Free Republic

Authorities in Tennessee announced Friday that they believe a sheriff who inspired the movie "Walking Tall" is responsible for his wife's death in 1967. During a news conference Friday, officials with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said there were "inconsistencies" in statements from Sheriff Buford Pusser following the 1967 murder of his wife, Pauline. “It’s been said that the dead can’t cry out for justice. It is the duty of the living to do so. In this case, that duty has been carried out 58 years later,” said District Attorney General Mark Davidson for the 25th Judicial District. Blood splatter...

A renewed investigation into the unsolved 1967 murder of the wife of McNairy County, Tenn. sheriff Buford Pusser debunks what has for decades been depicted in movies and implicates the long-dead lawman in his wife’s shooting. The sheriff, who died in a 1974 car crash, long said Pauline Pusser went with him on a call on Aug. 12, 1967 when a car pulled up alongside them and shots were fired, killing her and leaving Buford shot in the face. She was 33. The scene was depicted in the 1973 movie “Walking Tall,” with Buford Pusser depicted by Joe Don Baker....

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — 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. 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 incoming 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 a 2004 remake starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Various sites in Adamsville...