Highlights

• Evidence suggests Huey Long may have been accidentally shot by his own bodyguards, not assassin Carl Weiss
• Insurance company investigation concluded Long's death was "accidental," paying $20,000 double indemnity claim
• .38 caliber bullet recovered from Long matched his bodyguards' weapons, not Weiss's .32 caliber pistol
• Witness nurse testified Long said "That's where he hit me" while treating his bruised lip, suggesting Weiss only punched him
• Car keys mysteriously missing from Weiss's body, gun planted in car after death

The Huey Long Assassination Conspiracy: Was Louisiana's Kingfish Actually Murdered by His Own Men?

BATON ROUGE, La. (KPEL News) — On September 8, 1935, in the marble corridors of the Louisiana State Capitol, Senator Huey "The Kingfish" Long was shot and killed in what history records as an assassination by Dr. Carl Weiss.

But Louisiana's most captivating political mystery centers on a troubling question that has persisted for nearly nine decades: Did America's most powerful populist leader actually die at the hands of his own trigger-happy bodyguards?

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According to Wikipedia, the official story has always maintained that Weiss shot Long in the chest, and Long's bodyguards immediately killed Weiss. But a mountain of evidence suggests something far more sinister happened that September night in Baton Rouge.

The Official Story Falls Apart?

The accepted version of events reads like political theater. On that Sunday evening, Long was pushing through a gerrymandering bill designed to oust Judge Benjamin Pavy, a bitter political enemy. Dr. Carl Weiss, Pavy's son-in-law, allegedly confronted Long in a capitol corridor at 9:20 PM and shot him point-blank. Long's bodyguards, nicknamed the "Cossacks" or "skullcrushers," responded by shooting Weiss more than 60 times. Long died 30 hours later.

But does the official story begin unraveling under scrutiny? According to the Huey Long Official Website, no autopsy was performed on Long's body, no ballistics testing was conducted, and only Long supporters were allowed to testify at the inquest. The investigation that should have revealed the truth instead created more questions than answers.

An Insurance Investigation That Changes Everything?

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence in the Long mystery came from an unexpected source: the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. According to NOLA.com, the company dispatched investigator K.B. Ponder to validate the nature of Long's death for insurance purposes.

Ponder's 1935 report reached conclusions that contradicted the official narrative: "There is no doubt that Weiss attacked Long, but there is considerable doubt that Weiss ever fired a gun... There is no doubt that his death was accidental, but the consensus of more informed opinion is that he was killed by his own guard and not by Weiss."

Based on this finding of "accidental death," the insurance company paid a $20,000 double indemnity claim to Long's widow. This information remained largely unknown to the public until it was released in 1985, fifty years after Long's death.

The Physical Evidence That Raises Questions

The ballistics and medical evidence have long troubled investigators and researchers. According to the National Library of Medicine, surgeons who treated Long noted that "the entrance and exit wounds were several centimeters in diameter, which hardly could have been produced by a steel-jacketed .32 bullet which was fired from Weiss' gun."

The ballistics findings have fueled decades of speculation. Weiss carried a .32 caliber pistol, but the bullet recovered from Long's body was .38 caliber, matching the weapons carried by his bodyguards. According to NOLA.com, when State Police investigators later test-fired Weiss's gun and compared the bullet under a microscope, they concluded "Weiss's gun did not fire the bullet."

Even more suspicious, Weiss's gun disappeared for decades after the shooting, only to surface in the 1960s in the estate of Louis Guerre, the state's head of crime investigations in 1935.

The Witnesses Who Tell a Different Story

Perhaps the most intriguing evidence comes from eyewitness accounts that contradict the official version. According to Wikipedia, nurse Jewel O'Neal, who helped treat the dying Long, provided a sworn affidavit stating that while treating Long's bruised lip, he told her, "That's where he hit me."

If Weiss only punched Long, it explains why Long had a bruised lip but changes the entire narrative of the shooting. According to Unsolved Mysteries, Francis Grevemberg, head of the Louisiana State Police in the 1950s, claimed that during a 1953 gambling raid, he heard three state troopers say that bodyguards Joe Messina and Murphy Roden opened fire on Weiss after he punched Long.

Grevemberg also claimed that one of Long's former security guards told him that Weiss's gun was removed from his car and planted at the scene. When Grevemberg tried to investigate further, he was told to stand down.

The Questions That Have Never Been Answered

The investigation, or lack thereof, began immediately after the shooting. According to Unsolved Mysteries, when Weiss's brother Tom arrived at the scene an hour after the shooting, he found that Carl's car had been moved from where witnesses had seen it parked at the Capitol door. The car's glove compartment, where Weiss kept his .32 caliber pistol, had been tampered with.

Most tellingly, Weiss's car keys were missing from his pockets after he was killed. This suggests that someone had access to his car and could have removed the gun from the glove compartment to plant it at the scene.

The inquest raised more questions than it answered. According to the Unsolved Mysteries Wiki, no ballistic or medical evidence was examined, no autopsies were performed on either Long or Weiss, and the inquest members were not allowed to examine Long's body closely. The Louisiana legislature's decision to halt any further investigation only deepened the mystery.

Why the Truth Was Buried

The political motivations for the cover-up were obvious. Long's political machine needed a story of martyrdom to maintain power after his death. Blaming an "assassin" was far better than admitting that incompetent bodyguards had accidentally killed their own boss in a panic.

The Roosevelt administration was also relieved by Long's death. According to Wikipedia, Roosevelt's close economic advisor, Rexford Tugwell, wrote that when Long died, "it seemed that a beneficent peace had fallen on the land" and that Roosevelt regarded Long's assassination as a "providential occurrence."

Even the Catholic Church seemed to believe in Weiss's innocence. According to the National Library of Medicine, Weiss was buried from the Catholic Church with full rites, "and I am told that such is not done for a murderer."

The narrative control was remarkably effective. According to NOLA.com, Long's political faction was so skilled at messaging that for 50 cents in late 1935, people could buy a 50-page booklet titled "Why Huey Long Was Killed!!" that promoted "Startling Accusations" about a "deep laid plot conceived in iniquity and completed in sin."

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