By September 2, 1980, Charles Voyde Harrelson could rest assured that everybody would know his name, and not because he was a regular at some local bar. After a six-hour standoff with police the day before, Harrelson confessed to killing a federal judge. On top of that, he also claimed responsibility for the John F. Kennedy assassination. Before we go any further, the whole reason we’re telling you this is because five years after Harrelson’s confession in 1980, his son, Woodrow, would start receiving some media attention himself for his role as Woody on the NBC hit sitcom Cheers.
Yes, you got that right: Woody Harrelson’s father was an admitted murderer. More specifically, he was a contract killer. The JFK murder was very unlikely since the elder Harrelson was high on cocaine at the time of his confession. He later explained that he’d said that so the police wouldn’t have an incentive to kill him right away. But Charles did actually kill people and was convicted of murder twice.
Before Woody and his two brothers were born, Charles had turned to a life of crime. His first conviction was for armed robbery in 1960. He divorced Woody’s mother in 1964 (he was married four times), four years before being accused of murder for the first time. Despite Charles’s acquaintance testifying against him in that case, he was ultimately acquitted.
He wasn’t so lucky the second time around. The same year he was acquitted, Charles was hired to kill Sam Carmelo Degelia, Jr., a grain dealer from Hearne, Texas. He received a 15-year sentence for the murder, but was released in three years due to time served. He’d serve two more years for a previous charge before being released in 1978.
Charles’s previously mentioned 1980 arrest resulted in him being convicted for the murder-for-hire killing of Judge John Howland Wood, Jr. at his home in San Antonio. He was allegedly paid $250,000 for the 1979 job. During the trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences plus five years. Charles tried to escape from prison in 1995 and was transferred to another facility, where he died in 2007.
Woody unsuccessfully pushed for an appeal for his father after one of Charles’s fellow defendants changed their story. Following their father’s death, Woody and his brothers inherited his intended memoirs. In them, he admitted to being involved with many other murders, six of which he claimed to have committed himself.
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