12 —— Summation
“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels.”
——WOODROW WILSON
The various versions of “what really happened” during the assassination of Huey Long can be grouped into four general classes under some such headings as the following:
Dr. Weiss, unarmed, entered the capitol and merely struck at Long, being gunned down at once by the bodyguards, one of whose wild shots inflicted a mortal wound on the man they were seeking to defend.
Dr. Weiss was armed, did fire one shot which missed its target. In the ensuing fusillade which riddled the young physician’s body, a wild shot inflicted on Long a wound which proved fatal.
The small-caliber bullet from Weiss’s weapon did not pass completely through its victim’s body, and was never found, being buried with him. The fatal bullet, a ricochet or stray shot from the gun of a bodyguard, was the missile that emerged from Long’s body in the back, creasing the kidney in its passage and initiating what later proved to be a fatal hemorrhage.
Dr. Weiss’s small-caliber weapon fired the only shot which struck Huey Long, passing through the right side of the abdomen, and injuring the right kidney just before emerging at the back. It is possible that surgery to remove this kidney, rather than the frontal laparotomy which was performed, might have halted the fatal hemorrhage and thus have saved Long’s life.
Taking these up individually and in sequence, it becomes a relatively simple matter to dispose of the first assumption. This rests on the undeniable fact that Senator Long’s lower lip bore an abrasion on its outer surface, and a small cut inside of his mouth; also on the statement of one nurse who is quoted as saying she heard the patient say in the hospital: “He hit me.”
But there is abundant evidence to support the belief that if this bruise was the result of a blow, it was not struck by Dr. Weiss. There is, for one thing, the testimony of Sheriff Coleman, that he struck at Senator Long’s assailant twice, that the first blow missed the assassin and struck someone else, and that the second felled Weiss, who by that time was grappling with Murphy Roden.