The killing was the first assassination of a sitting federal judge in the twentieth century. President Jimmy Carter called it, in a public statement, “an assault on our very system of justice.” The FBI opened what would become one of the most resource-intensive investigations in the bureau’s history — ultimately involving approximately seventy agents, taking three years, and costing an estimated five million dollars or more.
Wood’s death removed from the bench a judge whose severity in drug cases had made him a target. It also sent a message — or was intended to send a message — about what consequences facing Maximum John could be avoided. The message was not, ultimately, what its senders intended. The investigation that followed it would eventually consume nearly everyone in Chagra’s orbit who had any connection to the plot.
## The Investigation and the Six-Hour Standoff
The FBI investigation into Wood’s killing proceeded slowly and expensively. The assassination had been planned carefully enough that the physical evidence was limited. Investigators recovered bullet fragments, which were traced to a .240 Weatherby Mark V rifle. A rifle of that type had been purchased by Jo Ann Harrelson — Charles’s wife — under a false name, using false identification. This purchase eventually became a key link in the chain of evidence connecting Harrelson to the killing.
The investigation was also driven by surveillance. Jimmy Chagra was eventually caught and imprisoned on drug trafficking charges. While in prison, he made statements — recorded by the FBI, in phone calls and in-person conversations — that were part of the most extensive recorded documentation the government assembled in the case. His brother Joe Chagra, an attorney who had represented both Jimmy and Charles Harrelson, eventually became a cooperating witness and provided testimony that proved central to the prosecution.