CRIME CHANNELS

Jurors convict two men of first-degree murder in shooting death near Delray Beach

 

A jury convicted two men of first-degree murder Tuesday in connection with the 2007 shooting death of John Blazevige, whose body was found outside his still idling pick-up truck near Delray Beach. It took three days for jurors to return the verdicts against Michael Marquardt and Louis Baccari at the end of the week-long trial. At times they seemed entrenched into two separate camps, but in the end they made the unanimous decision to return the convictions on murder and armed robbery for each man. "We were surprised, and disappointed," Baccari's defense attorney Andrew Strecker said. "We thought for sure it would have been a hung jury." More puzzling, Strecker said, were the jury's findings in their verdict. For example, they found that Baccari, the alleged triggerman, had not used a firearm during the robbery of Blazevige, but they convicted him of armed robbery anyhow. Prosecutors Sherri Collins and Aaron Papero built their case largely on the testimony of Antonio Bussey, who deputies originally said was responsible for the killing. His DNA was found on the murder weapon, but he told deputies that Marquardt had made him touch the gun after Baccari shot Blazevige during a bad drug deal, telling him that they were "all in it together." Bussey made a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a 21-year sentence. Hours before they returned the verdicts Tuesday, jurors asked to hear Bussey's testimony again. Baccari's and Marquardt's attorneys Strecker and Scott Skier asked Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath to also allow jurors to hear their entire cross examinations of Bussey, but the judge ruled that jurors only needed to hear a small portion of it. Colbath also denied defense attorneys' subsequent requests for a mistrial. Baccari's relatives outside the courtroom described him as a warm-hearted person and said they were convinced there was no way he would ever harm Blazevige, who had been his longtime friend and formerly lived in West Palm Beach. Prosecutors had said that Blazevige was addicted to prescription drugs and had met Baccari, Marquardt and Bussey to buy pills when he was killed. But defense attorneys, along with Baccari's family, say Bussey made a deal with prosecutors even though he knew he was the one who killed Blazevige in order to avoid the life sentences both Baccari and Marquardt will now inevitably receive as result of their convictions. Colbath set sentencing for Marquart, a landscape company owner who lived in Boynton Beach, and Baccari for April 2.

Mongols Motorcycle Gang Member Convicted of Murdering President of San Francisco Hells Angels

 

federal jury found Christopher Bryan Ablett, a/k/a “Stoney,” a member of the Modesto Chapter of the Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang, guilty of all four felonies with which he was charged including murder in aid of racketeering, assault with a deadly weapon in aid of racketeering, using a firearm during a crime of violence, and using a firearm causing murder during a crime of violence, United States Attorney Melinda Haag announced. The charges stemmed from the defendant’s gang-related murder of Mark “Papa” Guardado, the president of the San Francisco Chapter of the Hells Angels, on September 2, 2008, at 24th Street and Treat Avenue in the Mission District of San Francisco. Evidence at trial showed that Ablett traveled to San Francisco to visit a friend. He was armed with a foot-long military knife and a .357 magnum revolver. Ablett brought with him a Mongols full-patch vest and t-shirt that only a full member of the Mongols is allowed to wear. According to testimony from Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) gang expert Special Agent John Ciccone, and former Mongols undercover ATF Special Agent Darrin Kozlowski who infiltrated the gang, the Mongols are an organized criminal motorcycle gang whose primary rival is the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. When word traveled to Guardado that the defendant was wearing a Mongols patch shirt in a bar in the Mission, Guardado went to the street outside the bar and approached Ablett. A fight broke out during which Ablett stabbed Guardado four times and shot him twice, killing him. According to the testimony of FBI Special Agent Jacob Millspaugh, the case agent, the defendant’s phone records showed that he spent the next several hours calling people who were identified as members of the Mongols—showing that he was reaching out as part of the Mongols communication network. The jury rejected the defendant’s defenses of self-defense, defense of his friends, and heat of passion after the defendant took the stand and testified. The jury also found that the defendant murdered Guardado to maintain or increase his position in the Mongols gang, and that the Mongols engaged in racketeering activity. Ablett is scheduled to be sentenced on May 15, 2012. He faces a possible sentence of three terms of life in prison plus 10 mandatory consecutive years, a $1 million fine, and five years of supervised release. Specifically, for the charge of murder in aid of racketeering, in violation of 18 United StatesC. § 1959, Ablett faces a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole. For the charge of assault with a deadly weapon in aid of racketeering, in violation of 18 United StatesC. § 1959, Ablett faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. For the charge of using a firearm during a crime of violence, in violation of 18 United StatesC. § 924(c), Ablett faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. And for the charge of using a firearm causing murder during a crime of violence, in violation of 18 United StatesC. § 924(j), Ablett faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the United States Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 United StatesC. § 3553. The case was prosecuted by former Assistant United States Attorney Christine Wong, Assistant United States Attorneys Kathryn Haun, Wilson Leung and William Frentzen, paralegal specialist Lili ArauzHaase, legal techs Marina Ponomarchuk, Daniel Charlier-Smith, and Ponly Tu, all of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Violent Crime Section of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, and the San Francisco Police Department.

Federal agents bust heroin operation at Stillwell Ave. auto shop in the Bronx, arrest 2, seize drugs and gun

 

Federal narcotics agents busted a heroin operation at a Bronx auto shop this month, severing a million dollar supply chain that stretched to Long Island, court records indicate. They raided Mobile Creations, a luxury car customizing shop, on Feb. 7 after nabbing a Suffolk County drug dealer attempting to sell 68 grams of heroin. The dealer ratted out his supplier, who gave up his source at Mobile, at 1631 Stillwell Ave. near Pelham Parkway in Morris Park, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court. The drug task force officers had the supplier set up a meet with James Gainer, who allegedly operated out of the Bronx shop, and arrested the suspect with 500 grams of heroin he planned to sell for $28,500, according to the complaint. They also snatched Mobile Creations manager Robert Bishun after finding 1.5 kilograms of cocaine and 250 grams of heroin hidden in a vehicle at the shop, and $40,000 in cash concealed in a Mercedes-Benz sedan registered to Bishun. The officers seized a .40 caliber handgun, loose ammunition and $30,000 cash from the shop’s office, along with pay-and-owe sheets detailing millions of dollars in narcotics transactions. The complaint charges both men with drug dealing and possession and Bishun with possessing a firearm linked to trafficking. Four drug grinders and a scale were also found in the shop, according to the complaint. The Suffolk County supplier told the agents he met Gainer at Mobile Creations to buy at least 100 grams of heroin a week. Repair shops and auto parts stores line Stillwell Ave., a quiet street that abuts Metro-North Railroad tracks. The facade of Mobile Creations sports colorful signs featuring Bentleys, Range Rovers and other luxury cars. "I just work here 10-6," said Mike James, a mechanic at Mobile Creations, on Monday. "This is a legit shop." "The shop has been around for over 10 years and they do high-end customization of cars," said Javier Solano, Bishun’s lawyer. "They do Lamborghini-style doors. They do $25,000 rims, $30,000 audio systems." Bishun and Gainer are being held without bail and have not been indicted yet, said Solano. Gainer’s lawyer, Lawrence DiGiansante, declined to comment.

2 Dead, 5 Wounded In Chicago Drive-by Shooting

Police in Chicago are investigating a drive-by shooting that killed two people and left five others wounded. Police officials say the shooting happened just before 7 p.m. Sunday outside a liquor store on the city's South Side. Police say a vehicle pulled up outside the store and someone inside the vehicle opened fire on a crowd of people outside. Authorities say 19-year-old Jamal Harris died inside the store, while 61-year-old Gregory Glinsey was found dead outside. Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford says both men suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Police officials say the five surviving victims were all teen-age boys. Four were treated for their wounds and released, while a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the stomach remains hospitalized.

Fatal Detroit shooting of baby gang-related, police say

 

Diamond Salter said she was asleep in her west-side home early Monday morning when shots rang out. As her son, Delric Miller IV, dozed nearby on a living room couch, bullets pierced windows and walls, striking the 9-month-old. "I grabbed my baby and wrapped him up in a blanket … and ran in the basement," said Salter, 19, who also has a one-year-old daughter who was staying with a relative. "I thought he was asleep because that's how I left him. I thought he was alive … I started feeling for him, and he wouldn't wake up." Someone fired 37 rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle at about 4:30 a.m. into the home in the 8400 block of Greenview Avenue, near Tireman. Police Chief Ralph Godbee said the shooting was gang-related. Godbee said police have details about the shooting he didn't want to release to the public, but that investigators have a handle on what happened. "We know who they are," Godbee said. "This was not a random incident." Salter said there were eight people in the house, including three children, when the shooting took place. She called the incident "senseless" and said she doesn't know why someone opened fire on their home. Salter added that she's no stranger to violence; she was inside her home at a different location years ago when a similar crime occurred: Someone started shooting at the house, and her sister, who was also inside, was killed. "I got to be strong, because I still have a daughter to live for," Salter said. The boy's maternal grandmother, Cynthia Wilkins, 39, added: "They killed a precious baby." Delric was rushed to Sinai-Grace Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival following the shooting. Police believe that shots could have been fired from a van after a witness reported that a light-colored van sped away from the scene. "It's an act of God that more people weren't killed," Godbee said. A pink and purple motorized cart sits in front of the home and shattered glass glittered on the front porch Monday morning. Neighbors said there were usually 10 to 15 people living in the home over the past year, including three to four children. The boy's father, Delric Miller III, was not at the home when the shooting began. He arrived early Monday afternoon and stayed for approximately 20 minutes. He said his son loved to play with his toy hammer. The last gift Miller gave his son was a multicolored teething ring for Christmas, he said. When Miller left the home Monday afternoon he said, "I need some time for myself." Neighbor Diane Fryst, 67, was coming out of the bathroom when she heard the shots. Fryst said she was worried about ricochets, so she immediately laid down on top of her two rescue collie dogs to shield them from harm. "The shooting didn't last more than a few minutes," said Fryst, who has lived in her home (formerly owned by her parents) for 66 years. "It sounded like an AK-47 because of the 'pop, pop, pop' sound that it made. I've heard shots around here before so you get to recognize the sound." According to Fryst almost a dozen people, including four to five children, lived in the home where the shooting occurred. "I've never seen any trouble over there before, no violence," Fryst said. This is the second killing of a youngster in Detroit within the last three weeks. Twelve-year-old Kadejah Davis was shot to death on Jan. 31 when a gunman fired through the front door of the home in which she was living with her mother. Police arrested Joshua Brown, 19, and his mother, Heather Brown, in the incident. According to police, Joshua Brown came to the home of Kadejah's mother, Amanda Talton, on Ferguson Street and demanded the return of a cellphone Talton had found earlier at her tax preparer's office. Police said he fired shots through the door after Talton told him she didn't have the phone and closed the door. Brown has been charged with first-degree murder, assault with intent to murder and felony firearm. His mother, Heather, has been charged with accessory after the fact. Godbee has recently unveiled initiatives aimed at stemming the violence. Earlier this month, he moved his department to a "virtual precincts" model, in which officers who manned the city's police precincts were reassigned to patrol.

Inmate Massacre Highlights Mexico Jail Corruption

 

Nine guards have confessed to helping Zetas drug gangsters escape from prison before other Zetas slaughtered 44 rival inmates, a state official said late Monday, underlining the enormous corruption inside Mexico's overcrowded, underfunded prisons. The top officials and as many as 18 guards at the Apodaca prison in northern Mexico had been detained under suspicion that they may have helped 30 Zetas escape during the confusion of a riot early Sunday in which 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel were bludgeoned and knifed to death. Nuevo Leon state public security spokesman Jorge Domene Zambrano said nine of the guards confessed to aiding the escape. He said it appeared the breakout happened before the deadly fight. The massacre in this northern state was one of the worst prison killings in Mexico in at least a quarter-century and exposed another weak institution that President Felipe Calderon is relying on to fight his drug war. Mexico has only six federal prisons, and so sends many of its dangerous cartel suspects and inmates to ill-prepared, overcrowded state penitentiaries. Drug trafficking, weapons possession and money laundering are all considered federal crimes in Mexico. "The Mexican prison system has collapsed," said Raul Benitez, a professor at Mexico's National Autonomous University who studies security issues. "The prisons in some states are controlled by organized crime." AP A child yells out for her father as she... View Full Caption An increase in organized crime, extortion, drug trafficking and kidnapping has swelled Mexico's prison population almost 50 percent since 2000. But the government has built no new federal prisons since Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels when he took office in late 2006, leaving existing jails overcrowded. Calderon's administration has renovated three existing state prisons to use as federal lockups. Built to hold about 185,000 inmates, the prison system nationwide now holds more than 45,000 above that capacity, according to figures from the National Public Safety System. Of the 47,000 federal inmates in the country, about 29,000 are held in state prisons. That has drawn complaints from Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina and other state governors, who say their jails aren't equipped to hold members of powerful and highly organized drug cartels. The federal government counters that none of the escapes or mass killings have occurred at federal lockups, and it cites corruption on the state level, not overcrowding, as the main cause of the deaths and escapes. "The constant element has been corruption in the control processes" at the prisons, said Patricio Patino, assistant secretary for the penitentiary system. Prison employees say guards are underpaid, making them more likely to take bribes. And even honest guards are vulnerable to coercion: Many live in neighborhoods where street gangs and drug cartels are active, making it easy to target their families with threats. The same can be said for Mexico's municipal police forces, another weak flank in Calderon's attack on organized crime. Thousands of local officers — often, entire forces at a time — have been fired, detained or placed under investigation for aiding drug gangs. "Yesterday, Apodaca, tomorrow, any other (prison)," columnist Carlos Puig wrote in the newspaper Milenio.

Dead gangster's assets seized

 

Anti-mafia authorities impounded real estate, automobiles and financial assets from Domenico Campisi, who was shot dead last June in an ambush in the southern Calabria region. He was 44 years old. Campisi was a member of the 'Ndrangheta crime network based in Calabria, considered Italy's most violent and wealthy mafia groups. It was reportedly one of the first time police went after assets of a deceased mafioso.

U.S. Ordered to Pay $1 Million to Family of Man Murdered by Gangster Whitey Bulger

 

The federal government went too far in shielding an FBI informant from the 1970s through the 1990s, not only tipping him off about state and local police investigations, but even covering up his involvement in several murders. Last week a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Appeals Court in Boston ruled that the family of one of those murder victims, Louis Litif, who was murdered by Boston organized crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger in 1980, was entitled to government compensation of $1.15 million.   Litif, a bookmaker facing murder charges, offered to help the Boston police with a drug conspiracy case against Bulger, who was already secretly informing on the rival Patriarca crime family to the FBI. About three weeks after his offer, Litif was found dead in the trunk of his car. The First Circuit concluded that “there was a pattern of FBI leaks of informants to Bulger,” mainly by Bulger’s FBI handler, John Connolly, who “was present when Litif’s plans to cooperate and incriminate Bulger were made known to the Boston Police, …[and who] leaked the names of between six and twelve informants to” Bulger, at least three of whom, including Litif, were later found dead.   In a similar case last year, the First Circuit ruled that the families of Bulger murder victims Michael Donahue and Brian Halloran could not sue the government for their deaths, because even though FBI leaks led to their murders, the two-year statute of limitations on lawsuits against the government had run out. The difference was the large amount of publicly available information linking the FBI to the Donahue and Halloran murders, compared to the lack of such information in the Litif case.   Former FBI agent Connolly is currently in prison, convicted of racketeering and obstruction of justice in 2002, and of second degree murder in 2008, although his wife runs a website maintaining his innocence. Bulger, who went on the lam in December 1994 and spent 12 years on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, was captured on June 22, 2011, and is facing charges for 19 murders.

Harrelson, 50, is one of Hollywood's most interesting actors.

Woody Harrelson: 'He wasn’t the greatest husband. Or father. But...'
I'm not looking forward to meeting Woody Harrelson. I'm a bit scared, to be honest. I've just seen Rampart, his new movie in which he plays a racist, psychopathic police officer. Harrelson is terrifying in it. Terrifying when he's chasing villains, bullying juniors, beating the crap out of innocents, stalking the mothers of his children. He's even terrifying when he's making love. His body, specially slimmed-down and muscled-up for the part, pulses with a tension permanently on the cusp of violence.

Rampart
Production year: 2011
Country: USA
Runtime: 102 mins
Directors: Oren Moverman
Cast: Anne Heche, Ben Foster, Cynthia Nixon, Ice Cube, Ned Beatty, Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver, Woody Harrelson
More on this film
It's not as if this is a one-off – there's his sickening Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers ("At birth, I was cast into a flaming pit of scum"), deranged killer Tallahassee in Zombieland, Charlie in the forthcoming Seven Psychopaths whose title says it all, and we've barely started. Even when he plays it nice, like he did in Cheers all those years ago as dopey bartender Woody, there's something in the goofy smile that makes you worry – for his sanity, and your safety. And it's not as if the weird stuff is just confined to acting – there are numerous stories of him hitting photographers or police officers or taxi doors.

It's Sunday afternoon and when I arrive at the London hotel, there's no sign of Harrelson. His publicist apologises and says the bad news is he's still in bed, but the good news is he's woken up. A few minutes later he arrives, looking a little the worse for wear. He stretches, gulps from a hefty bottle of water, and drawls a lazy Texan apology. "I tied one on last night," he says, "I drank too much." Where did he go? "We went to a few places… but I'm waking up now and everything seems nice and, erm, Victorian in this room." Harrelson takes another swig, and as he does, I'm again thinking of the crazed cop in Rampart.


Even when Harrelson plays it nice, like he did in Cheers all those years ago as dopey bartender Woody, there’s something in the goofy smile that makes you worry.
Doesn't it take a lot out of him making a film like that – after all, he's in virtually every scene, inflicting damage of one sort or another? "It was an intense time," he says. "The problem was being seeped in paranoia because that was so much the attitude of the character. That really affected me because I don't normally do paranoia." He pauses. "Well, sometimes, of course. But it's an emotion I try not to affect myself with. I had weird shit happening." What weird shit? "Not stuff I'd care to talk about. But being aggressive and strange with friends who had not been offensive, but I took it as offensive. A couple of friends said, 'I can't wait till you're done with this role because I know this ain't you doing it.' "

What messed with his head more, Rampart or Natural Born Killers? The latter film, directed by Oliver Stone, was blamed for a series of copycat killings after it was released in 1994. "I'd say this, but then when I was doing Natural Born Killers I was doing some weird shit, too." I tell him I can't bear watching it; that it freaks me out. He smiles. "Really, it's a misunderstood romantic comedy." And now his smile is truly worrying. "It's a dark comedy." Pah. I tell him I reckon Natural Born Killers features more Hollywood headcases than any film made – Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Sizemore, Tommy Lee Jones, Juliette Lewis. "I know, it was a mad little time. After we'd been working on it for a while, I felt I was the sanest guy in it. I really did. This has never happened… I'm the sanest guy in the whole deal." He whoops at the very idea. Who was the most insane? "Tom and Juliette went a little crazy. Yeah. I felt in a way Oliver encouraged madness. He needed to create that mayhem because that's what was on the screen."

Harrelson, 50, is one of Hollywood's most interesting actors. It's not only the roles he plays (he has often worked outside the mainstream with directors such as Michael Winterbottom in Welcome To Sarajevo and Milos Forman in The People Vs Larry Flynt) and the way he plays them, it's his whole backstory – disturbing family history, sexcapades of youth, militant veganism, political campaigning (not all of it for the legalisation of marijuana). It's the multiple contradictions and what-ifs that make him fascinating.

He could, for instance, easily have ended up as a minister of the church. His mother is a religious prestbyterian and so was he through his childhood. Did he see it as a calling? "I did a little bit." He studied theology alongside drama at university, and it was only then that his belief system started to collapse. "I remember Dr Matthews; a great teacher teaching progressive ideas. I started seeing through the way the Bible got constructed. For example, there were two angels outside the tomb when Jesus rolled back the stone and rose from the dead. Why? Because in Jewish law there had to be two witnesses for it to be legal. But when it was first written it was one, so little things like that."

Talk to Harrelson and you might think his reverse Damascene conversion was the first significant event in his life. But it wasn't – by a long stretch. In the past, he's been surprisingly private about his family life. He would talk about the love for his mother, his two brothers, growing up in Texas and Ohio, and it seemed a pretty regular childhood. I've read that Harrelson's father was a contract killer but assume it's an urban myth – one of those apocryphal stories actors come up with when bored. I ask him how he got on with his father. "Pretty good," he says. "They separated young, he was not around too much." Then nothing. He ended up in prison? "Yeaah," he says slowly as if chewing on a tobacco leaf. "Yes. That explains his absence." He laughs wryly, and waits for the subject to change.

You're the first star I've interviewed whose dad was a professional killer, I say. No comment. I tell him I recently interviewed a woman whose son became a serial killer, and that she had been suicidal as a result. He looks interested. "Ah man, that must have been devastating for her. You never really think of that shit when you hear these stories," he says quietly. He tells me a bit more about his father. "I think they separated when I was seven. But he was gone a lot before that, in prison. Away and back. Away and back. It wasn't like he was there all the time prior to that."

"They call him a contract killer in the cuttings," I say. "Is that a glamorisation or simplification of what he did?" Harrelson chews some more on the imaginary tobacco. "Yeah, I mean that's probably a fair, erm…" He stops. Fair job summary? "Yeah, job summary. I was 11 or 12 when I heard his name mentioned on a car radio. I was in the car waiting for a lady who was picking me up from school, helping my mum, and anyway I was listening to the radio and it was talking about Charles V Harrelson and his trial for murder and blah blah blah blah and I'm sitting there thinking there can't be another Charles V Harrelson. I mean, that's my dad! It was a wild realisation. Then the woman got in the car and saw my face and realised something was up. She was a very kind lady."

He says he went home, in shock, and tried to talk to his mother about it. But there was little to say – the truth was out there, on the radio and in the papers. Did your mum know what he did for a living? "Oh yeah, she was pretty hip to all that." Did she love him? "Well, no, she was well out of love with him. You know, I've got to give her credit because she never really soured us on him, she didn't talk negative about him, never, ever. And she could have – he wasn't the greatest husband. Or father. But..."

Charles V Harrelson was jailed in 1973 for the murder of grain dealer Sam Degelia Jr. He was sentenced to 15 years, but released after five for good behaviour. In 1981 he was given two life sentences for the assassination of district judge John H Wood – the first murder of an American judge in the 20th century. At times, he also claimed to have assassinated John F Kennedy.

It was in 1981, after he heard his father had been arrested for killing the judge, that Woody tried to get in touch with him, aged 20. Were they ever reconciled? "Oh yeah, oh yeah. I tried for years to get him out. To get him a new trial." Why did you think he deserved a new trial? Harrelson stops, and thinks about it as if for the first time. "I don't know he did deserve a new trial… just being a son trying to help his dad. Then I spent a couple of million beating my head against the wall." A couple of million, I say, astonished. "Easily. Lawyers upon lawyers…"

Do you see much of your father in you? "Quite a bit… I was born on his birthday. They have a thing in Japan where they say if you're born on your father's birthday, you're not like your father, you are your father, and it's so weird when I would sit and talk with him. It was just mind-blowing to see all the things he did just like me." Such as? "Idiosyncratic things. The way he laughed. The face, very similar."

Did it scare you that you were so similar? "No, no." He laughs, uncertainly.

Charles V Harrelson died in prison in 2007. Were they friends by then? "Yeah, we got along pretty good. When you can't hang out and go to a pub, you know what I mean, it's hard."


Harrelson in Rampart, his latest film. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex
It's difficult to imagine that Harrelson's character has not been shaped to some degree by his father – the early religion, the subsequent hell-raising, the campaigning (against environmental devastation, testing on monkeys, unethical energy, defence spending). He says if it were down to him, he'd scrap the defence budget and reallocate it. "The first thing I'd do is buy up every bit of rainforest or ancient forest – you could buy it all up with $2.5tn, no problem."

It's funny that you make such a convincing redneck, I say, when you are famous for your lefty-liberal views. He grins, and says it wasn't always like that. "I was a freshman in college in 1980, the year that Reagan was elected, and I went around badgering people to vote for him." What? Why? "I was part of the Young Republicans and bought all the bullshit. I'm embarrassed to tell you this because I really think he's one of the worst presidents in history. I was 18 when he went into office. Then almost immediately I noticed these cuts to the aid that I had to go to school – Reagan's first thing was to cut all the social shit."

By his early 20s, Harrelson had long given up on God and Reagan – he was starring in Cheers, had been introduced to environmental politics by fellow actor Ted Danson, and was having a wild time. He had a voracious appetite for pretty much everything. At one point, he was quoted as saying he slept with three women a day. Was that true? "No, no, no, no, not at all." He realises he might be protesting slightly too much, and starts again. "There was definitely a time of, what would you call it... of Satyricon. A time of definite excess, but I like to think everybody in that situation is probably going to go through that. I've always believed the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." He goof-grins. "It's been one of those thoughts that consoles me."

One of the many surprising things about Harrelson is that he has been with the same woman for 22 years. You wouldn't expect it, I say. "None of my friends did either. It is kind of shocking." Then he shocks me even more by telling the lovely, soppy story of how he and his wife got together. Laura was his assistant, and it was only over time he realised he was in love with her. "I went to Africa and I'm sitting around the fire out there, in Nairobi, thinking about her, fantasising about her." He looks embarrassed. "She's my assistant. It's baaaad! I came back from Africa and I couldn't even say I was in love with her because I was so nervous. I'd been sitting there with a guitar, so I wrote this song to her, and I sang it to her and at the end of it she goes, 'Woody, I've been in love with you for the last two and a half years.' Then I picked her up and carried her in." He and Laura finally married in 2008.

Harrelson takes out his phone to show me photos of Laura and his three daughters. "They are the best thing going. The oldest has just gone off to college. It was one of the single most difficult experiences of my life when it was time to separate and she walked off to the dorm and we drove away. I bawled my eyes out."

Twelve years ago the family moved to Hawaii. He'd been introduced to America's 50th state by the country singer Willie Nelson. "I went to see Willie play and at the end up comes Annie his wife and she goes, 'Willie wants to hang with you on the bus.' We open the door, and I see through the fog this guy holding up a big fatty. So I go in and start hanging with the Willie and I don't know this is going to become one of my best buddies in life." Nelson invited him to his home in Hawaii, Harrelson and Laura discovered Maui, the remote part of the island, and that was that. For three years he didn't make a movie – he just got on with remaking a life, hanging with the Willie on his porch, strumming guitar, smoking big fatties and writing (his play, Bullet For Adolf, co-written by Frankie Hyman, premiered in Toronto in 2003).

Are the hell-raising days over, then, or is he going to walk out of here and smack another photographer? "Oh yeah. I will never, ever even touch a cameraman. Never." It's funny how your sweet and scary sides happily coexist, I say. "Yeah. Heh! Heh! Heh! Heh!" And now he really does laugh like crazy. "Hey, man, the paparazzi, they will make you angry, that's their whole thing. It's a better picture. I've had a lot of expensive lessons on that score." With anger or the paparazzi? "The combination." Did something change in you? "No, I still have emotions bubble up, but I think I probably have a better rein on them. My whole thing now is I put my head down and keep walking."

A man comes into the room carrying two huge green smoothies.

"Hey, buddy!" Harrelson says.

"Hey, buddy!" the man says.

"This is Simon," Harrelson says. "This is Stan the man." He tastes the smoothie. "That is just awesome, the best smoothie on earth. Lots of berries, kale, kiwi, plum, pineapple, cinnamon, hemp seed." Harrelson eats mainly raw food. "There's a spoon right there, have some."

So I do, and it tastes wonderful.

"Wo, I can see you transforming in front of me," Harrelson says.

"It's good. Did you say that was kiwi in it?" I say.

"No," says Stan the man. "Ki-weed!"

"I forgot to tell you, it's spiked!" Harrelson says. And the pair of them fall about laughing.

As he finishes his smoothie, I say to Harrelson that he seems to have had a pretty amazing life. He nods and slurps. "It's quite a dichotomy," he says and he tells me one last story. "I was in a taxi the other night, and we started talking about life and the taxi driver goes, 'Chaos and creativity go together. If you lose one per cent of your chaos, you lose your creativity.' I said that's the most brilliant thing I've heard. I needed to hear that years ago."