In the world of action movies, every character has some kind of crazy backstory, but there are only so many times a character can turn out to be the son of an infamous assassin or a child tragically orphaned by the mob and raised in an inner city dive bar before the movie officially becomes a comedy. Then you find out that those things happened to Woody Harrelson and Dylan McDermott in real life, and you realize actors' lives are sometimes way crazier than any character they played in a movie ... 
 
 5 Woody Harrelson's Dad Was a Contract Killer Woody Harrelson's Dad Was a Contract Killer 
 
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 Woody Harrelson has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, with such memorable roles as Woody on Cheers and a recent turn as a detective on True Detective. He also frequently plays Jesse Eisenberg's stepfather. Woody is such a likeable, laid-back guy that it's hard to believe his father was a cold-blooded contract killer who murdered people at the behest of criminals. 
 
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 We had our money on long-haired Deadhead marijuana activist at 3-1 odds. 
 
 Charles Harrelson walked out on his wife and three sons in 1968, which was only the third worst thing he did that year. After being acquitted for a murder he probably committed thanks to a bush league prosecutor, Charles was hired to kill another person so the victim's business partner could collect insurance money. Amazingly, he got off again, this time on a mistrial, because Texas' judicial system in the '60s was apparently the equivalent of a first-turn guess in a game of Clue. Let that sink in -- Charles Harrelson killed two people in one year and got away with it both times. 
 
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 The state got their shit together and tried Charles again five years later, sentencing him to 15 years in jail. Prison straightened Charles out, and he dedicated the rest of his life to his family. This is another way of saying that he got out of prison after serving only five years of his sentence and immediately murdered a judge. The parole board was batting a thousand that year. ||||| A Texas teen killed his girlfriend's parents when he was thirteen. Now, after five years in prison, he is getting released. Here's what you need to know about the juvenile's crime. (Monica Akhtar,Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post) 
 
 When police arrived at the yellow-brick house in Garland, Tex., on the afternoon of Aug. 17, 2010, they found Alan Nevil lying near death in a neighbor’s yard. He had been shot five times. One bullet was lodged in his throat. His wife, Darlene, was found dead inside the house, shot in the back and head. 
 
 Despite the blood in his mouth, Alan managed to gargle the name of their attacker. 
 
 It was his stepdaughter’s 13-year-old boyfriend, he said. 
 
 Minutes later, police pulled up outside the boyfriend’s house, just a few blocks away. There, they found Darlene’s 12-year-old daughter and her boyfriend — having celebratory sex. 
 
 When Alan Nevil succumbed to his injuries 16 days later, the young couple was charged with capital murder. Adults convicted of the charge can be executed. Charged as juveniles, though, the youths faced a maximum of 40 years in prison. The boyfriend and girlfriend both pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 28 years and 20 years, respectively. Neither has been publicly named because they were juveniles. 
 
 “I feel nothing but disgust for you,” Alan’s sister, Fran Nevil Cawley, said to the girl in court. 
 
 Less than six years later, the Nevil family’s disgust has suddenly deepened. 
 
 On Wednesday, a Dallas judge ordered the boy released when he turns 19 next month, the Dallas Morning News reported. 
 
 The ruling was an astonishing — and for the Nevil family, terrifying — twist on the 2010 double murder. Judge Andrea Martin could have transferred him to adult prison for 10 years. Instead, he will now face nothing more than parole and anger-management classes. 
 
 Juvenile justice experts and officials said the boy had turned over a new leaf behind bars, accepting responsibility for the crime, getting his GED and becoming a role model for other inmates at his juvenile-detention center. 
 
 But the ruling left the Nevils furious, and fearful. 
 
 “He gets to see his mom, and my dad is in a box,” Susan Nevil told Fox4, displaying Alan Nevil’s ashes. “This is how my kids get to visit their grandfather. And it’s just not right.” 
 
 She added that she has dreams in which her father’s murderer tracks her down and kills her, too. 
 
 The judge’s ruling raises questions about the age at which juveniles can be charged as adults — in Texas, it is 14 — as well as the severity of sentences they should face when convicted. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18. Some scientists say adolescents’ brains aren’t as capable of controlling impulses and understanding long-term consequences as adult brains. In the past decade, many states have moved away from life sentences for minors. 
 
 [States are getting rid of life sentences for minors. And most of them are red states.] 
 
 For the Nevils, no amount of expert testimony can justify the judge’s ruling. 
 
 “Five years?” shouted Alan Nevil’s son, Alan Jr., as he left the courtroom, according to the Morning News. “For capital murder?” 
 
 DFW: Teen murderer to be released on parole https://t.co/pJ1isG5wNa — FOX 4 NEWS (@FOX4) May 18, 2016 
 
 The saga began June 6, 2009, when the girl joined her mother, Darlene, and her stepfather, Alan, in Garland, a suburb of Dallas. 
 
 “We decorated the house in Garland, bought a cake and welcomed you with open arms,” Fran Nevil Cawley, Alan’s sister, would later tell the girl in court, according to the Morning News. 
 
 But problems quickly appeared. The girl claimed her father back in Ohio had thrown away her clothes and ice-skating medals, but her belongings later arrived. 
 
 It wouldn’t be the last time the girl lied. 
 
 In the spring of 2010, the girl began dating a boy who lived nearby. He had had a hard life, psychiatrists would later testify in court. One of his uncles had murdered a family member. Another uncle had been killed. And he watched his mother endure domestic violence. He began smoking marijuana at age 10 and became involved with a gang. 
 
 But the two seemed normal together. Neighbors saw them walking around the neighborhood, holding hands. 
 
 “I just thought they were two teenagers having a teenage relationship,” neighbor Michelle Campbell told the Associated Press. 
 
 [‘The thanks you gave them was murder’: Teen pleads guilty to killing couple that raised him] 
 
 Jasmine Sepulveda, a 14-year-old who lived across the street from the girl, detected something odd about the relationship. 
 
 “She was a really cool person but when she hung out with him, her boyfriend, that’s when she got weird,” Sepulveda told the AP. “She didn’t want to talk to me anymore.” 
 
 The Nevils didn’t approve of the relationship. In July, a month before the murders, the girl ran away from home. When she returned, she began to plot to kill her mother and stepfather, according to police. 
 
 “Her parents had grounded her to where she couldn’t see [the boy],” Garland police detective Bruce Marshall testified in court, according to the Morning News. “And she told me, ‘The final straw, Detective Marshall, is when they took away my coloring books. I knew they had to die.’ ” 
 
 The girl was smarter than the boy and easily manipulated him, she told Marshall. Over several weeks that summer, she tried to persuade her boyfriend to kill her parents. When she first showed him Alan’s gun, he wouldn’t touch it, Marshall testified. When the Nevils insisted that the two break up, the boy was furious, according to text messages later introduced as evidence. 
 
 Finally, the girl lied to her boyfriend. 
 
 “She told [the boy] she was pregnant and that Alan Nevil tried to sexually abuse her,” Marshall testified, according to the Morning News. 
 
 It wasn’t true, but it worked: The boy agreed to the plot. 
 
 On Aug. 17, he was waiting for Darlene when she came home from work. The boy shot her twice, killing her, then waited for her husband. When Alan arrived, the boy shot him five times. When the gun jammed, he used it to beat Alan over the head. 
 
 But Alan clung to life, crawling out a window and toward a neighbor’s house for help. When police arrived, he told them his stepdaughter’s boyfriend had shot him. 
 
 Police officers found the couple having sex and arrested them. Meanwhile, Alan underwent surgery. For a while it appeared as if he would live. Whenever he regained consciousness, he would ask for Darlene. 
 
 “We’d tell him Darlene was dead and he’d start fighting and they would put him under again,” Alan Jr. told the Morning News. 
 
 [Teen murder suspect kills himself in front of mom, who made him surrender to police] 
 
 When Alan Sr. suddenly died after 16 days in the hospital, it seemed as if his stepdaughter and her boyfriend might spend most of their lives in prison. 
 
 “They deserve everything they’ve got coming,” neighbor Juan Garcia Jr. told the AP. “Kids nowadays, they don’t think twice.” 
 
 The boy admitted to shooting the Nevils because his girlfriend told him to, according to police. 
 
 “He was cooperative. He took responsibility almost immediately,” Marshall testified Wednesday, according to the Morning News. 
 
 But the boy’s first couple of years in juvenile detention did not go smoothly. He was involved in 64 incidents, 21 of which required him to be moved to a security unit, officials testified. Six were major offenses, including assault and possession of a controlled substance. 
 
 Those same officials said the boy had matured, avoiding trouble over the past two years, earning his GED, learning carpentry and working as a groundskeeper. 
 
 “Having a job has built his confidence,” testified Kathryn Hallmark, a psychiatrist who runs the therapy program at the boy’s center. “He can be at peace while being focused on his work.” 
 
 Did the court provide a just ruling? "It's just not right." – Susan Nevil, daughter of Alan Nevil pic.twitter.com/fzgXRWrJ51 — Victoria Upton (@_VictoriaUpton) May 18, 2016 
 
 But the judge’s decision to release the boy next month, rather than send him to adult prison for up to 10 years, is unlikely to give the Nevil family any peace. 
 
 “I’m going to be graduating in 11 days and my grandpa isn’t going to see me walk the stage,” Destiyne Nevil, Alan’s granddaughter, who is the same age as the teen murderer, told Fox4. “We didn’t get the outcome that we wanted. The guy, he only served 6 years of a 28-year sentence and I don’t think that was just for my family.” 
 
 “They’re considering him a good candidate for parole, well my dad was a good candidate to live,” added her mother, Susan. “My kids are still suffering. I’m suffering. My brother is suffering. It’s just not right.” 
 
 Adding to the family’s agony is the fact that Alan’s stepdaughter — convicted five years ago of killing him — could also soon be released. 
 
 She faces her own hearing later this year. 
 
 Correction: The original version of this story said the accused boy would have been eligible for the death penalty had he been a year older. As the story points out, the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for those under 18 in 2005. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Pregnant woman executed for refusing to get an abortion, family says 
 
 Georgia’s alleged ‘Dr. Death’ indicted on three counts of murder after 36 of his patients die 
 
 Why students and their teacher won’t be disciplined for using cat intestines as a jump rope 
 
 ‘It wasn’t letting go’: Woman rushed to hospital with shark attached to her arm ||||| Janice Summerfield (Photo: Family photo) 
 
 A mother's confession about a child's death a half-century ago is finally giving a Battle Creek woman and her brothers some peace. 
 
 But Janice Summerfield's acknowledgment that she was responsible for the death of her infant son in 1961 leaves his surviving siblings wondering if she also killed their twin sisters years later. 
 
 "I killed that baby," Summerfield told the Battle Creek Enquirer. "My mind wasn't right. I killed that baby. I didn't know what I was doing." 
 
 Summerfield, 77, is in a nursing home in Kalamazoo but lived with her family in Tekonsha at the time of the boy's death. 
 
 Paula Gastian, 54, of Battle Creek, one of Summerfield's three surviving children, contacted the Calhoun County Sheriff Department in September after her mother told her how 8-month-old William Earl Summerfield III died. 
 
 She told Detective Steve Hinkley her mother had confessed to smothering her brother and then blamed another brother for the death. 
 
 His death certificate listed the cause as aspiration of regurgitated formula. 
 
 William Earl Summerfield III's death certificate listed the cause as aspiration of regurgitated formula. (Photo: Michigan.com) 
 
 His body is now in a morgue at Western Michigan University where pathologists and anthropologists are trying to determine how he died. His tiny casket was exhumed Oct. 16 from a grave marked only with a number at Oakridge Cemetery in Marshall. 
 
 Caitlin Vogelsberg, a Michigan State University graduate student, and Jered Cornelison, an assistant professor of pathology at Western Michigan University, lift a coffin bearing the body of William Summerfield III from a grave in Marshall’s Oakridge Cemetery. (Photo: Michigan.com) 
 
 Hinkley gave few details about the case but confirmed that the department has opened a homicide investigation and is awaiting results of an autopsy to determine a possible cause of death. 
 
 Hinkley said Summerfield also confessed to him in an interview that she had smothered her son. 
 
 Hinkley said it could be weeks before the medical examiner is able to determine a cause of death and conceded because of the condition of the body, investigators might not be able to say how the child died. 
 
 In speaking with the Enquirer after her daughter arranged an interview, Summerfield first denied she was responsible for her son's death. In the dining room of her nursing home Nov. 5, Summerfield told the Enquirer she was not a murderer. 
 
 "I did not kill anyone," she said. 
 
 In her interview with the Enquirer, Summerfield first said she had been coerced into confessing a few days before. 
 
 She said before she started making any statements she was taken to a dark, quiet place. 
 
 "The doctor would come in and say, Open your eyes so you can sign this piece of paper," she said. "They made me confess. When I came out of that darkness my mind was not working right. That darkness did something to my brain. I couldn't stop talking. I talked all the time." 
 
 She then said to a reporter that she didn't want to talk anymore that day. 
 
 The next day, Summerfield left phone messages with an Enquirer reporter. In one, she admitted she killed the boy, saying, "What they said is true. Everything Paula told you is true." 
 
 And in a later message, Summerfield said, "you can print every word that Paula said. Just don't stop what she started. The story that she told you is 100% correct." 
 
 The next morning she told an Enquirer reporter in a brief phone conversation that she was responsible for the death of her son, adding, "I didn't know what I was doing. All these years I had forgotten. I am going to die. I hate myself so much. I am ready to die." 
 
 For years Gastian and her two brothers have wondered about the death of their infant brother and later their twin sisters, who died as small children while the family was living in Battle Creek. A fourth child, a baby boy, died on Aug. 20, 1961, at Oaklawn Hospital in Marshall, five days after birth. 
 
 Gastian said she was raised in an abusive home with a mother who used drugs and neglected her children. Their father, William Summerfield, 86, was a truck driver, often absent from the home. He was sentenced to prison in September after he entered a plea to a sexual assault of a friend's child. 
 
 William Summerfield (Photo: Michigan Department of Corrections) 
 
 "I was investigating it myself," Gastian said about the deaths. "I had twin sisters and I always suspected neglect." 
 
 Beth Summerfield was 3 months and 15 days old when she died May 1, 1969. Her sister, Brenda, was 11 months and 14 days old when she died Jan. 1, 1970. 
 
 Both girls died while the family was living in Battle Creek and death certificates for them list bilateral pneumonitis (lung disease) as the cause of death. 
 
 Gastian said she went to her mother's nursing home room in September, the day after her father was sentenced to prison, to confront her about the deaths of her twin sisters. She had heard her mother had been making statements to nursing home staff about her role in a killing. 
 
 She always had believed her mother was responsible for the death of her sisters and wanted answers. 
 
 "The day after the sentence I told her I want to talk about the babies. I expected it to be the twins. She was quiet and then she said his name. I don't know how I stayed calm," Gastian said. 
 
 Twins Brenda and Beth Summerfield died eight months apart in 1969 and 1970. (Photo: Family photo) 
 
 "I was not ready for her to tell me that she killed my little brother," Gastian said. "I was completely blown away. She said she smothered him. She covered him up with a blanket and smothered him. 'I killed him.' It came out of her mouth. 'I killed him.'" 
 
 "I asked if she had told anyone and she said she told my dad," Gastian said. "He just told her, 'Well I haven't been there for you and I guess life goes on.'" 
 
 Gastian said her mother also told her she had found God. "She told God and that was good enough and she just forgot about it." 
 
 Janice Summerfield told her daughter the stress of raising three small children alone was too much. 
 
 "She said my dad drove trucks and was gone a lot and she couldn't take it. My brother was 4, I was 2 and Billy was 8 months old." 
 
 Gastian recorded the conversation with her mother. 
 
 "I have played that recording several times," she said. "It is 20 minutes but it seems like hours. 
 
 The baby died, but Gastian's brother lived with guilt his whole life. 
 
 Phil Summerfield was 4½ when he awoke that May morning and found his dead little brother in bed with him. 
 
 "After she allegedly smothered the baby she put the baby in bed with me," he said. "I was shy of 5 years old. I woke and he was dead. I picked him up and took him downstairs. She told me it was my fault." 
 
 It was a day that scarred the the rest of his life for Summerfield, 58, now living in Huntsville, Ala. 
 
 "I was 4½ and at that age I believed her. I thought it was my fault. There was never anything else said," he recalled. 
 
 The children already lived in a home with abusive parents, Summerfield said. 
 
 "We were knocked down and thrown down steps. That was just another part of the abuse," he said. "I learned to survive and I did my best to help Paula survive and then the twins. I was in school when the twins went. I thought I didn't do a very good job." 
 
 Gastian was blamed for the death of one sister, she said, after Brenda Summerfield was found dead on a cold New Year's Day in 1970. 
 
 The night before, her mother put the child in a room upstairs without heat, Gastian remembers. 
 
 "She put a hat on her and she was sleeping in a tiny crib. The next morning (mother) went upstairs and she yelled and came stumbling down the stairs and came over to me saying it is all your fault. If you had slept up there she wouldn't have died. My brother and uncle carried the crib downstairs. 
 
 "She was good at blaming other people. She blamed me that morning and I was 10 years old. I blamed myself for years." 
 
 Both Phil Summerfield and Gastian said they have suffered from the guilt. 
 
 "I have been in and out of therapy all my life," Summerfield said. "In my first marriage I could never get close to my children or my ex-wife. I caused them a lot of pain in the way I acted and what I did." 
 
 He attempted suicide 20 years ago and has been diagnosed as bipolar and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 
 
 Learning about his mother's confession lifted a weight for him, Summerfield said. 
 
 "I feel better about myself. And it happened pretty quick once it sunk in. Fifty-five years of guilt is a pretty big weight to lose." 
 
 But he can't change much of the damage done by the guilt his mother imposed on him. 
 
 "His life has not been a good life," Gastian said. "But after he found this out, he called me the next day and said, 'Something weird happened — I was happy today.'" 
 
 Michael Summerfield, 47, of Marshall, the third surviving child, said he only knew the stories his brother and sister told him about the deaths. 
 
 Three of the six Summerfield children -- Phil, standing; William, who died in 1961; and Paula Gastian -- in an old family photo. (Photo: Family photo) 
 
 "By the time I came along my parents had quit their drunken days and turned to religion," Summerfield said. 
 
 His experiences were different than his sister and brother. 
 
 "Not that I lived in the Cleaver house, it was not that. But I was not beaten. It was just a childhood." 
 
 Summerfield has no memory of the deaths and said he does not choose to dwell on his mother's confession. He is working, in school and has a family. 
 
 "I can't deal with it. I can't process it," he said. "I have to focus on other things. I do believe it happened and the way it came out in detail, I think she did it. And I would like for the truth to come out. If this is a secret they held for 50 years, there is no reason we should be burdened with keeping the secret. Not that I am proud of it." 
 
 As they await the results of the autopsy and any possible criminal case, Phil Summerfield and Gastian said they have lost most of their feelings for their mother. 
 
 "I am kind of numb," Summerfield said. "There was no angry process. I have distanced myself from (her). The last time I talked to her was two years ago on my birthday and she called to sing 'Happy Birthday' and I hung up the phone. I don't have any feelings for her. There is no anger. There is nothing. 
 
 "I had a dream one night that I was choking her and had my fingers on her throat and her life was leaving her. But I don't know that I will ever go through an anger stage. We had to learn as children to be void of emotions because they caused a lot more punishment." 
 
 Gastian said when her mother finally admitted to killing her brother, she was not really surprised. Her great fear now is that investigators won't be able to find the cause of death to support their mother's confession. 
 
 All three surviving children also believe she was responsible for the deaths of the twin girls, although detectives have not opened investigations in their deaths. If it wasn't murder, it was at least severe neglect, the children agree. 
 
 "My older brother and I have lived through hell," Gastian said. This is a truly unbelievable story. So full of ugliness and secrets. Now to know so many things will be exposed, it is a relief for my siblings who are gone but in my heart have never, ever been forgotten. My siblings have been with me every day of my life. 
 
 "I don't want to see her go to prison," Gastian said, "but it needs to be put on record. She needs to be somewhere for what she has done. 
 
 "It is just such a relief. I am sick of living with secrets." 
 
 Trace Christenson is a reporter for the Battle Creek Enquirer. Follow him on Twitter: @TSChristenson 
 
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– If you thought being an international superstar was about as crazy as your life could get, think again. Cracked and The Stir round up 15 celebrities with even crazier (and some of them very painful) backgrounds: Woody Harrelson's dad, who walked out on the family in 1968, was a contract killer who probably got away with killing at least two people before going to prison. Then, when he got out early, he was hired to murder a judge, and he went back to prison. Woody tried to get him a retrial, but he died in 2007. Kelsey Grammer first lost his mom and grandpa, whom he lived with. Two years later, his dad was shot to death on his front lawn by a crazed taxi driver. Then his younger sister was murdered by a gang of robbers in a Red Lobster parking lot. Then his two half-brothers died in scuba diving accidents. As if that's not all bad enough, a good friend was killed on 9/11, another good friend was murdered by his own wife, and one of his former wives tried to kill herself and ended up killing their unborn child. Olivia Newton-John's parents fled Germany when the Nazis took over, and her dad ended up getting a job interrogating captured Nazi pilots—not over torture, but over dinner and drinks. One of his interrogations led to the capture of Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess. He later joined MI5's code-breakers and decoded German messages, including secret battle plans that helped the Allies win World War II. Charlize Theron's father was verbally abusive, and while the actress was growing up in South Africa, he once came home drunk and started shooting at Charlize and her mother. Theron's mom managed to get the gun, and ended up killing her husband. Jack Nicholson was born out of wedlock to a 19-year-old aspiring actress, so her parents raised him as their own and he grew up believing his mom was his sister. Leighton Meester's parents and her aunt went to prison when the actress was just a baby, after getting busted smuggling 1,200 pounds of marijuana from Jamaica. Her aunt ended up escaping prison and got on the US Marshals' 15 Most Wanted List. Tobey Maguire's dad robbed a bank across the street from his house—in broad daylight, without a mask. He was caught, not surprisingly, and went to prison for two years. Cracked's full list here; The Stir's here.