Williams' claim that Long received incompetent medical treatment after the shooting was rebuffed in 1983 by the physician Edgar Hull, who was among those who treated Long and who would later become the first Dean of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport. Hull, who had by then retired to his native Pascagoula, Mississippi, claimed that the wound was so severe that Long could not be healed. Hull also said that he should have pressed more forcefully for an autopsy to settle lingering doubts about the assassination and demise of the Louisiana political icon.