Carl Weiss

For the World War II Navy Cross recipient, USMC, see Carl W. Weiss.

Carl Austin Weiss, Sr., M.D.
Dr. Carl Weiss
Born	(1906-12-06)December 6, 1906 Baton Rouge East Baton Rouge Parish Louisiana, USA
Died	September 8, 1935(1935-09-08) (aged 28) Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Resting place	Exhumed from Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge; remains never returned
Alma mater	Catholic High School Interned at Bellevue Hospital in New York City Louisiana State University
Occupation	Physician
Spouse(s)	Yvonne Louise Pavy Weiss (married 1933-1935, his death) Father-in-law: Judge Benjamin Pavy
Children	Carl Austin Weiss, Jr.
Parent(s)	Carl Adam and Viola Maine Weiss

Carl Austin Weiss, Sr. (December 6, 1906 – September 8, 1935), was a young physician from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who assassinated nationally famous U.S. Senator Huey Pierce Long, Jr., at the Louisiana State Capitol on September 8, 1935.

Baton Rouge doctor

Weiss was born in Baton Rouge to Carl Adam Weiss, M.D., 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 and a member of the Kiwanis International (Conrad 1988, 2:831).

The Pavy-Opelousas connection

In 1933, Weiss married Yvonne Louise Pavy of Opelousas, the seat of St. Landry Parish. The couple had one son, Carl Austin Weiss, Jr. (born 1934). Pavy was the daughter of Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy (1874–1943) and Ida Veazie (died 1941). Judge Pavy was part of the anti-Long political faction. Judge 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.

Benjamin Pavy was the Sixteenth Judicial District Court 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.

Murder of Huey Long

On September 8, 1935, Weiss confronted and shot Huey Long in the Capitol building in Baton Rouge. Long's bodyguards returned fire and Weiss was hit with sixty-two bullets.

Dr. Weiss was interred at Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge. As measured by the number of mourners, Weiss' funeral is believed to have been the largest ever held for an accused political assassin in the United States.

Dr. Weiss's sister-in-law, Ida Catherine Pavy Boudreaux (born 1922) of Opelousas, recalls that his body was exhumed on October 29, 1991, and sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for a study of bullets entering and exiting the body. The remains were never returned to Roselawn.

Family denials

At the time, Weiss's wife, her parents and other family members accepted his guilt, but his parents disagreed because Weiss had seemed to be quite happy earlier in the day that Long was killed.

Weiss's son—Carl Weiss, Jr., an infant at the time—has since vigorously disputed the assertion, most recently in an interview on a 1993 episode of NBC's Unsolved Mysteries program hosted by Robert Stack. Weiss was shot on the spot by Long's bodyguards. One argument made in that program revolves around the ballistics evidence. 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. Weiss claims without evidence that the insurance company reported that Long's death was "accidental." 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.

However, the thesis that Huey was shot by one of his own bodyguards has not been accepted by any scholars. Professor T. Harry Williams of LSU dismissed it as wishful thinking on the part of Dr. Weiss's son. In his exhaustive, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Long, Williams wrote (p. 870, Vintage edition) that "no one had taken it very seriously, for unless all the witnesses to the event were lying or mistaken, only four shots had been fired while Huey was still in the corridor, the two from Weiss's pistol that struck Huey and Roden's wristwatch respectively and the two from the revolvers of Roden and Coleman that dropped Weiss. By the time the other guards had got their guns out and started to fire Huey had run from the scene."

Notes

• The character of Adam Stanton in Robert Penn Warren's fictitious All the King's Men is partially based on Weiss.

References

• 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.
• Williams, T.H., 1969, Huey Long, New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
• Gremillion, E.A., 2011 Did Carl Weiss shoot Huey Long

External links

• C-SPAN program Death of Huey Long