A Partin History, Part 1

But then came the killing shot that was to nail me to the cross.

Edward Grady Partin.

And Life magazine once again was Robert Kenedy’s tool. He figured that, at long last, he was going to dust my ass and he wanted to set the public up to see what a great man he was in getting Hoffa.

Life quoted Walter Sheridan, head of the Get-Hoffa Squad, that Partin was virtually the all-American boy even though he had been in jail “because of a minor domestic problem.”

– Jimmy Hoffa in “Hoffa: The Real Story,” 1975, published just before he vanished from a Detroit parking lot.

I’m Jason Partin.

My biologic father is Edward Grady Partin Junior, a drug dealer who went to prison in 1986 during the height of President Reagan’s war on drugs; he became a lawyer and is currently a public defense attorney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

My grandfather was Edward Grady Partin Senior, the Baton Rouge Teamster leader who became famous as the mole inside Jimmy Hoffa’s inner circle; according to Chief Justice Earl Warren, my grandfather’s testimony was the sole reason Hoffa was found guilty in 1966’s Hoffa versus The United States. Prosecutors hid that Edward Grady Partin Senior was also a lier, thief, rapist, murder, adulterer, racketeer, and weapons smuggler who stopped going to church on Sundays in 1959 and took my five year old dad to Teamster meetings instead. If my grandfather had a religion, it was the same as Jimmy Hoffa’s: The Teamsters.

To protect their only witness against Hoffa, U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover whitewashed my grandfather’s history, plastered him across national media, and shielded anyone with the name Edward Partin from legal prosecution as long as Hoffa remained in prison. I believe he was also involved in killing President Kennedy, though not at a high enough level to prosecute him instead of using his testimony to get Hoffa.

You could probably write a book about my father and grandfather’s relationship. But this memoir is only partially about them; mostly it’s about Wendy Partin and me, and of course who killed President Kennedy.

Wendy was my mother. She was born Wendy Anne Rothdram on 08 August 1955 in a suburb of Toronto, Canada. When she was four years old, her mother – my Granny – fled an abusive husband and took Wendy to Baton Rouge and moved in with my Auntie Lo and Uncle Bob, who had moved there few years earlier. Twelve years later Wendy was a petite but athletic and strikingly attractive girl with strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes that crinkled when she laughed and she laughed often. She was a junior at Glenoaks High School and met the area’s 17 year old drug dealer, Edward Grady Partin Junior.

Wendy rarely watched television or read the newspaper, so she didn’t recognize the name Edward Partin; she just knew the Ed she met was a tall, handsome, strong, and defiant teenager with long black hair and narrow dark brown eyes so dark and narrow they blended in with his black hair like a crow’s face. He had the nicest sports car in Baton Rouge, a white Dodge Charger you could hear coming before you saw it. He usually skipped school and drove fast and seemed immune to tickets or police prosecution. and he openly challenged anyone in the government to try and send him to Vietnam. He rarely smiled unless he was high, and then he was fun and generous and shared his drugs with anyone.

My mom got high lost her virginity to my dad and discovered she was pregnant with me two weeks later. She couldn’t afford an illegal abortion (partially because Chief Justice Earl Warren’s Roe versus Wade case that legalized abortion was still a year away) so Wendy accepted my dad’s proposal; they dropped out of school and eloped to Woodville, Mississippi. In my dad’s Dodge, Woodville was only 45 minutes up Highway 61 from where Glenoaks High, where spent most of their free time with friends still in high school.

Everyone in Woodville knew the name Edward Grady Partin; my dad and Wendy had plenty of spaces to stay. It was a tiny working class town centered around a sawmill and surrounded by fast growing pine trees. It was built for workers before there were cars, and the walking town was packed with narrow shotgun houses that were so thin a shotgun would blast through walls, built long and narrow to take up less street space, and without inside doors to save costs and allow air flow on hot muggy nights; a shotgun fired through the front door would exit the rear door without hitting any walls. My grandfather was born in there in 1926. His parents were born there in the 1800’s; his father was Grady Partin, a sawmill worker who fled the family in 1936, and his mother – my Grandma Foster – remarried a man name Foster who was willing to help support Big Daddy and his two little brothers, Doug and Joe. While young men were away fighting in WWII, Big Daddy took over the sawmill union that cut nearby pine trees from the surrounding forests, and also the trucking union that hauled out cut lumber back down to the Mississippi River port of Baton Rouge. My grandfather had been arrested in Woodville many times on charges ranging from raping a young girl to stealing all the guns in Woodville when he and Doug broke into the Sears and Roebuck hunting store, though a Woodville jury of his peers never convicted him. No one would deny Edward Partin a bed to sleep on.

Mississippi laws didn’t require parental consent for a 16 year old girl to marry a 17 year old boy. They returned to Baton Rouge as Mr. and Mrs. Edward Grady Partin and moved into one of my grandfather’s rural houses near the swampy forests surrounding the Comite River Bridge, where my dad could hunt and grow weed on hidden patches of dry land that poked up from the marsh. The house was already furnished and listed under Edward G. Partin; they didn’t have to change names for utilities or the phone book and quickly settled in to a new lifestyle. I was born nine months later.

Wendy had a series of nervous breakdowns. One time was when my dad was away with his friends buying drugs in Miami and seeing a Bob Marley show in Kingston; while alone with me, she saw a handwritten note on a coffee shop community board asking to share gas to California and she impulsively responded that she could leave that day. Wendy and the stranger left me at a daycare center near Glenoaks High school and gave the phone number of her best friend from school’s parents as an emergency contact; they drove back onto I-110 and turned west on I-10 and followed it straight for 1,830 miles to where it ended at the Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles, California.

Sun set and no one picked me up and the daycare called my emergency contact. I was taken to their home and a few days later the only family court judge in East Baton Rouge Parish removed me from Partin custody and placed me in the care of my emergency contact – my PawPaw – the who was the custodian of Glenoaks High and had known Wendy since she was in the ninth grade.

Wendy woke up in Los Angeles and took a bus back to Baton Rouge. She visited me two days a month and took me to play at parks near PawPaw’s house while she fought to get me back. She was ashamed of having abandoned me and for being a single teenage mother without a high school diploma, and she taught me to call her by her first name so people would think I was her little brother. It worked, and I called my mother Wendy until the day she died on 05 April 2019.

I flew home to be by her side during her final few hours. The next day I hastily wrote her obituary, and this is what was published published in the Baton Rouge Advocate from 08 to 09 April 2019:

Wendy Rothdram Partin, a resident of St. Francisville, LA, passed way on Friday, April 5th, 2019 at the age of 63. Wendy attended Glenoaks High School in Baton Rouge, LA, and retired from Exxon Mobil. She is survived by her son, Jason Ian Partin, of San Diego, CA. She was preceded in death by her mother, Joyce Rothdram, and her aunt and uncle, Lois and Robert Desico, all of Baton Rouge, LA. During her retirement, she became a master gardener and enjoyed helping people with their lawns. She enjoyed cooking, and took food to anyone she knew who was ill or grieving. Wendy loved animals, and worked with local shelters to foster dogs until they found permanent homes. She passed away unexpectedly from liver failure. In lieu of gifts or a service, please spend time sharing what you love with your neighbor, listen to what they love, and help each other.

To plant trees in memory, please visit _____

There was more to tell but obituaries are short and sweet, and it’s hard to tell Wendy’s story without beginning with Edward Grady Partin Senior.

We called my grandfather Big Daddy. Jimmy Hoffa summarized him concisely: Edward Grady Partin was a big, rugged guy who could charm a snake off a rock. Big Daddy was tall, built like a bull, and had sky blue eyes and wavy strawberry blonde hair and a perpetual gentle smile that led people to trust him. His all-American looks and charm led him to be elected president of Baton Rouge Teamster’s Local #5 in the mid 1950’s and re-elected every year for almost thirty years. He was so popular in Louisiana that governors sought his endorsement and newspapers said that if he had a college degree he’d be governor. His face on front page news of Louisiana papers at least once a month for decades, and every few months in national news magazines like Look! and Life after he testified against International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa.

Americans knew what Big Daddy looked and sounded like, so when producers of Blood Feud, the 1983 national two-part movie about Hoffa and Kenendy, cast actors, they had to find someone who resembled my grandfather. They chose a new actor named Brian Dennehy, who would go on to be one of America’s most celebrated actors known for portraying ruggedly handsome men.

(Dennehys’ breakout was in 1983’s summer hit coincidentally also with blood in the name; he costarred with Sylvester Stalone in Rambo: First Blood, and was the decorated Korean war veteran and rural mountain-town sheriff who pursued Sylvester Stalone as a Vietnam special forces veteran with PTSD named Rambo. A few years before, Stalone had portrayed a fictionalized version Hoffa in the 18-Wheeler union uprising film F.I.S.T. – the Federation of Inter-State Truckers – based loosely based on Hoffa and used Stalone, in his first film after the boxer Rocky, to show just how rough Hoffa had been; but I don’t know Dennehy’s overlap with Hoffa in Blood Feud influenced Stalone to work him in Rambo.)

Dennehy had green eyes and was smaller than Big Daddy, but otherwise the resemblance was so close that even I was confused when watching Blood Feud on the small black and white TV Wendy and I shared, and even more so when I saw him dressed as a sheriff in the theater and wearing, of all things, a sheriff’s uniform; I was 11 years old then. I remember veteran actor Robert Blake slicked back his hair and looked a lot like Hoffa; Blake won an Academy award for “channeling Hoffa’s rage.” Ernest Borgnine convincingly portrayed an aging but still sharp J. Edgar Hoover, and some tall daytime soap opera heart throb whose name I can never recall was Bobby Kenendy.

From his private and roomy minimum security prison cell with a big color television, Big Daddy said he thought Blake nailed Hoffa and that Dennedy did a fine job portraying him. I never learned what he thought of Rambo.

Two years later and still from his cushy cell, Big Daddy portrayed in by the wavy-haired handsome Ben Fuhrman 1985’s TV miniseries, Robert Kennedy and His Times. I never learned what he thought of that, either.

In 1986 Big Daddy was released early from prison due to declining health and he returned to Baton Rouge and spent most of his leisure days driving around Baton Rouge in his massive luxury Cadillac and visiting with Grandma Foster, who lived a few blocks down from Granny and around the corner from Glenoaks High School, which is how Wendy met my dad in 1971.

Big Daddy died in 1990, my senior year of high school and just before I left Louisiana for the army; his funeral seemed like a military assault on Greenoaks Funeral Home. Hundreds of Teamsters clogged the Baton Rouge arteries leading to Greenoaks with their lumbering and rumbling 18 wheeler trucks; every Baton Rouge police car and motorcycle surrounded the parking lot, and police stood at intersections directing traffic and at the entry doors controlling crowds; though to be fair, a lot of the crowd was there to see the 1954 LSU Tigers national champion football team, which reunited for the funeral and had our hometown hero, 1954 Heisman trophy winner for LSU and former pro-footballer Billy Cannon as one of Big Daddy’s pallbearers; Billy Cannon alone would have brought hoards of Baton Rouge LSU Tiger fans to any event.

A couple of politicians and former mayors attended, and of course my dad’s side of my family was there and so were Big Daddy’s latest wife and kids, who were technically my cousins though I barely knew them. Mixed among us and listening in were a gaggle of FBI agents; the case against Hoffa was still open, and they unabashedly served as both security and eavesdroppers hoping for a clue and asking what Big Daddy’s final words were. Teams of reporters from most major newspapers stood outside snapping photos of everyone who entered.

The Los Angeles Times summarized what was known of Big Daddy’s history back then in a front page article. I’m mentioned, though not by name; I was one of seven grandchildren by then, his second grandchild and his first grandson. Reporters simply called us as his grandchildren. Here’s what was said in national front page news on 11 March 1990:

BATON ROUGE, La. — Edward Grady Partin, the labor leader whose testimony sent Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa to prison in 1967 and who himself was convicted of extortion, has died at 66.

Partin, who died Sunday at a nursing home here, suffered from heart disease and diabetes.

A native of Woodville, Miss., Partin was business manager of Teamsters Local 5 in Baton Rouge for 30 years.

Partin, a close associate of Hoffa, helped then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy convict the Teamsters boss in 1964 of jury tampering. Partin testified that Hoffa had offered him $20,000 to fix the jury at Hoffa’s 1962 trial on charges of taking kickbacks from a trucking company. That trial ended in a hung jury, but Hoffa eventually was convicted of jury tampering and mail fraud and served nearly five years in federal prison.

James Neal, a prosecutor in the jury-tampering trial in Chattanooga, Tenn., said that when Partin walked in the courtroom, Hoffa gasped, “My God, it’s Partin!”

The government later spent several years and three trials prosecuting Partin on labor corruption charges before he went to prison in 1980 for conspiracy to obstruct justice by hiding witnesses and arranging for perjured testimony.

While in prison, he pleaded no contest to conspiracy, racketeering and embezzling $450,000 in union money. He was released to a halfway house in 1986.

Union members at one time voted to continue paying his salary while he was in prison. He was removed from office in 1981.

Survivors include his mother, two brothers, a sister, five daughters, two sons and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I left for the army soon after his funeral and the 1990-1991 Gulf war would dominate my thoughts and time for a while, but I would see my grandfather’s name in books and films practically every year since I returned and have been pondering writing a book about him for decades. This is the introduction to that book.

Big Daddy is described in hundreds of books about Hoffa and the Kennedys published beginning in 1966 and reaching into today, including the 2004 memoir “I heard you paint houses: Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran and closing the case on Jimmy Hoffa.” Frank was a WWII infantryman with PTSD like Rambo and countless other war veterans; he had killed probably hundreds of people in his two year deployment during an unprecedented 345 days of hands-on combat at a time when soldiers still died hearing each side scream from only a few feet away. Sheeran was honorably discharged from the army and became a mafia hitman; that’s how he met Hoffa.

I heard you paint houses was lingo for paining a wall with splattered blood; that’s the first thing Hoffa said to Frank, and it wasn’t a question. Frank replied: “Yes. And I do my own carpentry work,” meaning he also disposed of the bodies. Seventy years later, Frank would confess to painting a wall red with Hoffa’s blood in a empty Detroit suburban house on 22 July 1975. But first, Frank became a delivery truck driver for Teamster local #107 in Philadelphia and then was elected president of local #326 in Delaware, similar to how Big Daddy was president of Local #5 in Baton Rouge. Both were called lieutenants in Hoffa’s army. As side gigs, the Teamsters and their mafia allies painted a lot of houses and did a lot of carpentry.

Frank was pulled from prison in his 70’s due to ill health. His release was facilitated by the co-author of Frank’s memoir, Charles Brandt, an established true-crime author and attorney with a reputation for coaxing truth from witnesses and convincing juries of their authority. He scored an early contract with one of the most respected literary agencies, The Literary Group, and worked with the coincidentally named agent Frank Weinman, who had a personal interest in biographies that documented history, especially Hoffa’s and the mafia’s, and Frank the agent – who would decline first drafts of my book – also said he was very interested in my grandfather, whose name and reputation is sprinkled throughout Frank’s accounts of Hoffa. (To be fair, early drafts of my book were so focused on Wendy that it was hard to see where I was going with it; even I would have turned me down.)

Brandt worked with Frank The Irishman for 14 years to nurture I heard You Paint Houses into a narrative memoir that is also a treatise on Hoffa and the mafia. Aiding their effort was Frank Sheeran’s latent Catholic upbringing: he wanted to confess his sins before he died. Frank passed away a few months before his memoir was finally published in 2004; in it, he confesses to more than a dozen unsolved murders in the 1960’s and 70’s, including Hoffa’s. Neither Hoffa’s body nor evidence of his demise have been found, even with modern DNA polymerase chain reaction analysis that was unfathomable back when Frank was doing carpentry work.

Martin Scorcese bought the movie rights to I Heard You Paint Houses from Steerforth Press and raised $257 Million to make his opus about Hoffa and the mafia. Scorcese hired the best Hollywood actors and had worked with them in decades of gangster classics and centered his opus around Frank Sheeran and renamed it The Irishman.

Big Daddy was portrayed by the burly Craig Vincent who had played a thug in Scorsese’s 1995 Casino. Craig researched his role by watching Dennehy in Blood Feud and contacting surviving Partins, but he couldn’t mimic Big Daddy’s southern drawl and sly smile like Dennehy had. Scorcese modified the role to fit Craig’s dark complexion and northeast Italian accent and fit “Big Eddie” Partin into twenty-five minutes of film. After editing, Big Eddie was squeezed into five minutes of Scorcese’s whopping three hour and twenty nine minute film, probably the most that modern movie-goers would sit and watch. The Irishman sold out theaters the summer of 2019 and quickly recouped the quarter of a billion dollar investment.

Scorsese was an artist. In one scene, Big Eddie Partin is towering silently behind the more well known actors like Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Ramono. Scorcese had lowered the camera angle to make Craig Vincent appear even larger than he was in real life; it looks like he’s a puppet master controlling the men below him. (After The Irishman was released, I told Craig he did a fine job and my grandfather would have appreciated that scene.)

In March of 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered all public theaters on Earth. Netflix picked up The Irishman and it set global streaming records, and over the next year approximately one Billion people saw a condensed and fictionalized version of my grandfather’s part in history.

During Covid-19 my mother had been deceased a year and hardly anyone alive remembered her or knew her relationship with my grandfather. I worked through my grief and waves of childhood memories flowing over me every night by immersing into what was already published on Hoffa and The Kennedys and looking for patterns that would help me understand what had happened to Wendy in the early 1970’s what led her to abandon me. I ordered around 50 books from Amazon not already on my bookshelf, and I used the internet to research what was publicly known versus only existed in my memories or our family’s letters and memorabilia. That’s when I stumbled upon my 1976 custody court report that was inexplicably available online forty-four years after my mother took her stand against the Partin family. I had read a printed paper copy once before in 1990, just after Big Daddy’s funeral, but hadn’t thought much about it since.

For decades my custody report was only available in the East Baton Rouge Parish 19th Judicial District under Partin versus Partin. Judge JJ Lottinger assumed oversight of my case immediately after Hoffa vanished and he worked with Wendy for more than a year to ensure she had the support she needed to regain my custody.

When I read it in 2020, what surprised at first was that I had – and still have – a fuzzy memory of Judge Lottinger and Wendy and me. I can see us in what must have been his private chambers in the downtown courthouse; he was trustworthy and had a kind smile and asked me to call him Judge JJ. What he learned he documented in Partin versus Partin, and this is what Judge JJ had to say about Wendy and me in 1976:

This is a suit by Edward Partin, Jr., plaintiff, seeking a divorce from his wife, Wendy Rothdram Partin, defendant, after having lived separate and apart for more than one year following a judgment of separation from bed and board. Plaintiff also seeks custody of the minor child, Jason Ian Partin, and the defendant reconvened asking that she be granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child.

The Trial Court had previously, by ex parte order, awarded the temporary care, custody and control of the minor to Mr. and Mrs. James Ed White. Following trial on the merits, plaintiff was awarded a divorce as well as the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child, with the temporary physical custody of the minor child to remain with Mr. and Mrs. James Ed White. The defendant has appealed this judgment as it regards the custody of the child.

This couple was married when plaintiff was 17 and the defendant was 16 years of age. Nine months following the marriage, they gave birth to young Jason. While we are not concerned with the facts surrounding the separation and divorce, it was apparently one of incompatibility as defendant testified that at the age of 17 she found herself married to a man who did not love her and so she left. Her testimony was as follows:

“As I say I was emotionally upset. I was receiving little support from Edward. I was scared, very confused. I didn’t know exactly which way to turn. I felt I had no one to listen and help with the situation at hand.”

Several weeks later she returned and lived with her husband again. She found that the situation hadn’t changed, and felt she had to get away again. She heard of a man who wanted someone to share expenses on a trip to California, so she quit her job and with her last wages left with him. She testified that she had no sexual relations with this man, and plaintiff does not accuse her of such. Following this trip she returned to Baton Rouge still emotionally upset. Her husband was suing her for separation and told her he was going to take custody of Jason. She went to live with her aunt and uncle, got a full time job with Kelly Girls paying $512.00 per month.

In February, 1975, the defendant’s mother was injured in an accident and she moved in with her to care for her. In September, 1975, following the recuperation of the mother she returned to live with her aunt and uncle.

During these above periods of time, the minor child lived with Mr. and Mrs. White. The Whites came to regard Jason as their own and, although the separation judgment awarded custody to the plaintiff with reasonable visitation privileges to the defendant, the Whites decided the defendant-mother could only see the child two days a month and that she could never keep the child over night. The reason the defendant did not contest custody at the separation trial was because at the time she felt unable emotionally and financially to care for her son.

We note that the petition for separation was grounded on habitual intemperance, as well as abandonment of the husband and the minor child. There are no other grounds listed for the separation nor for custody. The petition for the separation and custody of the minor child was not contested by the defendant, and a default judgment was granted. Defendant testified in the instant proceedings that the reason she did not contest custody in the separation proceeding was that she was not financially or emotionally capable of caring for the minor, and that knowing the Whites were going to be caring for him, she knew he would be in good hands.

Though the petition for separation had as one of its allegations “habitual intemperance”, the plaintiff in the instant proceeding testified that he had never accused his wife of drinking, nor had he ever seen her drink.

The welfare of the child is the main issue that the Court is concerned with. This issue is more important than any wishes or wants the parents may have. Fulco v. Fulco, 259 La. 1122, 254 So.2d 603 (1971), rehearing denied (1971). As a general rule, and in particular where children of young age are involved, preference is given to the mother in custody cases. This preference is very simply explained, the mother is normally better able to care for the child and look after the education, rearing, and training necessary. Estes v. Estes, 261 La. 20, 258 So.2d 857 (1972), rehearing denied (1972).

No argument is made that the mother is not now morally or emotionally fit to care for the child, or that the house in which she lives is not a proper place to rear a child. In fact, the Trial Judge admitted that it was a fine home.

The Trial Judge has not favored us with written reasons for judgment, however, we must conclude from various statements by the Trial Judge that appear in the record that he could find no fault with the defendant, nor was there anything wrong with the house in which she lived. It thus becomes apparent to this Court that the Trial Judge applied the “double burden” rule to the defendant. We have already ruled that the “double burden” rule does not apply in this situation, and thus, under the established jurisprudential rules, we can see no reason why the defendant-mother should not be granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child with reasonable visitation privileges granted to the father.

In consideration of our above opinion, there is no need to discuss the specification of error as to the ex parte granting of custody to the Whites.

Therefore, for the above and foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Trial Court is reversed, and IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the defendant-appellant, Wendy Rothdram Partin, be and she is hereby granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor, Jason Ian Partin, and IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that this matter be and it is hereby remanded to the Trial Court for the purpose of fixing specific visitation privileges on behalf of plaintiff-appellee Edward Partin, Jr. All costs of the appeal are to be paid by plaintiff-appellee.

After my surprise at remembering Judge JJ, the irony of him focusing on Wendy not drinking stands out; I was looking for details that I may have overlooked before, and though Wendy not drinking wasn’t a smoking gun pointing to Kennedy’s assassin, it was a type of detail I was looking for: something I had missed or taken for granted when I was younger. I must have reread that report once for every year that had passed since I first saw it.

I don’t know why Judge JJ didn’t mention my dad’s drug arrests. I assume it wasn’t relevant to the case in his hand.

It turns out that my dad and friends from Glenoaks rode their motorcycles to Miami and sold them there, then hopped on a boat to Puerto Rico on their way to see Bob Marley in Jamaica. Puerto Rico was an up-and-coming U.S. offshore pharmaceutical manufacturer to save on taxes and show nearby communist Cuba how capitalism could work in Latin America. My dad’s Baton Route arrest records show that he returned he was delayed in finding me because when they returned he and his friends were arrested with a truckload of prescription opioids.

What I know now and is relevant to Big Daddy is that both Miami and Puerto Rico were Teamster hubs, and the name Edward Partin was famous in Latin America, too. When the coincidentally named Frank Chavez of Puerto Rico Teamsters Local #901 heard Big Daddy had sent Hoffa to prison, he publicly declared: “I’m gonna fucking kill Edward Partin!” Chavez was shot and killed by his bodyguard soon after saying he’d kill my grandfather, and his replacement never said anything negative about Edward Partin. I’m sure that like in Woodville, when my dad arrived in Miami and began seeking drugs in Latin America no one would deny Edward Partin Junior a bed to sleep on or a hand in getting whatever he needed.

But all of that was before my time and therefore is speculation based on what I read. My memories begin forming in 1976, when I met Judge JJ; everything after that summer of 1976 is what I know to be true or believe as strongly as some people believe in their religion, whatever it may be.

To get the whole story – or at least my perspective – it’s useful to start with Jimmy Hoffa. He vanished in 1975 and his story is well known. What I write next is what I believe based on what I’ve read about the rise and fall Jimmy Hoffa.

Go to the Table of Contents