The enduring mystery of who killed Huey P. Long

Who killed Huey Long? Was it an assassination? A fisticuffs turned fatal? A police cover-up?

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the shooting and death of the former Louisiana governor and U.S. senator, whose homicide is still debated by historians and sleuths weighing confusing and sometimes contradictory evidence in the case.

The school history books say he was shot by Carl Weiss, a young Baton Rouge doctor who was killed immediately by Long’s bodyguards. To this day, members of the Long family defend that explanation while relatives of Weiss believe he was framed.

The official metal plaque marking the fateful spot in the state Capitol is careful not to take sides. It says only that Long “died September 10, 1935, from a bullet wound inflicted here on September 8, 1935. He was 42 years old.”

On that, everyone agrees. The rest of the story has accumulated clouds of doubt for three quarters of a century and seems destined to remain without clear resolution.

“The only premise that I personally believe in, is that no matter what theory that you believe in personally, there exists serious and believable evidence that disputes your theory, as well as all the other theories,” said Michael Wynn, a Louisiana historical collector and co-author of a play about the shooting in which the audience decides what happened.

No CSI in 1935

The historical truth is complicated by the fact that the shooting was not investigated with any sort of thorough collection of evidence or methodical methods that would be expected today. There was no CSI-Baton Rouge in 1935.

The bullet that killed Long has never been produced as evidence. The gun used by the alleged assassin was picked up in the hall by the local coroner but it was not clearly and immediately established at the scene except by witness testimony. It went missing for more than 50 years.

There was no autopsy and no X-rays of Long. There was no detailed medical report. No authorities surrounded the Weiss family home with police tape to secure the site for a crime investigation. No one has ever presented evidence that Weiss was planning an assassination.

The closest thing to a public investigation was a coroner’s inquest, which was mainly a series of witness testimony conducted by the local district attorney, a noted Long opponent. The bulk of the witnesses did not participate in the inquest until eight days after the shooting. Their stories matched closely, except for different recollections of whether they had heard one shot or two before the retaliatory fusillade, and it was unclear whether the second shot might have come from Weiss or one of the guards.

This discrepancy, which also showed up in newspaper coverage right after the shooting, did not seem meaningful at the time. But it would take on greater significance as historians examined the evidence in later years amid questions of whether the fatal shot was fired by one of the bodyguards in Long’s entourage.

The central criticism of the inquest is that the witnesses were either Long supporters or guards, who had their reputations as well as the fortunes of the Long political faction to protect. One of the witnesses was a newspaper reporter favored by Long who moonlighted with a government salary thanks to the senator. His testimony came days before the bodyguards came forward and was consistent overall with what they reported. The inquest registered the deaths as homicides but did not assign blame in the shootings.

As with everything touched by Long, the cause of his death has become part of a greater legend, the slant of which depends on whether he is interpreted as a hero of the common man or a villain of near epic proportions.

Huey Long led a spectacular and controversial political career that spawned legions of supporters as well as enemies in Louisiana and beyond. In Depression-era America, his magical persona and Share Our Wealth philosophy of class warfare grew avid support across the nation and threatened to disrupt the Democratic Party and Franklin Roosevelt’s hold on the presidency at a crucial time. In the summer of 1935, Long published a fanciful book, “My First Days in the White House,” and was widely seen as a potent challenger to FDR.

But Long’s socialist agenda and militarist, dictatorial tactics also begged comparisons to the rise of fascism in Europe. He was loved, hated and, perhaps most importantly, feared. Even while holding a seat in the U.S. Senate, he broadened his powers in Louisiana exponentially through legislative sessions granting him extraordinary control over state and local political realms, including elections procedures and government employment. He could hire and fire sheriff deputies, teachers and streetcar drivers. He waged war on the influence of major corporations and the New Orleans business and political establishment.

There was plenty of talk about the possibility that someone might try to assassinate Long. In a speech in 1935, Long alleged a plot among his enemies to eliminate him by means of, “one man, one gun, one bullet.”

The state was divided into factions of Longs and anti-Longs, a political dichotomy that would color state politics for generations after his death. Among the anti-Longs was the Pavy family of St. Landry Parish, where district judge Benjamin Henry Pavy protected a pocket of opposition to the Long machine. Carl Weiss was married to the judge’s daughter, Yvonne.

Two members of the Pavy family, a teacher and a school principal, lost their jobs in a Long purge. On the night of Sept. 8, 1935, the House of Representatives met at the state Capitol in a special session to pass 39 bills, including one that would alter Judge Pavy’s district and effectively prevent him from re-election. Although Long was a U.S. senator at the time, he personally oversaw the proceedings in keeping with his tight grip on the governor’s office and most of the Legislature.

The official version of events is represented in newspaper reports at the time, a coroner’s inquest eight days after the shooting and a 1992 State Police investigation of new evidence. That version maintains that Weiss carried a .32 caliber automatic pistol into the Capitol, where the session had drawn crowds of politicians and onlookers.

As the lawmakers were about to finish their business on that Sunday night, Long left the House floor and walked down a back corridor between the House and Senate chambers. His bodyguards went with him, and along the way Supreme Court Justice John Fournet, a Long ally, sought a word with the senator. Long darted into the governor’s secretary’s office and quickly re-emerged into the hall, which was now busy with people. He paused to tell one of his aides to make sure his legislative allies would arrive punctually the next morning for a meeting.

Wearing a white suit, Weiss was standing nearby next to a marble column against a wall. In a flash, he stepped forward, catching Long and his bodyguards unaware.

Weiss shot the senator at close range and the bullet went straight through Long’s abdomen. Judge Fournet knocked Weiss’ arm, possibly moving the bullet’s trajectory into Long’s gut instead of his chest.

Long howled and fled the hall, making his way down a set of stairs to the ground floor. Meanwhile, one of Long’s bodyguards wrestled briefly with Weiss and grabbed at the doctor’s gun. The guard may have caught his hand in the automatic release mechanism, possibly preventing another shot.

Backing off, the guard pulled out his own pistol and he and the other bodyguards unloaded their automatic handguns into Weiss, who died on the spot. Those in the Capitol that night said it sounded like machine guns or firecrackers. Bystanders scrambled away, bullet shells littered the floor and gun smoke burned eyes and fogged the view.

On the ground floor, Long found a close political friend who commandeered a car and got the senator to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital a couple of blocks away. According to the traditional version of the story, the surgeons concluded that a single bullet went into the soft tissue of Long’s front abdomen and exited the back. They operated and closed perforations in the intestines hoping to stop internal bleeding and infection.

They failed to save him, which was not unusual for gunshot victims in those days, an age before antibiotics. He may have died from loss of blood.

Weiss was soon identified as the shooter, and the news media was quick to pick up on his connection with the Pavy family.

“The first bill introduced at the extra session of the Legislature which convened Saturday night (the night before the shooting) took St. Landry Parish out of the 13th Judicial District and is said to have been aimed at Judge Pavy, one of the anti-Long leaders in his section of the state,” The Times-Picayune reported the next day.

Other motives have been imputed about Weiss’ desire to kill Long. One is that Long had implied or was about to suggest that the Pavy family ancestry was mixed with African-Americans blood, which at the time would have been perceived as a grave insult. Whether Long intended this slur, Weiss may have believed he would, prompting deep rage against the senator.

The Long machine erupted into accusations that Weiss was part of a conspiracy, an interpretation that doesn’t hold much weight today. A gubernatorial election was several months away, and the Long faction branded its enemies as the “Assassination Party.”

Carl Weiss’ son and members of the Pavy family offer a different interpretation of events. They believe Weiss went to the Capitol that night to talk with Long or confront him, not to kill him. Weiss had an exchange of words with Long in the corridor and slugged the senator in the jaw. A guard reacted hastily and accidentally shot Long, or else shot at Weiss and a bullet ricocheted into Long’s stomach.

Weiss was framed and the true story was covered up in an orchestrated effort by the top State Police investigator to protect the bodyguards and foment anger toward Long’s enemies and build his legend as a martyr.

This theory also points to the mild-mannered and professional character of Weiss, in many ways an unlikely man to carry out a brazen, suicidal assassination. At 29, he was a successful ear, nose and throat doctor and the son of another respected physician in Baton Rouge. He developed his medical skills in New Orleans, Vienna, Paris and New York. He was regarded as an intelligent, gifted surgeon with a love of arts, carving and music.

Weiss was happily married with a 3-month-old son, Carl Jr., and had just bought new furniture and was planning renovations to his house, which was just a block from the Capitol building.

The day of the shooting, Weiss attended Mass with his family at St. Joseph’s Cathedral and spent the afternoon lounging with his wife’s family in an outing on the Amite River. That evening, he called an anesthesiologist to remind the colleague about a change in location for a tonsillectomy the next day. Then he went out to make a house call, a visit that was later verified by the patient he saw. His wife and parents were dumbfounded when they learned of the shooting.

Weiss owned a gun that he kept in the glove compartment of his Buick, a weapon he carried ostensibly as protection against possible muggers during night calls. According to the counter-theory, Weiss either carried the gun into the Capitol without intending to use it or else Long’s men found the pistol in his car and planted it at the crime scene.

The night of the shooting, Weiss’ brother found the locked Buick parked in front of the Capitol and he said it appeared that someone had rifled through it. When the brother later returned with a second set of keys, the car was gone.

Years later, other provocative but inconclusive evidence to support the planted gun theory would come to light.

The counter-theory also banks on evidence that Long had a cut lip, perhaps caused by a blow from Weiss. The Times-Picayune reported the next day that the man who took Long to the hospital said there was “a trickle of blood oozing from Sen. Long’s lips.” A nurse at the hospital reported the cut lip and quoted Long as saying, “That’s where he hit me.”

The inquest also addressed the cut lip, which a doctor described as an abrasion. Speculation during the inquest suggested it might have been caused by an accident as Long was weaving down the stairwell. Also during the inquest, a bodyguard testified he saw one of the other guards take a swing at Weiss but hit Long instead. The guard who made the alleged punch later said he never hit Long. Through the years, conflicting testimonies about the cut lip would cloud the incident further.

In the weeks after the shooting, the public’s focus was diverted to the possibilities of a conspiracy with Weiss as its hit man. There was no strong proof of that, but there was no resounding protest of the official version of events either. Weiss generally was recognized as the assassin. It was a time when it might have been easy to imagine any number of types of people who might want to kill the Kingfish.

But the story did not end there. Years later, reporters, historians and other investigators re-examined the evidence, the gun was found, Weiss’ body was exhumed and sensational affidavits were signed, all offering clues to support both sides of the discussion – but no definitive conclusion.

“And so what are we left with?” said David Zinman, a reporter and author of the book, “The Day Huey Long Was Shot.” “In essence, beyond the testimony at the inquest, which is clouded by the fact that it comes from men who are part and parcel of the Long political machine or by guards who vindicate themselves by naming Weiss, there still is only speculation.”

Zinman, who spoke recently as a Baton Rouge symposium on the Long assassination, began his investigations of the Long shooting in 1960 and he still is unable to reach a conclusive verdict about what happened.

“And so the shooting – cloaked in secrecy, never fully investigated, confused by conflicting details – continues to spawn a host of intriguing puzzles,” Zinman said. “With all the participants and eyewitnesses now in their graves, what really happened in that narrow back corridor of the state capitol will probably remain one of Louisiana’s enduring mysteries.”

Former Louisiana governor and U.S. Sen. Huey Long was a magnet for political fire – from friends and foes. Seventy-five years after his assassination, questions remain about how he really died Sept. 8, 1935. FILE PHOTO

Library of Congress