Speaker 1: Also Media, Harry everyone Robert Evans here and on Thursday
Speaker 1: September twenty fifth at eight pm, Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 1: doing a live show. The show itself is in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: but all of the in person seats have sold out. However,
Speaker 1: there are live stream tickets available if you go to
Speaker 1: Alberta Rose Theater t h E A t r E
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards on just type that into Google or
Speaker 1: whatever search engine you use. Alberta Rose Theater, Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards you can find a link to buy tickets for
Speaker 1: the live show. This is to benefit the Portland Defense Fund,
Speaker 1: which helps bail people out who don't have, you know,
Speaker 1: resources of their own, so it's a good cause. Tickets
Speaker 1: are twenty five dollars for the live stream version of
Speaker 1: the show, So please go to Alberta Rose Theater Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards and pick up a live stream show to
Speaker 1: check it out. On Thursday September twenty fifth at eight pm,
Speaker 1: and we're back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
Speaker 1: bad people, the worst ones in all of history. This
Speaker 1: is tart two of our series on Buford Pusser, the
Speaker 1: man whose family could not give their kids normal names.
Speaker 1: To save their lives. Also, he committed a bunch of
Speaker 1: horrible crimes and killed people. Back as my guest.
Speaker 2: Dan O'Brien, Hello, thank you for having me. There's there's
Speaker 2: no depths to my appetite for Pusser.
Speaker 1: That's that's right, I just love Pusser. Beauford. I'm agnostic
Speaker 1: on Have you ever met a Buford? Do you know
Speaker 1: a single Buford?
Speaker 2: The only this is not a person that I know,
Speaker 2: the only time I've ever heard that name was Benjamin
Speaker 2: Buford Blue, the full name of Bubba from Forrest Gump.
Speaker 1: I know that I didn't remember that was Bubba's.
Speaker 2: Person, I know, but yeah, that's the only other instance
Speaker 2: of that name I've ever heard anywhere.
Speaker 1: Huh. Yeah, I know that. I'm actually looking up the
Speaker 1: name of the shaf from Smoking the Band Yeah, Buford
Speaker 1: t Justice is the sheriff of Smokey and the bandit Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think is probably the first time I heard
Speaker 1: that name and did not realize that it was. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was came out in seventy seven, so he was
Speaker 1: definitely named after Buford. Pusser because Walking Doll came out
Speaker 1: in seventy three, kind of a more accurate parody of
Speaker 1: Buford Pusser as opposed to the version in Walking TLL
Speaker 1: that's basically a hero.
Speaker 3: The cool sheriff guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, speaking of those movies, if you've watched any
Speaker 1: of the Walking Tall movies, you're probably aware as I've
Speaker 1: mentioned that he was. Buford was mostly famous for using
Speaker 1: a large stick or a bat or piece of wood
Speaker 1: to beat up gangsters. The original poster, which Sophie's going
Speaker 1: the show, for those of you watching the video version,
Speaker 1: is just it looks like he's just holding like a log,
Speaker 1: but like a trimmed log, like a log someone has
Speaker 1: processed to be nice firewood, like it's had the bark
Speaker 1: shaved off at everything. But it does just look like
Speaker 1: a log.
Speaker 4: Like he kind of looks like if Javier Bardem was
Speaker 4: also a zombie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's how the illustrated Yeah, Buford and Walking
Speaker 1: in the poster looks. And then, of course the tagline
Speaker 1: of the original movie, the measure of a man is
Speaker 1: how tall he walks? What does that mean? I mean
Speaker 1: you mean that like, the taller you are, the better
Speaker 1: you are. What is what is that?
Speaker 2: It's somewhere between literal and poetic, right where like you
Speaker 2: would measure.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess the measure of a man, yes, is.
Speaker 1: How you literally, Yes, you can measure a man by
Speaker 1: how tally is. But I don't think like you're saying
Speaker 1: a lot about the man necessarily, especially since like the
Speaker 1: fact that a man can walk tall, being six foot six, like,
Speaker 1: it's that's less impressive. Like if he was a short
Speaker 1: man who had like his personality, you know, or whatever
Speaker 1: you're saying, Like he walked tall, that's something. But just
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, you know, this giant guy, he sure was.
Speaker 4: Tall, that's just Napoleon Robert, right.
Speaker 2: If they're going literal, it's very boring and there's nothing
Speaker 2: more to say about it. You're saying that the tallness
Speaker 2: is the tallness. If they're going poetic. They also don't
Speaker 2: do a good enough job defining what walking tall means,
Speaker 2: Like what.
Speaker 1: Is it means you beat in a man half to
Speaker 1: death with lumber?
Speaker 3: He walks the most tall?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess so, But that's not really
Speaker 1: a point in his favor. He just happened to be big.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The more recent reboot featuring The Rock, which was a
Speaker 1: loose adaptation of the original movie that was not explicitly
Speaker 1: based on the life of Buford. Pusster shows the rock carrying.
Speaker 1: It's interesting the differences between these. Instead of carrying like
Speaker 1: a trimmed log, he's carrying what looks just like a
Speaker 1: piece of like construction timber. Yes, yeah, yeah, he's just
Speaker 1: he's just gotten his hand there. And the tagline there
Speaker 1: is one man will stand up for What's right, which
Speaker 1: is at least a better tagline than the first movie had,
Speaker 1: and it notes that it's inspired by a true story,
Speaker 1: which it wasn't. Yeah, as we'll discuss today, it's the
Speaker 1: whole myth. As I noted about him using a large
Speaker 1: piece of wood to fight crime, started when Buford hit
Speaker 1: Wo Hathcock Junior in the school with a fence post.
Speaker 1: Buford's daughter noted in her book Walking On, there was
Speaker 1: a handful of other times when Daddy would find use
Speaker 1: for a sizeable piece of lumber when going up against
Speaker 1: bad guys, but as often as not he went in
Speaker 1: bare handed, or maybe would grab something more like a switch.
Speaker 1: That's usually all that was necessary. But his first retaliation
Speaker 1: against the State Line mob was personal and it did
Speaker 1: indeed require a fence post.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's okay, that's so interesting. To describe a
Speaker 2: mob fight as personal.
Speaker 3: They're all personal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are trying to kill you. It feels very personal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is funny to me that she's like, there were
Speaker 1: a handful of times where he'd find a big piece
Speaker 1: of lumber to fight people with. That was like a
Speaker 1: thing he did so Normally, the State Line Gang was
Speaker 1: not the kind of group who would settle a problem
Speaker 1: by calling in the police because they were a mafia.
Speaker 1: But in this case, Buford and his friends had committed
Speaker 1: straight up felony assault against somebody. So Hathcock Junior pressed charges,
Speaker 1: and Buford was arrested with his buddies and extradited to Mississippi.
Speaker 1: They were charged with assault with a tent to commit
Speaker 1: murder and armed robbery, both of which are probably accurate
Speaker 1: descriptions of what they'd done. Bufert's daughter doesn't write that
Speaker 1: he robbed Hathcock Junior, but it sounds like he did.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't be surprised if, well, they took my
Speaker 1: money that I gambled away, so I'm going to take
Speaker 1: whatever's in his wallet, right like I really did. It
Speaker 1: does sound like he actually also just robbed the guy again,
Speaker 1: rather than this being he was so upset at all
Speaker 1: the crime he had to fight against these gangsters. He
Speaker 1: was like, no, he beat a man after death and
Speaker 1: took his money.
Speaker 2: He lost money at a casino and got beat up
Speaker 2: and then wanted to rectify that specific situation for himself
Speaker 2: ten days after his wedding.
Speaker 3: It needs to be repeated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right after the wedding. Yeah. So Buford and his
Speaker 1: friends they get extradited, but they don't wind up getting
Speaker 1: convicted because again, he's got that, like you said, he's
Speaker 1: got that cop brain for when he's committing violent crimes.
Speaker 1: Where he made sure to set up an alibi for
Speaker 1: himself and his buddies before they went out to attack
Speaker 1: Hathcock Junior, and their defense hinged on the fact that
Speaker 1: they worked at a factory together in Chicago, and they'd
Speaker 1: all filled out time cards and there were time cards
Speaker 1: for all three men that showed them working on the
Speaker 1: day of the assault, and then they just had like
Speaker 1: a friend fake the time cards so they could go
Speaker 1: out and beat that guy. And Duanna Pusser writes about
Speaker 1: this in her book About Her Dad and again describes
Speaker 1: it as like a lighthearted prank as opposed to somebody
Speaker 1: like consciously trying to evade the law while committing felonies. Quotemeditated, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very premeditated. Yes. As it turns out, having a friend
Speaker 1: clock their time cards for them while they were gone
Speaker 1: proved to be a stroke of really smart planning by
Speaker 1: Daddy and his friends. That's one way to describe a
Speaker 1: criminal conspiracy. Yeah, a stroke of really smart planning.
Speaker 2: God, it's like one of my favorite planners, the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great at planning. In a stroke of very smart planning,
Speaker 1: he cut the body up into forty pieces and threw
Speaker 1: it in a river. So once the trial ended, Beauford
Speaker 1: and his new wife, Pauline, returned to Chicago, where he
Speaker 1: started attending a mortuary school to get a proper degree.
Speaker 1: So he decides to try to make this a career still,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of like working at a factory. He's
Speaker 1: going to mortuary school at night, and then on the
Speaker 1: weekends he starts wrestling. He becomes a pro wrestler as
Speaker 1: a way to pick up extra money. Now, Buford was
Speaker 1: good enough that he caught the eye of Jerry Lawler,
Speaker 1: the wrestling icon who later helped The Rock get started,
Speaker 1: which is a weird direct an action between the two men.
Speaker 1: Jerry the King Lawler, Yeah, yeah, Lawler was reportedly a
Speaker 1: friend of Buford Puster, or like a fan of his
Speaker 1: when he was a wrestler.
Speaker 3: That's I mean, there you go.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 2: If there's a behind the Bastards on Jerry the King Lawler,
Speaker 2: that'll be the one episode that I skiw because I
Speaker 2: love him too much.
Speaker 1: I don't have any evidence of him doing anything bad,
Speaker 1: and we don't. I don't actually have proof that he
Speaker 1: actually was a fan of Buford. He's reported reputed to
Speaker 1: have been a fan of Buford, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: like maybe that was a lie.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also not entirely like he was a huge dude.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I could see him being decent at wrestling.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that said, he's not wildly successful and he does
Speaker 1: not become a national name. This is never going to
Speaker 1: be anything that makes becomes a career for him, but
Speaker 1: it does teach him some lessons that will be useful
Speaker 1: in his later crimes. As of nineteen fifty eight, it
Speaker 1: was still mostly a weekend gig. He does do some
Speaker 1: pretty good size performances, his largest being he wrestles at
Speaker 1: an event at Comiski Park in Chicago, in front of
Speaker 1: thirty seven thousand people. So, like, you know, he's not
Speaker 1: a nobody here. You know, that's not nothing. We don't
Speaker 1: there's just not a I wish there was more detail
Speaker 1: about his wrestling career. Basically, the only real documentation we
Speaker 1: have of it is a nineteen seventy article that Buford
Speaker 1: wrote after he got famous, for an issue of the
Speaker 1: men's adventure magazine True Detective. So again not great journalistic
Speaker 1: reputation True Detective Magazine. But in that article he claims
Speaker 1: that the hardest match of his wrestling career was in
Speaker 1: Union City, Tennessee, against a guy named Big Bill Crockett.
Speaker 1: They both wrestled the night before in Jackson, and Buford
Speaker 1: had gotten a nashty gash on his forehead during that fight,
Speaker 1: and so when they fight again the next fight, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna continue here from Buford's article. When the referee called
Speaker 1: us out to shake hands in Union City, he hauled
Speaker 1: off and hit me with his fist, busted open the
Speaker 1: cut in the night before. When he hit me the
Speaker 1: second night, that's when the fight come off. We didn't wrestle,
Speaker 1: we just fought. It was a little makeshift ring and
Speaker 1: we tore it down. The referee stopped us, got some
Speaker 1: canvas and lumber and patched it up. Then we fought
Speaker 1: some more and tore it down again. I don't know
Speaker 1: how I'd got home that night if I hadn't had
Speaker 1: a wrestler named Billy Daniels to drive for me. Both
Speaker 1: eyes were swollen shut, my hands were so sore, my
Speaker 1: fingers got stiff like claws. I was stiff as a
Speaker 1: board for days. It was along then that I decided
Speaker 1: to give up wrestling, So that'll be basically his only
Speaker 1: rational decision in life.
Speaker 2: I would argue that makes him a bad professional wrestler.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably fair, Okay, good, Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think when you lose your temper enough that you have
Speaker 1: an actual fight and destroy the ring twice. Although I
Speaker 1: do want to see that fight, Like I bet that
Speaker 1: was a hell of a thing to watch.
Speaker 2: And like, gosh, whether this is an embellishment or not,
Speaker 2: it's a really good, legitimate pro wrestling bit. It to
Speaker 2: fight so bad that the ring breaks and then they
Speaker 2: rebuild the ring, and.
Speaker 3: That's excellent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a good wrestling bit. So one of
Speaker 1: the last things that Bufford and Pauline would do in
Speaker 1: Chicago before they moved back to Adamsville was have their
Speaker 1: first child, Dwana, On's January ninth of nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: And it almost immediately after that happens they moved back
Speaker 1: to Adamsville. And I want to quote now from an
Speaker 1: article by the McNairy Historical Society. His dad, Carl was
Speaker 1: chief of police in Adamsville. He was retiring and encouraged
Speaker 1: Bufford to apply for his job. After a vote from
Speaker 1: the city board, Buford was made chief of police. Thus
Speaker 1: began his law enforcement career. Now that's a that seems
Speaker 1: like it's leaving out a lot.
Speaker 3: He was made chief of police.
Speaker 1: He was made chief of police right and the way
Speaker 1: Dwana describes it, they had to beg him to be
Speaker 1: the chief of police, Like he really didn't want it
Speaker 1: and they had to force it on him. There's a
Speaker 1: lot that we just don't have here, the little bitty
Speaker 1: details around the edges that get left out that I
Speaker 1: have been able to find paint to kind of a
Speaker 1: darker picture. So, among other things, this is back during
Speaker 1: a time when small town law enforcement was less of
Speaker 1: like a career track and more like a gig you
Speaker 1: could fall into by accident, right, Like, if you're in
Speaker 1: a county and like the sheriff is like an elected
Speaker 1: position and you're just a popular guy, you might wind
Speaker 1: up being the sheriff, even if like that wasn't your ambition,
Speaker 1: you know. But also there's a lot of money being
Speaker 1: the sheriff in a town that has organized crime in it,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of this. I can't say this for certain,
Speaker 1: but I really heavily suspect based on a couple of
Speaker 1: things I've read that his dad, Carl was crooked and
Speaker 1: wanted to pass on the job as police chief to
Speaker 1: his son so that the money from being crooked cops
Speaker 1: in this mafia town could continue to stay in the family. Right.
Speaker 1: He becomes the police chief after he's horribly injured in
Speaker 1: a car accident. There's a lot of car accidents in
Speaker 1: this story. In a second car no no, no, this
Speaker 1: is his dad totally separate car. So his dad becomes
Speaker 1: the chief of police after he gets too hurt to
Speaker 1: work in a pipeline, which is also weird, and yeah,
Speaker 1: does the job for just a few years and then
Speaker 1: decides he's too hurt, and he pushes for his son
Speaker 1: to take the job. Now, given the reality of crime
Speaker 1: at the time in McNairy County, this was not an
Speaker 1: easy job enforcing the law near the state line, and
Speaker 1: it was made harder by the fact that everyone whose
Speaker 1: job was to enforce the law in the area was,
Speaker 1: as best as I can tell, also incredibly corrupt, right, Like,
Speaker 1: no one was really all that interested in enforcing the law,
Speaker 1: including Buford. The McNairy County sheriff worked with the state
Speaker 1: Line Gang to ensure that alcohol kept getting smuggled into
Speaker 1: the county. And as soon as he became the police chief, Buford,
Speaker 1: the way he would describe things as like he set
Speaker 1: himself against these corrupt cops to like fight for justice
Speaker 1: and fight against the mafia. The way I interpret it
Speaker 1: and what I think the body of evidence suggests now
Speaker 1: is he was just kind of trying to edge these
Speaker 1: other law enforcement guys out of the racket, right because
Speaker 1: they were all getting cuts and he wanted more money
Speaker 1: for himself. Because as soon as he becomes the police chief,
Speaker 1: he runs for constable, and he wins a narrow victory's
Speaker 1: constable in nineteen sixty two, and after that he's going
Speaker 1: to immediately like set his sights on becoming the sheriff. So, like,
Speaker 1: what he's doing here is he's getting rid of the competition.
Speaker 1: He's trying to make himself the only lawman in town,
Speaker 1: in part because then the cut only gets split one way.
Speaker 1: Right now, kind of laying out exactly what happened here
Speaker 1: is hard because most of what was written during this
Speaker 1: time period was written from the perspective that, like Buford,
Speaker 1: Pusser was a hero who was going on a crusade
Speaker 1: against the whiskey trade. That's how Michael Birdwell describes what
Speaker 1: he does for the Tennessee Encyclopedia as like a crusade,
Speaker 1: Like this was a like a almost like a holy
Speaker 1: war that he was waging against bootleggers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Those are always good, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we love a good holy war. Yeah. No one's
Speaker 1: ever done one of those with an ulterior motive.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anytime someone has committed to something that they've described as
Speaker 2: a crusade, my immediate thought was like, well, that sounds
Speaker 2: like they're clear ride and level headed about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like you're saying and reasonable and pursuing
Speaker 1: this reasonably.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Again, modern evidence suggests that he was perfectly happy taking
Speaker 1: money from bootlegging and that his issue was both specifically
Speaker 1: with the State Lion Gang because they had beef, and
Speaker 1: with the fact that like he wanted more of the
Speaker 1: money that was coming in from these illegal businesses, right,
Speaker 1: rather than he had an issue with the businesses in
Speaker 1: the first place. So that's why he would go after people, right,
Speaker 1: He was effectively starting to make people pay protection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: first as the police chief and then is the sheriff.
Speaker 1: Right now, we do know that the ever corruption between
Speaker 1: area law enforcement and the State Line Gang is certainly
Speaker 1: a lot broader than even just the stories Bufford would tell. Like,
Speaker 1: there is out He's not the only guy saying that,
Speaker 1: like the sheriff when he became police chief was crooked.
Speaker 1: There's evidence for this outside of Beauford. The book Mississippi
Speaker 1: Moonshine Politics is a great anecdote about Louise Hathcock that
Speaker 1: really sells how locked down the State Line Gang had
Speaker 1: things with the cops before Buford got into the mix.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: After one particular raid on the forty five grill, a
Speaker 1: deputy sheriff arrived early one morning at the Halfcock home
Speaker 1: in Corinth to arrest Luis on liquor charges. Since Louise
Speaker 1: was still in her bathrobe, she asked the deputy to
Speaker 1: wait well, she changed into her work clothes, fixed her hair,
Speaker 1: and applied some makeup. Oddly, the deputy agreed. Once she
Speaker 1: was dressed for work at the roadhouse, the deputy allowed
Speaker 1: Luis to drive to the sheriff's office in her own vehicle.
Speaker 1: Once Louis arrived, she quickly posted a five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: bail and made it to work before the lunch crowd arrived.
Speaker 1: And that's that's just you're paying a bribe on your
Speaker 1: way to work to the cops.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I love this woman so so much.
Speaker 1: It's a shame what happens to her, because she's very
Speaker 1: speaking of things that depress me, not going to ads.
Speaker 1: Every moment of my life is agony, outside of the
Speaker 1: brief periods of time in which products and services are
Speaker 1: being advertised. On this podcast, we're back and my long
Speaker 1: nightmare continues.
Speaker 3: Tragic.
Speaker 1: So Pusser is going to run for sheriff. You know,
Speaker 1: he becomes the police chief, he becomes the constable, and
Speaker 1: the next thing he's going to do is he's going
Speaker 1: to get that crooked McNairy County Sheriff out so that
Speaker 1: he can continue his crusade against Moonshine slash take all
Speaker 1: of the money for himself. Now, he made some interesting
Speaker 1: decisions when he started this run, the weirdest of which
Speaker 1: is that he chose to run as a Republican in
Speaker 1: what was then a Democratic stronghold. This should have been
Speaker 1: more of a problem for him, but he got lucky
Speaker 1: because his rival, the incumbent Sheriff James Dickie, died in
Speaker 1: a horrible car accident part way through the election, clearing
Speaker 1: Bufford an easy path to victory. Now, man, did Bufford
Speaker 1: have anything to do with that car accident?
Speaker 2: And I can I just just on behalf of the
Speaker 2: audience without any jokes or frills, just say that, yes,
Speaker 2: you're Dicky and Pusser.
Speaker 3: Dickie is the name. It was Dicky v.
Speaker 2: Pusser, and Dickie was pulverized and cleared a path or
Speaker 2: Pusser to snatch this victory.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, that's that's the story of Dicky v. Pusser. Yeah, proceed,
Speaker 1: And again we know Buford is willing to kill people
Speaker 1: in stage assassinations to get what he wanted. Like this
Speaker 1: is me speculating. I just wouldn't be shocked if he
Speaker 1: had something to do with Dickie's death. That said, this
Speaker 1: is like the fourth car accident that we've talked about
Speaker 1: in these episodes, So you also have to acknowledge it
Speaker 1: was the sixties. Everyone was drunk and nobody had c else, right,
Speaker 1: So people just die in cars a lot back then.
Speaker 1: So as soon as he gets elected Sheriff, Pusser began
Speaker 1: an immediate spree of high profile raids against State Line
Speaker 1: Gang properties. Local papers reported that he bust into gambling
Speaker 1: dens carrying a pickaxe and use it to destroy tables
Speaker 1: and roulette wheels. In his first year on the job,
Speaker 1: he is said to have rated forty two stills and
Speaker 1: arrested almost twice as many moonshiners. So he's going on
Speaker 1: like a rampage here, right, Like as soon as he
Speaker 1: gets in and he get like the news picks up
Speaker 1: on this, like he gets famous for the way he's
Speaker 1: doing this, because he sometimes he's calling reporters along so
Speaker 1: they can see him busting up stuff with a pickaxe
Speaker 1: or a stick. Now, by this point, the State Line
Speaker 1: Gang that he's declared war against has undergone a change
Speaker 1: of leadership. Luis had decided to end her twenty year
Speaker 1: partnership in marriage with Jack Hathcock, because in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: seven she'd fallen in love with a different criminal figure,
Speaker 1: a lieutenant from one of the most powerful gangs in
Speaker 1: the area, the Dixie Mafia.
Speaker 3: Now that yeah, yeah, enter John Fullcock.
Speaker 1: It would be that would be pretty funny if she'd
Speaker 1: fallen for John Folcock. No, she keeps going by Hathcock,
Speaker 1: by the way, after she does what she does, which
Speaker 1: is interesting to me, But that's the story we're telling now.
Speaker 1: So the Dixie Mafia where she falls for this guy's
Speaker 1: lieutenant there is based out of the Strip, which is
Speaker 1: this neighborhood in Biloxie that's basically Mississippi's answer to Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Edward Humes, the author of a book called Mississippi Mud
Speaker 1: that's on the Dixie Mafia, describes the Strip as the
Speaker 1: cancerous heart of Biloxie, and given the rest of Biloxie,
Speaker 1: that's really saying something if you've ever been to that
Speaker 1: fucking town. Per his description, the Dixie Mafia was started
Speaker 1: by a lot of guys you might call rejects from
Speaker 1: East Coast organized crime. Like it was initially a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys who got in too much trouble in night
Speaker 1: like New York or Jersey and had to flee to
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere so they wouldn't get off. Like
Speaker 1: that's kind of who founds the Dixie Mafia. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: these are these are both tough guys and also maybe
Speaker 1: not quite the top of the game, right because they
Speaker 1: had to flee to Biloxi.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, it's oops, Alfredo's It's not gonna get any
Speaker 2: of the cream of the crop there.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, these guys are like, yeah, the dudes
Speaker 1: who My alternative to moving here was to get murdered.
Speaker 1: So Louise Halfcock, the guy she falls for, is named
Speaker 1: Carl White and he's nicknamed Towhead, a Tallahatchie boy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Carl Towhead White.
Speaker 3: In these episodes, the names.
Speaker 1: There's some great names.
Speaker 3: I think you're with us.
Speaker 4: You're just like, you're just throwing fake names just to
Speaker 4: see if.
Speaker 1: We catch I was I was worried when we went
Speaker 1: from Pusser's and dickies and half cocks to a white
Speaker 1: you know, boring name, but then nicknamed Towhead. We're back
Speaker 1: in the game, baby, ye Yeah. Toehead was a Talahatchie
Speaker 1: boy and gangster who had risen to the highest levels
Speaker 1: of the Dixie mafia. And yeah, Louise falls in love
Speaker 1: with this guy, and so she's got to split up
Speaker 1: with Jack. Now, she does file for divorce, but that's
Speaker 1: just step one because Jack, like everyone else in the story,
Speaker 1: is a murderous gangster, and Louise and Carl know just
Speaker 1: divorcing him isn't going to be quite enough, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not really an option with this kind of crime.
Speaker 3: Marriage.
Speaker 1: Author Janis Tracy summarizes the rest of the story of
Speaker 1: Janis and Luis read like a B movie script. Luise
Speaker 1: divorce Jack, Towhead, and Luis conspired to murder Jack, and
Speaker 1: Towhead shot and killed Jack in a motel room where
Speaker 1: he was enticed by his wife. Luise convinced authority she
Speaker 1: had shot Jack and self defense, and showed bruises to
Speaker 1: authorities that she had allowed Towhead to inflict on her body.
Speaker 1: Although Luis was charged with killing Jack and self defense,
Speaker 1: it was no surprise when the charges later were dismissed.
Speaker 1: Luis and Towhead continued their off and on relationship, at
Speaker 1: least when Towhead was in town. The couple never married
Speaker 1: in part because Louis saw through Towhead's often obvious attempts
Speaker 1: to gain control of her money and her business operation.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is a smart, tough lay orchestrates the
Speaker 1: murder of her husband and then keeps her boyfriend at
Speaker 1: arm's lengths because she's like, look, man, I like you
Speaker 1: and thanks for help with the murder, but like, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna own my businesses, Like, that's that's my stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, I put up with this guy for twenty years.
Speaker 1: I'm not giving out my business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such a bummer that this was the past.
Speaker 2: If she had waited a few more decades before being alive,
Speaker 2: she'd have been a very powerful figure Governmentstely.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, she could have. She might have been
Speaker 1: able to win the presidency. Right, She's got that kind
Speaker 1: of ruthlessness and organizational school and apparently a very good cook,
Speaker 1: the whole package. Really, Yeah, if you don't mind getting
Speaker 1: murdered maybe, which I've had worse things happen in relationships.
Speaker 1: So and this is another crucial dimension to the Beeford
Speaker 1: poster story because by the time he declares his war
Speaker 1: on the State Line Gang, their most prominent leader is
Speaker 1: a woman. Right, and it may just be the case
Speaker 1: that why Buford starts going after them is less because
Speaker 1: he hates crime and he's got this vendetta, and more
Speaker 1: he thinks they're weak because a woman's in charge, and
Speaker 1: he can take over control of the business, right or
Speaker 1: at least get a better deal, you know, if somebody
Speaker 1: else winds up in charge, or if he doesn't have
Speaker 1: to like right, he sees weakness here. I think that's
Speaker 1: why he does what he does, whatever the case. In
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixty four, Luis's gang strikes back. Buford was
Speaker 1: ambushed by an unknown number of questionably competent assassins who
Speaker 1: stab him seven times and then leave him for dead.
Speaker 1: They don't take any effort to confirm that he's dead.
Speaker 1: Buford survives, and this obviously makes him famous, right like that,
Speaker 1: There's this law man who's he's been doing all these
Speaker 1: very showy raids, cracking down on bootleggers and you know,
Speaker 1: organized crime in the area, and then he gets ambushed
Speaker 1: and stabbed repeatedly and he manages to survive and continue
Speaker 1: attacking the mob. Know he's becoming a hero. At this point.
Speaker 1: The news is covering him like that, And did this
Speaker 1: really he was definitely stabbed a bunch of times. Was
Speaker 1: it an assassination attempt? Or is this something because he's
Speaker 1: later going to injure himself as part of like a
Speaker 1: faked assassination attempt, and so it kind of this is
Speaker 1: probably real because they definitely the State Line Gang had
Speaker 1: a reason to But I can't not doubt it now, right,
Speaker 1: For all.
Speaker 2: We know, he just got tangled up with so many
Speaker 2: fucking volleyball nets again, like, oh no, down.
Speaker 1: Seven down. Yeah, we found him tangled, covered in blood,
Speaker 1: tangled in seven volleyball and that's what happened, Bufort. They
Speaker 1: tried to kill me. It was the mob again, it
Speaker 1: was the mob. It was the State Line Mob. But
Speaker 1: Beuford does like the thing he's best at is he's
Speaker 1: very good at nursing this growing mythos around himself. Right,
Speaker 1: He gives a lot of interviews. He likes talking to
Speaker 1: the press. He's good at working the media such as
Speaker 1: it is in his era, and he really likes the
Speaker 1: image of himself as this badass, log wielding juggernaut of justice.
Speaker 1: So he starts making a point that when he realizes, oh,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that is really playing well
Speaker 1: with the audience. He starts carrying a hickory stick whenever
Speaker 1: he goes to on raids to bust Moonshine stills, so
Speaker 1: the press sees him with it, right, Even though it's
Speaker 1: not really useful for anything, it's part of his legend
Speaker 1: at this point. In nineteen sixty six, he launches his
Speaker 1: most ambitious arrest yet. He takes a squad of deputies
Speaker 1: to the Shamrock Hotel, which is the center of the
Speaker 1: Halfcock criminal empire. The official story is that during the arrest,
Speaker 1: Luise pulls a gun and Buford shoots her dead in
Speaker 1: self defense. Luis's family will insist up to the present
Speaker 1: day that she was shot in the back and thus
Speaker 1: probably not a self defense case. He just murdered her, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, I think that's pretty credible that said. Luis
Speaker 1: definitely is not the kind of person who wouldn't pull
Speaker 1: a gun on a law man, right. I just think
Speaker 1: she was probably too smart to have tried to do that.
Speaker 1: Then I think it's likelier that he murdered her.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think the woman shrewd enough to keep her
Speaker 2: financials intact, and the woman shrewd enough to like let
Speaker 2: me get changed to put on my makeup and drive
Speaker 2: myself to post my own bail before I go to work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think she is also shrewd enough to not shoot
Speaker 2: the famous hero cop that everyone talks about.
Speaker 1: I think's there with all of his cops in a
Speaker 1: daylight raid. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's how I feel too.
Speaker 1: And there's something very sad about within the criminal underworld.
Speaker 1: Obviously this is like a brutal These are brutal, violent,
Speaker 1: dangerous people. But within that world and its rules, she
Speaker 1: is able to succeed and survive, and taking her out
Speaker 1: requires someone the only kind of person who doesn't have
Speaker 1: to abide by any sort of rule, which is a sheriff, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's the reality of law enforcement then and now.
Speaker 1: But like sheriffs have such a degree of autonomy and power.
Speaker 1: And when Beauford says, oh, yeah, she pulled a gun
Speaker 1: on me, so I had to shoot her, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that she was shot in the back, Like no
Speaker 1: one else's version of events is going to carry water here.
Speaker 1: And it's just it's so unfair, Like if you were
Speaker 1: playing by the same rule as Luis was playing, you
Speaker 1: never would have won Buford, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, just such a coward's way to win this war, right,
Speaker 2: and like probably set back women's rights at least in
Speaker 2: crime a couple of decades from.
Speaker 1: Women's crime rights. Yes, yeah, it took decades for them
Speaker 1: to recover. Yeah, I was trying to remember a famous
Speaker 1: lady mafioso, but actually they mostly were in Most of
Speaker 1: the ones I know were from like the sixties seventies,
Speaker 1: Like that lady who invented murdering people using motorcycles.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did a bTB on her at one point
Speaker 1: she was great. So yeah, Buford's people write the official reports,
Speaker 1: and so his version of events here is the one
Speaker 1: that history accepted. People who are only now starting to
Speaker 1: really like question it on a white although I should
Speaker 1: point out the Halfcock family has four decades been saying like, no,
Speaker 1: he totally murdered her, right, Yeah, people just didn't listen
Speaker 1: to them because they were famous. Crisis of course. Now,
Speaker 1: over the next couple of years, Buford expanded his war
Speaker 1: on crime across the state line and even into territory
Speaker 1: operated by the Dixie Mafia. His legend grew with him.
Speaker 1: The Buford Pusser Museum lists his greatest hits and a
Speaker 1: bulleted list that I am sure is largely inaccurate, but
Speaker 1: it gives you an idea of how people talk about,
Speaker 1: like the legends that's grown up about this guy. So
Speaker 1: here's the their bulleted list of his accomplishments. Shot eight times,
Speaker 1: knife seven times, fought off six minute once, sending three
Speaker 1: to jail and three to the hospital, destroyed eighty seven
Speaker 1: whiskey stills in nineteen sixty five alone, killed two people
Speaker 1: in self defense, hopped on the hood of a speeding car,
Speaker 1: smashed the window, and subdued the man who had tried
Speaker 1: to run over him.
Speaker 3: Okay, now, could be a little bit of truth in that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's fair to say that he killing me
Speaker 2: to contact with a car and its window.
Speaker 1: Right. We know that he was stabbed several times. Who
Speaker 1: did the stabbing?
Speaker 3: Was it him?
Speaker 1: Was at other people? Probably a mix. He was shot
Speaker 1: several times. At least one of those times he shot himself.
Speaker 1: Were the other times people shooting him? Or did he like?
Speaker 1: Who knows? He may have fought six minute once, although
Speaker 1: I kind of doubt it, but he was a really
Speaker 1: big guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it depends on the definite definition of fighting.
Speaker 2: I would believe that he like a crowd of guys
Speaker 2: were around him and he starts hitting, took took a
Speaker 2: stick out and spun in a circle real fast the
Speaker 2: way I think that's viable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Or he got angry and he started beating on
Speaker 1: some guys and they were like, well, that is literally
Speaker 1: the sheriff, So we probably can't really fight back here.
Speaker 3: We're not allowed to kill him.
Speaker 1: His deputies have guns pointed at us. Maybe we just
Speaker 1: take the beating. Perhaps that's likelier. That said, no one
Speaker 1: doubts that Buford got into a lot of gunfights and
Speaker 1: basically every other kind of fight under the sun. The
Speaker 1: more recent allegations do suggest that he killed more than
Speaker 1: two people, and probably not any of them in self
Speaker 1: defense and what we would call self defense, and modern
Speaker 1: evidence also suggests heavily that he personally profited from his
Speaker 1: crime busting work, and maybe what he was doing was
Speaker 1: less a one man more on crime than demanding protection
Speaker 1: money and busting operations who wouldn't pay him. So this
Speaker 1: next part of the Buford posters story is by far
Speaker 1: the most debated. First, I'm going to give you the
Speaker 1: story that almost definitely didn't happen. But this is what
Speaker 1: everyone believed had happened for decades. Right. This is the
Speaker 1: story that's like the basis for the climactic events of
Speaker 1: the movie Walking Tall. Right. Okay, And according to that story,
Speaker 1: despite Bufford being basically an unkillable law god Toehad, White decides,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this guy down from murdering my girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Luis right, that's the story that toe Head is just
Speaker 1: He's trying to get vengeance for his dead lover. So
Speaker 1: White who was known to the FBI as one of
Speaker 1: the top hoods in the Southeast, which I think just
Speaker 1: means top gangsters and not the other thing a hood
Speaker 1: might mean in the rural South. He was furious and
Speaker 1: still grieving over the loss of his lover in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, and he decides to get Buford assassinated. He
Speaker 1: has strong connections to another Dixie Mafia figure, a guy
Speaker 1: named Kirksey mcnord nicks junior. So toe Head White again
Speaker 1: not a normal name in this episode.
Speaker 3: Kirksy mgnord nicks junior.
Speaker 1: Okay, Kirksey mcnord nicks junior. Yes, Kirksey. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: why White needs Kirksy is that White is behind bars
Speaker 1: at this point, he's gotten locked up for one of
Speaker 1: his many crimes. While it, Nix is free and allegedly
Speaker 1: the center of a gang of hitman and hired muscle.
Speaker 1: So Nix is kind of like the guy in the
Speaker 1: Dixie Mafia that you call if you need some wet
Speaker 1: work done, right, he'll ice a motherfucker for you. So,
Speaker 1: from prison, Toehead is alleged to have orchestrated an assassination attempt,
Speaker 1: using Nix to do the on the groundwork Nixon his
Speaker 1: hired goons, So we know that Nix visits the Shamrock
Speaker 1: Hotel the day before. On August eleventh, the day before,
Speaker 1: Sheriff Pusser receives a phone call from an anonymous caller
Speaker 1: who tells him there's a couple of drunks going at
Speaker 1: it out on the edge of town. Someone's gonna get killed.
Speaker 1: So an anonymous caller calls the station and reports these
Speaker 1: drunk guys are like fighting and the police need to
Speaker 1: break it up otherwise someone's going to die, right, and
Speaker 1: they give a location to Sheriff Pusser, who promises to
Speaker 1: drive out and take care of it in the law
Speaker 1: established by Pusser. After this point, his wife Pauline wasn't
Speaker 1: just a good life partner. She was also moderately involved
Speaker 1: in his business as sheriff and regularly rode along on
Speaker 1: calls with him. This is what he claims that she
Speaker 1: loved to go with him as he was fighting crime.
Speaker 1: She was as write or die, and she decides at
Speaker 1: the last minute, as he's heading out to bust up
Speaker 1: this fight between these drunks, to come along with him.
Speaker 1: So the couple hits the road a little after four
Speaker 1: am on August twelfth, nineteen sixty seven. For a summary
Speaker 1: of what happened next from an article on al dot com,
Speaker 1: his wife, Pauline, a thirty three year old mother of three,
Speaker 1: insisted on going with him, and they listened to an
Speaker 1: eight track cassette. He said, we were discussing a vacation
Speaker 1: we were planning to take to Florida the next day.
Speaker 1: Beauford Pusser told The Tennessee in a nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: after they passed New Hope Methodist Church, he claimed a
Speaker 1: car pulled up alongside his Plymouth and someone inside fired
Speaker 1: a thirty caliber carbine rifle into his vehicle. I knew
Speaker 1: Pauline was hit. Pusser told the newspaper. I cradled Pauline's
Speaker 1: headed my lap and prayed over and over again, Oh God,
Speaker 1: don't let her die, he told the report. Or He
Speaker 1: never returned fire from the shotgun or handgun by his side,
Speaker 1: and instead drove several miles, waiting until he thought he
Speaker 1: escaped the ambushers to pull over. He then claimed the
Speaker 1: car again pulled up to his and someone fired at
Speaker 1: him at point blank range. I felt my face getting
Speaker 1: torn off, my head, Pusser said. My chin was hanging
Speaker 1: on my chest. I don't see how I lived. So
Speaker 1: that's the story he gives. And this is the story
Speaker 1: that makes him famous. Right now. You might have noticed
Speaker 1: there's a couple of sketchy things there, right, Yeah. First off,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's describing, well, we got shot first
Speaker 1: and my wife was hit, and then I drove and
Speaker 1: I thought I had gotten away from them, and then
Speaker 1: later they came up and shot me. Well, what are
Speaker 1: you establishing that my injuries and my wife's injuries didn't
Speaker 1: happen simultaneously, right right? And that there's multiple locations involved
Speaker 1: in the shooting.
Speaker 2: And I get that he's a law man, but what
Speaker 2: are you're stopping at lights? What do you mean that
Speaker 2: caught up to you and shot you again when you
Speaker 2: were a step and beautiful.
Speaker 3: Bleeding to death or whatever?
Speaker 1: Right, you didn't go straight to a hospital? Like what
Speaker 1: was your plan there?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: As far as the injuries Buford got, both he and
Speaker 1: his wife were shot with a thirty caliber.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's technically a rifle or a carbine, right,
Speaker 1: And most of the articles will describe it as like
Speaker 1: these is high velocity rounds. But in terms of ballistics,
Speaker 1: a thirty caliber is not like a big bullet, right,
Speaker 1: It's closer to like a nine millimeter handgun round than,
Speaker 1: for example, like a five five six the round that
Speaker 1: you is fired by an AR fifteen normally, right. And
Speaker 1: I bring this up not for gun nerding purposes, but
Speaker 1: because it explains how he could survive being shot in
Speaker 1: the face, right, Because people often have that question when
Speaker 1: they hear about this, is like, oh, well, how could
Speaker 1: he how could he? Number one? How could he have
Speaker 1: survived being shot in the face? And also how could
Speaker 1: he have faked something as serious as being shot in
Speaker 1: the face? Well, because he was shooting himself in a
Speaker 1: place and with a bullet that was survived, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the reason I'm bringing that up.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The only parts of this initial story that have proven
Speaker 1: accurate with time is that Pauline Poster was shot and
Speaker 1: killed and Buford was shot but not killed, right like,
Speaker 1: Those are the only two things that definitely happened. Everything
Speaker 1: else about the story that Beauford told to authorities when
Speaker 1: he was found and nursed back to health has been
Speaker 1: shown to have been a lie. No one in law
Speaker 1: enforcement seriously questioned the heroic sheriff's version of events. He
Speaker 1: started to claim after he recovered that informants he had
Speaker 1: inside the Dixie Mafia and the State Line Mob had
Speaker 1: brought him word that Nix and White had orchestrated the shooting.
Speaker 1: And they also these informants brought him the name of
Speaker 1: like three other guys who had been the goons who
Speaker 1: took part in the actual assassination attempt. Now, he never
Speaker 1: provided any evidence of this, nor did he ever produce
Speaker 1: an actual live informant who was willing to go on
Speaker 1: the record. And this is the other really suspend thing
Speaker 1: that should have been suspicious at the time. No charges
Speaker 1: are ever filed in Pauline's murder against anyone, even though
Speaker 1: the sheriff is saying, I have an informant telling me
Speaker 1: it's these guys. No one ever pushes charges like nobody ever. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: oh that seems suspicious. You know, all of this should
Speaker 1: have caused suspicion at the time, but it didn't, and
Speaker 1: it didn't for a couple of interesting reasons. Now, the
Speaker 1: reality of the story and what we're pretty sure at
Speaker 1: this point happened, is that Buford Pusser murdered his own
Speaker 1: wife and then covered up the murder by faking an
Speaker 1: assassination attempt. He shot himself right after he shot and
Speaker 1: killed his wife. Now, there were rumors that this had
Speaker 1: happened immediately afterwards, right like that. It was kind of
Speaker 1: I think people would whisper about in Adamsville right that, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I believe Buford's story. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I think that like this is exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. The kind of thing like this was
Speaker 1: always like a matter for either like local gossip or
Speaker 1: independent investigators, And there were through the years, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of independent investigators who got interested in the Buford
Speaker 1: Puster myth. One of them published a book trying to
Speaker 1: like basically arguing years before the most recent round of
Speaker 1: investigations that Buford had probably murdered his wife. So there
Speaker 1: were people pointing this out earlier, but it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agreed to reopen the case
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two that things started to really change publicly. Now,
Speaker 1: the reopening of the cold case of Pauline's Puster's murder
Speaker 1: was publicized, and once they started being articles out that like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're looking into this famous assassination attempt. The TBI received
Speaker 1: a tip about the murder weapon, which had been sold
Speaker 1: years later and wound up in the hands of someone
Speaker 1: who had tracked it back to its original owner and
Speaker 1: was willing to give it over to the TBI. So
Speaker 1: they look at the gun. They analyze the gun, and
Speaker 1: they conclude, based on physical evidence from the crime scene,
Speaker 1: that Pauline was likely shot and killed outside of the
Speaker 1: vehicle and then placed inside after death and driven to
Speaker 1: a second location where Pusser wounded himself and then radioed
Speaker 1: for help. One investigator concluded, this appears to be a
Speaker 1: domestic violence homicide rather than this notion that they were
Speaker 1: ambushed in the middle of the night in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere in nineteen sixty seven with no street lights.
Speaker 2: I mean, this forensic evidence is incredibly helpful, and broadly speaking,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty pro innocent until proven guilty.
Speaker 3: If a wife dies and the town is saying.
Speaker 5: I bet the husband did it, I don't think history
Speaker 5: like that generally, the town being lockstep in their suspicion,
Speaker 5: it's like, yeah, he probably did that.
Speaker 1: Shit, I think I think old Buford killed his wife.
Speaker 2: Buford comes home with a dead wife and a scratch
Speaker 2: out his face, and everyone's immediately like, oh shit, finally
Speaker 2: did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what are you going to call out the
Speaker 1: guy who murders people who annoy him, the man who
Speaker 1: shot his grandpa with the twelve gage for a fun right?
Speaker 2: Nah, the mafia killed my wife, man, Sure, Sheriff, that's crazy.
Speaker 3: That sucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that definitely sounds real. Sheriff for sure.
Speaker 3: Also feels pretty case closed. Man, I'm not gonna ask
Speaker 3: any questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm good, I'm good. Please just stay away
Speaker 1: from my house. Look I got shot too, Nah, No, totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy that you got out of that alive.
Speaker 3: That mafia must really hate you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The mafia dead it, huh. So the case gets
Speaker 1: reopened by the TBI in twenty twenty two, and then
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four they feel like they've got enough
Speaker 1: evidence to justify exuming Pauline and actually doing like a
Speaker 1: second autopsy, and upon re examining her body, they find
Speaker 1: evidence of several serious injuries consistent with domestic violence, including
Speaker 1: a pre death nasal fracture that had been in the
Speaker 1: process of healing when she was killed. In other words,
Speaker 1: Buford had broken his wife's nose days before actually murdering her.
Speaker 2: And you'll never guess, a week before the assassinate, the
Speaker 2: mafia punched my wife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy, right to our house and punched us
Speaker 1: straight in the nose. Can you believe it? Classic mafia stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about, there a couple of reasons why
Speaker 1: there's not any like serious like at the professional like
Speaker 1: like public level, no one really questions the story at first, right, yea.
Speaker 1: And first off, the most obvious reason is that Buford
Speaker 1: is so grievously wounded in the attack that people just
Speaker 1: didn't think he could have inflicted the injuries on himself
Speaker 1: based on and this is crucial his description of the
Speaker 1: injuries he suffered. In the book Mississippi Moonshine Politics, Jenny's
Speaker 1: Tracy describes him as having quote the lower half of
Speaker 1: his face virtually shot off. Now, Janie is a good writer,
Speaker 1: and this is a good book, but she's based that
Speaker 1: line entirely off of Buford's testimony to police, which I
Speaker 1: quoted earlier, right where he's like, I can't believe I survived.
Speaker 1: My jaw was basically hanging onto my chest right now.
Speaker 1: Beauford himself relied heavily on the supposed severity of his
Speaker 1: own injury to explain away lingering questions about what happened
Speaker 1: that night. In a nineteen sixty nine interview, he insisted,
Speaker 1: I loved my wife. I'd have been pretty damn stupid
Speaker 1: to blow my own jaw off. And it's here I
Speaker 1: will remind you. Beauford Pusser was a pro wrestler. He
Speaker 1: had made a living pretending to suffer serious injuries and
Speaker 1: even faking injuries for the entertainment of a crowd. District
Speaker 1: attorney Mark Davidson, who has been intimately involved with the
Speaker 1: reexamination of the case, told al dot Com our theory
Speaker 1: is he put a pistol inside his cheek and pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger and created a flesh wound. And this would
Speaker 1: have been easy for Buford because as a result of
Speaker 1: his wrestling career, the left side of his face was
Speaker 1: numb because he'd gotten seriously injured a number of it
Speaker 1: resided that of the car accidents, but he didn't have
Speaker 1: feeling in that side of his face that he shot himself.
Speaker 1: And this is a pro tip for all of the
Speaker 1: listeners out there, if you ever need to fake a
Speaker 1: grievous injury, shooting through your own cheek creates a hitten
Speaker 1: looking wound that is unlikely to kill you or even
Speaker 1: all that seriously injure you. Right, Like, it's not nothing,
Speaker 1: but like, if you've gotta if you've got a fake
Speaker 1: an assassination attempt, shoot yourself in the cheek. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Actually, I think they're pretty It's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to tell when you've fired the bullet from inside of
Speaker 1: your mouth. But you know, if you if you're in
Speaker 1: a pinch, maybe try shooting yourself in the cheek.
Speaker 2: Or now, Evans, Evans, is it just to fake assassination attempts?
Speaker 2: Or if I wanted to scare but not kill something,
Speaker 2: or if your listener wanted to scare but not sure someone,
Speaker 2: would you also recommend shooting your enemies in the cheek?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: That is the official stance in this podcast of iHeartRadio, uh,
Speaker 1: and of our sponsors, all of whom are very pro
Speaker 1: shooting people in the cheek as a bit. And we're back. Yeah. Well, Sophie,
Speaker 1: apparently we're allowed to say whatever we want about our
Speaker 1: sponsors because it has not been a problem for us yet.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would think. I think, I think it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if my desk is made of real wood.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll see.
Speaker 2: I believe, I believe it is.
Speaker 4: I ordered it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sick.
Speaker 2: I feel like I got in trouble for loudly sighing
Speaker 2: during one of our podcast reads that I'm contractually obligated
Speaker 2: to do and then uh, they no longer came back
Speaker 2: to us. Whatever that fucking dog food company that made
Speaker 2: my dog eat crickets and get diarrhea.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, Chewi is it chewy?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: This was chew chew?
Speaker 2: Alright?
Speaker 3: Maye? I think may no, no, no, no, no, I'll think
Speaker 3: of it. I'll think of it because I'm not allowed
Speaker 3: to say it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull a Buford pusser, you know, mave send
Speaker 1: us some money if you want us to cut out
Speaker 1: this part of the show where Dan accuses your food
Speaker 1: of giving his dog diarrhea. You know, well, we're basically
Speaker 1: holding up for protection money Jimminy's.
Speaker 2: It's Jimminy's dog for it's called Jimmy's.
Speaker 3: That doesn't sound if you want this, if you.
Speaker 1: Want this all cut out of the episode, Jimminy's, send
Speaker 1: us some cash. You know, I can be bought.
Speaker 2: It's easy to remember because it's it's called Jimney's because
Speaker 2: the food is made of cricket meat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I've heard
Speaker 1: good things about me, Yeah, no, May is good.
Speaker 3: Jimminy's is the one I'm not allowed to say on
Speaker 3: our podcast anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say all of them are good or bad,
Speaker 1: depending on who pays me money. You know, that's my promise.
Speaker 1: You know what I have to say to Jimminy's. Everybody
Speaker 1: just like what about it?
Speaker 4: Like a nice group sigh, just like a Jimmy's.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of eating crickets, Beauford Poster probably not eating
Speaker 1: crickets for a while after he shoots himself in the face,
Speaker 1: but otherwise he's more or less okay, right, And I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting and this is something the DA Davidson,
Speaker 1: just attorney Mark Davidson, who's one of the guys who's
Speaker 1: been doing this like reopen the cold case, specifically points
Speaker 1: to his wrestling career as like, well, look, this is
Speaker 1: a guy with experience selling a fake injury to a
Speaker 1: crowd like this is exactly in his wheelhouse quote. It
Speaker 1: was not the debilitating wound many seemed to believe it was.
Speaker 1: It healed up pretty well. People say he got his
Speaker 1: face blowed off. Nobody believes he did that to himself.
Speaker 1: That's not accurate. So he just didn't have that serious
Speaker 1: an injury, and he lied about it a lot. He
Speaker 1: and the media was like, well, it looks like he
Speaker 1: got hit in the face. Sounds serious to me, you know,
Speaker 1: and just kind of reported what he was saying as
Speaker 1: if it was the truth. And that's how the legend grew,
Speaker 1: which is great. So this all brings the question, why
Speaker 1: would Buford Pusster murder his wife? Now, yeah, right, you
Speaker 1: do want to ask that, right, motive matters. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: don't think we're ever going to get a perfect satisfying
Speaker 1: answer because of how long ago this was and how
Speaker 1: dead basically everyone involved was there are And you know
Speaker 1: I talked earlier there was that that this guy Mike
Speaker 1: Elam who was a former Benton County sheriff who started
Speaker 1: his career in law enforcement as like a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Buford Pusser, and then basically through trying to like
Speaker 1: recreate the crime scene, like traveling to where the crimes
Speaker 1: that he started to notice inconsistencies with Buford's story and
Speaker 1: what had happened. And he's he's one of these guys.
Speaker 1: He writes a book about it. He self publishes a
Speaker 1: book in like two thousand and four about it. So
Speaker 1: he's one of the early guys trying to make noise
Speaker 1: about how what a froud this dude was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and puss Truther, an early.
Speaker 1: Pusser Truther, right, Yeah, Yeah, he's I'm trying to find
Speaker 1: a way to bring Dickie back into it, but it
Speaker 1: didn't work. But yeah, he's a he's a Pusser Truther.
Speaker 1: And uh, based on his research, one possibility as to
Speaker 1: why Pusser had his wife murdered. Is that he was
Speaker 1: just a garden of a variety abusive spouse, right and
Speaker 1: maybe and also he's a giant, so he's huge and
Speaker 1: very strong, and he gets drunk one night and he
Speaker 1: kills his wife by accident, or he kills his wife
Speaker 1: in a moment of passion and then has to fake
Speaker 1: the assassination attempt, right, like it's a thing he has
Speaker 1: to come up with, kind of suddenly, that's possible, Elam.
Speaker 1: Elam's personal theory is that Buford was actually involved himself
Speaker 1: in the illegal moonshine trade, and as I've mused earlier
Speaker 1: in these episodes, was probably taking cuts of a number
Speaker 1: of different illegal businesses going on in the county. And
Speaker 1: Elam thinks Buford had Pauline murdered because she knew what
Speaker 1: he was up to, and maybe they had a fight
Speaker 1: and she threatened to tell everyone, right, Like, it's kind
Speaker 1: of unclear, or maybe she wasn't initially aware and became
Speaker 1: aware and then he had to do it. We don't
Speaker 1: really know. Per an article in the Nashew, tennesseean quote,
Speaker 1: Elam says he believes Bufford Pusser killed her to prevent
Speaker 1: her from speaking to authorities.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: If he Buford Pusser took someone's life to keep his secret,
Speaker 1: what kind of hero was he? Elam said, And I
Speaker 1: think the answer is not a hero at all, but
Speaker 1: maybe a generational talent itself. Branding. He's very good at that.
Speaker 1: And probably what happens is this, he has to come
Speaker 1: up with this fake assassination attempt kind of quickly because
Speaker 1: he's killed his wife. But once people buy that, he
Speaker 1: has to lean into this larger than life hero figure,
Speaker 1: and he just keeps kind of upping the ante on
Speaker 1: the stories he's telling because, in part, continuing to get
Speaker 1: away with it means continuing to sell people on the
Speaker 1: belief that he is the guy he's claiming to be right,
Speaker 1: this larger than life hero who's survived all these impossible
Speaker 1: brushes with death. And if he makes this calculation right,
Speaker 1: it pays off perfectly. And the wake of the murder,
Speaker 1: Buford Pusser's story spread across the country about as fast
Speaker 1: as a story could spread in those pre internet days.
Speaker 1: Countless news articles celebrated the sheriff as the ideal lawman,
Speaker 1: tough as nails and willing to fight crime even if
Speaker 1: he had, even if he had to break the rules
Speaker 1: to do it. Beauford was smart enough to know that
Speaker 1: he had to sell what he does by acting as
Speaker 1: a greeting husband, and so he vowed public vengeance against
Speaker 1: the men he had accused of the assassination attempt. Carl
Speaker 1: tow Head White was shot dead the next year, and
Speaker 1: rumor had it that Pusser had hired an assassin to
Speaker 1: do the job. Two other men he accused of partaking
Speaker 1: in the murder, George McGann and Gary McDaniel, were shot
Speaker 1: dead in Texas the next year. Nix goes to prison
Speaker 1: at this point, so he doesn't get assassinated. But the
Speaker 1: fact that these three guys who he has publicly named
Speaker 1: but not charged with any crime, die in very quick succession,
Speaker 1: a lot of people suspect maybe he orchestrated these deaths. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe he had these guys killed. And it's it's a
Speaker 1: sign of like where things are culturally and how much rope,
Speaker 1: how much slack we're willing to give cops in this
Speaker 1: country that the average assumption of like a normal person
Speaker 1: in Tennessee is like, well, he definitely had three guys murdered,
Speaker 1: But it's fine, they killed his wife, so like, I
Speaker 1: get it. You know, that's cool. You know, sometimes you
Speaker 1: got to break the law to uphold the law. Why
Speaker 1: couldn't he have these guys arrested. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually a surprising to me if he's going
Speaker 2: to if we're okay with him bending the law, which
Speaker 2: it seems like we are, I don't know why he
Speaker 2: would hire an assassin and why he wouldn't kill those
Speaker 2: guys himself. Like, if people are going, we don't know,
Speaker 2: accept the fact that he hired assassines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's gonna steer.
Speaker 2: Into this image of the reckless above the law man.
Speaker 2: I don't know why it's against the rules for him
Speaker 2: to like kill kill them himself, no head white himself.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I may not not to give him ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that is that is like, and it's did
Speaker 1: he have something? Did he kill some of these guys himself?
Speaker 1: Did he hire people to like? We don't really And
Speaker 1: it's also possible, I think unlikely but not impossible, just
Speaker 1: given these guys are all criminals who are in a
Speaker 1: violent business. Maybe they just happened to most to three
Speaker 1: of them died in a year or so after this crime.
Speaker 1: Not the most shocking thing in the world, right.
Speaker 2: The only stable things that I feel like we can
Speaker 2: say is that he did him that sick child proof
Speaker 2: teddy bear, and he definitely killed his wife. Those are
Speaker 2: the ones that I feel most comfortable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I've quoted several times from the book Mississippi
Speaker 1: Moonshine Politics by Janis Tracy because it's a good book
Speaker 1: in general about a lot of characters at the edge
Speaker 1: of this story. But Tracy bought into Buford's lie, and
Speaker 1: I think that it's useful. The way she did is
Speaker 1: useful because it does kind of explain how people thought,
Speaker 1: like why people bought into this at the time. And
Speaker 1: this is how Janis explains why none of the people
Speaker 1: that he charged, that he named as having tried to
Speaker 1: kill him and killing his wife actually got charged with crimes.
Speaker 1: Quote this suited Pusser. However, he preferred a more personal revenge.
Speaker 1: And that is like the official story that people buy
Speaker 1: is that like, yeah, he didn't have him charged because
Speaker 1: he wanted to have a murdered personally, Like he wanted
Speaker 1: to do this personally, And we're okay with that. Out
Speaker 1: of our lawmen and tennessee this is fine.
Speaker 3: We like that. We like that.
Speaker 1: In America, this guy's a hero. And that's the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing about the story to me. There was always
Speaker 1: evidence that Buford was suss and a fraud, but Americans
Speaker 1: in and outside of law enforcement were happy to ignore
Speaker 1: it because the story version of buford poster was so
Speaker 1: good and it matched exactly with the kind of tale
Speaker 1: that Hollywood had primed audiences to expect.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy one, W. R. Morris wrote a book
Speaker 1: about Buford titled The twelfth of August, which is the
Speaker 1: day that he and his wife were targeted by that
Speaker 1: quote unquote assassination attempt. This is the book that was
Speaker 1: ultimately adapted into nineteen seventy three's Walking Tall, which became
Speaker 1: a surprise hit and rocketed Buford to the level of
Speaker 1: a national celebrity. The studio sent him on a tour
Speaker 1: around the country and Europe to do promotional work for
Speaker 1: the film. He starts making celebrity friends. He's publicly buddies
Speaker 1: with Johnny Cash. There's a fucking uh, what's his name,
Speaker 1: the Margheritaville guy. Uh. Jimmy Buffett writes a song about
Speaker 1: him and has a story about Buford like basically assaulting
Speaker 1: him and his friends. So he gets famous, and in
Speaker 1: fact he becomes such a public figure in his own
Speaker 1: right that after the smash surprise success of the movie
Speaker 1: Walking Tall, the production company Bing Crosby Productions, decides to
Speaker 1: make a sequel and they ask Buford to play himself.
Speaker 1: They're trying to do an Audie Murphy with him, right,
Speaker 1: and the new movie would just be titled Buford and
Speaker 1: would be based entirely, presumably on his exploits as a
Speaker 1: grief stricken sheriff out to murder the criminals who killed
Speaker 1: his wife. It's a shame we never got to see
Speaker 1: this movie because I am really curious what direction would
Speaker 1: they have gone vis a vis all of the murders,
Speaker 1: you know. Right as his fame sets off, Bufford's takes
Speaker 1: questions from fans, including one who asked him how people
Speaker 1: in his home county treated him after he became famous.
Speaker 1: And the answer he gave to the newspaper in this
Speaker 1: when he's doing this Q and a is really interesting
Speaker 1: to me. I'd say about eighty percent of the people
Speaker 1: in McNairy County are proud of me at least they
Speaker 1: say they are. But there's a handful that never liked
Speaker 1: me and still don't. They resisted every step of my
Speaker 1: campaign to clean up the corruption, and they have nothing
Speaker 1: good to say about me. Now, it's not that these
Speaker 1: people like crooks, it's that I think they consider me
Speaker 1: too big for my breeches. There's one man in the
Speaker 1: county I won't mention names who's always bad mouth in me.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons for that, I think is because
Speaker 1: when I was sheriff, I was always after him for
Speaker 1: passing bad checks. But that's life. No matter what you do,
Speaker 1: you can never make friends with everybody.
Speaker 2: Man, that guy's fucking dead.
Speaker 1: Beat him to death with a stick. Now it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to say how much of McNairy County thought
Speaker 1: this guy was legitimately a hero and how many people
Speaker 1: were aware like, nah, there's something fucked up at the
Speaker 1: center of that story. I did find an art article
Speaker 1: in al dot Com that notes quote Davidson said during
Speaker 1: the investigation he often heard from those who believed Pusser
Speaker 1: murdered Pauline and wanted him to tell the truth. In
Speaker 1: McNairy County, especially, everybody knew that's what happened. Nobody ever
Speaker 1: believed the Walking Tall story. They knew he was a
Speaker 1: bad guy, and you know, Davidson's the DA who's digging
Speaker 1: up and reopening the case. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: totally accurate or totally accurate to how people would have
Speaker 1: felt back in the seventies, but will I have founded
Speaker 1: a couple of other quotes to that extent that basically like, yeah,
Speaker 1: in his hometown, people kind of knew, but also he's
Speaker 1: kind of the biggest thing that ever happened in this county, right,
Speaker 1: So at the same time, you have to embrace it
Speaker 1: because you don't have there's not any other reason people
Speaker 1: are heading to mcnery for tourism, right, which is why
Speaker 1: the water tower in Adamsville has a silhouette of Buford
Speaker 1: with his trademark big stick. There's a museum for him,
Speaker 1: and of course the town Historical Society of the county
Speaker 1: Historical Society's largely dedicated to him, right, Like it's Walking
Speaker 1: Tall and Walking Tall related tourism are still kind of
Speaker 1: two of the bigger things in that county.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, yeah, I mean yeah, people will add
Speaker 2: twenty miles onto a road trip to see a giant chair.
Speaker 2: Just to imagine what we'll do for a big, fucking
Speaker 2: massive mountain.
Speaker 1: People with a stick in this county, Let's go see
Speaker 1: the water tower. Right, Beuford spent the rest of his
Speaker 1: life dining out on the lie that he told to
Speaker 1: cover up for murdering his wife. He spent his last
Speaker 1: year's jet setting around the world and making a lot
Speaker 1: of money. When he died, he was worth an estimated
Speaker 1: one million dollars, which is a lot more money back then,
Speaker 1: and more money than a guy who was briefly sheriff
Speaker 1: for six years would have accumulated. Honestly. Right, He did
Speaker 1: fail to win reelection in nineteen seventy, which is interesting
Speaker 1: to me, so that is kind of more evidence for
Speaker 1: thee Local people knew this guy was full of shit,
Speaker 1: but that was before Walking Tall came out. So who
Speaker 1: knows how his law enforcement career would have gone if
Speaker 1: he'd tried to run for election after becoming a celebrity.
Speaker 1: Had he lived longer, he also might have slipped up
Speaker 1: or behaved in such a way as to draw more
Speaker 1: attention back to that alleged assassination attempt. I have trouble
Speaker 1: imagining this guy living a lot longer and not killing
Speaker 1: someone else, but he doesn't get the chance at the
Speaker 1: height of his fame. Right after siin a in agreement
Speaker 1: to play himself. In the sequel to Walking Tall, he's
Speaker 1: driving back from Memphis to Adamsville and he crashes his
Speaker 1: sports car and dies on August twenty first, nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: He's in his like mid thirties, and that's the Buford
Speaker 1: Pusser story.
Speaker 3: Man crashing his sports car.
Speaker 2: What a wo awesome way for murderer to die.
Speaker 1: It is very appropriate for this guy, being the kind
Speaker 1: of dude he is. That's like, yeap sports car crash
Speaker 1: right at the end. Yeah, that's that's how this story ends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so lame. The fucking fake grieving sheriff who's
Speaker 2: on his way to Hollywood and buys a sports car
Speaker 2: and then he dies and the entire town is.
Speaker 1: Like, honestly, dodge there, that's the best.
Speaker 2: What about cool?
Speaker 4: If he got killed by a big stick?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, impaled by a stick?
Speaker 1: I mean maybe he did. Maybe he crashed into a tree, Sophie,
Speaker 1: that's my head. Cannon impaled by a stick after crashing
Speaker 1: his car into a tree.
Speaker 2: Or like the the cane of that sickly bear all
Speaker 2: grown up.
Speaker 3: M just glad that this guy's dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. That's the good part is he does die,
Speaker 1: and he does die very early.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of things that are I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of tragedy in this story. The fact
Speaker 2: that he for sure murdered his wife enough that like
Speaker 2: everyone was talking about it, and his daughter still becomes
Speaker 2: his biggest evangelist.
Speaker 3: That's an added layer of tragedy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like like when I in the beginning in the first episode,
Speaker 2: when I kind of understood her hero worship, because you
Speaker 2: if you have the opportunity to write Dad's story and
Speaker 2: you want to embellish a bit and like take all
Speaker 2: of his tall tales as gospel, there's something endearing about that.
Speaker 3: But she must have also known the many.
Speaker 2: Rumors in the open secret that he for sure murdered
Speaker 2: her mother, yeah, and decided to ignore that or not
Speaker 2: buy into it.
Speaker 3: And that's like there's I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, maybe that's stockholm or brainwashing or whatever else,
Speaker 2: but that like that makes it much less endearing and
Speaker 2: charming and more tragic for her in my mind.
Speaker 1: I would agree. And there's also I mean, there's also
Speaker 1: the darker question of like I mean or was this
Speaker 1: an act for her too, and was she just like, look,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of money in being Buford Puster's family.
Speaker 1: That walking tall money keeps coming in. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that's probably less likely than just
Speaker 1: this is a daughter who hero worshiped her dad who
Speaker 1: died very early. But yeah, it is it. It did
Speaker 1: give me a lot of fun detail on growing up
Speaker 1: in the fifties, which sounded like a fucking nightmare.
Speaker 3: So easy to do crime, but so easy.
Speaker 1: So much more dangerous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially if you were a cop.
Speaker 1: Especially if you were a cop.
Speaker 2: So, oh my god, if you want to do crime
Speaker 2: then and now, Yeah, cop is the way to.
Speaker 1: Being a cop. Number one. You can get away with
Speaker 1: prank shooting your grandpa with a shotgun if you're a cop, apparently,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2: It's great training for for for really pranking your wife
Speaker 2: somewhere down the line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh he sure got Pauline.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 1: She didn't see that coming at all. Prank the whole town.
Speaker 1: Classic Buford Pusser prank, murdering his wife and staging it
Speaker 1: as an assassination attempt by the mob, like That's the
Speaker 1: funny thing. I came in here with a lot more
Speaker 1: detail on these different like organized criminal groups, and then
Speaker 1: as I the more researcher did them, more was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: these guys barely did anything to it. Like maybe they
Speaker 1: had him stabbed, maybe he got some fights, but he
Speaker 1: could have faked a lot more of that, Like, yeah.
Speaker 2: This mafia was running four successful businesses and maybe were
Speaker 2: cutting corners. Well, they had to pay off the cops.
Speaker 2: They needed to cover all those financial losses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I don't know. There's a fun quote from
Speaker 1: the DA that Davidson that I've quoted from a few
Speaker 1: times where he's like, I don't know, we probably won't
Speaker 1: reinvestigate every shooting he was involved in, but you could
Speaker 1: like maybe we should.
Speaker 2: We're not going to reopen it because like at this point, Yeah,
Speaker 2: what do you think, what's it gonna be?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What are we gonna get out of reopening it? Like
Speaker 1: clearing the name of Louise Halfcock, the gangster who also
Speaker 1: murdered people. I don't know, Dan got anything to plug
Speaker 1: here at the end of the episode, how are you feeling?
Speaker 3: I feel good.
Speaker 2: I liked the story, so it's uh, you know, murderers.
Speaker 2: Bad hold for applause, But I like those bastards more
Speaker 2: than like endangering children bastards and like creating systemic wrongs
Speaker 2: that still plague our society today. So I appreciate that
Speaker 2: it was like kind of a standalone bastard.
Speaker 3: That's pretty fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, thanks for giving me that. Otherwise pluggables, I
Speaker 2: ride for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. You could
Speaker 2: find that on HBO Max The One to Watch, or
Speaker 2: on YouTube.
Speaker 3: We release our episodes there. Podcast that I do is
Speaker 3: Quick Question.
Speaker 2: We answer rider questions and talk about bullshit, and you
Speaker 2: can find me on Blue Sky.
Speaker 3: It's probably Daniel O'Brien on Blue Sky. I'm not really sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I hate to ask you to google it, but give up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well everybody, this has been behind the bastards.
Speaker 1: Please check out Dance podcast, Quick Question and Last Week
Speaker 1: Tonight and more than anything, you know, go shoot your
Speaker 1: grandfather with a shotgun if he's in the app Okay, no,
Speaker 1: we don't. We shouldn't do that. Can't do that. Don't
Speaker 1: shoot anybody.
Speaker 4: To take advice from Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: Don't do pranks? Can we Maybe we could just come
Speaker 1: down on that bad idea ranks, prank's bad, and this
Speaker 1: is like really funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah obviously.
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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