A press conference on Friday may have forever shattered the image of a lawman thought incorruptible, whose ruthless war on violent Tennessee moonshiners was believed to have cost him his wife, and nearly his life, in 1967.
Investigators say that legend, enshrined by the 1973 drive-in movie classic “Walking Tall,” hid a secret of deadly domestic violence and the shocking lengths to which the sheriff went to save himself from prison for his wife’s murder.
What happened in the early morning hours of Aug. 12, 1967 on a dark stretch of country road near the Mississippi-Tennessee state line?
McNairy County, Tenn. Sheriff Buford Pusser, who died in a 1974 car wreck at age 36, long said he went out that day to answer a call of a disturbance.
His wife, Pauline, a 33-year-old-mother of three, insisted on going with him and they listened to an eight-track cassette, he said.
“We were discussing a vacation we were planning to take to Florida the next day,” Buford Pusser told the Tennessean in 1969.
After they passed New Hope Methodist Church, he claimed a car pulled up alongside his Plymouth and someone inside fired a .30 caliber carbine rifle into his vehicle.
“I knew Pauline was hit,” Pusser told the newspaper. “I cradled Pauline’s head in my lap and prayed over and over again, ‘Oh God, don’t let her die.’”
He told the reporter he never returned fire from the shotgun or handgun by his side and instead drove several miles, waiting until he thought he escaped the ambushers to pull over.
He then claimed the car again pulled up to his and someone fired at him at point blank range.
“I felt my face getting torn off my head,” Pusser said. “My chin was hanging on my chest. I don’t see how I lived.”
Somehow, he said, he radioed for help.
Pauline was dead. Buford was taken to a Memphis hospital, where he spent the next 18 days.
The story was national news, spawned country songs and led to multiple movies, the first and most famous of which starred Joe Don Baker.
Sheriff Pusser, who had already survived multiple shootings and stabbings and killed a woman linked to the Dixie Mafia, was seen as a hero and his wife a devoted martyr to his war on crime.
“Hollywood really turned it on its head. They have these two jumping out of bed, getting into the car together and that’s not the case,” District Attorney General Mark Davidson told AL.com.
“That’s extremely unusual to have your wife in the car at 2 o’clock in the morning, not to mention dangerous. He’s going to a disturbance, or so he says.”
On Friday, the image forged by the movies inspired by the long-unsolved murder came crashing down after 58 years.
Tennessee officials said a cold case investigation found evidence sufficient to present an indictment to a grand jury against Buford Pusser for the murder of his wife, if he was still alive.
Dr. Michael Revelle, an emergency medicine physical and medical examiner, found that cranial trauma suffered by Pauline didn’t match crime scene photographs of the car’s interior.
Blood on the hood outside the car contradicted Buford Pusser’s statements, he found.
An ambush or domestic violence?
The case was reopened by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in 2022.
“TBI had taken another look at the files and decided to kickstart their investigation so there was a news report and they asked for information,” Davidson said.
That’s when TBI agents received a tip about a murder weapon.
That weapon is believed to have been a .30 caliber carbine rifle. But, Davidson said, physical evidence shows it was likely used by Buford to shoot Pauline outside of the vehicle.
The gun was recovered and tested.
Though they cannot say conclusively it was the murder weapon, Davidson said it was “consistent with the weapon that killed Pauline.”
“This appears to be a domestic violence homicide rather than this notion that they were ambushed in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, in 1967 with no streetlights,” Davidson said.
“And (the killers) failed in their attempt, despite all of these shots being fired, to kill Buford Pusser but instead killed his wife — with no identifiable suspects.”
The sheriff, they believe, placed Pauline’s body inside the car and staged his own injury, Davidson said.
“Our theory is he put a pistol inside his cheek and pulled the trigger and created a flesh wound,” Davidson said.
The left side of Pusser’s face “was mostly numb” from some previous injury, Davidson said.
“It was not the debilitating wound many seemed to believe it was … It healed up pretty well.”
Davidson said photos of the injuries are in the case file, which in a rare move will soon be made public. That is due to the decades of intense public interest in Buford Pusser, particularly in west Tennessee.
“People say, ‘He got his face blowed off. Nobody believes he did that to himself.’ That’s not accurate,” Davidson said.
Most people would “think really long and hard about putting a gun anywhere near our mouths and pulling a trigger, but he’s a former wrestler, violent guy, prior injuries to his face,” he added.
“In that kind of extreme situation, where you’ve murdered your wife, you’ve got to get to work covering it up. And, frankly, it worked.”
Buford Pusser denied killing his wife or injuring himself.
“I loved my wife. I’d have been pretty damned stupid to blow my own jaw off,” he said in 1969.
As the renewed investigation progressed, Pauline Pusser’s body was exhumed in Feb. 2024 from the Adamsville, Tenn. Cemetery where she is buried beside her husband.
“They found an antemortem, or predeath, healing nasal fracture. It was a fracture of her nose. It was in the process of healing,” Davidson said.
“Those are most commonly associated with domestic violence,” Davidson said. “The term the (medical examiner) used was ‘interpersonal violence.’”
What justice can be accomplished?
The exhumation was hard to accept for Madison Garrison Bush, whose mother, Dwana, was the only child Buford and Pauline had together.
“I had to chose to redress her, choose a new casket and vault for, and re-bury or re-inter her,” she wrote in the McNairy County News on the anniversary of the murder.
She wrote that Buford Pusser “reminds us that courage is often about standing firm when others back down and love is worth fighting for.”
Pauline Pusser also had two children from a previous relationship. Dwana, who died in 2018, was “all about her father,” Davidson said.
Bush released a statement after the press conference:
“I personally never knew Buford or Pauline and cannot speak to their relationship or what happened on the morning of August 12, 1967. What I do know, is my family has endured traumatic loss that few people can comprehend.
“A dead man, who cannot defend himself, is being accused of an unspeakable crime. I don’t understand what justice can be accomplished by pursuing this theory of my grandmother’s death. Our family has been through enough pain and loss because of my grandfather’s law enforcement career and we aren’t looking to reopen closed wounds.”
Pauline’s younger brother, Griffon Mullins, said in a recorded message played at the press conference that his sister never spoke of troubles with her husband.
“I knew deep down there were problems in her marriage …. Perfectly honest with you, I’m not totally shocked.”
Others in the county of approximately 26,000 people, which still holds events in Buford’s honor, are not so sure.
“That’s not the Buford I knew,” David Dickey, who was a pallbearer at Buford’s funeral, told WKRN.
“I loved Buford and his family, so whatever the facts are — they’ll pan out on their own — but I don’t believe it.”
The legend grew
Buford Pusser was one of the Tennessee’s youngest sheriffs and reportedly considered a possible candidate for governor.
As “Walking Tall” became a $40 million hit — roughly $290 million today — he travelled the U.S. and Europe to promote the film. He was said to have spent time with Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.
Jimmy Buffett sang of surviving an encounter with Pusser and several Drive-By Truckers songs were inspired by him.
Two “Walking Tall” sequels were made, along with a 1978 TV movie starring Brian Dennehy and a short-lived 1981 NBC series. A 2004 “Walking Tall” remake starred Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
If Buford Pusser murdered his wife, it means he spent the final years of his life profiting from the lie he crafted to hide the crime and fostered a false legend that outlived him.
Davidson theorizes Pusser felt he had to go along with the movie.
“Once you set that all up, I don’t know that you have but much choice to run with it,” Davidson said. “I suppose he could have said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’m grieving.’”
Buford died in a car crash almost exactly seven years after his wife’s murder.
His 1974 Corvette ran off the road hours after he was reportedly in Memphis for talks to star in the sequel to “Walking Tall.” News reports said it was to be titled “Buford.”
It was a meteoric rise that carried a high price for the former U.S. Marine.
He had reportedly been shot eight times, stabbed seven and killed two people while sheriff in a county said to be overrun with criminals chased from Phenix City in the 1950s.
One of the people he killed was Louise Hathcock, shot during a 1966 arrest attempt at a bar notorious for swindling and robbing tourists driving to Florida.
Pusser often blamed Hathcock’s boyfriend, Carl “Towhead” White, for Pauline’s murder.
Once called “one of the top hoods in the Southeast” by the FBI, White was murdered in Corinth, Miss. in 1969.
Davidson said he has been asked if there are plans to look into the killing of Hathcock.
“Murdering your wife, and staging the crime scene, that would raise red flags to me about other occurrences, things he claimed. We’re not going to try and go back in time and undo all that,” Davidson added.
Some say the investigation might have been a waste of resources, he said.
“If Pauline was your sister or your mother you’d want the record corrected,” Davidson said.
Pauline’s family has been mourning her death for nearly 60 years.
“You would fall in love with her because she was a people person. And of course, my family would always go to Pauline if they had an issue or they needed some advice and she was always there for them,” her brother said.
“She was just a sweet person. I loved her with all my heart.”
‘It’s kind of like the Civil War’
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation plans to make the entire 1,000 page investigative file available to the public at the University of Tennessee at Martin once redacted and then share it on an online, searchable database.
Until then, members of the public can review it in person or purchase a copy, said university Chancellor Yancy Freeman Sr.
The response to the findings of the investigation are mixed, Davidson said.
“It’s kind of like the Civil War. There’s not really any middle ground,” Davidson said.
A water tower in Pusser’s town of Adamsville, Tenn. shows a silhouette of him carrying the big stick his fictionalized version carried.
A museum there that bears his name was closed Saturday “due to a family emergency,” its Facebook page posted a few days before the TBI announcement.
City officials “will carefully review the implications of these findings and determine the appropriate course of action with respect to the Buford Pusser Museum and other related matters,” a city statement read.
“While the legacy of Buford Pusser has been a part of our identity, Adamsville is defined by much more.”
Davidson said during the investigation he often heard from those who believed Pusser murdered Pauline “and wanted (him) to tell the truth.”
“In McNairy County especially, everyone knew that’s what happened.
“Nobody ever believed the ”Walking Tall” story. They knew he was a bad guy.”
As the Tennessean in 1969 described Pusser as a real life Marshal Rooster Cogburn, the sheriff was asked if enjoyed his newfound “measure of fame” despite Pauline’s death.
“I believe strongly in God. I think it was His will that I lived. I just wish it had been possible for Pauline to have lived, too,” he said.
“When I think of what I lost — Pauline’s death — it just wasn’t worth it.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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