Remember Buford Pusser?
This is not Buford Pusser. This is Joe Don Baker playing Buford Pusser in the original “Walking Tall”.
This is the real Buford Pusser.
There’s a chance that some of my younger readers might have heard of him from the misguided remake of “Walking Tall” with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Mr. Pusser was the sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee from 1964 to 1970. He’s famous for trying to clean up the county single-handedly, fighting the Dixie Mafia and the “State Line Mob”. On August 12, 1967, a person or persons unknown allegedly ambushed Mr. Pusser and his wife, Pauline. Mrs. Pusser was killed, and Mr. Pusser was badly injured.
Mr. Pusser died in 1974 as a result of a single-car accident. There were suspicions that it wasn’t an “accident”, but nobody was able to prove anything. The official investigation said he was driving drunk and wasn’t wearing a seat belt when his Corvette hit an embankment and ejected him.
As sheriff, Pusser was credited with surviving seven stabbings and eight shootings.
I’m trying to be careful in my wording here because of what happened last week: McNairy County prosecutors announced “they had amassed enough evidence…to present an indictment to a grand jury in the killing of…Pauline Mullins Pusser”.
58 years later, the prosecutors office is saying Buford killed his wife and allegedly staged the whole thing.
This raises many questions.
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.
There doesn’t seem to be any question, from what I can tell, that he was seriously injured.
The prosecutors say his wounds were self-inflicted, and “the gunshot wound on Sheriff Pusser’s cheek was a close-contact wound“.
It isn’t clear, but it seems to be implied in the article that prosecutors believe something other than a .30 caliber carbine was used. I have a lot of trouble imaging shooting yourself once, much less “two or three times” in the jaw with a .30 caliber carbine. Not just the whole “shooting yourself” factor, but also just physically getting the gun into position to do it without slipping and putting a bullet in your brain. The thought does occur to me, though: taking the idea that Mr. Pusser was shot with .30 carbine rounds at face (ha!) value, it could have been done with an Enforcer, which is a weird .30 carbine pistol thing. (It could also have been a Ruger Blackhawk in .30 carbine.)
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.
I have a lot of respect for crime scene investigators and cold case detectives. But “blood spatter” evidence (I assume from photographs) in a 58-year-old case? Blood splatter evidence already has a lot of problems.
What evidence is he looking at? Just ballistics evidence, or more than that? Crime scene experts sometimes get out over their skis and testify to things that aren’t in their field of expertise. Not saying that’s what is going on here, but the question is worth asking.
Ms. Pusser’s family seems to buy into the prosecution’s theory.
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.
I’ll really enjoy reading that case file. As it is now, I don’t know what to think. It could be that Buford killed his wife and staged the crime scene, but I feel like there are all kinds of holes that can be punched in that theory. But what’s the motivation of the prosecutor’s office to frame him 58 years later? The State Line Mob and the Dixie Mafia were pretty much broken up years ago, so the prosecution probably isn’t under their control.
I wonder if maybe this is one of the problems with cold case investigation. There’s a temptation once you’ve got some evidence together to say, “Oh, yeah, we think so-and-so did it, but he’s dead, so we’re closing the case and blaming him.” I really wonder if the case against Buford Pusser would actually hold up in court. We’ll never know.
Buford Pusser named one man as being the person who contracted the killing, but nobody was ever able to make a case against him for that crime. The guy is a real scumbucket, though: he was convicted of another murder in 1972, sentenced to life in prison without parole, and (while serving that sentence) arranged to have a judge whacked. And that’s another rabbit hole worth going down, but that’s also another story for another day.