The Huey Long Murder Case

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by Hermann B. Deutsch
Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 1963
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-15869 Copyright © 1963 by Hermann B. Deutsch All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition
In Boundless Affection, This Modest Volume Is Dedicated to THE LYING NEWSPAPERS A Generic Term Applied by Huey P. Long to The Free Press of a Free Republic . Especially is it dedicated to any and all who during almost half a century have been My Fellow Workers As Typified by John F. Tims and Ralph Nicholson And Most Specially Is It Dedicated to the Memory of Richard Finnegan and Marshall Ballard.
Until I undertook to gather all available evidence for what I hoped to make a definitive inquiry into the circumstances of Huey Long’s assassination, I had no idea of how many gaps there were in my knowledge of what took place. Yet except for the actual shooting, which fewer than a dozen persons were present to see, and for what then took place in the operating room of Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium, most of what had any bearing on the circumstances took place before my eyes.
Consequently I am so deeply indebted to so many who were good enough to fill those gaps with eyewitness reports, that no words of mine could begin to settle the score. Chief among those whose claims on my gratitude I can never wholly acquit are Dr. Cecil A. Lorio of Baton Rouge, one of the only two surviving physicians who played any part in the pre-operative, operative, and post-operative treatment of the dying Senator; Dr. Chester Williams, the present coroner of East Baton Rouge parish, who made it possible for me to see, study and understand the microfilmed hospital chart sketchily covering the thirty hours that elapsed between the time of the shooting and its fatal termination; Col. Murphy J. Roden, retired head of the Louisiana State police, who was the only person to grapple with Dr. Weiss; my friend and for many years colleague, Charles E. Frampton; Sheriff Elliott Coleman of Tensas parish; Chief Justice John B. Fournet of the Supreme Court of Louisiana; and Juvenile Court Judge James O’Connor, who carried the stricken Kingfish to the hospital after the shooting.