TN TN - Pauline Pusser, exhumation, killed by gunfire while in a car driven by her husband McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser, 12 Aug 1967

[imstilla.grandma]

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it oversaw the exhumation of the body of Pauline Pusser on Thursday at Adamsville Cemetery. She was killed by gunfire while in a car driven by her husband, McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser, a figure whose legend was captured in the 1973 film "Walking Tall," starring Joe Don Baker, and in a 2004 remake starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

His face marked by the scars where two 30 caliber carbine slugs blasted half of his face away, former McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser points to a section along a lonely blacktop road where he and his wife Pauline were ambushed in 1967

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Body of famed Tennessee sheriff's wife exhumed 57 years after her cold case murder

Pauline Pusser was killed on Aug. 12, 1967, by gunfire while in a car driven by her husband, McNairy County Sheriff Buford Pusser.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[imstilla.grandma]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=655017686776605

 

[imstilla.grandma]

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A TBI statement said the agency received a new tip that led agents to find that there was never an autopsy performed on Pauline Pusser's body.
The Tennessean cited an Aug. 13, 1967, publication of its newspaper that says Pauline Pusser was killed and her husband was “seriously wounded in the jaw when Pusser’s prowl car was fired on at dawn on a lonely country road.”

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The wife of a famed Tennessee sheriff died in a 1967 unsolved shooting. Agents just exhumed her body

Authorities have exhumed the body of the wife of a famed former Tennessee sheriff more than a half-century after she was fatally shot in a still-unsolved killing

abcnews.go.com

 

[worm]

This case has been a constant topic in the Dixie Mafia/Kirksey Nix case for years.

 

[DEPUTY2002]

I believe like most that Dixie mob planned and carried out this plan to kill Burford. Mob didnt care Pauline was in the car they just wanted him dead!

 

[worm]

I believe like most that Dixie mob planned and carried out this plan to kill Burford. Mob didnt care Pauline was in the car they just wanted him dead!

Same here. That Dixie Mob story is wild. I was just searching around for info about Biloxi before a trip there and spent days of the vacation reading about the Sherry murders.

 

[cenazoic]

Press conference releasing additional evidence tomorrow (29 August 2025):

Additional evidence on Pusser homicide to be released - WBBJ TV

‼ Additional evidence in the homicide of Pauline Mullins Pusser is expected to be made public. 👉 See here: wbbjtv.com/2025/08/27/additional-evidence-on-pusser-murder-to-be-released-friday

www.wbbjtv.com

 

[worm]

Could they finally be charging Kirksey Nix with this?

 

[cenazoic]

BREAKING: Evidence connects Bufford Pusser to wife's murder, authorities say - WBBJ TV

Authorities hold a press conference announcing new evidence in a cold case murder.

www.wbbjtv.com

“TBI says evidence suggests Pauline was shot outside of the vehicle and later moved inside the vehicle. Evidence also suggests the gunshot wound Bufford received was self-inflicted.”

 

[doublestop]

That was what I was expecting to hear.

 

[Derph]

I'm actually SHOCKED!!! This is awful! We used to play Walkin Tall as kids. One kid would be Bufford with whatever stick or 2x4 we had around and the others would be the bad guys. It usually ended up as a kind of Wrestling/ Cop show mash-up with Bufford eventually winning after overcoming savage beat-downs and overwhelming odds. We all looked forward to when the movie came on TV.

I can't believe he did this and then shot himself in the face but facts are facts. I had no idea this was ever questioned. Poor Pauline. What a crazy, crazy story.

 

[worm]

I'm actually SHOCKED!!! This is awful! We used to play Walkin Tall as kids. One kid would be Bufford with whatever stick or 2x4 we had around and the others would be the bad guys. It usually ended up as a kind of Wrestling/ Cop show mash-up with Bufford eventually winning after overcoming savage beat-downs and overwhelming odds. We all looked forward to when the movie came on TV.

I can't believe he did this and then shot himself in the face but facts are facts. I had no idea this was ever questioned. Poor Pauline. What a crazy, crazy story.

I’d like to know more about how the came to this conclusion.

 

[Warwick1991]

I’d like to know more about how the came to this conclusion.

I would like to know as well.. I hope detailed findings will be released to the public. Perhaps the direction of the shot(s) that killed Pauline aren't consistent with where she would be in the vehicle. But I wonder whether certainty is really possible here. JMO

 

[Sikkim]

There were "problems in the marriage" including domestic violence. Buford was abusing her

https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/pauline-pusser-update/

 

[Derph]

Late crime-busting sheriff Buford Pusser inspired Hollywood. Investigators say he killed his wife

Tennessee authorities say a cold-case investigation reveals that a sheriff who inspired a Hollywood movie about an organized crime-busting law enforcement officer actually killed his wife in 1967 and led people to believe she was murdered by his enemies.

apnews.com

...."He found that cranial trauma suffered by Pauline didn’t match crime scene photographs of the car’s interior. Blood spatter on the hood outside the car contradicted Buford Pusser’s statements. The gunshot wound on his cheek was in fact a close-contact wound and not one fired from long range, as Buford Pusser described, and was likely self-inflicted, Revelle concluded.

Pauline’s autopsy revealed she had a broken nose that had healed prior to her death. Davidson said statements from people who were around at the time she died support the conclusion that she was a victim of domestic violence."

...." The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation plans to make the entire file, which exceeds 1,000 pages, available to the public by handing it over to the University of Tennessee at Martin once it finishes with redactions. The school will create an online, searchable database for the case. Until then, members of the public can make appointments to review it in person or can purchase a copy, said university Chancellor Yancy Freeman Sr."

 

[ColyH]

He sounds more like a town bully than a law abiding citizen.

 

[vls12345]

TBI believes Sheriff Buford Pusser killed wife Pauline, staged crime scene

TBI says that Pauline's death did not occur the way Buford reported it.

www.11alive.com

“There is probable cause to believe that Pauline’s death was not an accident, not an act of chance, but, based on the totality of the TBI investigative file, an act of intimate, deliberate violence,” District Attorney General Mark Davidson said during Friday’s press conference.

Davidson said that the investigation is not about “tearing down” a figure of Tennessee’s history, but bringing justice to Pauline.

“The truth matters, justice matters,” Davidson said. “Even 58 years later, Pauline deserves both.”

 

[333_OnlyHalfEvil]

He shot himself in the face to cover for killing his wife? Who does that? Unless he was trying to kill himself and failed, I've never heard of anyone shooting themselves in the face or head when an arm or leg or foot would also do just fine as a cover story.

 

[worm]

He shot himself in the face to cover for killing his wife? Who does that? Unless he was trying to kill himself and failed, I've never heard of anyone shooting themselves in the face or head when an arm or leg or foot would also do just fine as a cover story.

Somewhere it’s suggested that she shot him during a violent incident and he then killed her. I’m anxious to see that incoming report on it.

 

[tilomagnet]

Above it says self inflicted gun shot wound suspected....

I totally agree with @333_OnlyHalfEvil This smells like BS that he blew off his jaw for a cover story. Nobody does that. And if he had attempted suicide after murdering her, a Sheriff sure would aim better.