Louisiana, 1935. An influential US senator is assassinated in the hallways of the State Capitol in Baton Rouge.

On September 8, 1935, Senator Huey Long, known by his nickname “The Kingfish,” was at the Louisiana State Capitol to pass a redistricting bill that would oust district judge Benjamin Henry Pavy. Shortly after the vote, Long was shot in the capitol building’s corridors and later died of his wounds. The prime suspect was a man named Carl Weiss, a physician and the son-in-law of Judge Pavy. The official version of events is that Weiss shot the senator during a scuffle before being gunned down by Long’s bodyguards.

However, that did not stop other theories from cropping up. Senator Long’s critiques of the administration led his supporters to believe he might challenge President Roosevelt to win the White House in 1936. Is it possible that Long’s assassination was linked to his political ambitions or his ties to the New Orleans Mafia? What if he had, probably accidentally, been shot by one of his own bodyguards? And what if the fatal accident was subsequently covered up by the local police?

French journalist Jean-Marie Pottier dives into the details, exploring the facts of the case and the merits of this alternate theory.

50 States of Crime: France’s leading true crime journalists investigate America’s most notorious cases, one for every state in the Union, offering up fresh perspectives on famously storied crimes and reflecting, in the process, a dark national legacy that leads from coast to coast.