Jamiel "Jimmy" Chagra was born on December 7, 1944, the middle son of a Lebanese-American rug merchant. By all accounts, Jimmy was the bad apple in the Chagra family of three sons; the other two grew up to be lawyers.
Jimmy idolized his older brother Lee, who graduated at the top of his law-school class at the University of Texas and was subsequently a flamboyant El Paso attorney who built a lucrative career defending drug dealers.
Jimmy, however, dropped out of high school in the early ‘60s. At first, he tried to run the family carpet business, but failed at that, so he got into smuggling. At first, it was Levis and gold and silver from Texas into Mexico. Then it was illegals from Mexico into Texas. Finally, he got into marijuana and cocaine.
Over time, Chagra smuggled drugs using Cessnas to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, then expanded into mother ships from Colombia. In the late 1970s, Chagra was reputedly the largest smuggler in the U.S. , moving upwards of three and a half million pounds of pot a year into the country.
Jimmy Chagra and his third wife Elizabeth moved to Las Vegas in 1978, where he was one of the highest rollers in town. He lived at Caesars Palace while his Vegas mansion was being built; there, he was known for million-dollar swings at the blackjack and crap tables. The long version of that part of the story is covered in our book, Of Rats and Men -- Oscar Goodman's Life from Mob Mouthpiece to Las Vegas Mayor.
The short version is as follows.
Chagra was arrested in 1978 and charged with drug trafficking. The federal judge in the case was John H. Wood; he was nicknamed "Maximum John" for his tendency to hand down long sentences for drug offenses.
Apparently, Wood's law clerk informed Lee Chagra, Jimmy's older brother and a Texas attorney known for defending drug dealers, about the judge's intention to put Jimmy away for life without parole. Jimmy allegedly paid $250,000, delivered by his wife Elizabeth, to Charles Harrelson to assassinate Judge Wood.
Charles Harrelson was actor Woody Harrelson's father and one of the three so-called "tramps" arrested in the railway yard behind Dealey Plaza shortly after President John Kennedy was shot; Harrelson at one time confessed to being involved in Kennedy's assassination, though he later retracted the confession.
Wood was shot to death in front of his house in San Antonio, Texas, on May 29, 1979.
Chagra was subsequently convicted on the drug-trafficking charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
While in the federal pen in Leavenworth, Kansas, Chagra apparently discussed Wood's murder with his brother Joe Chagra, fingering Harrelson for the hit.
Harrelson was arrested, charged, and convicted of murdering a federal judge (the first such assassination in 30 years); he was sentenced to two life terms without parole.
In addition, Joe Chagra was implicated in the conspiracy; he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years. Jimmy's wife Elizabeth, as well, was sent up for delivering the quarter-mil to Harrelson.
Defended by Oscar Goodman, Jimmy Chagra was acquitted of Wood's murder when Jimmy's brother Joe refused to implicate him. However, Jimmy cut a deal with federal prosecutors: He admitted to his involvement in the murder (as well as the attempted murder of a U.S. Attorney), in exchange for having Elizabeth released from prison before she died.
Well, Elizabeth Chagra was never released; she died in prison from ovarian cancer at age 41.
Lee Chagra, the oldest brother and attorney, was gunned down by armed robbers during a Christmas Eve robbery of his Texas law office in Texas in 1978. Reportedly, the murderers' haul of nearly a half-million dollars was money Jimmy Chagra owed mob boss Joe Bonnano for a drug deal gone bad.
Joe Chagra was released from a federal prison in Stafford, Arizona, in 1988 after serving six-and-a-half years on his 10-year bit. Joe was killed in an automobile accident in 1996 in El Paso. He was 50.
Jimmy Chagra was released from federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia, on Dec. 9, 2003, after serving 24 years of his 30-year sentence on the drug conviction. He was 59 at the time. After having assisted prosecutors in other crimes, Chagra reportedly disappeared into the federal Witness Protection Program.
Charles Harrelson attempted to escape from the federal pen in Atlanta, then was transferred to a Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He died on March 15, 2007, of what was reported to be natural causes, at age 68.
After Jimmy Chagra was released, he reportedly claimed that Harrelson didn't kill Wood. He said that he and Joe fingered Harrelson, knowing that their prison conversation was being tape-recorded by authorities, because Harrelson was blackmailing the Chagras about the judge's murder. For his part, Harrelson maintained that he never shot Wood. He claimed that he only admitted to it in order to collect the Chagras' $250,000.
Jimmy Chagra died on July 25, 2008, at age 63 of cancer in Mesa, Arizona. He's survived by seven children.
