Hermann B. Deutsch

“The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.”

——THOMAS HUXLEY

Huey Long came down to the main floor of the capitol an hour before the House was to go into session to arrange for an early morning caucus of his followers the next day. Primarily he wanted to make certain that there would then be no absentees among votes on which he knew he could rely.

At regular sessions of the legislature, when House and Senate were normally convened during the forenoon, such early conferences were daily affairs. But since in this instance the ordinary routine did not apply, he was bent on making assurance doubly sure.

Behind closed doors he always took charge of caucuses in person, outlining step by step what was to be done on that particular day: who should make which motions, at what point debate should be cut off by moving the previous question, how the presiding officer was to rule on certain points of order, should these be raised by the opposition, and so on.

Since the next morning’s session of the House would be the only genuinely important one of the current assembly, the one at which all thirty-one must bills were to be passed and sent on to the Senate, he was taking no chances on unexpected difficulties due to absenteeism. Not only must every one of his partisans be in his seat when the Speaker called the House to order, but all the House whips and other aides must attend the morning’s caucus without fail, to rehearse in the most minute detail every procedural step to be taken on the House floor, and every counter to each procedural obstacle any anti-Long member might seek to raise.

That Sunday evening, seated at Governor Allen’s desk, Long was sending for his legislative leaders, one by one, and giving them the names of the men they each had to bring to the caucus by eight the next morning.

Meanwhile, as nearly as can be determined, the five members of the Weiss family returned from their Amite River outing shortly after nightfall. The young physician and his wife left his parents’ home with the baby for their own Lakeland Avenue residence. A composite of various subsequent accounts pictures the scene there as one of tranquil domesticity.

Yvonne prepared the baby for bed while Carl went out to the yard and remained there for a time, petting the dog. Coming back indoors about 8:15, he made a telephone call to his anesthetist, Dr. J. Webb McGehee. Yvonne assumed that this call was to a patient, but Dr. McGehee later confirmed the fact that Dr. Weiss called “and asked me if I knew that the operation for the following day had been changed from Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium to the General Hospital. I told him I knew that.”

Miss Theoda Carriere, one of the registered nurses later called to attend Senator Long, lived not far from the home of Dr. Weiss. After a twelve-hour day stint at the Sanitarium, in attendance on a traffic-accident victim, she was taking her ease on the front gallery of her home. She saw Dr. Weiss leave his house at this time, and depart in the direction of Baton Rouge General Hospital. There he checked the condition of the patient on whom he was to operate the next day.

In view of the time factor involved, he must have gone from the hospital directly to the State House, leaving his car in the capitol’s parking area, where it was found later. At least five eyewitnesses place him in the north corridor of the Capitol’s main floor a little before 9:30, waiting in a shallow niche opposite the double door to Governor Allen’s anteroom.

Charles E. Frampton is now manager of the State Museum at the Cabildo in New Orleans, the building in whose sala capitular the transfer of Louisiana from France to the United States was consummated. But in 1935 he was one of the veterans of the press gallery at Baton Rouge. He describes what he saw as follows:

“Some time after eight o’clock on this particular Sunday night I was seated with Governor Allen at his desk when George Coad, then editor of the Morning Tribune in New Orleans, called me by phone from the office and said a hurricane had wrecked a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in southern Florida, and that a number of ex-soldiers had been drowned. He asked me if Senator Long was there, and I said I believed he was in the House chamber. Then he asked me to tell him about the storm, and the CCC disaster, and get any comment he might want to make. I told Coad to hold the line; I thought I could get Huey on the phone.

“I picked up another phone on the governor’s desk and called the House sergeant-at-arms. Joe Messina answered and said yes, the Senator was right there. I asked if I might talk to him, and he told me to wait a minute. After an interval Huey got on the phone. I relayed what Coad had told me, and asked if he cared to comment on it. He said, ‘Hell, yes! Mr. Roosevelt must be pretty happy tonight, because every ex-soldier he gets killed off is one less vote against him.’ We chatted for a minute or so longer, and I asked whether he intended to do anything about this when he got back to Washington, and he replied by asking where I was. When I told him I was in Oscar Allen’s office, he said: ‘Wait there. I’m coming there myself in just a few minutes.’

“I hung up, picked up the other phone, and relayed the conversation to Coad, telling him that since Huey was on the way over I might have an add for him, and to hang on the line. He said he would, and again I laid down the phone without breaking the connection.

“Oscar and I talked for a couple of minutes, and then I thought to myself I had better not wait for Huey to come to me; after all, he was a United States senator and I was a reporter looking for a story, so maybe I’d better go see him. Telling Coad to hang on, I then went out of the governor’s private office into the big reception room adjoining it, and opened one of the double doors leading into the corridor that extends from the House chamber to the Senate. As I opened the door this whole thing blew up right in my face.”

Justice Fournet takes up the narrative at this point. Here is his statement:

“In the late afternoon my father and I drove from Jackson to Baton Rouge, and I went to the twenty-fourth floor of the capitol in search of Huey. He was not in his apartment, so I returned to the main floor, and looked into the House chamber, where I was informed the Senator was. Sure enough, he was there on the House floor, followed or attended by Joe Messina and talking to Mason Spencer.

“Just as I caught sight of Huey he rushed to the Speaker’s rostrum and began to talk with Ellender. When he left there it looked to me as though the House was about to adjourn. Huey rushed by Joe Messina and me. We tried to follow as best we could and got into the north corridor, into which the House and Senate cloakrooms, the Speaker’s and lieutenant governor’s office, as well as the governor’s office and those of his secretary and executive counsel all open.

“There was not a soul in that corridor when we got there except Louis LeSage and Roy Heidelberg, who were seated on the ledge of the window at the east end of the corridor. I asked them where Huey had gone and they said he was in the governor’s office, so Joe and I walked to the door of that office at a leisurely pace, and as we approached the door I could hear a voice which I recognized as that of Senator Long ask:

“‘Has everybody been notified about the meeting tomorrow morning?’ and a voice which I identified as that of Joe Bates of the Police Bureau of Identification answered: ‘Yes, Senator.’

“At this point I noticed three or four people lined up against the marble recess in the corridor wall opposite the door to the governor’s anteroom. I don’t remember the exact number but I definitely recall there were more than one. Just then Huey walked out of the office door of the governor’s secretary and....”

The third eyewitness to what took place was Elliott Coleman, on special assignment as one of the Senator’s bodyguards and later for many years sheriff of Tensas parish. He says of the night in question:

“I was an officer of what was then known as the Bureau of Criminal Identification, which was headed by General Louis F. Guerre. He had directed me to come from my home in Waterproof for duty at the state capitol during the special session of the legislature. There was nothing specific of an alarming nature, but there was a general feeling of uneasiness in view of the murder-plot probe against the Senator earlier that year, after the Square Deal Association disorders.

“Nothing particularly noteworthy happened on Saturday, but on Sunday night, when the special session was meeting, I went into the House chamber and was standing back of the railing with State Senator Jimmie Noe, and he was trying to get me to help him in his effort to get Huey’s endorsement as a candidate for governor in the campaign that was about to begin.

“Huey was in the House, circulating about the floor, talking to this member and to that, with Murphy Roden and George McQuiston remaining outside the railing but as near to him as they could. Huey was talking to Mason Spencer and they were probably joking with each other, or telling a funny story, because they laughed, and then Huey went up on the rostrum and sat with Speaker Allen Ellender for a time. All this while I was outside the railing with Jimmie Noe, and he was talking about getting Huey to back him for governor.

“While Jimmie was talking to me, Huey jumped up all of a sudden, from where he was seated on Ellender’s rostrum, and hurried down the side to the corridor. I figured the House was about to adjourn, so I left Jimmie and turned to hurry into the corridor myself. There were not many persons there and I saw Huey, followed by Murphy Roden, go into Allen’s office, and it seemed to me like he wasn’t in there hardly at all, that it was almost as if he had turned right around and come back out. He was met as he came out by Justice Fournet, and they were walking toward the elevator and toward where I was standing, with Murphy Roden following.”

Judge James O’Connor’s testimony logically follows that of Sheriff Coleman. He says:

“I was in the House chamber when Huey came sort of storming in and sat down beside Allen Ellender on the rostrum. I was standing in the space between the railing and the wall, chatting with friends, when Huey beckoned to me as though saying: ‘Come on over, I want to talk to you.’

“When I got there he said something that struck me as unusual, because he had not been smoking in months, maybe not in as much as a year. He said: ‘I want you to get me half a dozen Corona Belvedere cigars.’ I asked him where to get those, and he said: ‘Downstairs in the cafeteria. They have a box of them there.’

“When I came downstairs something else struck me as very peculiar. There wasn’t a soul in that basement on this Sunday night. I walked into the cafeteria. They had just air-conditioned it, and the new glass doors were very heavy. There was no one in that restaurant either, except three or four of the girls behind the counter. I got the cigars and then sat down to drink a cup of coffee, and was about to finish it, when I heard a noise like cannon crackers going off. It was coming faintly through those heavy glass doors....”

Murphy Roden, who recently retired as Superintendent of State Police with the rank of colonel, is last of the surviving eyewitnesses to take up the tale. A graduate of the F.B.I. school and therefore a specially trained observer, his memory is sharp and vivid in recalling what took place during the violent interlude in which he played so large a role. He says:

“Whenever the Senator returned to the governor’s office I would wait in the anteroom, and as he went out I would leave just ahead of him, and Elliott Coleman would walk just behind him. He made several trips into the House chamber and back while the House was briefly in session that night.

“On the last such trip the Senator spent a little time on the floor, talking jocularly to several of the members, and then sat for a time with Speaker Ellender on the rostrum. At such times I would follow his movements as best I could from outside the railing, and when he hurried out I would try to anticipate his movements so as to be just ahead of him when he left the hall. The House seemed to be about ready to adjourn then, and he rose and hurried from the rostrum toward the governor’s office. I was ahead of him and when he turned in I went into the anteroom and waited for him there. He went into the inner office where Governor Allen was. Joe Bates, a special agent of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, and A. P. White, the Governor’s secretary, were in there too, along with some other persons whose identity I do not recall except for Chick Frampton of the Item, who was standing over Allen’s desk and using the telephone in there.

“Senator Long was in that office only a moment or two. It seemed to me as though he had walked right in, turned around, and gone right out, going through the anteroom and heading back toward the hallway. I realized he was going back out, and managed to get into the hall just ahead of him, so as to be in front of him when he got out there. But he was walking fast and caught up to me and was just about beside me at my left. We are speaking now in terms of my being just one step ahead of him as he came out.

“Judge Fournet was standing at the partly opened door that led from the hallway directly into the governor’s inner office, a private entry and exit to that office. Behind us was Elliott Coleman. Chick Frampton had also hurried out of the governor’s outer office and anteroom right behind us. The Senator was going back in the direction of the House chamber from which he had just come, and from which people were just beginning to move out. But at the private door to Governor Allen’s inner office he stopped, and we were standing still as Judge Fournet came up and started to talk to him. I have no idea what they were talking about, because I was not watching them or paying attention, but looking around us as always to see what other persons nearby were doing.

“One of them was a young man in a white linen suit....”

It is 9:30. One floor below, in the otherwise deserted basement cafeteria, Judge O’Connor is still sipping the last of his coffee when, muffled by distance and the heavy glass doors of the restaurant, he hears a noise like exploding cannon crackers.