Their stories differ in detail. Frampton says Huey gave “a sort of a grunt” when he was shot; Justice Fournet describes it as “a hoot.” He also says the first shot was fired by Weiss, the next three by Coleman; Roden says the first two shots were fired by Weiss, the third by himself, and the fourth by someone else (obviously Coleman). Coleman says Huey was attended by Roden, McQuiston, and himself on his final visit to the House chamber, Fournet says he was accompanied by Messina, and Frampton reports that Messina answered the telephone in the office of the sergeant at arms, which opens off the Speaker’s rostrum and is entirely separate from the House chamber.
These discrepancies are natural; only the absence of such variations would lay the testimony of witnesses to a violent incident open to the suspicion, nay the certainty, of collusion. Take for example the three mutually contradictory versions of what happened when the two principals, Roden and Weiss, locked in literally a life-and-death grapple, fell struggling to the floor. Roden says his hard heels slipped on the marble paving; Justice Fournet says he threw out his hands in a gesture that overbalanced the two; Coleman says a blow of his fist felled Weiss, who, clasped in Roden’s grip, pulled the latter down beneath him.
But on the main point—namely, that the two fell to the floor, and that Weiss was not killed until after they were down—all are in complete agreement. If it is assumed that this is a concocted story, made up to divert suspicion from one or more of the bodyguards as having fired so wildly that one of their bullets brought about their leader’s death, the following must likewise be accepted as true:
Somewhere and sometime before the first of these four witnesses told what he saw, all of them would have had to agree on the specific untruths they would tell.
But at no time was there any opportunity during those initial frantic moments for the four to have met, either to concoct and agree on a false story or for any other purpose. Indeed, Frampton was already telephoning his first story of what had occurred, while the others are all accounted for elsewhere: Coleman describing to Governor Allen what he had seen, Justice Fournet in the hospital, Roden out of action and temporarily blinded until taken to the hospital himself by Ty Campbell.
Furthermore, after treatment, and not having spoken to any others in the meantime, Roden gave his statement that night to General Guerre, and later to General Fleming. These accounts agreed in almost every detail with one another and with the one he gave me, twenty-four years later, in the presence of Generals Fleming and Guerre, who verified that this statement differed in no essential respect from what he had told them at the scene when questioned by them on the night of September 8, 1935.
Except for one detail, it also agrees with the testimony he gave on September 16 of that same year, at the Odom inquest. It was his belief at first that Dr. Weiss fired but once. However, mulling the violent images of that night over in his mind, he later came to the conclusion that the doctor fired twice; this, incidentally, is the only conclusion that would square with the two minor injuries he sustained on his right hand and left wrist.
In any case, the possibility of conspiratorial collusion among these four in time to have agreed on a falsified account of what took place before their eyes, would appear to be ruled out in its entirety. The inevitable corollary of such a proposition is that the otherwise uncontradicted testimony of these four witnesses is a factual account of what took place.
None the less, one cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility, however remote, that evidence can be framed, as it has been in documented cases—Sacco-Vanzetti, Tom Moony, Leo M. Frank; and that circumstantial evidence, even where no single link in the chain appears weak, leads now and then to false conclusions. But it can be said that in this instance the overwhelming weight of available evidence indicates that Weiss’s bullet was the cause of Huey Long’s death, and that no bullet from the guns of one or another of his bodyguards was a contributing factor in putting an end to his career.
The available evidence likewise appears to indicate beyond a reasonable doubt that the emergency operation was a contributing cause of death in the following respect: