Assassination of Huey Long

Long had arrived at the capitol for a special legislative session to gerrymander a political opponent, Judge Benjamin Pavy, out of his position. At approximately 9:20 PM, as Long walked through the capitol corridor surrounded by bodyguards, Dr. Carl Weiss emerged from an alcove and approached the senator. Witnesses reported seeing Weiss strike or push Long before bodyguards opened fire, killing Weiss instantly with multiple gunshots.

Long stumbled away from the confrontation with what appeared to be a bullet wound to his abdomen, reportedly saying “I’ve been shot” before being rushed to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. He died approximately 30 hours later from internal bleeding and complications, though some medical experts later questioned whether the wound was necessarily fatal with proper treatment.

The official account attributed Long’s death to a single shot from Weiss’s .32-caliber pistol, with Weiss allegedly motivated by Long’s political persecution of his father-in-law, Judge Pavy. However, several forensic inconsistencies have fueled alternative theories about the shooting’s circumstances and whether Weiss was the actual killer.

Most significantly, some historians and ballistics experts have questioned whether Weiss’s pistol was ever fired, noting that no gunpowder residue tests were conducted and that witness accounts of the sequence of events varied significantly. The theory that Long was accidentally shot by one of his own bodyguards gained credibility when researchers examined the trajectory of the fatal wound and the chaotic gunfight that followed Weiss’s approach.

Dr. Tom Ed Weiss, Carl’s son, spent decades investigating his father’s alleged role and argued that the evidence supported accidental shooting by Long’s security team rather than deliberate assassination. However, definitive forensic conclusions remained impossible due to the immediate destruction of physical evidence and the lack of systematic crime scene investigation.

The assassination eliminated one of America’s most controversial political figures and ended the populist movement that had made Long a potential threat to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 presidential campaign. Long’s death consolidated opposition control over Louisiana politics while transforming him into a martyred figure for his working-class supporters.