Who Killed Huey Long?

Published in The Athens Observer, p. 8A (September 12, 1985). For additional information on
the death of Huey Long, see Donald A. Pavy, Accident and Deception: The Huey Long Shooting
(1999);Duel Stone, The Huey P. Long Assassination: Conspiracy Unveiled (1997); Ed Reed,
Requiem for a Kingfish (1986). See also Ubelaker, "The Remains of Dr. Carl Austin Weiss:
Anthropological Analysis," 41 J. Forensic Sciences 60 (1996).
Author: Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.
Three United States Senators have died violent deaths while in office. In 1859, the
antislavery Sen. David C. Broderick of California was killed in a duel with the
proslavery David S. Terry, a former justice on the California Supreme Court. Murder
charges against Terry for killing Broderick were dismissed, but Terry's career was
blighted. In 1889, in a railway station restaurant in tiny Lathrop, Calif., Terry
attacked and struck in the face U. S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field. A federal
marshal assigned to protect Field shot Terry dead on the spot.
In 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy was shot to death. Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of
the murder, has been imprisoned for 17 years under a life sentence. Although some
claim that Sen. Kennedy's death resulted from a conspiracy and not the acts of one
man, everyone agrees that Kennedy, like his brother, was the victim of an
assassination.