Shotgun blast kills Governor’s cousin in Amite

In the 1950s, farmhands and berry-pickers alike traveled to Loranger on weekends to let off steam. At Skeet’s Place, outside the watchful eye of the sheriff in Amite, Aldon “Skeet” Hewitt served alcohol and allowed customers to sleep on his floor. Skeet looked the other way as his poker-playing patrons dropped money on the table unless, of course, he was dealing. In between bar fights, a jukebox provided ambiance.

At Skeet’s Place, barroom brawls provided a release for laborers with pent-up frustrations and live entertainment for customers outside the scuffle. In time, Skeet expanded on these concepts, bringing live music and wrestling to a place he called the Loranger Coliseum.

On Labor Day, 1957, one bar fight at Skeet’s got out of hand.

Louis Emerson Davis told fellow drinkers that a relative, James Houston Davis, a former Louisiana governor, considered running for the seat again. This prompted a political debate, followed by an argument on Davis’ alleged kinship to the former governor. In minutes, the disagreement came to blows and ended with Louis Davis pulling a homemade Bowie knife from his boot and hacking into five men.

Soon after, Louis Davis became known throughout South Louisiana as “Butcher Knife” Davis, and the butchering at Skeet’s Place became a story retold again and again.

In December 1959, during Jimmie “You are my Sunshine” Davis’ renewed run for governor, a 24-year-old LSU student named Carl Edward King campaigned loud and hard against him, accusing the former governor of co-owning a business with a black woman, Lena Horne, and of performing on stage with a black man, Louis Armstrong.

Four nights before Christmas, after arguing in a public rally with Louis “Butcher Knife” Davis, Carl King vanished, and the Baton Rouge State Times interviewed his parents, Claude and Mavis King of Independence, two weeks after their son disappeared. The following week, Carl King returned home, unharmed, telling a story about Louis Davis kidnapping him at knife-point.

Louis Davis saw no jail time for either incident. The King family attributed this to Louis Davis’ political connections. Jimmie Davis won re-election in 1960.

With that background, this article appeared in the State Times on May 11, 1959:

“This week, a 35-year-old Independence man is being held in the parish jail on murder charges in the shotgun slaying of Louis Davis, 58, in an Amite bar at 5:40 Saturday evening, May 9, 1959. Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Tom Sanders identified the suspect as Claude King.”

This Claude King was not the father of the kidnapped student, but his cousin. However, this Claude King was a victim of the knife fight at Skeet’s Place.

“Witnesses saw Davis enter the bar with his wife and was in an embrace with a brother-in-law when King shot him in his open mouth from a distance of about four feet with a single-barreled 12-gauge shotgun.”

“Mrs. Davis, sitting in a nearby booth, said she heard King say, ‘Louis, I told you I was going to kill you and here it is.’ Mrs. Davis continued, ‘and immediately after the shot, my husband begged him, for God’s sake, don’t kill my wife.’ She said everything happened too fast.”

“Mrs. Curtis Slocum, an employee of the Ponder Hotel Bar, where the shooting occurred, said that King and two other men were in the bar when she came to work at two and had been drinking all afternoon. She said King did not enter with a shotgun and must have gone to his car for the gun after Davis arrived.”

“District Attorney Duncan Kemp said that there was bad blood between the men over previous trouble.”

“Mrs. Davis said that her husband had been in a knife fight with King and others at Skeet’s Place the year before. She said that her husband and eight other men became hospitalized. Her husband’s killer received 57 stitches to sew up the lacerations about his face and arms.”

“Amite City Police Officer Dominique Cuti and Night Marshal Roy Ryls arrested Claude King after the shooting.”

The following year, Claude King stood trial. A 12-man jury took 27 minutes that Wednesday to return a verdict of not guilty.

From the Baton Rouge Advocate, May 12, 1960:

“Defense Attorney Barbee Ponder called many men to the stand today, including two of the accused’s brothers, both previously scarred and maimed by Davis in a wild melee at Skeet’s Place in Loranger on Labor Day night in 1957.”

“All the men removed their shirts and exhibited scars before the jury. The accused man presented 57 scars from as many stitches from wounds about his disfigured head and arms, souvenirs from the fight in 1957, testimony showed.”

“The dead man’s widow took the stand and related that her husband said he intended to kill all the King family.”

“Testimony also brought out that Louis Davis had made a throat-slitting gesture toward King before King shot him in the mouth and killed him instantly.”

“Character witnesses for Claude King said he was a quiet, peaceable family man who did not search for trouble but did not run from it either.”