A Man to Be Afraid Of

Sheriff Buford Pusser said he and his wife had come under gunfire early one morning on a country road - leading to her death. He told one reporter, “I'm pretty sure about who did it, and I'm pretty sure about where he is." Jason Guerrasio's article about Buford Pusser is called ⁠"A Bullet, A Legend, A Lie."⁠ Oakley Dean Baldwin's book is called "Sheriff Buford Pusser: Final Chapter." Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:57Speaker 02

  Early in the morning on August 12th, 1967, the sheriff of McNary County, Tennessee, Buford Pusser, said he got a strange phone call.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Related to something that was happening around the Tennessee Mississippi line.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  He said the caller told him that he'd, quote, "find something interesting out on New Hope Road."

• 1:18Speaker 03

  And his wife, Pauline, was very concerned and decided that she was going to ride along with Buford to this call.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Writer Jason Garassio.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  So they get in the car and drive, while it's still dark out, down this windy, gravelly road. And about halfway there, a car out of nowhere comes out and begins shooting at them.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Buford Pusser later said, "It sounded like a bunch of machine guns had opened up." His wife, Pauline, was shot. Buford Pusser said he quickly sped away with his wife laying in his lap.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Buford drives for a little farther, pulls it aside, checks his wife, see what kind of injury she has. And then the car reappears and completely just shoots up the entire car.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Pauline was shot again, and Buford was also hit. Buford later told investigators that he was looking at Pauline when she was shot in the forehead. He was shot in the chin.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Buford radioed for help and drove for several miles down the road. Police from a nearby town soon arrived. Pauline Pusser died at the scene. She was 36. Buford Pusser, who was 29, was seriously injured.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  When police showed up, they saw him completely bloodied, barely able to talk, just trying to kind of hold his jaw together, and then he was rushed to the hospital.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Buford Pusser had surgery in Memphis. During his stay in the hospital, he was put in a secret room with two sheriff's deputies and two police officers assigned to protect him. The governor of Tennessee offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. While he was still in the hospital recovering, Pauline Pusser's funeral was held in Adamsville, where the couple lived. A newspaper reported that the church was full. More than 200 people came. They wrote, quote, "Every wall was banked with flowers." Less than a month after the attack, Sheriff Buford Pusser was back at work.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  When reporters interviewed him about the ambush that had killed his wife, he told them, "I'm pretty sure about who did it, and I'm pretty sure about where he is." I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Buford Pusser was elected sheriff of McNary County in 1964. He ran against the incumbent sheriff, who died in a car accident just a week before the election. Buford won by a few hundred votes. He was the youngest sheriff to be elected in Tennessee history. He was 26.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  The way it was told to me by many was that if you were friends with him, he was a best friend. If you weren't, he was your greatest enemy.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Buford Pusser grew up in Adamsville in McNary County, a rural area about 100 miles east of Memphis. His father was the local police chief. Buford was tall and athletic. He played football and basketball in school. When he graduated from high school, he enlisted in the Marines, but quickly was discharged due to asthma. Eventually Buford left Tennessee and went to Chicago, where he attended mortuary school, worked at a factory, and started a professional wrestling career.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  He was known as Buford the Bull. I mean, this is a guy that, you know, once he grew up was six foot six, 250-plus pounds, a very imposing figure. So he was perfect for the wrestling ring. And that's where he met Pauline.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Pauline Mullins was a divorced mother of three. She was six years older than Buford. They got married in Chicago in December of 1959 and moved back to Adamsville a few years later. Buford Pusser was elected police chief of Adamsville after his father stepped down. And then Buford was elected sheriff of McNary County.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  McNary County, Tennessee, back then, even now, is a beautiful region, but a very poor region of the country. And if you weren't working at a factory or farming, even if you were doing that, you more than likely had a moonshine still in your backyard. And for most in that time, you just looked away. It was something just to pass the time or make some extra money. Once Buford became sheriff, he really, that was his goal, was to break up all these illegal moonshine stills.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Tennessee enacted the nation's first prohibition law in 1838, making it a misdemeanor to sell alcohol in bars and stores. Even after the national ban on alcohol ended in 1933, Tennessee stayed completely dry for several more years. The state eventually allowed individual counties and cities to vote on whether they wanted to allow sales of alcohol. By the mid 1960s, more than half of the population of Tennessee still lived in dry areas, including McNary County.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  You know, Buford, going back to his wrestling days, knew how to self-promote. I think he wanted more than what his father had, what his friends had. He had ambitions to be someone that, if you saw him out on the street, you would go, wow, hey, that's Buford Pusser. So I think he wanted to have a persona that was as big as him physically. So what better way to get famous but to break up the most notorious things that were going on in his backyard?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Buford Pusser quickly gained a reputation for going after bootleggers, moonshine stills, and illegal alcohol sales. In a raid in December of 1964, he seized almost 3,000 bottles of Kentucky whiskey with the help of state agents. He told reporters that it was the largest amount of whiskey ever seized in the county. He also raided bars and motels near the Mississippi-Tennessee state line, known for gambling and illegal alcohol sales, including one called the Shamrock Motel and Restaurant.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  It was a rough place. Everybody will tell you. You know, there were definitely fights there. There was a lot of heavy drinking.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  The Shamrock Motel and Restaurant was owned by Louise Hathcock, who had shot and killed her ex-husband. She claimed self-defense.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  She was known to be part of a loosely organized crime syndicate known as the State Line Mob.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Depending on what stories you believe, it could trace all the way back to the mafia up east. But their main thing was doing moonshine and prostitution. State Line Mob definitely were Buford's main enemies.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  In 1966, tourists staying at the Shamrock Motel filed a police report after they said a purse containing $125 had gone missing.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Sheriff Pusser showed up at the establishment because the couple had made a complaint. And he had already had interactions in the past with Louise. And he went there. He had a conversation with Louise in a back room, just the two of them. And according to Buford, Louise pulled out a gun, shot at him, missed. Buford pivoted, turned, and shot her and killed her.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Buford said that Louise's bullet had, quote, "whizzed by my ear." He said he dropped to the floor and fired three shots, hitting her in the chest, face, and neck. Did he face any charges?

• 10:08Speaker 03

  He was found not guilty by a grand jury. They came to an agreement that it was in self-defense.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  The year after Buford Pusser shot and killed Louise Hathcock, Buford's wife, Pauline, was murdered. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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• 12:56Speaker 02

  Sheriff Buford Pusser said he believed that the early morning attack that killed his wife was, quote, "linked to his crackdown on criminal activity at the Tennessee-Mississippi border." He told reporters that he was sure the shooters were after him, not his wife.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  His assumption was that it was someone involved with the State Line mob. He never really gave any specific names. It was more just, "They finally got me."

• 13:28Speaker 02

  The local district attorney, who was leading the investigation, said he believed that hired assassins were behind the shooting. The chief of the Tennessee Bureau of Criminal Identification told reporters, "We're not overlooking anything." A ballistics expert who examined the car that Buford and Pauline had been riding in said that the bullets that killed Pauline and wounded Buford were from a 30-caliber rifle. The investigation went on for years.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  Buford even took part in some points of the investigation, strangely enough. There were a few specific people in the State Line mob. One individual named Toehead White, who was in jail at the time of the ambush, that they went and questioned. They questioned his girlfriend. And there are transcripts now that show the girlfriend calling up Toehead going, "Why are the police trying to interview me about this ambush?" So there were specific people that Buford wanted investigated, but those things all led to dead ends. They investigated for about 10 years, even going as far as reaching out to J. Edgar

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Hoover in the offices of the FBI to run ballistic tests on bullets that they had found. But eventually, it became a cold case. No one was ever charged. No murder weapon was ever found.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  In September of 1967, a month after Pauline's death, the New York Daily News featured Buford Pusser in a two-page spread. They wrote that during his time as sheriff, he was responsible for destroying more than 30 stills, seizing more than 15,000 gallons of whiskey, and bringing three dozen moonshiners and bootleggers to justice. The article also talked about the many times that criminals had tried to kill him. They wrote that he had been shot, stabbed, and dragged down the road by a car. One deputy said Buford Pusser was jumped by six men while he was unarmed, adding, "The sheriff took three of them to the hospital and three of them to jail."

• 15:41Speaker 02

  The article said Buford was becoming a legend in West Tennessee. A Tennessee singer named Eddie Bond recorded a song about Buford. Eddie Bond went on to write a whole album of songs about him, including one called "Buford Pusser Goes Bear Hunting with a Switch." That same year, Buford Pusser shot and killed a man after he was called to a disturbance at his home on Christmas Day. He said the man shot at him first. One headline after the shooting read, "Sheriff Buford Pusser Adds to Legend."

• 16:21Speaker 02

  CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd came to McNary County to interview Buford. And then, in 1971, a writer named W.R. Morris published a biography of him called "The 12th of August."

• 16:35Speaker 03

  And then eventually that led to Hollywood getting hold of the story. Of all people, it's Bing Crosby and his production company who catches wind of the Pusser story and decides to bring it to the big screen. And this is a film that, you know, a little, small drama, not made for a lot of money. And... At its peak, when it came out in theaters, it was making more money in theaters, especially in the South, than The Godfather was, which at the time was still a sensation and had just won the Oscar for Best Picture.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  The movie was called Walking Tall. Buford Pusser was played by actor Joe Don Baker.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  I was elected sheriff on one issue that I'd bust every joint in the whole county. We're gonna start tomorrow. First off, I don't want any car, truck, or driver that even looks like a moonshiner to move on our roads.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Ads for the movie said it was, quote, "The powerful and true story of Sheriff Buford Pusser, who couldn't be bought and couldn't be killed." Buford said the movie was about 80% true. In the movie, Buford Pusser carries a big stick, which he uses to break up moonshine stills and beat people. During press appearances, he would autograph sticks for fans. One newspaper said the film was one of the most violent, yet most moving, films of the season.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  One review of the movie said, "Walking Tall deserves credit for creating mostly believable characters who are bigger than life. Comic book dig." The movie cost $500,000 to produce and made more than $40 million worldwide.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  You know, generations since, people joined law enforcement because of what they saw on screen.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  By the time the movie came out in 1973, Buford was no longer the sheriff of McNary County. He lost when he tried to run for a fourth term in 1972. In August of 1974, it was announced that Buford would play himself in a sequel to the Walking Tall movie. He told a reporter at a press conference in Memphis, "The idea scares me some."

• 19:05Speaker 03

  He drove back home and was at a fair and got in his car, his Corvette that he had just bought, and he sped down the highway and he got into a fiery wreck and died.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Some people speculated that Buford's enemies had tampered with his car. But police investigating said they could find no evidence of foul play. One newspaper wrote, "Seven times while he was sheriff, attempts were made on his life. He died, a victim of his love for speed." After his death in 1974, what did you hear from people in McNary County about his death?

• 19:58Speaker 05

  I would say a certain amount of relief.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Kami Wilson is a former investigative reporter who grew up in Mississippi, across the state line from McNary County.

• 20:13Speaker 05

  Everybody knew about Pusser. He was brutal. He would attack people. And he was known as a violent person. What was shocking was how much he was glorified in the movie.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  In 1973, the year before Buford Pusser died, Kami Wilson was working at a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio. Walking Tall was playing in the local theaters.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  At that time, that was in the county in Ohio where I was working. That was the most watched movie that they had ever had. So, one day, my editor came back from lunch and came over to my desk and said, "Are you from the county near McNary County, Tennessee?" And I said, "Yes, I'm from Alcorn County, which is just over the line." And he said, "Well, I just watched Walking Tall. What do you think of that movie?" And I said, "Well, I think it's a fraud." And he said, "Well, I thought it was too, so I'm going to send you down there, and I

• 21:27Speaker 05

  want you to do a story for us."

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Kami Wilson went down to McNary County to talk with people about what they knew. She talked with the mayor of Selmer, the county's seat, who had previously said that the plot of Walking Tall, quote, "has little, if any, resemblance to the truth."

• 21:48Speaker 02

  She also talked with the sheriff of McNary County at that time, Clifford Coleman, who Buford lost to in 1972.

• 21:56Speaker 05

  Sheriff Coleman ran on the slogan, "If your son had to be arrested, would you want it to be done by me or by Pusser?" And he won the election. So, anyway, he was sheriff at the time. And he had told me that Pusser would pull off the road at a fast food restaurant and wait to see if I drove by. And at that time, it was well-known that civil rights workers, anybody that you disliked, had a certain danger of getting run off the road if somebody didn't like your stories

• 22:39Speaker 05

  or your activities. So I was trying to avoid that. So I always went a different route.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  So you thought that Pusser himself might hurt you?

• 22:56Speaker 05

  Potentially. You know, at the time, people would go down there and they would interview him and they would just swallow whatever he said. So he knew that I was looking for the real story.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Kami Wilson said she talked with local club owners, one of whom told her they had regularly paid Buford Pusser bribes. People also told her that Louise Hathcock had also paid bribes to the county before being shot and killed. In the movie version of his story, Buford Pusser gets robbed and beaten up at a state line club before becoming sheriff and then goes back to the club and gets revenge, beating people up with his stick and getting his money back. He's put on trial and tells the courtroom he stood up for himself to show, quote, "There's still little law and order left." He's found not guilty by the jury.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Kami Wilson learned that in reality, something different had happened. In 1960, while he was still living in Chicago, Buford had gone to a state line club seeking revenge for an earlier incident. He beat up a man named W. O. Hathcock, a relative of Louise Hathcock, who was so badly injured that he was in the hospital for two weeks. Buford was charged with armed robbery. But when he was put on trial, he said he wasn't there that night. Pauline testified that he was in Illinois at the time, and Buford produced a punch time card from his factory job in Chicago. He was found not guilty.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  He later said he lied.

• 24:41Speaker 05

  He readily admitted that he and his friends had gone to the club and they had beaten up Hathcock and they had taken the money that he had lost. He quibbled about the amount of the money. He said that he didn't take as much as they said he took.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Kami Wilson also talked with one of Buford Pusser's former deputies about the many times Buford had reported being attacked or hurt on the job.

• 25:15Speaker 05

  He said that he was just beaten up in a lot of drunken brawls and that he was often carved up in some of those drunken brawls, that it didn't have anything to do with his activities as sheriff.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  So he was drinking himself?

• 25:36Speaker 05

  Oh, very much so. And in fact, I interviewed his stepdaughter, who talked about how he would bring home cases of liquor and put them under the bed. And, you know, if he was supposed to be sheriff, why was he keeping so much of the illegal liquor for himself?

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Buford Pusser's stepdaughter, Diane, also talked with Kami Wilson about her mother's death.

• 26:07Speaker 05

  His stepdaughter told me that she thought he had killed her mother. And she even supplied what she thought was a motive that she was planning to leave Pusser. The stepdaughter told me.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Diane told Kami Wilson that Buford Pusser was, quote, "a man to be afraid of." Kami says Diane was not the only person who told her they thought Buford had killed his wife.

• 26:38Speaker 05

  A lot of people did. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody did, but that was the common knowledge.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  When she got back to Ohio, Kami Wilson called up Buford Pusser for an interview.

• 26:51Speaker 05

  I asked him about all the rumors that he had shot his wife. I asked him if he had been having affairs, and he, of course, denied it. And I asked him about taking bribes, and I told him that I had an affidavit from a club owner. And I asked him about his killing of Louise Hathcock.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  How did he react when you asked him those questions?

• 27:23Speaker 05

  With anger, but he was not surprised. You know, it wasn't like it was a call out of the blue. He knew that I had been asking people questions and that I had been gathering affidavits and interviewing a number of people.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  He denied everything?

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  The headline of Kami's article was "The Sheriff Walked Tall and Violently." A year after Kami Wilson published her first article, she published another one shortly after Buford Pusser's death. "One thing is sure," she wrote, "most citizens of McNary are not grieving." She also quoted a former sheriff from across the state line in Mississippi, who told her before Buford Pusser's death, "As far as I'm concerned, Pusser is just a thug."

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Did you think that maybe something might change in the investigation into Pauline's death after you wrote those articles?

• 28:35Speaker 05

  I would have hoped so, but it was a matter of money. I mean, once the movie came out, people would come to the county to see what had been going on there. And then when he was killed, then people began to really make money from the fact that people would come, they would stay in the local motels, people started giving them tours, they even created a Buford Pusser Museum. So people loved the story. It was a complete fabrication, but they loved the story.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  We'll be right back.

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• 31:40Speaker 02

  On Thursday, February 8, 2024, 50 years after Buford Pusser's death, a team from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation went to the cemetery in Adamsville, Tennessee. They were there to exhume the body of Pauline Pusser.

• 31:56Speaker 06

  I knew that there was going to be something there that was going to tell the true story. It was going to give Pauline a voice from the grave.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Oakley Dean Baldwin is a former sheriff's deputy from Wake County, North Carolina. He's also a distant relative of Pauline Pusser.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  I never met Pauline. Of course, I was only 12 years old when she was murdered. But my Uncle Johnny, who was our family historian, I want to say in about the time the movies came out, maybe '73, he was telling me at a family reunion that we had a distant cousin who was murdered while she was riding with her husband.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Oakley Dean Baldwin started looking into Pauline's story in 2014. He'd retired and was interested in learning more about his family tree.

• 32:51Speaker 06

  At the start, I had no clue, other than what I had heard from the law enforcement circles, what Buford Pusser had told the TBI, that's the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. So at the start, I was, you know, I believed that, you know, they were ambushed.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Oakley Dean Baldwin read the 1960s case files, which detailed what Buford had said happened on the night of Pauline's murder, and he started gathering other pieces of evidence.

• 33:23Speaker 06

  Photographs of the crime scene, witness statements from people, things were not matching up.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  At the same time, another person states away in Arkansas was also looking into the case, a former deputy sheriff named Mike Elam.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Mike was someone who loved Buford Pusser, loved the movie, loved the book.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Writer Jason Garcia interviewed Mike Elam, who told him that as he started looking into Buford Pusser's story more, he got interested in the death of club owner Louise Hathcock, who Buford shot and killed in 1966.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  But then he started doing some digging, and he found Louise Hathcock's autopsy. And inside that autopsy, it showed that her wounds were not to the front of her, they were to the back, two shots in the back, one shot in the back of the head. That is very different than what Buford said happened in that room, when supposedly she pulled a gun on him.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Mike Elam also found that Louise Hathcock's autopsy report was never shown to the grand jury that chose not to indict Buford Pusser for her murder.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  When Pauline was murdered the year after Louise Hathcock's death, there was no autopsy performed at all.

• 34:53Speaker 06

  You had this high-profile sheriff with a 36-year-old wife who's murdered from an ambush that he's saying was from the mob. And it didn't make any sense that they didn't do an autopsy on her.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  There were other things about Pauline's murder that didn't make sense to Mike Elam or Oakley Dean Baldwin either.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  What they both found out independently, that was a major red flag to both of these people who had careers in law enforcement, was that there was too much blood on the outside of the car.

• 35:26Speaker 06

  That showed me that there was somebody violently injured on the outside of the car. And Buford Pusser's statement was that Pauline and himself, they were both shot inside the car only.

• 35:44Speaker 06

  Either someone was hit with a club or shot in front of that car on the outside.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Then there was also Buford's statement about how fast they were going on New Hope Road, how far away the other car was, how far away he went the second time he pulled over to check on Pauline.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  All these things, when Mike Elam actually went and drove the whole route, he did exactly what Buford said he did that night. None of it added up. None of it made sense.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Mike Elam and Oakley Dean Baldwin both published books about their findings. And then in 2022, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation decided to reopen the investigation into Pauline's murder.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  And the first thing they had to do, because it wasn't done 50-some years before, was to give Pauline an autopsy.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  Good morning. Thank you all for being here. I'm Mark Davidson. I'm the District Attorney General for the 25th Judicial District.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  In August 2025, a press conference was held about Pauline's murder.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Justice for Pauline has been a long time coming, and thanks to all the hard work put in by so many, we're finally able to announce to Pauline's surviving family and to the public that we believe we are as close as possible to justice.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  District Attorney Mark Davidson said the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation believed there were inconsistencies in what Buford Pusser had told law enforcement about Pauline's death.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Including physical, medical, forensic, ballistic, and reenactment evidence that contradicts his version of events.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  One of those pieces of evidence was Pauline Pusser's autopsy, conducted in 2024.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  That autopsy reveals that her gunshot wound is in the back of her head, which completely just throws away Buford's statement that he's looking right at her when she's shot in the forehead. The autopsy also reveals that Pauline had bruising in her nasal passage, which was thought to be that she had suffered domestic violence before her death.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  The TBI's investigative report about Pauline's murder, which was more than 1,000 pages long, also included statements from Buford Pusser's chief deputy that he had made almost a decade after Pauline died.

• 38:39Speaker 06

  He knew that Buford Pusser had beaten Pauline up just days before she was murdered. And another lady, she worked with Pauline, and she saw Pauline with black eyes and bruises on her arms where she had been beaten up.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  His former deputy also said that shortly before her death, Pauline had gone to the local district attorney for help with getting a divorce.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Investigators from the TBI spoke with two witnesses, who said they heard Pauline and Buford arguing the night before Pauline's death, about his involvement with a woman named Pearl Wade. Pauline allegedly shouted that she would ruin Buford, and would turn him in for taking bribes from businesses. Later that night, Buford was also seen trying to talk with a woman named Anne Henderson, who later confirmed that she'd also been having an affair with him.

• 39:37Speaker 06

  He was in a rage, trying to get in the door. And Buford was yelling, "Let me in. I'm gonna die tonight. You'll be putting flowers on my grave." So she runs out of the house, and they get into a big scuffle. And he grabs her by the arm, but she manages to get away and goes back in the house. And he leaves, and he's spinning his tires. And two hours later, or maybe an hour later, we're not exactly sure, but that window of opportunity, Pauline's murdered.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  A medical examiner also looked at photos of Buford Pusser's facial wounds, and concluded that he was shot at close range, rather than from a distance, as he had claimed. They concluded that his wound was likely self-inflicted. At the press conference, District Attorney Mark Davidson said that they now believed that Pauline had most likely been shot outside of the car, and then placed inside the car. They believed the crime scene had been staged. He said, quote, "There is probable cause to believe that Pauline's death was not an accident, but an act of intimate deliberate violence."

• 40:57Speaker 06

  If Buford Pusser was alive today, they felt they had enough probable cause to charge him or indict him with the murder of Pauline.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  When this all came out in Adamsville, you went there, you talked to people in town. What was the reaction? Was this a big deal in town?

• 41:20Speaker 03

  So when you go to Adamsville, Tennessee, which is in McNary County, which is where Buford lived and where he patrolled, the legend of Buford Pusser is everywhere. When you drive up to the town line, there's a giant sign that says, "Welcome to Adamsville, home of Buford Pusser," with a silhouette of the man holding his trusty stick that he supposedly fought crime with. There's a giant water tower with that silhouette figure on it.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  His home has turned into a museum. Everything in Adamsville is about Buford Pusser. And so there were certainly people in town who, once the DA had their press conference, had a very knee-jerk reaction. Take Pusser off the signs that welcome you into the town, take him off the water tower, you know, what are we going to do with the museum now? But there are certainly people that love the man there.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  After the report came out, people in Adamsville had a town hall meeting to talk about what to do next. Buford Pusser's granddaughter, Madison Bush, said, "This isn't over yet." One man, who said he became a law enforcement officer because of Buford Pusser, said that closing the Buford Pusser Museum would be letting this new day and age of the internet win. A man named Steve Swett spoke.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  And I think it's terribly sad that they did this to a man who couldn't defend himself. Amen. It's not a good idea. Amen.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  One person said, "I believe in America. People are innocent until proven guilty." The Buford Pusser Museum remains open. The top of their website reads, "What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. It doesn't matter who you are." It's a quote attributed to Buford Pusser.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  The town decided that they weren't going to change anything and they were still going to celebrate Buford Pusser.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  So the legend lives on.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  The legend absolutely still lives on.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  The annual Buford Pusser Festival was held last month in Adamsville.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sajikko, Lilly Clark, and Lena Silson. This episode was fact-checked by Katie Cedarborg. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get

• 45:11Speaker 02

  bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spoor, talking about everything from how we make our episodes, to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at This is Criminal, and Instagram and TikTok at criminal_podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. ... or the county that he loved to give his life. But it's a dirty rotten world that took his wife. It's a dirty rotten world that took his wife.