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”

I only peripherally glanced at the taxis as I left the Havana airport as I strolled away from the state-controlled zone and towards a row of private drivers. Finding a classic, privately-owned taxi was exactly as the Lonely Planet guide book had described, effortless and an introduction to what many Americans expected to see: the 1950’s trapped in time.

I scanned the options and chose a convertible that was older than I was but probably in better physical condition. It was buffed to a shine, and had an almost ineffable look of care that implied love rather than labor. I don’t know which type of convertible – I’ve never been good at identifying vehicles – but the top was down and it looked like all convertibles from that time period. To me, and what was on my mind, it was identical in shape to the one in which Kennedy was riding through downtown Dallas when he was shot and killed. But all of those photos are black and white, and they didn’t impress me like the shiny red convertible before me.

I stared with obvious admiration. The driver approached. He was about my age and height, though more stout, and wore a faded black bolero with a decorative tan band. He smiled at me and proudly said the car had been his father’s, and that he maintained it himself and tried to keep it looking original. It was a fine automobile, whatever type it was, and we agreed on a price to a downtown plaza within walking distance of several casa particulares I had circled in the Lonely Planet. AirBnB and Vevmo were banned in Cuba, just like Lyft and Uber, perhaps because helping entrepreneurs in Cuba have access to American technology was somehow a threat to national security in ways I didn’t understand; I didn’t ask the driver what he thought about it all, I just said I wanted to ride in his fine automobile. To myself, I chuckled and thought that because of the exchange rate, the price was less than I’d leave as a tip in a San Diego 1950’s themed diner.

I put my bag in the back seat and sat in the front. He had installed a modern Bluetooth stereo and quality three-way door speakers, and a large digital counsel that played videos and waves of lights in sync with the music. He turned on something I had never heard but sounded like what was, I imagined, classic Caribbean Funk with a congo drum beat and brass horn riffs. We took off smoothly, and soon we were out of the airport and cruising down the melecon. He rested his bolero on the seat between us, and I rotated my cap backwards to stay on in the wind.

The door speakers were clear without needing to be loud, and the driver seemed to love the sound as much as he loved his car. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, syncing with the stereo’s congo drums. I leaded back and sank into the slick vinyl seat that stretched from door to door and was more like a living room couch than any car seat since our fathers’s time. I rotated my cap backwards to keep it from blowing off, and tapped my fingers in sync with the driver; or as close as I could muster. I’ve never had rhythm, but he didn’t see to notice.

A few minutes later we were cruising along the melacon. I stretched my arms above my head and took a deep breath of clean salty air, inhaling moisture and wide open space to replenish what the cramped seats and dry airplane air conditioners had depleted. I have mild asthma, and the humid air soothes my breathing and reminds me of home in Louisiana. Of all the symptoms attributed to Desert Storm Syndrome, the one I most agree with is my asthma and sinusitus, because I remember several of us wheezing and having nosebleeds after the Khamisiya explosion, when the ground war ended and Iraqis ignited the Kuwaity oil fields to choke their economy. We spent the next two months behind .50 cal machine guns perched atop Humvees, cleaning up rogue units and having our medic, whom everyone called Doc, cauterize our bleeding noses so we could keep going. The dry San Diego Santa Anna winds reignite my wheezing, and the moist Caribbean air soothes it. I breathed deeply and felt my body relax. We drove with the ocean on our right, and I kept my face pointed towards it like a dog riding with it’s head out of the window, lapping up all the sensations I could.

I extended my hand flat, like an airplane foil, and held it by the mirror and rotated my wrist back and forth to make my hand fly up and down like Superman flying over the wall of the melacon, just above ocean level. The reflection dwindled slowly, and soon I could see the forts and the ocean and a row of 1950’s cars parked along the melacon in what looked like a postcard beside my Superman hand; my smile broadened from the 1950’s warning on the mirror: objects are closer than they appear. How true, I thought.

I asked the driver where I could get public WiFi. I must have said it poorly, because he turned down the radio and asked me to repeat the question. I said I would like a public WiFi card and access. (I didn’t know the word for ‘access,’ but I said the English word after a pause that, in San Diego, implied a Spanglish word followed.) He told me there was a kiosk near where we were going, Playa de San Francisco de Asi. I asked if he’d drop me off there. “Claro que si!” he said, and turned the radio back up and resumed tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. On the flight over, I had read the Lonely Planet say to look out for finger tapping, that Cubanos revered their music. So far, that book had guided me right, and I relaxed more knowing I’d probably appreciate my casa particulares, too. I road the rest of the way silently, letting my hand fly beside me and seeing the driver’s hand tapping cheerfully in my periphery, smiling and watching stones in the wall of the melecon zip past my window while the ocean seemed to stay the same.

We arrived and I hopped out and gathered my bag. He picked up his hat and was about to put it on his balding head when I took off mine and made a joke about how my cap kept my head shaded in the open convertible. I lowered my head and rubbed my bald spot before looking up and replacing my cap facing forward. He laughed and lowered his head and patted his larger spot and said he should do that, too.

On a whim and with playfulness in my voice, I asked if he wanted to trade. Surprisingly, his eyes lit up and he said “Si!” He said he loved American baseball. I handed him my hat and he handed me his bolero, and he inspected it and plopped it on his head and grinned. I donned his hat and grinned back. We joked about how I now looked Cuban and he looked American, and then I asked if he knew of a hotel that existed in the 1960’s called The Havana Cabana. He shook his head and said no, that he had lived here all his life and hadn’t heard of it. I said “Gracias,” and pulled out a thumb tip and a small red silk handkerchief. I stretched my colloquial Spanish to make a joke about it, but the pun was lost in translation and fell flat. I asked if he knew what it was, and he said no. I quickly and obviously hid the tip in my left fist and poked the red silk into it with my right thumb. I showed my right hand empty with the thumb tip pointed directly at him, but he didn’t notice because, like most people, he focused on my palm and didn’t notice the small fake plastic dot jutting closer towards him, even though he had just seen the tip in my hand. I opened my left hand to show it empty, and his eyes jumped to my right hand and saw the tip with a hit of red visible through the thin plastic. He laughed out loud, a relief from the initial shock combined with re-seeing the same action with new insight. I gave it to him, and he tried it out and laughed again and said he’d show it to his sons. We shook hands strongly and sincerely, and he got into his car, rotated his cap, and drove off.

I looked around the small plaza where I stood. Only a few elderly men were there, sitting in benches facing the melacon and looking as relaxed as I hoped to be soon. I wanted to let a few people know I had arrived and cleared customs, then I’d turn off my phone for almost a month and begin to relax like they were. About twenty feet away was me was a vendor selling WiFi cards from a kiosk that also had chargers and cases. I bought a card with only 15 minutes and walked a few blocks inland to the Plaza de San Francisco de Asi, where a handful of people were gathered around a few benches and a statue that the Lonely Planet said it was a statue of ______. They were all staring at their smart phones, and I assumed that was the spot to check messages. I set down my backpack and clipped it to a bench with a non-locking carabiner, and pulled out my iPhone 8.

Despite having earbuds, I held my smart phone to my ear like an old flip phone. It transcribed voice mails, but I didn’t feel like rummaging for my reading glasses, so I told Siri to play voice mail. I kept the phone to my ear and moved into a modified warrior pose, with one hand on the phone and the other outstretched. I rotated my feet and squatted into the pose, trying to stretch my hamstrings and open my hips a bit until I could find a mat and do a proper job. My mind wandered to why I forgot the mat, and I was only partially listening to my phone. The first voice mail was from Wendy.

“Hey Jason, it’s Wendy. You’re probably in Jamaica or Cuba or wherever you were going by now, but I thought I’d call just in case.”

She paused almost three seconds. Twice as long as usual.

“It’s not important.”

Pause.

Something felt wrong. I stood upright and tried to listen more closely.

“I just wanted to talk with you about my will.”

Another pause. I pressed the phone tighter to my left ear, and I was so perturbed by the voice mail that I fumbled a bit for my thick sausage of a finger to fit into my narrowed cauliflower-scarred right ear canal. I breathed quietly and leaned in to what she was saying.

There was another pause, and I heard a hint of a sound, as if she had inhaled deeply and began to say, “I…” I can’t explain why, but I suddenly thought that Wendy would commit suicide and that she was calling me first; she wouldn’t, and I had no reason to suspect she would, but that’s the thought that popped into my mind. My body tensed as springs wound up inside me, and I pressed the phone and my finger more tightly. I held my breath and listened.

“It’s not big deal… You travel so much that I wanted to add Cindi as executor. We can talk about it later.” She sighed a subtle sigh, and said in what was obviously a forced cheerful tone, “Tell Cristi I said hello, and have fun scuba diving. Call me when you get back.” She hung up.

Gut instincts can be wrong, so instead of calling her back immediately I kneeled by the bench and dug through my backpack and pulled out my reading glasses and earbuds, and rewound her message. The VA says I arrived in the army with perfect hearing, but I left with a 15% hearing loss in each ear at different frequencies; despite stereo headphones, my head still rotated back and forth out of habit, as if trying to catch missing frequencies by whichever ear could. Anyone noticing probably thought I was moving my head to music and had jittery rhythm.

I listened to the entire message twice. Nothing changed from what I heard the first time. The transcription made a few mistakes translating her southern Louisiana accent, and it missed her beginning to say, “I…”, but she had definitely began to tell me something and stopped before the first word manifested. I was fixated on what she had begun to say, and wondered what had sparked my feeling that she could kill herself. I heard nothing other than that one subtle sound and atypically long pauses. The feeling was so strong that the thought dominating my mind was taking a car back to the airport, flying to Miami and then New Orleans, and renting a car to drive two hours upriver to Wendy’s home in Saint Francisville.

Wendy was my mother, Wendy Anne Rothdram Partin. When she was a 16 year old sophomore at Glen Oaks High School in Baton Rouge, she lost her virginity to the school’s drug dealer, Edward Grady Partin Junior, a 17 year old junior who had recently showed up at school because he had started living with Grandma Foster near the Baton Rouge airport, only a few miles from Glen Oaks. Wendy didn’t know anything about my dad’s family, and she couldn’t afford $150 for an abortion, so she accepted my dad’s proposal and they dropped out of school and eloped to Woodville Mississippi, where my dad still had family and state laws didn’t require parental consent for a 16 year old girl to marry. They returned to Baton Rouge as Mr. and Mrs. Edward Partin and moved into one of Big Daddy’s houses, and I was born a few months later. My dad was gone often, traveling to the Carribbean to buy drugs in bulk, and on one of those trips Wendy was at home alone and had a nervous breakdown – her second since having me – and impulsively abandoned me at a daycare near Glen Oaks when she saw a note asking to share gas on a trip to California. Judge Pugh of the East Baton Rouge Parish family court system removed me from their custody, and I entered foster care. Wendy returned on her own, divorced my dad, and spent the next few years fighting the Partin family and court system to regain custody of me. She would would win my custody back, but because she was ashamed of her age and having abandoned me, on monthly visits she taught me to call her by her first name so people would assume I was her baby brother. Old habits are hard to break, and I still called my mother Wendy.²

Why Wendy abandoned me will never be fully known; even she’s unsure, and a lot of our experiences back then aren’t verified, but we believed that they all centered around her and my dad being listed in the Baton Rouge phone book as Mr. and Mrs. Edward Partin. We lived in a house near the Amite River that Big Daddy used to store plastic explosives he obtained from Marcello on behalf of Jimmy Hoffa; the Amite River was where Hoffa mentioned the Local #5 safe being discovered, the one where the two witnesses who could link the safe to Big Daddy were found beaten and bloody, and the survivor refusing to testify. Though that house was not identified by an address in media, Big Daddy keeping plastic explosives for Hoffa had been discussed by FBI director in a 1964 issue of Life magazine that highlighted my family as “all-American heroes” for thwarting Hoffa’s plans to use them on Bobby Kennedy. That part was public, but no one but Hoffa and his attorney and a few hitmen knew that around the time my dad started attending Glen Oaks High School, an incarcerated Jimmy Hoffa met with an attorney, Frank Ragano, and a few other contacts including Frank The Irishman Sheenan, and said that he’d forgive all mafia debts if “anyone” could do “anything” to get Edward Partin to either change his testimony or sign an affidavit saying Walter Sheridan and Bobby Kennedy used illegal wiretapping to monitor Hoffa’s defense team.

Not even Ragano or the FBI knew how much debt would be forgiven, but we now know it was around $121 Million, and at least $20 Million of it was loaned to Marcello in New Orleans. In today’s money, that’s almost a billion dollars that would be forgiven if any one of the families could get my grandfather to free Hoffa, no matter what it took. The only requirement was that Ed Partin live. Otherwise, Hoffa’s conviction would stand, and he’d have to serve the entire eight years in prison. Frank talks about why he or the mafia didn’t just kill my grandfather, though they only knew a small piece of the puzzle. No one knew all the pieces, not even Hoffa, which is why it took so long to paint a picture of what was happening back then. In his memoir, Frank wrote: “Partin was no good to them dead. They needed him alive. He had to be able to sign an affidavit. They needed him to swear that all the things he said against Jimmy at the trial were lies that he got from a script fed to him by Bobby Kennedy’s people in the Get Hoffa Squad.”

The $121 Million forgiven would have been incentive enough for the mafia to pursue my family, but Hoffa went on to say that if they didn’t find a way to intimidate Ed Partin, he’d stop loaning them money from the Teamster’s pension fund. Hoffa had access to around $1.1 Billion in money not in banks back then, untraceable and mostly in cash from monthly dues of 2.7 million teamsters. Not even his closest allies knew that, and it would be decades before people put together pieces of the puzzle and figured it out. We now know that Jimmy Hoffa loaned millions to mafia families building casinos in the burgeoning city of Las Vegas, and hotels and other ventures in cities like New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, and New Jersey. His Teamsters then scored lucrative contracts to transport construction materials and work on site. He also invested in Hollywood films, which used Teamsters to haul filming equipment and house actors in mobile homes during filming in cities all over America; to this day, if you sit through the credits of most Hollywood films from the 60’s and 70’s and even the 80’s, the final image you’ll see is the Teamsters logo, a steering wheel framed by two massive horse heads. The mafia knew that being forgiven $121 Million was good, but having access to $1.1 Billion was better. In today’s money, that’s a lot more than I’d know what to do with, and I can only imagine what mafia families would do to ensure they had access.

Frank, who had originally answered Hoffa’s phone call about paining houses, knew to stay away from Big Daddy, but Hoffa had to make sure Frank told the mafia that, too. You couldn’t be subtle with low-level hitmen, and Frank said: “Jimmy told me point-blank to tell our friends back East that nothing should happen to Partin.” The friends back east were the mafia families near Frank’s Teamster territory. Ragano spread the word to Miami and New Orleans. I assume Chuckie O’Brien mentioned it to Detroit and Chicago families, though I never found evidence for that. I don’t know who would have reached out to Hollywood and Las Vegas. But the message was consistent and straight from the mouth of Jimmy Hoffa: Use any method possible to intimidate Ed Partin, but nothing should happen to him.

By then, most mafia knew that Big Daddy had been arrested for kidnapping little children, manslaugher, and extorion, and that he had escaped prison only because he ratted on Hoffa, so they knew they could do the same to his family him and still sleep at night. My dad and his siblings grew up with shootings, kidnappings, arson, explosions, and knifings being such a normal part of life they didn’t think to mention it; until shown otherwise, kids don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. Despite the attacks, Big Daddy refused. In 1968, a series of Time magazine features focused on the growing threat of organized crime in America and once again highlighted Big Daddy as an all-American hero, a man strong enough to stand up to Carlos Marcello and the mob. That probably infuriated Hoffa even more. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, so my grandfather was the main source of Hoffa’s focused rage.

Still fuming from inside his prison cell, Hoffa sent word through loyal men and gave Richard Nixon millions of dollars in campaign money, and promised the first ever Teamster endorsement of a republican, which would be at least 2.7 million votes and enough publicity to win the 1971 election. A few months later, President Nixon pardoned Hoffa, but he did it with a caveat that surprised Hoffa and his lawyers, proclaiming that Hoffa couldn’t participate with the Teamsters for another eight years or he’d go back to prison again. He then told voters that Hoffa would use his labor union negotiating skills to visit Vietnam and negotiate the release of American POW’s. Publicly, Hoffa agreed to help POW’s and reform America’s prison system, but privately he fumed. He told America he’d fight and win his role back and return to power in the Teamsters, and from 1971 to his disappearance in 1975, Hoffa continued to tell the mafia that Edward Partin must be convinced to sign an affidavit affirming illegal wiretapping, which would invalidate his 1964 conviction and therefore negate Nixon’s hold on him.

I’m not an expert on low-level mafia hitmen, but I assume they could read names in the Baton Rouge phone book, or at least knew someone who could. I mentioned that Baton Rouge was a small capitol city of only about 100,000 people, and it’s worth noting that the Partins were from Woodville, Mississippi, and only a few had followed Big Daddy to Baton Rouge. Doug, Don, Joe, and another Douglas were the ones I remember. Big Daddy’s mother, my Grandma Foster, had remarried and was named Bessie Foster in the phone book, not Bessie Partin, and she lived in a small house near the Baton Rouge airport down the street from Wendy’s mother, Joyce Hicks Rothdram. Mamma Jean, my dad’s mother and the wife mentioned by Walter Sheridan as “a quiet, attractive woman” who inspired Big Daddy to “settle down in Baton Rouge,” and who Chief Justice Warren noted was receiving “secret payments” from the government as far back as 1964, kept the name Norma Jean Partin but was unlisted in the Houston phone book, where she lived with my dad and his younger siblings in a house Bobby Kennedy bought for her, and they were protected by a team of J. Edgar Hoover’s federal marshals; and Big Daddy was remarried by 1972, and Mamma Jean had been estranged from Big Daddy for so long that no one thought she was worth pursuing. Big Daddy, per the governor’s request, he had taken up residence in Flagstaff to hunt elk while the mafia scoured Baton Rouge looking for his new family. No one seemed to notice that Ed Junior left Houston in the early 70’s and was living with Grandma Foster in Baton Rouge. When my parents became Mr. and Mrs. Edward Partin, there were fewer than four Partins in the phone book, and only one Edward Partin. Our home and neighborhood was subject to a disproportionate number of fires, explosions, and shootings; though most were attributed to gas pipe explosions, mishaps when kids played with fire, and hunting accidents from the expansive woods surrounding the home that led to the remote and rural Amite River.

I was an infant, so I don’t remember anything specific, but I have a lot of scars from that period that are unaccounted for, but may attest to the harsh life Wendy must have experienced as Mrs. Edward Partin. Unsurprisingly, she had two nervous breakdowns. The second time, my dad was somewhere in the Carribban buying drugs wholesale, without a phone and out of contact for a few months. Like father, like son, I suppose. His court records say that he was found with large amounts of prescription opiods with a probably intent to distribute, but for mysterious reasons was found not guilty. I’ve never confirmed where he bought them; he says Kingston, but Wendy remembered Cuba, and a few of my dad’s friends who went with him said Puerto Rico; a few other others who were with him says they’re unsure about that trip in 1973. I suspect Puerto Rico was involved, because offshore U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturing was burgeoning there back then, but wherever they went, they were likely to get help because of my dad’s name and association with the Teamsters. In one story, a Peurto Rican Teamster president loyal to Hoffa publicly said, “I’m gonna fucking kill Edward Partin!” A few days later, he was murdered by his bodyguard, and the new president never said anything ill of the Partin family. I’m sure Edward Partin had sufficient support in Latin America to go wherever he pleased.

Back in Baton Rouge, Wendy and I were by ourselves in Big Daddy’s house. My body is riddle with scars from that time period, and Wendy hasn’t discussed what happened or what was the final moment that propelled her to abandon me. She may have been so traumatized that she can’t remember. Whatever happened, I believe it’s as much of an unsolved mystery as Kennedy’s murder and Hoffa’s disappearance.

In Havana, I resisted the urge to fly home, and I stood in quiet reflection with thousands of memories fighting for attention in my mind. It’s no wonder she had a couple of nervous breakdowns, and I could hear her voice from my custody records forty years before, speaking to my mind as if it were today, telling me: “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.”

That was the understatement of the 1970’s, I said to myself, trying to find humor in the situation. I breathed, and stared at my phone and let my heart stop racing and my thoughts settle before acting.

Go to The Table of Contents

Footnotes:

1. The 1964 Warren report mistakenly claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot and killed President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, and that Jack Ruby acted alone when he shot and killed Oswald two days later. What is agreed upon today is that Oswald was born and raised in New Orleans, joined the marines (where he was a subpar marksman), was discharged, and defected to the Soviet Union, where he met and married a young lady and had a baby. Inexplicably, the FBI paid for their airfare back to the United States, and Oswald settled in New Orleans again, where he worked odd jobs to support his family and trained in the Baton Rouge civil air force under the alias Harvey Lee. After Kennedy’s embargo on Cuba, Oswald either joined or started a pro-Castro, pro-Cuba, pro-Communism organization and handed out pamphlets around New Orleans for their cause, and he traveled to Mexico City and attempted to fly to Cuba and meet Castro, but was denied a visa and returned to New Orleans. In the summer of 1963, he received a job at a school book repository in downtown Dallas and moved his family to a nearby small apartment. Using the alias A. Hidell, Oswald bought a 6.5mm WWII Italian carbine from a catalog, and took it to a Dallas gunsmith outfit it with a scope; his wife, Marine, took a photo of Oswald posing with that rifle and a .38 caliber revolver pistol in the back yard of their apartment. At approximately 1:26pm on 22 November 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed as he drove through downtown Dallas in the back of an open convertible with his wife, Jacquelyn, the Texas governor, and the governor’s wife; the governor was shot, too, and both men were taken to a hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead from his head wound. Police quickly found a 6.5mm Italian carbine with a scope in the 6th floor repository overlooking where Kennedy had been shot, and several 6.5mm rounds were meticulously laid on the windowsill; another 6.5mm round was found in the hospital, on the floor beside the governor’s gerny.
   
   Less than two hours later after Kennedy was shot, Oswald was stopped coming out of a downtown movie theater by Dallas police officer J.D. Tippet. Oswald used his .38 revolver to shoot and kill Tippet then fled, but was arrested soon after for the murder of Tippet and Kennedy. Before being carried away, Oswald declared, “I’m a patsy!” Two days later, around twenty Dallas police officers were leading Oswald from the police station in handcuffs, taking him outside and through a crowd of spectators, reporters, and news cameras broadcasting Oswald’s case world-wide; inexplicably, Jack Ruby, a Dallas night club owner and small-time mafia runner with a history of run-ins with the Dallas police, strolled through the police station and stood beside Oswald. While the world watched, Ruby removed a .38 Colt detective-sized revolver from his pocket, and with his right forefinger along the barrel and his middle finger on the trigger, he shot Oswald in the stomach. Ruby was arrested, and Oswald died a few hours later in the same hospital as Kennedy. Oswald was never tried for either murder. His carbine rifling matched bullets extracted from Kennedy – they are as accurate as fingerprints – and a bullet extracted from the wall of a publicly known army general who had been fired upon in his office a few months before; as mentioned, Oswald was a subpar marksman. Melina would admit that Oswald had planned and attempted, and few people doubted that Oswald was mentally unstable and capable of escalating his assassination desires to include President Kennedy; his marksman records weren’t public yet, but perhaps he had been practicing on generals with his new high-powered scope.
   
   While the world investigated Oswald, Ruby was found guilty of murder and sentence to life in prison. Newly appointed President Johnson pushed for a conclusion to who killed Kennedy, and tasked the unassailable Chief Justice Earl Warren with overseeing a committee to provide the world an answer. Ten months later, after thousands of interviews and ostensible collaboration between police, the FBI, and the CIA, The Warren Report said that, despite all conflicting evidence and claims of conspiracies, Oswald acted alone and so did Ruby. They interviewed Ruby extensively in prison, where he’d change his story back and forth: he’d say he acted alone and that he loved the Kennedys and wanted to protect Jacquelyn Kennedy from a long drawn out trial, he’d say the whole thing was a conspiracy, and he’d say that the that FBI was trying to kill him giving him cancer. (Two years after being incarcerated, Ruby would die of complications secondary to lung cancer; he had been a lifelong smoker.) Ruby was a known associate of Jimmy Hoffa from when Ruby was the the business agent of a Dallas dump truck company, and investigators learned that Ruby had made several phone calls to Hoffa around the time of Oswald’s death; US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy himself suspected Hoffa, and pushed for close scrutiny for ties between Hoffa, Oswald, and Ruby; but nothing could be proved and the Warren Report was published; ten months later, my grandfather collaborated with Bobby Kennedy to testify against Hoffa and send him to prison. That was a lot going on in a short amount of time, and the world was divided between those who believed the hastily assembled Warren Report and those who thought it was either an under-investigated conspiracy or an overt cover-up by those responsible. That debate continues 60 years later.
   
   Lesser known than the Warren Report and Hoffa vs The United States are the details behind the only court trial against anyone for Kennedy’s murder was held in New Orleans, when Attorney General Jim Garrison targeted New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw and subpoenaed anyone with ties to Oswald; Garrison’s case brought to light so many coincidences with FBI and CIA agents in New Orleans interacting with Oswald that, even though the trial was against Shaw, many people saw that as a way to bring the FBI and CIA forward. My grandfather was one of the people Garrison subpoenaed; that means Garrison thought he had enough evidence for a Grand Jury to force Big Daddy into speaking on record at a trial, and the evidence was a couple of witnesses saying they saw Big Daddy driving Ruby and Oswald together, and others saying they saw him driving Oswald “to the airport,” though it was unclear if they meant the New Orleans airport 50 minutes from the childhood home where I knew Big Daddy, or the Baton Rouge airport four miles away where Oswald trained; and there was a black and white photo of Big Daddy handing something to Ruby two weeks before Ruby shot Oswald. But, the witnesses and that photo vanished, and without them Big Daddy never had to stand trial. Shaw was found not guilty, and Jim Garrison published his version of the investigation without mentioning my grandfather again; his book, “On the Trail of Assassigns,” was a best seller that seemed to portray Kennedy’s assassination as the work of either the FBI and CIA or rogue agents within the organizations. In 1992, filmmaker Oliver Stone based his epic JFK on Garrison’s book (Garrison, a remarkably tall and lanky man standing 6’8″, appears in a cameo as Chief Justice Earl Warren); that film was timed with the 1992 presidential elections, and so swayed public opinion that voters demanded their candidate, Bill Clinton, release the classified JFK and Martin Luther King Junior assassination report that began in the 1960’s and ended in 1979. That report reversed the Warren Report and said that Kennedy was probably killed by a conspiracy, and that the three main suspects with the means and motive were International Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, New Orleans mafia boss Carlos Marcello, and Miami mafia boss and Cuban exile Santos Trafficante Junior. Clinton only released about 60% of the report, and every president since has released a bit more.
   
   In 1992, when I was on President Clinton’s quick-reaction force, I glanced through the freshly released JFK assassination report. Though my grandfather’s link with Oswald and Ruby wasn’t discussed – they never found the witnesses or that photo – a considerable amount of the report was 1962 FBI surveys of Big Daddy and then of Big Daddy and Hoffa, and over the next 30 years, whenever I heard of a new book coming out or saw that another president released more of the 1979 JFK and Martin Luther King Junior assassination report, I’d skim though and see if anything new jumped out at me. It’s a work in progress, and part of my trip to Cuba was slowly rereading old notes to see if new patterns emerge; and, of course, to find evidence that Big Daddy was in Cuba and met Castro in the months before Kennedy’s assassination. ↩︎
2. My custody records, like most of my family history, are easily downloaded by anyone with internet access who knows my name and my parents name. Or you could walk into the East Baton Rouge Parish 19th Judicial District and ask for paper copies. Either way, Judge Pugh, a family court judge who removed me from the Partin family and alleggedly committed suicide a year later, isn’t named by name; that’s where my family’s daily talk and apocrophyl stories help me put together a few pieces of the puzzle. Pugh’s the “trial judge” referenced by Judge JJ Lottingger, the judge who stepped in and assumed my case around the time Jimmy Hoffa vanished on 30 July 1975. Here’s what Lottingger said about my family in his 26 September 1976 custody court ruling:
   
   This is a suit by Edward Partin, Jr., plaintiff, seeking a divorce from his wife, Wendy Rothdram Partin, defendant, after having lived separate and apart for more than one year following a judgment of separation from bed and board. Plaintiff also seeks custody of the minor child, Jason Ian Partin, and the defendant reconvened asking that she be granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child.
   
   The Trial Court had previously, by ex parte order, awarded the temporary care, custody and control of the minor to Mr. and Mrs. James Ed White. Following trial on the merits, plaintiff was awarded a divorce as well as the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child, with the temporary physical custody of the minor child to remain with Mr. and Mrs. James Ed White. The defendant has appealed this judgment as it regards the custody of the child.
   
   This couple was married when plaintiff was 17 and the defendant was 16 years of age. Nine months following the marriage, they gave birth to young Jason. While we are not concerned with the facts surrounding the separation and divorce, it was apparently one of incompatibility as defendant testified that at the age of 17 she found herself married to a man who did not love her and so she left. Her testimony was as follows:
   
   “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.”
   
   Several weeks later she returned and lived with her husband again. She found that the situation hadn’t changed, and felt she had to get away again. She heard of a man who wanted someone to share expenses on a trip to California, so she quit her job and with her last wages left with him. She testified that she had no sexual relations with this man, and plaintiff does not accuse her of such. Following this trip she returned to Baton Rouge still emotionally upset. Her husband was suing her for separation and told her he was going to take custody of Jason. She went to live with her aunt and uncle, got a full time job with Kelly Girls paying $512.00 per month.
   
   In February, 1975, the defendant’s mother was injured in an accident and she moved in with her to care for her. In September, 1975, following the recuperation of the mother she returned to live with her aunt and uncle.
   
   During these above periods of time, the minor child lived with Mr. and Mrs. White. The Whites came to regard Jason as their own and, although the separation judgment awarded custody to the plaintiff with reasonable visitation privileges to the defendant, the Whites decided the defendant-mother could only see the child two days a month and that she could never keep the child over night. The reason the defendant did not contest custody at the separation trial was because at the time she felt unable emotionally and financially to care for her son.
   
   [Judge Lottinger wrote a paragraph of legal jargon here, citing the “double burden” placed on Wendy by the deceased Judge Pugh to go above and beyond what was typically necessary to regain custody.]
   
   We note that the petition for separation was grounded on habitual intemperance, as well as abandonment of the husband and the minor child. There are no other grounds listed for the separation nor for custody. The petition for the separation and custody of the minor child was not contested by the defendant, and a default judgment was granted. Defendant testified in the instant proceedings that the reason she did not contest custody in the separation proceeding was that she was not financially or emotionally capable of caring for the minor, and that knowing the Whites were going to be caring for him, she knew he would be in good hands.
   
   Though the petition for separation had as one of its allegations “habitual intemperance”, the plaintiff in the instant proceeding testified that he had never accused his wife of drinking, nor had he ever seen her drink.
   
   [Judge Lottinger goes on to cite a few precent cases, verdicts from previous judges in higher courts used to justify his opinions, a detail that’s less important in Louisiana’s version of the Napoleonic code, but still useful to show one’s logic and suggest unbiased decisions.]
   
   The welfare of the child is the main issue that the Court is concerned with. This issue is more important than any wishes or wants the parents may have. Fulco v. Fulco, 259 La. 1122, 254 So.2d 603 (1971), rehearing denied (1971). As a general rule, and in particular where children of young age are involved, preference is given to the mother in custody cases. This preference is very simply explained, the mother is normally better able to care for the child and look after the education, rearing, and training necessary. Estes v. Estes, 261 La. 20, 258 So.2d 857 (1972), rehearing denied (1972).
   
   No argument is made that the mother is not now morally or emotionally fit to care for the child, or that the house in which she lives is not a proper place to rear a child. In fact, the Trial Judge admitted that it was a fine home.
   
   The Trial Judge has not favored us with written reasons for judgment, however, we must conclude from various statements by the Trial Judge that appear in the record that he could find no fault with the defendant, nor was there anything wrong with the house in which she lived. It thus becomes apparent to this Court that the Trial Judge applied the “double burden” rule to the defendant. We have already ruled that the “double burden” rule does not apply in this situation, and thus, under the established jurisprudential rules, we can see no reason why the defendant-mother should not be granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child with reasonable visitation privileges granted to the father.
   
   In consideration of our above opinion, there is no need to discuss the specification of error as to the ex parte granting of custody to the Whites.
   Therefore, for the above and foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Trial Court is reversed, and IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the defendant-appellant, Wendy Rothdram Partin, be and she is hereby granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor, Jason Ian Partin, and IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that this matter be and it is hereby remanded to the Trial Court for the purpose of fixing specific visitation privileges on behalf of plaintiff-appellee Edward Partin, Jr. All costs of the appeal are to be paid by plaintiff-appellee.
   
   Lottingger, incidentally, knew my grandfather and father well, though that’s not obvious in my custody report. He was a 30 year veteran of Louisiana legislative law, and served in the Baton Rouge state capital building down the road from Big Daddy’s Teamsters Local #5 headquarters. On behalf of three governors, he spent almost three decades and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars trying to rid Louisiana of Big Daddy, similar to how Bobby Kennedy spent fifteen years and millions of taxpayer dollars trying to prosecute Hoffa. That’s probably why he was so kind to Wendy and took such a personal interest in my well being. ↩︎