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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Early in the morning on August 12, 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.
And his wife Pauline was very concerned and decided that she was going to ride along with Buford to this call.
Writer Jason Garacio.
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.
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Chapter 2: What happened on the morning of August 12, 1967, involving Sheriff Buford Pusser?
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", 200 pounds. 50-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. Buford 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.
Tennessee 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, Beaufort... 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. He had ambitions to be someone that if you saw him out on the street, you would go, wow, hey, that's Buford Pusser. So I think he wanted to have a persona that was as big as him physically. So what better way to get famous than
but to break up the most notorious things that were going on in his backyard.
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Chapter 3: Who was Pauline Pusser and what role did she play in Buford's life?
And inside that autopsy, it showed that her wounds were not to the front of her. They were to the back. Two shots in the back, one shot in the back of the head. That is very different than what Buford said happened in that room when supposedly she pulled a gun on him.
Mike Elam also found that Louise Hathcock's autopsy report was never shown to the grand jury that acquitted Buford Pusser of murder. When Pauline was murdered, the year after Louise Hathcock's death, there was no autopsy performed at all.
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.
There were other things about Pauline's murder that didn't make sense to Mike Elam or Oakley Dean Baldwin either.
What they both found out independently that was a major red flag to both of these people who had careers in law enforcement was that there was too much blood on the outside of the car.
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.
Then there was also Buford's statement about how fast they were going on New Hope Road, how far away the other car was, how far away he went the second time he pulled over to check on Pauline. All these things, when Mike Elam actually went and drove the whole route, he did exactly what Buford said he did that night. None of it added up. None of it made sense.
Mike Elam and Oakley Dean Baldwin both published books about their findings. And then in 2022, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation decided to reopen the investigation into Pauline's murder.
And the first thing they have to do, because it wasn't done 50 or so years before, was to give Pauline an autopsy.
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Chapter 4: What illegal activities did Buford Pusser target as sheriff?
When this all came out in Adamsville, you went there, you talked to people in town, what was the reaction? Was this a big deal in town?
So when you go to Adamsville, Tennessee, which is in McNary County, which is where Buford lived and where he patrolled, the legend of Buford Pusser is everywhere. When you drive up to the town line, there's a giant sign that says, welcome to Adamsville, home of Buford Pusser, with a silhouette of the man holding his trusty stick that he supposedly fought crime with.
There's a giant water tower with that silhouette figure on it. His home has turned into a museum. Everything in Adamsville is about Buford Pusser. And so there were certainly people in town who, once the DA had their press conference, had a very knee-jerk reaction. Take Pusser off the signs that welcome you into the town. Take him off the water tower.
You know, what are we going to do with the museum now? But there are certainly people that love the man there.
After the report came out, people in Adamsville had a town hall meeting to talk about what to do next. Buford Pusser's granddaughter, Madison Bush, said, this isn't over yet. One man, who said he became a law enforcement officer because of Buford Pusser, said that closing the Buford Pusser Museum would be letting this new day and age of the internet win. A man named Steve Sweat spoke.
And I think it's terribly sad that they did this to a man who couldn't defend himself.
Amen.
That's not a hero. One person said, I believe in America. People are innocent until proven guilty. The Buford Pusser Museum remains open. The top of their website reads, what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. It doesn't matter who you are. It's a quote attributed to Buford Pusser.
The town decided that they weren't going to change anything and they were still going to celebrate Buford Pusser.
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