Was Senator Huey Long murdered by an assassin or was he accidentally shot by his own bodyguards?
Huey Long
Dr. Carl Austin Weiss was named the assassin
CASE DETAILS
He was a superstar of Depression Era politics, a fiery speaker known as “The Kingfish.” His name was Huey Long. At age 34, Long was elected Governor of Louisiana and became a Senator three years later.
Were the bodyguards responsible?
Long was incredibly popular because he believed in redirecting America’s wealth. In a speech, he said, “No man must be allowed to have too much. No man must be allowed to have too little. Unless you limit the size of the big, it necessarily means that the small people must become more and more impoverished as time goes on.”
He was a national figure, and there was serious talk of a run for the Presidency in 1936. But that idea worried some people. To the rich and powerful, Long was the enemy, and he received numerous threats. Some believed Long was better off dead than being President. In fact, a few were convinced it was the only way to stop him. Historian and author Ed Reed:
“Huey Long had a great compassion for a lot of people, but that compassion did not extend to people who crossed him. Once you crossed Huey Long, you had an enemy for life. People lost jobs. They lost businesses. They lost lands. They lost everything because of the vindictiveness of Huey Long.”
The bullet matched the bodyguard’s gun
Judge Henry Pavey of St. Landry Parish was one of the many elected officials that Long targeted for political destruction. And it was Pavey’s 29-year-old son-in-law, a respected doctor named Carl Weiss, who is still remembered as the man who assassinated Huey Long.
Four days before his death, Long returned to Louisiana from Washington, D.C. He had convened a special session of the state legislature. Ignoring threats against his life, Senator Long walked boldly between the State House Chamber and Governor Oscar Allen’s office, where history says that Dr. Carl Weiss was waiting. Just after Long spoke to the governor, Dr. Weiss shot him in the hallway. Weiss was then shot more than sixty times by Long’s bodyguards. Weiss’ .32 caliber pistol was found beside him.
Huey Long died 30 hours later. He was just 42-years old. His funeral drew more than 100,000 mourners. Five days after the funeral, an inquest concluded that Dr. Carl Weiss was the lone assassin. But now, strong evidence indicates that Huey Long may have been killed accidentally, and that Dr. Weiss is innocent.
Who took Carl’s gun from his car?
On the day Huey Long was shot, Carl Weiss and his wife ate Sunday dinner at his father’s house. Carl’s wife, Yvonne, was the daughter of Judge Benjamin Pavey, one of Huey Long’s most outspoken critics. At the special legislative session Long had convened, he intended to eliminate Judge Pavey’s position. According to those present at dinner, Dr. Weiss’s father was ranting about Long, and his attack on Judge Pavey at the special legislative session. But despite his marriage to the judge’s daughter, Dr. Weiss minimized Long’s actions and tried to calm his father.
Yet, just a few hours later, Dr. Weiss would lie dead in the state capital, accused of assassinating Huey Long. He would leave behind his wife and a son, Carl Weiss, Jr.:
“Naturally, most of what I know of my father is very second hand. But understandably, it’s been one of my major life interests. There’s been a lot of interest focused on the minute-by-minute detail of my father’s day, where he went, what he did, etc. He spent the afternoon at home. And then he left to visit the home of a man named Morgan who was a patient of his. And I believe my father made a phone call from the Morgan home to make plans for the morning surgery. There, after he left, and for reasons that I don’t believe we’ll ever know, didn’t go directly home, and the rest is, as they say, history.”
At the State Capitol that evening, the career of Yvonne Weiss’s father, Judge Henry Pavey, was on the line. House Bill Number One, a re-districting plan, was Huey Long’s top priority. If it passed, Judge Pavey would be removed from the bench. At 9 P.M., the session was still going strong. Huey Long did not notice the arrival of Dr. Weiss. Historian and author Ed Reed believes Weiss went to the capitol, not to shoot Huey Long, but to plead his father-in-law’s case:
“Carl Weiss took his position outside of the governor’s office. He was not hidden outside of the governor’s office. He was in plain view because he was approached by other people who knew him, who saw him there, approached him, shook hands with him, talked with him.”
Ed Reed says that three times Weiss approached Huey Long that night, and three times he was brushed aside:
“On another pass, Weiss was a little bit more urgent. And he told Long that he really had to talk with him. And Long once again said he didn’t have the time to talk to Weiss. History records the rest in some blue haze, really. We’re uncertain as to what happened. But that is how the scene was set for this particular moment.”
At 9:20 P.M., Dr. Weiss approached Long for the third and final time. The historians who are convinced that Weiss did not kill Huey Long believe that when Long verbally insulted Weiss, Weiss punched him. The altercation brought a hail of gunfire from Long’s bodyguards, and Long was accidentally struck by one of their bullets.
Huey Long was taken to a nearby hospital. Despite his wounds, says Ed Reed, The Kingfish remained very much in charge:
“Huey Long had been briefed as to who the man was who they claimed had shot him. He had been given a lot of information. Somebody had to come up with a story as to exactly what happened there and Huey Long felt that he was the man to tell it. Huey Long was shot around 9:20. He was operated on sometime around 11 o’clock. They went inside, found out that the colon had been punctured in two places. They sewed up Huey Long and then pronounced him cured.”
However, the surgeons had overlooked a serious wound to the senator’s kidney. A day and a half later, on September 10, 1935, Huey Long died. At the official inquest, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss was named as Long’s assassin. Historian Ed Reeds questions that conclusion:
“Most assassins leave a paper trail. They leave some hint as to what they did and why they did it. There was nothing like this. Carl Weiss was not a man who was preparing to shoot anybody. And at that dinner, at noontime on September the 8th, he was the model of propriety and, really, he was in complete control of himself. Carl Weiss was a father of a three-month old son. He was making provisions for the future. He spent a very normal Sunday and there was nothing to incline anybody to believe that he had this on his mind. I think it was all together incomprehensible that he could have been the perpetrator of this crime.”
No one disputes that Carl Weiss owned a gun, a .32-caliber pistol which he kept in the glove compartment of his car. However, Ed Reed believes that he has uncovered evidence that Huey Long was not shot by that gun. The official version of the operation makes no mention of a bullet being retrieved from Long’s body. But Reed heard a conflicting story from a relative of one of the surgeons:
“During the operation, there was a .38 caliber bullet removed from Huey Long. This is significant because Carl Weiss was alleged to have been carrying a .32, but the body guards were carrying .38s and .45s, so therefore if a .38 was removed, and I believe it was, then that could not have come from Carl Weiss or his gun certainly.”
Within half an hour of the shooting, Dr. Weiss had been tentatively identified as Long’s assailant. Weiss’s brother and cousin heard the rumors and went straight to the Capitol. There, they found Weiss’ car, but when they came back with the keys, it had been moved At this point, they still had no idea that Dr. Weiss had been killed.
Weiss’ brother and cousin discovered that the doctor’s gun was missing from the glove compartment. To this day, no one can be sure who removed the gun from the car. Elois Sahuk, a security guard at the State Capitol that night, told Ed Reed that it was not Carl Weiss:
“One of the bodyguards, who is now dead, told me that he felt that that gun was a throw down gun, that one of the bodyguards had gone out to the car that Carl Weiss had driven up in, had gotten that pistol and had thrown it next to the body.”
Reed believes his theory is supported by Weiss’s own actions inside the capitol:
“If Carl Weiss was actually at the state capital to kill Huey Long, he had a perfect opportunity that passed. Huey Long had his back turned to Carl Weiss. It would’ve been very easy for Carl Weiss to shove his pistol up against Long’s body, emptied out the magazine and then make his escape. Because of the rumors that had been flying that there would be an attempt made on Huey Long’s life that night, because of that, fuses were very, very short. Something that happened that night, perhaps Carl Weiss hit Huey Long, perhaps he just moved too fast, and I think the bodyguards who were without any training whatsoever in security, I think they overreacted. I think bullets that entered Huey Long’s body were the bullets that came from the bodyguard’s guns.”
Reed offers up what he believes is one final piece of evidence. When Huey Long was admitted to the hospital, his lip was bleeding. Long apparently explained, “That’s where he hit me.” Was Long referring to his encounter with Carl Weiss? According to a sworn affidavit from a witness, he most certainly was.
In hindsight, there seems to be considerable doubt about who actually shot Huey Long. But at the time, it was treated as an open and shut case. No one was allowed to investigate further and all the official records, as well as Dr. Weiss’s gun, disappeared a few years after the inquest and remained missing for more than half a century. That is, until Professor James Starrs, a forensic expert, began researching the case:
“In trying to find the gun and the state police files, I decided that the police are the prime suspects that should be looked at starting from the top down. And I literally made a laundry list of the individuals with Louis F. Guerre at the top of that list.”
Louis F. Guerre was the head of the Criminal Bureau of Investigation in Louisiana at the time of Huey Long’s death. Years after Guerre died, a researcher hired by Starrs found Guerre’s will in the public records. According to Prof. Starrs:
“There was a listing in the inventory of miscellaneous files, listed as no value. Now, being a lawyer as well as a scientist, I realized that inventories of estates do not list items of no value. They certainly don’t list them in this kind of mysterious way as miscellaneous files. And I said to myself, ‘Those are the state police files.’”
Guerre’s will listed something else of interest: Carl Weiss’s gun. With the gun were several unused .32 caliber bullets, and one spent .32 slug. At first it was assumed this was the bullet that killed Huey Long, but ballistics tests showed it did not come from Dr. Weiss’s gun. The obvious questions were, where did it come from, and, why was it kept with the gun?
Some believed that the answer would be found with the official state files, which were also recovered by Starrs’ investigation. However, the Louisiana State Police reviewed the files and concluded there is nothing in them that changes the original ruling. Capt. Ronald B. Jones spoke for the Louisiana State Police:
“It’s my opinion that Dr. Weiss was the assassin in this case. We believe from a law enforcement standpoint that he had motive. We believe he had opportunity. And we believe he had the means to do the job. And we know that he was there.”
Dr. Carl Weiss Jr. is hoping new evidence will clear his father’s name:
“The amount of time that may have elapsed since an occurrence really doesn’t change one’s desire to see the truth brought out. And I care probably more today than I did when I was a youngster about the truth concerning my father. If I were asked whether my father shot Huey Long, today I would say categorically no, he didn’t.”
Update:
Col. Francis Grevemberg, head of Louisiana State Police during the early 50’s, was among those who believed that Long’s bodyguards killed him accidentally, and Grevemberg was in a position to know. He claimed that two state troopers who were eyewitnesses to the shooting told him that Dr. Carl Weiss was unarmed when Long was shot. The state troopers confirmed that after the bodyguards shot Long, they planted a gun on Weiss. Despite this information, the official position of the Louisiana State Police is still that Dr. Carl Weiss killed Huey Long.
There is one final piece of evidence that suggests Huey Long’s death might have been accidental. Records uncovered decades later reveal that a $40,000 life insurance payment was awarded to Long’s family. At the time, insurance company investigators concluded that Huey Long’s death was “accidental.”
Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.
Anonymous
Long’s son later became the Senator of Louisiana. And he held his father’s old job for almost 40 years. He wasn’t as ardent as his father was.
nevadaman45
I definitely believe that Dr Weiss is the assassin his gun was a 32 acp and It was more common for bodyguards at that time to carry something more powerful like 38 special revolvers or 38 super or 45 acp m1911 type pistols. Also, bullets used in semi autos of the time in the US used full metal jackets bullets. With stone floors, these full metal jacket bullets would have conditions perfect for ricochets. The bodyguards were firing 60 rounds recklessly so it would be more likely that Long was killed by his own guards. Basic firearm knowledge should have disproved the assassin theory so it had to of been a cover-up by Long and his men. Long was even still using his power while he was on the operating table.
Ernest Gremillion
Actually Dr. Lorio was not one of the surgeons who operated on Long but was present during the surgery as a close associate of Long’s. Obviously Dr. Lorio knew there was still a bullet in Long’s body because he observed Dr. Vidrine remove the 38 cal bullet and there were two bullet holes in Long’s body.
Petaa Motex
Definitely doesn’t look like Huey was killed by an assassin but by his bodyguards. If the re-enactment was accurate on the show, they mafia-shot Carl Weiss and carelessly emptied their guns causing ricochets which hit Huey. Maybe we would have been spared from Huey as president. He doesn’t sound like he would have been a good one. It’s sad that the history books were written on the side of Huey’s men.
Sonny Couvillion
The Gremillion summary is very convincing and I agree with him that the evidence against a Weiss shooting is overwhelming and should convince Louisiana officials to recognize that fact. Typical Louisiana politics in ruining the reputation of a family rather than put the blame on the state police bodyguards where it belongs.
Anonymous
“None of my efforts, thus far, have been successful.”
Sadly they most likely never will… but thank god for the internet, so we don’t have to except “My late brother Joseph M.” so-called conclusion… the days of only having one source of information to the truth is long over with.
Clintonsix
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Anonymous
I remember watching an update to that case a few months ago because many decades after Huey Long’s death I remember the update when the gun was tested at a lab I do remember watching the reinactment when Carl Austin Weiss Sr. claimed to have shot Huey Long I remember seeing Huey’s Bodyguards shooting Carl with their guns while Huey was then running away after being shot but that wasn’t true because in the update there was all talk saying that Huey’s untrained Bodyguards had mistakenly shot Mr. Long because Dr. Weiss was innocent because he didn’t shoot Mr. Long back there because those men had killed Dr. Weiss during that time someone brought the Dr.’s gun there & dropped it alongside The Dr.’s body & so I say that The Dr.’s innocent.
Amanda Long
Hello Huey P Long is family and he was murdered by people of his own kind at which Texas tried to do to me and killed my twin my friend and it has to do with political and money, I firmly believe it had to do with money and other political government issues and it’s wrong and we want relief because me I bear arms and together Long family and friends will stand side by side like no other and remember who we are and how deep our bloodline runs,while Texas allowed hate crime like Louisiana I just want America to know we do have rights to protect
Fred
You crazy.
R Burke
From what I’ve read and seen this all points to a cover up by General Guerre , why would he keep the official state case files along with Dr Weiss’s gun in a safe deposit box which got passed onto his heirs my opiniIon is it should be kept in the state records as evidence if in fact Dr Weiss was the assasin which I seriously doubt
Katelyn
OR someone from the Roosevelt Administration paid off one of Long’s bodyguards to make it seem like an accidental shooting and made said bodyguard blame it on Dr. Weiss so Long would not be a competitor for the Democratic nomination….
William Graham
Dr. Weiss was not the assassin of Huey Long and the Louisiana State Police rushed to judgement. Sooner or later they are going to have to admit that Dr. Weiss was innocent!
Stephanie Mardesich
My late brother Joseph M. Mardesich, III wrote his U.S. history thesis while a student at The Lawrenceville School (nr.Princeton, NJ) WHO SHOT HUEY LONG? which he published as a book in 1964. His conclusion was that Dr. Weiss was the (lone) assasin.
His thesis and book have been donated tom and will be part of, The Historic New Orleans Collection who are presenting the 80th anniversary of “the shooting” opening April 14 thru Sept. 30.
Ernest Gremillion
If you are adult living in Louisiana, no doubt you are familiar with who Dr. Carl Austin Weiss is. He is the person who allegedly shot Huey P. Long in the Louisiana State Capitol on the night of September 8, 1935. This event has received more publicity than probably in other event in Louisiana history. Many books, television documentaries and articles have been written and produced related to this subject. I became involved with this matter in the early 1980’s when I did research for Ed Reed for the book he was writing about Huey Long which he titled “Requiem for a Kingfish”. The book was published and contained two revelations that both Reed and I felt would significantly change the public perception of who actually shot Huey Long. These items are the first and second items of the evidentiary summary I have prepared over the years which, I feel, presents overwhelming evidence that Weiss did not shoot Huey Long. The summary is as follows:
1. Merle Welsh interview. As the mortician at Rabenhorst Funeral Home where Long’s body was brought, he described in detail how Dr. Clarence Lorio removed a large caliber bullet from Long’s body at the funeral home. He was given the bullet by Lorio and he, in turn, gave it to his assistant, Jack Umbehagen. Unbehagen’s relatives confirmed that he had a large caliber spent bullet on his watch chain for years describing it as the bullet that killed Huey Long. Weiss’s gun was a rather small 32 caliber.
2. Coleman Vidrine Jr interview. He explained how his father told him that Dr Arthur Vidrine, his uncle, had given his father, Coleman Sr. a 38 cal spent bullet for safekeeping, telling him that this was the bullet removed from Long’s body during surgery. Arthur’s instructions to Coleman Sr. were to keep the bullet in a safe place and tell no one about it, obviously because it was a different caliber than Weiss‘ gun. This was corroborated by J. C. Broussard a south Louisiana restaurant owner and friend of Arthur Vidrine. Broussard told T. Harry Williams during his research for his Pulitzer Prize winning book “Huey Long” that Vidrine confirmed to him that Long had two bullets in him, one being a 38 cal. Dr Vidrine also confirmed the same story to Col Francis Grevemberg’s father.
3. The recollection of Tom Ed Weiss, Carl’s brother about the events he experienced the night of the Long shooting. His explanation was that after he heard about the shooting , he went to the State Capitol and located Carl’s automobile which was locked. He went to his home to find the spare key and when he returned to the capitol, the automobile was moved, unlocked and ransacked. The glove compartment where Weiss kept his pistol was open and the pistol was gone.
4. The true details on the Long shooting from some of the state police officers who were at the shooting that were inadvertently disclosed to Francis Grevemberg during a long automobile trip after a raid. Grevemberg was Superintendent of state police at that time. These details included the accidental shooting of Long by his bodyguards, introducing a throw down gun which was later replaced by Weiss’s own gun, and a gathering of all of witnesses by Superintendent L. F. Guerre later to admonish them to close ranks in support of a Weiss shooting. This version was corroborated by Morris Soileau a barber , whose shop was close the state police headquarters and who heard this same story for those state police troopers who were present at the Long shooting.
5. The testimony of the two emergency room nurses at the hospital, who said that Long explained that the cut on his lip was caused by Weiss hitting him. They also related that Long asked his bodyguards “who was that ‘sob’ who hit me?” Not who shot him but who hit him which is highly probative that Long knew that Weiss did not shoot him. It would be inconceivable to believe that Weiss struck Long and five body guards standing very close would allow Weiss time to draw a gun and shoot Long after he hit him.
6. Weiss confronted Long on three separate occasions. The shooting incident occurring on the third occasion. If Weiss had gone to the Capitol intending to shoot Long, it makes no sense that he would have passed up two earlier occasions to shoot him, not knowing if he would have been presented with additional occasions later.
7. Judge Fournet’s testimony that he saw Weiss shoot Long. This has been heavily relied on for many years as the key evidence supportive of Weiss shooting Long. His declaration took place several days after the shooting and according the Grevemberg statement, after General L. F. Guerre brought all of those present at the shooting into a gathering and directed them under extreme repercussions not to break ranks against the version of Weiss shooting Long that Guerre orchestrated. Fournet recanted to at least five different individuals that he lied about what he said he saw but refused to go public with his recantation.
8. Stories about the Long shooting told to others by Vernon McGee a reporter at the scene who witnessed a bodyguard accidentally shoot Long. He and all the other reporters were later subjected to extreme intimidation by General Guerre not to report the facts but only that Weiss shot Long.
Philip Maranto also told his story of being at the shooting to a Port Allen newspaper. His story was that a bodyguard accidentally shot Long in the back. Federal Judge Lansing Mitchell who was General Guerre’s attorney acknowledged that Guerre admitted to him that the Weiss gun was removed from his car after the shooting.
Physical Evidence
The official version of the shooting describing the two wounds in Long’s body as wounds of entry and exit from a single shot from Weiss’s gun. Although there were many law enforcement officers who investigated the scene for some time, no 32 caliber bullet was ever found even though the scene was a closed, pristine, marble hallway. There is no record of anyone even looking for a 32 caliber bullet because it is obvious that no one at the scene saw anything that would have caused them to look for one. Had that been the case, there is little doubt that the order would have come down from the top that no one was to leave the building until that bullet was found. Additionally the 32 caliber pistol round at about 70 grains projectile weight and approximately 900 feet per second muzzle velocity is the slowest least penetrating of all the handgun rounds and very unlikely to cause a pass through penetration in the upper torso of a large adult male.
I’ve seen narratives defending the state’s position that assert that the state employees involved at the time would not be so calloused as to frame Carl Weiss for shooting Long after Weiss’s death. Apparently these same employees were sufficiently calloused to shoot Weiss at close range over seventy times which required them to reload their weapons multiple times and continue shooting into Weiss’s lifeless body. The number of shots to Weiss’s body was confirmed by Dr James Starrs when he performed an autopsy on Weiss’s body in the late 1980’s.
In my opinion, any one of these items standing alone would be enough to convince an objective person that Carl Austin Weiss did not shoot Huey Long and all taken in total would produce that conclusion beyond any reasonable doubt. The only state investigation made since the shooting was after the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting where many of the factors presented above had been revealed and received extensive publicity. Ironically the Louisiana State Police conducted its own one man investigation which concluded that Carl Austin Weiss was indeed the shooter and Long’s bodyguards simply responded by shooting the man who shot Long. This investigator was aware at the time of his investigation of each and every one the factors listed above but chose not to even consider any one of them. I seemed to be the only one to notice that the Louisiana State Police saw no conflict of interest in deciding to investigate the Long shooting and the criminal conspiracy cover up of its own former employees.
Additional analogies and conclusions about the Long shooting can be made as follows:
Grevemberg’s attempt to publicly disclose the explanation of the shooting he overheard from those involved. His statement details that after he confronted the bodyguards about going public with their inadvertent admissions to him, they reminded him that they were sworn to secrecy years ago by General Guerre and if forced to would deny they ever made those statements. He ultimately dropped his attempt to go public after his legal advisor convinced him that it would not be successful and he would probably lose his job if he proceeded with it.
T Harry Williams’ book about Huey Long was somewhat of an enigma when it came to the Long shooting. Although it mostly ignored the shooting itself, Williams remained adamant that Weiss shot Long. I’ve explored that scenario and have come to the some conclusions about it. It is fairly common knowledge that the Long family sought out Williams to write the “defining book” about Huey Long. Williams had the right credentials to do the necessary research and pen the type of work that the Long family wanted. It is also common knowledge that the Long family held fast to the belief that Carl Austin Weiss, and not the bodyguards, shot Long. I am not certain if the Long family or Williams ever acknowledged it, but it is also a common belief that they paid Williams a handsome sum to undertake this endeavor. That would make perfect sense since there was no guarantee such a book would be the financial success it ultimately proved to be and the amount of time Williams spent on this project was staggering. This being the case, it came as no surprise that Williams toed the Long family line about Weiss shooting Long. This is particularly interesting because of the acknowledgement that J. C. Broussard made to Williams that never was included in the book. Because this information came from such a reliable source and was in stark contrast to what had been published and accepted about the shooting, it should have given Williams considerable pause to reconsider his position, which he never did. I found this information buried in Williams’ research material he had accumulated and donated to the LSU library. This material covered numerous boxes and had originally been designated by Williams not to be made available for inspection until years after his death. When I reviewed this material in the early 1980’s, I was informed by the curator that I was the only person who had ever examined it and I mean all of it which took over two weeks. The Broussard memo was only a partial page and I suspect probably either forgotten by Williams or was so insignificant in volume to the total research package that he felt no one would come across it or make an issue of it.
The question of truths versus untruths in the shooting of Huey Long can be postulated as follows: If Weiss shot Long all of the following lied:
Merle Welsh, Jack Umbehagen, Coleman Vidrine, Tom Ed Weiss, two emergency room nurses, Francis Grevemberg, Francis Grevemberg’s father, J. C. Brousssard, Morris Solieau, Vernon McGee, Phillip Maranto, and Judge Lansing Mitchell. If Weiss did not shoot Long, Judge Fournet, General Guerre, and the bodyguards lied. Fournet acknowledged to five separate individuals that he lied, General Guerre told his attorney Judge Mitchell he lied and the bodyguards acknowledged to Francis Grevemberg and Morris Solieau that they lied.
The orderly way that these nine factors dove tail and corroborate each other. Some of the facts coming from different sources agree with each other in amazing detail, even though the sources never knew or had occasion
to discuss these events together. Examples of this are the story from the bodyguards told both to Francis Grevemberg and Morris Solieau and what Guerre told to his attorney and the bodyguards telling Grevemberg the same story about Weiss’s gun which was also corroborated to some extent by Tom Ed Weiss. Additionally, Merle Welsh revealing the removal of the large caliber bullet and Coleman Vidrine acknowledging the 38 caliber bullet which were disclosed to T Harry Williams by J. C. Broussard and by Francis Grevemberg‘s father. And finally the same story about Long being accidentally shot by his bodyguards which was told by both Vernon McGee, a reporter present at the shooting and Phillip Maranto, a Long groupie who was also present.
Since my first involvement with the research for Ed Reed’s book, I have made quite a few attempts to get public official recognition by the State of Louisiana acknowledging that Carl Weiss did not shoot Huey Long. In a letter to the editor published by the Baton Rouge Advocate, I stated “it seems that the perpetuation of the Long shooting as a mystery is a myth that the press and to some extent, even our elected officials seem to want to hang on to as a mystery because it is more interesting to keep the mystery going than to accept closure by applying the existing facts of the case. These facts, I submit, conclusively prove that Carl Austin Weiss did not shoot Huey Long. Hanging on to the mystery may have some merit in promoting the mystique of Louisiana but does not overcome the agony suffered by the Weiss family for this injustice.” Where I have been able to have any dialog with state officials on this matter. I have generally been met with the posture of “that’s our story and we’re sticking to it and we have the last word.” None of my efforts, thus far, have been successful.
Ernest A. Gremillion
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Dan
Reed also stated that a second bullet was found when Senator Long was prepared for the funeral. The mortician in charge, Merle Walsh, stated that he was visited by Dr. Clarence Lario, who was one of the surgeons who operated on Long days earlier. Dr. Lario found another bullet near Long’s kidney where he was shot. The bullet was described by Mortician Walsh as being as big as the 1st joint on your index finger. The bullet was later determined to be a 45 caliber. one of the guns most of Long’s bodyguards were carrying.