In a tight-knit, rural community in Tennessee, Sheriff Buford Pusser is a Tennessee legend. He patrolled McNairy County in the 1960s while wielding an enormous hickory walking stick, took on bootleggers and mobsters, and became the inspiration for the Hollywood film Walking Tall – later remade with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
But behind the legend is a tragic death that’s never been solved.
In 1967, Sheriff Pusser’s wife Pauline was gunned down in front of her husband, in an attack that Pusser said was an ambush meant for him. Nearly 60 years later, questions still linger: was the sheriff a hero – or hiding a darker truth?
On Friday, investigators with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and McNairy County prosecutors will reveal what they call “significant details” in Pauline’s murder, after a new round of forensic testing and a rare exhumation of her body in 2024.
Officials say the findings will bring “closure” to her family and shed light on one of Tennessee’s most notorious cold cases.
“As far as I’m concerned, it happened the way the sheriff said it did because he was there and we weren’t,” Steve Sweat, a Buford Pusser historian, told WKRN.
Others, though, aren’t convinced.
“I believe it was staged to fit Buford’s narrative. But when you look at the evidence, it’s so convincing that he didn’t tell the entire truth,” said Mike Elam, who runs the podcast Buford Pusser: The Other Story and has provided leads to investigators.
“So much of what he said doesn’t make sense.”
Elam points to what he believes will be critical details – blood spatter evidence on the Pussers’ car and the number of times Pauline was actually shot. “If she was shot only once, that would mean Buford lied,” he said.
The new investigation began in 2023, when the TBI received a tip that led agents to exhume Pauline’s body the following year. Her remains were reburied in 2025 after a fresh autopsy was performed, but the results were kept sealed.
As months passed without answers, frustration grew. A petition demanding the release of the TBI’s findings gathered more than 400 signatures this summer, with supporters insisting the public had a right to know.
On social media, some have called for “justice for Pauline.” Others remain staunch defenders of the sheriff, still honored each May at the Buford Pusser Festival in his hometown of Adamsville.
For some, Buford Pusser is still the hero who fought corruption and survived stabbings, shootings, and assassination attempts before dying in a 1974 car crash at the age of 36.
His story was immortalized in the 1973 film Walking Tall and its 2004 remake, cementing his place in pop culture as a southern lawman fighting corruption.
But for others, the former sheriff remains a deeply flawed figure accused of corruption and abuse.
