![]() Many politicians dream of kidnapping their enemies. Semmes Walmsley, of New Orleans, called Irby’s disappearance “the most heinous public crime in Louisiana history.” No one had any doubt about who had engineered it. It was rumored that he had been carried off to Angola, the state prison or that he had been locked in the Jefferson Parish jail or-the theory favored by many-that he was buried in the muck at the bottom of some bayou. Irby was not arrested, or formally taken into custody nevertheless, by the next day he had vanished. Recently, he had approached members of the large (and increasingly anxious) anti-Long camp, offering to testify about Highway Commission corruption. ![]() For a time, Irby had worked for the state’s Highway Department and as business manager for the Louisiana Progress, a newspaper Long had founded, but he had been fired from both posts. Long, and also, almost certainly, as Long’s mistress. ![]() Irby was the uncle of a young woman, Alice Lee Grosjean, who served as secretary to the governor, Huey P. On the night of September 3, 1930, a group of law-enforcement officials-members of the newly formed Louisiana Bureau of Criminal Identification-stormed into a room at Shreveport’s Gardner Hotel, where a man named Sam Irby was sleeping. ![]()
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