The Legend of Sheriff Buford Pusser

Buford Pusser's life was full of big stories.  Now someone is wondering if his life was also filled with big lies, including one about the death of his wife.

We would like to thank The Courier-Journal, The Jackson Sun, The Commercial Appeal, The Memphis Press-Scimitar, Johnson City Press, newsunzip.com; the Forgotten History, Spa Guy and Mark Elum YouTube channels and Wikipedia for information contributing to today’s story.

Written by Frederick Crook - check out our other collaboration WRAITHWORKS - Wraithworks at Amazon https://www.amzn.com/dp/B07HXNCW4L (audiobook narrated by John Lordan) Also avaible on iTunes: https://apple.co/2OFXb8L

Do you have any comments, or a case you’d like to suggest? You’ll find a comment form and case submission link at LordanArts.com.

This is not intended to act as a means of proving or disproving anything related to the investigation.  It is a conversation about the current known facts and theories being discussed.  Everyone directly or indirectly referred to is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

LordanArts 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Some stories are so strange, so shocking, that if it
weren't for newspapers, witness accounts, and the records that they
leave behind, you might never believe that the story actually happened. Today,
we're looking into a seriously mysterious tale where someone entrusted
to uphold the law may have gone too far, blurring

(00:42):
the line between protector and perpetrader. This is the nearly
unbelievable case of Buford Pusser. Born in the unfortunately named
town of Finger, Tennessee, Buford Pusser came into the world
in nineteen thirty. His father, Carl, was the chief of

(01:02):
police in Adamsville at that time, so it was certain
that young and impressionable Buford would be inundated with the
teachings of right, wrong and law enforcement as he moved
through childhood. He grew up fast and tall, reaching a
height of six feet six inches, and he wasn't just
tall but big, weighing in at about two hundred and

(01:23):
fifty pounds by the age of sixteen. Obviously, he fit
in well on the football field and on the basketball court.
In high school. He joined the Marines right after graduating,
but was medically discharged once it was discovered that Buford
suffered from asthma. Asthma didn't interfere with his career in
professional wrestling, though, which he had taken to Once he

(01:45):
moved to Chicago in nineteen fifty seven, the Big Tennesseean
earned the nickname Buford the Bull. This profession had him
traveling from venue to venue all over the country, but
after two years he met someone while on the road.
He and Pauline mu a divorced mother of two children,
were married in December of nineteen fifty nine. Buford decided

(02:06):
he was done with wrestling, and they settled for a
time in Chicago. Buford found work at a paper bag factory,
where he would make a living for three years. In
nineteen sixty one, Pauline gave birth to their daughter, Dwana,
and Buford legally adopted Pauline's two children from the previous marriage,
Diane and Mike. In nineteen sixty two, Buford relocated his

(02:27):
family to his home state, and it is there that
their lives would take a dramatic turn. The Pusser family
had not been in the state long when one night,
Buford stated that he was mugged near the Mississippi Tennessee border.
This event seemed to take Buford back to the lessons
he had learned from his father, and like Carl Pusser,

(02:47):
Buford became the police chief of Adamsville. Immediately he went
to work attacking the prominent problems of prostitution, gambling, and
moonshining that were out of control. These crimes fostered others,
so armed robberies and murders were quite common there. Having
control over the law enforcement in Adamsville was fined for Buford,

(03:08):
but these problems were at least county wide, where he
had no jurisdiction. So when the opportunity arose in nineteen
sixty four, Buford ran for sheriff of McNairy County, and
he won the election. He was twenty seven years old
at that time and was the youngest person ever elected
to the position in the state's history. Pusser's predecessor, Sheriff

(03:30):
James Dickey, had died in an automobile accident and had
been a known collaborator with the State Line Mob, a
criminal organization run by Kirksey Nicks, also a member of
the Dixie Mafia, and Luis Hathcock. Upon taking office, Pusser
was approached by Kirksey and offered a bribe to keep
things as they were in the county. Their offer one

(03:53):
thousand dollars a month to look the other way. That
equals a shade more than ten thousand dollars per month today.
But Buford was having none of that and instead targeted
the mobs. More than eighty moonshine stills located within his county.
Since McNair County is located in the southern part of
the state and shares at southern border with Mississippi, moonshiners

(04:15):
would distill their products in Tennessee and slip over the
state line. Sheriff Pusser broke up many of these moonshining operations,
putting a squeeze on the mob's profits. This made him
plenty of enemies in no time at all. Even amongst
his own deputies, there were those in the pockets of
the mob. The sheriff replaced whomever he suspected of being

(04:36):
on the take. Beauford Pusser became known for not carrying
his service revolver, but leading the charge into the moonshining
camps deep in the woods. As he swung a four
foot long Hickory Club, destroying their distilling rigs. Soon with
over forty stills destroyed and more than seventy moonshiners apprehended,
he was on the mob's hit list. Hitman ambushed Sheriff

(04:59):
Pusser se several times in his early days. He was
shot in the cheek by an unknown gun men during
a traffic stop on January second, nineteen sixty six. He
was stabbed seven times during another of these attempts, but survived.
He retaliated by shutting down more operations. However, as the
mob made it clear that a hickory stick would not suffice,
Sheriff Pusser began to arm himself. Kirksey Nicks and Louise

(05:23):
Hathcock knew that they had to put an end to
Sheriff Pusser and make it permanent. Nix couldn't do the
job himself, as he was in prison at the time.
Halfcock ran the Shamrock Motel, which was just one of
the mob couple's hubs for prostitution, gambling, and illegal alcohol warehouses.
The story goes that Louis thought she'd take the matter

(05:44):
into her own hands, so she called the Sheriff's office
on the night of February first, nineteen sixty six, and
reported a robbery. As soon as Pusser and a deputy
walked through the front door, Halfcock took a shot at
the tall law man. The good luck of the Shamrock
Motels shined not on Halfcock but on Beauford that night.
She missed the first attempt, aiming too high. Then her

(06:07):
Saturday Night special jammed, giving him time to take aim
and fire. Louise Halfcock fell dead. Sheriff Buford Pusser continued
his reign of justice on the mob's activities, doing significant
damage and really making a difference in cleaning up his county.
Nix's state line mob struck out again on January second,

(06:28):
nineteen sixty seven. Sheriff Pusser was patrolling that night in
his cruiser when he spotted a speeder and pulled the
car over. Pusser was ambushed by an unseen gunman and
shot three times. Against the odds, he again survived. Later
that year, he stopped a suspected moonshiner who proceeded to
run him down, putting the sheriff through the windshield of

(06:50):
the car. According to Pusser's account of the incident, a
woman in the passenger seat began striking him on the
head with what he thought was a wrench, while the
driver staid a with a small blade. Pusser managed to
get out of the car and the couple drove off,
never to be identified. Then, at four thirty am on
August twelfth of that same year, Sheriff Pusser received a

(07:12):
phone call from his father, Carl, who was working as
a jailer at the time. Police officers were generally not
on duty after two am on weekends, so Carl had
received a couple of phone calls reporting the disturbance at
an establishment called Jordan's McNairy County Tavern, located near the Tennessee,
Mississippi border, and he told his son Buford that he
was needed. His wife, Pauline, had decided some time before

(07:36):
that she was going to accompany Buford whenever he was
called out at night, refusing to leave him to respond
to emergencies alone. Driving to the disturbance along New Hope Road,
their car was intercepted by another car full of gunmen,
who opened fire on them. Pauline received a fatal gunshot
to the head, killing her instantly. Beauford returned fire and

(07:58):
raced away. When he pulled over to check on Pauline,
the car caught up with them. Buford's car was pummeled
with rifle and handgunfire. Buford called for help on the
police radio while he hunkered down behind the steering wheel.
By this time, a second car arrived. The men inside
joined in on the attack, and Beauford was struck twice

(08:18):
in the face by bullets. The gunfire stopped eventually and
the two cars sped off. They didn't realize that Beauford
had once again survived. Barely conscious. Beauford turned the shot

(08:43):
up police cruiser around and drove northward. He called for
help several more times and eventually had to stop driving
and pulled over. Responding to Buford's call for help, the
police chief of Selmer arrived on scene. He found Beauford
in the driver's seat of his cruiser, bleeding heavily from
the face, with his wife lying dead in his lap.

(09:03):
Pusser was taken to the hospital, where it took many
surgeries to reconstruct his face. It took over a month
for him to be well enough to leave the hospital,
though many more cosmetic surgeries would need to be performed sheriff.
Pusser suspected that Nix had ordered the hit. It was
also a possibility that law officers from other nearby jurisdictions

(09:23):
on the payroll of the State Line mob or other
illegal interests, had participated in past attempts on Buford. These
on the take officers could have even been some of
the men in the two cars that were involved in
Pauline's murder. Pusser had established a solid network of informants
and soon he began to gather names, and he planned

(09:44):
to go after them. He had another ambush to fight off.
This one put him alone against a squad of six.
It said that three went to the hospital and three
went to jail, but Nix's men the names that Pusser's
network had divulged to be on someone's hit list. In
the following three years, some of these names were scratched out. One,

(10:07):
Carl Towhead White, was gunned down in his car by
unknown assailants. Rumors spread that Pusser had done it or
that he had hired a hitman. Two others that were
on that list were found dead in Texas, and the
gossip persisted. While Kirksey Nicks remained safely behind bars for
another crime. Pusser remained the sheriff of McNairy County. On

(10:27):
the night of Christmas nineteen sixty eight, one of the
listed assassins of Pauline found the wrong end of Pusser's revolver.
Charles Hamilton was intoxicated that night and had started trouble
with his landlord. When the sheriff responded, Hamilton took a
shot at him with his twenty five caliber handgun, striking
Pusser's own handgun and inflicting superficial wounds to his abdomen.

(10:48):
Returned fire from Pusser's gun took him down. The exploits
of Sheriff Pusser had long been nationally known, receiving a
lot of newspaper attention and appearances on television news programs.
He received what he looked upon as a great honor
when singer songwriter Eddie Bond wrote the song The Ballad
of Buford Pusser. In nineteen seventy, Buford Pusser's term limits

(11:12):
came to an end and he had to step down
as Sheriff of McNairy County. The movie Walking Tall, starring
jo Don Baker, was released in nineteen seventy three, dramatizing
the life and times of Sheriff Pusser. The movie glorified
his one man army approach to law enforcement, but just
how much was actually glorified. The real Buford had been

(11:35):
attacked over and over again in real life and had
lived through it all. And while the events in the
film may not exactly line up with reality, could it
really have been all that unbelievable? The movie fame was
a double edged sword for Pusser, who had received little
public support when he was able to run for McNary
Sheriff again or when he ran for the constabulary of Adamsville.

(11:58):
He had torn through the state life mob, but he
had taken a hard line on other crimes too, so
he became unpopular amongst the law abiding citizens as well.
The sensationalism created by the film and later more films
and even a short lived television series left those that
knew Buford Pusser personally to scoff at. The inflated legend

(12:20):
then came the night of August twenty first, nineteen seventy four.
Buford was driving his Corvette home when he lost control
of it, rolling it and subsequently died in the crash.
Moments later, his own daughter, Duana Pusser, then sixteen, came
along in another car and discovered the wreckage. Police and
an ambulance were called, but there was no helping the man.

(12:43):
No autopsy was performed, which seemed strange, and rumors flew
that the Corvette's steering column, brakes, or even the suspension
of the car had been sabotaged, and that the wreck
was a final hit on the man, carried out by
state line mob specialists. Some said Buford Pusser had been
drink that night and was driving too fast. Duana herself

(13:04):
stated that Beauford had not been drinking. In nineteen eighty eight,
the Pusser Home in Adamsville was transformed into the Sheriff
Buford Pusser Home and Museum, located on yes, that's right,
Pusser Street. At one point, the museum curator was his
own daughter, Dwana. Adamsville also holds an annual Buford Pusser

(13:24):
Festival in the month of May. Diane Pusser, his adopted daughter,
had for a long time said that her stepfather was
less than kind to her and had been the one
that had spread many false stories of his exploits in
law enforcement. But that's not all. A retired Bella Vista,
Arkansas Sheriff mark Elam has gone public in the form

(13:46):
of podcasts and such to proclaim that Buford Pussard's legend
is a false one, sharing Diane's opinion that his legendary
feats are exaggerated, He's gone as far to say that
the killing of Pauline was carried out by Husser himself.
His claims seemed to have some merit, as he made
contact with someone that came to him with the thirty

(14:08):
caliber carbine that killed Pauline, and ballistic tests proved it
to be correct that weapon belonged to Buford Pusser. Mark
Elim had been a longtime fan of Sheriff Pusser, so
it was not a matter of going out of his
way to discredit the man. But as he dug into
the legend, some things just didn't add up. At first.

(14:30):
The attempts to discredit Sheriff Pusser smacks of someone just
trying to earn fame and to sell books. However, facts
about the ambush from the mystery men in the two
cars on the night of August twelfth nineteen sixty seven
certainly makes one think the road is pitch black at night,
and the ambushers, according to Pusser, were driving with their
lights off. It seems impossible, even if one were to

(14:52):
argue that they could have been following his tail lights.
What was Sheriff Pusser doing driving along a dark dirt
road as he responded to the call of a disturbance.
The other option was to take Highway forty five South,
a bit of a longer route, but he could have
driven more safely in better light along a paved surface,
and the highway would have allowed him to push the

(15:13):
cruiser much faster. Additionally, how were gunmen chasing Pusser in
a car in the dark able to shoot at the
car accurately? Further Still, Elim has Diane Mullen Pusser's word
that she heard a pop that night in her home
and witnessed her stepfather carry her mother to the car

(15:33):
and then drive away. They had been arguing earlier, she said,
and Beauford threatened her mother. Did she hear a muffled gunshot?
Was the entire ambush? An elaborate ruse to cover her murder?
Elim has also looked into the claims that Pusser, while
on duty, was shot eight times in total and stabbed
in separate incidents a total of seven times. However, according

(15:56):
to official police reports, he was wounded far fewer times
than that. Alam's claims have led to Pauline's murder case
to be reopened and her body was exhumed in February
of twenty twenty four by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Her remains were put through modern day forensic testing. Shockingly,
or maybe not, their findings contradict Sheriff Pusser's original claims

(16:20):
about the ambush that took his wife's life. Even though
he was shot twice in the face. From the crime
scene photographs, TBI investigators claimed that Pauline was shot outside
the vehicle and was dragged inside the car after she
was dead. The blood patterns found on the hood of
Pusser's cruiser back up that theory. Further, they make the

(16:40):
incredible claim that Beauford's cheek and chin wounds were self inflicted.
The District Attorney General of the twenty fifth Judicial District,
Mark Davidson, held a press conference just days prior to
the writing of this podcast script stating that there is
enough new evidence to have indicted Buford Pusser had he
been alived. Pauline's younger brother, Griffin Mullins, has stated that

(17:04):
he's not surprised at the tbi's findings and indicated that
there was trouble in Pauline's marriage to Buford. And still
more intriguing are the police reports on the death of
state line mobster Louise Hathcock. The forensics report indicates that
Hathcock was not shot once from across the room at
the Shamrock Motel. Instead, the body had two bullet holes

(17:26):
in the back and one in the head. Could Buford
have just made up the story that Hathcock called in
a robbery? Was it an excuse to stage the execution
of a state line mobster? How many times did Sheriff
Buford Pusser twist the facts and insert his own narrative
into police reports during his career. So does this all

(17:47):
put an end to the legend of Sheriff Bufford Pusser.
Did he exaggerate or even fabricate many of his triumphs
with the media taking his word as gospel. It certainly
seems possible, if not proper the tall man spinning tall
tales didn't just capture headlines. He also led Hollywood by
the nose, shaping a dramatized story that drew audiences into theaters.

(18:11):
As of right now, it seems that the state of
Tennessee has proof of a very different story, one about
a man going to unbelievable lengths to cover up the
murder of his own wife. In the coming months, perhaps
more facts will emerge, shedding new light on Buford Pusser.
Questions always linger when the truth is obscured, but if

(18:33):
those questions stay around long enough, they don't always remain
seriously mysterious. Do you have any comments or a case
you'd like to suggest. You'll find a comment form in
caseubmission link at lordenarts dot com. We would like to
thank the Courier Journal, the Jackson Son The Commercial Appeal,
the Memphis Press, Scimitar, Johnson City Press, Newsonzip dot Com,

(18:55):
the Forgotten History spa GI, and mark Elam YouTube channels
and with for information contributing to today's story. This episode
was written by Frederick Crook, is edited by John Lordon,
and produced by Lorden Arts. If you appreciate it today's episode,
please check out the novel Wraithworks, another collaboration between Frederick
Cook and myself. It's available in hard copy or audiobook format.

(19:18):
You can find more information about Wraithworks at Lordenarts dot
com or by searching for it on Amazon. Thank you
to our audience here for the live recording session hosted
on the YouTube channel lord and Art's Studio two. Special
thanks to seriously mysterious financial supporters Robert Martin, Mike and
b Jones. Most of all, thank you for listening. I'm

(19:39):
John Lordon. Please join me again next week for another
story I know you'll find seriously mysterious