Hoffa versus The United States

“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.”

WJBO radio, New Orleans, 23 June1964

“As noted in the account of Ruby’s telephone records, the committee confirmed the existence of several contacts between Ruby and associates of Hoffa during the period of October and November 1963, including one Hoffa aide whom Robert Kennedy had once described as one of Hoffa’s most violent lieutenants.”

– The Congressional Committee on Assassinations John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Report

Around the time Warren released that report, Bobby Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover decided to use Big Daddy against Hoffa. They were willing to risk exposing their most valuable informant that had been feeding Walter Sheridan and the Get Hoffa Task Force information. Hoffa was on trial in Chattanooga Tennessee for another Bobby-influenced charge of influencing jurors in a 1962 minor state-level labor trial where Hoffa was found not guilty of using his Teamster role to benefit a Detroit trucking company owned by his wife called The Test Fleet.

Hoffa’s 1964 trial for obstructing justice in 1962 was its own national spectacle. Hoffa was known to do publicity photos before juries were selected for his trials and then banned from influential media; he would pose with famous African American boxers, like Joe Lewis, to gain sympathy from inevitable African American jury members in the south. This was before the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King Junior’s assassination, and no one was politically correct; and because of socio-economics, many of the south’s African American’s were assumed to be more susceptible to bribes and offers than white men. A common way to bribe Hoffa’s jurors was to offer someone in their family a plush Teamster job and guaranteed pension, but that wouldn’t be known for decades. The most common way to influence a juror was simply to offer them a lot of untraceable cash from the Teamster pension fund.

“The Negro” juror would be referenced throughout the news and even cited by Earl Warren, the man who oversaw Brown versus The Board of Education ten years prior would simplify that man’s role into “a Negro.” Warren would write:

There was other evidence at the trial that petitioner Campbell, a union associate of Hoffa’s, and petitioner Parks, Campbell’s uncle, had made bribe offers to Gratin Fields, a Negro juror. On November 7, according to Partin, Hoffa told Partin that he had “the colored male juror in [his] hip pocket,” and that Campbell “took care of it.” Hoffa told Partin that Campbell, a Negro, was related to Fields, and that while Fields had refused the bribe he would not “go against his own people.”

As America would soon hear, Hoffa was running the Teamsters from his hotel room in 1962, just like in 1964, and would be convicted of handing Big Daddy $20,000 from the room’s petty cash safe and asking him to convince “the Negro” to accept a bribe. Big Daddy never spoke with the gentleman and no money exchanged, but he knew all details about all jurors and tied circumstantial evidence together with his testimony. Any conviction against Hoffa would have to be based on Big Daddy’s word. Bobby Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover were focused on solving the president’s murder, yet were still receiving daily updates from the head of the Get Hoffa Task Force, Walter Sheridan.

Hoffa was a notoriously calm man in courtrooms. He remained unfazed when a man burst in the Chatanooga courtroom and pointed a pistol pointed at him; Hoffa’s menttee, a stout pitbull without a leash who had boxed in youth named Chuckie O’Brien, leapt across Big Daddy and tackled the man and pistol whipped him with his own gun before courtroom security guards could pry him off. For the rest of the trial, Chuckie patrolled the courtroom hallways during the day and lurked with a .410 shotgun in Hoffa’s hotel at night and kept bumping into Big Daddy but suspected nothing. Hoffa increased his diligence and tightened his inner circle.

It had been two years since Hoffa allegedly implied Big Daddy bribe a juror in 1962, so they had to pile up circumstantial evidence for the new jury to review. Bobby and Hoover were waiting to see if it would be prudent to expose their mole and use Big Daddy’s testimony; once they did, they’d either have to win or they’d lose their most cherished informant. Walter set up the FBI’s headquarters in a hotel a few blocks from Hoffa’s hotel and met with Big Daddy daily. Everything they said was relayed to Bobby and Hoover, who also had FBI agents planted in the courtroom trying to predict Hoffa’s defense. Allegedly, Hoover even bugged private meetings between Hoffa and his attorneys, hoping to hear an advantage they could use in the prosecution’s case.

FBI agents loomed everywhere around the trial in Chattanooga, and Hoffa’s men stood guard at his hotel. Teamsters, mobsters, and corporate managers were in and out of Hoffa’s room throughout the trial. Hoffa told them that Ed Partin was standing at the door and was to be trusted. When prosecutors seemed to know details about Hoffa’s case, Hoffa had begun to suspect a leak in his inner circle, but big Daddy was so trusted that he was never considered and Hoffa kept him closer to prevent anyone from eavesdropping on Teamster business and his court strategy.

Jimmy Hoffa’s face was a chiseled chunk of granite in the courtroom. But when prosecutors called their surprise and Big Daddy stood up from Hoffa’s inner circle and faced the jury, Hoffa’s rigid jawline dropped and his skin turned pale and he probably sealed his own fate when he gasped: “My God, it’s Partin!” The jury only deliberated for three hours before believing Big Daddy’s word and convicting Hoffa of obstructing justice by jury tampering.

At the trial, two mafia hitmen sitting by the FBI agents flicked their thumb nails against their two front teeth and at Big Daddy, a signal of an impending hit on him and his family. Life magazine reported that Big Daddy just smiled confidently

Anyone loyal to Hoffa would have wanted revenge. Chuckie, among his final words before passing away in 2020, would say: “Fucking Partin. I should have killed him when I had the chance.” Anyone loyal to Hoffa felt the same, and the phrase “I’m going to fucking kill Partin” was uttered across Teamster locals from New Jersey to Puerto Rica. But Big Daddy survived and thrived after testifying against Hoffa. That was mostly because of Bobby and Hoover’s support.

Immediately after Big Daddy’s role became public, Hoover announced that he was assigning federal marshals to follow and protect my family from inevitable Teamster and mafia retaliation. Bobby used his contacts at Life and Look! magazines to quickly whitewash Big Daddy’s past and showcase him as an all-American hero for standing up to Hoffa’s corrupt Teamsters and their mafia connections. By then, Big Daddy’s most controversial criminal chargers were missing and have not been found since.

Hoffa had the best and lawyers his $1.1 Billion pension fund could afford. By then even his son, James R. Hoffa Junior, was an attorney and motivated to help his father. Hoffa’s army of attorneys left the courtroom and immediately began trying to discredit Big Daddy and appeal based on violations of the 4th and 6th Amendments in our Bill of Rights. The 6th is relatively long and complex and related to what would become the simplified Miranda’s rights; it overlaps with the 1st Amendment’s right to remain silent and ensures a suspect can have a lawyer present so they aren’t manipulated into saying something incriminating or out of context. The 4th Amendment was penned by hand in the 1700’s and concisely protects people against unwarranted search and seizure. It says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Hoffa’s attorneys petitioned that Big Daddy could have influenced Hoffa’s words and therefore violated the 6th Amendment, and that his unwarranted task to find “something” or “anything of interest” violated the 4th Amendment. They rose through appeal courts with that violation leading their charge.

Hoffa, to combat Bobby Kenendy’s whitewashing of the only witness against him, used his fame to lash out at Big Daddy’s character. He wrote:

It was Edward Grady Partin who volunteered the testimony that sealed my doom in the Chattanooga court.

You may have read about him. Thanks to a government sponsorship he was portrayed as something of a national hero. he somehow looked the part, too: a rugged, firm-jawed man with slightly wavy hair and the appearance of sincerity and honesty that would have made him a successful salesman. Ah, you’d say upon meeting him, there’s a true-blue blood American, a churchgoer, no doubt, a man who contributes regularly to charity, a fellow who devotes much time to community-service groups, a chap who turns over most of his paycheck to a divorced wife.

But there’s another Edward Grady Partin, one the jury never got to hear about.

This Edward Grady Partin is mentioned in criminal records from coast to coast dating from 1943, when he was convicted on a breaking and entering charge, to late 1962, when he was indicted for first-degree manslaughter. During that twenty-year period Partin had been in almost constant touch with the law. He had had a bad-conduct discharge from the Marine Corps. He had been indicted for kidnapping. He ha been charged with raping a young Negro girl. He had been indicted for embezzlement and for falsifying records. He had been indicted for forgery. He had been charged with conspiring with one of Fidel Castro’s generals to smuggle illicit arms into communist Cuba.

Hoffa’s word had no power over Life and Look! magazines, which were the most distributed weekly publications and trusted source of news for Americans back then. J. Edgar Hoover oversaw the photos they used, including a head-to-toe photo of Big Daddy in his early 20’s, handsome and smiling and shirtless and wearing nothing but boxing shorts and simple gym shoes. Another two-page layout showed Big Daddy’s squiggly 1962 lie detector results and a photo of him strapped down to a chair with electrodes all over him and FBI scientists wearing white lab coats questioning him and interpreting the squiggling lines for readers.

Other photos were probably more from Bobby’s perspective, and they showed Big Daddy walking picket lines with Baton Rouge teachers offering them the support of Teamsters if necessary, and a slew of two-page spreads showing Big Daddy being a loving father to my dad and his four siblings in scenes around the Baton Rouge state capital building and LSU’s nearby campus. As an extra sell, the Partin family shared that issue with the new first-family, the Johnsons, as if showing America a united team and on the right path between the new government and new union leadership. There was no reason to doubt Edward Partin’s word.

Big Daddy’s charm oozed from the pages of Life; that’s how he gained the moniker all-American hero that Hoffa would scoff about in public when he ranted about the “minor domestic problem” that Big Daddy was up against when Bobby set him free.

Hoffa’s army of attorneys clawed their case through appeal courts and all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, one of only a few dozen cases out of thousands petitioning to reach the docket. One verdict could set the president for future generations and essentially rewrite the U.S. Constitution. Attorney General Bobby Kenendy followed every step, and newspapers fed the final results to America.

Chief Justice Earl Warren was the was the only justice to vote against using my grandfather’s testimony to convict Jimmy Hoffa of obstructing justice by jury tampering. Six justices allowed the testimony and two abstained. Hoffa was sentenced to eight years in prison based solely on Big Daddy’s word.

By then, Big Daddy had been indicted by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison in charges related to killing President Kennedy, and he had always been a known associate of New Orleans mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello. But the trial judge refused to allow any of Big Daddy’s history to be used in the case against Hoffa. The supreme court had access to what was denied as evidence against Big Daddy’s character, yet still voted to convict Hoffa and send him to prison for eight years. An additional and seemingly incidental charge of mail fraud were added later, and Hoffa’s total sentence grew to 11 years. He began serving in a small cell in a New Jersey federal penitentiary in 1966. He worked eight hours a day pounding mattresses in the prison mattress factory, and spent evenings pondering how to get out and resume control of the Teamsters.

While Hoffa pounded mattresses, Hoffa versus The United States was published for public review. To this day they are available on the U.S. supreme court and archives websites for posterity to ponder, and practically all law schools in America still require review of the case and what Warren and the other justices wrote to justify their decisions. Earl Warren documented his reasons in a lengthy missive; he railed on my grandfather’s character so vehemently that sixty years later his words leap with the sprite of an angry teenager. Warren and the other justices reference Edward Partin on 24 pages of the 30 page court record of Hoffa versus The United States, and the name Edward Partin or Partin is typed 148 times, more than twice as many times as Hoffa’s.

Warren began his rant by writing:

Here, Edward Partin, a jailbird languishing in a Louisiana jail under indictments for such state and federal crimes as embezzlement, kidnapping, and manslaughter (and soon to be charged with perjury and assault), contacted federal authorities and told them he was willing to become, and would be useful as, an informer against Hoffa, who was then about to be tried in the Test Fleet case.

A motive for his doing this is immediately apparent — namely, his strong desire to work his way out of jail and out of his various legal entanglements with the State and Federal Governments. And it is interesting to note that, if this was his motive, he has been uniquely successful in satisfying it. In the four years since he first volunteered to be an informer against Hoffa he has not been prosecuted on any of the serious federal charges for which he was at that time jailed, and the state charges have apparently vanished into thin air.

Warren ranted about what he knew of Big Daddy’s history, though by then so much had vanished or been whitewashed that he only had a partial view; but even that glimpse told everyone what Warren blatantly said:

Here the Government reaches into the jailhouse to employ a man who was himself facing indictments far more serious (and later including one for perjury) than the one confronting the man against whom he offered to inform.

Warren agreed with fellow judges that using disreputable has been a part of the justice system for all of history, and that they will always be useful in a court of law. But he emphasized that Edward Partin’s word should not be used in American court of law because of his incentives to get out of jail, and repeated the irony of Big Daddy’s history of perjury; or, as my devout Christian grandmother Mama Jean would call it later in life, bearing false witness. And in what I believe was a warning to posterity about Hoover’s growing illegal wire tapping surveillance program, Warren wrote:

Partin became the equivalent of a bugging device which moved with Hoffa wherever he went. Everything Partin saw or heard was reported to federal authorities and much of it was ultimately the subject matter of his testimony in this case.

Given the incentives and background of Partin, no conviction should be allowed to stand when based heavily on his testimony. And that is exactly the quicksand upon which these convictions rest, because without Partin, who was the principal government witness, there would probably have been no convictions here.

He concluded his three-page rant against my grandfather by saying:

I cannot agree that what happened in this case is in keeping with the standards of justice in our federal system and I must, therefore, dissent.

Warren would die in 1974, long before surveillance technology grew beyond his imagination and his warning would be viewed as prescient in hindsight. Some law professors say that modern government surveillance liberties and prosecution methods violate the original Bill of Rights and can be traced back to allowing my grandfather’s testimony in Hoffa versus The United States. What Earl Warren and practically every historian and law professor agree upon today is without recorded evidence, my grandfather’s word was the only thing keeping Jimmy Hoffa in prison.

Hoffa could only get out only if Big Daddy changed his testimony or testified that Bobby and the FBI illegally monitored Hoffa’s legal defense team, which would lead to his case being thrown out and Hoffa returning to power in the Teamsters. In prison, Hoffa was only allowed visits in prison from friends or family once every three months, though he could speak weekly with his attorneys if they weren’t working on other cases. Hoffa shared attorneys with mafia families and paid them to not take on other cases. Because of attorney-client privileges, they could meet in private and Hoffa could communicate with the mafia families via code.

Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran spoke about the days Hoffa was in school, which is what the mafia called prison, and Charles Brandt quoted him as saying:

In school Jimmy talked a lot about Partin. Frank Ragano was supposed to be getting an affidavit from Patin that the government set Jimmy up. There was a [District Attorney] in New Orleans who arrested Partin, and they were supposed to get that D.A. off Partin’s back in exchange for the affidavit. The same D.S. arrested Walter Sheridan for bribery, and that was supposed to help Jimmy by making Sheridan look bad in the papers. All that help came from [mafia boss Russel Buffalo’s] and Jimmy’s good friend, Carlos Marcello, the boss in New Orleans who had the D.A.

Per penitentiary requirements, only attorneys not working on cases could visit Hoffa. To ensure he had constant coded contact with his Teamsters and mafia families, Hoffa paid for attorneys like the coincidentally named Frank Ragano to have no other cases and to ensure the right to attorney-client confidentiality. Ragano was the attorney for Hoffa, New Orleans mafia boss Carlos Marcello, and Miami mafia boss Santos Trafficante Jr.

Their codes were well planned because all of Ragano’s clients were being watched by FBI daily; the eventual 1976 classified John F. Kennedy Assassination Report would explain why when it pointed to Ragano’s three clients as the men with the motive, means, and opportunity to orchestrate Kennedy’s assassination. In particular, the report emphasizes that Marcello was unique and above other mafia families; the report says:

“Any evaluation of Marcello’s possible role in the assassination must take into consideration his unique stature within La Cosa Nostra. The FBI determined in the 1960’s that because of Marcello’s position as head of the New Orleans Mafia family (the oldest in the United States, having first entered the country in the 1880’s), the Louisiana organized crime leader had been endowed with special powers and privileges not accorded to any other La Cosa Nostra members.“

Marcello was so powerful that people at even The Irishman’s level did not know his confidential role. Even fewer knew that Marcello owed Hoffa $21 Million for financing New Orleans hotels and mafia operations. When combined with the other mafia families, the leaders of organized crime owed Hoffa $121 Million. That was a jaw-dropping sum of money back then. It was enough to kill for.

Hoffa sent word via his attorneys and therefore via Marcello that all mafia debt would be forgiven if – in a jab at the clause that put him in prison – “anyone” could find “any way” to get my grandfather to either change his testimony against Hoffa or to testify that Bobby and Hoover used illegal surveillance of Hoffa’s legal defense, and therefor have the trial revoked. That was too complex for most low-level mafia runners to understand, so Hoffa emphasized again and again that Partin should not be killed.

The Irishman said:

“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 by Bobby Kennedy’s people in the Get Hoffa Squad. Partin had to say that he did all of this because he had kidnapping charges hanging over his head and not because Jimmy had made threats to whack Bobby. That was Jimmy’s best chance on the jury-tampering matter. Partin knew that nobody was going to kiss him [mafia slang for kill him] as long as he strung them along. Partin gave Jimmy’s lawyers useless affidavits and even a deposition. In the end, they never really got him to say that he railroaded Jimmy Hoffa. All they ever got out of him about railroading amounted to no more than, “Partin, me boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?”

Not even media picked up on the small detail that Big Daddy had to be alive for Hoffa to get out of jail.

A six month expose on organized crime in 1968 by Life magazine showcased Big Daddy refusing a $1 Million bribe from Carlos Marcello in exchange for changing his testimony. Baton Rouge lauded that as Big Daddy unafraid of the mafia or possibly even in charge of the mafia. Partially informed national pundits scoffed at Life and said the mafia wouldn’t bribe someone they could kill, but what no one realized, probably not even the FBI, was that Marcello already knew Big Daddy and that bribing an old colleague with $1 Million was good business if it erased $21 Million owed to Hoffa, and that by killing him they’d be honor-bound to repay $21 Million. (Nor did anyone know that Marcello upped the bribe to $2 Million and Big Daddy still refused; like Hoffa, he craved power and had more than enough money.)

All of that time Big Daddy continued running the Teamsters. Newspaper reports flooded in about him being stabbed and shot, and about unprecedented violence and shootouts and explosions in Baton Rouge as mafia hitmen from around the country poured in and tried “anything” to convince Big Daddy to change his testimony.

Nothing intimidated Big Daddy. From prison, Hoffa tried other tactics. He sent word to President Nixon that he’d give millions to Nixon’s re-election campaign and offer his endorsement and therefore millions of Teamster votes – and probably more from millions of other people who listened to Hoffa’s word – if Nixon would offer Big Daddy a preemptive pardon for perjury and clemency for the future in exchange for changing his testimony. To strengthen the offer, Hoffa then negotiated with a man who would appeal to all Americans, Audie Murphy: America’s most decorated war hero and star of more than 40 action films, the Texas star and WWII veteran who was revered by citizens, politicians, the mafia, and even The Irishman.

Later in this story I’ll talk more about Audie Murphy and how his story had influenced my life so far. But it’s useful to start with his life and how his death in a plane crash soon before Hoffa was released (and I was conceived) in 1971, and how Audie Murphy influenced my life in the years that followed.

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