Revisionist History - Presenting Gone South

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Here's an episode from a podcast that you may enjoy. Presenting Gone South. This episode looks at the life and legacy of Buford Pusser, an iconic American law enforcement figure. The film "Walking Tall," starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, is based on Pusser's life as a cop. But recent revelations are turning Pusser's legacy on its head.  Gone South, an Audacy original podcast, is available now on the free Audacy app and wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here. We'll be back with new Revisionist History episodes in January. But today we're going to bring you something a bit different. It's an episode of the podcast Gone South. Each week, writer and host Jed Lipinski shares a different story about a fascinating crime that took place below the Mason-Dixon line.

Often told from the perspective of the perpetrator, the investigator, or both, Gone South explores not only the criminal mind, but also the distinctive culture and rich characters of the South. This episode is called The Real Buford Pusser, Part 1. It chronicles the life of the iconic Tennessee sheriff who inspired several books, songs, and a half a dozen movies, including the 2004 remake Walking Tall, starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson. But recent findings suggesting Pusser played a role in his wife Pauline's death have called his legacy into question.

Here's the episode. Earlier this year, a listener sent us a link to an article in the Tennessean newspaper. The article was about the decision to exhume the body of a woman named Pauline Pusser. New information tonight, nearly 60 years after a sheriff's wife was shot and killed, the TBI exhumed her body and a deeper investigation into her death begins. Pauline was the wife of Buford Pusser, the legendary Tennessee sheriff whose life story became the basis for a best-selling book and a handful of Hollywood movies, most

notably Walking Tall. In August 1967, Pauline was fatally shot in an ambush that left Buford seriously injured. She was 33 years old and a mother of three. Authorities never figured out who was behind the ambush. Her death has remained unsolved for over 56 years. But according to the article, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, or TBI, had recently gotten a tip that caused them to reopen the case. To their surprise, they discovered that an autopsy had never been performed on Pauline. By exhuming her body, the TBI said in a statement,

they intended to answer, quote, critical questions and provide crucial information that could help them identify who was behind Pauline's death. I was familiar with the story of Buford Pusser and the ambush that killed his wife. We'd mentioned it in season two about the Dixie Mafia. Buford had publicly blamed Kirksey Nix, the Dixie Mafia's supposed leader, for orchestrating the attack.

When I asked Kirksey about it, he'd vehemently denied being involved. In fact, he said, officials had brought Buford to an Oklahoma prison to try and identify him, but Buford couldn't do it. I had the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation reports where they brought him out to Oklahoma and he couldn't pick me out. They arranged for him to hear my voice and he couldn't pick me out. As Kirksey put it, Buford was a criminal himself.

He said the sheriff had taken bribes from a gangster associate of his in Mississippi. Carl gave him $12,000 when he ran for office. He gave him $3,000 for every month he was in office. He was on the take. He was a dirty cop and he was a killer cop. Let him sue me for that. Kirksey was never charged with Pauline's murder

and neither was anyone else. It was a 56-year-old mystery, one of the most famous cold cases in Tennessee history, and it looked like the TBI was on the verge of a breakthrough, but they weren't talking, and the article left a lot of questions unanswered, like why had an autopsy never been performed on Pauline Pusser, and why had the TBI

only just discovered this fact? Also, what was the tip that caused them to reopen the case, and who was the tipster? As I look deeper into the story, though, I realize that this wasn't really an investigation into the death of Pauline Pusser. It was an investigation into the life of Buford Pusser. Buford was a hero to a generation of Americans,

a larger-than-life figure who inspired people to stand up to injustice. But now, the TBI was raising questions that would threaten that legacy. I'm Jed Lapinski. This is Gone South. The story of Buford Pusser reads a bit like a fable from the American South. To tell it, we're gonna start with Dwayne Johnson, otherwise known as The Rock, the star of the Fast and Furious franchise, the voice of Maui in Moana, one of the highest

paid actors in Hollywood. But in the early 2000s, The Rock's film career was still uncertain. He was already a global wrestling sensation, but Hollywood had a long-standing stigma against pro wrestlers who tried to cross over. Hulk Hogan tried to do it in the 80s and 90s, but most of his films flopped. His 1996 film, Santa with Muscles,

has been called one of the worst movies ever made. The Rock's film career began with fantasy roles in The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King, but it was his leading role in the 2004 film Walking Tall that solidified his status as an action star. I was justified in what I did. And if you acquit me of these charges, then I'm gonna run for sheriff. Mr. Vaughn.

And if elected, I'm gonna fix this town. Order! In the film, The Rock plays a retired special forces agent who returns to his hometown to find it awash in corruption. He decides to run for sheriff and launches a one-man crusade to clean up the town. The movie poster shows him striding down a country road, armed only with a two-by-four.

Younger viewers may not have realized Walking Tall was a remake of the 1973 hit movie of the same name. Both were based on the real-life story of Buford Pusser. If you're under 40 and live outside Tennessee, you've probably never heard of Buford. But in the 60s and 70s, he was a big deal. Pusser was an almost mythical figure in the South. He died in a fiery car crash in 1974 at 36.

But in just over a decade in law enforcement, he managed to inspire a legend akin to that of Wild West lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok. The folklore surrounding Buford Pusser can make it hard to separate fact from fiction. So here are some facts. Pusser was born on a sharecropper's farm in Adamsville, Tennessee. He was 6'6 and 2'50 by high school and got a scholarship to play college football. He enlisted in the Marines instead but was given a medical discharge for asthma. From there he bounced around. He got a job as a die cutter for a paper bag company in Chicago. He went to mortuary school at night.

For extra money, he wrestled professionally on weekends under the name Buford the Bull. It was after a match that he met his future wife, Pauline Mullins. Pauline was a petite blonde from Virginia, divorced with two young kids. They married soon after and moved back to Buford's hometown of Adamsville. It was here that Buford found his calling in law enforcement. Buford became Adamsville's chief of police at age 25. Two years later, he ran for sheriff of McNary County, promising to clean up the violence and corruption that plagued the state line between Tennessee and Mississippi.

For decades, the sale of hard liquor was prohibited in McNary County. The area became a hub for bootlegging and moonshining. Illegal gambling and prostitution flourished. Criminal groups like the State Line Mob and the Dixie Mafia terrorized residents and tourists alike. Buford, the imposing former wrestler, seemed like the man for the job. He became the youngest sheriff in the history of Tennessee. He immediately developed a reputation as a fearless crusader.

I tell people there's nobody on the face of the earth that has studied this story and been as involved in it as I have, you know, for 60 years. And everybody in Magnet County knows that. This is Steve Sweatt. He owns a body shop in McNary County called Steve Sweatt Body Shop. He's also considered the unofficial Buford Pusser historian. And you know, people got to call me the Pusser historian

and of course, that's how it's been described in the newspapers for probably 20 years. Steve first heard about Buford Pusser as a young boy. He watched a lot of Westerns and police procedurals on TV, like gun smoke and highway patrol. Pusser reminded him of the men in those shows. Steve studied Buford. He read the articles about him in the newspaper, stories of Pusser arresting bootleggers, dynamiting moonshine stills, punching out drunks at the roadhouse down the street. Once, in 1966, Buford killed the owner of a seedy state-line motel after she fired at

him with a concealed.38. Another time, a speeding motorist he'd pulled over shot him in the face before fleeing the scene. Buford got stitched up and went back to work. Steve could hardly believe it. Buford was like a real-life Matt Dillon, the star of Gunsmoke. In the show, Dillon is the marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, tasked with bringing law and order

to the lawless frontier town. You know, Buford, he was just like Matt Dillon. When he got on the scene, there was no arguing back and forth and this and that. In a matter of seconds, you know, the situation was under control. But what happened next would raise Buford Pusser from a local legend to a national folk hero.

Early in the morning of August 12, 1967, a call came into Buford Pusser's home. The caller said a few drunks were threatening to kill each other at Hollis Jordan's Beer Hall, a rowdy spot near the state line. The story goes that someone had called to jail. Of course, Buford's dad was the jailer, Carl, and dispatcher. And he felt like this call, you know, when somebody would come to the state line, was, and dispatcher. And he felt like this call, you know, when somebody would come to State Line was a bogus call, he never did even bother Buford with it.

But then at some point they called Buford's home, you know, in the early morning hours and told him there was trouble, you know, there on the State Line that he needed to come down there. According to Buford's biographer, W.R. Morris, Buford and Pauline were scheduled to attend a family gathering in Virginia later that day. So Pauline decided to join him.

And supposedly she told him, she said, I'm gonna go with you so you'll get back. And that's what put her in the car with him that morning. So, responding to an anonymous complaint, Buford and Pauline jumped into his Plymouth Fury and raced down New Hope Road to Hollis Jordan's Beer Hall. En route they passed the New Hope Methodist Church. Moments later, a sleek black Cadillac pulled up beside them. It sprayed Buford's Plymouth with a.30 caliber carbine.

Their lights were off, it was just breaking day, and he didn't realize they were on him before the shots came through the car. The shots shattered the driver's side window, missing Buford but striking Pauline in the head. As Buford later told his biographer, he had an automatic shotgun beneath the seat and a.41 Magnum pistol on his hip,

but he didn't have time to grab them. Pauline slumped onto the floorboard, He had an automatic shotgun beneath the seat and a 41 Magnum pistol on his hip, but he didn't have time to grab them. Pauline slumped onto the floorboard. Pusser gunned it. He drove another two miles until he thought he'd lost the attackers and pulled over to check on Pauline. He gunned it.

He gunned the Plymouth that he was in and drove approximately two miles, and it was two miles just right on the money, and pulled over to see about Pauline." Buford later said he laid Pauline's head on his lap and saw a gaping wound. He prayed, oh God, please don't let her die. As he did so, the black Cadillac reappeared. A gunman opened fire again, this time at point blank range. Buford took two shots to the lower jaw,

his chin held in place only by a flap of skin. He slumped forward as another bullet ripped through the driver's side door. It shattered Pauline's skull, killing her instantly. Buford managed to drive another seven miles to the hospital. He drove seven miles further with his chin gone and gum, lower gum and teeth gone. At the hospital, Pauline was pronounced dead. Buford was taken to Memphis to get his jaw reconstructed.

Sheriff's deputies stood guard outside his room around the clock, fearing the assassins might return to finish the job. Steve Sweatt was 12 years old at the time of the ambush. He remembers the moment he heard about it. We didn't have social media and cell phones, but you can't imagine how fast words spread and things like that in this area back then. Based on Buford's statement to the cops, they concluded the ambush was motivated by hisuford's statement to the cops, they concluded the

ambush was motivated by his quest to combat corruption on the state line. A full scale search for the murderers ensued. The governor of Tennessee offered a $5,000 reward for info leading to an arrest and conviction. But months passed and the money was never collected. The Black Cadillac and the assassins had vanished without a trace. ever collected. The Black Cadillac and the assassins had vanished without a trace. Still, Buford, now recovered, said he had a good idea of who they were. He named several men with ties to the state-line mob and the Dixie Mafia. Kirksey Nix was one of them.

Over the next few years, four of those men died under suspicious circumstances. One, a notorious gangster named Carl Tohead White was ambushed and killed in his car outside a motel in Corinth, Mississippi. And a lot of people speculate about that being an arranged hit, you know, to get rid of him. Another was reportedly found floating in the Boston Harbor, his body riddled with bullets.

Two more were shot to death in Texas. Kirksey Nicks supposedly survived only because he was locked up at the time. No evidence tied Buford to those murders. But legend has it Buford had a hand in all of them. That's just speculation, that's just kind of the way it seemed. Whatever the truth was, Buford's style of law enforcement suited residents of McNary County. After the ambush, he was re-elected twice more. Then, in 1974, at 36 years old, he died. He was speeding down a country road in his Corvette when he spun out of control, hit an embankment, and broke his neck.

No, there was no foul play. It was just mainly speed. He was 36 years old and had a big engine, 74 Corvette, and he loved to go fast. And that's pretty well it. That's pretty well what happened. The story of the ambush and Buford's vigilante quest to kill the men who'd murdered his wife struck a deep and primal chord in American culture. It inspired a best-selling book in 1971

called The 12th of August by W.R. Morris. From there, the legend took on a life of its own. The 12th of August was adapted into the hit 1973 movie Walking Tall, starring Joe Don Baker as Buford Pusser. Audiences across America are standing up, applauding, and cheering a film called Walking Tall based on the true story of a young man who wouldn't surrender to the system and the girl who always stood beside him.

Walking Tall was lightly fictionalized. For example, Joe Don Baker carries a hickory stick instead of a gun while cleaning up the state line. In truth, Buford never carried a stick on patrol. But since the film was based on a true story, most people naturally thought it was true, and so the legend grew. The film spawned two sequels.

The country and rockabilly singer Eddie Bond released an entire album of songs inspired by the sheriff. Listening to the lyrics, you could be mistaken for thinking Buford Pusser was a figure out of American folklore, like John Henry or Paul Bunyan. Actor Joe Don Baker, who played Buford in the original Walking Tall, later compared him to a character from Greek mythology.

This astounds me that people still remember it. I mean, I can understand it because Buford was such a wonderful person. You know, he was a hell of a character in real life. He was like Hercules, Zeus or something. He was incredible. Then in 2004, the remake of Walking Tall came out. Shortly after the premiere, The Rock came to McNary County to see where Buford lived.

Steve Sweatt and his wife escorted him around, accompanied by a group of impatient MGM execs. And he came here out of respect for Buford. He wanted to see where Buford walked and worked, he said. He said, I want to see where he actually worked. Steve took the rock to Buford's house, his office and the local courthouse. He regaled him with stories as the rock sat hunched in the back seat. And we had the sheriff and chief in front of me and five marked units behind us and with lights and sirens.

We didn't stop at any red lights, any intersections. And we ran like 80 miles an hour down the highway here. He rode in my back seat with his elbows on the front seat, and just like a five-year-old kid, trying to absorb these stories. As they drove, The Rock told Steve that starring in Walking Tall had been a dream come true. The Rock's father, Rocky Johnson, had also been a pro wrestler.

The two of them had watched the original Walking Tall over and over when The Rock was young. It was their favorite movie. According to Steve, it inspired The Rock to be a better man. And he told us, he said, that was my dad and my favorite movie when I was a little fella. And he said, and in my life, he said,

all the times I had the opportunity to take the wrong path. He said, I would think of those walking tall movies, and I wanted to walk tall. That's what The Rock said. That's what he said. Like The Rock, Steve Sweat was emotionally invested in the legend of Buford Pusser as a righteous hero. And so, when Steve learned that Pauline's body was being exhumed earlier this year, he was appalled.

The suggestion that Buford played a role in Pauline's death threatened to destroy his legacy. What made matters worse was that the decision to exhume her could be traced to an outsider. A former security consultant from Arkansas named Mike Elam. Of course, the perception that America has is that Buford was a real hero. That he cleaned up the state line and that he sought revenge for his wife's death. But you know, there's a whole other story that needs to be told. Like everybody else, when I first heard the story of Buford Pusser, I was a huge fan.

I don't think they made fans any bigger than me. I admired the man and everything he did. The 12th of August had me convinced. Then the movie came out and I saw the movie. I thought it was incredible. It told a really entertaining story. And you know, I was just filled with admiration for Buford.

This is Mike Elam. In the early 1970s, when the first Walking Tall came out, Mike was a young sheriff's deputy in Benton County, Arkansas, 465 miles west of McNary County. He loved the job. He imagined being elected sheriff one day and cleaning up the county just like Buford had.

But the pay was lousy. To support his family, he reluctantly took a job as the head of loss prevention for a regional grocery retailer. And yet his interest in police work never went away. He watched every episode of Dragnet. He got hooked on the JFK assassination and later the O.J. Simpson case.

In the mid-90s, he turned his attention to Buford Pusser. Mike still held the man in high regard, but certain elements of the story had always bothered him. For one, the idea that Pauline had joined Buford on a disturbance call in the middle of the night. I think I can speak for just about anyone who's been in law enforcement. They will tell you that one thing you never do is take your spouse to a disturbance call.

A disturbance call can go sideways so quickly and it's just dangerous for everyone. Then there was the route Buford took that night. As a Buford Pusser fan, Mike had visited McNary County to check out the Buford Pusser Museum and see a few of the sites. And he realized Buford could have taken a much simpler route to Hollis Jordan's Beer Hall where the alleged disturbance took place. It was a very convoluted system of back roads to get to the state line. That didn't make sense to me because he was just two blocks from Highway 64 and he could have got on Highway 64, then on 45, been to the same location in a very short time.

Whereas this convoluted system of roads, several of them were unimproved at that time. And so it would have been a much slower route. That led Mike to another question. According to Buford, the Ambushers were lying in wait behind a church on a deserted country road. But how would they have known that Buford would take that road instead of the more direct route to Hollis-Jordans? Wouldn't they be waiting on either 64 or 45 or possibly even there at the site where he was supposed to be responding to.

So that didn't make sense. And so when he got some time off work, Mike decided to reenact the ambush. He recruited some friends to pose as the assassins, a police chief from Ohio, a retired cameraman from Mississippi, and a McNary County local who knew the story. We set up a scenario where I would pass by representing Buford's car passing by the church,

and we actually had a Cadillac beside the church that gave chase. However, by the time that I got to the bridge, they were still about 200, 250 yards behind me. And, you know, that really started to ring true that if they couldn't catch me in broad daylight, how could that have happened in the pre-dawn hours with no headlights? How fast were they traveling when they were trying to chase you? Well, I was going 45 and at one time they reached 92 miles an hour in that seven tenths of a mile stretch trying to catch me. And like I say, they were still over 200 yards behind me

by the time I reached the ambush point. And that just convinced me that there was no way it happened the way that Buford said. At this point, I just started to gather up all the information that I possibly could. Mike began making public records requests. He read the police reports and studied the crime scene photographs from the ambush. Two things immediately stood out. One was the blood spatter. He knew that blood spatter often tells a story

about how a crime occurred. Blood spatter tells you several different things. It can tell you the direction that a shot came from, the height that it came from, the distance the firearm was away from a person. And none of it matched Buford's stories. Buford had claimed that he and Pauline were inside the car when the ambushers opened fire, wounding Buford and killing Pauline. As such, you'd expect the blood spatter to be all over the car's interior. But that's not the only place the blood spatter was.

You had blood on the front bumper, the hood of the car, the top of the car, the sides of the car, all over the outside of the windshield. So you knew that something was not correct with his story. What specifically did that suggest about where the victim may have been at the time or the shooter? So all of the blood spatter on the outside of the car leads you to believe that someone was actually standing in front of that car when they were shot, not on the inside. The second thing that stood out to Mike was the position of the shell casings. He said that he was sitting in the car, that they pulled up close enough that they were

right next to him. You would expect shell casings to have been found in between the cars, possibly some being ejected inside the Cadillac and some even going over into Buford's car after the window was blown out. But the shell casings weren't in the middle of the road or inside Buford's car after the window was blown out. But the shell casings weren't in the middle of the road or inside Buford's Plymouth. They were on the shoulder of the road, on the opposite side of where Buford's car would have been.

Pauline was said to have died from two gunshot wounds to the head, but Mike wanted to see what the autopsy report said. He called the McNary County Medical Examiner, but they didn't have it. So he called the medical examiner for the state of Tennessee in Nashville. They didn't have it either. When Mike asked why, the response shocked him.

I learned that one was never performed. Mike couldn't believe it. Pauline was the sheriff's wife, who had, according to Buford, been killed in a dramatic Hollywood-style ambush with no other witnesses and no viable suspects. Even a cursory look at the evidence suggested Buford's version of events was highly dubious. And yet, no autopsy. The state and local medical examiners from 1967 had long since passed away,

so Mike reached out to the current state medical examiners from 1967 had long since passed away. So Mike reached out to the current state medical examiner. He asked, what could have prevented the autopsy of a murder victim back in 1967? And he told me that the prosecutor and the local medical examiner had to concur on the need for one. So for some reason, they could not concur and you have to wonder about the reasoning for that because that autopsy would have told so much about her death that

they just passed up the opportunity to get trajectories, the angles, the distance, so much there that needed to be told. Mike knew that Buford, as the sheriff of McNary County, was friendly with both the local DA and the medical examiner. They must have felt sorry for Buford. Mike could easily imagine him persuading both men to bury his wife without an autopsy.

You know, it is possible that Buford absolutely did not want an autopsy done and convinced the two men not to have one. It makes absolutely no sense otherwise. Mike was hooked. He would spend a good part of the next 10 years investigating Buford and the events leading up to Pauline's death. Along the way, he would uncover details no one knew about one of the South's most famous unsolved murders. Details that suggested the prime suspect of the South's most famous unsolved murders.

Details that suggested the prime suspect in Pauline's death was her husband, Buford Pusser. That's next time on Gone South. If you have information, story tips, or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone South team, please email us at gonsouthpodcast at gmail.com. That's gonsouthpodcast at gmail.com. We're on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram at Gonsouth Podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on Substack at Gonsouth with Jed Lapinski. Gonsouth is an Odyssey Original Podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on Substack at Gone South with Jed Lapinski.

Gone South is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written, and narrated by me, Jed Lapinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman, Maddie Sprung-Kaiser, Tom Lapinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lapinski, Maddie Sprung-Kaiser, and Joel Lovell. Gone South is edited, mixed, and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskiewicz.

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