Part Two: Buford Pusser: The Worst Sheriff Ever

Robert discussed Buford Pusser's war on crime and the crime he committed when he murdered his wife and blamed the mafia. We also talk about how he died, which is fun. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. And on Thursday, September 25th at 8:00 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, just type that into Google, or 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 $25 for the live stream version of the show. So please go to Alberta Rose Theater, Behind the Bastards, and pick up a live stream show to check it out on Thursday, September 25th

• 0:49Robert Evans?

  at 8:00 PM.

• 0:53Robert Evans?

  And we're back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people, the worst ones in all of history. This is part two of our series on Buford Pusser, the man whose family could not give their kids normal names to save their lives. Also, he committed a bunch of horrible crimes and killed people. Back as my guest, Dan O'Brien!

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Hello, thank you for having me. There's, uh, there's no depth to my appetite for Pusser.

• 1:25Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm, that's, that's right. I just love Pusser. Buford, I'm agnostic on. Have you ever met a Buford? Do you know a single Buford?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  The only, this is not a person that I know. The only time I've ever heard that name was Benjamin Buford Blue, the full name of Bubba from Forrest Gump. I know that doesn't count.

• 1:47Robert Evans?

  I didn't remember that was Bubba's full name.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  As a person I know. But yeah, that's the only other instance of that name I've ever heard anywhere.

• 1:55Robert Evans?

  Huh, yeah, I, I, I know that I'm actually looking up the name of the sheriff from Smokey and the Bandit. Yeah, Buford T. Justice is the sheriff from Smokey and the Bandit. Yeah, um, which I think is probably the first time I heard that name and did not realize that it was. Yeah, that was made, came out in 77, so he was definitely named after Buford Pusser. Cause Walking Tall came out in 73.

• 2:16Robert Evans?

  Kind of a more accurate parody of, of Buford Pusser as opposed to the, the version in Walking Tall. That's basically a hero.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  The cool sheriff guy.

• 2:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Speaking of those movies, if you've watched any of the Walking Tall movies, you're probably aware, as I've mentioned, that he was, Buford was mostly famous for using a large stick or a bat or piece of wood to beat up gangsters. The original poster, which Sophie's going to show, for those of you watching the video version,

• 2:44Robert Evans?

  is just, it, it looks like he's just holding like a log, like, but like a trimmed log, like a log that someone has processed to be nice firewood, like it's had the bark shaved off and everything. But it does just look like a log, like.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  He kinda looks like if Javier Bardem was also a zombie.

• 3:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's, that's how the illustrated, yeah, Buford in Walking, in the poster looks.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07Robert Evans?

  And then of course, the tagline of the original movie, "The measure of a man is how tall he walks." What does that mean?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 3:15Robert Evans?

  Does it mean that like the taller you are, the better you are?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Just shut up. Just shut the fuck up.

• 3:19Robert Evans?

  What is, what is that?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  It's somewhere between literal and poetic.

• 3:25Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Where, where like you would measure, I mean, I guess the measure of a man, yes, is how tall he is.

• 3:34Robert Evans?

  You can measure a man by how tall he is.

• 3:38Robert Evans?

  But I don't think like you're saying a lot about the man necessarily. Especially since like the fact that a man can walk tall, being six foot six, like it's, that's less impressive. Like if he was a short man who had like a, his personality, you know, or whatever you're saying, like he, he walked tall, that's something, but just being like, yeah, you know, this giant guy, he sure was tall.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  That's just, that's just Napoleon, Robert.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Right. If they're, if they're going literal, it's very boring and there's nothing much to say about it. You're saying that the, the tallness is the tallness. If they're going poetic, they also don't do a good enough job defining what walking tall means. Like what is?

• 4:17Robert Evans?

  It means you beat in a man half to death with lumber.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  He walks the most tall?

• 4:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, I guess so, but that's not really a point in his favor. He just happened to be big. Um, now, the more recent reboot featuring The Rock, which was a loose adaptation of the original movie that was not explicitly based on the life of Buford Pusser, shows The Rock carrying, it's interesting, the differences between these. Instead of carrying like a trimmed log, he's carrying what looks just like a piece of like, uh, construction timber? Yes. Yeah, yeah. He's just, he's just gotten his hand there. Uh, and the tagline there is, "One man will stand up for what's right," which is at least a better tagline than the first movie had. Uh, and it notes that it's inspired by a true story, which it wasn't.

• 5:08Robert Evans?

  As we'll discuss today.

• 5:12Speaker 03

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• 5:16Robert Evans?

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• 5:57Robert Evans?

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• 6:53Robert Evans?

  The whole myth, as I noted, about him using a large piece of wood to fight crime, started when Buford hit W. O. Hathcock Jr. in the school with a fence post. Buford's daughter noted in her book, Walking On, "There was a handful of other times when Daddy would find use for a sizable piece of lumber when going up against bad guys, but as often as not, he went in barehanded, or maybe would grab something more like a switch. That's usually all that was necessary. But his first retaliation against the state line mob was personal, and it did indeed require a fence post."

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  It's...

• 7:26Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  That's so interesting to describe a mob fight as personal. They're all personal.

• 7:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, people are trying to kill you. It feels very personal.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:39Robert Evans?

  It is funny to me that she's like, "There were a handful of times where he'd find a big piece of lumber to fight people with. That was like a thing he did."

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:48Robert Evans?

  So normally, the state line gang was not the kind of group who would settle a problem by calling in the police because they were a mafia. But in this case, Buford and his friends had committed straight up felony assault against somebody. So Hathcock Jr. pressed charges, and Buford was arrested with his buddies and extradited to Mississippi. They were charged with assault with intent to commit murder and armed robbery, both of which are probably accurate descriptions of what they'd done. Buford's daughter doesn't write that he robbed Hathcock Jr., but it sounds like he did. And I wouldn't be surprised if he'd, "Well, they took my money that I gambled away, so I'm gonna take whatever's in his wallet," right? Like, I really do. It does sound like he actually also just robbed the guy. Again, rather than this being, "He was so upset at all the crime. He had

• 8:33Robert Evans?

  to fight against these gangsters." It was like, no, he beat a man after death and took his money.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  He lost money at a casino and got beat up and then wanted to rectify that specific situation for himself. 10 days after his wedding. It needs to be repeated.

• 8:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right after the wedding. Yeah. So Buford and his friends, they get extradited, but they don't wind up getting convicted because, again, he's got that, like you said, he's got that cop brain for when he's committing violent crimes, where he made sure to set up an alibi for himself and his buddies before they went out to attack Hathcock Jr. And their defense hinged on the fact that they worked at a factory together in Chicago, and they'd all filled out time cards. And there were time cards for all three men that showed them working on the day of the assault. And then they just had like, a friend fake the time cards so they could go out and beat that guy. And Joanna Pusser writes about this in her book about her dad, and again, describes it as like a lighthearted prank, as opposed to somebody like consciously trying

• 9:33Robert Evans?

  to evade the law while committing felonies. Right. Quote, "As it turns out..." Premeditated. Yeah, very premeditated, yes. "As it turns out, having a friend clock their time cards for them while they were gone proved to be a stroke of really smart planning by daddy and his friends." That's one way to describe a criminal conspiracy, yeah, a stroke of really smart planning. God, it's like one of my favorite planners, the Zodiac Killer. Yeah, great at planning. "In a stroke of very smart planning, he cut the body up into 40 pieces and threw it in a river." So, once the trial ended, Buford and his new wife Pauline returned to Chicago, where he started attending a mortuary school to get a proper degree. So, he decides to try

• 10:16Robert Evans?

  to make this a career still. And he's kind of like, working at a factory, he's going to mortuary school at night, and then on the weekends, he starts wrestling. He becomes a pro wrestler as a way to pick up extra money. Now, Buford was good enough that he caught the eye of Jerry Lawler, the wrestling icon who later helped The Rock get started, which is a weird, direct connection between the two men. Jerry the King Lawler? Yeah, yeah. Lawler was reportedly a friend of Buford Pusser, or like, a fan of his, when he was a wrestler.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  I mean,

• 10:49Robert Evans?

  There you go. He was big.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  If there's a Behind the Bastards on Jerry the King Lawler, that'll be the one episode that I skip because I I love him too much.

• 10:59Robert Evans?

  I don't have any evidence of him doing anything bad. And we don't, I don't actually have proof that he actually was a fan of Buford. He's reported, reputed to have been a fan of Buford. But there's a lot of like, maybe that was a lie. I don't know. You know, uh, it's all, it's also not entirely like, like he was a huge dude, you know? I could see him being decent at wrestling.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 11:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So that said, he's not wildly successful and he does not become a national name. This is never going to be anything that like makes, becomes a career for him. But it does teach him some lessons that will be useful in his later crimes. Uh, as of 1958, it was still mostly a weekend gig. He does do some pretty good precise performances. His largest being he, he wrestles at a, an event at Comiskey Park in Chicago in front of 37,000 people. So like, you know, he's not, he's not a nobody here, you know? That's, that's, that's not nothing. He, we don't, there's just not a, I wish there was more detail about his wrestling career. Basically the only real documentation we have of it is a 1970 article that Buford

• 12:00Robert Evans?

  wrote after he got famous, uh, for an issue of the Men's Adventure magazine, True Detective. So again, not great journalistic reputation, True Detective magazine. But in that article, he claims that the hardest match of his wrestling career was in Union City, Tennessee against a guy named Big Bill Crockett. They both wrestled the night before in Jackson and Buford had gotten a nasty gash on his forehead during that fight. And so when they fight again, the next fight, I'm going to continue here from Buford's article. "When the referee called us out to shake hands in Union City, he hauled off and hit me with his fist, busted open the cut he'd opened the night before. When he hit me the second night, that's when the fight come off. We didn't wrestle, we just fought. It was a little makeshift ring and we tore it down.

• 12:45Robert Evans?

  The referee stopped us, got some canvas and lumber and patched it up, then we fought some more and tore it down again. I don't know how I'd got home that night if I hadn't had a wrestler named Billy Daniels to drive for me. Both eyes were swollen shut. My hands were so sore, my fingers got stiff like claws. I was stiff as a board for days. It was a long then that I decided to give up wrestling." So that'll be basically his only rational decision in life.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  I would argue that makes him a bad professional wrestler.

• 13:16Robert Evans?

  I think that's probably fair.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 13:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I think when you when you lose your temper enough that you have an actual fight and destroy the ring twice, although I do want to see that fight. Like, I bet that was a hell of a thing to watch.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  And like, gosh, whether this is an embellishment or not, it's a really good legitimate pro wrestling bit to fight so bad that the ring breaks and then they rebuild the ring.

• 13:41Robert Evans?

  They have to rebuild the ring around you.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  That's excellent.

• 13:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that is a good wrestling bit.

• 13:49Robert Evans?

  So, one of the last things that Buford and Pauline would do in Chicago before they moved back to Adamsville was have their first child, Dwana, on January 9th of 1961. And almost immediately after that happens, they move back to Adamsville. And I want to quote now from an article by the McNary Historical Society. "His dad, Carl, was chief of police in Adamsville. He was retiring and encouraged Buford to apply for his job. After a vote from the city board, Buford was made chief of police. Thus began his law enforcement career." Now, that's a, that seems like it's leaving out a lot, right?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Was made chief of police?

• 14:25Robert Evans?

  He was made chief of police, right? And the way Dwana describes it, they had to beg him to be the chief of police. Like, he really didn't want it and they had to force it on him. There's a lot that we just don't have here. The little bitty details around the edges that get left out that I have been able to find paint to kind of a darker picture. So, among other things, this is back during a time when small-town law enforcement was less of like a career track and more like a gig you could fall into by accident, right? Like, if you're in a county and like the sheriff is like an elected position and you're just a popular guy, you might wind up being the sheriff, even if like that wasn't your ambition, you know? But also, there's a lot of money being the sheriff in a town that has organized crime in it.

• 15:11Robert Evans?

  And that's kind of... The this I can't say this for certain, but I really heavily suspect based on a couple of things I've read that his dad Carl was crooked and wanted to pass on the job as police chief to his son so that the money from being crooked cops in this mafia town could continue to stay in the family, right? He becomes the police chief after he's horribly injured in a car accident. There's a lot of car accidents in this story. This is a second car accident? No, no, no, this is his dad. Totally separate car accident. So his dad becomes the chief of police after he gets too hurt to work in a pipeline, which is also weird. And yeah, does the job for just a few years and then decides he's too hurt and he pushes

• 15:56Robert Evans?

  for his son to take the job. Now, given the reality of crime at the time in McNary County, this was not an easy job enforcing the law near the state line. And it was made harder by the fact that everyone whose job was to enforce the law in the area was, as best as I can tell, also incredibly corrupt, right? Like, no one was really all that interested in enforcing the law, including Buford. The McNary County sheriff worked with the state line gang to ensure that alcohol kept getting smuggled into the county. And as soon as he became the police chief, Buford, the way he would describe things is like he set himself against these corrupt cops to like fight for justice and fight against the mafia.

• 16:40Robert Evans?

  The way I interpret it and what I think the body of evidence suggests now is he was just kind of trying to edge these other law enforcement guys out of the racket, right? Because they were all getting cuts and he wanted more money for himself. Because as soon as he becomes the police chief, he runs for constable and he wins a narrow victory as constable in 1962. And after that, he's going to immediately like set his sights on becoming the sheriff. So like what he's doing here is he's getting rid of the competition. He's trying to make himself the only lawman in town, in part because then the cut only gets split one way, right? Sure. Kind of delay, laying out exactly what happened here is hard because most of what

• 17:24Robert Evans?

  was written during this time period was written from the perspective that like Buford Pusser was a hero who was going on a crusade against the whiskey trade. That's how Michael Birdwell describes what he does for the Tennessee Encyclopedia as like a crusade. Like this was a, like a, almost like a holy war that he was waging against bootleggers.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are always good, right?

• 17:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we love a good holy war. Yeah. No one's ever done one of those with, uh, you know, an ulterior motive.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anytime someone has committed to something that they've described as a crusade, my immediate thought is like, well, it sounds like they're clear-eyed and level-headed about it.

• 17:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it sounds like you're sane and reasonable and pursuing this reasonably. Um, now again, modern evidence suggests that he was perfectly happy taking money from bootlegging, uh, and that his issue was both specifically with the state line gang because they had beef and with the fact that like he wanted more of the money that was coming in from these illegal businesses, right? Rather than he had an issue with the businesses in the first place. So that's why he would go after people, right? He was effectively starting to make people pay protection. First as the police chief and then as the sheriff, right? Um, now we do know that the evidence of corruption between area law enforcement and the state line gang is certainly a lot broader than even just the stories Buford would tell.

• 18:44Robert Evans?

  Like there is out, he's not the only guy saying that like the sheriff when he became police chief was crooked. There's evidence for this outside of Buford. The book Mississippi Moonshine Politics is a great anecdote about Louise Hathcock that really sells how locked down the state line gang had things with the cops before Buford got into the mix. Quote, "After one particular raid on the 45 grill, a deputy sheriff arrived early one morning at the Hathcock home in Corinth to arrest Louise on liquor charges. Since Louise was still in her bathrobe, she asked the deputy to wait while she changed into her work clothes, fixed her hair and applied some makeup. Oddly, the deputy agreed. Once she was dressed for work at the roadhouse, the deputy allowed Louise to drive to the sheriff's office in her own vehicle. Once Louise arrived, she quickly posted a $500 bail and made it to work before the lunch crowd arrived."

• 19:29Robert Evans?

  And that's just, that's just you're paying a bribe on your way to work to the cops, right?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  I love this woman so, so much.

• 19:37Robert Evans?

  It's a shame what happens to her because she's very cool.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  What a bummer.

• 19:42Robert Evans?

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• 19:58Robert Evans?

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• 20:58Robert Evans?

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• 22:08Robert Evans?

  We're back and my long nightmare continues. Tragic. So, uh, Pusser is going to run for sheriff. You know, he becomes the, the police chief. He becomes the constable. Uh, and the next thing he's going to do is he's going to get that crooked McNary County sheriff out so that he can continue his crusade against moonshine slash take all of the money for himself. Now, he made some interesting decisions when he started this run. The weirdest of which is that he chose to run as a Republican in what was then a Democratic stronghold. This should have been more of a problem for him, but he got lucky because his rival, the incumbent sheriff, James Dickey, died in a horrible car accident partway through the election, clearing Buford an easy path to victory.

• 22:51Robert Evans?

  Now, did Buford have anything to do with that car accident?

• 22:55Speaker 01

  And I, can I just, just on behalf of the audience, without any jokes or frills, just say that yes, you're-

• 23:03Robert Evans?

  Dickey and Pusser?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Dickey is the name. It was Dickey V. Pusser and Dickey was pulverized and cleared a path for Pusser to snatch this victory.

• 23:14Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  All right.

• 23:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's, uh, that's the story of Dickey V. Pusser. Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Proceed.

• 23:21Robert Evans?

  Um, and again, we know Buford is willing to kill people and stage assassinations to get what he wanted. Like, this is me speculating. I just wouldn't be shocked if he had something to do with Dickey's death. That said, this is like the fourth car accident that we've talked about in these episodes?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:40Robert Evans?

  So you also have to acknowledge it was the 60s. Everyone was drunk and nobody had seat belts, right? So people just die in cars a lot back then. Um, so as soon as he gets elected sheriff, Pusser began an immediate spree of high-profile raids against state line gang properties. Local papers reported that he bust into gambling dens, carrying a pickaxe and use it to destroy tables and roulette wheels. In his first year on the job, he is said to have raided 42 stills and arrested almost twice as many moonshiners. So he's, he's, he's going on like a rampage here, right? Like as soon as he gets in and he get like, the news picks up on this. Like he, he gets famous for the way he's doing this because he, sometimes he's calling reporters along so they can see him busting up stuff with a pickaxe or a stick.

• 24:24Robert Evans?

  Now by this point, the state line gang that he's he's declared war against has undergone a change of leadership. Louise had decided to end her 20 year partnership and marriage with Jack Hathcock because in 1957, she'd fallen in love with a different criminal figure, a lieutenant from one of the most powerful gangs in the area, the Dixie Mafia.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 24:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Enter John Fullcock.

• 24:47Robert Evans?

  It would be, that would be pretty funny if she if she'd fallen for John Fullcock. No, she keeps going by Hathcock, by the way, after she does what she does, which is interesting to me, but that's the story we're telling now. So the Dixie Mafia, where she falls for this guy's lieutenant there, is based out of the Strip, which is this neighborhood in Biloxi that's basically Mississippi's answer to Las Vegas. Edward Humes, the author of a book called Mississippi Mud, that's on the Dixie Mafia, describes the Strip as "the cancerous heart of Biloxi." And given the rest of Biloxi, that's really saying something, if you've ever been to that fucking town. Per his description, the Dixie Mafia was started by a lot of guys you might call rejects from East Coast organized crime.

• 25:32Robert Evans?

  Like, it was initially a bunch of guys who got in too much trouble in like New York or Jersey and had to flee to the middle of nowhere so they wouldn't get offed. Like, that's kind of who founds the Dixie Mafia.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 25:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, so these are, these are both tough guys and also maybe not quite the top of the game, right? Because they had to flee to Biloxi.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Right, it's oops, Alfredo's. It's not, you're not gonna get any of the the cream of the crop there.

• 26:00Robert Evans?

  No, no, no. These guys are like, yeah, the dudes who, my alternative to moving here was to get murdered. So Louise Hathcock, the guy she falls for, is named Carl White, and he's nicknamed Toehead. A Tallahatchie boy, yeah.

• 26:19Robert Evans?

  Carl Toehead White.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  These episodes, the names.

• 26:24Robert Evans?

  There's some great names.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  I think you're fucking with us. You're just, I feel like you're just throwing fake names in there just to see if we catch it.

• 26:31Robert Evans?

  I was, I was worried when, when we went from pussers and dickies and Hathcocks to a white, you know, boring name, but then nicknamed Toehead, we're back in the game, baby.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Boy, Heidi.

• 26:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Toehead was a Tallahatchie born gangster who'd risen to the highest levels of the Dixie Mafia. Um, and yeah, Louise falls in love with this guy. Uh, and so she's got to split up with Jack. Now she does file for divorce, but that's just step one because Jack, like everyone else in the story, is a murderous gangster and Louise and Carl know just divorcing him isn't going to be quite enough, right? Like that's, that's not really an option with this kind of crime marriage. Author Janice Tracy summarizes, "The rest of the story of Janice and Louise reads like a B movie script. Louise divorced Jack, Toehead and Louise conspired to murder Jack and Toehead shot and killed Jack in a motel room where he was enticed by his wife. Louise convinced authorities she had shot Jack in self-defense and showed bruises to authorities that she had allowed Toehead

• 27:27Robert Evans?

  to inflict on her body. Although Louise was charged with killing Jack in self-defense, it was no surprise when the charges later were dismissed. Louise and Toehead continued their off and on relationship, at least when Toehead was in town. The couple never married, in part because Louise saw through Toehead's often obvious attempts to gain control of her money and her business operations." So yeah, this is a smart, tough lay orchestrates the murder of her husband and then keeps her boyfriend at arms length because she's like, "Look, man, I like you and thanks for help with the murder, but like, you're not gonna own my businesses. Like that's, that's my stuff. You know, I put up with this guy for 20 years. I'm not giving up my business."

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's such a bummer that this was the past. If she had waited a few more decades before being alive, she'd have been a very powerful figure in our government.

• 28:16Robert Evans?

  Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. She, she could have, she might've been able to win the presidency, right? She's got that kind of ruthlessness and organizational school and apparently a very good cook. The whole package, really.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:30Robert Evans?

  If you don't mind getting murdered, maybe. Which, I've had worse things happen in relationships. So.

• 28:37Robert Evans?

  And this is another crucial dimension to the Buford Pusser story because by the time he declares his war on the State Line gang, their most prominent leader is a woman, right? And it may just be the case that why Buford starts going after them is less because he's hates crime and he's got this vendetta and more, he thinks they're weak because a woman's in charge and he can take over control of the business, right? Or at least get a better deal, you know? If somebody else winds up in charge or if he doesn't have to like, right? He sees weakness here. I think that's why he does what he does. Whatever the case, in late 1964, Luis's gang strikes back. Buford was ambushed by an unknown number of questionably competent assassins who stab

• 29:20Robert Evans?

  him seven times and then leave him for dead. They don't take any effort to confirm that he's dead. Buford survives and this obviously makes him famous, right? Like that there's this lawman who's, he's been doing all these very showy raids, cracking down on bootleggers and, and, you know, organized crime in the area. And then he gets ambushed and stabbed repeatedly and he manages to survive and continue attacking the mob. You know, he's becoming a hero at this point. The news is, is, is covering him like that. And did this really, he was definitely stabbed a bunch of times. Was it an assassination attempt? Or is this something? Cause he's later going to injure himself as part of like a faked assassination attempt?

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:04Robert Evans?

  And so it kind of, this is probably real because they definitely, the State Line gang had a reason to, but I can't not doubt it now, right?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  For all we know, he just got tangled up with so many fucking volleyball nets again.

• 30:16Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  And he was like, oh no.

• 30:18Robert Evans?

  I had to cut down seven volleyball nets.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Let me live this down.

• 30:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we found him tangled, covered in blood, tangled in seven volleyball nets. What happened Buford? They tried to kill me.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  It was the mob again.

• 30:30Robert Evans?

  It was the mob. It was the State Line mob. But Buford does, like, the thing he's best at is he's very good at nursing this growing mythos around himself, right? He gives, he gives a lot of interviews. He likes talking to the press. He's good at working the media, such as it is in his era. And he really likes the image of himself as this badass, log-wielding juggernaut of justice. So he starts making a point when that, when he realizes, oh, that's one of the things that, like, is really playing well with the audience. He starts carrying a hickory stick whenever he goes to, on raids to bust moonshine stills, so that the press sees him with it, right? Even though it's not really useful for anything, it's part of his, his legend at this point. In 1966, he launches

• 31:13Robert Evans?

  his most ambitious arrest yet. He takes a squad of deputies to the Shamrock Hotel, which is the center of the Hathcock criminal empire. The official story is that during the arrest, Louise pulls a gun and Buford shoots her dead in self-defense. Louise's family will insist, up to the present day, that she was shot in the back. And thus, probably not a self-defense case. He just murdered her, right?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:39Robert Evans?

  And, again, I think that's pretty credible. That said, Louise definitely is not the kind of person who wouldn't pull a gun on a lawman, right? I just think she was probably too smart to have tried to do that, then. I think it's likelier that he murdered her.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think, uh, the, the woman shrewd enough to keep her financials intact, and the woman shrewd enough to, like, let me get changed and put on my makeup and drive myself to post my own bail before I go to work.

• 32:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  I don't, I think she is also shrewd enough to not shoot the famous hero cop that everyone talks about. I think-

• 32:20Robert Evans?

  Who's there with all of his cops in a daylight raid? Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's how I feel too. And there's something very sad about within the criminal underworld. Obviously, this is like a brutal, these are brutal, violent, dangerous people. But within that world and its rules, she is able to succeed and survive. And taking her out requires someone, the only kind of person who doesn't have to abide by any sort of rule, which is a sheriff, right? Like, that's the reality of law enforcement then and now. But like sheriffs have such a degree of autonomy and power. And when Buford says, oh yeah, she pulled a gun on me, so I had to shoot her. Doesn't matter that she was shot in the back. Like, no one else's version of events is going to carry water here.

• 33:11Robert Evans?

  And it's just, it's so unfair. Like, if you were playing by the same rules Luis was playing, you never would have won Buford, right?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Just such a coward's, coward's way to win this war. And like, probably set back women's rights, at least in crime, a couple of decades.

• 33:29Robert Evans?

  Women's crime rights, yes.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:31Robert Evans?

  It took decades for them to recover. Yeah, I was trying to remember a famous lady mafioso. But actually, they mostly were in, most of the ones I know were from like the 60s, 70s. Like that lady who invented murdering people using motorcycles.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 33:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we did a BTB on her at one point. She was, she was great. So yeah, Buford's people write the official reports. And so his version of events here is the one that history accepted. People are only now starting to really like question it on a white. Although I should point out, the Hathcock family has for decades been saying like, no, he totally murdered her. Right?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:10Robert Evans?

  People just didn't listen to them because they were famous criminals.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 34:15Robert Evans?

  Now, over the next couple of years, Buford expanded his war on crime across the state line and even into territory operated by the Dixie Mafia. His legend grew with him. The Buford Pusser Museum lists his greatest hits and a bulleted list that I am sure is largely inaccurate. But it gives you an idea of how people talk about, like, the legends that's grown up about this guy. Here's their bulleted list of his accomplishments. Shot eight times, knifed seven times, fought off six men at once, sending three to jail and three to the hospital, destroyed eighty-seven whiskey stills in nineteen sixty-five alone, killed two people in self-defense, hopped on the hood of a speeding car, smashed the window and subdued the man who had tried to run over him.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:58Robert Evans?

  Now.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Could be a little bit of truth in that. I mean, it's fair to say that he

• 35:04Robert Evans?

  Killed people.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Came into contact with a car and its window.

• 35:07Robert Evans?

  Right, we know that.

• 35:10Robert Evans?

  He was stabbed several times. Who did the stabbing? Was it him? Was it other people? Probably a mix. He was shot several times. At least one of those times, he shot himself. Were the other times people shooting him? Or did he, like, who knows? Uh, he may have fought six men at once, although I kinda doubt it, but he was a really big guy.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it depends on the definition of fighting. I would believe that he, like, a crowd of guys were around him and he

• 35:40Robert Evans?

  Starts hitting.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Took a stick out and spun in a circle real fast, the way children do. I think that's viable.

• 35:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, or he got angry and he started beating on some guys and they were like, well, that is literally the sheriff, so we probably can't really fight back here.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  We're not allowed to kill him.

• 35:56Robert Evans?

  His deputies have guns pointed at us. Maybe we just take the beating? Perhaps that's likelier.

• 36:04Robert Evans?

  That said, no one doubts that Buford got into a lot of gunfights and basically every other kind of fight under the sun. The more recent allegations do suggest that he killed more than two people and probably not any of them in self-defense and what we would call self-defense.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:21Robert Evans?

  And modern evidence also suggests heavily that he personally profited from his crime-busting work. And maybe what he was doing was less a one-man war on crime than demanding protection money and busting operations who wouldn't pay him. So this next part of the Buford Pusser story is by far the most debated. Okay. First, I'm gonna give you the story that almost definitely didn't happen, but this is what everyone believed had happened for decades, right? This is the story that's like the basis for the climactic events of the movie Walking Tall, right? Okay. And according to that story, despite Buford being basically an unkillable law god, Toadhead White decides, "I'm gonna take this guy down for murdering my girlfriend Louise", right?

• 37:02Robert Evans?

  That's the story, that Toadhead is just, he's trying to get vengeance for his dead lover. So White, who is known to the FBI as one of the top hoods in the southeast, which I think just means top gangsters and not the other thing a hood might mean in the rural south. Sure. He was furious and still grieving over the loss of his lover in 1966, and he decides to get Buford assassinated. He has strong connections to another Dixie mafia figure, a guy named Kirksey McNord Nix Jr. So Toadhead White, again, not a normal name in this episode. Kirksey McNord Nix Jr., okay. Kirksey McNord Nix Jr., yes. Oh, Kirksey.

• 37:46Robert Evans?

  Now, the reason why White needs Kirksey is that White is behind bars at this point. He's gotten locked up for one of his many crimes. While Nix is free and allegedly the center of a gang of hitmen and hired muscle. So Nix is kind of like the guy in the Dixie mafia that you call if you need some wet work done, right? He'll ice a motherfucker for you. So from prison, Toadhead is alleged to have orchestrated an assassination attempt using Nix to do the on-the-ground work, Nix and his hired goons. So we know that Nix visits the Shamrock Hotel the day before, on August 11th. The day before Sheriff Pusser receives a phone call from an anonymous caller who tells him, "There's a couple of drunks going at it out on the edge of town. Someone's gonna get killed."

• 38:30Robert Evans?

  So an anonymous caller calls the station and reports these drunk guys are like fighting and the police need to break it up, otherwise someone's gonna die, right? And they give a location to Sheriff Pusser, who promises to drive out and take care of it. In the lore established by Pusser after this point, his wife Pauline wasn't just a good life partner, she was also moderately involved in his business as sheriff and regularly rode along on calls with him. This is what he claims, that she loved to go with him as he was fighting crime. She was his ride or die, and she decides at the last minute as he's heading out to bust up this fight between these drunks, to come along with him. So the couple hits the road a little after 4:00 AM on August 12th, 1967. For

• 39:12Robert Evans?

  a summary of what happened next from an article on AL.com, "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 Tennessee in a 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

• 39:55Robert Evans?

  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."

• 40:04Robert Evans?

  So, that's the story he gives, and this is, this is the story that makes him famous, right? Um, now, you might have noticed there's a couple of sketchy things there, right?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:18Robert Evans?

  First off, the fact that he's describing, "Well, we got shot first and my wife was hit, and then I drove and I thought I had gotten away from them, and then later they came up and shot me." Well, what are you establishing? That my injuries and my wife's injuries didn't happen simultaneously, right?

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:35Robert Evans?

  And that there's multiple locations involved in the shooting.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  And I get that he's a lawman, but... What are you stopping at lights? What do you mean they caught up to you and shot you again when you were stopped?

• 40:47Robert Evans?

  How did that happen?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  While your wife's bleeding to death or whatever.

• 40:50Robert Evans?

  Right, you didn't go straight to a hospital? Like, what was your plan there? Now, as far as the injuries Buford got, both he and his wife were shot with a 30 caliber. I mean, it's technically a rifle or a carbine, right? And most of the articles will describe it as like, these is high velocity rounds. But in terms of ballistics, a 30 caliber is not like a big bullet, right? It's closer to like a 9mm handgun round than, for example, like a 5.56, the round that is fired by an AR-15 normally, right? And I bring this up not for gun nerding purposes, but because it explains how he could survive being shot in the face, right? Because people often have that question when they hear about this is like, oh, well, how could he? How could he?

• 41:35Robert Evans?

  Number one, how could he have survived being shot in the face? And also, how could he have faked something as serious as being shot in the face? Well, because he was shooting himself in a place and with a bullet that was survivable, right?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:45Robert Evans?

  Like, that's the reason I'm bringing that up. Now, the only parts of this initial story that have proven accurate with time is that Pauline Pusser was shot and killed, and Buford was shot, but not killed, right? Like, those are the only two things that definitely happened. Everything else about the story that Buford told to authorities when he was found and nursed back to health has been shown to have been a lie. No one in law enforcement seriously questioned the heroic sheriff's version of events. He started to claim, after he recovered, that informants he had inside the Dixie Mafia and the Stateline Mob had brought him word that Nix and White had orchestrated the shooting. And they also, these informants, brought in the name of like, three other guys who had been the goons who took part in the actual assassination attempt.

• 42:29Robert Evans?

  Now, he never provided any evidence of this, nor did he ever produce an actual live informant who was willing to go on the record. And this is the other really suspect thing that should have been suspicious at the time. No charges are ever filed in Pauline's murder against anyone. Even though the sheriff is saying, "I have an informant telling me it's these guys", no one ever pushes charges. Like, nobody ever... Yeah, which, oh, that seems suspicious, you know?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:57Robert Evans?

  All of this should have like caused suspicion at the time, but it didn't. And it didn't for a couple of interesting reasons. Now, the reality of the story and what we're pretty sure at this point happened is that Buford Pusser murdered his own wife and then covered up the murder by faking an assassination attempt. He shot himself, right after he shot and killed his wife. Now, there were rumors that this had happened immediately afterwards, right? Like it was kind of thing people would whisper about in Adamsville, right? That like, I don't know if I believe Buford's story. I don't know if I think that like this is exactly what happened. But it wasn't the kind of thing like this was always like a matter for either like local gossip

• 43:41Robert Evans?

  or independent investigators. And there were through the years, a couple of independent investigators who got interested in the Buford Pusser myth. One of them published a book trying to like, basically arguing years before the most recent round of investigations that Buford had probably murdered his wife. So there were, there were people pointing this out earlier, but it wasn't until the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agreed to reopen the case in 2022, that things started to really change publicly. Now, the reopening of the cold case of Pauline's Pusser's murder was publicized. And once there started being articles out that like, oh, they're looking into this famous assassination attempt, the TBI received a tip about the murder weapon, which had been

• 44:25Robert Evans?

  sold years later and wound up in the hands of someone who like had tracked it back to its original owner and was willing to give it over to the TBI. So they look at the gun, they analyze the gun, and they conclude based on physical evidence from the crime scene, that Pauline was likely shot and killed outside of the vehicle and then placed inside after death and driven to a second location where Pusser wounded himself and then radioed for help. One investigator concluded, 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.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  I mean, this forensic evidence is incredibly helpful. And broadly speaking, I'm, I'm pretty pro innocent until proven guilty. If a wife dies and the town is saying, I bet the husband did it.

• 45:15Speaker 06

  I don't think this story is true.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Generally, the town being lockstep in their suspicion is like, yeah, he probably did that shit.

• 45:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I think old Buford killed his wife, right?

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Buford comes home with a dead wife and a scratch on his face and everyone's immediately like, oh shit, he finally did it.

• 45:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Well, what? Are you going to call out the guy who murders people who annoy him? The man who shot his grandpa with a 12 gauge for fun? Like, nah.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  The mafia killed my wife. Man.

• 45:48Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Sheriff, that's crazy. That sucks.

• 45:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that definitely sounds real, Sheriff. For sure.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Also feels pretty case closed, man. I'm not gonna ask any questions.

• 45:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Please just stay away from my house.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Look, I got shot too. No, no, totally. That's crazy that you got out of that alive. That mafia must really hate you.

• 46:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the mafia did it, huh?

• 46:15Robert Evans?

  Um, so the case gets reopened by the TBI in 2022 and then in 2024, they feel like they've got enough evidence to justify exhuming Pauline and actually doing like a second autopsy. And upon reexamining her body, they find evidence of several serious injuries consistent with domestic violence, including a pre-death nasal fracture that had been in the process of healing when she was killed. In other words, Buford had broken his wife's nose days before actually murdering her.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  And you'll never guess, a week before the assassination, the mafia punched my wife.

• 46:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they came over right to our house and punched us straight in the nose. Can you believe it? Classic mafia stuff.

• 46:55Robert Evans?

  Uh, now, as we've talked about, there are a couple of reasons why there's not any like serious like at the professional like, like, uh, public level, no one really questions the story at first, right?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:07Robert Evans?

  And first off, the most obvious reason is that Buford is is so grievously wounded in the attack that people just didn't think he could have inflicted the injuries on himself based on, and this is crucial, his description of the injuries he suffered. In the book, Mississippi Moonshine Politics, Janice Tracy describes him as having, quote, "the lower half of his face virtually shot off." Now, Janice is a good writer, and this is a good book, but she's based that line entirely off of Buford's testimony to police, which I quoted earlier, right? Where he's like, "I can't believe I survived. My jaw was basically hanging on to my chest," right? Now, Buford himself relied heavily on the supposed severity of his own injury to explain away lingering questions about what happened that night.

• 47:51Robert Evans?

  In a 1969 interview, he insisted, "I loved my wife. I'd have been pretty damn stupid to blow my own jaw off, and it's here I will remind you," Buford Pusser was a pro wrestler. He had made a living pretending to suffer serious injuries and even faking injuries for the entertainment of a crowd. District Attorney Mark Davidson, who has been intimately involved with the reexamination of the case, told AL.com, "Our theory is he put a pistol inside his cheek and pulled the trigger and created a flesh wound." And this would have been easy for Buford, because as a result of his wrestling career, the left side of his face was numb, because he'd gotten seriously injured on a number of-- it was either that or the car accidents, but he didn't have feeling in that side of his face that he shot himself.

• 48:36Robert Evans?

  And this is a pro tip for all of you listeners out there. If you ever need to fake a grievous injury, shooting through your own cheek creates a hideous-looking wound that is unlikely to kill you, or even all that seriously injure you, right? Like, it's not nothing, but like-- Not that we're giving tips, right, Robert? Look, if you've gotta fake an assassination attempt, shoot yourself in the cheek. Allegedly, no, no, no. That's all I'm saying. Actually, I think it's pretty easy to tell when you fired the bullet from inside of your mouth, but, you know, if you're in a pinch, maybe try shooting yourself in the cheek.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Now, Evans, Evans, is it just to fake assassination attempts? Or if I wanted to scare but not kill-- or if your listener wanted to scare but not kill someone, would you also recommend shooting your enemies in the cheek?

• 49:25Robert Evans?

  Absolutely. You know, that is the official stance of this podcast, of iHeartRadio, and of our sponsors, all of whom are very pro shooting people in the cheek as a bit.

• 49:38Robert Evans?

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• 50:37Robert Evans?

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• 50:47Speaker 06

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• 51:49Robert Evans?

  And we're back.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Tellin' me.

• 51:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, well, Sophie, apparently, we're allowed to say whatever we want about our sponsors, because it has not been a problem for us yet.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Knock on wood.

• 52:01Robert Evans?

  I think, I think it's good, yeah. I'm not sure if my desk is made of real wood. I guess we'll see.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  I believe, I believe it is. I ordered it.

• 52:09Robert Evans?

  Thank you, Sophie.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  I, I feel like I got in trouble for loudly sighing during one of our podcast reads that I'm contractually obligated to do, and then, uh, uh, they no longer came back to us.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  That rules.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Whatever that fucking dog food company that made my dog eat crickets and get diarrhea, I think.

• 52:28Robert Evans?

  Oh, Chewie, is it Chewie?

• 52:30Speaker 01

  No, this was, uh.

• 52:31Robert Evans?

  Give us money, Chewie.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  No, Chewie's, Chewie's all right.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Maeve, I think. Maeve was like, no, no, no, no, no. Uh, I'll think of it. I'll think of it, because I'm not allowed to say it.

• 52:41Robert Evans?

  Here, I'm gonna pull a Buford Pusser. You know, Maeve, send us some money if you want us to cut out this part of the show, where Dan accuses your food of giving his dog diarrhea. You know, we're, we're basically holding you up for protection money.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Jiminy's. It's Jiminy's dog food. It's called Jiminy's.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  That sounds fake. That doesn't sound real.

• 52:59Robert Evans?

  If you want this, if you want this all cut out of the episode, Jiminy's, send us some cash. You know, I can be bought.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  It's easy to remember, because it's, it's called Jiminy's, because the food is made of cricket meat. Yeah, that's right.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, I've heard good things about Maeve.

• 53:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  No, Maeve is good. Jiminy's is the one I'm not allowed to say on our podcast anymore.

• 53:18Robert Evans?

  Well, I will say all of them are good, or bad, depending on who pays me money, you know? That's my promise.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  You know what I have to say to Jiminy's? Everybody just like, what about like, a nice group sigh, just like a, ah, Jiminy's.

• 53:34Robert Evans?

  So, speaking of eating crickets, Buford Pusser probably not eating crickets for a while after he shoots himself in the face. But otherwise, he's more or less okay, right? Um, and I think it's interesting, and this is something, the DA Davidson, District Attorney Mark Davidson, who's one of the guys who's been doing this, like, reopen the cold case, specifically points to his wrestling career as like, well, look, this is a guy with experience selling a fake injury to a crowd. Like, this is exactly in his wheelhouse. Quote, "It was not the debilitating wound many seem to believe it was. It healed up pretty well. People say he got his face bloat off. Nobody believes he did that to himself. That's not accurate."

• 54:16Robert Evans?

  So he just didn't have that serious an injury and he lied about it a lot. He, and, and the media was like, well, it looks like he got hit in the face. Sounds serious to me, you know? And just kind of reported what he was saying as if it was the truth. And that's how the legend grew, which is great. So this all brings the question, why would Buford Pusser murder his wife? Now. Yeah. Right. You do want to ask that, right? Motive matters. Unfortunately, I don't think we're ever going to get a perfect, satisfying answer because of how long ago this was and how dead basically everyone involved was. There are, and I, you know, I talked earlier, there was that, uh, that, uh, this guy Mike Elam,

• 55:00Robert Evans?

  who was a former Benton County sheriff, who started his career in law enforcement as like a huge fan of Buford Pusser. And then basically through trying to like recreate the crime scene, like traveling to where the crimes, he started to notice inconsistencies with Buford's story and what had happened. And he's, he's one of these guys, he like writes a book about it. He self publishes a book in like 2004 about it. So he's one of the early guys trying to make noise about how, what a fraud this dude was. Yeah. And his theory. Pusser truther. An early Pusser truther. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He, he's, I'm trying to find a way to bring Dicky back into it, but it, it didn't work. But yeah, he's a, he's a Pusser truther.

• 55:40Robert Evans?

  And, uh, based on his research, one possibility as to why Pusser had his wife murdered is that he was just a guardian of a variety abusive spouse, right? And maybe, and also he's a giant, so he's huge and very strong. And he gets drunk one night and he kills his wife by accident. Or he kills his wife in a moment of passion and then has to fake the assassination attempt. Right? Like it's a thing he has to come up with kind of suddenly. That's possible.

• 56:08Robert Evans?

  Elam, Elam's like, personal theory is that Buford was actually involved himself in the illegal moonshine trade. And as I've mused earlier in these episodes, was probably taking cuts of a number of different illegal businesses going on in the county. And Elam thinks Buford had Pauline murdered because she knew what he was up to. And maybe they had a fight and she threatened to tell everyone, right? Like, it's kind of unclear. Or maybe she wasn't initially aware and became aware and then he had to do it. We don't really know. Per an article in the Nash Utennesian, quote, "Elam says he believes Buford Pusser killed her to prevent her from speaking to authorities." Quote, "If he Buford Pusser took someone's life to keep his secret, what kind of hero was he?" Elam said. And the answer is, not a hero at all. Not a hero, yeah.

• 56:53Robert Evans?

  But maybe, maybe a generational talent at self-branding. He's very good at that. And probably what happens is he, this is, he has to come up with this fake assassination attempt kind of quickly because he's killed his wife. But once people buy that, he has to lean into this larger-than-life hero figure and he just keeps kind of upping the ante on the stories he's telling because part, in part continuing to get away with it means continuing to sell people on the belief that he is the guy he's claiming to be, right? Right, of course. This larger-than-life hero who's survived all these impossible brushes with death. And if he makes this calculation, right, it pays off perfectly. In the wake of the murder, Buford Pusser's story spread across the country about as fast as a story could

• 57:38Robert Evans?

  spread in those pre-internet days. Countless news articles celebrated the sheriff as the ideal lawman, tough as nails and willing to fight crime even if he had, even if he had to break the rules to do it. Buford was smart enough to know that he had to sell what he'd done by acting as a grieving husband, and so he vowed public vengeance against the men he had accused of the assassination attempt. Carl Tothead White was shot dead the next year, and rumor had it that Pusser had hired an assassin to do the job. Two other men he accused of partaking in the murder, George McGann and Gary McDaniel, were shot dead in Texas the next year. Nix goes to prison at this point, so he doesn't get assassinated, but these, the fact that these three guys who he has publicly named but not charged with any crime die in

• 58:22Robert Evans?

  very quick succession, a lot of people suspect maybe he orchestrated these deaths, right? Maybe he had these guys killed. And it's, it's a sign of like where things are culturally and how much rope we're willing, how much slack we're willing to give cops in this country, that the average assumption of like a normal person in Tennessee is like, well, he definitely had three guys murdered, but it's fine, they killed his wife, so like, I get it, you know, it's cool, you know, sometimes you gotta break the law to uphold the law. Why couldn't he have these guys arrested? I don't know, but it's fine. Yeah.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  It's actually surprising to me if, if he's going to, if we're okay with him bending the law, which it seems like we are, I don't know why he would hire an assassin and why he wouldn't kill those guys himself. Like if people are going to

• 59:18Robert Evans?

  We don't know.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Accept the fact that he hired assassins. And he's gonna steer into this image of the reckless above the law man. I don't know why it's against the rules for him to like kill

• 59:33Robert Evans?

  Kill them himself.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Toadhead White himself. I don't know. I mean, not, not to give him ideas.

• 59:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, but, but that is, that is like, and it's, did he have some, did he kill some of these guys himself? Did he hire people to like, we don't really, and it's also possible, I think unlikely, but not impossible, just given these guys are all criminals who are in a violent business, maybe they just happened to most, three of them died in a year or so after this crime. Not the most shocking thing in the world, right?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  The only stable things that I feel like we can say is that he did pin that sick, childproof teddy bear, and he definitely killed his wife. Those are the ones that I feel most confident.

• 1:00:18Robert Evans?

  So I've quoted several times from the book Mississippi Moonshine Politics by Janice Tracy, because it's a good book in general about a lot of characters at the edge of this story. But Tracy bought into Buford's lie, and I think that it's useful, the way she did is useful, because it does kind of explain how people thought, like, why people bought into this at the time. And this is how Janice explains why none of the people that he charged, that he named as having tried to kill him and killing his wife, actually got charged with crimes. Quote, "This suited Pusser, however, he preferred a more personal revenge." And that is like, the official story that people buy is that like, yeah, he didn't have him charged because he wanted to have him murdered personally. Like, he wanted to do

• 1:01:01Robert Evans?

  this personally. And we're okay with that out of our lawmen in Tennessee. This is fine. We like that. We like that in America. This guy's a hero. And that's the most interesting thing about the story to me. There was always evidence that Buford was sus and a fraud, but Americans in and outside of law enforcement were happy to ignore it because the story version of Buford Pusser was so good, and it matched exactly with the kind of tale that Hollywood had primed audiences to expect. Yeah. In 1971, W.R. Morris wrote a book about Buford titled The 12th of August, which is the day that he and his wife were targeted by that quote unquote assassination attempt. This is the book that was ultimately adapted into 1973's Walking Tall, which became a

• 1:01:45Robert Evans?

  surprise hit and rocketed Buford to the level of a national celebrity. The studio sent him on a tour around the country and Europe to do promotional work for the film. He starts making celebrity friends, he's publicly buddies with Johnny Cash, there's a fucking, uh, what's his name? The Margaritaville guy. Jimmy Buffett. Jimmy Buffett writes a song about him and has a story about Buford, like, basically assaulting him and his friends. So he gets famous, and in fact, he becomes such a public figure in his own right, that after the smash surprise success of the movie Walking Tall, the production company, Bing Crosby Productions, decides to make a sequel, and they ask Buford

• 1:02:26Robert Evans?

  to play himself. They're trying to do an Audie Murphy with him, right? And the new movie would just be titled Buford, and would be based entirely presumably on his exploits as a grief-stricken sheriff out to murder the criminals who killed his wife. Um, it's a shame we never got to see this movie because I am really curious, what direction would they have gone vis a vis all of the murders, you know?

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:51Robert Evans?

  As his fame sets off, Buford takes questions from fans, including one who asked him how people in his home county treated him after he became famous. And the answer he gave to the newspaper in this, when he's doing this Q and A is really interesting to me. "I'd say about 80% of the people in McNary County are proud of me. At least they say they are, but there's a handful that never liked me and still don't. They resisted every step by campaign to clean up the corruption and they have nothing good to say about me now. It's not that these people like crooks. It's that I think they consider me too big for my britches. There's one man in the county, I won't mention names, who's always bad mouthing me. One of the reasons for that, I think, is because when I was sheriff, I was always after him for passing bad checks. But that's life. No matter what you do, you can never make friends with everybody."

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Man, that guy's fucking dead. That guy's fucking dead as hell.

• 1:03:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he probably had that guy killed. Yeah. Beat him to death with a stick. Um, now, it's hard for me to say how much of McNary County thought this guy was legitimately a hero and how many people were aware, like, nah, there's something fucked up at the center of that story. I did find an article on AL.com that notes, quote, "Davidson said during the investigation, he often heard from those who believed Pusser murdered Pauline and wanted him to tell the truth. In McNary County especially, everybody knew that's what happened. Nobody ever believed the walking tall story. They knew he was a bad guy." And you know, Davidson's the DA who's, who's digging up and reopening the case. I don't know if that's totally accurate or totally accurate to how people would have felt back in the seventies, but you will, I have found a couple of other quotes to that extent to

• 1:04:21Robert Evans?

  that basically like, yeah, in his hometown, people kinda knew, but also, he's kind of the biggest thing that ever happened in this county, right? So, at the same time, you have to embrace it because you don't have, there's not any other reason people are heading to McNary for tourism, right? Which is why the water tower in Adamsville has a silhouette of Buford with his trademark big stick. There's a museum for him. And of course, the town historical society, or the county historical society is largely dedicated to him, right? Like, it's, walking tall and walking tall related tourism are still kind of two of the bigger things in that county.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:04:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  I mean,

• 1:04:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  People will add 20 miles onto a road trip to see a giant chair. Just imagine what they'll do for a big fucking massive mountain of a sheriff.

• 1:05:04Robert Evans?

  I beat people with a stick in this county. Let's go see the water tower, right? Buford spent the rest of his life dining out on the lie that he told to cover up for murdering his wife. He spent his last years jet setting around the world and making a lot of money. When he died, he was worth an estimated $1 million, which is a lot more money back then, and more money than a guy who was briefly sheriff for six years.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Robert Evans?

  Would have accumulated, honestly, right?

• 1:05:33Robert Evans?

  He did fail to win reelection in 1970, which is interesting to me. So that is kind of more evidence for the people, local people knew this guy was full of shit. But that was before Walking Tall came out. So who knows how his law enforcement career would have gone if he tried to run for election after becoming a celebrity? Had he lived longer, he also might have slipped up or behaved in such a way as to draw more attention back to that alleged assassination attempt. I have trouble imagining this guy living a lot longer and not killing someone else.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:02Robert Evans?

  But he doesn't get the chance. At the height of his fame, right after signing an agreement to play himself in the sequel to Walking Tall, he's driving back from Memphis to Adamsville and he crashes his sports car and dies on August 21st, 1974. He's in his like mid 30s. And that's the Buford Pusser story.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Man, crashing his sports car. What a

• 1:06:25Robert Evans?

  cool way to die.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  What an awesome way for a murderer to die.

• 1:06:30Robert Evans?

  It is very appropriate for this guy being the kind of dude he is that's like, yep, sports car crash right at the end. Yeah, that's, that's how this story ends. Yeah.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  That's so lame. The fucking fake grieving sheriff who's on his way to Hollywood and buys a sports car. And then he dies and the entire town is like,

• 1:06:49Robert Evans?

  Honestly dodged a bullet there.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  That's the best.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  What about in cool if he got killed by a big stick?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Just impaled by a stick.

• 1:06:58Robert Evans?

  I mean, maybe he did. Maybe he crashed into a tree, Sophie. That's my headcanon. Impaled by a stick after crashing his car into a tree.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Or like the, the, the cane of that sickly bear all grown up.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. That works too.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Just, just glad that this guy's dead.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. That's the good part is he does die and he does die very early, right?

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  There, there are a couple of things that are, I mean, there, there's a lot of tragedy in this story. The, the fact that he for sure murdered his wife enough that like everyone was talking about it. And his daughter still becomes his biggest evangelist. That's an added layer of tragedy.

• 1:07:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Like, like when I, in the beginning, in the first episode, when I, I, I kind of understood her hero worship. Because you, if you have the opportunity to, to write your dad's story. And you want to embellish a bit and like take all of his tall tales, his gospel. I, there's something endearing about that, but she must have also known the many rumors and the open secret that he for sure murdered her mother.

• 1:08:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  And, and decided to ignore that or, or, or not buy into it. And that's like, there's, there's, I don't know, maybe that's Stockholm or brainwashing or, or, or whatever else. But that like, that makes it much less endearing and charming and more tragic for her in my mind.

• 1:08:25Robert Evans?

  I would agree. And there's also, I mean, there's also the darker question of like, I mean, wish, or was this an act for her too? And was she just like, look, there's a lot of money in being Buford Pusser's family. That walking tall money keeps coming in, you know? Uh, I don't know. I think that's probably less likely than just this is a daughter who hero worshipped her dad, who died very early.

• 1:08:49Robert Evans?

  But yeah, uh, it is, it, it, it did give me a lot of fun detail on growing up in the fifties, which sounded like a fucking nightmare.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  So easy to do crime, but.

• 1:08:59Robert Evans?

  So easy to shoot people.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Much more dangerous.

• 1:09:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Especially if you were a cop.

• 1:09:04Robert Evans?

  Especially if you were a cop. So.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. If you wanted to do crime, then and now.

• 1:09:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Cop is the way to go.

• 1:09:11Robert Evans?

  Being a cop, number one. You can get away with prank shooting your grandpa with a shotgun if you're a cop.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Apparently.

• 1:09:17Robert Evans?

  Mm hmm. So, yeah.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  It's great. It's great training for, for, for really pranking your wife somewhere down the line.

• 1:09:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Oh, he sure got Pauline good. She didn't see that coming at all. Prank the whole town. Classic Buford Bussard prank, murdering his wife and staging it as an assassination attempt by the mob. Like, that's the funny thing. I came in here with a lot more detail on these different, like, organized criminal groups. And then, as I, the more research I did, the more I was like, oh, these guys barely did anything to him. Like, maybe they had him stabbed. Maybe he got in some fights, but he could have faked a lot more of that, like.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, this mafia was running four successful businesses and maybe they were cutting corners. Well, they had to pay off the cops. They needed to cover all those financial losses.

• 1:10:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, I don't know. Uh, it's, it's, there's a fun quote from the DA that I, Davidson, that I've quoted from a few times where he's like, I don't know, we probably won't re-investigate every shooting he was involved in, but you could, like, maybe we should.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  We're not gonna reopen it because, like, at this point.

• 1:10:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  What do you think? What's it gonna be?

• 1:10:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah. What are we gonna get out of reopening it? Like, clearing the name of Luis Hathcock?

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Robert Evans?

  The gangster who also murdered people? Um, I don't know. Dan, you got anything to plug here at the end of the episode? How you feeling?

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Uh, I feel good. I, I liked the story. It's, it's, uh, you know, murder is bad, hold for applause. But, uh, I like those, those bastards more than, like.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Endangering children bastards and, and like creating systemic wrongs that still plague our society today. So I appreciate that it was like kind of a standalone bastard. That's pretty fun.

• 1:11:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Thanks for giving me that. Otherwise, pluggables, I write for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. You can find that on HBO Max, the one to watch, or on YouTube. We release our episodes there. Podcast that I do is Quick Question. We answer writer questions and talk about bullshit. And you can find me on Blue Sky. It's probably Daniel O'Brien on Blue Sky. I'm not really sure.

• 1:11:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  I hate, I hate to ask you to Google it, but.

• 1:11:43Robert Evans?

  Give up.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  But yeah.

• 1:11:46Robert Evans?

  Um, well, everybody, this has been Behind the Bastards. Please check out Dan's podcast, Quick Question, and Last Week Tonight. And more than anything, you know, go shoot your grandfather with a shotgun.

• 1:11:58Speaker 07

  No, no.

• 1:11:58Robert Evans?

  Okay, no, we don't, we shouldn't do that. Can't do that. Don't shoot anybody with a shotgun.

• 1:12:04Speaker 07

  Don't take advice from Robert Evans.

• 1:12:06Robert Evans?

  Don't do pranks. Can we, maybe we can just come, come down on that. Bad idea.

• 1:12:10Speaker 07

  Pranks, pranks bad.

• 1:12:12Robert Evans?

  And this is like really funny.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Speaker 07

  Yeah. Obviously.

• 1:12:20Speaker 07

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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