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Controversy still rages
over who killed the Kingfish
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of TheColumnists.com |
It all started
in 1960 on the midnight shift at the Associated Press bureau
in the old Times-Picayune Building in New Orleans.
I was a cub reporter looking for my first national byline. I
found it browsing through the Louisiana Almanac. An item said,
"Huey P. Long assassinated September 8, 1935."
The 25th anniversary. It was the perfect news peg. I did the
story and the AP ran it under my name. That was the beginning
of a lifelong interest in the bizarre case. Three years later
after talking to everyone I could find connected with the double
killing, I wrote the book "The Day Huey Long Was Shot."
What surprised me then--and still did recently on the 70th anniversary
of the shooting--is that controversy has never disappeared. People
continue to speculate about what happened when Dr. Carl Austin
Weiss slipped past Long's bodyguards in the Kingfish's skyscraper
capitol.
Did the 29-year-old Baton Rouge physician gun down Louisiana's
governor without a word--as his guards and other witnesses said?
Or did he merely punch Long after a hot exchange of words? And
a wild bullet from the guards' barrage that killed the doctor
also took the 42-year-old Senator's life?
Few events in Louisiana history have raised as many questions.
But if you were a college student who learned about the slaying
from your history book, you wouldn't know that anyone had ever
challenged the "official" version of the shooting.
"Louisiana: A History" (Harlan Davidson), the state
history text used in nearly all Louisiana colleges, does not
have even a footnote mentioning the debate over Weiss's guilt
that still simmers today.
The late Bennett H. Wall, the textbook editor, put skeptics of
the official version of the slaying in the same camp as doubters
of historical accounts of Presidential assassinations.
"There is a world of non-believers which feeds now and then
on a startling expose of the 'true' facts about political assassinations,"
Wall said in a letter defending his book. "J. Wilkes Booth
did not kill Lincoln. Charles Guiteau did not kill Garfield.
Leon Czolgosz did not kill McKinley. But the record of who actually
killed is fairly conclusive in every case."
Not all historians agree. "Louisiana: The History of an
American State" (Clairmont Press), adopted by virtually
all middle schools in the state, says "the shattering events
of that night in Baton Rouge still puzzle the world."
The author, Anne Campbell, taught social studies for more than
20 years in East Baton Rouge Parish and as a faculty member at
the LSU Laboratory School.
"Questions have no clear answers" Campbell wrote. "What
provoked the incident? Did Dr. Weiss fire the actual shot that
hit Huey Long? Was Long hit by bullets from more than one gun?"
What first triggered these questions was the fact that Weiss
was unlike other American assassins, most of whom were mentally
disturbed or social misfits. A brilliant physician and a family
man, Weiss was the father of a newborn son and a devout Catholic.
The very morning of the shooting, he went to Mass with his wife,
the former Yvonne Pavy of Opelousas.
Why would Weiss want to kill Long? The most obvious reason was
that the Kingfish was gerrymandering out of office Weiss's father-in-law,
Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy. The judge was a political foe whom
Long could not beat at the polls with his own candidate. But
many feel the judge's ousting too weak a motive.
Some think a more likely reason stemmed from a rumor that Long
was about to charge there was black blood in the Pavy family.
That was the supreme Southern insult then in racially segregated
Louisiana. It would have applied to Weiss's wife and baby. However,
no one has been able to confirm that the unfounded charge was
ever made or even contemplated.
What is not disputed is that Long was at the peak of a meteoric
career. He rose to governor at age 34, the youngest to hold that
post. Four years later, he was elected U.S. Senator. A populist,
Long found his power base in the poor and disadvantaged. He gave
the people welfare benefits, charity hospitals, paved roads,
and free school books. And he abolished the poll tax.
But all this came at a high price: graft and political servitude.
Long built a crack machine, and Louisiana became his empire.
He controlled the governor' office, the legislature, and the
courts. Some called him the closest thing to a dictator in America.
Then, Long looked beyond his state's bordesrs. His "Share
the Wealth" plan caught up the longing of Depression-poor
millions. He set his sights on the White House. But on September
8, 1935, a bullet ended his Presidential dreams under circumstances
that remain clouded today.
Because "Louisiana: A History" omits the controversy
that brewed after the assassation, many history professors feel
the textbook short-changes students.
Charles Elliott of Southeastern Louisiana said "Louisiana:
A History" presents the official version "without any
hint of the controversy. I usually tell my students the official
version but also give them all the other interpretations as well."
Overlooked in the text are recent developments-such as the dramatic
discovery in 1992 of Weiss's long-missing gun along with a spent
bullet. Ballistics tests of the bullet--first thought to be the
one that killed Long--showed it did not come from Weiss's weapon.
The test results prompted the State Police to reopen the case.
Police Lt. Donald Moreau, who headed the investigation, discounted
the importance of the bullet. There was no chain of custody,
Moreau said, and so no one knew if the bullet was linked to the
Long slaying. Nor, he said, was there any credible evidence,
new or old, to change the original finding that Weiss shot Long.
The man who discovered Weiss's gun, James E. Starrs, professor
of law and forensics sciences at George Washington University
in Washington, D.C., took strong exception to Moreau's report.
As a state police officer, Starrs said, Moreau was not a truly
independent investigator. He formed his "conclusions in
advance," Starrs charged. "There is no doubt in my
mind that Weiss did not kill Long."
Moreau called Starrs's charge "ludicrous...Nothing in the
(new) evidence rules out the historical theory of how this occurred."
And so the controversy that intrigued me as a young reporter
a half century ago still boils the blood.
David Culbert, history professor at LSU, may have been closest
to the mark when he talked about the difficulty of resolving
a 70-year-old dispute. There are some things in life, Culbert
said, "whose absolute truth will always remain clouded."
©2005 by David Zinman.
The Zinman caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column
first posted Sept. 12, 2005.
(David Zinman teamed with
Michael Wynne of Alexandria, La., to write the play "Who
Killed the Kingfish?" The two-act drama is scheduled to
have its world premiere in the Hopkins Black Box Theatre at Louisiana
State University from October 26-30.)
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or David Zinman. To send an
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