A rural Tennessee sheriff who was portrayed by Hollywood as a leader who had to bend the law in order to fight crime killed his wife 58 years ago, prosecutors announced on Friday.
They said that they had amassed enough evidence against the sheriff, Buford Pusser, who served in McNairy County from 1964-70, to present an indictment to a grand jury in the killing of his wife, Pauline Mullins Pusser, 33, who died in 1967.
Though Sheriff Pusser died in a car crash seven years after his wife’s death, prosecutors said it was critical to make public what they had learned, in part because the case inspired the Nixon-era law-and-order hit “Walking Tall” in 1973.
The movie is set in a Tennessee town taken over by bootlegging, illegal gambling, and prostitution. It starred Joe Don Baker as Sheriff Pusser, a crusading official who cleaned up the streets with the help of a colossal baseball bat.
Before becoming sheriff, Sheriff Pusser, 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds, had been a wrestler known as Buford the Bull.
According to Variety, “Walking Tall” was made for about $500,000 and earned more than $40 million worldwide.
“This case is not about tearing down a legend,” District Attorney Mark Davidson of Tennessee’s 25th Judicial District said in a news conference on Friday.
“It is about giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time,” he said. “The truth matters. Justice matters, even 58 years later. Pauline deserves both.”
Prosecutors in Mr. Davidson’s office worked with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which began in 2022 to re-examine the file on Ms. Pusser’s death.
The agency’s director, David Rausch, said that the fresh look at the file, which contains more than 1,000 pages, had been part of a routine review of cold cases.
He said that the case, which resulted in no arrests, had largely been built upon Sheriff Pusser’s statements and quickly closed.
“Perhaps too quickly,” he added.
Mr. Davidson said that the case file revealed “physical, medical, forensic, ballistic, and re-enactment evidence that contradicts his version of events,” referring to Sheriff Pusser’s statements to law enforcement officials and others about his wife’s death on Aug. 12, 1967.
On that day, Sheriff Pusser got a call in the early morning about a disturbance. In his version of events, his wife volunteered to ride with him as he responded to the call.
Sheriff Pusser said that as they drove along a country road, a car pulled up and a gunman opened fire, killing Ms. Pusser and wounding him.
He needed several surgeries and was hospitalized for nearly three weeks.
By then, Sheriff Pusser had been on the job for three years, and was well into a campaign of busting up gambling, prostitution and moonshine rings in the county. He was known for personally smashing up gambling equipment, like slot machines and gaming tables, with a pickax.
Over the course of his career, Sheriff Pusser had been attacked with a knife, beaten multiple times and, at least once, thrown from a window. He was known “to overkill in the pursuit of justice,” according to a Tennessee newspaper.
But based on a re-examination, the 1967 shooting of his wife was not an attempt on the sheriff’s life, investigators concluded.
During their review, officials received a tip about a potential murder weapon and exhumed Ms. Pusser’s body for an autopsy.
Dr. Michael Revelle, an emergency medicine doctor and medical examiner, determined that Ms. Pusser was more likely than not shot outside the car and then placed inside it.
He found that skull trauma she suffered did not match the crime scene photographs from inside the car. Blood spatter on the hood of the car also contradicted Sheriff Pusser’s statements to the authorities, he said.
Dr. Revelle also found that the gunshot wound on Sheriff Pusser’s cheek was a close-contact wound, not one fired from long range, as Sheriff Pusser had described it. The gunshot was likely self-inflicted, Dr. Revelle concluded.
A ballistics expert, Dr. Eric Warren, determined that the physical evidence pointed to a staged crime scene.
Ms. Pusser’s autopsy also revealed that she had a broken nose that had healed before she died. Mr. Davidson, the district attorney, said that statements from people at the time of her death supported the conclusion that she had been a victim of domestic violence.
Ms. Pusser’s younger brother, Griffon Mullins, said in a video played at the news conference that he knew trouble had been brewing in the marriage and that he was “not totally shocked” by the findings.
He said that he was grateful for the investigators’ work.
“I think I can lay down tonight and have some peace in my mind,” Mr. Mullins said.
Ms. Pusser, he said of his sister, “was just a sweet person, and I loved her with all my heart.”
Another of Ms. Pusser’s relatives, Oakley Dean Baldwin, wrote to Mr. Davidson on behalf of her family to thank his office “for giving Pauline a voice from her grave.”
Investigators also talked with members of Sheriff Pusser’s family but did not describe those conversations. They also declined to discuss the weapon that was used, and whether it matched up with the autopsy findings.
They said that the case file would have more specifics, and that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation would make public the entire file once redactions are made.
In 1970, Sheriff Pusser failed to win re‐election, even though he was well known across the South for his zealous policing. He had a new look, as a result of 14 plastic surgery operations, and he was able to cover up his scars by wearing his hair longer.
His fame spread even more after the success of “Walking Tall.” The movie ended with the sheriff’s shooting and his hospitalization, with half his face shot off.
“Pusser survives a series of beatings, stabbings and shootings that arrive with the rhythm and regularity of a Road Runner cartoon, and like Wile E. Coyote, he bounces back every time, slightly battered but ready for more,” Dave Kehr wrote in a film review in The New York Times.
Though Mr. Pusser was not in the first film, a sequel called “Buford” was being planned by Bing Crosby Productions. The company decided that Sheriff Pusser would play himself.
On Aug, 21, 1974, Mr. Pusser was driving from Memphis, where plans for the sequel had been announced, back to his home in Adamsville, Tenn.
According to the Tennessee Highway Patrol, his red Corvette careened off Highway 64 near Selmer, crashed into an embankment and caught fire.
Mr. Pusser died at the age of 36. While “Buford” was never made, three more movies were: “Part 2: Walking Tall” (1975), “Final Chapter: Walking Tall” (1977), and “Walking Tall” (2004).
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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