Carl Weiss
Carl Austin Weiss Sr. (December 6, 1906 – September 8, 1935) was an American physician from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was implicated in the assassination of U.S. Senator Huey Long at the Louisiana State Capitol on September 8, 1935.
Carl Weiss | |
|---|---|
 Dr. Carl Weiss | |
| Born | Carl Austin Weiss December 6, 1906 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Died | September 8, 1935 (aged 28) Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Gunshot wounds |
| Resting place | Exhumed from Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge; remains never returned |
| Alma mater | Louisiana State University |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Spouse(s) | Yvonne Louise Pavy Weiss (married 1933-1935, his death) |
| Children | Carl Austin Weiss Jr. |
| Parent(s) | Carl Adam and Viola Maine Weiss |
| Relatives | Benjamin Pavy (father-in-law) Felix Octave Pavy (wife's uncle) |
Baton Rouge doctor
Weiss was born in Baton Rouge to Carl Adam Weiss, M.D., and the former Viola Maine. His parents were Jews who converted to Roman Catholicism.[1] Weiss's father was a prominent eye specialist who had once treated Senator Long.[2] Weiss was educated in local schools and graduated from St. Vincent's Academy. 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., who was born in 1934, shortly before the elder Weiss's death. (Weiss Jr. died 2 August 2019.)[3] Pavy was the daughter of Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy (1874–1943) and Ida Veazie (died 1941). The Pavy family was part of an anti-Long political faction. Judge Pavy's brother Felix Octave Pavy (1879-1962), a physician in Leonville and Opelousas, had run for lieutenant governor in 1928 on an intraparty ticket, and had been defeated[4] by Paul N. Cyr, a Jeanerette dentist who was endorsed by Long.
Similarly, Judge Pavy, Weiss' father-in-law, 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).
Murder of Huey Long
On September 8, 1935, Weiss confronted and shot Huey Long in the Capitol building in Baton Rouge.[5] At 9:20 p.m., just after passage of the bill effectively removing Judge Pavy, Carl Weiss approached Long, and, according to the generally accepted version of events, fired a single shot with a handgun from four feet (1.2 m) away. Long was struck in the torso. Long's bodyguards, nicknamed the "Cossacks" or "skullcrushers",[6] responded by firing at Weiss with their own pistols, killing him; an autopsy found that Weiss had been shot more than sixty times by Long's bodyguards.[7]
Alternate theories and denials of the assassination
In the years since the event, theories have arisen that Weiss did not actually murder Senator Long; with some speculating that Long was, in fact, killed by a stray bullet fired from the gun of one of his bodyguards.[8]
Family denials
At the time, Weiss's wife and their families did not accept his guilt. Indeed, Weiss's parents indicated that he had seemed quite happy earlier on the day that Long was killed.[9] Many people close to the family, as well as politicians of the time, doubted the official version of the shooting.
Weiss's son, Carl Jr., an infant at the time of his father's death, has since vigorously disputed the assertion. In a 1993 interview on the NBC program Unsolved Mysteries,[10] he proffered the assertion that Long was accidentally shot by one of his own bodyguards. Donald Pavy, a medical doctor and first cousin of Weiss's wife Yvonne Pavy, conducted a scientific study of the case and concluded in his book Accident and Deception: The Huey Long Shooting that Weiss did not shoot the governor-turned-senator.
A Louisiana State University Professor, T. Harry Williams, wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Long:
... 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.[11]
Portrayal in literature
The character of Adam Stanton in Robert Penn Warren's fictitious All the King's Men is partially based on Weiss.
In her 1993 memoir, Marguerite Young mentions the murder of Huey Long and how she used to dance with Weiss as a college girl at Louisiana State University.[12]
Footnotes
- Killer Doctors: The Ultimate Betrayal of Trust By Kenneth Gibson
- http://ajlambert.com/history/hst_hc30.pdf
- https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_d1ce27d6-b557-11e9-8f9b-2f8080279968.html
- "Felix Octave Pavy". The Times-Picayune. May 14, 1962. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- Hickey, Eric W. (2003). Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime. SAGE. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-7619-2437-1.
- Rensberger, Boyce (June 29, 1992). "Clues From the Grave Add Mystery to the Death of Huey Long". The Washington post. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
- "Assassination". The Official Huey Long Website. Long Legacy Project. Retrieved November 25, 2017.
- T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (1969), p. 868.
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0737614/plotsummary www.imdb.com
- Williams, p. 870.
- Young, Marguerite (1993). Nothing but the Truth. Carlton. pp. 168 (Huey Long, Carl Weiss). LCCN 93219200.
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