For a long time it was believed that Pauline Mullins Pusser, wife of the legendary Sheriff of Tennessee, Buford Pusser, was shot dead in an ambush for her husband, but the new evidence suggests that it was the late Sheriff who killed his wife.
A report from the Tennessee Investigation Office discovered “inconsistencies in Buford Pusser’s statements to the Police and others,” said Mark Davidson district prosecutor at a press conference on Friday.
Police have discovered physical, medical, forensic, ballistics and recreational evidence that contradicts the Sheriff’s story of his wife’s murder in 1967.
The Sheriff’s account inspired the movie “Walking Tall” in 1973 and several sequelae, a 2004 remake and several books, said Davidson.
Buford Pusser died in a car accident in 1974.
“This case is not about demolishing a legend, it is about giving dignity and closing to Pauline and his family and ensuring that the truth is not buried over time,” said Davidson.
This photo provided by the Tennessee Research Office on August 29, 2025 shows the location in Guys, Tennessee, where then the McNair County Sheriff, Buford Pusser, said his wife was killed on August 12, 1967.
TBI through AP
The Sheriff reported that his wife offered as a volunteer to travel with him in the dark and early in the morning in a disturbance call. He said that a car stopped and fired several shots towards them, killing Pauline and hurting him in what, according to him, was an ambush for him carried out by unknown assailants, according to Davidson.
The Sheriff, who also was shot in the ambush, recovered from his injury and no viable suspects were found and no charges were presented.
The researchers now believe that Pausine Pusser was shot off the vehicle and then placed inside the vehicle, which is not what Buford Pusser told the researchers at the time of the murder.
“This was a cold case for decades, but in 2022 the TBI agents took another look at the file file and coordinated with our office. That accelerated work in 2023 and 2024, Pauline Mullins Pusser was exhumed by an autopsy,” Davidson said.
A portrait of Pauline Pusser is shown next to a screen that reproduces a video of his brother, Griffon Mullins, giving a statement, at a press conference on August 29, 2025.
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“It has been said that the dead cannot cry for justice, it is the duty of the living to do so. In this case, that the duty is carried out 58 years later,” said Davidson.
The researchers used modern forensic science and research techniques that were not available in 1967, authorities said.
A new autopsy also revealed that the cranial trauma suffered by Pauline Pusser does not coincide with the photographs of the crime scene of the interior of the vehicle in which he was supposedly killed. On the blood outside the vehicle, it also contradicts Buford Pusser’s story of the murder, said Davidson.
A forensic researcher also determined that a gunshot wound on Buford Pusser’s cheek was a close contact wound, not a long range as he had described, and was probably self -inflicted, Davidson said. The blood splash analysis also indicated that someone was injured both inside and outside the vehicle, he said.
The researchers now believe that the crime scene was staged.
The Sheriff spent about 18 days at the hospital and required several surgeries to recover, said the director of the Tennessee Research Office, David Rausch, at the press conference.
The case based largely on his statement, “maybe too fast,” Rausch said.
The researchers received advice on the possible homicidal weapon in the spring of 2023.
In this photo without date provided by the Tennessee Research Office on August 29, 2025, Pauline Mullins Pusser’s body is exhumed from his grave in the Adamsville cemetery, in Adamsville, Tennessee, in 2024.
TBI through AP
The autopsy also indicates that before his death, he had a nasal fracture that had cured more commonly caused by the “interpersonal trauma,” according to Davidson.
If you were alive today, investigators believe they have produced enough probable cause that prosecutors could have delivered a criminal accusation for murder.
“Pauline’s death was not an accident, not an act of chance, but based on the entire TBI research archive, an act of intimate violence,” said Davidson.
“Justice for Pauline has spent a lot of time and thanks to all the hard work done by many that we can finally announce to the surviving family of Pauline and the public that we believe we are as close as possible to justice,” he said.
In this archive photo of April 12, 1973, the former Sheriff of McNairy Buford Pusser County is shown in Selmer, Tennessee, near a section along a lonely Blacktop road where he and his wife Pauline were ambushed in 1967.
Bettmann archives through Getty images, file
Griffon Mullins, brother of Pauline Mullins Pusser, thanked the police for his work and urged others to accept the results of the investigation.
“To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not terribly shocked,” he said.
He said he was grateful to have obtained this closure so many years later.
“I loved her with all my heart and I have missed her horribly in these last 57 years,” Mullins said in a recorded statement.
“I am devastated. It has been a long time since he left … I have had a lot of time to think and look back in Pauline’s life. He didn’t tell me much. He was not the type of person who told him his problems, but he knew there were problems in his marriage,” Mullins said.
