Assasinations and Bombings in the Pelican State

The hospital I work at in Baton Rouge is named after the younger brother of famed politician and former governor Huey P. Long - "The Kingfish."

Huey Long was a tyrant, probably manic, a heavy drinker, he ruined the lives of many of his competitors through political subversion, he was adored by the underprivileged and minorities in Louisiana, and he built the beautiful state capitol building here and Baton Rouge. He was shot inside of it, just after getting off of his personal elevator, and bullet holes still scar the marble walls 75 years later.




Long was allegedly shot inside of his new building by physician Carl Weiss, M.D. Dr. Weiss was the son of a judge in Opelousas whom Long despised. Long had been unable to unseat the judge, so he introduced a bill to divide up voting districts in his area to force him out of office.

Statue of the Kingfish, facing the state capitol.

According to some theories, Dr. Weiss a well respected physician, confronted the governor who was with his heavily armed entourage. There is a debate as to whether Weiss had a weapon, or simply punched the governor in the mouth as he exited his elevator. What ever the case - Dr. Weiss was shot 32 times in the hallway of the capitol, and the governor died in a local hospital 2 days later from a gunshot wound that may have been ricochet from his own guards.

Dr. Weiss' body lying in the capitol hallway after the assassination.

I was prompted to write this, and to post pictures from my visit to the capitol by an NPR special for the 75th anniversary of Huey Long's death. At the state capital next weekend, Dr. Weiss' son (now himself a surgeon) will be speaking publicly for the first time on the event. After the assassination, his mother was mistreated by the local community in Baton Rouge, and they were forced to move to France, where he grew up. There will also be a play, based on the assassination, in which members of the audience will be chosen as jurors. The jurors will decide the final scene, whether Dr. Weiss indeed murdered Governor Long, or if the Kingfish was inadvertently killed by his own men.

Another interesting bit of history that is not readily apparent to all visitors of the state capitol is the evidence of a bomb blast that shook the state senate chamber in the 1970's. Luckily the bomb, hidden under the front podium, exploded at the wrong time when the senate was out of session. Shards of wood are still embedded in the plaster and in the ceiling, and the marble columns are fractured behind the speaker's podium.

Wood shard embedded in the column.

Fissure in the marble column behind the speaker's podium.
Small wood shard embedded in the ceiling.