A forensic sleuth said Friday that a four-month investigation cast doubt over the historic account that Louisiana political boss Huey P. Long was killed by a doctor.
But James E. Starrs, who exhumed the body of Long's purported assassin on Oct. 20, said a new examination of evidence in the case did not prove conclusively whether Long was shot by Dr. Carl A. Weiss or his own bodyguards in 1935."It is submitted that there is significant scientific evidence to establish grave and persuasive doubts that Carl Austin Weiss was the person who killed Sen. Huey P. Long," Starrs told a meeting of the Academy of Forensic Scientists.
When he died, Long was a former governor and U.S. senator who still ruled Louisiana with a handpicked governor and a rubber-stamp Legislature.
The leader of the Great Depression-based "share our wealth" movement that proposed limiting individual incomes to $1 million per year, Long was seen as a major political danger to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Long, who was shot in a state Capitol corridor on Sept. 8, 1935, died 30 hours later. Weiss was killed instantly in a volley of shots fired by Long's bodyguards.
Witnesses, including many of the bodyguards, said Weiss was killed after firing once into Long's body with a .32-caliber, Belgian-made pistol. But some historians contend that Weiss never fired a shot and Long was wounded by his overeager watchdogs.
The case has been clouded for years by speculation, contradictory witnesses and the 1940 disappearance of state police records and the weapon found on Weiss. No autopsies were performed on either Weiss or Long.
After a lengthy hunt triggered by Starrs and given the blessing of Weiss' son, the gun and records turned up last year in the possession of a daughter of Louis F. Guerre, the state police commander who headed the Long investigation.
State police have reopened the investigation, while a state court in New Orleans is trying to decide who owns the gun. Investigators, who are under a gag order by a judge, have refused to comment on their findings.
State police Capt. Ronnie Jones, who has been involved in the renewed investigation, said Starrs' findings cast new light on the case. But he said the mystery may never be sorted out.