Edward Grady Partin

Edward Grady Partin, president of Teamsters Local 5 in Baton Rouge, became a crucial witness against Jimmy Hoffa in the investigations of threats and jury tampering. Hoffa mistook Partin’s background and Louisiana ties for proof of allegiance; instead, Partin carried information to Walter Sheridan and, eventually, testified publicly about Hoffa’s efforts to influence jurors. His importance lay in the contrast between the man Hoffa thought he understood and the witness who emerged in court.

Identity and Background

Partin was a large, tough-looking union official with an extensive criminal record as a young man. At the time Hoffa confided in him, he was out on bail on a kidnapping charge arising from a family custody dispute involving a trucker in his local. He was also under indictment for diverting $1,659 in union funds to personal use. These details made him appear to Hoffa like a man at home in the same rough world of power and obligation.

Hoffa also drew a mistaken conclusion from Partin’s home state. Louisiana was the base of Carlos Marcello, and Hoffa assumed Partin belonged to Marcello’s orbit without first asking him. Partin later explained that Hoffa simply took for granted that a Louisiana man would be in Marcello’s pocket. The assumption exposed Hoffa’s confidence in his own ability to read people: he treated a bundle of outward signs—size, criminal history, bail, and geography—as a guarantee of loyalty.

The Threat Against Bobby Kennedy

One night in the summer of 1962, Hoffa and Partin were alone in Hoffa’s office at the Teamsters headquarters in Washington, D.C. Hoffa asked whether Partin knew anything about plastic explosives, then mentioned knowing where to obtain a gun silencer. He went on to describe Bobby Kennedy’s lack of personal security and the ease with which he could be killed. Partin understood the remarks as both a threat and an invitation to participate in carrying it out.

Partin reported what he had heard to the Get Hoffa Squad, led by Walter Sheridan. Sheridan asked the FBI to administer a lie detector test; Partin passed emphatically. Sheridan then informed Bobby Kennedy of the threat. The story also reached JFK, who disclosed it to journalist Ben Bradlee at a private dinner. Bradlee sought confirmation from Bobby Kennedy, but Kennedy asked him not to publish it, fearing that publicity would frighten potential witnesses in the organized-crime cases he was supervising. Bradlee withheld the story. Partin’s report thus set off a chain of responses that reached the president and the press without producing a public account at the time.

Reports of Jury Tampering

Partin’s role grew more consequential during the Nashville Test Fleet trial. After the jury had been selected and proceedings had begun, he told Sheridan that the president of a Nashville Teamsters local planned to bribe the wife of a Tennessee state trooper who was serving on the jury. Sheridan checked the jurors and confirmed that the trooper’s wife was among them. Agents followed the union official to a deserted road, where he met the trooper in a patrol car.

Prosecutors sought the juror’s removal without disclosing the source of the tip. At the ensuing hearing, the union official took the Fifth Amendment after Hoffa gave him a five-finger signal, according to Sheridan’s account. The trooper initially denied wrongdoing, then acknowledged under Judge Miller’s questioning that the official had offered him promotion and advancement in exchange for an unspecified future favor. The episode showed how influence could be exerted indirectly: the proposed inducement was presented as a career benefit, while the favor itself remained unstated.

A separate allegation concerned a Black juror. In an affidavit prepared for Partin’s signature, he said that Hoffa had told him a Detroit business agent, Larry Campbell, had arranged a $10,000 bribe through the juror’s son, with $5,000 paid in advance. Judge Miller read the sealed affidavit, denied the defense access to it, and excused the juror, who was replaced by an alternate. The defense, unaware that Partin had defected, suspected that the government had been bugging and wiretapping its preparations. Partin’s information therefore affected not only who remained on the jury but also the defense’s understanding of how the prosecution seemed to know so much.

From Hidden Source to Courtroom Witness

Partin’s presence in Nashville was not always apparent to the defense. Frank Sheeran recalled being called there by Bill Isabel and told that his presence would help if protesters caused trouble. Sheeran understood that the real purpose was to make eye contact with jurors and discourage anyone who had been approached from coming forward. At the Andrew Jackson Hotel, he saw Partin sitting with Frank Ragano, who did not know that the man beside him was an informant. The hotel room was serving as the lawyers’ offices, placing Partin close to the defense camp while his information flowed to Sheridan.

During the later Chattanooga jury-tampering trial, the government kept Partin out of sight in a cabin on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. The trial had run for three months, and Hoffa’s defense appeared confident when prosecutors called Partin as their final witness. His arrival prompted an immediate defense motion to exclude his testimony. The defense argued that the government had planted a mole within its camp, violating Hoffa’s right to counsel.

The government answered that Partin had volunteered to attend the trial and had reported to Sheridan, a former FBI agent who was not a lawyer, rather than to the prosecutors. Sheridan had asked him to watch for evidence of ongoing jury tampering; Partin said he had not discussed with Sheridan anything he had heard in Nashville about the Test Fleet case or Hoffa’s defense. After a four-hour hearing, the judge accepted the government’s account and allowed Partin to testify before the jury.

Hoffa glared at Partin, but Partin was not intimidated. He connected Hoffa to specific efforts to influence jurors by recounting Hoffa’s boasts about attempted bribes, including remarks made before or while the efforts were under way. The testimony gave the jury a picture of Hoffa not merely as the beneficiary of other men’s schemes but as the figure directing them. Partin endured almost five days of cross-examination. Rather than collapsing under it, he grew more effective; when a defense lawyer accused him of rehearsing his account, Partin replied that, if he had rehearsed it, the lawyer would have heard much more, because he had forgotten some things.

Narrative Role and Significance

Partin’s trajectory turns on a reversal of presumed loyalty. Hoffa treated his apparent toughness, legal troubles, and Louisiana connections as signs that he could be trusted, while Partin became the channel through which threats and attempted jury interference reached investigators. His reports connected private boasts and covert approaches to public hearings, judicial decisions, and testimony before a jury.

The account also preserves the strain around his position. His criminal record and pending charges formed part of his identity, while Sheridan’s request for a lie detector test and Partin’s emphatic result supplied one official measure of his credibility. In Nashville, his proximity to the defense made the question of how he had gathered information central to the courtroom dispute. The judge’s decision did not erase that controversy; it allowed the jury to hear the evidence after the government’s explanation prevailed. Partin’s significance is therefore both evidentiary and dramatic: the man Hoffa presumed to have in his pocket became the witness whose account portrayed Hoffa pulling the strings.