A Man to Be Afraid Of

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0:38You could say that again. Critics are calling it Pixar's funniest movie ever and a wildly entertaining ride. Blizzard Potato. It's certified fresh and verified hot. Now we party. This is incredible! Wow! I am clear in the rest of the day. Disney and Pixar's Hoppers. Now available on Disney+. Rated PG. Early in the morning on August 12th, 1967, the sheriff of McNary County, Tennessee, Buford Pusser, said he got a strange phone call. Related to something that was happening around the Tennessee-Mississippi line. He said the caller told him that he'd, quote, find something interesting out on New Hope Road.

1:22And his wife, Pauline, was very concerned and decided that she was going to ride along with Buford to this call. Right are Jason Garascio. So they get in the car and drive while it's still dark out down this windy, gravelly road. And about halfway there, a car out of nowhere comes out and begins shooting at them. Buford Pusser later said it sounded like a bunch of machine guns had opened up. His wife Pauline was shot. Buford Pusser said he quickly sped away, with his wife laying in his lap. Buford drives for a little farther, pulls it aside, checks his wife, see what kind of injury she has, and then the car reappears and completely just shoots up the entire car.

2:21Pauline was shot again, and Buford was also hit. Buford later told investigators that he was looking at Pauline when she was shot in the forehead. but he was shot in the chin. Buford radioed for help and drove for several miles down the road. Police from a nearby town soon arrived. Pauline Pusser died at the scene. She was 36. Buford Pusser, who was 29, was seriously injured. When police showed up, they saw him completely bloodied, barely able to talk, just trying to kind of hold his jaw together, and then he was rushed to the hospital. Buford Pusser had surgery in Memphis. During his stay in the hospital, he was put in a secret room with two sheriff's deputies and two police officers assigned to protect him.

3:19The governor of Tennessee offered a$5 ,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. While he was still in the hospital recovering, Pauline Pusser's funeral was held in Adamsville, where the couple lived. A newspaper reported that the church was full. More than 200 people came. They wrote, quote, every wall was banked with flowers. Less than a month after the attack, Sheriff Buford Pusser was back at work. When reporters interviewed him about the ambush that had killed his wife, he told them, I'm pretty sure about who did it, and I'm pretty sure about where he is. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

4:15Buford Passer was elected sheriff of McNary County in 1964. He ran against the incumbent sheriff, who died in a car accident just a week before the election. Buford won by a few hundred votes. He was the youngest sheriff to be elected in Tennessee history. He was 26. The way it was told to me by many was that if you were friends with him, he was a best friend. And if you weren't, he was your greatest enemy. Buford Pusser grew up in Adamsville, in McNary County, a rural area about 100 miles east of Memphis. His father was the local police chief. Buford was tall and athletic. He played football and basketball in school.

5:03When he graduated from high school, he enlisted in the Marines, but quickly was discharged due to asthma. Eventually, Buford left Tennessee and went to Chicago, where he attended mortuary school, worked at a factory, and started a professional wrestling career. He was known as Buford the Bull. I mean, this is a guy that, you know, once he grew up was 6 '6", 250-plus pounds, a very imposing figure. So he was perfect for the wrestling ring. And that's where he met Pauline. Pauline Mullins was a divorced mother of three. She was six years older than Buford. They got married in Chicago in December of 1959 and moved back to Adamsville a few years later.

5:53Buford Pusser was elected police chief of Adamsville after his father stepped down. And then Buford was elected sheriff of McNary County. McNary County, Tennessee, back then, even now, is a beautiful region, but a very poor region of the country. And if you weren't working at a factory or farming, even if you were doing that, you more than likely had a moonshine still in your backyard. And for most in that time, you just looked away. It was something just to pass the time or make some extra money. Once Buford became sheriff, he really, that was his goal, was to break up all these illegal moonshine stills.

6:42Tennessee enacted the nation's first prohibition law in 1838, making it a misdemeanor to sell alcohol in bars and stores. Even after the national ban on alcohol ended in 1933, Tennessee stayed completely dry for several more years. The state eventually allowed individual counties and cities to vote on whether they wanted to allow sales of alcohol. By the mid-1960s, more than half of the population of Tennessee still lived in dry areas, including McNary County. You know, Buford, going back to his wrestling days, knew how to self-promote. I think he wanted more than what his father had, what his friends had.

7:34He had ambitions to be someone that if you saw him out on the street, you would go, wow, hey, that's B for Pusser. So I think he wanted to have a persona that was as big as him physically. So what better way to get famous but to break up the most notorious things that were going on in his backyard? Buford Pusser quickly gained a reputation for going after bootleggers, moonshine stills, and illegal alcohol sales. In a raid in December of 1964, he seized almost 3 ,000 bottles of Kentucky whiskey with the help of state agents. He told reporters that it was the largest amount of whiskey ever seized in the county.

8:22He also raided bars and motels near the Mississippi-Tennessee state line, known for gambling and illegal alcohol sales, including one called the Shamrock Motel and Restaurant. It was a rough place. Everybody will tell you. You know, there were definitely fights there. There was a lot of heavy drinking. The Shamrock Motel and Restaurant was owned by Louise Hathcock, who had shot and killed her ex-husband. She claimed self-defense. She was known to be part of a loosely organized crime syndicate known as the Stateline Mob. Depending on which stories you believe, it could trace all the way back to the mafia up east.

9:05But their main thing was doing moonshine and prostitution. State line mob definitely were Buford's main enemies. In 1966, tourists staying at the Shamrock Motel filed a police report after they said a purse containing$125 had gone missing. Sheriff Pusser showed up at the establishment because the couple had made a complaint. And he had already had interactions in the past with Louise. And he went there. He had a conversation with Louise in a back room, just the two of them. And according to Buford, Louise pulled out a gun, shot at him, missed. Buford pivoted, turned, and shot her and killed her.

9:57Buford said that Louise's bullet had, quote, whizzed by my ear. He said he dropped to the floor and fired three shots, hitting her in the chest, face, and neck. Did he face any charges? He was found not guilty by a grand jury. They came to an agreement that it was in self-defense. The year after Buford Pusser shot and killed Louise Hathcock, Buford's wife, Pauline, was murdered. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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12:57Sheriff Buford Pusser said he believed that the early morning attack that killed his wife was, quote, linked to his crackdown on criminal activity at the Tennessee-Mississippi border. He told reporters that he was sure the shooters were after him, not his wife. His assumption was that it was someone involved with the state line mob. He never really gave any specific names. It was more just, they finally got me. The local district attorney who was leading the investigation said he believed that hired assassins were behind the shooting. The chief of the Tennessee Bureau of Criminal Identification told reporters, we're not overlooking anything.

13:44A ballistics expert who examined the car that Buford and Pauline had been riding in said that the bullets that killed Pauline and wounded Buford were from a.30 caliber rifle. The investigation went on for years. Buford even took part in some points of the investigation, strangely enough. There were a few specific people in the state line mob, one individual named Toehead White who was in jail at the time of the ambush that they went and questioned. They questioned his girlfriend. And there are transcripts now that show the girlfriend calling up Toehead going, why are the police trying to interview me about this ambush?

14:27So there were specific people that Buford wanted investigated. But those things all led to dead ends. They investigated for about 10 years, even going as far as reaching out to J. Edgar Hoover in the offices of the FBI to run ballistic tests on bullets that they had found. But eventually it became a cold case. No one was ever charged. No murder weapon was ever found. In September of 1967, a month after Pauline's death, the New York Daily News featured Buford Pusser in a two-page spread. They wrote that during his time as sheriff, he was responsible for destroying more than 30 stills, seizing more than 15 ,000 gallons of whiskey, and bringing three dozen moonshiners and bootleggers to justice.

15:20The article also talked about the many times that criminals had tried to kill him. They wrote that he had been shot, stabbed, and dragged down the road by a car. One deputy, said Buford Pusser, was jumped by six men while he was unarmed, adding, the sheriff took three of them to the hospital and three of them to jail. The article said Buford was becoming a legend in West Tennessee.

15:50A Tennessee singer named Eddie Bond recorded a song about Buford. Eddie Bond went on to write a whole album of songs about him, including one called Buford Pusser Goes Bear Hunting with a switch. That same year, Buford Pusser shot and killed a man after he was called to a disturbance at his home on Christmas Day. He said the man shot at him first. One headline after the shooting read, Sheriff Buford Pusser adds to legend. CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd came to McNary County to interview Buford. And then in 1971, a writer named W.R. Morris published a biography of him called The 12th of August.

16:36And then eventually that led to Hollywood getting hold of the story. Of all people, it's Bing Crosby and his production company who catches wind of the Pusser story and decides to bring it to the big screen. And this is a film that, you know, a little small drama, not made for a lot of money. And at its peak, when it came out in theaters, it was making more money in theaters, especially in the South, than The Godfather was, which at the time was still a sensation and had just won the Oscar for Best Picture. The movie was called Walking Tall. Buford Pusser was played by actor Joe Don Baker. I was elected sheriff on one issue, that I'd bust every joint in the whole county.

17:28We're going to start tomorrow. First off, I don't want any car, truck, or driver that even looks like a moonshiner to move on our roads. Ads for the movie said it was, quote, the powerful and true story of Sheriff Buford Pusser, who couldn't be bought and couldn't be killed. Buford said the movie was about 80 % true. In the movie, Buford Pusser carries a big stick, which he uses to break up moonshine stills and beat people. During press appearances, he would autograph sticks for fans. One newspaper said the film was one of the most violent yet most moving films of the season. One review of the movie said, Walking Tall deserves credit for creating mostly believable characters who are bigger than life.

18:21Comic book big. The movie cost$500 ,000 to produce and made more than$40 million worldwide. You know, generations since, people joined law enforcement because of what they saw on screen. By the time the movie came out in 1973, Buford was no longer the sheriff of McNary County. He lost when he tried to run for a fourth term in 1972. In August of 1974, it was announced that Buford would play himself in a sequel to the Walking Tall movie. He told a reporter at a press conference in Memphis, the idea scares me some. He drove back home and was at a fair and got in his car, his Corvette that he had just bought, and he sped down the highway, and he got into a fiery wreck and died.

19:26Some people speculated that Buford's enemies had tampered with his car. But police investigating said they could find no evidence of foul play. One newspaper wrote, seven times while he was sheriff, attempts were made on his life. He died, a victim of his love for speed.

19:50After his death in 1974, what did you hear from people in McNary County about his death?

20:02I would say a certain amount of relief. Cammie Wilson is a former investigative reporter who grew up in Mississippi, across the state line from McNary County. Everybody knew about Pusser. He was brutal. He would attack people. And he was known as a violent person. What was shocking was how much he was glorified in the movie. In 1973, the year before Buford Pusser died, Cammie Wilson was working at a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio. Walking Tall was playing in the local theaters. At that time, that was in the county in Ohio where I was working. That was the most watched movie that they had ever had. So one day my editor came back from lunch and came over to my desk and said, are you from the county near McNary County, Tennessee?

21:11And I said, yes, I'm from Alcorn County, which is just over the line. And he said, well, I just watched Walking Tall. What do you think of that movie? And I said, well, I think it's a fraud. And he said, well, I thought it was too, so I'm going to send you down there. and I want you to do a story for us. Cammie Wilson went down to McNary County to talk with people about what they knew. She talked with the mayor of Selmer, the county seat, who had previously said that the plot of Walking Tall, quote, has little, if any, resemblance to the truth. She also talked with the sheriff of McNary County at that time, Clifford Coleman, who Buford lost to in 1972.

21:56too. Sheriff Coleman ran on the slogan, if your son had to be arrested, would you want it to be done by me or by Pusser? And he won the election. So anyway, he was sheriff at the time. And he had told me that Pusser would pull off the road at a fast food restaurant and wait to see if I drove by And at that time, it was well known that civil rights workers, anybody that you disliked, had a certain danger of getting run off the road if somebody didn't like your stories or your activities. So I was trying to avoid that, so I always went a different route. So you thought that Pusser himself might hurt you?

22:57Potentially. You know, at the time, people would go down there and they would interview him and they would just swallow whatever he said. So he knew that I was looking for the real story. Cammie Wilson said she talked with local club owners, one of whom told her they had regularly paid Buford Pusser bribes. People also told her that Louise Hathcock had also paid bribes to the county before being shot and killed. In the movie version of his story, Buford Pusser gets robbed and beaten up at a state-line club before becoming sheriff, and then goes back to the club and gets revenge, beating people up with his stick and getting his money back.

23:44He's put on trial and tells the courtroom he stood up for himself to show, quote, there's still a little law and order left. He's found not guilty by the jury. Cammie Wilson learned that in reality, something different had happened. In 1960, while he was still living in Chicago, Buford had gone to a state line club seeking revenge for an earlier incident. He beat up a man named W.O. Hathcock, a relative of Louise Hathcock, who was so badly injured that he was in the hospital for two weeks. Buford was charged with armed robbery. But when he was put on trial, he said he wasn't there that night. Pauline testified that he was in Illinois at the time, and Buford produced a punch time card from his factory job in Chicago.

24:37He was found not guilty. He later said he'd lied. He readily admitted that he and his friends had gone to the club and they had beaten up Hathcock and they had taken the money that he had lost. He quibbled about the amount of the money. He said that he didn't take as much as they said he took. Cammie Wilson also talked with one of Buford Pusser's former deputies about the many times Buford had reported being attacked or hurt on the job. He said that he was just beaten up in a lot of drunken brawls and that he was often carved up in some of those drunken brawls, that it didn't have anything to do with his activities as sheriff.

25:35So he was drinking himself? Oh, very much so. And in fact, I interviewed his stepdaughter, who talked about how he would bring home cases of liquor and put them under the bed. And, you know, if he was supposed to be sheriff, why was he keeping so much of the illegal liquor for himself? Buford Pusser's stepdaughter, Diane, also talked with Cammie Wilson about her mother's death. His stepdaughter told me that she thought he had killed her mother. And she even supplied what she thought was a motive that she was planning to leave Pusser, the stepdaughter told me. Diane told Cammie Wilson that Buford Pusser was, quote, a man to be afraid of.

26:33Cammie says Diane was not the only person who told her they thought Buford had killed his wife. A lot of people did. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody did, but that was the common knowledge. When she got back to Ohio, Cammie Wilson called up Buford Pusser for an interview. I asked him about all the rumors that he had shot his wife, and I asked him if he had been having affairs, and he, of course, denied it. And I asked him about taking bribes, and I told him that I had an affidavit from a club owner. And I asked him about his killing of Louise Haythcock. How did he react when you asked him those questions?

27:27With anger, but he was not surprised. You know, it wasn't like it was a call out of the blue. He knew that I had been asking people questions and that I had been gathering affidavits and interviewing a number of people. You deny, he denied everything. Yes. The headline of Cammie's article was, The Sheriff Walked Tall and Violently. A year after Cammie Wilson published her first article, she published another one, shortly after Buford Pusser's death. One thing is sure, she wrote, most citizens of McNary are not grieving. She also quoted a former sheriff from across the state line in Mississippi, who told her before Buford Pusser's death, as far as I'm concerned, Pusser is just a thug.

28:28Did you think that maybe something might change in the investigation into Pauline's death after you wrote those articles? I would have hoped so, but it was a matter of money. I mean, once the movie came out, people would come to the county to see what had been going on there. And then when he was killed, then people began to really make money from the fact that people would come. They would stay in the local motels. People started giving them tours. They even created a Buford Pusser Museum. so people loved the story. It was a complete fabrication, but they loved the story.

29:24We'll be right back.

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