Second Probe of Huey Long’s Death Turns Up Same Killer

Authorities on Friday closed their investigation of Sen. Huey P. Long’s killing after reaching the same conclusion as almost 57 years ago: that Louisiana’s political “Kingfish” was slain by a doctor out to right a family wrong.

“He was shot once, the bullet passing completely through his body and exiting through his back,” state police Lt. Donald R. Moreau testified at a hearing. “There was one assassin. That assassin was Dr. Carl A. Weiss.”

Long, a U.S. senator and former governor who ruled Louisiana through a handpicked successor and rubber-stamp Legislature, was a potential presidential candidate when he was gunned down in the state Capitol on Sept. 8, 1935.

Seven witnesses identified Weiss as the gunman. Long, who lived for two days after the shooting, never said anyone other than Weiss attacked him. But theories abounded that Long was killed as part of a plot to remove him from power or because he posed too much of a threat to first-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The theories were unfounded, Moreau said of the case, which was reopened last year.

“The Long machine was still in power after Long died,” he said. “They immediately dubbed their opponents the ‘Assassination Ticket.’ Believe me, if they had found any evidence of a conspiracy connected with Weiss, they would have shouted it from the rooftops.”

Weiss was shot to death by Long’s bodyguards, and some theories held that Long was hit by a ricocheting bullet fired by one of the guards.

There purportedly had been bad feelings between Long and Weiss over Weiss’ belief that Long had kept his father-in-law from getting a job and that Long had implied that some members of Weiss’ family were black.