Pauline Pusser was the wife of a sheriff, so her chores were a bit unusual. She cooked meals for prisoners and cleaned the jailhouse between raising her children and sending Christmas cards. But on the early morning of August 12, 1967, Pauline did something she’d never done before. She went on a police call with her husband.
Sheriff Buford Pusser was famous in Tennessee for busting the moonshine stills and prostitution rings forged by the “State Line Mob,” a collection of gangsters who operated at the Mississippi border. The sheriff would later tell law enforcement that an anonymous person called his Adamsville home just before 5 a.m. and insisted he drive to the state line, about 25 minutes away. Buford said Pauline was suspicious about the call — with reason. Since cleaning up McNairy County, the sheriff had survived multiple gunshot and stab wounds. He said she thought it was best to go with him.
Just before dawn, they got in Buford’s squad car and started down the quiet two-way street to State Line Road. Buford would later tell investigators that about 20 miles later, on New Hope Road, a car with no headlights sped up beside the Pussers and began shooting. Pauline was hit. He floored the accelerator, pulled off to one side, and frantically searched for where his wife had been shot.
The speeding driver reappeared, pulled up on the other side of the road, and fired again, he said — this time fatally shooting Pauline in the forehead. Buford, who ended up with a bullet wound on his left jaw, said the assailants peeled off.
Headlines chronicled the shocking incident: One blared, “MCNAIRY SHERIFF SHOT, WIFE SLAIN;” another “CRIME-BUSTING SHERIFF’S WIFE MURDERED,” with a photo of Buford covered in blood on a stretcher. He survived and became an instant fascination: Books and songs were written about him, and the “Walking Tall” movie franchise gave him the Hollywood hero treatment. Today, he’s immortalized in his hometown as a legend akin to Wyatt Earp or Davey Crockett.
And Pauline? She lies in a grave at Adamsville Cemetery, marked by a small tombstone that barely pokes out of the ground, engraved with the wrong birth date and her August 12 death date. No murder weapon was ever found, and no one was charged. She was 36.
For decades, rumors swirled that Buford, who died in 1974, was involved in the murder. It took more than half a century for law enforcement to investigate them: On February 8, 2024, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation visited Pauline’s grave. Trying not to disturb Buford’s towering tombstone beside her, they exhumed her body in the hopes of finally putting the rumors to rest.
For many, it was a seminal moment in a Southern tale that has been handed down through generations. Could it all have been a lie?
The answer to that question wouldn’t come for another year and a half — and when it did, it would shatter a legend.
The first thing you see when driving into town is a massive sign: “Welcome to Adamsville: Home of Sheriff Buford Pusser.”
I came to town in March, on the heels of buzz that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s findings would soon be revealed. The soil at Pauline’s gravesite was still fresh.
There had been no autopsy performed in 1967, one reason some in McNairy County question whether that night went down exactly as Buford described. It’s also why the TBI took another look at Pauline’s cold case.
Still, some in town stand by the Buford legend.
“There’s a lot of garbage out there written. It needs to be piled up and burned,” Steve Sweat, 70, told me from his body shop just outside Adamsville.
Sweat has lived his entire life in McNairy County and considers himself a historian on all things Pusser. His shop is home to a collection of photographs and memorabilia that he has compiled over decades.
Ever since Buford busted Sweat’s older brother’s moonshine still in 1963, he’s been fascinated by the man.
“I was 6 or 7 years old and would see this young chief of police, 6-foot-6 with a flattop haircut, all over town. There was a picture of him in the paper every week,” Sweat said, pausing for a moment as he choked up. “He was bigger than life.”
Sweat used to lead tours of key Pusser sites around town. Every Memorial Day during the Buford Pusser Festival, he drives a replica of the patrol car Joe Don Baker drove when he portrayed the sheriff in the 1973 movie, “Walking Tall.”
Tina Mullis, 60, called the TBI investigation “just silly.”
“How are they going to prove something 57 years later?” she said in March.
Mullis, a distant relative of Pusser, is the curator of Adamsville’s Buford Pusser Home & Museum. Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood next to a baseball field on Pusser Street, the modest ranch home is a destination for travel vloggers, true crime fans, and awe-struck law enforcement officials.
Mullis sits me down in Buford and Pauline’s living room to play me a video titled “Liars & Legends,” an eight-minute history of the sheriff and his battles with the State Line Mob. She walks me through the home, lined with memorabilia and newspaper clippings of Pusser’s moonshine busts, and points out a carefully preserved bedroom she says Elvis stayed in on the day of Buford’s funeral.
“In a time before the internet and cable TV, he was a world-class promoter. Whether his stories were true or not, people ran with them.”McNairy County sheriff Guy Buck
Buford died seven years after Pauline in a fiery car wreck on Highway 64. Eyewitnesses told law enforcement at the time they saw him driving at a high speed before the crash; others said they smelled alcohol on his breath before he got behind the wheel. The charred remains of his 1974 Corvette sit on display in the museum’s garage.
Walking through the museum is akin to visiting Graceland with a dash of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! I’m filled with fascination, but also skeptical.
The current McNairy County sheriff, Guy Buck, 58, who has held the post for 15 years, described Pusser’s appeal thusly: “In a time before the internet and cable TV, he was a world-class promoter. Whether his stories were true or not, people ran with them.”
Pusser was a master of self-promotion. He got his start as a professional wrestler, “Buford the Bull,” in the 1950s in Chicago, where he met Pauline, a divorcée with two kids. They married in 1959, had a child, and in 1962 moved back to Adamsville, where he succeeded his father as chief of police.
Pusser quickly began busting moonshine stills, and at 26, he was elected sheriff — a position he helped secure thanks to the media coverage of his exploits, which he had organized as press officer. Pusser broke up over 140 stills in his career, according to the museum.
After the 1967 shooting, Pusser’s lore grew. In 1971, W.R. Morris wrote the book “The Twelfth of August,” which introduced people outside the Southeast to him and his battles with the State Line Mob. Around the same time, Eddie Bond released the song “Legend of Buford Pusser,” a twangy tune that played throughout the South.
That attention found its way to Hollywood and crooner Bing Crosby, whose production company bought Pusser’s life rights for $10,000 and made “Walking Tall.” The filmmakers ran with backwoods stories that Pusser once raided a moonshine still with just a fence pole. (Sheriff Buck debunks that myth: “That’s the farthest thing from the truth.”)
In the era of vigilante blockbusters like “Dirty Harry” and “Billy Jack,” “Walking Tall” earned $40 million on a $500,000 budget. Variety reported that in some regions of the South, “Walking Tall” did better than “The Godfather.”
After stepping down as sheriff in 1970, Pusser hobnobbed with the likes of Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, made money off speaking tours, and entertained the idea of running for governor. In 1974, he attended the press conference where it was announced he would play himself in the “Walking Tall” sequel.
The next day, he died in a car wreck at 36.
The Pusser franchise lived on: Actor Bo Svenson took over the role, starring in “Walking Tall Part 2” (1975) and “Walking Tall: Final Chapter” (1977), as well as a short-lived “Walking Tall” TV series (1981).
In the decades that followed, Pusser’s daughter, Dwana, built her father’s myth into a business. She sold her parents’ house to the state of Tennessee in 1987 for Adamsville to use as a for-profit museum and helped turn the jailhouse in nearby Selmer, where Pusser had his office, into a tourist attraction. When Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson starred in the 2004 remake of “Walking Tall,” Dwana posed for press photos with him. (Dwana died in 2018.)
As the years passed, whispers about the 1967 shooting spread.
Svenson told me that in the 1970s, he was approached by people who told him that Buford’s gunshot wound was self-inflicted.
“I even saw photos of Buford on the operating table, photos that showed powder burn on his face, which meant that whatever gun was used was held very close to his head” — which didn’t align with the sheriff’s story, the actor said.
While making the “Walking Tall” sequels, did Svenson think Pusser could have killed his wife?
“I felt sometimes public people have skeletons in their closets,” Svenson said. “But what he represented I felt, at the time, was important.”
Dennis Hathcock’s family name has been intertwined with Pusser’s mythology for most of his life.
His aunt, Louise Hathcock, ran the Shamrock Motel, a restaurant and motel known for bootlegging, gambling, and nightly fights. In February 1966, Sheriff Pusser arrived to question Louise about two patrons who accused her of stealing. The two were speaking in a back room when, according to Pusser, Louise pulled out a gun and shot at him. She missed, and Pusser said he shot and killed Louise in self-defense. A grand jury agreed.
The faceoff would cement the Pusser vs. State Line Mob lore that would be reported in newspapers and chronicled in Morris’ book “The Twelfth of August.” A character bearing a strong resemblance to Louise Hathcock was later made the main villain in the first “Walking Tall” movie: Callie Hacker, a madam who ran a moonshine, gambling, and prostitution operation out of her establishment.
Dennis Hathcock, 75, claims Pusser killed his aunt in cold blood.
“My family has borne the brunt of many lies,” he told me.
He had his own run-ins with Pusser. Hathcock was 16 the night of August 11, 1967, when he and a friend were riding around on Hathcock’s CB450 Honda motorcycle. After playing some pool in Selmer, they got bored and decided to do what they always did: tail Pusser while he patrolled the county.
Hathcock said he knew a girl Pusser was seeing on the side, Ann Henderson. They found him banging on the door of her friend’s house, yelling for Henderson to come out. After he and Henderson were done talking, Hathcock heard Pusser yell out after her, “You’ll be putting flowers on my grave tomorrow!” (Henderson confirmed this in her interview with the TBI.)
Hathcock said they stopped following Pusser around 2:30 a.m. on the 12th. When he heard about the shooting the next morning, Hathcock raced to New Hope Road, where a police officer told him to leave. Hathcock left and passed the second ambush site, which was littered with shell casings. He said he saw bloody remains of what looked like a scalp on the side of the road and went back to the officer to show him.
Later, when Hathcock read news reports where Buford described how Pauline was killed, he felt a pit in his stomach. Something wasn’t right. He decided to go to the FBI.
“I was afraid to go to the TBI at the time,” Hathcock said. “I knew they were overlooking things.”
Hathcock said he didn’t get a better reception at the FBI.
“They laughed me out of the office,” Hathcock recalled. “They just made fun of me, that Pusser would be involved at all.”
Mike Elam knows how hard it is to find the shooting site on New Hope Road, so he offered to drive me there — on the exact route Buford drove with Pauline.
I’m chatting with Elam’s wife, Connie, who’s sitting in the back seat, when Elam pulls over and begins digging under his seat. Suddenly, he pulls out a handgun and swiftly holsters it.
“I wasn’t kidding when I told you he gets death threats,” Connie said when she notices my shell-shocked expression.
Pusser became a hero to Elam, a 74-year-old former deputy sheriff in Benton County, Arkansas, after he read “The Twelfth of August” in the early 1970s. However, by the 2000s, Elam had begun to think differently about Pusser and started posting about it online. That’s when he said the death threats started coming.
“I’m really cautious around people I don’t know,” he told me.
Elam began questioning the official accounts of the shooting after he got hold of Louise Hathcock’s autopsy report. Pusser maintained that Louise was facing him when he shot her at the Shamrock, but the autopsy concluded that she was shot twice in the back and once in the back of the head. Elam tracked down the pathologist who performed the autopsy to make sure the report was accurate and discovered the autopsy was never presented to the grand jury that cleared Pusser.
“Buford had put up a smoke screen,” Elam said.
He wondered: Was Pusser untruthful about anything else?
In 2005, Elam launched a Yahoo page and began posting his discoveries. A decade later, he started the Facebook page, “Buford Pusser: The Other Story,” which now has over 23,000 followers. His main questions: Why was Pauline never autopsied? Why didn’t Buford take a polygraph? Why was there more blood outside Buford’s car than inside, where he said Pauline was shot?
In March 2020, while recovering from colon cancer surgery, he began writing a book, “Buford Pusser: The Other Story,” and self-published it later that year. His Facebook and YouTube pages exploded with reactions from Pusser loyalists appalled that Elam would tarnish his name.
At the same time, a relative of Pauline in North Carolina had also begun investigating her death.
Oakley Dean Baldwin is a 35-year veteran of law enforcement. After retiring, he began self-publishing books with colorful stories from his family tree. He wanted to write about Pauline, a distant cousin.
Baldwin, 67, and his side of the family had largely believed Pusser’s story, but he began to see holes during his research. The more he and his son Roy, who is a crime scene investigator, read, the more flabbergasted they got at how the details, including the ballistics, didn’t match up.
“We would say, ‘That couldn’t have happened, it’s not possible.’ And the more we dug, the worse it got,” Baldwin said.
To Baldwin, Pauline seemed like an afterthought in Buford’s narrative. No one noticed that the birth date on her gravestone and in the TBI report is incorrect.
“She was born February 27, 1931, and they have it as 1934,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin put these revelations in his 2021 book, “Murder of Mrs. Buford Pusser,” and started a YouTube page.
By 2022, both Elam and Baldwin had independently sent their findings to the TBI in hopes that the agency would reexamine the cold case. The TBI decided to take a closer look. This time, they listened to Dennis Hathcock’s recollections, and they dug up Pauline.
On August 29, 2025, Sweat, Hathcock, and Elam joined local press and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officials in a packed room at the University of Tennessee at Martin. The TBI was ready to reveal its findings.
Poster-size photos of Pauline sat on easels and flashed across the two flat-screen TVs. A piano rendition of the Mötley Crüe ballad “Home Sweet Home” played in the background, giving the press conference the feel of a wake.
“It’s been said that the dead cannot cry out for justice; it’s the duty of the living to do so,” said McNairy County District Attorney Mark E. Davidson. “In this case, that duty’s been carried out 58 years later.”
Davidson explained that with the help of modern investigative techniques and forensic science, they could now confidently close Pauline’s cold case with a 2,000-plus-page report.
The report, which Business Insider has read, highlights major inconsistencies in Buford’s account. The biggest contradiction: Buford said he was looking at Pauline when she was shot in the forehead; the forensic report from her autopsy found she was shot in the back of the head.
Through ballistic tests and reenactments, the report concludes that Pauline was likely shot outside the car, then placed inside it. The report also suggests that Buford’s facial wound was made at close range and likely self-inflicted. Davidson described the crime scene as “staged” and said Pauline’s death was “not an accident.”
The report also revealed that the couple’s relationship was far from the happy marriage depicted in “Walking Tall.” The autopsy showed that Pauline had a nasal fracture before her death, and the report concludes that Buford physically abused Pauline throughout their marriage. Pauline knew about Buford’s infidelity and payoffs he was getting from bootleggers. She was taking steps toward a divorce and was going to alert the FBI, according to Buford’s chief deputy Jim Moffett.
“Our office, after review of the case file, believes that the TBI has produced evidence sufficient to create probable cause that would allow us, if he were alive today, to present an indictment to the McNairy County grand jury for their consideration against Buford Pusser for the murder of his wife, Pauline,” Davidson said.
The words reverberated back to Adamsville.
Tina Mullis closed the museum as news trucks began to surround the Pusser home. By the next day, all the historical landmark signs by the shooting site had mysteriously disappeared. Rumors percolated that Buford Pusser’s name could be erased from everything from the Memorial Day parade to the town’s water tower.
But not everyone was ready to turn on him.
Madison Garrison Bush, Dwana’s only living daughter and Buford and Pauline’s granddaughter, decried the report in a statement. “A dead man, who cannot defend himself, is being accused of an unspeakable crime. I don’t understand what justice can be accomplished by pursuing this theory of my grandmother’s death,” she said.
Sweat, the self-described historian, was unmoved by the report. “At the end of the day, I felt like they more or less just gave an opinion,” he told me after the press conference. “It didn’t appear to me that they presented enough evidence to make you believe that, without a shadow of a doubt, that they have proven that Sheriff Pusser did this.”
Sweat believes Pusser did a lot of good in McNairy County and that this news could be a blessing in disguise for Adamsville tourism.
“This all isn’t going to kill the story; the story is only going to get bigger,” Sweat said.
By September, the museum reopened. At a town hall meeting, the overwhelming consensus from residents was that nothing Pusser should be changed.
“We have been overwhelmed with the support that we’ve received from all over the world and here in our hometown, especially,” Mullis said, adding that business at the museum has doubled since the August press conference. “That was nothing but free advertisement for us.”
That’s not to say the museum will ignore the TBI’s findings. Mullis told me the town is condensing the report into one volume, which will be made available for visitors to view.
“We’re just going to keep telling Buford’s story here, and Pauline’s,” Mullis said. “We will continue to tell their story and let people come to their own conclusions.”
Since the press conference, Baldwin has self-published an updated version of “Murder of Mrs. Buford Pusser.” Elam, who feels vindicated after years of being harassed online for his views, is working on a follow-up to his book. He runs a Pusser-themed bus tour with Hathcock called “The Truth Has No Agenda Tour.”
Though he hopes that his aunt Louise’s death will be reexamined one day, Hathcock is happy Pauline can finally rest in peace.
“I have prayed for this day to come,” Hathcock told me. “For the truth to be told about Buford Pusser — because I’ve known it since I was 16 years old — I couldn’t be happier.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post ‘Walking Tall’ sheriff Buford Pusser was hailed as a crime-busting hero. What if he was the killer all along? appeared first on Business Insider.
