Carl Weiss
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Carl Austin Weiss (December 6, 1906 – September 8, 1935) was a young Baton Rouge, Louisiana physician who allegedly assassinated U.S. Senator Huey Pierce Long, Jr. on September 8, 1935, though his family has vigorously disputed the assertion most recently in an interview with his son, Dr. Carl Weiss, Jr. on an Unsolved Mysteries program first aired in 1993.[1] Weiss was shot on the spot by Long's bodyguards. The most convincing evidence presented on that program, ostensibly exonerating Dr. Weiss, revolves around the ballistics evidence and the conclusions of the insurance company which issued Huey Long's life insurance policy. Long died from either a .38 caliber or a .45 caliber bullet consistent with the bodyguard's ammunition, while Dr. Weiss actually owned a .32 caliber gun which was not seen by anyone at the scene at the time of the confrontation. The insurance investigators concluded that Long's death was "accidental" and that the stray bullet which eventually killed him had been fired carelessly by one of his bodyguards. The fatal shell, fired at relatively close range, was found by the surgeons lodged in Long's body and the conclusion reached on Unsolved Mysteries was that the fatal bullet had either passed through Dr. Weiss's body first or ricocheted off the solid marble walls. In addition, the surgeon's report noted that Long's lip was cut, bleeding and severely bruised, consistent with the punch to Long's mouth attributed to Dr. Weiss by several observers at the scene.
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[edit] Baton Rouge doctor
Weiss was born in Baton Rouge to Dr. Carl Adam Weiss and the former Viola Maine. He was educated in local schools and graduated as the valedictorian of Catholic High School. He then obtained his bachelor's degree in 1925 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He did postgraduate work in Vienna, Austria, and was thereafter awarded internships in Vienna and at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. In 1932, he returned to Baton Rouge to enter private practice with his father. He was president of the Louisiana Medical Society in 1933. He was a member of the Kiwanis Club (Conrad 1988, 2:831) and his firstborn son, was only 3 months old at the time.
[edit] The Pavy-Opelousas connection
In 1933, Dr. Weiss married the former Yvonne Louise Pavy of Opelousas, the seat of St. Landry Parish. The couple had one son, Carl Austin Weiss, Jr. (born 1934). She was the daughter of Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy (1874–1943) and the former Ida Veazie (died 1941). Judge Pavy was part of the anti-Long political faction. Pavy's brother Felix Octave Pavy, Sr. (died 1962), an Opelousas physician, had run for lieutenant governor in 1928 on an intraparty ticket opposite the Long slate. Felix Pavy was defeated for lieutenant governor by Paul N. Cyr of Iberia Parish, who thereafter turned against Long.
Pavy was the Sixteenth Judicial District state judge from St. Landry and Evangeline parishes. He did not seek reelection in 1936, after Long had the legislature gerrymander the seat to include a majority of pro-Long voters within a revised district.(Conrad 1988, 2:635). Weiss's father was a prominent eye specialist who had once treated Senator Long. [1][citation needed]
[edit] The shooting
On September 8, 1935, Weiss confronted Huey Long in the Capitol building in Baton Rouge. The precise events that followed are unclear; however, whether Weiss punched Long, shot him, or merely attempted to punch or shoot him, the result was that Long's bodyguards opened fire. Weiss was hit with as many as sixty bullets, and he died at the scene. Dave Haas, the leader of an anti-Long group called the "Minute Men", claimed that five men met in the DeSoto Hotel in Baton Rouge to draw straws as to who would kill Long. Weiss allegedly drew the short straw, and according to Haas, "He would have killed Huey as he would a snake."
Dr. Weiss's sister-in-law, Ida Catherine Pavy Boudreaux (born 1922) of Opelousas recalls that his body was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for a study of bullets entering and exiting the body. Dr. Weiss was interred in Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge by Rabenhorst Funeral Home. His body was exhumed on October 29, 1991, for forensic evaluation, fifty-six years after the event, and never returned to Roselawn.
[edit] The Weiss family thereafter
Yvonne Weiss (born 1908) and her son Carl moved to New York City, where she was a member of the faculty of Columbia University. Ida Boudreaux, Yvonne's youngest sister and the maternal aunt of Carl Weiss, Jr., recalled that the move was necessary to avoid the hostile political climate against the Weiss family in Louisiana in the late 1930s. Yvonne Weiss subsequently married Henri Samuel Bourgeois, a Canadian. She died on December 22, 1963, exactly one month after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Carl Weiss, Jr., who resides on Long Island in New York, has been trying for years to clear his father's name. Weiss, Jr., met with U.S. Senator Russell B. Long (1918–2003), Long's son and successor in the Senate, and the two agreed to put aside past differences and reach a reconciliation.
[edit] Notes
- The character of Adam Stanton in Robert Penn Warren's fictitious All the King's Men is partially based on Weiss.
- Carl A. Weiss, III, graduated from Tulane University Medical School in 1993.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0737614/plotsummary www.imdb.com
- Conrad, Glenn R. 1988. A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography. Lafayette: Louisiana Historical Association.
- Richard D. White, Jr., Kingfish (New York: Random House), pp. 258-259.
- Douglas H. Ubelaker, 1997. Taphonomic Applications in Forensic Anthropology. In: Haglund, W.D. & Sorg, M.H. (eds): Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains. CRC Press, pp.: 77-90; Boca Raton.
