Criminal - The Kingfish

Episode Date: April 21, 2017

In 1928, Huey P. Long became the youngest Governor in Louisiana’s history. He bragged that he bought lawmakers like “sacks of potatoes, shuffled ‘em like a deck of cards.” By the time he was 39 years old, he’d made his way to the U.S. Senate. And just a couple of weeks after his 42nd birthday, he was assassinated in the Capitol Building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Allegedly, a doctor named Carl Weiss shot him. Almost immediately, Carl Weiss was shot by Huey P. Long’s bodyguards. Soon after, Huey P. Long was buried 16 feet deep on the front lawn of the state Capitol, with no autopsy. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. I was elected railroad commissioner of Louisiana in 1918, and they tried to impeach me in 1920. When they failed to impeach me in 1920, they indicted me in 1921. And when I wiggled through that, I managed to become governor in 1928. And they impeached me in 1929. He was famous for white linen suits, cigars, and being a charming and brilliant speaker, a master at reinventing himself and telling people exactly what they wanted to hear, whether it was true or not. During his run for governor, the then New Orleans Picayune wrote that there had never been a candidate whose statements were so, quote, shot through with gross error and careless of truth generally.

But he won by a landslide, with 96% of the vote. He was only 34, the youngest governor in Louisiana's history. Huey P. Long. One of his first orders of business was to commission a new Capitol building. The old Capitol was a squat fortress right on the banks of the Mississippi. And as the story goes, Huey Long wanted something more sophisticated, an Art Deco skyscraper that would put the state on the map. But Nebraska was in the process of building their own skyscraper,

and Huey Long would not be one-upped. So we waited until they completed their skyscraper and we went one story higher. So ours is still the tallest state capitol in the United States. I love state capitals. I've been to almost all of them. And the capitol in Baton Rouge is over the top and wonderful. It's always reminded me of the Empire State Building. The building is extremely impressive. The ceiling is a byproduct of sugar cane. This is Louisiana State Representative Terry Brown. He gave us a tour. And what they did was they'd take the sugar cane stalks and mash the juice out and use the byproducts to make acoustical

tile. The desks are made of American walnut, which is the most valuable wood in the world. The railing around the window shows a southern magnolia, which is our state flower. And when I was a young man, I used to come to the state capitol, and I thought, gee, you know, just the awe and the majesty of the place. And I thought it certainly must be one of the most sacred places in the world, but it isn't that way. You know, but it is a special place for all the people of Louisiana because it is the people's house. This is the people's house.

And everyone who comes here, if I give them a tour, the first thing I tell them is welcome to the people's house. In the gardens in front of the Capitol, there's a 12-foot bronze statue of Huey Long on top of an 18-foot marble pedestal. The whole place is a real monument to the ego and character of the sort of man who'd insist on having the tallest capital in the country. Long bragged he bought lawmakers like, quote,

sacks of potatoes, shuffled them like a deck of cards. By the time he was 39, he'd made his way to the U.S. Senate. And just a couple of weeks after his 42nd birthday, he was dead. They buried him on the front lawn of his own gigantic state capitol, 16 feet deep, with no autopsy. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Presenting His Excellency Huey Pierce Long, the dictator of Louisiana, the enigma who is making many Americans regret that the United States ever purchased Louisiana. He rose to power. He became governor.

And then he essentially went about cleaning house and putting all of the people who supported him in office, which, I mean, I'm sure every governor does that to some degree, but he did it to such a great degree that he essentially took total control of the state. This is Amanda McFillin, archivist at the historic New Orleans collection. And so all of his cronies that were in power at the time,

if he wanted them to do something, if he wanted them to pass a bill, they just did it because they supported him. He fired a policeman for giving his son a speeding ticket. He took 10% of state employees' salaries for himself to spend on future campaigns. He didn't like what the newspapers wrote about him, so he accused them of lying, and even imposed a lying tax on their ad revenue.

He started his own newspaper, so at least one press outlet would praise him and ridicule his critics. He kept secret files on everyone, even his closest friends, so he could discredit or intimidate anyone, anytime. He said, I can frighten or buy 99 out of every 100 men. But he was also famous for building thousands of miles of paved roads, improving prison conditions, and making it easier for poor people to vote. He opened free hospitals across Louisiana, tripled the budget for public health care, and started LSU's medical school. He gave himself the nickname the Kingfish. His slogan was Every Man a King. Here man a king, there's enough for all people to share. When it's sunny June and December too, or in wintertime or spring,

there'll be peace without end, every neighbor a friend, With every man a king This is Huey P. Long, United States Senator from Louisiana. By 1933, he was planning to run for president. He wanted to unseat FDR. This was early in the Great Depression, and Huey Long proposed a radical program to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what's intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat?

The only way you'll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub he ain't got no business with. His plan was to heavily tax anyone who made more than a million dollars and give every family in America enough money for a house, a car, and a radio. The work week would be capped at 30 hours. College would be free. Campaign buttons were printed, Huey Long for president. I can take him, Long said of FDR. He's scared of me. I can out-promise him, and he knows it. Speaking of Huey Long, FDR said he screams at people,

and they love it. He was incredibly controversial. There are people that absolutely hated him. I mean, this was not just one person that wanted Huey Long dead. Many people in the state hated him enough that they wished that he would have gone away. They saw Huey Long's, the way he governed the state, as being extremely unethical. Huey Long knew people hated him. Rich people. But also academics and journalists. He was called the Messiah of the Rednecks. People shot at his house from passing cars and sent homemade bombs to his office. He kept his blinds drawn all the time and sometimes wore a bulletproof vest.

In Washington, he took the floor and told his fellow senators that he had reason to believe he would be assassinated. It was hard to know how much of this was real, and how much of it was Huey Long overplaying his hand, trying to seem important. But he claimed to have evidence of a plot against his life that would involve, quote, one man, one gun, one bullet. And then, on September 8, 1935, Huey Long was walking through the state capitol in Baton Rouge. It was about 9.30 that night, and the legislative session had ended for the day. He was walking down a hallway in the state capitol,

and a young man named Dr. Carl Weiss stepped out from behind a pillar, pulled out a pistol, and shot him. Carl Weiss was wearing a white suit. He was a thin man with glasses. And as the story goes, he carried a small.32 caliber pistol and fired one shot at close range into Huey Long's abdomen. I'll show you where he was shot. So this is sort of like a back hallway that legislators often use

just to get between the two chambers. But the story is that Huey Long was headed out of the House of Representatives. This hall starts to head into this office, and the story goes that this doctor pulls out a gun and shoots Huey in the stomach. The bodyguards are surrounding Huey Long. They pull out their guns, and they begin firing on the shooter. The shooter falls to the ground, and as he's laying on the ground, they, just to make sure that he's dead, basically fill him with bullets. And so there's a description of this hallway being filled with gunfire

in these very brief moments. This is Kevin Litton, reporter for the Times-Picayune. But as you can see over here, this this is believed to be a bullet hole that was left over from the shooting. Do you think that's real? It looks so perfect. I don't know if it's real or not. I don't know if anybody's ever confirmed it, but it's something people always get to see. And the fact that you could actually put your finger in there gives you a little bit of a feeling that you're connected to history, I think, in this area.

Huey Long staggered away, down the Capitol stairs, and asked to be taken to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital a couple of blocks away. He died two days later. His last words were, God, don't let me die. I have so much to do. Newspapers across the country reported that Carl Weiss shot Huey Long because of a family vendetta. But there's a lot about that that didn't add up. They never knew each other. They'd never met. Dr. Weiss wasn't really involved in politics

or state politics. But Carl Weiss's father-in-law was a guy named Judge Benjamin Pavey. And Judge Pavey was a district judge in St. Landry Parish, which is near the city of Opelousas. And he'd been a judge for a very long time, and he was very much against Huey Long. Huey Long, that weekend, had come down to Louisiana to help push through a legislative bill that would redistrict Judge Pavey's judicial districts to get Judge Pavey out of office. And that's the connection was that Judge Pavey was Dr. Weiss's father-in-law. And so people think that maybe Dr. Weiss was angry that Huey Long had done this. But even if he was upset about what had happened to his father-in-law, it just doesn't seem like Carl Weiss was the type to actually kill someone. He was a 29-year-old, mild-mannered, ear, nose, and throat specialist,

a newlywed with a three-month-old baby. Incredibly intelligent, incredibly well-trained. He trained at Tulane Medical School. He lived in Vienna and Paris for a while. By all accounts, he was very happy, a very thoughtful, friendly, quiet person, kind of a reserved person. The day that this happened, he had spent the day with his wife and his baby and his parents at a cabin on a river swimming. And he left to go do some rounds, go check on some patients. He had a surgery scheduled for the next morning at 7.30. We don't know why he chose to stop at the state capitol that night.

The first projectile that probably struck my father was a bullet that entered under his left maxilla, that's under the eye, and penetrated his brain so that effectively he was dead by the time he hit the ground. We're hearing from Carl Weiss' son, also named Carl Weiss, and also a doctor, like his father, grandfather, and his son.

He was three months old when his father was killed by Huey Long's bodyguards. Today, he's 81. We flew to Florida to meet with him, and with his son, also named Carl Weiss. Generations of surgeons, all with the same infamous name. And most of the shots that were subsequently fired were fired by the guards shooting down onto a supine dead body. And they fired quite a number of shots. I think there were something like 61. The Weiss family has argued from that very first day that there's absolutely no way Carl Weiss shot Huey Long. Not only was it totally out of character,

but they say he didn't even carry a gun. So you think that he had come into the Capitol to maybe speak with Long about the judges... The gerrymander. The gerrymander. That's what he was going to say, hey, wait a second, this isn't kosher, this isn't right. Yes, and there had been a little history of that in my family

because I had an Aunt Marie who was a schoolteacher in Opelousas, and she had been fired from her job by the Long administration. So we had a little experience of that. So Carl Weiss approached Huey Long, and Huey Long brushed him off. Carl Weiss tried again to get his attention, and perhaps, depending on who you ask, punched Huey Long in the face. And the bodyguards responded with their guns. The family says that any bullets that hit Huey Long came from the guns of the bodyguards.

But I don't think they had any plot, any coherent plot to do away with him. So your father was confronting him and they thought to themselves, you're getting too close. That's right. I think it was the case. And he was wearing a white suit, which made him kind of stand out in the crowd, so to speak. That makes the most sense, too. It really kind of... What's it called? He was 135 pounds, wearing a white suit with a Panama hat, walking in the front door,

parked in the back of the parking lot. It just doesn't feel, look, or taste like a premeditated thing. It seems to fit most with the actions of everybody around it. It was just an accident, really. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman

as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence.

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The family believes the bodyguard shot Huey Long, and then, in an attempt to cover up the mistake, framed Carl Weiss. The bodyguards apparently wanted to empty their guns so that they wouldn't be accused of having been treacherous and traitorous. So that's why they expended so many bullets. You might think they're just rationalizing, but there are two key pieces of evidence to support them. A nurse named Jewel O'Neill came forward and said that when Huey Long arrived at the hospital, his lip was bleeding.

A doctor asked why, and Long said, quote, that's where he hit me. The other piece of evidence is an affidavit from Francis C. Gravenberg, The doctor asked why, and Long said, quote, that's where he hit me. The other piece of evidence is an affidavit from Francis C. Gravenberg, former superintendent of the state police. He came forward years later and said he knew that Huey Long was shot by the bodyguards, not Carl Weiss. Again, archivist Amanda McFillan. His big thing when he was in charge of state police was trying to get rid of illegal gambling happening in the state, especially with slot machines. So they would go on these police raids around the state. So he's driving back one night from one of these raids with a couple of guys, state policemen, who were telling him that they were there when Huey Long was shot

and that they saw what happened and that it was a cover-up. Yeah, so they're riding in the car, they tell him it's a cover-up. He says to them the next day, well, I'm going to make this public, and they say something to the effect of, we will never publicly admit this. Like, we will deny it. And how are they saying Long was shot? Let's see. So what he's saying here is that the state policeman told him that one of the bodyguards was aiming for Weiss, but his bullet ricocheted off a marble wall and instead hit Huey Long. But the official story was that it was Carl Weiss,

and his family was now in the spotlight. Immediately after Huey Long's death, they started getting letters, some hate mail, but a lot of letters expressing gratitude for Carl's sacrifice. Some people even sent money. A lot of these people don't know the Weiss family, but felt very strongly that he had done a heroic act by stopping this person that they were so politically opposed to. Can you, this is one of them, right?

What is this? Let's see, it says, I am an old man, nearly 80. I want to express to you Be it wife or mother My feeling of great admiration for the doctor I think I can understand the high resolve Which led him to lay down his life

Deliberately for a purpose Which has unquestionably been in the subconscious mind Of very many right-thinking people There is no other possible way To rid your state of the incubus Of the things which Hui Long had already done and the things he had had in contemplation on an even greater scale. Yeah. So you can see here from this letter, I mean, people thought, uh, were incredibly

threatened by Hui Long and, uh, his plans that he had in place. So, so Weiss becomes this martyr in his own right. He does, absolutely. And as some of these letters call him a martyr as well, which I think is just fascinating that, you know, both Huey Long and Carl Weiss after their deaths were referred to as martyrs. And what's this one? This one is from an exiled Louisianian. It's signed, may an exiled Louisianian extend heartfelt sympathy to you and your family upon the tragic death of your husband. Dr. Weiss gave his life in order that the liberty of Louisiana might be preserved, and its soil freed from the blight of ignorance and tyranny.

Your husband died a martyr and hero. He is a modern William Tell. When history is written, your husband's brow will wear the wreath of honor. Carl Weiss's wife, Yvonne, was horrified by these letters, and especially by the money. She sent every penny back. Eventually, she got her son out of Louisiana. She started a new life, first in Paris and later in New York. My mother, we had protection ourselves for quite a while, a bodyguard and a police dog whose name was Peter. But my mother wanted to shield me from the reality and she

concocted a story that my father had been killed accidentally at a firing range and he was shooting a firearm and he was hit by another bullet. Well, unlikely as that might seem to you and me today, I believed that for many, many years. And the first time I was aware of what actually happened was when I saw a copy of Life magazine. It might have been 1945 or thereabouts. And I lived a very bizarre life because I was very, very far removed from Louisiana or Huey Long or anything of that nature. Carl Jr. grew up and, like his father, became a doctor. And one day had a son of his own, and again passed down the family name. Did your father tell you stories about Huey Long or his father when you were growing up?

No, to be honest, very little, if any. Do you feel compelled to set the record straight? I don't. I don't. What I believe is my own conviction, and I'm comfortable with that. I can't change the minds of others. My dad has done everything in his power, basically. He's endured a lot more than he acknowledges or admits to. I know what my own temperament is. I know it in my heart.

I know that my grandfather probably has had a similar temperament. And I think he reacted at the wrong place at the wrong time. That's just something that me personally, I believe in my heart. In 1969, a writer named T. Harry Williams published an almost 900-page biography of Huey Long. It won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Williams interviewed 295 people who'd known Huey Long. And by the end, he concludes that Weiss did shoot Huey Long, and that he had planned it. Williams writes that Weiss read a lot of political philosophy and, quote, wept openly in conversations about what Long was doing to the state.

We asked Carl Weiss Jr. and his son about this, and they said that Williams didn't interview a single member of the Weiss family. There are even more theories, it'll make your head spin, that Long engineered the shooting himself. He wanted to be grazed by a bullet for the spectacle. Only important people are assassinated. There's a theory that the bodyguards shot Long on purpose, acting as hired guns in a larger political conspiracy,

and that they shot Weiss more than 50 times to make sure he could never say what happened. A lot of people in Baton Rouge and New Orleans said that we were heading down a rabbit hole when we told them we were working on this story. And it does seem like the more you learn, the less clear you are. Every convincing detail is contradicted by another one. I think if you're a crime reporter, you know that there's a problem that the governor of Louisiana was shot and there was no autopsy. So I think that has always raised questions about what actually happened to Huey Long. So was there a gun planted on the doctor, for instance, and the bodyguards actually committed the murder? Or did the bodyguards accidentally kill Huey? These are all questions that are probably never going to be answered, but still persist to this day,

partly because the legend of Huey Long looms so large over the state, but also because I think people would really love to know what happened to Huey Long and why would he be killed in the building that he created. I think it was just unbelievable at the time. It was like a fairy tale that somebody had made up, a political fairy tale. The year before he died, Huey Long wrote a strange little autobiography. It was actually his second autobiography before the age of 42, and he called it My First Days in the White House. He's imagining himself as president. He writes, it had happened. The people had endorsed my plan for the redistribution of wealth, and I was president of the United States. I had just sworn upon the Bible, from which my father read to us as children, to uphold the Constitution and to defend my country against enemies foreign and domestic.

Yet, standing there on the flag-draped platform erected above the East Portico of the Capitol, delivering my inaugural address, it all seemed unreal. I felt that I was dreaming. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr, Nadia Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Johnny Vince Evans and Rob Byers. Special thanks to Alice Wilder. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.

And we're on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Come find us. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. Shows like Mortified, in which people dig up their embarrassing letters and journals and songs from childhood and let you laugh at them. I was on the show. And if you liked my father in our 420 episode, he's there too. That's episode 90, Kid Criminals.

I used to steal money from your pants in the morning while you were in the shower. And I did this for not just a couple of months, but it went on for a couple of years. Are you telling me this now? Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation. And thanks to AdCirc for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia. From PRX.

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