‘God, don’t let me die, I have so much to do.’
Senator Huey Long
IT WAS A hot, balmy evening, 8 September 1935, when a ‘crazed’ assassin, Dr Carl Weiss, came forth from the shadows and gunned down the Louisiana Senator Huey Pierce Long jnr in the State Capitol of Baton Rouge. Huey Long was a fiery, populist Southern Democrat with an eye on no less a prize than the presidency of the United States. Tall and charismatic, with dark curly hair and a ruddy complexion, he was dynamic, outspoken and consumed with belief in his own destiny. Few historical figures in America have had a greater impact on politics, the press, literature and even film than Long. Included in works that encapsulated his career are the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All The King’s Men of 1946 by Robert Penn Warren and the 1949 Oscar-winning film of the same name, whose central character, Willie Stark, was based very much on Huey Long.
Long had many enemies, who nicknamed him ‘the Despot of the Delta’ and ‘Caesar of the Bayous’. Long preferred to call himself ‘Kingfish’ after a wily character in the popular radio programme Amos ‘n’Andy even answering the phone with, ‘This is the Kingfish’.
Dr Carl Austin Weiss was one of history’s least likely assassins. He was born on 6 December 1906 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Dr Carl Adam Weiss. Studying at Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans, Dr Weiss worked initially at the city’s Turo Infirmary before heading to France, where he found employment at the American University in Paris. He then worked in New York’s Bellevue Hospital from May 1930 before finishing his postgraduate studies in Austria. By 1932 Weiss’ wanderlust had waned and he returned to Baton Rouge and found employment in his father’s medical practice. The following year Weiss married Yvonne Pavy, the daughter of Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy, a man who hated Huey Long with a passion.
Originally Jewish, Weiss’ family had converted to Roman Catholicism many years previously. Yvonne Pavy was descended from a long line of Catholic French Bourbon planters.
By the age of 28, Dr Weiss was the most renowned ear, nose and throat specialist in Louisiana. Tall and handsome with a thin, angular, inquisitive face and bright eyes, bespectacled Dr Weiss looked every inch the highly intelligent and respected man he was, which makes what happened all the more inexplicable.
Judge Pavy’s relentless opposition to Huey Long led to the senator launching undeclared war against him, as he did against any who dared oppose his dictats. Pavy could not be unseated from his stronghold of St Landry’s Parish in the 13th Louisiana judicial district, some 33 miles west of Baton Rouge and so Long vindictively used his influence to have two of his daughters sacked from their teaching posts. The tension between the two men rose further when Long began to threaten Pavy with rumours that his family contained ‘coffee blood’, a reference to Pavy’s father-in-law supposedly having had a black mistress. It was even rumoured that Long was preparing a bill to remove Judge Pavy on the grounds of his ‘defiled ancestry’. In fact Senator Long was moving against his long-standing opponent, but race was not a factor. Pavy’s independent mind was.
On the morning of 7 September 1935, Senator Long announced that he would convene a special session of the Louisiana legislature that evening in Baton Rouge. In all, 42 bills would be considered. One of these would transfer the predominantly Catholic parish of St Landry’s to the predominantly Protestant 15th judicial district, a Long stronghold. Without St Landry’s, the 13th would be open to a takeover by Long supporters.
The transfer of St Landry’s created tensions even among Long’s allies, so blatant was the proposed gerrymandering involved. The Kingfish therefore drove from New Orleans to ensure his view prevailed. The following evening, Sunday 8 September, after supper, Senator Long entered the legislative chamber. He chatted to colleagues and held the floor until the meeting adjourned just before 9.20pm. Senator Long then headed towards the governor’s office along with the Lieutenant Governor, Justice John Fournet of Louisiana Supreme Court (who 30 years later was to be involved in investigating the Kennedy assassination) and seven armed bodyguards, or ‘Cossacks’ as they sometimes called themselves, walking to where his nemesis was waiting.
That Sunday evening, Weiss was supposedly enraged by the rumours circulating that his wife was of partial black descent. This meant the family would be considered black socially and Weiss feared the impact that would have upon his practice. He determined to visit Senator Long in the State Capitol building and intended, it is speculated, to also raise the issue of Long’s gerrymandering against Judge Pavy.
Senator Long was outside the office of his handpicked successor, Governor Oscar Kelly Allen. Allen was a man so devoted to his master that it was alleged he not only signed any bill Long placed before him but even a leaf that blew in through his window.
Weiss lurked behind a marble pillar dressed in his Sunday-best white linen suit, somewhat curious attire for an ‘assassin’. He approached the senator and appeared to raise his hand to shake Long’s. Weiss then drew a .32 automatic revolver and Fournet tried to deflect his arm but the gun still went off and a bullet hit Long in the abdomen. Bodyguard Murphy Roden leapt on Weiss, wrestling him to the ground. After a second shot tore Roden’s wristwatch from his arm, he struggled free of the assassin, Weiss’ gun jammed and a hail of bullets engulfed him as Long’s bodyguards opened fire. At least .31-, .38- and .45-calibre bullets struck Weiss, whose body was later found to have 61 entry and exit wounds. One of the bullets from the bodyguards ricocheted off a pillar and struck Long painfully in the lower spine.
Long staggered from the building unaided and was taken to Our Lady of the Lake Sanatorium. He was operated on at 11.20pm by a reluctant Dr Arthur Vidrine, who would have preferred the operation to be carried out by a more experienced surgeon. A bullet had penetrated below Long’s ribs and pierced his colon. His pulse rose and his blood pressure fell, a sure sign of internal haemorrhaging. He lost a lot of blood but the prognosis looked positive when the senator was patched up. However, a second bullet was then discovered lodged near his kidney and the internal bleeding continued. As the second bullet had remained undetected by the surgeons until it was too late, they could not operate on a patient too weak to survive further surgery. Long died at 3.30am on 10 September 1935, 30 hours after being shot. He had just turned 42.
Fifty years after the Long assassination, John Fournet was interviewed for an eponymous documentary on the life of Huey Long. According to Fournet, as he stepped out of the governor’s office a man ‘with a strange look on his face’ was coming towards them, gun in hand. A bodyguard, Mr Murphy Roden, grabbed the gun and it went off hitting Senator Long on his right side. Later, Fournet visited a seemingly still robust Kingfish in hospital. The doctors at first would not let Fournet in. Long insisted. When told who had shot him, perplexed, he said, ‘What does he want to shoot me for? I don’t even know him’. A few hours later, realising his death was imminent Long uttered his final words, ‘God, don’t let me die, I have so much to do’. Later it was speculated that Weiss had slain Long because he ‘reminded him of Hitler’. Having worked in Europe and being of Jewish origin, this theory seemed to be rather too neat an explanation.
Long’s body lay in state in the Memorial Hall of the Louisiana State Capitol for several days, watched over by national guardsmen who banned the cameras of mourners walking past in silent procession. Over 175,000 people watched the funeral procession, the biggest turn-out for a funeral in Louisiana’s history.
Dr Carl Austin Weiss was unique among assassins. He was not embittered, socially hostile or a loner. In fact, he was a seemingly contented man with a newborn son, Carl jnr (who would later become a distinguished doctor himself), a loving wife, a stable family background and a highly respected and thriving career. He had no history of mental illness, violence or extreme political views and seemingly had everything to live for. His family and the general populace were equally perplexed by what had happened and there was no universal public condemnation of the ‘murderer’. No one vilified the Weiss family or Carl, his family were treated sympathetically by the press and Carl was given a hero’s send off at his funeral. Bewilderment was the feeling most apparent among friends, colleagues and his shocked family. Why had he done it? Judge Pavy thought the racial slurs against his family trivial, unlikely to be believed and, as for the gerrymandering, well he would retire soon anyway.
The Weiss family did not accept the official story of the Long/Weiss killings or the media’s interpretation of it. There seemed no rational motive and the scepticism of the Weiss family was shared by thousands of others across Louisiana and beyond. An unpublished report claimed that one of Long’s bodyguards had killed the senator, ‘confessing’ while drunk that he had killed his ‘best friend’ and planted Weiss’ gun on the doctor to frame him. So was Weiss a killer or a patsy for treacherous or incompetent and reckless bodyguards?
Astonishingly, neither Huey Long nor Carl Weiss had autopsies conducted on their bodies. Suspiciously, Dr Thomas B Bird, East Baton Rouge parish coroner, was under such pressure from Long’s associates not to hold an inquest into Weiss death that it was postponed from 9 September. It did not take place until 16 September, eight days after the shootings. By then General Louis F Guerre of the Bureau for Criminal Investigation, a Long ally, had de-briefed all who had been in the vicinity of the incident and whose stories since had clearly coalesced. A report he alone had access to regarding the shootings subsequently disappeared, as did all the physical evidence collected at the scene. One thing the witnesses could not agree on was the number of shots Weiss fired. One or two was as close to a consensus as could be reached. Two witnesses alleged that when they first saw Weiss he appeared to be ‘chambering a round’, ie placing a bullet in the chamber of his gun. Surely, if one was planning an assassination, especially someone as meticulous as Dr Weiss, ensuring one had a bullet ready to fire would be a basic prerequisite for the success of the venture?
The official 72-page record of the Weiss inquest was made public only on 10 September 1985 when entered into the Congressional Record by Huey Long’s son, Senator Russell B Long. In contrast to the Weiss inquest, the inquest into the death of Senator Long took place almost as soon as he had died, being held without testimony at Rabenhorst Funeral Home, Baton Rouge, on 9 September.
On the fateful day it transpired that Carl and Yvonne had gone to Mass, dined at his parents’ house and then the entire family had enjoyed a riverside picnic in the warm summer sunshine. At 7.30pm they returned to the city and Carl took his wife home, situated near the State Capitol. He phoned a colleague, Dr J Webb McGehee, at 8.15pm to confirm the details of an operation he was to carry out the following day and its change of location from Our Lady of the Lake Sanatorium to Baton Rouge General Hospital. These were not the acts one would expect of someone planning an assassination immediately thereafter. At 9.00pm he received a telephone call to visit a patient. Within minutes he was in the State Capitol. Nothing in his demeanour that quiet day had given any clue that the young doctor was contemplating murder. Could he have been under the influence of drink or drugs? An autopsy might have given us an answer.
The inquest into Weiss’ death showed the savage way in which he died. Half his face was blown away and the 61 exit and entry wounds were found on his mutilated, broken body. If Dr Carl Weiss had planned an assassination, why confirm the operation for the following day? Why was he not restless or agitated that Sunday and how did he manage to walk into the building with a gun, unmolested by guards always on the alert for an attack? Why did he shoot Senator Long in the abdomen when success was more likely to result from shooting his victim in the head?
Opponents of his crude and aggressive political style have long reviled the memory of Huey Long, while for many of the poor in Louisiana he is remembered as a Robin Hood-style folk hero. He was born the seventh child in a family of four boys and five girls on 30 August 1893 to Huey Pierce Long Snr and Caledonia (Tison) Long, in the poor farming community of Winnfield, Winn Parish, north-central Louisiana. Winnfield was without paved roads, livestock roamed through the streets and stores and shops were often erected in tents. His family were middle-class Baptists but Long absorbed many of the strong populist traditions of the area he grew up in to become an avowed socialist, populist and, some claimed a ‘neo-Bolshevik’.
Long was educated locally at public schools but left before graduation, having quarrelled with the school authorities who expelled him in 1908 for circulating a petition calling for the principal to be sacked. He worked successfully as a salesman for four years, selling canned goods and patent medicines while gaining the reputation of being able to ‘sell anything to anyone’. His early career taught him the importance of advertising, sales promotion and product marketing.
On 21 April 1913 Long married Rose McConnell, whom he met three years earlier when she won a cake-baking contest he was judging. They would go on to have three children and, from the start, he told her of his intended path to political greatness. In September 1914 Long enrolled at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. For the next eight months he rarely ate or slept, cramming for his bar examination, which he sat and passed in May 1915. Highly intelligent with a photographic memory that ensured he never forgot a name or a face, Long was now the youngest certified lawyer in the state. Initially he practiced law in Winnfield before earning enough to open a prosperous practice in Shreveport.
Huey Long was always determined to have a career in politics and in 1918 he was elected to the fairly modest post of Louisiana Railroad Commissioner, defeating wealthy landowner Burke A Bridges by 7,286 votes to 6,651. As one of three commissioners regulating the railways, oil and gas pipelines, he built a strong reputation as a friend of the workers, enhancing their pay, benefits and working conditions while provoking the ire of big business. Anyone opposing him was attacked as ‘feeding out of the hands of Standard Oil’, a company that he opposed throughout his life. In 1921 the commission gained new powers and was renamed the Public Service Commission. Becoming chairman in 1922, Long was twice unsuccessfully indicted for challenging Standard Oil regarding the regulation of pipelines, enhancing his profile and status among the constituency he targeted. He raised oil company carriage rates and opposed the Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph Company’s plan to hike their telephone charges by 25%.
A rich, landed Bourbon class of French ancestry known as the ‘Old Regulars’ effectively controlled Louisiana in the 1920s, then as now one of America’s poorest states. Impoverished white sharecroppers and factory workers were exploited, patronised and bore the brunt of taxation and, in time of war, military service. Wages were low because the huge black underclass could always undercut the wages of their white counterparts. Should the poor whites get too ‘uppity’, the threat of black unrest could always be used against them. Quite simply, the ruling hierarchy were content with life and brooked no change that would upset their apple cart.
In 1924 Long ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Louisiana in the Democratic Primary against the candidate of the Old Regulars, Hewitt Bouanchaud, and Henry Luce Fuqua on a platform of free schoolbooks, road construction and building state warehouses for farm crops. He wanted to reduce corporate influence on government, increase state involvement in the economy and reduce the wealth of the ‘bloated plutocracy’, the two percent of the population who controlled 65% of Louisiana’s wealth.
Although less well known than his opponents and with no established political organisation, Long was an innovative campaigner, pioneering the use of mailed circulars, posters, radio speeches and brutal personal invective designed to appeal to the masses who believed themselves to be excluded from wealth, privilege and power. At this time he began to wear a white linen suit to distinguish himself from the common weal.
He won 73,935 votes on election day, 15 January 1924, against 84,162 for Bouanchaud and 81,382 for Fuqua. Although eliminated from the race Long had won an outright majority in 21 of the state’s 65 parishes and his supporters ensured Fuqua would go on to become governor, as the Democrat candidate was virtually guaranteed victory.
Long now built a political machine across Louisiana. He was strongest in the north but weakest in New Orleans. In 1926 he supported the re-election of Catholic Joseph Eugene Ransdell and two years later French Catholic Edwin Broussard, building his support in previously hostile Catholic and Cajun areas. In 1927 Long began a 600-speech, 15,000-mile campaign to become governor, attacking his fellow Democrat opponents as ‘trough feeders, low-down dirty thieves and liars’.
Huey Long was nothing if not egocentric, power-hungry and ruthless, convinced he was a man of destiny. In his own words he was ‘suis generis (one of a kind) just leave it at that’. He would become a master of manipulation in office and a brilliant machine politician who dominated a system in which bribery and corruption, patronage, bullying and extortion would become almost routine. That he was highly complex, a brilliant political strategist and a boor were beyond doubt.
In the Democratic Primary Long won 126,842 votes (43.9%) against two opponents. Although this should have meant a run-off, rival Oramel Hinckley Simpson pledged his support to the Kingfish in exchange for a lucrative state post. The feeble Republican candidate was defeated in the actual election in April 1938 by 92,941 votes to 3,733 and Huey P Long was elected Governor of Louisiana. During the campaign, he honed his previously poor oratorical skills, knocked on thousands of doors and reached out to parishes he had little support in previously.
At the relatively young age of 34, Long was to have an immediate, electrifying and long-lasting impact on his state. To Long the moderate Democrats that preceded him were incapable of taking the radical steps necessary to eliminate the desperate poverty into which so many in the state were born, lived and died. Race was important but not the massive issue it was in neighbouring Alabama and Mississippi and Long was the first to campaign in Louisiana without playing the race card. Like other southern Democrat states with de-facto one party rule, people were mired in poverty, accepting the rule of those who controlled the Democratic political machine. In Louisiana, within the Democrats the voters at least had a choice of fiscal conservatism from the Democrat establishment or Long’s populism, a state of affairs that lingered on for a quarter of a century after Long’s death.
In power, only 9 of 39 senators and 18 of 100 members of the House of Representatives initially backed Long. To secure his base, he took the unprecedented step of deciding who sat on which committees and was able to ram his legislative programme through. Using patronage Long gained control of the State Health Board, State Transportation Board and the Public Services Commission. All managerial employees, including Lieutenant Governor Paul Cyr, were required to sign undated resignation letters to intimidate them.
As Governor of Louisiana, Long developed what he called his ‘Share the Wealth’ programme to court public support. Infrastructure was prioritised, with the redevelopment of New Orleans port and the construction of its first airport. Swamps were drained and 3,000 miles of paved road and 111 bridges built by raising tax on gasoline from two to four cents a gallon. To improve educational attainment in a state where many children were illiterate because their parents could not afford books, all schoolchildren were given free schoolbooks funded by a severance tax paid by oil and gas companies. Louisiana State University saw a quantum leap in funding and the opening of a medical school. Investment in health was increased too through expansion of the charity system and the opening of New Orleans Charitable Hospital to treat poor people who lacked medical insurance.
Even prisons and mental institutions were reformed in the myriad of changes imposed by the workaholic, phenomenally energetic and ambitious Kingfish who seemed to devote himself 24 hours a day to Louisiana. Chain gangs and straitjacketing were abolished and dental care introduced along with prisoner rehabilitation. An adult literacy drive helped the black community raise its literacy levels from 62% to 77% at a time when few whites sympathised with their plight and endemic poverty.
Long sought to expand his political base and increase voter participation among blacks and poor whites by abolishing the poll tax as a voter registration qualification. To allow poor blacks to vote, the National Guard was used to protect polls.
Long’s fiscally conservative adversaries opposed him every step of the way, whether it was his policy of taxing wealth and businesses or his plan to build a new State Capitol. The oil, sugar and lumber companies, particularly Standard Oil, the biggest corporation in the old Confederacy, resented the increased taxation the Kingfish imposed on them.
State spending was almost tripled from $28 to $83 million per annum and the state debt grew from $11 to $125 million during Long’s tenure. Judge Cecil Morgan, a former state legislator commenting many years later on both the dynamism and corruption of the Huey Long era said that, ‘He provided about $100 million worth of good roads. And it only cost $150 million. There was a cushion for other people’s fraud’. When Representative Morgan refused to support a piece of Long legislation his father was immediately fired from his state job, leading to Morgan bringing forward an attempted impeachment of Long in 1929.
On 26 March 1929 Long defeated the attempt which was backed by Standard Oil because of a five-cent tax he had imposed on refined oil. Standard Oil threatened to close its refineries and leave the state, costing thousands of jobs. In Louisiana’s House of Representatives a group calling itself the ‘Dynamite Squad’, in protest at Governor Long’s unauthorised demolition of the gubernatorial mansion, grouped to oppose their governor. The impeachment accused Long of having tried to induce a former bodyguard to kill a Long opponent in exchange for money and legal immunity. Nineteen charges were levelled and eight accepted as grounds for impeachment. Included were accusations of incompetence, corruption, gross misconduct, misappropriation of funds and using ‘vile, obscene and scurrilous language’.
Long’s use of circulars to show himself to the public as a victim and ‘negotiations’ with fellow politicians, 15 of whom signed a round robin that they would not vote to convict regardless of the evidence, led to his acquittal. Two-thirds of the 39 senators were required to impeach. With 15 on his side, Longs opponents were two votes short.
Riled by the impeachment attempt, the Kingfish became more of a demagogue and behaved increasingly ruthlessly towards enemies whether real or imagined. His more visceral opponents, who he intimidated by calling out the Louisiana National Guard on occasion, considered him a ‘Fascist’. He controlled both the police and the judiciary, which he used to his own ends. His practices were undoubtedly anti-democratic and his power was such that he would call special sessions of the state legislature to rush through new laws without proper debate or committee scrutiny. Between August 1934 and September 1935 alone, some 236 bills were enacted in this way. Some of these included measures previously rejected but incorporated in another piece of legislation to get it through.
That Long abused his power is beyond dispute. Political allies were awarded state contracts, appointing family members and cronies to well-paid state jobs. All state employees had salary deductions in order to fund a pro-Kingfish newspaper Louisiana Progress he founded in 1930. At the same time Long sought to muzzle existing publications that did not kowtow to him or criticised the governor, his allies or his policies. His biggest enemy was Louisiana’s lively press, the one democratic institution he failed to dominate or control. Some 163 daily, weekly and monthly publications existed in Louisiana in the early 1930s. While some supported Long, the hatred of urban newspapers for him was implacable.
In June 1930, legislation denounced by the American Newspaper Publishers Association as ‘the boldest and most flagrant measures ever aimed at the freedom of American newspapers’, was introduced in Louisiana. A 15% tax was imposed on advertising revenue. Further to this, the governor could impose a court-issued injunction to suppress any newspaper that was ‘lewd, obscene, lascivious, malicious, scandalous or defamatory’. If the courts failed to act, private citizens could initiate proceedings themselves.
Long was temporarily defeated in his assaults on the Louisiana press which had the vociferous backing of newspapers the length and breadth of the United States. The implications of Long’s assault on press freedom were obvious: any newspaper that was hostile and which the Kingfish deemed to have broken the new law could face legal action and possible closure. Likewise the newspaper tax could be raised until the offending publication was driven into bankruptcy. Publishers fought ferociously in the courts to derail Long’s plans. A war of attrition commenced, finally being won by Long in 1934 when the newspaper tax was imposed and Alice Lee Grosjean, alleged mistress of the Kingfish, was installed as its collector. Grosjean, beautiful and only 25 years old had previously been Long’s personal secretary when he appointed her Secretary of State in October 1930 on the death of incumbent James J Bailey.
Long called his tax proposal, ‘a tax on lying at two cents a lie’. On 2 July 1934 Long announced, ‘I believe in freedom of speech but it’s got to be truthful speech, and lying newspapers should have to pay for their lying. I’m going to help these newspapers by hitting them in their pocketbooks. Maybe then they’ll try to clean up’. On 10 July 1934, the New Orleans Times-Picayune responded to this implied threat, denouncing the new law as, ‘The rape of representative government and the assault upon a free press … driven … by the openly wielded lash of a dictator without principle, honest conviction or scruple, constitute the blackest chapter in Louisiana’s history’.
The press took legal advice and the courts eventually invalidated the tax law on the grounds of its illegitimacy and punitive nature. The case, American Press Company v Grosjean, eventually reached the US Supreme Court in January 1936 when the late Huey Long’s legislation was thrown out, ironically on the very day his widow was sworn in to succeed him in the US Senate. The Supreme Court decision helped to actually broaden the constitutional guarantee of press freedom beyond the prohibition of prior restraint.
Long’s controversial policies and occasionally eccentric behaviour, such as meeting the captain of a visiting German cruiser in his pyjamas, soon pushed the Kingfish onto the national stage.
Using a sound truck for the first time in US politics to address huge crowds, in 1930 Long was elected to the US Senate after defeating the incumbent Joseph Ransdell in the primary by 149,640 votes to 111,451. As one of Louisiana’s two senators, he now considered himself to be bigger than the ‘Kingfish’ name he had given himself years before, saying, ‘I ain’t no fish, I’m gonna pick another name, maybe one with a lion or a tiger on it’. Kingfish stuck and Long did not head to Washington until January 1932, retaining his gubernatorial status until his political allies were secure. This was in defiance of the Louisiana constitution, which stated that two powerful political offices should not be held simultaneously. To aid his hold on power, he created a new police organisation, the Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI), responsible to him alone. This sinister organisation was empowered by Long to arrest and detain anyone without warrant at his behest.
Lieutenant Governor, Paul Cyr, had fallen out with Long who announced he would not accept Cyr as governor, ‘even for a minute’. After much wrangling, in October 1931 Cyr took the oath as governor, stating that Long had vacated the post upon his election to the Senate. The Kingfish called out the police and National Guard and had them surround the governor’s mansion and office. Declaring Cyr’s appointment null and void, the Kingfish declared that Lieutenant Governor Cyr had vacated his own office and replaced him with the President of the Louisiana Senate, Alvin Olin King, a Long supporter, who became governor in January 1932. In May 1932 Governor Allen, Long’s choice as his successor, was installed, albeit with the Kingfish still calling all the shots.
Arriving in Washington on 25 January 1932 Long shook up the US Senate just as he had his own domestic legislature back home in Louisiana. He produced long lists of fellow Democrats whose legal firms had the largest corporations as clients, denouncing them as being in the pockets of big business interests. He allied himself with progressive Republicans to force through an extension of bankruptcy privileges to farmers hit hard by the Depression. After attacking his old foe Standard Oil for supporting Bolivia in a war with Paraguay for control of Latin American oilfields, the Paraguayans named a stronghold ‘Senator Huey Long Fort’ after him. More outlandishly, Long wasted energy on absurd legislation, such as a bill requiring all Jew’s harp manufacturers to make them to the same specification.
Formerly a staunch supporter of President Roosevelt, Long had given an impressive speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago but broke from the President in June 1933 in protest at not being given federal patronage. This he knew undermined his own monopoly of power in Louisiana, especially when Roosevelt’s own men began distributing New Deal money in that state. Senator Long became a nuisance, insulting his own party colleagues at every turn. He also believed that the president was not doing enough to ameliorate the Depression.
Long’s boorishness almost caused his downfall. Drunk at a party in Long Island on 27 August 1933, Long insulted an obese woman and urinated on a man. The press laughed at him, calling him ‘Huey Pee Long’. Back in his home state on a speaking tour, he was pelted with rotten fruit and eggs. To save his political career and move towards fulfilment of his presidential ambitions, he launched himself at the nation.
Huey Long enunciated his ‘Share the Wealth’ programme on the floor of the Senate, unveiled his new ‘Share Our Wealth Society’ on 23 January 1934. By July 1935, Long’s initiative would have 7,682,768 million members, roughly one in 15 Americans, organised into 27,431 chapters in every state of the Union. Tourists to Washington wanted to see the ‘White House, Monument, Capitol and the Kingfish’. He was becoming a serious potential threat to the establishment, and after one radio speech attacking the president’s administration, Senator Long received over 30,000 letters a day for 24 consecutive days.
A man in a hurry, Long made it clear he intended to run against President Roosevelt for the 1936 Democratic Party Nomination. He appeared at speaking engagements across a country racked by the Depression offering simple, perhaps simplistic, solutions, supported by Louisiana Progress which he had renamed American Progress in 1933. His slogan, as he denounced oil companies, speculators and the ‘idle’ rich, was the somewhat preposterous, ‘Every Man a King but no one wears the Crown’. An autobiography, or rather hagiography, Every Man a King was published. Ultimately Long believed that even if he lost the nomination he could launch a third party and win through in either 1936 or 1940.
Long wanted strict controls on incomes with a ceiling of $1 million a year and no American to have a net worth of more than $10 million. These were vast sums in the but Long also showed he was a defender of the ‘little man’. He promised a guaranteed income of $2,000 a year when 18.3 million American families survived on less than $1,000 per annum and promised pensions for the elderly and free education, up to and including college, for the young. Egalitarianism and fairness were his watchwords and his oratory, blunt manner and apparent honesty appealed to many of the rural and small-town poor he primarily reached out to. So confident was Long that his message would resonate with the American people that he began a book in his last year of life, modestly entitled My First 100 Days in the White House, in which he proposed relegating President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Secretary of the Navy!
Back in Louisiana, towards the end of 1934 and in 1935 the Kingfish took steps to tighten his grip. As well as taking on the press, Long’s rubber-stamp legislature passed laws to give control of all police forces and fire stations to the governor, who could hire or fire any police officer or firefighter. Municipalities could no longer appoint teachers, councillors or officials. The state government took on this power. The New Orleans Tax Act prevented the city from collecting any taxes, effectively bankrupting the city. This was repealed when the administration agreed to support Senator Long. The State Board of Censors Act allowed the governor to prohibit any films, including newsreels, from being shown in Louisiana. The State Elections Board was given the power to count and confirm all ballots cast in a Democratic primary, placing elections and selections in Long’s hands. The State Printing Board was empowered to decide which newspapers were to become the ‘official printer’ for a district, printing parish, school and municipal notices. For many small publications this could mean the difference between staying in and going out of business. As a consequence, many anti-Long newspapers did an immediate volte-face.
The public grew restless at Long’s relentless attacks on their rights and centralising of power in his own hands. On 25 January 1935, an estimated 300 protestors, most of them armed, seized East Baton Rouge Courthouse. Long reacted by placing Baton Rouge under martial law, forbidding crowds from gathering and the ‘carrying, transporting, selling or buying of firearms’. This was a breach of constitutional rights. Nevertheless, the city was renamed the ‘First Military District’, and placed under the command of the BCI commander, General Guerre. Martial law remained in place for six months.
Senator Long knew the hackles he was raising across America with his open challenge to vested interests. Forces were mobilising against him, ranging from the ‘Square Deal Association’ in Illinois to the ‘Minutemen of Louisiana’. After Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was killed in a botched assassination attempt on the president in 1933, Long surrounded himself with bodyguards, saying ‘Some crazy galoot’s liable to be behind any one of those telephone poles and take a shot at me’. In July 1935 his Louisiana opponents held a large convention in the DeSoto Hotel in New Orleans to decide their slate of candidates for the upcoming state elections. A by-now paranoid Long claimed that a plot was formulated at that meeting to assassinate him. Indeed, Judge Morgan later stated that, ‘The tension was so high that in any gathering of more than three people, someone would say “Long ought to be shot”.’ If a plot ever existed to kill Senator Long, Dr Carl Weiss had no part in it. He was treating patients in Opelous, St Landry’s parish on the day of the convention and those who attended would later deny ever having met him or even known who Dr Weiss was.
Since the events of 8 September 1935, an alternative theory has emerged as to what actually happened that night. Living so close to the State Capitol and visiting a patient anyway, it is likely that Dr Weiss decided to remonstrate with the Kingfish about Judge Pavy on impulse. He did not hide behind a marble pillar but waited in full view of Senator Long, attempting three times to speak to him. Each time Weiss was told to wait. During this time Weiss had ample opportunity to kill had he wanted to. He did not, probably because he was not a murderer and was in any case unarmed. After being brushed off for a third time by a tired, rude and probably irritable Long, Weiss lost his temper and punched him on the face, splitting the senator’s lip. In fact, when asked in hospital when he had cut it, the Kingfish replied, ‘that’s where he hit me’.
The punch landed by Weiss enraged Senator Long’s inexperienced and trigger-happy bodyguards who now fired wildly at Weiss, hitting their boss by mistake in the process. To cover up their incompetence, Weiss’ gun, a Belgian .32 Fabrique Nationale, was retrieved from his medical bag and dumped beside his bloodied corpse. The two bullets taken from Long were .38 and .45 slugs, the same as those that had killed Weiss. The story of Weiss raising his gun arm and shooting Long was an invention to cover up what had really transpired.
Almost immediately on hearing on the radio of the incident, Weiss’ brother Tom and his cousin Jim raced to the State Capitol. There they found Carl’s car locked with his medical bag inside. Returning home to find keys, when they revisited the car’s location it had vanished. It was found soon after behind the building unlocked, with Weiss’ medical bag opened and disordered. His gun, usually kept in the glove compartment, had gone. It had been taken after the killing and placed at the scene of the shooting.
In 1985 a reporter looking into Long’s insurance policy discovered that the insurance company, Mutual Insurance of New York, had quietly investigated the death and concluded that it was due to an accidental shooting by one of his own bodyguards. Bodyguard Joe Messina was considered by another, Delmas Sharp, to have fired the fatal shot and was referred to by Sharp as ‘the killer’ thereafter. Why was the alternative theory of how Long met his death not properly investigated? A cover-up seems highly likely, as ballistics alone would have proved Weiss was not the killer. In fact, shortly after the alleged assassination all the official records of the case and Weiss’ gun disappeared. In September 1991 they were found in a safe deposit box owned by Mrs Mabel Binnings, daughter of General Louis Guerre, the man who had conducted the ‘investigation’ into the assassination and had then obviously decided to appropriate some of the evidence afterwards. The official records were released into police care. They commented that ‘nothing worth mentioning’ had been discovered.
Long’s programme of public works had proven very popular in Louisiana and he was not forgotten either by friend or foe. In office he was aided by a press he had ruthlessly suppressed and muzzled almost from the commencement of his period as governor. In fact, many of Long’s successes could have been enhanced had he accepted Federal Relief. This he blocked to emphasise how his state was being ‘ignored’ by Washington. After his untimely death, federal relief funds were instrumental in lifting Louisiana out of the Depression.
After his death American Progress blamed Long’s press foes for his demise. On 24 October it pronounced, ‘Of all the forces that conspired, incited and urged the removal of Huey P Long from politics in Louisiana, there is none whose hands are so stained with blood as the daily newspapers of Louisiana’. His enemies did not respect him even after Long’s death. Said the Chicago Tribune on 12 February 1936, ‘Huey Long was a Hitler in every sense but one: Hitler controls the press of Germany. Huey Long did not control the press of Louisiana’.
Rose Long, the senator’s wife, was appointed to succeed him on 31 January 1936 and was subsequently elected on 21 April 1936 in a special election to fill the vacancy until 2 January 1937. Senator Long’s younger brother, Earl Kemp Long, who had been estranged from his sibling until just before Huey died, took over his brother’s political faction and controlled it until 1960. Earl Long served three years as Lieutenant Governor and then three terms as governor from 19391941, 1948-1952 and 1956-1960 when he died of a heart attack. Huey Long’s son, Russell Billiu Long, had an even more impressive political career. He became a senator the day before his 30th birthday and served continuously from 31 December 1948 until he retired on 3 January 1987.
However, the story of Long’s ‘assassin’ Carl Weiss had not ended yet.
On 20 October 1991 the remains of Dr Carl Austin Weiss were removed from Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge after the exhumation was denounced by numerous Louisiana politicians who wanted to ‘let sleeping dogs lie’. It was subsequently flown to Washington DC and examined by a team led by Professor James E Starrs, Professor of Law at the National Law Centre, George Washington University, Washington DC and a professor of forensic science. Professor Starrs writes, publishes and distributes Scientific Sleuthing Review, a quarterly publication that encourages the use of up-to-date scientific techniques to investigate controversial and often ‘closed’ cases. He had already helped to locate Weiss’ missing gun.
Professor Starrs had long been intrigued by the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Long and Weiss and was given permission by the Weiss family to exhume the body. Professor Starrs did not plan to exhume the body of Huey Long. Although that might be beneficial to solving the case, the Long family were strongly against it. In fact, Starrs’ purpose was to see whether Weiss’ remains supported the testimony given by Long’s bodyguards at the Weiss inquest in 1935 or if they cast a doubt over their evidence and therefore the probable guilt of Dr Weiss.
The bones of Dr Weiss still retained some flesh that would enable Dr Alphonse Poklis of the University of Virginia to carry out a toxicological investigation of the remains. Dr Douglas H Ubelaker, Curator of the Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institute intended to examine the remains anthropologically and Dr Irvin M Sopher of the University of West Virginia planned to carry out an autopsy to check if there was a physiological or pathological reason for the actions of Dr Weiss on that fatal night in 1935. Mr Lucien Haag, a criminologist and firearms expert from Phoenix, Arizona had the task of evaluating any bullets or bullet fragments found in or near the remains.
In preparation for taking the skeleton of Weiss to Washington for forensic analysis, Starrs washed the bones and placed them on a bed next to him to dry. Staying up all night to turn the bones, the following morning members of Starr’s team asked him how he slept. ‘I can’t say I slept in peace, but Dr Weiss slept in pieces’, was his jocular retort.
The investigation of Weiss’ remains was carried out in the Department of Anthropology at Washington DC’s Smithsonian Institute. Toxicology showed, as far as was possible given the decomposition of the tissues that Dr Weiss had not been under the influence of any identifiable drugs. Dr Ubelaker proved that at least two bullets had struck Dr Weiss in the head while he was in a prone position. A further 12 had hit him in the back and three other bullets struck him on the right side. Two shots had been fired from the left and seven from the front. This was weighed together with ballistics tests on a spent .32 calibre bullet from the scene of Long’s death found in the Binnings collection that compared it with one test fired from Weiss’ gun. The spent bullet was not fired by Weiss’ FN .32 handgun. So who did fire it? Probably no one will ever know. Undoubtedly it was a bodyguard who carried a .32 for ‘back up’, but which one? Messina? Roden? Sharp? It could have been any one of the seven.
After concluding his investigations, Professor Starrs presented them at a meeting of the New Orleans Academy of Forensic Science in February 1992. It was a presentation that a local judge, aware of the sensitive topic, tried unsuccessfully to gag. After detailing his analysis of the evidence, Professor Starrs announced to a hushed audience that it was ‘highly improbable’ that Weiss had killed Senator Huey Long.
Whether Dr Carl Austin Weiss killed Senator Long or not, it is clear that it was his visit to the State Capitol that fateful evening that led to the Kingfish’s death. One can speculate whether Weiss meant to assassinate or merely remonstrate. However, what is not open to conjecture is that his intervention ultimately proved fatal both for Senator Huey Pierce Long and himself. How much American and world history was changed that day can now only be postulated.