Audie Murphy

“[Jimmy Hoffa’s] mention of legal problems in New Orleans translated into his insistence that Carlos Marcello arrange another meeting with Partin, despite my warning that dealing with Partin was fruitless and dangerous.”

“He wanted me to get cracking on the interview with Partin. In June, Carlos sent word that a meeting with Partin was imminent and I should come to New Orleans. As [my wife] watched me pack in the bedroom of our Coral Gables home, she began crying, imploring me not to see Partin. She feared that it was a trap and that I would be murdered or arrested.”

– Frank Ragano, J.D., attorney for Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Santos Trafacante Jr., in “Lawyer for the Mob,” 1994

Audie Murphy had 268 confirmed kills. His record impressed calloused mafia hitmen and WWII veterans and people like Frank Sheeran, who were both.

In the 1950’s, Korean war soldiers looked up to Audie, and so did anyone who learned his story or met in him person. He became the star of almost 40 Hollywood films viewed by millions of people born after the war, including classics like The Red Badge of Courage, The Quiet American, and his own To Hell and Back. Presidents and politicians courted a public handshake with him. Everyone respected Audie Murphy.

His story was admirable because of what Audie Murphy overcame. He grew up in the hill country of Texas after his father left him and his mother when he was a child. His mother raised him honorably; he adored her and gave back by learning to shoot rabbits with deadly accuracy because even a single .22 rifle bullet cost more than they could spare for a day.

Audie volunteered to fight in WWII when he was only 17 years old. But he was declined by the marines and then by the army’s new special forces, what Audie called the paratroop’s, short for paratroopers, soldiers who jump from airplanes and land behind enemy lines by parachute. Germany had already launched their version, and The United States had just created the 82nd Airborne (formerly the 82nd Infantry and still nicknamed the All Americans), the 101st Airborne (known as the Screaming Eagles), and the all African-American 555 Airborne (called The Tripple Nickel).¹

Audie wasn’t considered big enough to heft all of the machine guns, ammo, water, food, and supplies they jumped into Germany carrying in their oversized baggy pants to hold just one more round of ammunition when there never seemed to be enough. He opted for the infantry and saw three years of hands-on combat when wars were still fought hand-to-hand.

He persisted and was allowed to join the U.S. army infantry, whose moto is epitomized by the bronze Iron Mike statue at Fort Benning’s infantry’s school, a life-sized World War I solder nicknamed Iron Mike, holding a rifle in one hand and looking over his shoulder and waving for others to come this way, and shouting: “Follow Me!”

Soldiers followed Audie Murphy. In one of his earliest battles, the 18 year old handsome and physically fit but only 5’5″ tall and 121 pounds at enlistment Audie Murphy stood atop a destroyed U.S. Tank armed with only a stubby machine gun and faced off a platoon of Germans so that his platoon could retreat. He killed more than 20 men that day and his team lived because of him; Audie earned his first field promotion and a purple heart for injuries sustained in combat that day, and he went on to be awarded every medal America had to give including having the Congressional Medal of Honor given while still overseas so that he could keep fighting without pause.

Audie served more days than Frank The Irishman Sheeran and won all medals the United States had to give and many of them two, three, and more times. He returned home three years later but decades older, and now famous as America’s most decorated war hero.

Practically every newspaper and magazine showed his young, handsome, confident face above a chest full of medals that probably weighed more than his small frame.

He wrote a memoir – To Hell and Back- and it was made into a film and he starred in it and America fell in love with his handsome, youthful face and Texas twang. Scenes of Audie in To Hell and Back were cut and reused in dozens of other WWII films that created a stereotypical American soldier so entrenched in pop culture that people forget it’s origin.

If you’re a Marvel Comics fan and saw the early Avengers and Captain America films in the 2010’s, you saw Captain America first portrayed as a marketing ploy of a little guy who grew big and could fight off dozens of Nazis with only his fists and a shield, yet who went into real combat came out with hundreds of his fellow Americans alive; what you were watching is the legend of Audie Murphy persisting in American folklore. Audie Murphy was the first Captain America.

He will always have a place in America’s heart, even if we forget where it came from. But for an infantryman like me who was born only months after Audie died, I still see evidence of his influence every day.

During the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, Audie Murphy publicly described his PTSD, which we now know as post traumatic stress disorder, though it was called “shell shock” or “battle fatigue” back then. He said he wanted help more veterans who suffered like he did, and he wanted to help shape a world that led to fewer veterans and had more opportunities for kids.

He publicly refused lucrative cigarette and alcohol endorsements because he didn’t want to influence kids for unhealthy habits, and that he wanted to honor his mother; the best way to do that, Audie said, was by being a role model to other kids, especially those without a father. Anyone who grew up knowing Audie Murphy’s name would have known that, in the end, America’s most decorated war hero spoke of peace and tried to honor his mother with honorable actions.

When he died in 1971, America buried Audie Murphy in Washington DC’s Arlington Cemetery only a short stroll from President Kennedy’s; to this day, his tomb is the most visited next to Kennedy’s. All army medics including Special Forces medics in the Kennedy Special Warfare Center go through or have gone through training at the Audie Murphy memorial medical center in San Antonio, Texas. Every branch has their heroes, but even the marine Force Recon, navy SEALS, and army Delta Force knew of Audie and what he did for his teammates and how he lived his life as a civilian,.

When I first saw a photo of Audie Murphy and a copy of his memoir To Hell and Back, I was standing underneath his display at the Fort Benning Infantry Museum after having just studied the John F. Kennedy exhibit that showed a wall-sized photo of Kennedy in his PT boat and a long list of what he did that led to the United States Special Warfare Center. I had just turned 18 and completed Advanced Infantry Training and was on a weekend break before I’d begin Airborne school and then, if I graduated, going on to join the 82nd Airborne in Saudi Arabia. I had grown up hearing Big Daddy called an all-American hero; but when I stared up at Audie’s face and read his story, I first saw what a true All American hero looked like, regardless if the only badge on his uniform missing was, in my mind, Airborne wings. I graduated from Airborne school, and over the next few years I jumped with the 82nd 36 times, Navy SEALS five times, and Delta Force once; in all of those jumps, every one of the soldiers looked up to Audie Murphy and not one of them even hinted that he was less of a hero for not becoming what Audie called a paratroop’. Anyone can jump from a plane and hump hundred pound rucksacks, but it takes a true hero to stand between your team and people trying to harm them.

Not even Frank Sheeran questioned Audie Murphy’s valor or intentions. He spoke of Audie in his book, and said this about how Audie began speaking on Hoffa’s behalf:

“Still suffering nightmares from the war, Murphy had fallen on hard times. He had filed for bankruptcy in 1968 and had been acquitted on an assault-with-intent-to-murder charge in the 1970’s. Still, to a southerner like Partin, the decorated soldier from Tennesee was a shining star. Hoffa brazenly wrote that for the deal to turn out profitable for Audie Murphy and Partin, an unspecified favor was needed from Jimmy. [JiP: I assume that was a typo meant to say a favor was needed “for” Jimmy.] Hoffa wrote that shortly after the deposition, “Senator George Murphy [California Republican and former movie actor] personally took [the deposition] to Attorney General John Mitchell, and Audie Murphy gave it to President Nixon.”

Walter Sheridan’s final two chapters of The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa focus on Audie Murphy, my grandfather, and President Nixon. He’s following Audie around the time my father met Wendy, which tells me a lot of confusing things were happening quickly and not even Walter could keep up. He elaborates on D’Alton Smith, a friend of New Orleans mafia boss Carlos Marcello who Walter described as “a sort of in-law” to the family; his book details Smith approaching Big Daddy about changing his testimony against Hoffa as far back as 1967 and follows the effort until 1971. “Some where along the line,” Walter wrote, “Smith met Audie Murphy, the most decorated hero of World War II and a former movie star.”

Consistent with his writing style, Walter begins by addressing the controversies behind Audie Murphy.

“Murphy’s career in motion pictures and later in television had gradually faded and, following some abortive investments, he declared bankruptcy in 1968. In 1970 he had been acquitted of a charge of assault with intent to murder arising out of a dispute with his wife’s dog trainer.² Now, still in poor financial conditin, Murphy was attempting to finish a movie he was producing.”

Walter and his team of FBI agents followed the saga of Audie Murphy, Hoffa, Nixon, and Big Daddy daily, and Walter’s book has a long list of names of politicians and mafia associates who were parts of those meetings. Hoffa’s pension fund had funded Hollywood films and mafia business ventures; that link is probably what led Carlos Marcello to lend D’Alton Smith a private plane to fly Audie Murphy and Big Daddy back and forth between Baton Rouge and San Diego. Doug joined them a few times.

From San Diego, Audie, Big Daddy, and Doug drove north past the Del Mar racetrack where Audie kept quarter horses he fought to save after his bankruptcy, past the Rancho La Costa Country Club that was built by Detroit mafia head and Las Vegas and Havana casino boss Morris B. Dalitz³ using a $27 Million loan from the Teamster pension fund (and where Richard Nixon would play golf with Teamsters in 1975), and past the Camp Pendelton marine base to Nixon’s San Clemente estate built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I’d spend decades of my adult life making that drive and surfing the breaks below Nixon’s estate. It’s a famous surf spot, nicknamed Slippery Dick’s after Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, with the big Dick’s mansion looming overhead.⁴ Every time I made that drive I couldn’t help but imagine how my grandfather felt being flown from Baton Rouge in a private jet with Audie Murphy to meet the probable next president.

Slippery Dick had many reasons for listening to Big Daddy; anything against his rivals, the Kennedys, would only delight him. Walter Sheridan, in a long list of names and contacts, quotes people who knew the situation that Nixon was also trying to get evidence about the Hoffa trials that would remove FBI director J. Edgar Hoover from office; Hoover was known to manipulate presidents and politicians and even judges with his wire-tapping, and no new president would want that.

In other words, there were multiple plots going on, and Big Daddy and Audie Murphy were at the center of Nixon’s fight to the presidency. I can look back at what my grandfather was doing while my dad met Wendy through the countless FBI reports, chapters in Sheridan’s book, and quotes from aging Teamsters and mafia hitmen who began publishing after the JFK Assassination Report was released in 1993, but all of Nixon’s tapes have likely been discovered or erased so we’ll never know precise details.

Sheridan tracks every person Big Daddy and Murphy saw, and digs into the dwindling Teamster Fund that was being chipped away with loans for Las Vegas casinos and other ways to influence Hoffa’s alliances; by 1971 it was down to $800 Million, with around a half Billion in real estate ventures and $2 Million in annual maintenance fees. $15 Million was not reported for reasons I don’t understand, but was tied up in a loan to Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Another loan for $9 Million towards a country club was also not included. There was probably still more than a Billion dollars under Teamster control and untraceable even by the FBI. Sheridan was sure Hoffa was setting up his empire and using Nixon to get Big Daddy to let him out of prison so Hoffa could regain control of the fund and America’s lending machine to the mafia.

Murphy and Nixon prepared a 31 page affidavit for Big Daddy to sign that would give him a proactive presidential pardon for perjury if he turned against Hoover and swore he perjured against Hoffa. He never signed it, but witnesses took that document to Hoffa’s attorneys in preparation for Hoffa’s parole hearing. It was a gesture from Nixon saying he’d accept campaign donations and Hoffa’s endorsement in exchange for Hoffa’s freedom. Walter reported that to combat the affidavit prepared by Murphy and Nixon, congressional committees against freeing Hoffa and presumably against Nixon as president wanted to send Hoffa’s parole board “a lengthy memorandum containing information concerning the numerous connections of Hoffa to organized crime,” but that “a decision was made up the line not to send it to the board.”

But then on 28 May 1971, two weeks after leaving Big Daddy in Baton Rouge, Marcello’s plane crashed in West Virginia and Audie and all four passengers died. Their crash made international news, and America mourned the loss of America’s most decorated war hero.

Walter wrote: “Murphy had recently expressed concern to Partin about both the condition of the plane and the ability of the pilot,” and he concluded that “The plane overflew Martinsville during a violent thunderstorm and crashed into the side of a mountain.”

Big Daddy never signed the affidavit. It would show up in a few news leaks, and Hoffa would cling to his unsigned copy and expound on the missed opportunity in his 1975 final autobiography.

“I gave ’em nothing,” my grandfather told investigator and Teamsters expert Dan Moldea for Model’s 1978 book, The Hoffa Wars.

“Sure,” he said. “I said some words, and they wrote them down. But they were accusing me of doing everything, including being involved in the Kennedy assassination. So I just told them what they wanted to hear and refused to sign anything.”

As soon as Murphy died, Big Daddy recanted his recant. The mafia spread word that Big Daddy had Audie Murphy and the passengers on his plane killed rather than free Jimmy Hoffa. That belief was so strong that it stuck in Doug Partin’s mind until the day he died. In his 2014 book, Doug dedicates two chapters to describing two plane crashes at that time, Audie’s and another person who challenged Big Daddy’s authority, and Doug always swore that his big brother was capable and willing to kill even a true All American hero to get what he wanted.

I grew up believing my grandfather had killed America’s most decorated war hero.

I believe Audie was acting honorably. From that day at the Fort Benning Infantry museum until today, I’ve never found anything that implies otherwise. Even his charges of assault with intent to murder are easily explained; he learned that his wife’s dog trainer was not leading with patience and consistency, but had hit the dogs to make them do their will. You get what you give, and the former most decorated combat veteran in American history, a man who had 268 confirmed kills, expressed his frustration at the dog trainer in a way that would not be misunderstood, and that trainer filed assault charges. I can not imagine Audie Murphy having intention to kill and that person being around to report anything. I believe he was simply doing what he had to do to earn an honorable livelihood, unlike other veterans like Frank The Irishman Sheeran or the dozens of thousands of soldiers who returned to America without the opportunities privileged people rarely see or appreciate.

When Audie died in that plane crash, Hoffa’s best hope to get out of prison died with him.

Hoffa grew agitated in his prison cell. Word got out that Hoffa was using insight into President Kennedy’s assassination to get out of prison; in other words, Hoffa could point a finger in exchange for his freedom. But the mafia still clung to the temptation of $121 Million of debt forgiven, and then more access to the Teamster pension fund, if they helped Hoffa. I also assume that some people believed it would be easier to silence Hoffa outside of prison than deal with the fallout of him dying in prison. Whatever the case, after Audie Murphy died Hoffa was rapidly loosing control of the Teamsters and facing the another eight years in prison.

The mafia continued to help Hoffa. Simultaneously, they sent a strong message that he should stop talking about President Kennedy. Hoffa’s control of the pension fund used for Hollywood films and mafia businesses was probably over, especially if it depended on him getting out of prison. The risk of Hoffa turning witness against his former mafia allies grew with every unanswered request by Hoffa. And, in a bit of irony, if the mafia wanted to kill Hoffa it would be easier and less traceable to do it outside of a maximum security prison.

Though I’ve never found evidence, I always suspected that while Hoffa was in prison his role with the mafia was captured by author and screen writer Mario Puzo in 1969’s The Godfather. It was one of the most purchased books in 1969, but I thought it related to Hoffa because of the 1972 film.

At least one mafia family was known to be advising Francis Ford Copula for The Godfather, a masterpiece film released the year I was born that set the standard for realistically depicting organized crime families. Behind the scenes, leaders of mafia advised Copula on the first true depiction of mafia and Hollywood overlap. In one of the most famous scenes and reminiscent of Audie Murphy, the mafia is trying to get Hollywood to put an aging star in a modern war film. In The Godfather, an arrogant Hollywood producer who disrespects the mafia wakes up with a severed horse head bleeding across his bedsheets; to me, that has always been an obvious reference to the Teamsters horse heads of Thunder and Lightening shown at the end of older Hollywood films.⁵

Like many things I believed when younger, I never found evidence to support my beliefs, but I believed it just the same. I’m including the horse head scene now because, in my mind, that scene speaks to the time period when Hoffa was in prison and still trying to influence both Hollywood and the mafia. The Godfather’s book sales and film was indicative of an America in the honeymoon stage of a love affair with organized crime, and to this day it sets the standard for portraying the daily lives of Cosa Nostra, the Italian mafia, and how those families had their own code of honor and protected their territories, just like what had been happening in America for generations without most citizens realizing it.

People like Hoffa and Big Daddy became icons because they were seen as real versions of Hollywood images. Hoffa, even from prison, still had pop culture appeal; and Richard Nixon knew it. While The Godfather was being made into a film, Hoffa funded Nixon’s campaign and gave his endorsement even without Big Daddy’s affidavit. The Irishman wrote about heaving a heavy bag full of cash for what he suspects was Nixon’s campaign fund, and I heard that Hoffa funneled millions of dollars to the big Dick’s campaign fund. From my perspective, Jimmy Hoffa’s money, influence, and pop culture status during America’s fascination with Cosa Nostra put Richard Nixon in the White House.

It was the first time in history a major labor union endorsed a republican. Nixon was re-elected and commuted Hoffa’s sentence in time for Christmas in 1971, only days before Wendy met Edward Grady Partin Junior and I was conceived. Hoffa walked out of prison in 1971 and spent the first Christmas with his family since 1966. When asked, Hoffa said in his typical personalized approach: “I would say President Nixon is the best qualified man at the present time for the Presidency of the United States in my own personal opinion.”

Newspapers still mentioned my family daily, but the news was drowned out by the Mai Lai massacre by teams of American soldiers who raped, killed, and tortured a village of hundreds of women, children, and elderly men not conscripted into service had just become the focus of anti-war protests. Cosa Nostra may have been a welcome reprieve from the senseless violence of mass bombings and napalm unbridled young Americans without direction or honor; at least in the mafia you knew it was about business. Even heroes like Audie Murphy were shunned as part of the out of control war machine; no hero would fight, a real hero would refuse the draft and become a conscientious observer (Vietnam was no WWII in their eyes, and the Vietcong were not Nazis; to my parents’s generation, the new all-American hero was a pacifist). Audie’s status as an American hero diminished, and politicians began an anti-war rhetoric in response to voter demands. But Hoffa was still a valuable tool to Nixon, especially because Nixon had campaigned on bringing soldiers home from Vietnam.

Nixon had campaigned that he’d begin withdrawing the 550,000 American soldiers in Vietnam, and part of his deal with Hoffa included Hoffa was wooing veterans by saying Hoffa would represent Nixon in negotiating the return of American Prisoners of War and – ironically, as it would turn out for Hoffa – to help America find the remains of around 50,000 soldiers missing in action. Like Hoffa, most them will probably be lost forever, but that doesn’t keep people from trying.

Hoffa, known for his successful negotiation tactics, rallied; he also began his own campaign for prison reform, saying that not even he had realized how cruel and hopeless prison could be. He spoke openly about prison reform, but only seemed mildly interested in Nixon’s rhetoric about Hoffa going to Vietnam on his behalf.

Nixon wasn’t altruistic; he famously said “I’m not a crook” soon before facing an inevitable impeachment for the Watergate scandal; his crime was obstructing justice and – ironically, given his support of Hoffa – illegal wiretapping. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1975, and his role in history is immortalized in the surf break under his San Clemente mansion named after him: Slippery Dick.

After Nixon released him from prison, Hoffa was in the public eye for prison reform and getting prisoners out of Vietnam, but he was remarkably silent about the Teamsters. That’s because Nixon slipped a clause into Jimmy Hoffa’s contract that surprised even Hoffa’s legal team; he barred Hoffa from Teamster activity for another eight years, and stipulated that Hoffa would return to prison if he violated the terms. Even as a free man, Hoffa’s situation hadn’t changed since 1966’s Hoffa versus The United States. In other words, despite being free from prison, Big Daddy’s word still kept Hoffa away from his coveted Teamsters and control of the Teamster pension fund.

The Irishman wrote:

“It said that Jimmy could get out with his good time and all in November 1975, but Nixon was letting him out now. It didn’t say one word about Jimmy not being able to run for office until 1980. I can assure you that I would have picked that up right away. Jimmy was already planning to run in 1976. I might not have a lott of education, but I had been reading union contracts and legal documents for a living for many years. I had read hundreds of documents that were far more complicated than that pardon. All it said was that Jimmy was getting out, finally. We were happy people in that lunchroom, and after a lot of double-crossing by Partin and Fitzsimmons and Nixon and Mitchel, Jimmy was finally getting what he paid for. He was getting out for Christmas.”

Wendy lost her virginity to my dad that New Years Eve, and two weeks later she and my dad eloped to Woodville and she became a part of the Partin family. I was born nine months after that. What happened to us is the next and final chapter of this story.

Go to the Table of Contents

1. The All American’s didn’t allow African Americans; we were a young country fighting in a world war. Those Airborne units would evolve into America’s special operations teams, including the Special Forces made famous by Rambo and other movies who were trained in the real-world John F. Kennedy Special Warfares Center, named in his honor after he championed fewer pawns in war and more dedicated, highly atrained soldiers who teach other countries instead of dying for them. In the early 1950’s, Congress forced the U.S. military to allow African Americans and any other hetorsexual race to fight and die side by side, more than a decade before Justice Earl Warren would oversee Brown vs. The Board of Education and All of America was forced be begin integrating kids in school, which led to Governor George Wallace ordering the Alabama National Guard to stand armed guard in front of schools to keep out African Americans.
   Times have changed. ↩︎
2. Audie Murphy learned that his wife’s dog trainer hit the dogs instead of training them with consistent compassion and patience. Like anyone who’s read “do onto others as you’d have them do onto you,” that trainer saw what the country’s most decorated war hero thought about hitting animals, because Audey had probably also read “what you do to the lesser of creatures, you do to me,” and he wanted to ensure no one would ever hit his dogs again. Wendy, who would spend two decades fostering rescue dogs and volunteering in the Saint Francisville humane society – named after the Catholic saint of kindness to animals – knew Audie Murphy’s history and would laugh and say that dog trainer got what he asked for. As for the charges of assault with intent to kill, I can’t imagine Audie Murphy intending to kill anyone and them being around to press charges; I’m not surprised that he was acquitted. ↩︎
3. Years later, Walter Sheridan admitted the FBI had used illegal wiretapping on phone calls between Dalitz and Hoffa, put in place by Hoover’s men without Walter knowing; he said: “I had not known about these overhearings until long after I left the department.” ↩︎
4. A favorite joke in San Diego back then was a report of a young surfer saving a drowning Richard Nixon’s life during rough surf at Slippery Dick’s. After being drug back to shore, Nixon asked what he could do to thank him. The young boy replied that he’d like to be buried in Arlington Cemetary with dad’s heroes, President Kennedy and Audie Murphy. Nixon said yes, but that it was an unusual request from such a young man, and he asked to know why he was thinking about his burial plot now. The kid replied: “Because when my dad hears that I saved you, he’s going to kill me!” ↩︎
5. The link between the Teamsters, the mafia, Hollywood, and public perception of the mafia persists to this day: Al Pacino was a costar in 1972’s The Godfather, and the star of The Godfather II in 1974 and The Godfather III in 1990; and then as a Las Vegas mafia and casino boss in Scorcese’s 1995 Casino; and he would portray Jimmy Hoffa in 2019’s The Irishman. We associate actors with roles; the mafia’s real world was similar, and everyone knew the reputation of men like Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and knew how to read between the lines when talking about family business. ↩︎