"He Walked Tall"

Buford Hayse Pusser
Dec. 12, 1937 - Aug. 21, 1974
Sheriff of McNary County Tennessee 1964 - 1970

Buford Hayse Pusser was the McNairy County Tennessee Sheriff from 1964 - 70. His heroics resulted in two books and three "Walking Tall" movies. The man's life, both before and after he became famous, can be examined up close in the former Pusser home in Adamsville, Tennessee. He was described by his friends and family as a quiet, kind and caring man, a gentle giant Pusser stood 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 250 pounds. His shadow cast across the nation one of the tallest in law enforcement history. He was a rugged symbol of justice who became an American folk hero, a legend with world-wide recognition.
Buford was born to Carl and Helen Pusser on Dec. 12, 1937 near Finger, Tennessee. During the Depression the family made their living by working the area cotton fields and during the off season Carl worked at a local sawmill.
Buford graduated from Adamsville High School in 1956 and then he enlisted in the US Marines. His basic training was at Parris Island. But due to an astma condition he was given a medical discharge in November of that year. In the late summer of 1957 he moved to Chicago and it was there that he began a wrestling for extra money. While there he also met his wife Pauline, and on December 5, 1959 Buford, age 22, and Pauline were married.
In 1962 Buford and his family returned to McNairy County and settled in Adamsville. His father Carl, had been Adamsville's police chief. Due to medical problems Carl planned to retire and he encouraged Bufford to apply for his position. After a vote from the city board, Buford was made police chief. In 1962 Buford ran and won his first elected office, Constable, which was a part-time position. As constable, he made a crusade of crushing the area's illegal whiskey trade, but Sheriff James Dickey stifled Pusser's efforts. Dickey was in cahoots with the Moonshine Ring, which operated on the Mississippi and Tennessee state lines. Buford decided that he would like to seek the office of McNairy County Sheriff so during the early part of 1994 Buford and his father began to campaign and his election was assured when Dickey died in an automobile accident.
On September 1, 1964, at the age of 26, Buford became the Sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee. He hired his father as jailer and went right to work cleaning up the criminal elements within the county, which included the 'stateline' mob. As sheriff of McNairy County, Pusser refused the $1,000-a-month bribe he was offered to "look the other way." And the mobsters threatened to take his children out in the swamp, "and cut their pretty little heads off." Buford's methods were unconventional; extreme by the estimation of some. The stories of his fighting crime with nothing but a big stick are somewhat exaggerated, though on one occasion he did use a fence-post to extract his peculiar brand of justice, and on another he solved a domestic squabble with a good old-fashioned hickory-switching. In the beginning Pusser vowed not to even carry a gun, but he soon realized that his enemies weren't playing with sticks and stones, and he strapped one on after a number of violent confrontations.
In November 1964, the Moonshine Ring ambushed Pusser and stabbed him seven times, leaving him to die. But miraculously, Pusser survived and made war with the ring with a vengeance. In his first year as sheriff, Pusser crushed 87 whiskey stills producing illegal moonshine, and the business never recovered. In later years as sheriff, he attempted to clean up the state line area by prosecuting prostitution rings and illegal gambling houses. Those who didn't like him had good reason. During his tenure as sheriff he jailed more than 7,500 criminals. Sheriff Pusser was surrounded by violence. On February 1, 1966, he was on his way to the Shamrock Motel to arrest Louise Hathcock. He had two warrants for Hathcock in his pocket, one for theft and one for illegal possession of whiskey. The sheriff was accompanied by his deputies, Jim Moffett and Peatie Plunk, that morning. Pusser shot and killed Hathcock after Hathcock fired at him first. It was after these events that Buford's life story reads like a story from a horror magazine. By the time he was 32, Pusser had been shot eight times, stabbed seven times, struck by a car, and had killed two people in self-defense. He also fought six men at once and sent three to jail and three to a hospital. Another time, he hopped on the hood of a speeding car, smashed the window and subdued the man who tried to run over him.
Christmas Day, 1968, Pusser was forced to kill Charles Russell Hamilton. Don Pipkin, landlord and cousin to Hamilton, called Pusser and told him his relative was drunk and threatened to shoot him and his wife. Hamilton had killed his mother, his wife, a York man from Chewalla and a man from Alabama. Pusser made the call and after Hamilton shot at the sheriff, Pusser killed him, his second killing in the line of duty. Both cases were heard by the McNairy County grand jury and both were ruled self-defense.
On August 12, 1967, around 4:00 am, the Sheriff and his wife Pauline were up and ready to leave for vacation to visit Pauline's family in Virginia when the Sheriff received a call about some disturbance at the state line. Pauline insisted on accompanying him that morning. The night of Aug. 11, four men had checked into the Shamrock Motel, which straddled the line between Alcorn County, Miss., and McNairy County. They were Dixie Mafia leader Kirksey McCord Nix Jr., Boston mob star Carmin Raymond Gagliardi and two Dixie Mafia hitmen, Gary Elbert McDaniel and George Albert McGann. They left the motel around 4 a.m. in a black Cadillac. Sheriff Pusser and his wife drove down the lonely New Hope Road shortly after 4 a.m. looking for the disturbance. As they passed the New Hope Methodist Church, a black Cadillac, that had been hiding behind the church, sped out and pulled up alongside. One of the four men inside fired at the sheriff. The bullet missed Pusser but hit Pauline Pusser in the head. Pusser sped away, leaving the Cadillac behind. Buford drove about three miles down the road and stopped. Here, while attending to his wife, the car approached and began firing again. Pauline was hit in the head again and the bottom half of the sheriff's face was blown away. With the initial shots Buford sank to the floorboard, probably the move that saved his life. The attackers drove off, leaving the Sheriff for dead. Buford was later taken to a hospital in Selmer and then transferred to a hospital in Memphis. Pusser underwent sixteen facial operations as a result of the ambush. Law enforcement officials later concluded that the ambush was done by members of the state-line mob to get back at Pusser for his campaign to clean up illegal activities along the state line. Two weeks after the ambush Pusser went home. While in the hospital his wife was laid to rest at the Adamsville cemetery. It was only a short time later that Buford launched his own 'investigation' into his wife's killing. The press christened him the unkillable cop, and from that point on, he pursued the state-line mob with a thunderous vengeance, until all of the undesirables were either gone, dead, or in jail.
Word was that a movie was in the making on Pusser’s life. Two years later, as plans were being developed for the movie "Walking Tall," Pusser was making plans to run again for sheriff. There was controversy regarding the film developing in the county and Pusser blamed that controversy for his defeat by incumbent Sheriff Clifford Coleman. Selmer officials were opposed to the movie saying it would show the town in a "bad light." The producers ultimately chose Chester and Madison Counties for the location due to a said "lack of cooperation." These charges were denied by local officials. Buford left the Sheriff's post in 1970. By then his career was skyrocketing with "Walking Tall"; "Walking Tall: Part 2" and "Walking Tall: Final Chapter", still to be filmed. A television documentary 'The Great American Hero' was yet to come, as well as a television series.
On August 21, 1974, Buford Pusser had his last ride. Earlier that day he had been at a press conference in Memphis announcing that he would play himself in a sequel called "Buford." Pusser drove his Lincoln Continental home, parked it in his garage, and changed from his suit into shorts and a tee shirt. Employees of the Phillips 66 Station delivered his 1974 maroon Corvette and Pusser took a test ride. When he returned, his daughter Dwana had already left for the county fair. He got into the corvette and headed for Selmer. He attended the McNairy County Fair and Livestock show and signed autographs and chatted with Dwana, his daughter. Around midnight, he left the fair headed home, passed his daughter’s friend’s car and was out of sight. On a stretch of road between Selmer and Adamsville his new Corvette veered off Highway 64, then shot across the road into an embankment where it crashed and burned. His daughter was one of the first to arrive at the scene, and she pulled her giant father away from the burning wreck. "He had suffered so much," she's on record as saying. "I couldn't just let him burn up." While ruled an accident, his daughter suspects foul play.
It took nine guest-books to contain the names of those who turned out for Pusser's funeral. Actor Joe Don Baker, who portrayed the big sheriff in Walking Tall, was there, and even a brooding Elvis Presley lurked somberly in one of the children's bedrooms throughout the service.
Millions read of Buford Pusser and the State-Line Mob in THE TWELFTH OF AUGUST, and millions more watched them at war in the WALKING TALL movies. Now after more than twenty years-of research - W. R. Morris tells part of the story that could not be told until this time.
In the mid-1950s a cast of dangerous characters migrated to the Tennessee - Mississippi border after being run out of Phoenix City, Alabama, where they had run the gambling halls and whorehouses that thrived on the army paychecks from nearby Fort Benning, Georgia.
Once settled at the state line, they began a twenty-year run of rigged gambling, robbery, bootlegging, prostitution, murder, bribery, and payoffs that far exceeded their earlier activities. It was into the clutches of this group that young Buford Pusser stumbled In February 1957 when he was robbed of his mustering-out pay from the Marine Corps and severely beaten, requiring 192 stitches to close his wounds.
In the early 1960s a new face appeared at the Tennessee - Mississippi state line, that of Carl "Towhead" White. Fresh out of prison, White's ambition was to become the "Al Capone of the South." As a professional hit-man, he robbed banks, gambling joints, and various businesses across the South and throughout the Midwest and became the mastermind behind the state-line mob's evil empire. It was this mob that Buford Pusser confronted when he pinned on the McNairy County sheriff's badge In 1964, and it was White who masterminded the ambush murder of Pusser's wife, Pauline, in August 1967. From that day on Pusser was obsessed with avenging his wife's murder, for which no one ever stood trial. During the twenty years it has taken to write The State-Line Mob, gang "Insiders" - some on their deathbeds - told W. R. Morris the stories of what happened: who did what to whom, when, how, why, and for how much money. In the end, the criminals put themselves out of business, cleansing the border by murdering one another. Today the state line is a tranquil stretch of highway, its terror existing only In the memories of its victims and their families.
W. R. Morris is a veteran Journalist who has written on the subject of crime for more than twenty years. The author of THE TWELFTH OF AUGUST, which sold more than 1,500,000 copies, he also is author of BUFORD: A BIOGRAPHY, MEN BEHIND THE GUNS, and ALIAS OSWALD. He lives In Shiloh, Tennessee.