Family Connections

Here’s a string of synchronicities related to a murder that involves three related men—the killer, his brother, and the killer’s son.

David Berg is a well known Texas lawyer who founded his own law firm and has won cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He’s also been a civil rights activist and a Clarence Darrow-style defender of the damned: disgraced politicians, grungy protesters and celebrities.

But the most dramatic case of his life, revealed in his memoir, Run, Brother, Run, occurred years before Berg became a lawyer. He and his brother, Alan Berg, were separated at a young age when their parents divorced. They reconnected when Alan moved to Houston after serving in the Navy. The two grew close and David admired his older brother, a salesman who seemingly could sell carpeting to anyone. Alan worked for his father’s carpeting company, but in 1968 he vanished.

“It’s very hard to explain except to say that when a loved one disappears you become detached from anything even remotely that could be described as a normal life,” Alan recently said in an interview on National Public Radio. “I couldn’t take an unlabored breath. My father was so distraught he would throw up. He would bolt from the middle of sales discussions and just leave and look for my brother. So it was devastating.”

David’s father finally hired a well established private detective named Claude Harrelson to search for Alan. Within three days, Harrelson reported that Alan had been murdered. The detective then asked for $3,000 to locate the body. He said he didn’t want to take the $5,000 reward already offered, because he was afraid he would be the killer’s next victim.

A short time later, police arrested the alleged killer, and astonishingly it was Claude Harrelson’s brother, Charles Harrelson.  Supposedly, Harrelson had been hired by a former employee of the carpeting company, who was starting his own business, and was in conflict with Alan’s father. But Charles Harrelson escaped conviction when testimony from the only witness, his wife, was ruled inadmissible because she was his spouse.

But Charles Harrelson would  be convicted of two other murders and he was suspected in at least 20 killings. He also once confess to involvement in the JFK assassination. He died in prison in 2007.

That’s a somewhat lengthy explanation that leads to the next synchro. In 1993, David Berg attended a Simon & Garfunkel reunion concert at Madison Square Garden. Sitting in the adjacent seat was actor Woody Harrelson, Charles Harrelson’s son.

Woody was raised by his mother and knew very little about his father until he was seven years old when he found out his father was accused of murder. That was 1968, the year Charles was accused of killing Alan Berg. As an adult, Woody often visited his father in prison and considered him a friend, more than a father – or a mass murderer.

One year after sitting next to David Berg in Madison Square Garden, Woody Harrelson starred as a crazed serial killer in Natural Born Killers. With that role, Harrelson lost his image of an actor who nice-guy roles. Possibly, his electrifying performance was abetted by his genetic link to an actual killer.