* * * * *
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.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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