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Famed Southern Sheriff Retraces Years Of Wounds, Death, GunplaySELMER, Tenn. (UPI) — A jagged river of scar tissue circles Buford Pusser’s face, hiding torment felt by the ex-lawman who won fame across the South by busting up a notoripus gang on the nearby Tennessee-Mississippiborder.If half Pusser’s face had not been blasted away by two 30-calibre carbine slugs, the lines of anguish over the Aug. 12, 1967 murder of his pretty wife would be greater.As it is, there is only a trace of bitterness in the whisper-soft drawl of the former McNairy County sheriff. Fourteen plastic surgery operations have given him a new appearance.Moviegoers now munch popcorn as they view a wide screen and see an actor using Pusser’s name get shot eight times, stabbed seven and kill two people.The audience squirms as it watches a replay of the chilling ambush that took the life of Pauline Pusser on a narrow blacktop road next to a patch of fluffy cotton. “Walking Tall” is the name of the movie.Circling the McNairy County Courthouse once, Pusser pointed his new milk-white Thunderbird south toward the Mississippi-Tennessee line. Slightly sunk in the deep pile black carpet were three pistols—a 9mm, a 357 magnum and a .38 special.“I guess with the movie coming out some people are going to be rubbed the wrong way,” remarked Pusser who served the maximum of three two-year terms as this rural county’s top lawman.In the 1950s, some of the honky tonks that straddled the state line received at transfusion of bad blood when the territory becamea refuge for thugs, many of whom Pusser said were chased out of Phenix City, Ala. by the National Guard.Until Pusser became one of Tennessee’s youngest sheriffs at age 26, illegal gambling, prostitution and liquor flourished. The young sheriff claimed he was offered $1,000 a month to keep his 6-6, 250-pound frame away from state line business.Traveling at speeds of 85 miles per hour down roads he used to haunt as sheriff, Pusser, now 34, talked about the movie and his run-ins with the state line crowd. He is currently a consultant to the movie.“You know, I think the movie is pretty accurate,” he said, pulling a publicity picture from the fold in the car’s sunvisor. “This fellow, Joe Don Baker, does a good job playing me.“Yeah, they talked to a bunch of big name actors before coming up with Joe Don Baker,” he continued. “The people are going to see a story and not a Clint Eastwood or a John Wayne.“They didn’t choose a sex symbol to play my wife because my wife was a sex symbol.”The car had left the Selmer city limits, the town where the lawman killed Charles Hamilton in 1969. After being shot in the stomach, Pusser put a hole to the left of Hamilton’s right eye.For the record, Hamilton stood accused of killing five people in his lifetime, including his wife and a deputy sheriff. He had served 30 years behind bars.At the state line, Pusser turned the car around in the parking area of the Shamrock Motel, a faded green building in which Louise Hathcock met death Feb.1, 1966. Mrs. Hathcock, operatorof the Shamrock, tired one shot at Pusser before her gun jammed.The young sheriff, who had a warrant for her arrest on a robbery charge, put a bullet in her arm which traveled through to her heart.Backtracking, the sheriff turned off U. S. 45 down winding New Hope Road, breezing past cotton fields and pasture land until he came to a small concrete bridge.It was nearly dawn Aug. 12, 1967 and Pusser had just returned home from patrolling the county when an anonymous phone caller said there was “serious trouble brewing on the state line.”Pusser had been increasingly active in shutting down the nightspots that operated outside the law and Pauline feared for his life. She insisted on going with him to the stateline.“This is where the first volley came from,” he said, his patchwork face showing little emotion. “This is where they blew half of Pauline’s head off.“We found out later their car had been hiding behind the Methodist Church up the road.They were just waiting for us to come by.”William S. White ,WASHINGTON - Of the current Democratic Senate it may later be said that never had so many politicans so neglectedSlowly, Pusser drove the shiny Thunderbird another two miles down the road and stopped at an intersecting dirt road. “I thought they had stopped chasing us and I stopped here.“I pulled Pauline over to me and tried to help her. I could tell she was dying. She was gasping for breath. I opened the door and looked back and about that time they were on us again.“I caught two soft-nose slugs in the face. I tried to call for help on the radio but I couldn’t. I pulled the rearview mirror down to see what was wrong and my chin was almost to my lap.“Blood was spurting everywhere. Later they found my jaw about 20 feet over in that field,” Pusser said, pointing in the direction of pasture land enclosed by barbed-wire.Today, Pusser’s jaw is constructed of wire mesh. He has no feeling in part of his face and in cold weather his mouth freezes.He has lost a wife, the mother of three children. He has vowed to find her killers, but the man he believes put out the contract has since been killed in a shootout over a woman.Pusser is considered a legend in law enforcement at the age of 34.slogans, such as that the Senate is “sipping political Geritol.” Idleand empty words right out of television land are all right for« • m « • . -
Newspaper Details
Port Charlotte Daily Herald News
Port Charlotte, Florida, US
Mon, Apr 16, 1973
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Darrel C.
USA 14 Sep 2019
Other Publications Near Port Charlotte, Florida
Port Charlotte Herald News
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