The book further claims Lafitte changed his name to John Laflin and retired to St.
According to this journal, Lafitte was a Sephardi Jew whose persecution at the hands of the Spanish led to his lifelong hatred of the Spanish (except, presumably, for the extended period in which he served as a spy for them). Laflin said he himself was a descendant of Jean Lafitte and had found the book in a trunk he had inherited. As explains, in 1948, a man named John Andrechyne Laflin went to the Missouri Historical Society with a document called The Journal of Jean Lafitte, which he claimed was the authentic memoir and scrapbook of the famed pirate.
