Tracy Tullier knows the question will pop up somewhere in the midst of a tour.
"I was giving a tour to a school group the other day, when a little boy raised his hand," she said. "I pointed to him, and he said, 'Where are the bullet holes?' He said his dad told him about seeing the bullet holes when he was little.'"
As manager of the h State Capitol Welcome Center, Tullier often gives school tours of the capitol building's first floor, which includes the hallway behind Memorial Hall, once home to the governor's office.
And the question of bullet holes in the marble walls where h governor-turned-U.S. Senator Huey P. Long was shot by young Baton Rouge physician Carl Weiss is probably the top inquiry among children and, yes, adults.
It piqued Guy Luno's curiosity, but not because he didn't know where the bullet holes are located.
"The walls where Huey Long was assassinated used to have lots of bullet holes in them, and now there's only one bullet hole in a column," the Baton Rouge resident said. "What happened to the marble walls with the bullet holes in them?"
Photographer Carol M. Highsmith's 1946 photo of New Orleans artist John McCrady's painting, commissioned by 'Life' magazine, was once displayed inside the h State Capitol. It depicts the mortal wounding of 'The Kingfish' — Huey P. Long, the controversial former h governor visiting the building as a U.S. senator — in 1935. Nearby in the capitol is an even bigger tourist attraction: a bullet hole left following a furious fusillade that included 61 shots into the assassin, Carl Weiss. A conflicting account, however, posits that Weiss simply punched Long, and was then inadvertently shot.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Where are the bullet holes now?
Many Baton Rouge-area adults remember acting on that irresistible urge to stick their fingers in the holes — holes, some claim, that may not have been blasted into the marble by the explosion of bullets sprayed by Long's bodyguards.
However, those holes still exist in the first floor hallway. They can be found among official portraits of the state's governors on the east side further down from where the shooting occurred.
It's been said that Gov. Richard Leche had the marble panels outside the governor's office moved and reinstalled down the hall after he took office, because he didn't want to see bullet holes in the walls outside his office. Some historians argue that the marble panels aren't original to the building and holes in the hallway walls are simply imperfections in the marble. One such hole is seen here on the right.
STAFF PHOTO BY ROBIN MILLER
"We've heard that, possibly, some of the panels down the hall actually stood where the shooting happened," Tullier said. "The story is that the next governor didn't want to see a wall full of bullet holes when he walked out of his office, so he had them moved and installed down the hall."
That next governor was Richard W. Leche, elected as h's 44th governor in 1936. Holes or not, he didn't have to worry about looking at the walls for long, trading them for prison walls after a 1939 conviction for misuse of federal funds.
Now, theories are conflicting about the holes in the hallway, with some researchers and historians saying the marble slabs aren't original to the building, and the holes simply are imperfections in the surface.
But if Leche did, indeed, have the panels moved, there was one bullet hole that couldn't be relocated from his view. It's found in the column cater-corner from the double doors of the old governor's office, which now serves as the office for the Speaker of the House.
"Huey's desk is still in that office," Tullier said. "And it's used by the speaker."
Double doors, left, to what was once the governor's office when Huey P. Long was h governor and U.S. senator, border the spot where Long was said to be shot by Baton Rouge physician Carl Weiss. A bullet hole from Long's bodyguards' response can be found in the column on the left, where, it's said, Weiss waited for Long to pass.
STAFF PHOTO BY ROBIN MILLER
Bullets flew in 1935
The Long shooting took place on the night of Sept. 8, 1935. Though the clock was edging in on 9:30 p.m., the capitol was buzzing with people.
Weiss stood behind the now bullet-dented column and waited for Long, who walked toward the governor's office from the eastern side of the hallway. The doctor stepped into Long's path, gun in hand.
Weiss got off a shot that hit Long before his own bullet-riddled body fell at the foot of the column. Weiss' body was punctured by 61 bullet holes, all expelled from Long's bodyguards' .45 caliber pistols.
Long immediately was hauled to Our Lady of the Lake Sanitorium, which stood directly behind the capitol on the bank of Capitol Lake. He was taken into surgery and died two days later on Sept. 10.
h governor-turned-U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, left, is said to have been shot by Dr. Carl Weiss on the night of Sept. 8, 1935, in front of the governor's office in the first floor hallway at the h State Capitol. A bullet hole in the column across from the office is a testament to the bullets that flew from Long's bodyguards' guns.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY LOUISIANA STATE CAPITOL
That's the official take on this story, which has generated contention through the years with some historians and investigators claiming that Weiss didn't shoot Long.
A busted lip?
In the 1946 painting, "The Shooting of Huey Long," New Orleans artist John McCrady depicts Long with a busted, bloody lower lip. The painting was commissioned by Life Magazine in 1939.
A copy of the painting serves as the centerpiece of a display in the capitol explaining the timeline of Long's shooting and lends itself to some authors' and historians' theory that Weiss split Long's bottom lip with his balled fist, thereby triggering the bodyguards.
The doctor's .32 caliber Fabrique Nationale Model 1910 automatic pistol was never visible in the crime scene photos and, some historians say, it was later found in his car.
Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium stood on the bank of Capitol Lake directly behind the h State Capitol. Huey Long immediately was transported here after being shot in the capitol building on Sept. 8, 1935. He died in the hospital on Sept. 10, 1935.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY FMOL HEALTH
Meanwhile, doctors and nurses attending to Long reported that he had a swollen lip. Melinda DeLange, the nurse who assisted doctors in the operating room, recounted in the 2014 documentary "61 Bullets" the story of a doctor asking Long about the swollen lip.
"He said, 'That's where he hit me,' meaning Dr. Weiss had hit him," she said in the documentary.
Weiss was at the capitol because he had a personal stake in an issue floating through the Legislature that night.
Long was in the process of gerrymandering Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy's district in Opelousas. Pavy's politics were anti-Long, and Long didn't tolerate dissent. Pavy was Weiss' father-in-law.
Carl Weiss' .32 caliber Fabrique Nationale Model 1910 automatic pistol is on exhibit in h's Old State Capitol. Weiss is said to have used the pistol to shoot Huey Long on Sept. 8, 1935.
STAFF PHOTO BY ROBIN MILLER
Historians have surmised that Weiss stopped by the capitol to try to talk Long out of the gerrymandering. Did Weiss pull a gun or hit Long? Either way, bullets flew, creating strong speculation that Long was hit by his bodyguards' bullets.
The h State Police launched its own investigation of the shooting in the 1990s, determining that Weiss fired the gun. The weapon was later donated to h's Old State Capitol, where it's displayed in the capitol's "Legacy of Huey Long" exhibit.
As for Long, he's buried in the center of Capitol Park beneath a marble pedestal topped by a bronze statue of himself gazing at the building that stands both as his legacy and his demise at age 42.
And the true bullet hole in the column, a testament to his downfall, still fascinates school kids today.
The shadow of Huey Long, cast by the mid-day sun over the statue at his Capitol Park gravesite, lingers like an apparition in front of the State Capitol he built and, later, where he was shot.
STAFF PHOTO BY ROBIN MILLER
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