“Walking Tall” Sheriff Buford Pusser from Tennessee buried 50 years ago
They buried Sheriff Buford Pusser in a black suit with red and gray pinstripes, a white shirt, a red and blue polka dot tie, and with a mystery that may never go away.
Actor Joe Don Baker, who played Pusser in the 1973 film “Walking Tall,” attended the funeral, as did country music superstars Tammy Wynette and George Jones. More than 100 police officers were in attendance, some from as far away as Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama and Ohio.
Pusser, the former McNairy County sheriff known for his fight against corruption and moonshine, was buried in the Adamsville Cemetery on August 25, 1974, days after he was killed in a car crash that the Tennessee Highway Patrol ruled an “accident.”
Pusser’s 1974 Corvette crashed into a low embankment four miles west of Adamsville. For years, there has been speculation that the car was tampered with.
Pusser is buried next to his wife, Pauline, who was shot and killed on a back road just off U.S. Highway 64 on August 12, 1967. Pusser was unable to attend Pauline’s funeral because he was still recovering from one of the 14 surgeries needed to reconstruct his face after he, too, was shot that day.
There has also been speculation that Pusser may not have told the whole truth about the cause of his wife’s death. He said she was in his car on the way to a police call in the early hours of August 12 when they were ambushed by a group of assailants.
In this case, no arrests were ever made.
In February, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation exhumed Pauline Pusser’s body as part of an investigation that was never officially concluded.
Reached in August, the TBI said it had not yet drawn any conclusions about the findings of the new search.
“Our investigation is currently active and ongoing,” said TBI spokeswoman Kim Wheeler-Elder.
Pusser was a basketball star at Adamsville High School. After high school, he became a professional wrestler known in the Chicago area as “Buford the Bull.”
He first became police chief of Adamsville in 1962. He served as sheriff of McNairy County from 1964 to 1970. During his tenure as sheriff, he fought the State Line Mob and moonshiners in McNairy County. He became known for not carrying a gun, instead using a hickory bat to beat people up (but this account may be fictional).
Author WR Morris documented Pusser’s life and his wife’s death in the 1971 book Twelfth of August. The rights to the book were sold to Hollywood, and Walking Tall became a box office hit in 1973. The film, with a budget of $500,000, grossed $40 million at the box office.
The film spawned two sequels, a television movie, a remake starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Pusser, and a short-lived television series.
