A Partin History, Part 4

“[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 both hardened hitmen and other WWII veterans, including people like Frank Sheeran, who were both. But Audie did it as a 17 year old kid of a single mother who believed he was acting for a greater cause.

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. At 17 years old he volunteered to fight in WWII, but was declined for the marines and then for the army’s new special forces, the airborne paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Airborne, and the 555 “Tripple Nickel” Airborne that Audie called the ‘paratroops; he 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. Size didn’t matter to 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; there is no rest for the weary. Audie won most medals at least twice and returned home at three years later but decades older and became famous as America’s most decorated war hero in the entire history of our young nation military. 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.

There was a saying back then that if you weren’t infantry, you were supporting infantry. After all of the bombs and rockets and chemical warfare, it was always a handful of tired and unshaven men that won every battle of the war and even stepped into Hitler’s nest to take that, too. America dropping two atomic bombs on Japan and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians steered the course of modern warfare, but even Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were, in the end, uncovered by a handful of soldiers supported by billions of dollars in military spending every month. All of them have heard the name Audie Murphy, and probably seen his face in any one of dozens of military posts and commanding officer’s headquarters across America; though Murphy had never been what he called a paratroop’, when I was up for an award by the commanding generals of the 82nd Airborne in 1992, his photo was on the wall behind them and only slightly lower than President George Bush Jr.s.

Audie penned a memoir of his two years in WWII, To Hell and Back. It was made into a film and he was the star and that’s what led him to becoming a national pop culture icon in the 50’s and early 60’s; his scenes from To Hell and Back were reused in other films, and Audie Murphy created the stereotypical young, handsome, brave American soldier saving his team from Nazis by being the first one to stand up and do what needed to be done at that moment. No one doubted his courage and patriotism, and his small stature and boyishly handsome good looks and humility about his accomplishments made him the perfect poster child for America. In the 1990 reprint I would read, the back cover was plastered with famous politicians, sports stars, and actors I grew up seeing on television saying that their role model was Audie Murphy.

He joined the national guard and simultaneously became the star of more than 40 Hollywood action films until he aged out of the role in the 1960’s. He suffered from PTSD publicly in an effort to help more veterans like him, and he publicly refused lucrative cigarette and alcohol endorsements because he didn’t want to influence kids for unhealthy habits. He said that he wanted to honor his mother, and the best way to do that was by being a role model to other kids, especially those without a father like he had been. Behind the scenes, he was becoming an alcoholic who couldn’t sleep and kept a pistol under his pillow and developed an addiction to amphetamines that helped him appear alert during while filming or looking for a more stable way to earn his livelihood. To focus his mind, he raised horses to race in San Diego’s Del Mar Racetrack and his wife rescued dogs from one of the San Diego humane societies.

Audie Murphy remains popular today. Every army medic trains in the San Antonio Audie Murphy Memorial Veterans Medical Center; he’s the star of Texas. And because he was an infantryman, Audie Murphy is showcased in Georgia’s Fort Benning Infantry Museum. A few months after Big Daddy’s funeral I would stand under Audie’s display on a Saturday afternoon and see what a true all-American hero looked like. I had just completed Advanced Infantry Training and was scheduled to begin Fort Benning’s airborne school that Monday; from that day on, I’d pay attention to every book about Hoffa and read between the lines about how a kid like that became involved with the mafia.

Not even the Irishman questioned Audie Murphy’s valor or intentions. But Audie’s aging body, weak business acumen, and mental struggles with trauma twenty-five years after his battles in the war could not be whitewashed; he was a has-been. Murphy’s relationship with my grandfather surprised everyone, but it makes sense in hindsight. Frank said this about Audie and Big Daddy:

“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. [I assume that was a typo and Frank meant “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.”

Audie’s assault-with-intent-to-murder charge was overhyped. What had happened was that his wife’s dog trainer hit the dogs rather than coax them with patience and consistency; as per the old adage “Do onto others as you’d have them do onto you,” America’s most decorated war hero responded in kind. I don’t know what it would look like for a war hero with 258 confirmed kills to confront the man who hit his dog, but apparently it led to charges for assault-with-intent-to-murder. My mother, who spent her later years fostering rescue dogs, said she completely understood and that “asshole” dog trainer got what he gave; even she respected Audie Murphy.

Personally, I don’t believe that if Audie intended to kill someone they’d be around to press charges against him. Whatever happened, his legal bills added to his financial woes. Audie was no longer a young man with films lined up, and his resume of killing people didn’t have much weight outside of the mafia and Teamsters. But he still had tenacity and his mom was alive and he wanted to do the right thing in her name; he locked himself in a hotel room to get sober and emerged a week later in his 40’s and hoping someone would toss him a bone. Soon after, one of Hoffa’s attorneys contacted Murphy with an offer he didn’t refuse.

Carlos Marcello lent Audie Murphy one of his private planes and assigned a pilot to fly Audie and Big Daddy back and forth between Baton Rouge and San Diego to meet at Nixon’s beachfront estate in San Clemente, a wealthy community an hour north of San Diego and where I’d spend many summer weekends surfing later in life. Meeting Nixon and being guaranteed a preemptive pardon enticed Big Daddy to tell reporters that he had lied about Hoffa because Walter Sheridan was threatening to send him to prison for life on kidnapping charges and that he was worried about his family’s safety in the growing violence of Hoffa’s Teamsters. My grandfather said he just wanted to come clean and make things right for everyone.

But then Marcello’s plane crashed in West Virginia two weeks after leaving Big Daddy in Baton Rouge in 1971; Audie and all four passengers died, and the country mourned the loss of America’s most decorated war hero. Texas would name their Veterans Hospital the Audie Murphy Memorial Veterans Medical Center and Big Daddy would recant his recant. To his dying day in 2020, my great uncle Doug Partin would swear Big Daddy had Audie and those men killed rather than change his word against Hoffa, and that by killing Audie Murphy Big Daddy garnished fear in the mafia hitmen targeting him (though I would eventually believe evidence pointing to a mechanical failure in Marcello’s poorly maintained plane that led it to crash into a Virginia mountain forest.)

America buried Audie Murphy in Arlington Cemetery. HIs tomb is only a short stroll from President Kennedy’s, and to this day is visited the second most in our national cemetery, second only to Kennedy.

Hoffa funded Nixon and gave his endorsement anyway. 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. 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; 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). Nixon promised 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 – find remains of around 50,000 unaccounted for soldiers, most of who remain hidden and probably will be forever.

But Nixon wasn’t altruistic. He would become famous for resigning the presidency in 1975 instead of inevitably loosing an impeachment for widespread wiretapping and influencing justice, the same things that sent Hoffa to prison and would eventually send Big Daddy to prison. Richard Nixon’s role in history is immortalized in the surf break under his San Clemente mansion named after him: Slippery Dick’s. Slippery Dick affected my life by slipping a clause into Hoffa’s release contract: he barred Hoffa from Teamster activity for another eight years and stipulated that Hoffa would return to prison if he violated the terms. In other words, Big Daddy’s word still kept the freed Hoffa away from his coveted Teamster leadership role.

That clause surprised even Hoffa and his team of attorneys. 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.”

Hoffa got out of prison and wanted back in control of the Teamsters. The Irishman said:

“Once he got out of jail he was goin gto take back control of everything. And I was going to help him.”

Frank knew how to help Hoffa get what he wanted. He knew a lot of men with names who would show up in his memoir and on film in Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman, men like Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio, Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo, Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio, Whispers DiTullio, and more. To get what they wanted or what was asked of them, these men were known to torture victims, kill their family members, or do whatever their bosses ordered. To refuse was to end up dead at the hands of your peers. The entire U.S. mafia was alerted that Edward Grady Partin still needed to change his testimony. Their only restraint was that my grandfather should not be killed.

They complied but they were growing tired of Hoffa’s demands, and Hoffa had begun threatening them by saying he had enough on the families to send them to prison if they didn’t help him.

Simultaneously as those thugs descended on Baton Rouge, at least one mafia family was known to be advising Francis Ford Copula for 1972’s The Godfather, a masterpiece film that set the standard for realistically depicting organized crime families. In one of the most famous scenes, an arrogant Hollywood producer who disrespects The Godfather wakes up with a severed horse head bleeding across his bedsheets, which is, to me at least, an obvious reference to the Teamsters horse heads of Thunder and Lightening shown at the end of older Hollywood films. 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 he would portray Jimmy Hoffa in 2019’s The Irishman. Whether Frank Sheeran killed Hoffa or not, most historians agree that the national mafia kissed Hoffa into silence on 22 July 1975. But in 1972 they still clung to Hoffa’s word and the temptation of $121 Million of debt forgiven and then more access to the Teamster pension fund as a reward. The killers behind the scenes of The Godfather set their sites on Baton Rouge.

Frank Sheeran grew up Irish Catholic and like most people had probably heard the bible’s guidance to “do onto others as you would have them do onto you.” Because of Time magazine and Hoffa’s rants, all of America knew that Big Daddy was in jail for kidnapping when he made a deal to get Hoffa. Frank said he may not have much education but he could read contracts, and I assume most mafia hitmen back then could read the phone book or knew someone who could.

There were only five Partins listed in the Baton Rouge phone book back then. Big Daddy’s daughters had married and taken other names that no one knew, and my grandmother, Mamma Jean Partin, had moved to Houston under FBI protection after Big Daddy testified against Hoffa. The Partins in the phone book were my grandfather’s little brothers, my great-uncles and equally as huge as Big Daddy, Douglas Westley “Doug” Partin, a senior Teamster manager, and Joseph “Coach Joe” Partin, Zachary High School’s football coach; two of my cousins, Doug and Don; and a listing for Edward G. Partin in a rural area near the Comite River Bridge. With the new Interstate 10 connecting New Orleans to Baton Rouge it was only an hour drive between the two, and there was a phone book in every phone booth and convenience store once they arrived.

No one would have known there was an Edward Grady Partin Junior. And he was rarely home so Wendy and I were usually there alone; she was a petite teenager and most people thought I was her little brother. I have flashes of memories from my first few years of life; they’re all centered around bursts of pain and fear and fire and explosions and burning houses and Wendy screaming and people grabbing my arms and me waking up in hospitals. I have scars on the back of my head I do not recall, and x-rays of my left elbow show growth plates hindered by an old fracture I do not remember. Wendy would never open up and talk about it. I believe anyone looking up Edward G. Partin’s home address and showing up unannounced and when my dad was away would have assumed Wendy and I were Big Daddy’s children.

It’s no wonder she fled. What’s remarkable is that she returned.

My mother was an all-Canadian hero.

The day after Hoffa vanished on 30 July 1975 my all-American hero grandfather was no longer useful to anyone and most people were focused on Slippery Dick’s resignation, the Watergate Scandal, and the long-awaited American withdrawal from Vietnam. Freed from their restraints and no longer the focus of news about Ed Partin, Louisiana prosecutors replaced mafia hitmen in the pursuit of Edward Grady Partin.

I assume Louisiana governor John McKeithen was ecstatic about Hoffa’s disappearence. He had spent most of his two terms trying to rid the state of Big Daddy the same way President Kennedy had tasked the attorney general to rid America of Hoffa. McKeithen had his top legislative attorneys had been stymied at every effort. The governor’s quotes in the New Orleans Times Picayune and the Baton Rouge Advocate over the years expressed the governor’s frustration:

“I won’t let Edward Partin and his gangster Teamsters run this state!”

“These [Baton Rouge Teamster] hoodlums make Marcello and the Mafia look pretty good.”

“[We’re going to arrest Partin] as soon as we get the evidence against him.”

‘Partin has two Justice Department guards with him for fear Hoffa will retaliate against him,’ Gov. McKeithen said, ‘This gives him immunity.’

McKeithen even met with Walter Sheridan and begged and bargained for help. He said: “Walter, get him out of my state. Now listen to what I am saying to you. Just get him out of my state. I’ll help you do it and I’ll give him immunity. You write it up and I’ll sign it. Just please get him across that state line.”

The governor’s plea was kept in Walter’s notes and not published until Walter’s book on the fall and rise of Jimmy Hoffa, but Walter’s response to the governor was posted in the new Orleans State Times on 08 March 1968. They published this:

McKeithen is Warned to ‘Lay Off’ Partin

“Gov. John J. McKeithen reportedly received suggestions last month during a trip to Washington not to press the state Labor-Management Commission’s investigation of Baton Rouge Teamster Boss Edward G. Partin.”

“McKeithen said he met with [Walter] Sheridan, who is now an investigator for the National Broadcasting Company, to allay any suspicion that his motives in pressing the Baton Rouge labor investigation were to get Hoffa Free.

The governor said that the meeting was pre-arranged on a mutual basis, with each desiring to talk with the other. He said that Sheridan was a focal point of persons in the Justice Department and “national magazines” interested in seeing that Hoffa is not released.”

“The governor said he felt the recent series of Life Magazine articles on organized crime in Louisianan and the alleged bribe offers to free Hoffa were promoted by Partin. Since then, he said, Life Magazine has placed full confidence in him.”

So all of that is why I assume governor McKeithen was ecstatic when Hoffa vanished. But by then he would have finished his second term in 1972; I assume that, like most politicians, he followed what he started if only in the news. McKeithen succeeded by Edwin Edwards (who will show up later in my story), and they overlapped legislative attorneys the same way Kennedy and Johnson overlapped US Attorney General Bobby Kenendy. Onf of those would include a Judge Lottinger, whom I assume transferred to family court and oversee my custody though I can’t be sure, because there were several Lottinger attorneys in Louisiana around that time and most were related; it could have been a coincidence to have one pursue my grandfather and another remove me from Partin custody. What I know is that after Hoffa and Big Daddy’s guardian angels dressed in black suits vanished, Louisiana prosecutors were free to pursue Edward Partin after a decade of embarrassing failures.

Big Daddy was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, racketeering, and, after $450,000 was missing from Local #5 and the safe was discovered in the murky waters under the Comitte River Bridge, embezzling union money. Though the two witnesses who fingered Big Daddy were found bloody and beaten and the survivor refused to testify, similar to how witnesses of the photo of him driving Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby vanished and never showed up at Big Daddy’s grand jury indictment. But even after the surviving witness refused to testify, prosecutors found enough evidence that a jury of Edward Grady Partin’s peers convicted my grandfather for the first time in his life since joining Hoffa’s Teamsters twenty years earlier.

In 1975 Judge JJ Lottinger took over my custody case and began helping Wendy get me away from Partin custody. I don’t know why; Wendy would pass away before I could ask her what she remembers. But she left a few words from that time period for posterity to ponder.

In 2020 I re-read what Judge JJ had to say about Wendy and me in 1976, and I would finally see why my mother had nervous breakdowns and abandoned me with someone she felt would keep me safe. I can still hear her soft southern accent with a slight Canadian twinge telling Judge JJ:

“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.”

If anyone had listened, would they have believed her? It took me half a century to put together all of this using the internet and a bookshelf full of references curated since I was a young adult. She was an uneducated teenage girl trying to find work and get her son back. But there’s truth in what she said. And statements like my mother’s are peppered throughout court records and news media about my family history. I can read between the lines and assume things, but I do not know what happened. It isn’t until the summer of 1976 that my memories begin to take root and I can trace back what I know or believe deeply versus what I read and assume.

Coincidentally, 1976 was also when the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior Report was finalized but kept classified from public review. That’s probably related to Hoffa’s disappearance, too, because he would not be around to defend himself. That report is next.

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