit. As detailed in the investigative podcast Son of a Hitman by the journalist Jason Cavanagh, Charles V Harrelson was a ruthless criminal: a murderer-for-hire; a woman-beater; a con-man; a drug mover and user; and debt collector.
One wild story even has him smuggling weapons into Cuba with Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald. The sister of one murder victim described Harrelson as “cold as ice… there was nothing in his eyes.”
While researching the story, even Cavanagh thought to himself: “Is he the personification of evil?’”
But did Charles Harrelson really kill Judge Wood? There are questions hanging over his guilt: a witness testimony under hypnosis; a conveniently-found rifle stock; and modus operandi that doesn’t fit the man. In an archive interview, replayed in Son of a Hitman, Woody Harrelson said: “I think that it was not a fair trial… I‘m not saying my father’s a saint but I think he’s innocent of that.”
Woody had also said be believed his father was a secret CIA operative. “I shouldn’t get into this right now,” Woody said. “This is where we’re going to get into trouble… I know it’s true.”
Way moar
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/violent-life-woody-harrelson-possibly-112323945.html