Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glawel.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with new revisionist history episodes in January.
Speaker 2: But today we're going to bring you something a bit different.
Speaker 2: It's an episode of the podcast Gone South. Each week,
Speaker 2: writer and host Jed Lipinski shares a different story about
Speaker 2: a fascinating crime that took place below the Mason Dixon Line.
Speaker 2: Often told from the perspective of the perpetrator, the investigator,
Speaker 2: or both. Gone South explores not only the criminal mind,
Speaker 2: but also the distinctive culture and rich characters of the South.
Speaker 2: This episode is called the Real Buford Pusser Part One.
Speaker 2: It chronicles the life of the iconic Tennessee sheriff who
Speaker 2: inspired several books, songs, and half a dozen movies, including
Speaker 2: the two thousand and four remake Walking Tall starring Dwayne
Speaker 2: the Rock Johnson. And findings suggesting Pusser played a role
Speaker 2: in his wife, Pauline's death, have called his legacy into question.
Speaker 2: Here's the episode.
Speaker 4: Earlier this year, a listener sent us a link to
Speaker 4: an article in the Tennesseean newspaper. The article was about
Speaker 4: the decision to exhume the body of a woman named
Speaker 4: Pauline Pusser.
Speaker 5: New information Tonight, Nearly sixty years after a sheriff's wife
Speaker 5: was shot and killed, the TBI exhumed her body and
Speaker 5: a deeper investigation into her death begins.
Speaker 4: Pauline was the wife of Buford Pusser, the legendary Tennessee
Speaker 4: sheriff whose life story became the basis for a best
Speaker 4: selling book and a handful of Hollywood movies, most notably
Speaker 4: Walking Tall. In August nineteen sixty seven, Pauline was fatally
Speaker 4: shot in an ambush that left Buford seriously injured. She
Speaker 4: was thirty three years old and a mother of three.
Speaker 4: Authorities never figured out who was behind the ambush. Her
Speaker 4: death has remained unsolved for over fifty six years, but
Speaker 4: according to the article, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation or TBI,
Speaker 4: had recently gotten a tip that caused them to reopen
Speaker 4: the case. To their surprise, they discovered that an autopsy
Speaker 4: had never been performed on Pauline. By exuming her body,
Speaker 4: the TBI said in a statement, they intended to answer
Speaker 4: quote critical questions and provide crucial information that could help
Speaker 4: them identify who was behind Pauline's death. I was familiar
Speaker 4: with the story of Buford Pusser and the ambush that
Speaker 4: killed his wife. We'd mentioned it in season two about
Speaker 4: the Dixie Mafia. Buford had publicly blamed Kirksey Nicks, the
Speaker 4: Dixie Mafia's supposed leader, for orchestrating the attack. When I
Speaker 4: asked Kirksey about it, he'd vehemently denied being involved. In fact,
Speaker 4: he said officials had brought Bufford to an Oklahoma prison
Speaker 4: to try and identify him, but Buford couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: I have home of your investigation reports where they brought
Speaker 3: him out to o'klhalman and he couldn't pick me out.
Speaker 3: They arranged for him to hear my voice and he
Speaker 3: could pick me up.
Speaker 4: As Kirksey put it, Buford was a criminal himself. He
Speaker 4: said the sheriff had taken bribes from a gangster associate
Speaker 4: of his in Mississippi.
Speaker 3: Carl gave him twelve thousand dollars when he ran for office.
Speaker 3: He gave him three thousand dollars for every month he
Speaker 3: was in office. He was on the take. He was
Speaker 3: a dirty cop, and he was a killer cop. Let
Speaker 3: him sue me for that.
Speaker 4: Kirksey was never charged with Pauline's murder, and neither was
Speaker 4: anyone else. It was a fifty six year old mystery,
Speaker 4: one of the most famous cold cases in Tennessee history,
Speaker 4: and it looked like the TBI was on the verge
Speaker 4: of a breakthrough, but they weren't talking. And the article
Speaker 4: left a lot of questions unanswered, like why had an
Speaker 4: autopsy never been performed on Pauline Pusser and why did
Speaker 4: the TBI only just discovered this fact, and also what
Speaker 4: was the tip that caused them to reopen the case
Speaker 4: and who was the tipster? As I look deeper into
Speaker 4: the story, though, I realized that this wasn't really an
Speaker 4: investigation into the death of Pauline Pusser. It was an
Speaker 4: investigation into the life of Buford Pusser. Buford was a
Speaker 4: hero to a generation of Americans, a larger than life
Speaker 4: figure who inspired people to stand up to injustice. But
Speaker 4: now the TBI was raising questions that would threaten that legacy.
Speaker 4: I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South. The story of
Speaker 4: Buford Pusser reads a bit like a fable from the
Speaker 4: American South. To tell it, We're going to start with
Speaker 4: Dwayne Johnson, otherwise known as the Rock, the Star of
Speaker 4: the Fast and Furious franchise, the Voice of Maui and Mowana.
Speaker 4: One of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, but in
Speaker 4: the early time two thousands, the Rocks film career was
Speaker 4: still uncertain. He was already a global wrestling sensation, but
Speaker 4: Hollywood had a long standing stigma against pro wrestlers who
Speaker 4: tried to cross over. Hulk Hogan tried to do it
Speaker 4: in the eighties and nineties, but most of his films flopped.
Speaker 4: His nineteen ninety six film Santa with Muscles has been
Speaker 4: called one of the worst movies ever made. The Rocks
Speaker 4: film career began with fantasy roles in The Mummy Returns
Speaker 4: and The Scorpion King, but it was his leading role
Speaker 4: in the two thousand and four film Walking Tall that
Speaker 4: solidified his status as an action star. I was justified
Speaker 4: in what I did, and if you acquit me of
Speaker 4: these charges, then I'm going to run for sheriff, and
Speaker 4: if elected, I'm going to fix this town order. In
Speaker 4: the film, The Rock plays a retired Special Forces agent
Speaker 4: who returns to his hometown to find it a wash
Speaker 4: in corruption. He decides to run for sheriff and launches
Speaker 4: a one man crusade to clean up the town. The
Speaker 4: movie poster shows him striding down a country road armed
Speaker 4: only with a two by four. Younger viewers may not
Speaker 4: have realized Walking Tall was a remake of the nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy three hit movie of the same name. Both were
Speaker 4: based on the real life story of Buford Pusser. If
Speaker 4: you're under forty and live outside Tennessee, you've probably never
Speaker 4: heard of Beauford, But in the sixties and seventies he
Speaker 4: was a big deal. Pusser was an almost mythical figure
Speaker 4: in the South. He died in a fiery car crash
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy four at thirty six, but in just
Speaker 4: over a decade in law enforcement, he managed to inspire
Speaker 4: a legend akin to that of Wild West law men
Speaker 4: like Wyatt Up and wild Bill Hiccock. The folklore surrounding
Speaker 4: Buford Pusser can make it hard to separate fact from fiction,
Speaker 4: so here are some facts. Pusser was born on a
Speaker 4: sharecroppers farm in Adamsville, Tennessee. He was six six and
Speaker 4: two fifty by high school and got a scholarship to
Speaker 4: play college football. He enlisted in the Marines instead, but
Speaker 4: was given a medical discharge for asthma. From there, he
Speaker 4: bounced around. I got a job as a die cutter
Speaker 4: for a paper bag company in Chicago. He went to
Speaker 4: mortuary school at night. For extra money, he wrestled professionally
Speaker 4: on weekends under the name Buford the Bull. It was
Speaker 4: after a match that he met his future wife, Pauline Mullins.
Speaker 4: Pauline was a petite blonde from Virginia, divorced with two
Speaker 4: young kids. They married soon after and moved back to
Speaker 4: Buford's hometown of Adamsville. It was here that Buford found
Speaker 4: his calling in law enforcement. Buford became Adamsville's chief of
Speaker 4: police at age twenty five. Two years later, he ran
Speaker 4: for sheriff of McNairy County, promising to clean up the
Speaker 4: violence and corruption that plagued the state line between Tennessee
Speaker 4: and Mississippi. For decades. The sale of hard liquor was
Speaker 4: prohibited in McNairy County, the area became a hub for
Speaker 4: bootlegging and moonshining, Illegal gambling, and prostitution flourished. Criminal groups
Speaker 4: like the State Line Mob and the Dixie Mafia terrorized
Speaker 4: residents and tourists alike. Beauford, the imposing former wrestler, seemed
Speaker 4: like the man for the job, he became the youngest
Speaker 4: sheriff in the history of Tennessee. He immediately developed a
Speaker 4: reputation as a fearless crusader.
Speaker 6: I tell people there's nobody on a Feistar that has
Speaker 6: studied the store had been as involved and as I have.
Speaker 6: You know, for sixty years, and everybody in Mgatt County
Speaker 6: knows that.
Speaker 4: This is Steve Sweat. He owns a body shop in
Speaker 4: McNairy County called Steve Sweat Body Shop. He's also considered
Speaker 4: the unofficial Buford Pusser historian.
Speaker 6: Then you know, people got to call me the Pusser,
Speaker 6: a storian, and course that have been described in the
Speaker 6: newspapers for probably twenty years.
Speaker 4: Steve first heard about Buford Pusser as a young boy.
Speaker 4: He watched a lot of Westerns and police procedurals on TV,
Speaker 4: like Gunsmoke and Highway Patrol. Pusser reminded him of the
Speaker 4: men in those shows. Steve study Buford. He read the
Speaker 4: articles about him in the newspaper, stories of Pusser arresting bootleggers,
Speaker 4: dynamiting moonshine stills, punching out drunks at the road house
Speaker 4: down the street. Once in nineteen sixty six, Beaufford killed
Speaker 4: the owner of a CD state line motel after she
Speaker 4: fired at him with a concealed thirty eight. Another time,
Speaker 4: a speeding motorist he pulled over shot him in the
Speaker 4: face before fleeing the scene. Beiufford got stitched up and
Speaker 4: went back to work. Steve could hardly believe it. Buford
Speaker 4: was like a real life Matt Dillon, the star of
Speaker 4: gun Smoke in the show Dylan is the marshal of
Speaker 4: Dodge City, Kansas, tasked with bringing lawn order to the
Speaker 4: lawless frontier town.
Speaker 6: You know, Beauford, he was just like Matt Dylon when
Speaker 6: he got on the scene. There was no orgain back
Speaker 6: and forth and this and there. In a matter of seconds,
Speaker 6: you know, the situation was under control.
Speaker 4: But what happened next would raise Buford Pusser from a
Speaker 4: local legend to a national folk hero. Early in the
Speaker 4: morning of August twelfth, nineteen sixty seven, a call came
Speaker 4: into Buford Pusser's home. The caller said a few drunks
Speaker 4: were threatening to kill each other at Hollis Jordan's Beer Hall,
Speaker 4: a rowdy spot near the state line.
Speaker 6: The story goes that someone had called the jail. Of course,
Speaker 6: Beeffort's diet was the jailer, Carl and dispatcher, and he
Speaker 6: fell out. His call, you know, getting when somebody had
Speaker 6: come to state line was a bogus call. He never
Speaker 6: did even bother Beefford with it. But then at some
Speaker 6: point they called Beufford's home, you know, in the early
Speaker 6: morning hours, and told him there was trouble, you know,
Speaker 6: they're on the state line, that he needed to come
Speaker 6: down there.
Speaker 4: According to Bufford's biographer W. R. Morris, Buford and Pauline
Speaker 4: were scheduled to attend a family gathering in Virginia later
Speaker 4: that day, so Pauline decided to join him.
Speaker 6: And supposedly she told him, she said, I'm going to
Speaker 6: go with you so you'll get back, and that's what
Speaker 6: put her in the car with him that morning.
Speaker 4: So, responding to an anonymous complaint, Bauford and Pauline jumped
Speaker 4: into his Plymouth Fury and raced down New Hope Road
Speaker 4: to Hollis Jordan's Beer Hall. En route, they passed the
Speaker 4: New Hope Methodist Church. Moments later, a sleek black Cadillac
Speaker 4: pulled up beside them. It sprayed Buford's Plymouth with a
Speaker 4: thirty caliber carbine.
Speaker 6: Their laughs were off its just breaking day, and he
Speaker 6: didn't realize they were owning before the shots, you know, came,
Speaker 6: so as a caller.
Speaker 4: The shots shattered the driver's side window, missing Beauford but
Speaker 4: striking Pauline in the head. As Buford later told his biographer,
Speaker 4: he had an automatic shotgun beneath the seat and a
Speaker 4: forty one magnum pistol on his hip, but he didn't
Speaker 4: have time to grab them. Pauline slumped onto the floorboard,
Speaker 4: Pusser gunned it. He drove another two miles until he
Speaker 4: thought he'd lost the attackers and pulled over to check
Speaker 4: on Pauline.
Speaker 6: They gone it. He gone the Plymouth that he was
Speaker 6: in and approximately two miles, and that it was two miles,
Speaker 6: just right on the money, and he pulled over to
Speaker 6: say about Pauline.
Speaker 4: Buford later said he laid Pauline's head on his lap
Speaker 4: and saw a gaping wound. He prayed, oh God, please
Speaker 4: don't let her die. As he did so, the black
Speaker 4: Cadillac reappeared. A gunman opened fire again, this time at
Speaker 4: point blank range. Beuford took two shots to the lower jaw,
Speaker 4: his chin held in place only by a flap of skin.
Speaker 4: He slumped forward as another bullet ripped through the driver's
Speaker 4: side door. It shattered Pauline's skull, killing her instantly. Buford
Speaker 4: managed to drive another seven miles to the hospital.
Speaker 6: He drove seven miles further with his chin gone and
Speaker 6: gum lower, gum and tease gone.
Speaker 4: At the hospital, Pauline was pronounced dead. Buford was taken
Speaker 4: to Memphis to get his jaw reconstructed. Sheriff's deputies stood
Speaker 4: guard outside his room around the clock, fearing the assassins
Speaker 4: might return to finish the job. Steve Sweat was twelve
Speaker 4: years old at the time of the ambush. He remembers
Speaker 4: the moment he heard about it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we didn't have social media and sell phones, but
Speaker 6: you can't imagine how fast words spray it of things
Speaker 6: like that in this area. Back to the end.
Speaker 4: Based on Buford's statement to the cops, they concluded the
Speaker 4: ambush was motivated by his quest to combat corruption on
Speaker 4: the state line. A full scale search for the murderers ensued.
Speaker 4: The governor of Tennessee offered a five thousand dollars reward
Speaker 4: for info, leading to an arrest and conviction, but months
Speaker 4: passed and the money was never collected. The black Cadillac
Speaker 4: and the assassins had vanished without a trace. Still, Buford,
Speaker 4: now recovered, said he had a good idea of who
Speaker 4: they were. He named several men with ties to the
Speaker 4: State Line Mob and the Dixie Mafia. Kirksey Nicks was
Speaker 4: one of them. Over the next few years, four of
Speaker 4: those men died under suspicious circumstances. One, a notorious gangster
Speaker 4: named Carl Towhead White, was ambushed and killed in his
Speaker 4: car outside a motel in Corinth, Mississippi.
Speaker 6: And a lot of people speculate about that. Then at
Speaker 6: righted heap, you know, to get rid of ham.
Speaker 4: Another was reportedly found floating in the Boston Harbor, his
Speaker 4: body riddled with bullets. Two more were shot to death
Speaker 4: in Texas. Kirksey Nick supposedly survived only because he was
Speaker 4: locked up at the time. No evidence tied Bauford to
Speaker 4: those murders, but legend has it Buford had a hand
Speaker 4: in all of them.
Speaker 6: That's just speculation that it's kind of the way it seemed.
Speaker 4: Whatever the truth was, Buford's style of law enforcement suited
Speaker 4: residents of McNairy County after the ambush he was re
Speaker 4: elected twice more. Then, in nineteen seventy four, at thirty
Speaker 4: six years old, he died. He was speeding down a
Speaker 4: country road in his corvette when he spun out of control,
Speaker 4: hid an embankment, and broke his neck.
Speaker 6: Now there was no file play. It was just mine
Speaker 6: lee speed.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: He was thirty six years old and had a big
Speaker 6: engine seventy four Corvette, and he loved to go fast.
Speaker 6: And that's pretty weilliot, Yes, that's pretty well what happened.
Speaker 4: The story of the ambush and Buford's vigilanti quest to
Speaker 4: kill the men who'd murdered his wife struck a deep
Speaker 4: and primal chord in American culture. It inspired a best
Speaker 4: selling book in nineteen seventy one called The Twelfth of
Speaker 4: August by W. R. Morris. From there, the legend took
Speaker 4: on a life of its own. The Twelfth of August
Speaker 4: was adapted into the hit nineteen seventy three movie Walking Tall,
Speaker 4: starring Joe Don Baker as Bufford Pusser.
Speaker 7: Audiences across America are standing up, applauding and curing a
Speaker 7: film called Walking Tall, based on the true story of
Speaker 7: a young man who wouldn't surrender to the system and
Speaker 7: the girl who always stood beside him.
Speaker 4: Walking Tall was lightly fictionalized. For example, Joe Don Baker
Speaker 4: carries a hickory stick instead of a gun while cleaning
Speaker 4: up the state line. In truth, Beauford never carried a
Speaker 4: stick on patrol. But since the film was based on
Speaker 4: a true story, most people naturally thought it was true,
Speaker 4: and so the legend grew. The film spawned two sequels,
Speaker 4: The Country and rockabilly singer Eddie Bond released an entire
Speaker 4: album of songs inspired by the sheriff. Listening to the lyrics,
Speaker 4: you could be mistaken for thinking Buford Pusser was a
Speaker 4: figure out of American folklore, like John Henry or Paul Bunyan.
Speaker 4: Actor Joe Don Baker, who played Bufford in the original
Speaker 4: Walking Tall, later compared him to a character from Greek mythology.
Speaker 8: This astounds me that people still remember it. I mean,
Speaker 8: I can understand it because Beefort was such a wonderful person.
Speaker 8: You know, he was a hell of a character in
Speaker 8: real life. He was like Hercules, a Zeus or something.
Speaker 8: He was incredible.
Speaker 4: Then, in two thousand and four, the remake of Walking
Speaker 4: Tall came out shortly after the premiere, The Rock came
Speaker 4: to McNairy County to say see where Baufford lived. Steve
Speaker 4: Sweat and his wife escorted him around, accompanied by a
Speaker 4: group of impatient MGM execs.
Speaker 6: And he came here out of respect for Beauford. He
Speaker 6: wanted to see where Beaufort walked and worked DC and
Speaker 6: he said, I'll see where he actually worked.
Speaker 4: Steve took The Rock to Beaufort's house, his office, and
Speaker 4: the local courthouse. He regaled him with stories as the
Speaker 4: Rock sat hunched in the back seat.
Speaker 6: And we had the sheriff and chief in front of
Speaker 6: me and five mark units behind us, and with lights
Speaker 6: and sirens. We didn't stop at any red lights, any intersection,
Speaker 6: and we ran like eighty miles an hour down the highway. Here,
Speaker 6: he wrote in my back seat, with his elbows on
Speaker 6: the front seat, and you know, just like a five
Speaker 6: year old kid, you know, trying to absorb these stories.
Speaker 4: As they drove, The Rock told Steve that starring in
Speaker 4: Walking Tall had been a dream come true. The Rock's father,
Speaker 4: Rocky Johnson, had also been a pro wrestler. Two of
Speaker 4: them had watched the original Walking Tall over and over
Speaker 4: when The Rock was young. It was their favorite movie.
Speaker 4: According to Steve, it inspired the Rock to be a
Speaker 4: better man.
Speaker 6: And he told us, he said, that was my dad
Speaker 6: and my favorite movie when I was a little fella,
Speaker 6: and he said, and in my life, he said, all
Speaker 6: the times I had the opportunity to take the wrong path,
Speaker 6: he said, I would think of those Walk and Tall movies,
Speaker 6: and I wanted to walk tall.
Speaker 7: That's what the Rock said.
Speaker 6: That's what he said.
Speaker 4: Like the Rock, Steve Sweat was emotionally invested in the
Speaker 4: legend of Buford Pusser as a righteous hero, and so
Speaker 4: when Steve learned that Pauline's body was being exhumed earlier
Speaker 4: this year, he was appalled. The suggestion that Buford played
Speaker 4: a role in Pauline's death threatened to destroy his legacy.
Speaker 4: What made matters worse was that the decision to exume
Speaker 4: her could be traced to an outsider, a former security
Speaker 4: consultant from Arkansas named Mike E.
Speaker 1: Of course, the perception that America has is that Buford
Speaker 1: was a real hero, that he cleaned up the state line,
Speaker 1: and that he sought revenge for his wife's death. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole other story that needs to
Speaker 1: be told. Like everybody else. When I first heard the
Speaker 1: story of Buford Pusser, I was a huge fan. I
Speaker 1: don't think they made fans any bigger than me. I
Speaker 1: admired the man and everything he did. The Twelfth of
Speaker 1: August had me convinced. Then the movie came out and
Speaker 1: I saw the movie. I thought it was incredible. It
Speaker 1: told a really entertaining story, and you know, I was
Speaker 1: just filled with admiration for Buford.
Speaker 4: This is Mike Elam in the early nineteen seventies when
Speaker 4: the first Walking TLL came out. Mike was a young
Speaker 4: sheriff's deputy in Benton County, Arkansas, four hundred and sixty
Speaker 4: five miles west of McNairy County.
Speaker 3: He the job.
Speaker 4: He imagined being elected sheriff one day and cleaning up
Speaker 4: the county, just like Beauford had, but the pay was lousy.
Speaker 4: To support his family, he reluctantly took a job as
Speaker 4: the head of loss prevention for a regional grocery retailer,
Speaker 4: and yet his interest in police work never went away.
Speaker 4: He watched every episode of Dragnet. He got hooked on
Speaker 4: the jfk assassination and later the OJ Simpson case. In
Speaker 4: the mid nineties, he turned his attention to Buford Pusser.
Speaker 4: Mike still held the man in high regard, but certain
Speaker 4: elements of the story had always bothered him. For one,
Speaker 4: the idea that Pauline had joined Bauford on a disturbance
Speaker 4: call in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: I think I can speak for just about anyone who's
Speaker 1: been in law enforcement. They will tell you that one
Speaker 1: thing you never do is take your spouse to a
Speaker 1: disturbance call. A disturbance call can go sideway so quickly,
Speaker 1: and it's just dangerous for everyone.
Speaker 4: Then there was the roote Buford took that night. As
Speaker 4: a Buford Pusser fan, Mike had visited McNairy County to
Speaker 4: check out the Buford Pusser Museum and see a few
Speaker 4: of the sites, and he realized Bufford could have taken
Speaker 4: a much simpler route to Hollis Jordan's Beer Hall, where
Speaker 4: the alleged disturbance took place.
Speaker 1: It was a very convoluted system of back roads to
Speaker 1: get to the state line. That didn't make sense to me,
Speaker 1: because he was just two blocks from Highway sixty four,
Speaker 1: and he could have got on Highway sixty four then
Speaker 1: on forty five been to the same location in a
Speaker 1: very short time, whereas this convoluted system of roads, several
Speaker 1: of them were unimproved at that time, and so it
Speaker 1: would have been a much slower route.
Speaker 4: That led Mike to another question. According to Beauford, the
Speaker 4: ambushors were lying in wait behind a church on a
Speaker 4: deserted country road. But how would they have known that
Speaker 4: Buford would take that road instead of the more direct
Speaker 4: route to Hollis Jordan's.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't they be waiting on either sixty four or forty
Speaker 1: five or possibly even and they're at the site where
Speaker 1: he was supposed to be responding to. So that didn't
Speaker 1: make sense.
Speaker 4: And so when he got some time off work, Mike
Speaker 4: decided to re enact the ambush. He recruited some friends
Speaker 4: to poses the assassins, a police chief from Ohio, a
Speaker 4: retired cameraman from Mississippi, and a McNairy County local who
Speaker 4: knew the story.
Speaker 1: We set up a scenario where I would pass by,
Speaker 1: representing Buford's car passing by the church, and we actually
Speaker 1: had a Cadillac beside the church that gave chase. However,
Speaker 1: by the time that I got to the bridge, they
Speaker 1: were still about two hundred, two hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 1: behind me. And you know, that really started to ring true.
Speaker 1: That if they couldn't catch me in broad daylight, how
Speaker 1: could that have happened in the pre dawn hours with
Speaker 1: no headlights.
Speaker 4: How fast were they traveling when they were trying to
Speaker 4: chase you?
Speaker 1: Well, I was going forty five and at one time
Speaker 1: they reached ninety two miles an hour in that seven
Speaker 1: tenths of a mile straight trying to catch me. And
Speaker 1: like I say, they were still over two hundred yards
Speaker 1: behind me by the time I reached the ambush point,
Speaker 1: and that just convinced me that there was no way
Speaker 1: it happened the way that Beufford said. At this point,
Speaker 1: I just started to gather up all the information that
Speaker 1: I possibly could.
Speaker 4: Mike began making public records requests. He read the police
Speaker 4: reports and studied the crime scene photographs from the ambush.
Speaker 4: Two things immediately stood out. One was the blood spatter.
Speaker 4: He knew that blood spatter often tells a story about
Speaker 4: how a crime occurred.
Speaker 1: Blood spatter tells you several different things. It can tell
Speaker 1: you the direction that a shot came from, the high
Speaker 1: that it came from the distance, the firearm was away
Speaker 1: from a person, and none of it matched beauford stories.
Speaker 4: Beauford had claimed that he and Pauline were inside the
Speaker 4: car when the ambushers opened fire, wounding Beaufort and killing Pauline.
Speaker 4: As such, you'd expect the blood spatter to be all
Speaker 4: over the car's interior, but that's not the only place
Speaker 4: the blood spatter was.
Speaker 1: You had blood on the front bumper, the hood of
Speaker 1: the car, at the top of the car, the sides
Speaker 1: of the car, all over the outside of the windshield.
Speaker 1: So you knew that something was not correct with his story.
Speaker 4: What specifically did that suggest about where the victim may
Speaker 4: have been at the time or the shooter.
Speaker 1: So all of the blood spatter on the outside of
Speaker 1: the car leads you to believe that someone was actually
Speaker 1: standing in front of that car when they were shot,
Speaker 1: not on the inside.
Speaker 4: The second thing that stood out to Mike was the
Speaker 4: position of the shell casings.
Speaker 1: He said that he was sitting in the car that
Speaker 1: they pulled up close enough that they were right next
Speaker 1: to him. You would expect the shellcasings to have been
Speaker 1: found in between the cars, possibly some being ejected inside
Speaker 1: the Cadillac and some even going over into Ford's car
Speaker 1: after the window was smollown out.
Speaker 4: But the shell casings weren't in the middle of the
Speaker 4: road or inside Buford's plymouth. They were on the shoulder
Speaker 4: of the road, on the opposite side of where Buford's
Speaker 4: car would have been. Pauline was said to have died
Speaker 4: from two gunshot wounds to the head, but Mike wanted
Speaker 4: to see what the autopsy report said. He called the
Speaker 4: McNairy County medical examiner, but they didn't have it, so
Speaker 4: he called the medical examiner for the State of Tennessee
Speaker 4: in Nashville. They didn't have it either. When Mike asked why,
Speaker 4: the response shocked him.
Speaker 1: I learned that one was never performed.
Speaker 4: Mike couldn't believe it. Pauline was the sheriff's wife who had,
Speaker 4: according to Buford, been killed in a dramatic Hollywood style ambush,
Speaker 4: with no other witnesses and no viable suspects. Even a
Speaker 4: cursory look at the evidence suggested Buford's version of events
Speaker 4: was highly dubious, and yet no autopsy. The state and
Speaker 4: local medical examiners from nineteen sixty seven had long since
Speaker 4: passed away, so Mike reached out to the current state
Speaker 4: medical examiner. He asked what could have prevented the autopsy
Speaker 4: of a murder victim back in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Seven, and he told me that the prosecutor and the
Speaker 1: local medical examiner had to concur on the need for one.
Speaker 1: So for some reason they could not concur. And you
Speaker 1: have to wonder about the reasoning for that, because that
Speaker 1: autopsy would have told so much about her death that
Speaker 1: they just passed up the opportunity to get trajectories, the angles,
Speaker 1: the distance, so much there that needed to be told.
Speaker 4: Mike knew that Beauford, as the sheriff of McNairy County,
Speaker 4: was friendly with both the local DA and the medical examiner.
Speaker 4: They must have felt sorry for Buford. Mike could easily
Speaker 4: imagine him persuading both men to bury his wife without
Speaker 4: an autopsy.
Speaker 1: You know, it is possible that Buford Amssel literally did
Speaker 1: not want an autopsy done and convinced the two men
Speaker 1: not to have one. It makes absolutely no sense otherwise.
Speaker 4: Mike was hooked. He would spend a good part of
Speaker 4: the next ten years investigating Buford and the events leading
Speaker 4: up to Pauline's death. Along the way, he would uncover
Speaker 4: details no one knew about one of the South's most
Speaker 4: famous unsolved murders. Details that suggested the prime suspect in
Speaker 4: Pauline's death was her husband, Buford Pusser. That's next Time
Speaker 4: on Gonsouth. If you have information, story tips, or feedback
Speaker 4: you'd like to share with the Gonsouth team, please email
Speaker 4: us at Gonsouthpodcast at gmail dot com. That's Gonsouthpodcast at
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Speaker 4: South with Jed Lopinsky. Gone South is an Odyssey original podcast.
Speaker 4: It's created, written and narrated by me Jed Lopinsky. Our
Speaker 4: executive producers are Jenna weis Berman, Matty sprung Kaiser, Tom Leapinsky,
Speaker 4: Lloyd Lockridge, and Me. Our story editors are Tom Leapinsky,
Speaker 4: Matty sprun Kaiser, and Joel Lovell. Gone South is edited,
Speaker 4: mixed and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskowitz. Production
Speaker 4: support from Ian Mont and Sean Sherry. Special thanks to J.
Speaker 4: D Crowley, Leahrhese, Dennis Mora, Kerrn, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney,
Speaker 4: and Hillary Schuff. If you want to hear more of
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