Partin vs Partin
“You either loved Ed Partin or you hated him. There was no in between.“
– Douglas Westley Partin in his 2017 self-published autobiography, “From my Brother’s Shadow: Teamster Douglas Westley Partin Tells His Side of the Story.”
While he was in a federal penitentiary for almost six years based solely on my grandfather’s testimony, Jimmy Hoffa ran the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and made Richard Nixon president of the United States.
And he still drove the economy; as Charles Brandt pointed out, by 1974 the Teamster pension fund had more than a Billion dollars invested in commercial real estate, only 20% less than the largest American bank back then. The mafia listened to what Hoffa had to say, and millions of Teamsters were still loyal to him. Many people wondered how someone that powerful didn’t just kill my grandfather.
The Irishman explained.
“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?”
As soon as Big Daddy stood up as the surprise witness in Chatanooga, Hoffa focused all of his energy and resources on avoiding prison. The Chatanooga Choo Choo was a popular folk song that sang, “Pardon me boy, is that that the Chatanooga Choo Choo?” Hoffa called his trial in Chatanooga, Tennesee, the Chatanooga Choo Choo because he said that’s where Bobby Kennedy used Big Daddy to railroad him into prison. Hoffa liked the phrase so much that he titled Chapter 10 of his 1975 autobiography The Chatanooga Choo Choo and focused it around Big Daddy, though by then he had stopped using the pun “Partin, me boy…” and instead focused on Bobby’s abuse of the legal system.
Hoffa’s affinity for puns and sarcasm belied that behind the scenes he spent 24 hours a day trying to figure out how to stay out of prison after the Chatanooga judge sentenced him to eight years based on Big Daddy’s testimony. Hoffa spent more than a million dollars on his army of attorneys and tasked them with nothing else while Hoffa tried to work his own magic to stay out of prison.
The only two ways to to do that was to pay attorneys to fight his conviction up to the supreme court, or to get Big Daddy to either change his testimony against Hoffa and set him free, or to expose that Bobby Kennedy and the FBI used illegal wire tapping to monitor Hoffa’s defense team in Chattanooga, which would have the case thrown out and free Hoffa without Big Daddy admitting to perjury. Hoffa had to ponder that while still defending himself from the relentless attacks from Bobby Kenendy and labor union prosecutors across the country.
Five weeks after the Chatanooga trial, Hoffa was defending himself in another trial that had been in the works for years. That trial was in Chicago, home of a powerful mafia and with a history of clashes between organized crime and the FBI; it was Chicago where Al “Scarface” Capone got away with murder but was sentenced to prison for tax evasion, which was the only thing the FBI could prove. Like with Scarface, Bobby and Hoover were using whatever crime they could to send Hoffa to prison, and that crime would be jury tampering and Big Daddy was the only witness.
The mafia also wanted Big Daddy alive. If Hoffa were facing prison, or if he spent a few years in prison and wanted to get out, he knew so much about the mafia that it was possible he could become a witness against them in exchange for his freedom. Everyone was watching what Hoffa did in Chicago.
The Irishman said:
“At the Chicago office Jimmy told me point-blank to tell our friends back East that nothing should happen to Partin. Jimmy told me he had a good defense for the Chicago thing, and they were still working on Partin for an affidavit on the Chattanooga thing”
The Chicago thing was yet another case about abuse of the Teamster pension fund, this time centered around fuding real estate development in Florida called Sun Valley Village that was purported to benefit senior Teamsters and mafia heads; both owned lots in the development. The Village went bankrupt, and Hoffa himself owed around $400,000; he paid for that by aggressively taking from the pension fund and lending it out with short-term interests demands, and ended up paying back around a half million. Prosecutors said Hoffa was personally benefiting from the fund and from his position to influence other Teamster investors; they poured 15,000 documents into the case, and a jury would have to digest all of that.
Hoffa was sure he would win, and he had learned his lesson in Chattanooga and would become even more diligent in who he trusted and what he said while he worked on getting Big Daddy to change his testimony and reverse Hoffa’s conviction. All he needed was time and pressure on Partin.
The Irishman listened and understood. He said:
“I left Chicago and went back to the fund and games in Philly, and I passed the word among our friends about Partin.”
Hoffa spent two fruitless years trying to influence Big Daddy. He went to prison immediately after losing his final appeal in 1966’s Hoffa versus The United States. But from prison he persisted in pressuring Partin from prison.
Hoffa was only allowed visits in prison from friends or family once every three months; Frank was one of those people, and the rest were Hoffa’s wife and family. He saw his son James R. Hoffa Junior more often, because Hoffa Junior had become an attorney and the prison system allowed weekly between Jimmy Hoffa and attorneys as long as those attorneys were not working on other cases. And because of attorney-client privileges, Hoffa could meet with them in private and use codes to conduct business.
The Irishman wrote:
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.
Hoffa’s primary attorney was yet another coincidentally named Frank: Frank Ragano. That Frank only had three clients, Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Todos Trafficante Junior, the three primary suspects for orchestrating President Kennedy’s murder. He kept no other cases so that he could always visit Hoffa and relay messages to his other clients, and he could also give Hoffa messages from them.
By that time, Life magazine had already published J. Edgar Hoover’s endorsement of Big Daddy’s word, and the public believed that Hoffa had plotted to kill Bobby Kennedy in 1962 in a way so similar to how President Kennedy was killed in 1963 that many people began to suspect that either Hoffa or his mafia allies were responsible.
Frank The Irishman said:
“Some of our friends questioned Jimmy’s judgement, blabbing out loud like that to a man he hardly knew, Ed Partin. In our world you’ve got to keep things inside if you expect to be trusted. You don’t want people losing respect for you.”
In 1968 Life magazine published six issues back-to-back focused on nothing but the mafia. America was still not realizing how much of the economy they controlled, and how much crime could be attributed to their racketeering. Organized crime was in bed with organized unions, they said, and Big Daddy was showcased once again. This time he was an already established all-American hero willing to stand up to corrupt unions and the mafia. Life emphasized that Carlos Marcello was trying to free Jimmy Hoffa by offering Big Daddy a million dollar bribe to change his testimony. The amount would be raised to two million, and Big Daddy still refused.
Pundits challenged Life by saying that the mafia wasn’t in the business of bribing when they could intimidate or kill. But no one yet realized the extent of money they owed the Teamster Pension fund, nor did the pundits do their homework on Hoffa’s ongoing defense efforts. Low estimates are that the mafia owed the Teamster fund $121 Million, but it was probably more than that. By 1974, the Teamster pension fund had more than a Billion dollars lent out in commercial real estate, only 20% less than America’s largest bank, and an unknown but probably high amount of that $Billion was lent to mafia families. Carlos Marcello himself owed $21 Million to Hoffa. From prison, Hoffa sent word that all mafia debt would be forgiven if anyone could get my grandfather to change his testimony.
News and magazines began to report unprecedented violence in Baton Rouge. Big Daddy was shot and stabbed, and the local Teamster hall was shot up by unknown gunmen. That was around the time Audie Murphy became involved, which led to Nixon’s preemptive pardon against perjury and Big Daddy’s 29 page affidavit. But when Murphy died and Big Daddy was the main suspect and refused to sign the affidavit; as I alluded to earlier, Audie had 268 kills, and even the mafia would respect a man willing to and capable of killing Audie Murphy.
And then Hoffa was freed by Nixon. He wanted his power back, but was not getting the respect he had from before prison. His replacement and intended puppet, Fitzgerald, had become embedded in Hoffa’s former role like a tick that wouldn’t release its hold. Hoffa began trying to throw his weight around and was finding he weighed less and less each day. He began threatening that he’d expose the mafia if they didn’t do his bidding.
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. 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.
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. Hoffa, known for his successful negotiation tactics, rallied; he also began his own campaign for prison reform, saying that not even he had realized how cruel and hopeless prison could be (a stark difference from Big Daddy’s eventual role in a minimum security prison with his own color television to watch him and Hoffa portrayed by actors).
Hoffa ignored the warnings. He wanted control of the Teamster pension fund again so that his words would carry weight.
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.
And I assume most mafia hitmen back then could read the phone book or at least 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. Starting in 1972, the brutal mafia hitmen behind the scenes of The Godfather and likely involved in killing President Kennedy set their sites on Baton Rouge.
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.
All of my Partin family had the similar experiences in Baton Rouge. 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.
And there was one address still listed in the phone book under Mr. and Mrs. Edward G. Partin. No one would have known there was an Edward Grady Partin Junior; Mamma Jean and her children had long been hid from media.
Wendy did not have a car and she and I were usually at home alone. She was a petite teenager and I called her Wendy; most people thought I was her little brother. Anyone looking up Edward G. Partin’s home address and showing up unannounced 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.
As I wrote when I began talking about Wendy’s death during The Irishman’s film advertisements, she had a series of nervous breakdowns and abandoned me and I was placed in the Louisiana foster system for my safety.
Hoffa vanished on 22 July 1975, allegedly by Frank The Irishman Sheeran pointing a .38 at the back of his head and painting a wall red with Hoffa’s blood. Regardless of who pulled the trigger, it’s hard to imagine a man who lost most of his weight in prison pushing around the mafia and not being silenced.
The next day, Edward Partin was no longer necessary to anyone. The mafia ignored Baton Rouge, and Big Daddy lost his federal protection; that’s when prosectors began circling like vultures after having been held back for eleven years. Big Daddy was practically gone every week by then for federal-level trials in other states where he would have less influence over juries, similar to how Hoffa had bounced across the country from trial to trial. That’s when Judge JJ Lottinger assumed oversight of my case in the East Baton Rouge Parish 19th Judicial District and began helping Wendy get custody of me.
One of my custody hearings is on file at the East Baton Rouge Parish 19th Judicial District courthouse, the same courthouse that had decided to give Baton Rouge Teamster Sidney Simpson’s wife custody of their children just before Big Daddy helped him kidnap them. That’s the same court that would remove me from Partin custody. Wendy and my dad would file for divorce in separate proceedings, but it was that same court that Mr. and Mrs. Simpson battled that Wendy spent years trying to get me back.
The presiding judge was Judge JJ Lottinger. His voice is on record in Partin versus Partin, published on 26 September 1976. Lottinger was the family name of many Louisiana attorneys back then. At least one of the Lottingers was a legislative attorney on Governor McKeithan’s staff when McKeithan spent eight years trying to rid the state of Big Daddy. Regardless of which governor a Louisiana judge served under, I can’t imagine any one of them not knowing the name Edward Partin in the 1970’s. And I believe I remember Judge JJ.
I don’t recall the previous judge, but his name was Judge Pughe (a Cajun name pronounced Puh-Yew, like the sound you make when something smells bad). He’s listed as The Trial Judge, not by name, in Partin vs Partin, maybe because he had died of alleged suicide soon after removing me from Partin custody and professional courtesy kept his name protected. Soon after he passed, Judge JJ Lottingger became East Baton Rouge Parish’s only family court judge. My custody dispute was one of his first cases. Judge JJ said that Judge Puh-Yew hadn’t written down his reasons, so we had to start from the beginning
What Judge JJ learned he documented in Partin versus Partin, and this is what he had to say about Wendy and me in 1976:
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.
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.
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.
I downloaded my custody records after Wendy died. Like most of my family history, by 2019 it was available online. I hadn’t thought about it in decades. At first I was surprised that I remembered hearing Judge JJ’s voice; though, to be fair, that may be my mind confusing people I met as a kid or turning stories I heard into memories that seem as if I were there. Regardless, I did – and do – have memories from that time period and I recall Judge JJ as being what I now call kind and trustworthy.
The next thing I heard in my mind’s hear was not a memory, it was me knowing her soft southern accent with a slight Canadian twinge and reading what she said in Partin vs. Partin to explain why she abandoned me in the early 70’s.
“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?
All she could do to not cry was laugh and make puns on the Partin name, just like Jimmy Hoffa and Frank The Irishman Sheeran had. For most of her life, she would quip that she was born WAR, but that marrying a Partin WARPed her.
Wendy was married 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 to death. But only a few people knew that back then, and most of them had been killed or were serving life in prison. 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 paratrooper first reading my family history in the John F. Kennedy Assassination Report. I can’t imagine my teenage mom knowing what even the FBI didn’t know then, and what her death would prompt me to focus on until this story unfolded.
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. But believed truths are just as strong as factual truths uncovered later, and what Wendy said was true to her at that time: she felt there was no one to listen and help. That’s probably why when I read that line in Judge JJ’s report, all I could hear was a scared teenage girls soft voice pleading for help.
The next thing I focused on was Judge JJ reporting that, though Wendy was charged with “habitual intemperance,” and that no one had seen her drink. Even my dad admitted she did not. Intemperance was a euphemism for alcoholism back then, but it also implied mental instability ranging from postpartum depression to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Like every soldier with PTSD in the story so far, Wendy became an alcoholic later in life and she died of liver failure at age 63, forty five years after fighting the Partins to get custody of me. I know when and why she started drinking, and that will come out in another story that’s related to what jumped out in my mind next: PawPaw.
I hadn’t thought of him in years. Wendy had chosen to leave me with the custodian and Glen Oaks High School, who had known her and my dad for three years before they had me; Judge JJ wrote: “knowing the Whites were going to be caring for him, she knew he would be in good hands.”
I’m still here, so Wendy was right. I didn’t know how in her short and sweet obituary; it was too long of a story, and I hadn’t focused on organizing my thoughts yet.
Besides a few anecdotes about Big Daddy and Mamma Jean, I’ve already shared the highlights of their Partin history. There’s a lot more online and in books if anyone wants to dig deeper. It isn’t until the summer of 1976 that my memories begin to take root, and that’s when I have no doubt what I saw and heard. Those memories begin with PawPaw, the man who kept me safe when no one else could. I’ll focus on him in the next story.
For now, this is the end of A Partin History, except for one pun that Wendy once told me and is worth sharing now that you know our name. Like with Ed Partin, people may either love it or hate it.
My grandfather was Edward Grady Partin, a big man with a big part in history; I’m Jason Partin, just a small part in his story.
The pun sounds funnier if you say it out loud.
Now that it’s out of the way, whatever I say is in honor of my mother, Wendy Anne Rothdram Partin; may she rest in peace.
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