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 calloused mafia hitmen and WWII veterans and people like Frank Sheeran, who were both. Korean war veterans 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. 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, what Audie called the paratroop’s: the airborne paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne (nicknamed the All Americans), the 101st Airborne (called the Screaming Eagles), and the all African-American 555 Airborne (The Tripple Nickel). 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. 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. 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.

His scenes from To Hell and Back were cut and reused in dozens of other WWII films that created the stereotype. 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; he was the first Captain America. Audie Murphy will always have a place in America’s heart, even if we forget where it came from.

There was a saying back in Murphy’s day that if you weren’t infantry, you were supporting infantry. To many of us, that remains true. After all of the bombs and rockets and chemical warfare of wars fought since the first Gulf war of 1990-1991, it was always a handful of tired and unshaven men that won every battle of the war. Infantrymen stepped into Hitler’s bombed but surviving lair and ended a war that bombs could not. 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. The SEAL team that crept into Bin Laden’s stronghold tried to capture him alive, but killed him before escaping with Bin Laden’s body so that President Barrak Hussein Obama could bury him at sea per Islamic tradition and as a conflicted gesture of respect to all religions that proclaim belief in a god that said thou shall not kill; that SEAL team’s goal had been to capture Bin Laden alive and accomplish what years of bombing had not.

All of that SEAL team had heard the name Audie Murphy, and most had probably seen his face in any one of dozens of military posts and commanding officer’s headquarters across America. The same was true for members of teams that led lesser known exploits by Delta Force, Para Rescue, and Marine Force Recon; they never mentioned the one badge Murphy was missing from his highly decorated uniform – the silver airborne wings – they only spoke of his post-war service and the way he inspired people to look deeply into the cost of war.

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.

I grew up hearing Audie Murphy’s name and knowing a bit about him, but it wasn’t until 1990 that I finally understood his stature in society. Soon after Big Daddy’s funeral, I stood under Audie Murphy’s photo in the Fort Benning Infantry Museum the day after I graduated Advanced Infantry School and a day and a half before I would begin Airborne school. I knew his name by then, but not his reputation; I believed my grandfather had killed him in 1971, which I’ll explain in a minute. Standing under his photo, I also knew that if I graduated Airborne school, I would join the 82nd Airborne and wear their red white and blue patch with the letters AA, which stands for The All Americans. By then a few thousand of them were already deployed and standing their ground against Saddam Hussein’s 400,000 soldiers and the world’s largest fleet of tanks and armored vehicles in what was being called Desert Shield. I had just turned18 in basic training; in my mind, I was only a few months older than Audie when he went to war, and I was on my way to war, too. I stared at his face in a photo taken after two years of combat and saw a face not much older than mine. I saw a true All American hero.

I completed my five jumps in Airborne school and took my place beside The All Americans. Though Murphy had never been what he called a paratroop’, 21 years after his death Audie’s photo hung in the offices of the 82nd Airborne’s highest generals; in 1992, I was up for an award and being interviewed by those generals, and that same photo of Audie Murphy from the Infantry Museum was hung in a frame on the walls of my review only slightly lower than President George Bush Jr.s. I had been pondering my grandfather’s role in his death for two years, but said nothing. By the time I left service, I jumped with a SEAL team five times, Delta Force and cadre from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare center once, and the 82nd Airborne 36 times; in all those times boarding with fellow paratroopers and not being in the plane when it landed, I never jumped with someone who didn’t know the say the name Audie Murphy respectfully. Almost anyone can do a lot of pushups and carry heavy backpacks for days at a time or jump out of an airplane; it takes someone unique to stand between overwhelming firepower and their team, and someone remarkable to lead all of them home again.

During all of my time in service, I researched what I could about Audie Murphy and my grandfather. Not even Frank Sheeran questioned Audie Murphy’s valor or intentions; but, in the 1960’s Audie’s aging body, weak business acumen, and mental struggles with trauma twenty-five years after the war could not be whitewashed; he became a has-been. Murphy’s 1971 working relationship with my grandfather surprised everyone, but it makes sense in hindsight.

The Irishman 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. [JiP: 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.”

Walter Sheridan’s final two chapters of The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa focus on Audie Murphy, my grandfather, and President Nixon. 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.¹ Now, still in poor financial condition, Murphy was attempting to finish a movie he was producing.”

Walter Sheridan 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.

Jimmy 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, where they met at Richard Nixon’s beachfront estate in San Clemente, a wealthy community an hour north of San Diego.

Nixon’s house a familiar site to anyone in southern California. It’s only an hour up the coast from Del Mar’s racetrack, where Audie Murphy kept a couple of quarter horses and his wife kept a few dogs.² I’d spend decades of my adult life surfing the breaks below Nixon’s estate, and I can only imagine what it must have felt like to believe you were so important that the next probable president would fly you to his private beachfront mansion on those towering cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Big Daddy was enticed by meeting Nixon and being guaranteed a preemptive pardon if he freed Hoffa, and he asked his little brother, Doug, to join him on another adventure; that’s where I first learned of Big Daddy and Audie Murphy’s improbable collaboration. But at the time anything with Audie Murphy was national news.

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. 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. This is what I believe happened.

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.

“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.”

Doug would say the same thing in his 2014 book, and he remembered the pressure on Big Daddy and the allusions to killing Kennedy as far back as 1971. The pressure on Big Daddy to change his testimony or face bigger charges must have been immense, and the public awareness of whatever he said probably earned attention from the mafia, especially if Big Daddy would be free from jail because of whatever he said, just like when he sent Hoffa to prison in the first place.

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 aliances; 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.

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

But Walter doesn’t mention the parts about people on that plane implying Big Daddy was involved in the Kennedy assassination; I don’t know why, or if he even knew those parts of the saga; few people know all the details, even experts like Walter Sheridan. In 1971 no public evidence existed that Hoffa was in bed with the mafia. Walter’s allusions to loans and connections and coincidences weren’t the type of evidence they could use to convict any of the people involved. He just knew that they were all motivated to get Hoffa out of jail.

Walter reported in his book that, in addition to the affidavit prepared by Murphy and Nixon, congressional committees 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.” I interpret that as someone at the level of at least J. Edgar Hoover or higher, but I can’t be sure. The board denied Hoffa’s parole. Hoffa still needed Big Daddy to recant his testimony; or, as Walter wrote, sign an afadavit saying Hoover illegally added wire taps to monitor Hoffa’s defense, thereby having the trial thrown out and simultaneously implicating Hoover.

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.

Word got out that Hoffa was using insight into President Kennedy’s assassination to get out of prison. 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. Simultaneously, while convincing Big Daddy to change his testimony they sent a strong message that he should stop talking about President Kennedy.

After Audie’s death, at least one mafia family was known to be advising Francis Ford Copula for 1972’s 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. I believe The Godfather also sent a message to Hoffa and therefore, indirectly, to Big Daddy. 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.³

While The Godfather was being filmed with mafia advisors in the background, Hoffa funded Nixon’s campaign and gave his endorsement even without Big Daddy’s affidavit. 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.” It was the first time in history a major union endorsed a republican presidential candidate.

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 news quietly mentioned my family daily but it 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; 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).

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 – 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 famously said “I’m not a crook” soon before facing an inevitable impeachment for the Watergate scandal and his role in obstructing justice and, ironically given Hoffa versus The United States, illegal wiretapping. He resigned the presidency in 1975, and Richard Nixon’s role in history is immortalized in the surf break under his San Clemente mansion named after him: Slippery Dick.

Slipper Dick impacted my life directly with a subtle caveat in Hoffa’s 1971 release from prison; Richard Nixon slipped a clause into Jimmy Hoffa’s contract that surprised even Hoffa’s legal team: Nixon 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.

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.

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. He would have sent word that Edward Partin was needed alive, and mafia families who knew what he meant responded. Their only restraint was that my grandfather should not be killed.

Simultaneously, Big Daddy was in Louisiana news daily. Teamsters Local #5 reported $450,000 missing, and the refrigerator sized steel safe was discovered in the murky waters under the Comitte River Bridge and near the home listed under Edward G. Partin. The money was never found, and the two witnesses who fingered Big Daddy and pointed to where the safe was dumped were found bloody and beaten days later; the survivor refused to testify. As a coincidence, J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972; even Nixon’s desire to use Big Daddy to get rid of Hoover became old news. Hoffa’s importance was dwindling and the mafia was growing frustrated with his arrogance. Bobby Kennedy had been shot and killed in 1968, and only Walter Sheridan was left to oversee my family’s safety. The Partins had lost the judges who gave them legal protection, the black-suited agents who protected their bodies, and the patriarch, Big Daddy, who was being flown all over the country for meetings and court dates, which the mafia knew about, and he was rarely at home.

Starting in 1972, men behind the scenes of The Godfather and killing President Kennedy set their sites on Baton Rouge.

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 Wesley Partin, a senior Teamster manager, and Donald Joseph “Coach Joe” Partin, Zachary High School’s football coach; two of my cousins, Doug and Don; and a listing for Edward G. Partin 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. They would have approached the house thinking whoever lived there put fear into Jimmy Hoffa, demanded respect by Carlos Marcello, and could kill Audie Murphy.

My dad was rarely home, so Wendy and I were usually there alone. She was a petite teenager and I called her Wendy; most people thought I was her little brother. 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. I have flashes of memories from my first few years of life, and 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 receiving, and x-rays of my left elbow show growth plates hindered by an old fracture I do not remember breaking.

In 1973 my cousin Don was run off the road and has spent his life since then in a wheelchair. Uncle Doug was beaten and his house ransacked and then set on fire; he assumed it was Teamsters looking for the $450,000 Big Daddy had stashed inside the walls of one of his houses along with other cash and explosives; he was mostly out of town, but news reports would show him with knife and bullet wounds, and the Local #5 was shot up and reported at least once.

I don’t know what Wendy remembers from that time. She would never talk about it, and she passed away just as I was beginning to put all of this together into a plausible version of what led her to abandon me. But nothing from that time period sticks in my memory as fact; it’s just stories from books and movies and Doug and Don and Big Daddy, but at a time where Big Daddy was rarely home and was instead flying all over America meeting presidents and trying to stay out of jail. No one remembers checking in on my mother and me to see how we were doing. Whatever happened, she believed, as she told Judge JJ, that she was leaving me where she knew I’d be safe.

Wendy abandoned me and years passed and in the summer of 1975 I was living with foster parents near my parents’s old high school. Hoffa vanished on 22 July 1975. Whether or not Frank Sheeran pulled the trigger that killed Hoffa is probably less important than the accepted belief that the national mafia kissed him into silence and what happened to Jimmy Hoffa became America’s most famous unsolved mystery. The next day, the name Edward Partin lost its use and federal protection, and that’s when Judge JJ Lottinger assumed oversight of my case and began helping my mom get custody of me. Knowing what I knew in 2020, when I re-read what Judge JJ had to say about Wendy and me in 1976 I hear her soft southern accent with a slight Canadian twinge telling him, again, why she left me at that daycare center:

“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?

Wendy was married to a family that bought and sold drugs wholesale; traded arms with Fidel Castro; killed Audie Murphy; framed Jimmy Hoffa; was hunted by the American mafia; and casually raped, murdered, and beat human beings. 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; I can’t imagine my teenage mom realizing what was happening.

I would find a lot of mistakes in my years of research – like learning that Audie Murphy’s plane crash was a combination of pilot error and faulty maintenance – but that doesn’t change what Wendy felt in 1976 or what I believed in 1990 when I looked at Audie’s photo in the Infantry Museum and pondering nature versus nurture. A lot of research in my memoir uncovered new information that overwrote old beliefs, but relative truths are as strong as real truths to those of us who believe them. What Wendy said was true: she felt there was no one to listen and help.

Statements like my mother’s are peppered throughout court records and news media about my family history, which happens to overlap with world events that somehow lose their humanity when summarized in books or films. 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.

Go to the Table of Contents

1. 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. ↩︎
2. A local joke that’s a bit dated now is a local kid from one of the laid-back hippie beach towns was surfing Slippery Dick’s when he saw Richard Nixon drowning. The kid paddles to Nixon and rescues him. Nixon says thank you and asks what he can do for the boy. The kid says he’d like to be buried in Arlington Cemetery next to Audie Murphy. Nixon says okay, but that’s an unusual request from a boy to think about a final resting place, and the boy says: “It makes sense to me, because when my dad learns I saved your life, he’s going to kill me!” ↩︎
3. 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. ↩︎