Havana 3

“[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,” 19941
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Havana 3

“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”
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Stretch Armstrong and My Dad

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PawPaw and The Scar

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Testing different chapter layouts

Wrestling Hillary Clinton: A Memoir

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Query about representing a memoir

To All Literary Agents:

I’m querying 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, but circles back to the 1970’s, when I was a kid in the foster system. The story revolves around my teenage mom’s abandonment of me around the time when President Nixon pardoned Hoffa, and my return to her custody soon after Hoffa vanished. She was Wendy Anne Rothdram Partin, married to Edward Grady Partin Junior; my grandfather 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. 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.

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Havana 2

“Partin was a big tough-looking man with an extensive criminal record as a youth. Hoffa misjudged the man and thought that because he was big and tough and had a criminal record and was out on bail and was from Louisiana, the home states of Carlos Marcello, the man must have been a guy who paints houses.”1

Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran in “I Heard You Paint Houses,” 2014
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Havana 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.”1

Frank Ragano, J.D., attorney for Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Santos Trafacante Jr., in “Lawyer for the Mob,” 1994
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Havana 3

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

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

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

“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.”1

Louisiana governor John McKeithen in a progressive series of 1960’s newspaper statements in the New Orleans Times Picaune and Baton Rouge Advocate, and ending with personal correspondence between him and Walter Sheridan, documented in Walter’s 1972 “The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa.”
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Havana 5

“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.
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