Whether Charles Harrelson understood this and accepted it, or whether he had convinced himself that his skills as a hitman were sufficient to put the crime beyond the reach of the FBI, is not something the available record answers. What the record shows is that he took the Judge Wood contract — if he took it — knowing what the FBI’s response would be to the assassination of a sitting federal judge. The investigation that followed was one of the largest and most expensive in the FBI’s history.
## The Killing of John H. Wood Jr.
John Howland Wood Jr. was born on March 31, 1916, in Rockport, Texas, into a family with deep roots in Texas civic life. His great-great-grandfather had settled in Texas in 1836 and founded the town of Rockport. His grandfather had been a popular Bexar County sheriff. His father was a lawyer. The family’s relationship to Texas law and order extended back to the state’s earliest history.
Wood attended the University of Texas School of Law, earned his degree in 1938, served as a Navy ensign in World War II, and spent three decades practicing law in San Antonio before President Richard Nixon nominated him to the federal bench in 1970. He was confirmed to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, based in San Antonio.
On the federal bench, he developed a reputation that made him deeply significant to the people whose cases came before him and deeply feared by those whose interests might be affected by his sentencing philosophy. He became known as “Maximum John” — a nickname that captures the essential quality of what made him matter to the drug trafficking community in Texas and along the southern border. He handed down maximum sentences. When the federal sentencing guidelines provided a range and he had discretion, he exercised that discretion consistently toward the upper end. He was not a lenient judge in cases involving narcotics.