The Huey Long Murder Case

by Hermann B. Deutsch

The stage is set for a violent climax. Huey Long has turned through the anteroom of the governor’s office, where Chick Frampton, bending over the desk with his back to the door, is preparing once more to lay down the telephone without breaking the long-distance connection to New Orleans. He has told his editor, Coad, to hang on while he—Frampton—goes in search of the Senator, and does not see Huey just behind him. Intent on his conversation with Coad, he has heard neither the Senator’s question as to whether everyone has been notified about the morning’s early caucus, nor Joe Bates’s affirmative reply.

By the time he puts down the telephone and turns, Huey Long has already dashed out into the hallway where John Fournet steps forward to greet him. The Senator stops momentarily to talk to A. P. White in the partly opened private doorway to the inner office. He has noticed, while looking over the House from the Speaker’s rostrum, that some of his legislative supporters are absent, and asks White where the hell this one, that one, and the other one are, adding: “Find them. If necessary, sober them up, and have them at that meeting because we just might need their votes tomorrow!” Then he turns, facing the direction of the House chamber.

For that one fractional moment every actor is motionless: Huey Long, with John Fournet at his left elbow and Murphy Roden just behind his right shoulder; Chick Frampton in the very act of stepping into the corridor from the double doors of the governor’s anteroom; Elliott Coleman down the hall in the direction of the House, near the door of the small private elevator reserved for the governor’s use; and among three or four individuals standing in the marble-paneled niche recessed into the wall opposite the double doors where Frampton is standing, a slim figure in a white suit.

The fractional moment passes. Let us turn once more to Murphy Roden’s graphic account of what transpired:

“... a young man in a white linen suit, who held a straw hat in his hand loosely before him, and below the waist, so that both of his hands seemed to be concealed behind it. He walked toward us from the direction of the House chamber and I did not see the gun until his right hand came out from beneath his hat and he extended the gun chest high and at arm’s length. In that same instant I realized that this was no jest, no toy gun, and leaped. I seized the hand and the gun in my right hand and bore down, and as I did so the gun went off. The cartridge ejected and the recoil of the ejector slide bruised the web of my right hand between thumb and forefinger, though I was not conscious of the hurt and did not see the injury, a very minor one, until later.

“I tried to wrest the gun away, but saw I could not do it in time, so shifted my grip on it from my right hand to my left and threw my right arm around his neck. As I did this, my hard leather heels slipped on the marble floor and my feet shot out from under me, so that we both went down, the young man and I, with him on top. That is the last pair of hard leather heels I have ever worn. While we were falling, my wrist watch was shot off, but again I was not conscious of it. I did not even miss my watch until I was being treated at the hospital, later that same night.

“It has always been my belief that it was Dr. Weiss who fired a second shot as we were falling and that it was this one which shot off my watch. There are several reasons for this conclusion on my part. Firstly, his gun was of small caliber, 7.6 millimeter, which is about the equivalent of our .32-caliber automatic, a Belgian Browning which he had brought back with him from abroad. When it was examined later, it had only five cartridges in it. Normally it holds seven. I have always had a deep conviction that Dr. Weiss fired twice, and that I saw the first shell ejected. When his gun was recovered from the floor, a shell was found caught in the ejecting mechanism which I am convinced was the second shell. The dent on my watch, which was later recovered and which I still have, was made by a small-caliber bullet.

“As we were falling—Dr. Weiss and I—I released his gun hand, and reached for my pistol, a Colt .38 special on a .45 frame, loaded with hollow-point ammunition, which I carried in a shoulder holster. By the time we hit the deck I had it out and fired one shot into his throat, under his chin, upward into his head and saw the flesh open up. I struggled to get out from beneath him, and as I partially freed myself, all hell broke loose. The others may have waited till I got partially clear before they fired, for I think I got to my knees by the time they started, and that probably saved my life. But I was being deafened and my eyes were burning with particles of powder from those shots.

“Moreover, for all I knew this might have been an attack in force, which was why I was struggling so desperately to get to my feet. But by the time I really was on my feet, I could not see any more because of the muzzle blasts from other guns. While I did not learn this until later, shots had passed so close to me that the powder burns penetrated my coat, shirt, and undershirt, and burned my skin beneath, all along my back. I felt my way blindly down the hall in the direction of the Senate chamber, with my left hand on the corridor wall and my gun still in my right hand, till I turned a corner and reached a niche where there was a marble settee. This was right near the stairway where Huey had gone down, as I learned later. I was practically blinded for the time. The settee had a padded seat, and I waited there till Ty Campbell, a state highway patrolman, saw me and took me to the hospital.

“It was there that I missed my watch and saw the furrow plowed across the back of my wrist where the scar of it is still visible; also the pinch or scratch in the web between my right thumb and index finger. I did not know for two days what had become of my watch, but it was returned to me later by King Strenzke, chief of the Baton Rouge city police. Someone had picked it up off the floor at the scene of all the shooting, and had turned it over to the police while authorities were still trying to establish the identity of Dr. Weiss.”