Purple casket owned by slain LSU superfan is transformed into a portable bar

Four years ago, former LSU football player "Big Bob" Wynne bought a shiny purple coffin at an estate sale. The previous owner of the coffin, "Big Lee" Martin, who was known across New Orleans for his fanatical devotion to the Tigers, had been shot to death a few weeks earlier.

Martin's remains were laid out in the purple coffin during his funeral before being cremated.

Now, Wynne has converted Martin's purple coffin into an elaborate portable bar, destined to be used during football game tailgating parties.

"People might say, ‘This is mocking death,’" Wynne said, but he sees it as a winking tribute from one LSU superfan to another.

"He would have loved it," Wynne said.

At 6-foot-4 and 290 pounds, Wynne lives up to the nickname "Big Bob." He played offensive guard for the Tigers from 1998 to 2000, during the transition from coach Gerry DiNardo to the Nick Saban years.

No. 76 was more than a stalwart defender of quarterbacks Josh Booty and Rohan Davey. Wynne is proud to say he was an academic champ too, topping his undergrad class at LSU and his Loyola University law school class when he graduated in May 2005.

He passed the bar in July of that year, landed a job as a federal judge's law clerk in New Orleans in August, and got engaged the same month. Life seemed to be steadily marching forward from one first down to the next. But then, Hurricane Katrina blew the whistle for a time out.

Frustrated by the chaotic recovery period, Big Bob decamped to Houston in 2007.

Former LSU offensive lineman 'Big Bob' Wynne, 'temporarily' moved from his native New Orleans to Houston in 2007

It was a tortuous decision for Wynne, who’d grown up in the New Orleans Lakeview neighborhood, graduated from St. Dominic/Christian Brothers/Jesuit, and planned to spend the rest of his life in the Big Easy, rooting for the Saints on Sundays.

"I never, ever, ever planned to go anywhere else," he said.

To Wynne, Houston was especially odious. "I though Houston was worse than Atlanta," he said.

Wynne planned to eventually return home. "I thought I’d go to Texas for a couple of years," he said. "What does it hurt to leave for a couple of years?"

Fifteen years later, he's still in H-town, with "three kids, a marriage, a divorce and a bunch of jobs" under his belt. In 2017 he founded his own law firm.

And the truth is, despite conditioning to the contrary, Wynne adjusted to the sense of normalcy that Houston offered. "I appreciate the efficiency," he said.

Despite his defection, Wynne never lost the somewhat, uh, sardonic sense of humor common to natives of the Crescent City.

Anyone who ever took the Bonnabel Boulevard exit off Interstate 10 knew something about "Big Lee" Martin. He was a tow-truck company owner who’d converted his Metairie home into a museum of LSU football memorabilia: helmets, signed balls, posters, bobble heads, refrigerator magnets, and anything else remotely LSU football-related.

His pickup was tricked out LSU-style, as was his mailbox, his planters, banners, concrete lions and his coffin.

It's no surprise that Big Lee is supporting his LSU Tigers through the rough start to its 2017 season. He knew Les Miles was going to go at some point, and he likes quarterback Danny Etling. Who he really likes, though, is Ed Orgeron, the new Cajun head coach with a voice like rocks shaking around in the bottom of a metal bucket.

Martin got the purple casket "cheap, cheap, cheap," from someone he met at a hardware store, who apparently had heard of his unquenchable purple and gold collecting habit. Martin displayed the macabre acquisition in his kitchen, watched over by plush Mike the Tiger dolls.

"I bought it a few years ago," he said of the coffin in a 2017 YouTube tour of his carefully curated abode, "and I wasn't sure what to do with it. So, I just took my kitchen table out. And I’m a single man, so I can do whatever I want to with my house."

Lee once told a NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporter that he hoped for a big funeral that would be reported in the press. His body, he said, would recline in his LSU-themed casket, before being cremated.

Big Lee's little sister April Martin McElroy heard that often. "Every time I would visit, he'd tell me to lay him out in it, then sell it," she confirmed.

The moment came much sooner than anyone could have predicted.

The coffin of Lee "Big Lee" Martin sits in the living room at his home in Metairie, La., Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Lee "Big Lee" Martin was fatally shot May 5 by his neighbor Wayne Higgins. Now, the home of Big Lee is on the market with all of the LSU memorabilia inside.

Martin, 53, was shot to death in his driveway on May 5, 2018. His shooting was apparently the culmination of a decadelong conflict with a neighbor, 78-year-old Wayne Higgins. As Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto explained after the shooting, the two fought "non-stop over anything."

That spring morning, Martin — who had a reputation for hot-headedness — reportedly pointed his hose at the open window of Higgins’ pickup truck as the older man backed out of his driveway.

Based on video evidence, Higgins — who was also known for cantankerousness — allegedly left his truck, drew a pistol out of his fanny pack and shot Martin once in the chest, then stuck around to be arrested as Martin died. Higgins was later indicted on a second-degree murder charge.

Martin's sister said that her brother was, indeed, laid out in the purple casket at his funeral. Big Bob Wynne said he had always understood that was the case.

Wynne didn't attend the estate sale at Martin's home in person, but a pal shopped for him by proxy via live video. When Wynne saw the coffin, he knew he had to have it, but his enthusiasm wouldn't let him pay the opening bid of $1,000. Instead, he bid a mere $500 and walked away with a steal … assuming anyone else was interested in owning such a thing.

"It's a little bit strange, it's a little bit morbid, it's a little bit funny, it's a little bit entertaining," Wynne told a NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporter in 2018. "It's a nice resemblance of New Orleans," he concluded.

Like a grape-colored sarcophagus, Wynne's prize was entombed in his father's garage until two important things happened. The first was the appearance of a creative new girlfriend.

Kristina Wilson, an accomplished interior designer, said that Wynne told her about the purple casket and his plan to convert it into a portable bar "on a very early date."

"I just thought, this is hilarious," she recalled.

The other reason the coffin emerged from storage was the fact that, in May, Higgins died. He’d not yet gone to trial for the death of his adversarial neighbor, and the case has, of course, been dropped.

With a sense of cosmic closure, Wynne felt the time was ripe, and he began planning the repurposing project with Wilson.

Familiar with commissioning one-of-a-kind furniture for clients, Wilson said that the conversion of a casket to a combination ice chest and liquor cabinet was "right in my wheelhouse."

Wilson's cabinet makers partitioned an area for a gold-colored Igloo ice chest, and a storage spot for the 151-proof rum necessary to concoct Wynne's special "jungle juice," which is served in a "small, sanitary trash can."

The couple found a funeral gurney to wheel the coffin around, equipped with a Big Lee scrapbook and a symbolic coiled garden hose. They lined the inside of the lid with crime scene caution tape.

Former LSU offensive lineman 'Big Bob' Wynne and interior designer Kristina Wilson converted a purple coffin, which once belonged to the late LSU superfan 'Big Lee' Martin, into a portable tailgating bar

Wilson said that until the casket bar was finished, she was "unaware that there had been a human in it, alive or dead."

Wilson said that when it was finished, Big Bob became pensive, asking if maybe "it was all a bit too much." Wilson assured him it was not.

In late September, Wynne staged a debut party for the coffin bar at his law office. Guests loved it.

"Everyone was dying to hear the story," Wilson said.

"You really die twice," said Wilson, philosophically, "when you die and when people stop talking about you." Based on what she’d learned about Big Lee, she said, "he would have loved to have been the center of attention at Bob Wynne's party for all eternity."

Though Big Lee's sister hasn't seen the converted coffin in all its satirical details, in theory she believes Big Lee would approve.

"I miss my big brother and all his crazy antics," she wrote in an email. "Selling the coffin was his wish and he wanted it to be used for something fun. Lee would be thrilled to know that it will be used as a tailgating bar, serving up more than just spirits."

"As everyone knew," she continued, "Lee was the biggest LSU fan, and it would make him proud that it is being used exactly where it should be, so everyone can have a drink on Big Lee."

"Geaux Tigers," she concluded.

Email Doug MacCash at [email protected]. Follow him on Instagram at dougmaccash, on Twitter at Doug MacCash and on Facebook at Douglas James MacCash.

There was a tiny dead creature on the concrete pad outside the back door one morning. At first it looked just like an earthworm. But it wasn't…