Van Horn

Within a day of that phone call to Joe, Harrelson was driving on Interstate 10, shooting cocaine into his arm through a hypodermic as he drove.

He was just outside Van Horn, a scrubby West Texas town, when he pulled over because he heard his muffler rattling.

Let me quote Cartwright again on what happened after Harrelson decided his muffler was beyond repair.

Quote, he decided to shoot it off with his 44 Magnum, but missed and shot out a rear tire on the Corvette instead.

Because in September of 1980, more than a year after the assassination, Harrelson did something extraordinary.

On a highway outside the West Texas town of Van Horn, high on cocaine, he came apart in public in a way that would give the FBI everything it needed.

The Van Horn standoff has become, over the years, one of the most infamous episodes in the entire Harrelson story.

In September of 1980, Charles Harrelson was driving a Corvette that belonged to his El Paso mistress, Virginia Farah.

He was, by every account, deep in a cocaine binge when police attempted to stop him on a highway outside Van Horn.

He refused to surrender.

He produced a handgun and held it to his own head, threatening to kill himself.

The second was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.