Oakley Dean Baldwin

I knew that there was going to be something there that was going to tell the true story.

It was going to give Pauline a voice from the grave.

I never met Pauline.

Of course, I was only 12 years old when she was murdered.

But my Uncle Johnny, who was our family historian, I want to say about the time the movies came out, maybe 73, he was telling me at a family reunion that we had a distant cousin who was murdered while she was riding with her husband.

At the start, I had no clue other than what I had heard from the law enforcement circles, what Buford Pusser had told the TBI, that's the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

So at the start, I was, you know, I believed that, you know, they were ambushed.

Photographs of the crime scene, witness statements from people, things were not matching up.

You have this high-profile sheriff with a 36-year-old wife who's murdered from an ambush that he's saying was from the mob, and it didn't make any sense that they didn't do an autopsy on her.

That showed me that there was somebody violently injured on the outside of the car.

And Buford Pusser's statement was that Pauline and himself, they were both shot inside the car only.

Either someone was hit with a club or shot in front of that car on the outside.

He knew that Buford Pusser had beaten Pauline up just days before she was murdered.

And another lady, she worked with Pauline, and she saw Pauline with black eyes and bruises on her arms where she had been beaten up.

He was in a rage, trying to get in the door.

And Buford was yelling, let me in.

I'm going to die tonight.

You'll be putting flowers on my grave.

So she runs out of the house, and they get into a big scuffle, and he grabs her by the arm, but she manages to get away and goes back in the house, and he leaves, and he's spinning his tires.

And two hours later, or maybe an hour later, we're not exactly sure, but that window of opportunity, Pauline's murdered.