Part One: Buford Pusser: The Worst Sheriff Ever

Robert tells the story of legendary lawman Buford Pusser, whose lies about his real life inspired the movie 'Walking Tall' and helped create Hollywood's conception of the ideal lawman.

(2 Part Series)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, Harry everyone, Robert Evans here and on Thursday
September twenty fifth at eight pm, Behind the Bastards is
doing a live show. The show itself is in Portland, Oregon,
but all of the in person seats have sold out. However,
there are live stream tickets available if you go to
Alberta Rose Theater t h E A t r E
Behind the Bastards on just type that into Google or

(00:22):
whatever search engine you use. Alberta Rose Theater Behind the
Bastards you can find a link to buy tickets for
the live show. This is to benefit the Portland Defense Fund,
which helps bail people out who don't have, you know,
resources of their own, so it's a good cause. Tickets
are twenty five dollars for the live stream version of
the show, So please go to Alberta Rose Theater Behind

(00:45):
the Bastards and pick up a live stream show to
check it out. On Thursday September twenty fifth at eight pm.
Oh my god, what time is it is? It is
it's Behind the Bastards thirty or whatever. No, not my
best effort. This is the show about bad people, the
worst in all of history, and to distract everyone from honestly,

(01:07):
just a disappointing introduction. I feel bad about it. The
person that I feel worse when I'm incompetent in front
of my old boss, Dan O'Brien. Dan, welcome to the show.
I'm so sorry that's me.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Don't apologize. I was hoping this was one of the
episodes where we would shake things up and not do
a bastard? Do you not do those?

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Just like psych you for Christmas? Okay, what's the year?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Rats?

Speaker 1 (01:37):
You want to come on for Christmas? Dan and hear
about a nice person?

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Just once? Just want to hear about one nice person.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Well, that's not this week. That's not what we're doing
this week, although we are going to be learning a
lot about what it was like to grow up in
rural Tennessee in the nineteen forties, which, as a spoiler
bad it was a horrible time to be a person. Okay, Rats,
So that's gonna be fun. So Dan, who I forgot

(02:05):
to introduce my former boss at Cracked, one of the
best writers and mentors that I've ever had in my
life and also writer for last week Tonight with John Oliver,
where you have one uh not an oscar and not
a Tony, but the one the nimmy right you're at
Are you at two? Now?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
I really hate that you're making me do this. I
am at six now.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
You're at six. Jesus Christ, So did I miss four?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
It's so rude that you made me do that. It's
the worst thing in the world to correct someone on.
I couldn't let it go.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
No, Dan, you have to come on. We have my
friend patches on to celebrate his Grammy. We have to
celebrate my award winning friends. I love that episode.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
What a what a delightful person?

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Oh yeah, oh greasy yes, oh greasy will who will
be listening to this? Well, Dan, I'm proud of you
and I'm really excited to take you through really a
dark and depressing story about one of the worst police
officers that this country ever had. So do you know

(03:20):
anything about Buford Pusser?

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Great name. I love the name. Yeah. Apart from that, no.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
It's incredible. It's an amazing name. Yeah, it's almost that
he has almost the name from the Cop as, the
same name as the cop from Smoking in the Bandit.
But no, this was a real cop. Have you seen
the movie Walking Tall the original like nineteen seventy three.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
No, not the original.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, I mean there was a reboot in like two
thousand and four with the Rock but like both Walking
Talls and there's actually several Walking Tall movies. It became
like a whole franchise. They're all based on a real guy,
a real cop who up until literally like a year ago,
was almost universally viewed to have been like a hero.
And his name was Buford Pusser, And.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
It's a name that that were you writing a screenplay,
someone would be like, Haha, this is a fine placeholder,
but like, no one's gonna buy it for your bad
guy character.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
You gotta get a real name. Yeah, yeah, I don't
even know if like Buford or Pusser is more ridiculous,
but like together, it just does not sound like a
real person.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Absolutely not no, but no, it was.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
A real man and his story came out on film.
The kind of like the the shorthand version of the
story is that he's this cop who this like Tennessee
cop who declared war on this like local organized crime group,
the State Lion Gang, who were like doing running, gambling
and prostitution and a legal liquor because McNairy County was

(04:47):
a dry County and he went to war. He smashed
up their stills with like a baseball bat or just
like a big Sometimes you'll just see him like wielding
a log and like that's kind of Buford Pusser's like legend.
Is this cop who went head to head with the
mafia and like beat mafia guys to death with boards
basically right, Like that's the version of him from the movie.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yes, this is Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Yes adjacent, Yes, Yes,
very much so.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
And he kind of became because the movie comes out
in seventy three and because it's supposed to be a
real guy. There were a lot of news stories about
this guy's actual exploits and he is personally like the
model that you get around the seventies and eighties of
like the gritty, hard boiled cop who he breaks the law,
he doesn't play by the rules, but he gets results.

(05:37):
Like Bauford Pusser is the origin in a lot of
ways of a lot of that mythos, Like he's not
the only person it's based off of, but he's the
real guy that a lot of that stuff gets kind
of wrapped around, Like there's a lot of Buford Pusser
and Dirty Harry, you know, like he's and it kind
of makes sense that seventy three is when this guy
in his movie get famous and blow up, because you know,

(06:00):
seventy three is when Nixon resigns. It's this period in which,
like crime is raising and Americans are there's just kind
of this general sense of exhaustion both at like crime
in the streets and crime at like the top of
the country. So people were kind of craving this like
just law paladined figure who didn't wait for you know,

(06:21):
the court system to catch up, didn't wait for the
niceties of the galer, just went right after the bad
guys and took them down.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
You know, that makes a lot of sense. I do
have to say, and I don't want to note you
to death. You've You've come a long way since you
were my intern, and the podcast is great and everyone
loves it. I will say, if you're going to say
a sentence like there was a lot of Buford Pusser
in Dirty Harry, you've got to leave some air. You've
got to give some space for someone to say something
you can't barrel on through after that.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Really, I mean, you know, I kind of just thought
maybe maybe we just maybe we just let that lie. Okay,
I didn't know, I didn't I don't know, Dan, this
is These are the kind of life and death choice
people in our field have to make. I'm ready for
all your Pusser jokes and Buford jokes. He was played

(07:09):
in nineteen seventy three by Joe Don Baker, which is
actually sounds more like a real sheriff's name than Buford Pusser. Yeah,
so before we get into this guy's story, I want
to give you a little bit of like how he's
known in pop culture before the myth gets busted, which
really has just happened, like in the last year or so,

(07:30):
there's been a lot of crimes that have been reinvestigated
that Buford was involved in that has kind of tarnished
his legacy. But prior to that point, here's how the
La Times described Walking Tall, which went on to make
more than forty million dollars off of a half a
million dollar budget during his six years in office. Pusser,
known for carrying a big hickory stick he used as

(07:51):
a weapon, fought a gang of bootleggers and conmen who
are operating along the Mississippi Tennessee state line. He was
shot and stabbed on several occasions, killed a thieving meat
FEMA motel owner who ambushed him, and in nineteen sixty seven,
was way laid in his car by the criminals who
shot him and murdered his wife, Pauline. Almost none of
that's true, with the exceptional fact that he did get

(08:11):
shot and stabbed on several occasions. Everything else kind of
open for reevaluation given the more recent facts that we've got.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
So I'm assuming that means like murdered thieving woman. The
parts of that that are are false. It's gonna bum
me out right right.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yes, the murder part is true, the other parts maybe
a little less clear. His wife getting killed in an
assassination may not have been exactly how it went down,
it is worth noting. At the time, one New York
Times reviewer called Walking Tall a fascist movie, and it
kind of there's you can see that right, Like it

(08:52):
is fundamentally about how some people should just be allowed
to do whatever to enforce the law, even if they
have to break the law to it, and that's not
a great message. Joe Don Baker, who played Buford, describes
the film's appeal, as quote, a response to people being
sick of crime and politicians like Richard Nixon. They just
wanted to take a stick and beat up on the government.

(09:14):
And I think we can all identify with that urge.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
I just but is it the government that Pusser is
going after in.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
The moment the government he fought is that thieving female
motel owner Richard Nixon.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
I'm just so goddamn mad about Nixon. I'm gonna go
in this bar and beat up some people that I've
decided our criminals.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, I do. That's a very American thing, Like I'm
angry at the government. I need to see a huge
man beat the shit out of poor people.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
So, as I stated, over the last few years, a
growing body of experts that started to question the official
story of Buford's life, and particularly the story of the
night his wife was murdered and he was grievously injured.
And so we're going to talk as much as we
can about but the real Buford Pusser this week. He
was born Buford Hayes Pusser, and Hayes is spelled just wrong,

(10:08):
hys e. That's not how Hayes is supposed to be spelled.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
I'm incorrect.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
I'm not happy about that. Really took me a long
time to get over. On December twelfth, nineteen thirty seven,
Tokarl and Helen Pusser at a farm in McNairy County, Tennessee.
His dad's side of the family had come over from
England in the sixteen thirties, and his grandpa had settled
in Tennessee in eighteen seventy nine after leaving Georgia, where

(10:32):
he had served in the Confederate military. Probably we don't
know exactly, but we know that his brother died in
a Union prisoner of war camp, so pretty likely. Now,
these guys would not have been We're not talking like
the slave owning class. These people don't have money, but
you know that, we're talking like the class of poor
whites who made up the bulk of the Confederate military.

(10:54):
You know, like that's that's Beauford's relatives.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Sure fair enough to say that they were still like
broadly supporters of the cause.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Oh yeah, oh yeah yeah. Although although Buford is that's
really not a thing he has an issue with. He's
actually gonna be one of the first sheriffs to appoint
a black deputy, I think the first in Tennessee, and
he has a reputation for being like pretty good on
race stuff, and in fact, none of his crimes involve
him being racist, so he might actually get a pass

(11:22):
on that. Just a murderer. Hey, there we go, small
victories man, Yeah, you love to see it. So Carl
and Helen. His parents had three children, and Buford Hayes
Pusser was the youngest. He was delivered by his nanny
because the doctor was late getting to their farm house.
He was delivered right as the doctor was walking away.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Question, what are is it?

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Did the doctor still Bill? Because I'm guessing.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yes, well the doctor definitely still build. But no, what
what are his siblings names?

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Fantastic question?

Speaker 1 (11:55):
So his brothers? His brother was John Howard and his
sister was Gallia A y l A. I. Again not
a real name, so just.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
One normal had They come up with John.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
John Howard that one of the kids they figured had
to have like a real person name, and the rest
the rest you can just go for broke. I don't
understand how they're spelling things. The only answer I have
is that nobody knew how to spell words properly because
you just don't. Hayes doesn't need an E anyway. Galeen
Gayla Pusser gay g A y l i A Pusser,

(12:29):
Gayla Pusser, Gallia.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Pusser, Gallia Pusser, Gallia Pusser. I'm so sorry elementary school
was tough.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, right, at least at least she didn't come up
in like the nineties. That would have really been rough.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
That's actually an amazing stage name.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Gallia Pusser. Yes, it would be a stage name for
a very specific kind of performer today, but not maybe
the easiest name to grow up in Tennessee in the
forties with. Also true, So, uh, Beuford was huge. She's
going to be six foot six as an adult, and
he's noted as being a very big baby. He's got
a full head of hair by the time of his
first birthday, so this is a big kid. He's immediately

(13:08):
eating everything he can get his hands on. He just
turns out massive. He's just a monster from the jump now.
Most of our details on Buford's early life come from
a book written after his death by his daughter, Dwana
Pusser a d w Ana. This family cannot spell people's
names normally or give them more leaves. I don't know
what's going on. And this book is fantastic. It's so funny, Likedana.

(13:34):
It's not intentionally funny, because Duanna is clearly very proud
of her dad and buys into the whole hero myth
of him. She barely got to know him because, as
a spoiler, he dies pretty early. So the book is
all her talking about the different family lore that she got,
both from what she remembers from her dad telling her
and from what other relatives told her about like her family.

(13:56):
And she's clearly really proud of it and doesn't realize
how horrifying everything that she's saying is. And so it's
this like unintentionally terrifying narrative, and there's a lot of
humor and like her describing these awful things that are
happening to him and that he's doing as like, ah,
boys being boys, that's just how kids were back in
the day.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Was this the only book that she wrote or was
she an author or biographer by trade or anything.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
I don't believe Duana Pusser wrote any other books.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Okay, it's it's very sweet to do that for your father.
Do you wanna pusr I appreciate that. I yeah, understand
that impulse very much, but I also it puts me
in the right headspace to understand how accurate this is
going to be.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Right right, And I would not view this as like
a very good work of history. I think it's more.
But it is fascinating in terms of the shit that
she is willing to admit that he did that she
doesn't see as bad. But like, I think we can
look in and be like, oh, this is obviously like
a fucking psychopath. Like this kid is is deeply, deeply

(15:01):
damaged and dangerous. That's going to be That's going to
be a where the sweetness in this first episode comes out.
So Dwana describes her father. She gives kind of scarce
details of his first six years of life, other than
to say he was a mama's boy who fought against
going to school at first. She describes him kind of
conflictingly as both a natural leader and someone who was

(15:24):
bullied from an early age, which quote is one of
the ways he learned to sympathize with the underdog. Now again,
this kid is like famously large and famously violent. I
don't know how much I believe he was like ever
the underdog at his school. He's also like a basketball
star at a local at his school. I don't know
how much bullying I think he actually endured, but maybe

(15:46):
Duada was convinced of it.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
As someone who was famously real life bullied in middle
and high school. I don't think it was much to
do with how giant I was. That didn't make me
a target. I don't think. In fact, No, there was
an verse relationship.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, the six the kid who is a foot and
a half taller than everyone and the best at sports
is usually not the underdog, right, like, usually not the
bullied kid.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
That guy so huge, I bet he could throw me
over the fence. Well, I suppose we'll find out.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, let's make fun of him. Hey, basketball guy, you
like being good at sports. So family law about somebody
whose legacy became the subject of a successful series of
movies and several books is notoriously inaccurate. But the family
law of that Dwana gives is that as a kid,

(16:36):
Buford mostly socialized with women. Right, he writes, girl or
she writes, girls were drawn to my father. He liked
them too. As a child, growing up in the forties,
he encountered the kind of traumas you'd expect. At age eight,
he was walking with his siblings and their dog after
a rainstorm and they found the corpse of a neighbor
girl his age, who lived nearby and had drowned in

(16:57):
a ditch. Like this is just like a cash Like, yeah,
he's on a walk one day after a rainstorm and
they find the dead body of one of their neighbors
by me. Yeah, it's a real stand by me kind
of moment. And Duana does describe this as upsetting to
her father, but most of her stories of Daddy are
related as light hearted humor, even when the text of

(17:18):
what's happening is like fucked up, to say the least.
And I'll give an example here. By the time Daddy
got to be a big boy, he was seeing the
fun of playing practical jokes. I remember hearing about when
he played on his granddaddy Bliss Harris, who had come
to stay with the family. Again, not a normal name
among these people. They had an outhouse and my great
grandfather Harris went outside to use it. Daddy knew he

(17:40):
was in there. He fired a shotgun and rained a
storm of pellets against the side of the outhouse. When
his grandpa came running out with his pants hanging down
below his knees, Daddy thought it was the funniest thing
he'd ever seen. Holy shit, that's not a prank. That's
just shooting it at your grandpa with a shotgun. Right,
that's not a prank. That's shooting it someone.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
And it's such a it's such a rich area that like, oh,
he went into the outhouse and pranks are in the air.
I think, I bet I know where this is going.
I bet he's gonna like shake it or do something
like maybe tip over the outhouse, something with poop involved.
But it's like, no, it's just standard pedestrian gun violence.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
He just fires a twelve gag.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yet his grandfather the toilet is a non factor. Really, Yeah,
that prank works in any setting.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, he could have shot him anywhere, and he will.
He repeatedly throughout his life, will you will you shooting
at people with guns? As the punchline of a joke
like this, that's one of buford Buster's favorite gags is haha,
I shot you and you got scared.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Gosh, comedy was so easy back then.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
It really was. I mean, you could just get up
in front of an audience fire off a shotgun and
then you know, walk off the thunderous applause and probably
some screaming Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, you get a Comedy Central present special off that.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, I will say that if that's what like Joe
Rogan and company were angry about. As opposed to not
being able to say slurs. Man, you can't even fire
a twelve gage shotgun at your grandfather anymore and get labs.
People just get angry. It's this fucking new woke bullshit,
not allowed to shoot at people as a joke anymore. Tragic.

(19:20):
So Dwana tells another story about Buford's childhood church. It
had no outhouse, no bathroom facilities of any kind. So
I'm number one. It just sounds like a nightmare, like
going to church doing one of these long services. Churchgoers
just had to go in the woods nearby if the
need took them. And there was a side for men
and another side for women. And Dwana goes on to

(19:43):
relate this story. Daddy and his friend came across two
little boys who were fighting, and one of the youths
had just pulled a pocket knife from his pocket. Daddy
calmly approached the kid and took it away from him,
but not before the boy cut Daddy on the wrist.
Daddy's friend ran and told Papa what had happened. Papa
told the boy, why son, he'll be all right. Sure enough.
When he came back, Daddy had simply tied a handkerchief

(20:04):
around his wrist and acted as though nothing had happened. So,
just like a casual knife fight at church, you know,
that's the that's this the attitude towards violence. This guy
grows up with.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
A church knife fight that he was trying to break end.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Okay, yes, and wound up getting stabbed. And yeah, when
his friend freaks out, his dad is like, yeah, don't
worry about it, you know, like it's just a little
just got stabbed a little bit. It's barely anything, you know.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, there's so much information that the father's casual response
to it barely even registered the first time around, was like, oh, yeah,
that's kind of strange. I hope. The first time I
got stabbed as a child, my dad was like, that's alarming.
Let's look into this. Yeah, and this will blow over.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, I'm not going to say there's more than one
right way to handle your child getting stabbed in a
knife fight outside of church. But this is probably not
the ideal way to do it, right, So, as this
anecdote might key you went on, CPS was not even
a gleam in Congress's collective eye at this point. And
so despite all of this stuff happening, all of the

(21:11):
violence and shootings and whatnot that Beauford is involved in
before he's like a teenager, there's like, there's never any
chance that anyone's going to take him or his siblings
out of the house or like look into what's going
on in their home environment in any way. That's just
not a thing like this is this is it's kind
of important to note, I don't think this is a
wildly weird upbringing for the time period right like this,

(21:34):
it's certainly not treated as one by anyone who lives
around Buford. The family moves to Adamsville, Tennessee in nineteen
fifty one when he is in eighth grade, or I
should say his mom moved there and she took the
kids while Papa was away working on an oil pipeline.
And the story that Dwana gives is that he refused
to move and so his wife made the decision for him,

(21:56):
and he found out when he came back from the
pipeline and his family was gone. It kind of sounds
to me like maybe she left him and didn't want
to kill the kids the truth, and they just got
back together later. It's a little unclear.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, that's certainly the most generous way of framing that story.
It's like, oh, yeah, we wanted to be a fun surprise.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, we surprised Vappa by fleeing from him and leaving
the state.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Literally.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
You know, who would never abandon their children to work
on an oil pipeline?

Speaker 4 (22:28):
Me?

Speaker 2 (22:30):
What do you? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (22:31):
My parents, I would.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's such a long list.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, most people probably wouldn't. And among the most people
is our sponsors.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, that's what I was trying to do.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
There, Dan, I know the game. I'm gonna fuck with you.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
We're back, and Dan's fucking with me.

Speaker 4 (22:55):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Why, Dan? What did I ever do to you? Well?

Speaker 2 (23:00):
This episode's got me in the mood for pranks. I guess,
in the mood.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
For a casual prank like shooting a shotgun at your
grandfather or getting stabbed at Cherich, classic pranks. We're going
to hear some more good pranks in this episode. So Adamsville,
where the family moves in fifty one, is a comparatively
large city. There's about a thousand people there at the time,
so they're no longer just out in the sticks. And

(23:25):
Buford's earliest memories of life in the big city to
him involved his mom getting increasingly paranoid about crime. Dwannapuster
just writes, quote, being new to city life, she didn't
know what city folks might do, right, so they moved
to the city, and she's heard all of these it's
kind of familiar to today, where like kind of rural,
more conservative people, hear a bunch of horror stories about

(23:47):
how violent and dangerous the big city is. And so
when they get to Adamsville, she's just prepared for everyone
to be a monster. And one night soon after they
move there, when she's alone with the kids, someone knocks
on the and her immediate move is to threaten to
shoot whoever's at the door. And then that person knocks again,
and here's what Twana writes, quote, the noise started up

(24:10):
once again, and sure enough, Mama fired her shotgun through
the door and went back to bed. The rest of
the night was silent. The next morning, she got up
and found the family cat stone dead on the front porch.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
God. Incredible, I mean, thank goodness, it was just the cat.
Good Lord, it was.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Just the cat. Yeah, then your husband didn't come back, or.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Or just a neighbor being like, let's welcome you to
the neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, I brought a pie, sorry to the cat.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
And there's there's so much information about the character of
his mother because we get very little explicit, but just
from the fact that her response to noise is to
shoot through the door and then not check. Yeah, so
she doesn't open the door, she fires a shotgun through
it and then goes to bed like that. That's wild.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's if I have to get up to pee, I'm
not going back to bed. I'm just up and tossing
and turning for a while. God bless her her the
inner piece that she has.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, she just as soon as she shot, she was
like calmed out that like, yeah, spiritually cleansed her, had
got her into that yog state. She was able to
reach Nirvana after murdering the family cat. And you have
to imagine again this is all related as these funny
anecdotes by Dwana that has to have an impact on

(25:31):
the kid. Your mom shooting the family cat to death
in the middle of the night, ranting about crime. Now,
the fact that his mom is so paranoid about crime
in this period of time would not have been out
of place for the time in the area. The end
of World War two had brought an economic boom to
the whole country, and obviously Tennessee and Mississippi and the
border regions of those states, which is where the Pusser

(25:52):
family lives, Like we're included in that boom. But all
of that money also brought in organized crime. Now traditionally
in the region, like the big hub of sin and
vice had been Phoenix City, Alabama, But in the mid fifties,
the attorney general of the state was assassinated by mafia
related guys and the governor declared martial law and sent

(26:13):
in the National Guard to like actually deal with like
the organized crime problem in Phoenix City. And this cleared
out Phoenix City, but it sent all of these guys
who had been set up there fleeing for other areas,
and a lot of them wound up settling on kind
of like the state line in McNairy County right around
where Adamsville, is right. So that's kind of like the

(26:34):
inciting incident to why there was a surgeon crime in
and around Adamsville in this time, as all of these
guys had been cleaned out of Phoenix City, Alabama, and
so they'd had to relocate.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
The consistency of criminals where they get kicked out of
their town and they can start over and do whatever
they want, and they just decide to still do crime
is genuinely admirable. If I was just to flee and
go somewhere else, I would just like be a different guy.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
I don't know, Dan, Like when the old place, when
crack fell apart, we all wound up getting jobs writing
and doing comedy of some sort. I imagine it's the
same if you're like a pimp where you get busted, like, well,
this is what I have ten years experience doing, you know.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, there's a lot of similarities between pimping and internet comedy.
Dan absolutely mostly hats Yeah, that's ninety percent of it.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
And famously neither is easy.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Neither no, no, but they are both necessary. Obviously we
could go on. So in the nineteen ninety book The
State Line Mob, author W. R. Morris, and that's if
you're looking at like a broader history of organized crime
in the Southeast, the State Line Mob is a good
book for that. W. R. Morris writes that this crackdown
basically causes a criminal diaspora and a significant number of

(27:50):
gangsters settled in the state line joints when authorities closed
the gambling casinos and whorehouses in Phoenix City. So that's
a part of what and part of why they picked
this state line is that in McNary County is still
a dry county, like alcohol sales are illegal, which means
when they're kind of looking where are we going to
go from Phoenix, they're like, well, we can still bootleg

(28:12):
in McNairy County, you know, So that's an easy choice.
Like there's a whole extra business here that doesn't exist
in most of the country because the state's still trying
to keep a lid on this. So there's money for
you know, making moonshine and smuggling booze. Again, see the
documentary Smoking in the Bandit if you want to learn
more about smuggling alcohol through dry counties. But over the

(28:36):
course of the late nineteen fifties, a guy named Jack
Hathcock and his wife Laura Luis Hathcock came to run
the State Line Gang or the State Line Mafia, which
is kind of the loose term for all the different
criminal groups at this area. It's kind of like right
where Tennessee meets Mississippi along US Route forty five, that's
where all these folks are based.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
You are presenting me with an inevitable showdown between Pusser
and half.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
I am I am yes, yes, No. The woman who
is said to have ambushed him, that he had to
kill is Laura Louise Hathcock, right, excellent. No, So the
half Cocks and the Pussers famous family feud.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
As they were the first time they were writing history,
and so I was like, we just we simply can't.
I know what's the past, and all of our names
are different. Just make it half Field and McCoy. Just
do something else.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
That would be like the studio note. If you were
trying to do a movie about these people in the
modern like trying to reboot it, they'd be like, Okay,
we got to change the names for one thing. The
audience can't watch the rock. And that's why when they
did the Two thosand and four reboot, the rock was
not named after the actual sheriff. They're like, we can't
have this guy called himself Pusser on screen for an
hour and forty minutes. That's not gonna work for anybody.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Right, we're aiming for a PG thirteen here. We can't
have Pusser said more than once.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
We've gotta lock that down. And people would just be
confused about Buford because that's not a name that we
let kids have anymore. Yeah, so Jack had been raised.
Jack Hathcock had been raised in McNairy County, the same
as Buford, and like many of his peers, he grew
up drinking hard and fighting regularly. His father had been
an alcoholic who was brought load at an early age

(30:20):
by the jake leg, which is a kind of paralysis
caused by drinking poisonous moonshine. Since prohibition had hit right
when Jack Hathcock was a teenager, he immediately it's like
I was saying earlier. His whole like CV is crime.
Like from the time he's like fifteen, he's smuggling liquor,
he's running moonshine. He's literally like selling moonshine to his classmates.

(30:41):
In his grade school when he's in like seventh or
eighth grade, so a career criminal. He left home before
turning eighteen for a very good reason, which is that
his father shot his twin brother to death and he,
I guess got the message, like I'm out of twins. Holy,
I'm gonna take this as a warning. Oh man's got
a taste for killing people who.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Look just like me. I gotta get out of here.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Probably time to bounce. And I do love the idea
of a guy for whom crime is like it's like
being a child actor, but like, yeah, yeah, the mafia
version of that where like, yeah, from the time he's
like twelve years old, you know, he's getting inculcated into
the life.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, just a nepo crime baby, for sure. There's just
no way around it.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
Obviously, you know, running liquor and you know, murdering people
and doing illegal gambling is a lot healthier for a
teenager than being a child actor. But yeah, absolutely so.
Jack and Luis meet in nineteen thirty seven. They get
married soon after, and they're married for like twenty years,
and for a while it seems to be a really

(31:46):
good marriage. The two operate a growing assortment of illicit businesses.
They go from basically nothing to running four or five
large businesses on the state Line. And yeah, the organization
that they control comes to be known as the State
Line Mob. And while they're building their empire, while they're starting,
because they've got like a hotel and they've got a

(32:07):
couple of different roadhouses and bars, they've got a couple
of brothels, and they're gambling at all of these facilities, obviously,
And while they're building, you know, from nothing into having
an empire into being like very influential, powerful criminals. Young
Buford continues to make his way through school. He gets
his first job at age twelve, working at a general store.

(32:27):
He is tall for his age. He towers over most
of the other boys in town, and his primary character trait,
aside from violence, is that he drinks milk constantly and
is convinced that it's why he turns out bigger and
stronger than everyone else, which I guess maybe actually he
might be right on that one, if the milk ads
from the nineties I remember were accurate. And he gets

(32:48):
into the normal huge guy hobbies. He's into football, he's
into basketball, he plays he's good at football, but he
doesn't like it as much as he likes basketball, which
did surprise me because his other favorite hobby is constantly
every other boy that he can fight in his school.
His daughter would later write that had it not been
for athletics, she didn't think her father would have graduated.

(33:08):
And then she related this anecdote from one of his
high school teachers. And this is the teacher talking. I
whipped Buford Pusser. I came into my classroom one day
and found two holes about the size of your head
and the top of my desk. Buford was standing on
my brand new desk wrestling with four or five other boys.
As they tugged and pulled on him. Bufford's weight had
sent him sinking knee deep through my desk. After the

(33:29):
dust settled, I brought him around to the front of
my desk and tore him up with my paddle. And yeah,
just a lot there too, both. Number one, your brand
new desk. How does a boy sink through the time?

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Like?

Speaker 1 (33:41):
What the fuck shit material is your desk made out of?

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Right, there's I'm having I'm not sure which out house
to point my gun out. I don't know which twin
to shoot here because like his teacher, for starters, is
way too preoccupied with their desk. That's like too much,
too much affection for their desk.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Yeah, not the like the literal brawl that's happening in
their classroom, but it does say a lot about the
time that like fighting. Huh yeah, you know what, the
punishment for that is getting beat.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Maybe some violence will beat that at of you.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yeah, well, violence the violence out of you. Buford. So,
he and his friends, as we've established, love to play pranks,
and these are almost exclusively the kinds of pranks that
would get you a criminal record. Today. Buford's childhood buddy
Paul Wallace recalled one Halloween where Buford and he and
several of their friends borrowed a neighbor's wagon from his barn,
towed it to a nearby town like the town over,

(34:37):
basically took it apart, carried the pieces up to the
roof of the general store, and then reassembled it on
the roof of the general store in that other town.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Okay, I, which.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Is at least creative and nonviolent.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
That does resemble a prank to me. That's that's the
kind of prank I can get behind, because uh, It
just creates a little bit of in the world. And
there's like a victim, but not like a like a
victim victim, you understand, not like a hospitalized victim.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Right, No, one's like killed or maimed or injured. There's
no permanent property destry. You've created a conundrum for somebody,
but it's an amusing one. This will be the only
real prank that he ever plays. Buford spent the summer
of his junior year working on a pipeline in Oklahoma
with his father, And this is actually something. He begged

(35:27):
his mom for permission to go work on an oil pipeline,
and she only agreed on the grounds that once he
came back for class in the fall, he'd have to
work extra hard to get his grades up to passing.
So working on an oil pipeline is like his reward
for promising to study harder. Yeah, very different time and
a very different kind of person.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, it was Sonic the Hedgehog for me. That was
my pipeline.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah yeah, if I guess it was Warhammer forty miniatures
for me.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
So yeah, we had similarly difficult upbringings. To Buford know,
I would say those are like equal experiences playing Sonic
the Hedgehog or gluing models together, and working on an
oil pipeline in the forties or fifties. Yeah, so he
comes back from the oil pipeline and he's as good.
He follows up with his promise to his mom. He

(36:17):
does put in more work. His grades go up well
enough that he's able to pass. However, the final months
of his time in public school also saw a continued
escalation in the severity of the violent encounters that he
had with his classmates. His friends later recalled that Beauford
and his crew had a feud with a group of
boys from the nearby community of Savannah, and this other

(36:37):
gang of boys was led by a kid named nicknamed
Big Red Hubbard. Both crews would drive through each other's territory,
speeding and heckling each other to try to provoke a fight.
Like they'd drive past, and they'd all be like piled
in one guy's vehicle. They'd throw some shit at you
and like try to get you to follow them or something. Right,
And one day after they drove by, like Beauford runs

(36:59):
off after them. And then when he comes back a
few minutes later, he's got like a wound on his leg,
and he tells his friends that he had been stabbed
by in the leg by a member of Big Red's crew.
Now this was a lie. Buford had cut himself taking
down a volleyball net earlier, and just I guess, had
saved up the injury, had avoided talking about it until

(37:21):
Big Red's crew went by, and then he runs off.
I think he probably reopens the cut and is like, look,
they fucking stabbed me, and he does this. His daughter's
explanation is that he decided to lie and say that
they had stabbed in him because the lie would be
then quote, the foundation for some future mischief. And this
is what one of his friends, Paul Wallace, this is

(37:42):
how he describes the mischief that comes later. A few
days later, Buford told his mother that I wanted to
borrow his daddy's shotgun to go squirrel hunting. Those squirrels
just happened to live in Savannah and liked to playpool
and drive fast. Buford spotted the car of the Savannah
squirrels and let go with nine shots into the back
of that car. It was like a Wild West show.
We then drove off a little down the road and

(38:04):
hid next to the river bottom near the levee. We
were sure that any minute we'd hear police sirens. But
nothing happened and nothing was ever said. Man.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
As much as we've established that half Cock was a
born crook, this big giant pusser is a born cop.
That is some very sophisticated cop creation of reason to
do violence against people you don't like, that has some
really early instincts that will pay sweeping dividends for him

(38:36):
down the line.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah, it is amazing that, Like his immediate instinct as
a kid is like, I have to first set up
a justification for this is some kind of self defense,
and then I'm going to do what is just to
drive by shooting right right, And I feel the need
to emphasize he fires nine shots out of a shotgun. Shotguns,
especially in that day, most of them, the biggest probably
aren't going to fit more than like six maybe seven

(39:00):
shells in the tube, Like that's kind of the max,
and it was probably less. I don't know exactly what
he had. What I'm saying is that they he reloaded
to continue shooting into their car at some point, Like
this was not like a spur of the moment thing.
This was like planned with malice aforethought, right. Yeah, he
is seventeen or eighteen, and he's done his first drive by,

(39:23):
so that's good.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Holy coach.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
And yeah, as you said, like a very copstyle drive by. Yeah,
and these again, this anecdote, like all these others, is
described by his daughter as like boys being boys, and
they could drive by shootings. Not boys being boys, Absolutely not.
But it is going to graft precisely to his adult
life and the primary allegations against him as a law man,
Like he is already the guy he's going to be

(39:45):
his whole life at seventeen. And I guess you have
to respect consistency. I don't know if respect is the
right word, but he's certainly consistent.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
Yeah, but he's consistently Like shit, yes, I'm not gonna
respect that.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
I feel like it makes me a hypocrite to like
the the criminal hustle and for some reason not his
cop hustle. But I guess I'm okay being a hypocrite
in this direction.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Yeah, yeah, you know, criminal hustle is like because there's
usually something beyond it behind, just like violent nihilism, like
a desire to make money or you know, have access
to substances that aren't normally legal, as opposed to this
guy just wanted to shoot some other kids, potentially to
death for the crime of like yelling at him as
they drove past.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Right, It's the difference of people who are doing crimes
because they recognize, like, this system is rigged. Yeah, everyone's
everyone's robbing everyone. I'm gonna do it too, and Pusser
being like, the system is rigged and it's great and
it's one of the riggers.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna figure out how to rig the fuck
out of this thing. I love shooting people. I shoot
my grandfather with a shotgun. You think I won't shoot
someone else. So Beauford is drawn to crime from an
early point in his life, not just the violent crime,
but you know, the gambling and drinking and that sort
of stuff. He and his little gang of buddies started

(41:08):
traveling to the state Line in high school and they
would drive as a group to partake. They'd go to
these brothels and these roadhouses. They'd drink and they'd gamble
and they'd horer, and you know, they're paying into the
state Line mob, right, Like that's who's running all of
these businesses. So they are consumers of you know, these
different illegal ventures while he's a teenager. Buford's daughter would

(41:30):
later insist they mostly went just to stand around in
gowk as school boys do. And if you believe that
I've got a bridge to sell you, yeah, I just
went to the the brothel casino to look. I just
wanted to gock a little bit, you know, like boys do.
Do you want to?

Speaker 2 (41:46):
I don't think you know much about brothels. There's not
like a looking part. Yeah, there's there's there's mostly the
going in part.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
Oh, you boys are just here to gk. Come on
in gock away. So Beauford graduated Adamsville High School in
nineteen fifty six, and he immediately enlists in the US
Marine Corps. Now I think fifty six the draft was
still on, So this is probably one of those like
had to like enlisting gave me a degree of choice
as opposed to, you know, waiting to get drafted. The

(42:16):
Tennessee and he does not have a long military career.
The Tennessee Encyclopedia just summarizes that he was discharged due
to chronic asthma, and he only serves about three months
half of which he spends in a military hospital. He
does get an honorable discharge in November of that year,
nineteen fifty six, and his daughter notes that he wore
his uniform all the way home, keeping it on until

(42:38):
the last moment he legally could, because he was so
proud of being a marine, even though he really wasn't.
He's in the job for like three months. That's about
as long as I worked at Sonic.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
You worked at Sonic?

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Oh, my my first job.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
It was all visuals in my head are as.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
God.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, everyone worked king at a Sonic is already dead inside.
I can tell you that right now.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Were you the Were you rollerblading out to cars?

Speaker 1 (43:06):
God?

Speaker 3 (43:06):
I hope so.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
No.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
They wouldn't let me rollerblade. They were scared of me.
They were scared of my power. Dan. That was wise
of them, Yeah, probably was. So this short chapter of
his life, well he's briefly a marine, is bookended by
yet another very normal nineteen fifties experience, nearly dying in
a horrific car accident because there were absolutely no safety
measures in vehicles back then. In late November nineteen fifty six,

(43:30):
within really a couple of weeks of him getting out
of the Marine Corps, Beauford is riding back from Memphis
with a friend when the car that they're both in
crashes and he flies out through the front windshield. He survives,
but he suffers three crushed vertebrae and he has to
spend a month in the hospital and he has to
wear a back brace for an additional two months. Upon release,
and then, having narrowly survived a brush with death, he

(43:53):
starts studying to be a mortician and he goes to
work as a mortician's assistant in March of nineteen fifty seven.
You know, that's the first positive move. Get this guy
in a room with the corpses, right, he's not safe
around a live people, certainly.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, that's such a this does at the risk of
saying something positive about this, this massive pusser fellow that
that that is one of the most interesting decisions coming
from a person who I don't think it sounds very
capable of of like thoughtfulness or introspection, you know, like

(44:27):
like crime to marines to cop is a path that
makes sense to me. But surviving a terrible accident and
then being drawn to the work of mortician. Is is,
I don't know, there's something there's there's something kind of
poetic about that to me, there's something that that that
shows he's got some some like real like inner thoughtfulness

(44:51):
and pathos to himself that I that I I didn't
initially give him credit for.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah, it verges on being like a healthy way of
coping with the near death experience, right, which you wouldn't
expect from this guy. That is that is an interesting
like that is one of those weird little I didn't
I didn't expect that from him, actually, right, I assumed.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
He was going to walk out of the hospital and shoot.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
A car right right to start his start a one
man war against automobiles. He does shoot at some cars
in this story, Dan, but that's not he doesn't. He
doesn't do it in vengeance for the accident. He actually
seems to be pretty good as a mortician's assistant. At first.
He takes a weird degree of pride in his work.

(45:32):
Dwanna relates that he would periodically call his mom over
to the funeral home to look at the corpses of strangers,
that he felt like he'd done a really good job embalming.
Like mom you got to check out this dead lady
and this dead guy, Like I did a fucking I
know you don't even know him, but like come over here,
like look at this corpse. Well, how good I am?

Speaker 2 (45:50):
He looked better alive, but like I did, did a
pretty decent job.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Pretty pretty good job. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Also, like as as sweet as it is that he
takes pride in his work. If I died, even if
the morticians assistant thought he did a really good job,
don't like show me to people. I don't want that.
I don't want your relatives to come in and be like, oh, yeah,
you really nailed it.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Literally, oh yeah, great work.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
No.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, so morticians, you know, make a note of that,
and also make a note of these products and services,
because if you're a working mortician, you get ten percent
off the next ad that comes on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Wow, that's huge.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
I can't actually promise. That would be cool and we're back. Yeah,
I hope all the morticians who listen to the show
got a great deal on what is who sponsors us
these days? Sophie Halliburton Halliburton. Yeah, I hope you guys

(46:53):
have got a good deal on Halliburton. You know, Halliburton
We make corpses and we clean them up. That's their motto.
So within days of having his back brace removed, Beauford
and several of his friends take a trip down to
the state Line area, presumably to celebrate the fact that
he doesn't have to wear a back brace anymore. And

(47:14):
in the book Mississippi Moonshine Politics, author Janis Tracy gives
a vivid description of how things worked in state Line
Mob territory. Right, this is the area that he and
his friends would had probably for the last three or
four years at this point, had been going up to
on the weekends to party. During the first two decades
of their marriage, Jack and Louise owned and operated four establishments,
the State Line Club, the forty five Grill, built in

(47:36):
nineteen fifty one after the State Line Club burned, the
Shamrock Restaurant in Mississippi, and the Shamrock Motel just across
the line in McNairy County, Tennessee. Jack built and operated
the latter two establishments in nineteen fifty nine, and Luis
remained at the forty five Grill, Jack's nephew Wo. Hathcock Junior,
and Larry's Hathcock Wo's wife operated the Plantation Club, another

(47:56):
liquor in gambling establishment located directly across US Highway forty
from the forty five Grill. Large roadside signs advertising country ham,
red eye gravy, and homemade biscuits for forty five cents
lured travelers to the forty five Grill, but Luis's Southern cooking,
served on red and white checkered tablecloths, was only one
of several offerings at the roadhouse. With their appetites for
food satisfied, many of the male travelers just passing through

(48:18):
headed to the game room or the dance hall, where liquor,
gambling and available women were the main attractions. Most of
the men who opted for what they believed to be
a good quick game of three called cardemonti or a
toss of dice, however, left the place broken alone, and,
more likely than not, if the gambler complained too loudly
when he lost the last of his cash, or if
he threatened to report the halfcock's crooked gambling operation to
the authorities, he was beaten badly and thrown out the

(48:40):
door by Jack and his cohorts. Allegedly, Louise often ended
arguments herself when she beat dissatisfied gamblers about the head
and shoulders with a ball peen hammer that she carried
in her apron pocket. You know, cool people, Hi power couple.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
I love the crooked half cocks, There's no way around it.
I like them a lot.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
I love that. Yeah, her cooking is a draw. And
also she will beat you half to death with the
ballpeen hammer she keeps in her apron if you complain
that you lost buddy.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
It's the ballpeen hammer for me, my friends.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
This is what Vegas casinos have lost is just an
angry lady with a hammer who will beat you half
to death if you complain.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
You know, now, the just try to make a fuck
out of you.

Speaker 4 (49:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Now, obviously a lot of times people die when you're
beating them with the ballpeen hammer. And it was it
was said at least that a number of folks bodies
wound up thrown in the nearby river as a result
of you know, Luis or one of her goons going
too hard when trying to deal with somebody. So these
are not safe people to quarrel with, right. This is

(49:40):
a mafia, and anyone who had good judgment would try
to avoid pissing them off. But no one ever credited
Buford Pusser with having good judgment. So on this spring
nineteen fifty seven trip, right after getting out of his
back brace, he brings three hundred dollars with him to
the state line, and for whatever reason, he decides to
try his luck at the plantation cl Now we only

(50:01):
have the account that he passed down through his daughter,
but per that account, he was totally winning and beating
the house before one of the house employees switched the
dice on him. Now, whether this happened or not, Beauford
accused the house of rigging the game, which got him
jumped and pistol whipped by four men. He was robbed,
dragged out into the rain, and left for dead. Now,

(50:22):
as I noted earlier, not an uncommon experience for gamblers
partaking at half Cock owned establishments, and most people who
survived an encounter like this would thank their lucky stars
and make a note not to come back. But Beauford
Pusser was not most people. He gets angry. He has
to have one hundred and ninety two stitches for his injuries,
and while they're being sewn, he starts planning his revenge.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Man, this guy is just so much man. I love it.
I love when someone from the past. There's just there's
so few details written about, like a normal person's history,
but like it's enough that everyone is like, look at
this huge fucking kid, Like, look at this giant man.
It really tickles me that he's so big that it

(51:06):
makes the news. I like it a lot. So it's
a great defining characteristic.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Just huge. Yes, a lot of body space for stitches, yeah,
like yeah, it's a whole canvas for you to beat
on if you're a goon.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, just this enormous acre of pusser clomping down the
street to your casino.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
So, perhaps spurred by the loss of three hundred dollars,
Buford makes another career change. At this point, he decided
that mortitious is he wasn't making enough money as a
morticians assistant, so he leaves the state for a month
to work on a pipeline with his dad. And while
he's over there, he hears from a friend who moved
to Chicago and is like, Hey, wages are a lot
better in Chicago. Why don't you try living here. So,

(51:49):
after working on the pipeline, he moves to Chicago. Now,
one of the first articles I read on Buford was
published by the McNairy Historical Society, which is like the
county that he grew up historical society. And so far
as I can tell, the historical society, the McNairy Historical
Society is like ninety nine percent just the Buford Pusster
Historical Society, since nothing else of note has ever occurred

(52:11):
in McNairy. And here's how it summarizes this chapter of
his life. During his time in Chicago, he wrestled professionally.
He was called Baufford the Bull, and was reported to
have wrestled to grizzly bear. Didn't happen, didn't definitely, well,
that didn't happen, but was a little closer to having
happened than you'd expect, although, as you'd expect from a
county historical society, all of these details are like wrong

(52:34):
and their specifics because he does fight a bear, but
it's not while he's in Chicago. And this brings me
to my favorite chapter of the Buford Puster story. You
will hear anytime you run across like a popular history
of the man, like a news article, or just like
a you know, an internet clickbait article talking about the
walking tall guy. You'll hear the claim that he wrestled

(52:57):
and beat a live grizzly bear. The claim is peed
by the Sheriff Bufford Pusser Museum, by a bunch of
different places. And while Beauford was a big guy, I
just couldn't believe that he actually It's very rare for
a human being to fight a grizzly bear and win.
You can find some cases of it. The only ones
I found were it wasn't like a man with a gun.

(53:17):
Is like somebody hits the bear with like a huge
log and manages to do it in just the right place.
So wrestling a grizzly bear just seems physically impossible to me.
And I couldn't find any more detailed claims about what
he'd actually done until I ran his daughter's book, Walking On,
which says that the match she claims there was a

(53:38):
match against a bear, but her description of it is
a lot less impressive sounding. Number One, this doesn't happen
when he's in Chicago. This is when he's in his
senior year of high school. Quote. A summer carnival came
through the area. The bear's owner had a gimmick where
he challenged local boys to wrestle his black bear. Daddy
pinned the bear. He would later say it was just
a little bear that didn't have me teeth or cloths.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
Okay, I'm still choosing the bear.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Again, the details this gives you about this time in
American history in place where it's like, yeah, this carnival
owner who just traveled around challenging teenagers.

Speaker 5 (54:14):
To fight his pet bear, right like a like a
completely harmless bear that he's charging boys to pin for
bragging rights makes so much more sense.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Than exactly because like it number one black bear, much
smaller than a grizzly. But also it sounds from her
description like this is a sick bear. Maybe it had
its teeth and claws like removed, like people did shit
like that. So I wouldn't be surprised if this was
like a purposefully crippled bear that, yeah, this man kept
around so that teenage boys could pay to fight it

(54:47):
and feel like badasses. Yeah yeah, but that does give
you an idea also of like when we're looking at
the myth versus the reality of Buford Pusser, like they're
all kind of this level of off where like, yes,
there is like an actual real story there, he did
fight a bear at one point, but it's not It's
not as impressive as it sounds initially, Right.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
He fought a bear, but so did anybody else who
had four dollars.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
Right, the bear was sick and dying and had been
like purposefully hobbled so that he could beat it. Yeah,
much less impressive.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Similar to the stories that I shot a clown in
the mouth so hard that its brain exploded. I mean
it was at a carnival, and it was a water
gun and it was a balloon. But like enough of
the details are true.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Right, Yeah, that you could you could base your whole,
your whole legendary career off of yeah, that time you
shot that clown. I do think we've lost something as
a country that in that it's no longer acceptable or
legal for a man to wander around with a pet
bear and challenge teenagers to fight it. Like, yeah, we
are missing something as a nation now that we've lost that,
And it does make me sad.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Dan, It's such a fun, such a fun time in
American history to just come up with businesses and just
be allowed to do them.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Oh yeah, so there just weren't any rules back then. Huh,
you can just you can just do anything.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
I'm just saying, if that still existed, we might have
a different US Secretary of Human Health, Health and Human Services.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
That's absolutely true.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
If that still existed, cool zone media would be entirely
about challenging teenagers to fight bears. But I wouldn't have
no no beat up black bear. I bring a real
grizzly you know, like we're we're we're leaving a body
count behind when these kids, I feel.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Your business would would be less popular. It would be
it would make a real splash early on, and then
people will be like this, this is a.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
He's just feeding teenage boys to bears. So we will
talk about Buford's career as a pro wrestler, because soon
after moving to Chicago, he does start wrestling, uh and
he is he is like moderately successful at it. But
first we're going to talk about and close this episode
talking about the most fateful connection that Buford would make

(57:00):
during his time in Chicago. He met Pauline Mullins, the
woman who would become his wife. Now, at the time
they meet, she's already been divorced once and has two
kids from her first marriage, But this doesn't dissuade Buford,
and the couple were married on December fifth, nineteen fifty nine.
Just a little over a week later, Buford Poster would
return to the state line for the first time in

(57:20):
two years. So he gets married, and a week later
he drives up to the state line where he had
gotten beat up and nearly killed, you know, a year
or so before. And he drives up on December thirteenth
with two friends with the plan of ambushing wo Hathcock Junior,
the owner of the Plantation Club, and beating the shit
out of him, and they wind up catching him alone,

(57:40):
and Buford bashes his head and nearly kills him with
a fence post. And this is the original of like
the myth.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
You're a married man now you can't old grudges post love.
I don't understand.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
No. No.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
A week later, like he's supposed to be on his honeymoon,
but he's like, no, I've got a bit bash a
man's skull in with a fence post. And this is
the origin of like the store, like the myths that
you'll see of him, Like even if you look at
the poster of the two thousand and four of the
Walking Tall with the Rock. He's got like a big
fucking stick in his hand or something like. That's the

(58:14):
one thing everyone knows about Buford Pusser is he fought
crime with like fucking logs and baseball bats. The real
story is that he and his friends ambushed a man
who was alone, and while they held him down, he
bashed this guy's head him with a fence post. And
it wasn't because he hated crime. It was because he
had been committing crimes badly and they'd beaten him up earlier.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Yeah, you lost at a casino, illegal casino, the oldest
tale in the book. And like sure they like maybe
they switched the dice. Maybe maybe they didn't, and it's
just casino's win, because casinos win. It's like, yeah, you
lost or you were fooled. Those are like not reasons

(58:55):
to hold the grudge for a very long time.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Yeah. It certainly not to beat someone's head in with
a fence yeah. Yeah. The fact that he has to
pass on to his daughter that like, actually I was
winning first and then they switched the dice, Like I
think he probably just we're drunk and lost your money gambling.
But I don't know, maybe maybe you were too good
at gambling and they had to switch the dice on you.

(59:18):
I just don't particularly trust that version of events I
trusted about as much as I trusted the Grizzly Bear story.
I'll say that. But this is where part one is
going to end. Buford Poster has just like he's turned
this from normal business. Oh, this guy got drunk and
was kind of a dick in our gambling establishment, so
we beat him up to now we the hath Cocks
have beef with this kid, Buford Pusser, right, because he

(59:40):
has now tracked down and ambushed and badly beaten like
one of our lieutenants. So that has started, as has
his married life in the end of part one, and
we'll talk about the rest of Buford Puster's story in
part two. Dan, you got anything to plug?

Speaker 2 (59:55):
I do. We've talked about the show last week tonight,
but also a quick question is the podcast that I
host with Sore and Bowie. He will be familiar to
those of you who used to watch us on the
YouTube show After Hours or read our work from crack
dot com, where we both lived for about a decade
I read for Last Week tonight, Soren writes for American Dad.
Sometimes we talk about being TV writers. Sometimes we do

(01:00:16):
the kind of pop culture analysis that we used to
do at Cracked and on After Hours. Sometimes we tell
inside Hollywood stories, but mostly we just are friends who
talk on the phone. And you get to listen in
on it for an hour every week, and it's free.
It's on YouTube and everywhere you get podcasts. It's called
Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. I wrote this down

(01:00:38):
because I have been ordered by our business guy to
plug the podcast because I frequently forget to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
You've got so many great stories of and yeah, I
didn't realize that, you know, he'd killed those people, but
apparently so Dan. Yeah, yeah, stuff like that on Quick Question.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
I know, and I'm such a fan of his work,
and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And I was like it was self defense, right, And
he looked me dead in the eyes. He's like absolutely,
not absolutely, buddy, I'm giving you a way out and
he's like I'm not taking it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
No, no shocking stuff. Now, obviously we've both forgotten which episode,
but if you just listen through Quick question you will
hear which of your favorite celebrities is absolutely a murderer?
You know? I promise that, yes, you know what else?
I promise nothing go away? The episode's over.

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
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(01:01:51):
at Behind the Bastards