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To All Literary Agents:

I’m querying your interest in a narrative memoir centered around the deaths of my mother and grandfather, told in two parts interlaced like halves of a deck of cards riffle shuffled together. Combined, they tell a bigger story that begins on March 1st, 2019, when I was in Cuba researching my grandfather’s role in Jimmy Hoffa’s imprisonment and President Kennedy’s assassination. He was Edward Grady Partin Senior, the Baton Rouge Teamster leader famous for infiltrating Hoffa’s inner circle in 1962 and being the surprise witness that convicted Hoffa in his 1964 jury-tampering trial. On that trip, a my mom left a series of voice mails that would become the final words I’d hear from her; but I didn’t know that then, and the story weaves my pursuit of history with my memories of growing up with my mom and the Teamsters in the 1970’s and 80’s.

“[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.”¹

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

“We can report that Edward G. Partin has been under investigation by the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office in connection with the Kennedy Assassination investigation… based on an exclusive interview with an Assistant District Attorney in Jim Garrison’s office. We can report that Partin’s activities have been under scrutiny. In his words: “We know that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were here in New Orleans several times… there was a third man driving them and we are checking the possibility it was Partin.”¹

WJBO radio, New Orleans, June 23rd, 1964; as reported by Walter Sheridan in 1972’s “The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa,” published by Saturday Review Press.