Buford Pusser

Buford Hayse Pusser (December 12, 1937 - August 21, 1974) was the sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee (in West Tennessee) from 1964 to 1970. Pusser's life was the subject of Walking Tall, a 1973 film that became a cult classic (with two direct sequels of its own, a TV movie, "A Real American Hero," and a brief TV series). This was remade 31 years later as a somewhat less realistic and more mainstream film in 2004 by the same name (also dedicated to Pusser), starring The Rock. Like The Rock, Pusser also had a background in professional wrestling.

Buford joined the Marines when he was seventeen, but his military career was cut short during basic training when it was discovered he had asthma.

Pusser waged a virtual one-man war on moonshining, gambling and other vices on the Mississippi-Tennessee border. After serving as Adamsville's police chief and constable from 1962 to 1964, Pusser won the election for sheriff, and during his tenure as Sheriff he was shot eight times and stabbed seven. His "war" on the "State Line Mob" was brought to national prominence when his wife Pauline was killed in an ambush meant for him on August 12, 1967. In 1970, Pusser relinquished his role as sheriff due to a law limiting the number of terms a sheriff could serve. Pusser was elected as constable by a majority of voters who wrote his name on their ballots. He served in that position for 2 years.

During his run for sheriff in 1964, Pusser's predecessor, James Dickey, died in a car accident less than a month before the election. And so, at the age of 26, Pusser became the youngest sheriff in the history of the state of Tennessee.

Pusser was the subject of three biographical books written by W.R. Morris: The Twelfth Of August, Buford: A Biography and The State Line Mob. The movie Walking Tall was made as a homage to Pusser, and is a combination of loosely based fact and Hollywood revisionism. The Buford Pusser Museum has been established at the house where he was living at the time of his death in 1974.

Pusser died in an automobile crash August 21, 1974, after he hit an embankment and was ejected from the car. While the crash was ruled to be accidental, there has been ongoing speculation that, in light of the apparent speed of travel, foul play may have been involved in the incident (Buford's mother Helen (1908-1987) and his daughter Dwana (1961- ) believe he was murdered).

It should be noted that, in contrast to the public image that fostered the legend and the many who, to this day, praise his efforts to clean up McNairy County, there are also some who claim that he was corrupt and involved in much of the vice that took place at the State Line establishments. They contend the violence was the result of conflicts between the corrupt Sheriff and the criminal element that thrived in the area. This is vigorously disputed by most who knew him.

Pusser's Wife Assassinated

On the morning of August 12, 1967, Pusser's phone rang, and he answered a disturbance call on New Hope Road in McNairy County. His wife, Pauline, happened to come along for this particular ride. Shortly after they passed a Methodist church on New Hope Road, two cars came alongside Pusser and opened fire, killing his wife and leaving Pusser for dead. He suffered a shotgun wound to the face and needed several surgeries to restore his appearance. He spent eighteen days in the hospital before returning home.

Pusser vowed to bring all involved with his wife's death to justice. In April 1969, the mastermind who paid for the hit, Louise Hathcock's former boyfriend Carl Douglas "Towhead" White, infamous leader of the State Line Mob, was gunned down in front of the El Ray Motel on U.S. Highway 45 in Corinth, Mississippi. The alleged triggerman was a small-time hood name Berry Smith, but Morris' 1990 book declares that Pusser himself had hired a hit man who killed White with one shotgun blast to the head. Pusser also fingered three other assassins: George McGann, Gary McDaniel, and Kirksey Nix. In late 1970, both McDaniel and McGann, the husband of the alleged babushka lady (Beverly Oliver) in the Zapruder film, were found shot to death in Texas. According to Edward Humes in "Mississippi Mud," Pusser was suspected by some law enforcement officials of having killed both.

Pusser never brought Kirksey Nix to justice. Nix was sentenced to Angola State Prison in Louisiana for the Easter Saturday, 1971 murder of a New Orleans grocer Frank J. Corso. Nix was later involved in the 1987 murder for hire killing of Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret in Biloxi, Mississippi. His co-conspirator, Biloxi Mayor Pete Halat, had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from Nix and blamed it on his law partner, Vincent Sherry. Nix ordered a hit from prison and was later sentenced to isolation for the rest of his life. Nix has repeatedly refused to comment about Pusser's claims that Nix was one of his wife's killers. The other assassin, Carmine Raymond Gagliardi, was found floating in Boston Harbor, his body riddled with bullets (see Morris: 1990).

Other Information

Each year in May there is a Buford Pusser Festival in Adamsville, Tennessee, his hometown. The Drive-By Truckers wrote songs about the events surrounding his wife's death and his colorful tenure as sheriff, most notably "The Boys from Alabama" and "The Buford Stick", from the album The Dirty South.

External links

• Official home page
• Buford Pusser at IMDb
• A Buford Pusser Page & More Links
• Article about Dwana Pusser