Jackson Jambalaya

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and local prosecutors said last week that legendary rural Sheriff Buford Pusser, who died in a fiery accident in 1974 near his home, is now suspected of the cold-blooded murder of his wife in 1967. Pusser’s incredible fame stemmed from the story of his wife’s death, in which the sheriff said the couple was ambushed while responding to a call for assistance. Prosecutors now say Pusser’s story isn’t supported by the evidence in the case, turning the “Walking Tall” story inside out.

The Pusser legend – the presumed hero’s lore - was another story altogether.

Back in the mid-1990s in rural Adamsville, Tennessee, a friendly local lady would, for $2 a head, take you on a guided tour of the home of perhaps the most storied rural sheriff in American history. The museum is still open today. The sheriff’s public life between 1964-70 as a lawman charged him with keeping order in the long string of dives and honky-tonks with names like the Shamrock and the White Iris that peppered old Hwy. 45 between Corinth, Mississippi and Selmer, Tennessee.

The Pusser Museum is a modest, three-bedroom ranch-style home on a quiet Pusser Street in Adamsville. It's located less than a half-block from the Buford Pusser Memorial Park, where local youth play league baseball in the summer. Each year on Memorial Day weekend, they still hold the Buford Pusser Festival.

Pusser's law enforcement career was exceedingly violent. Yet the violence that he endured and returned in his battles with Dixie Mafia figures fueled the legends that were depicted in three movies about his life - the "Walking Tall" trilogy. Remakes ensued.

Inside the museum, one can view the "big stick" that Joe Don Baker and Bo Svenson used to bust heads, stills, and beer joints in three movies as they portrayed Pusser. The truth of the matter was that Pusser never carried a stick while a lawman. The legend grew from a campaign pledge he made in 1964 not to carry a gun. After he'd been shot, stabbed, and beaten a few times on the job, Pusser reneged on the pledge and carried a pistol.

Like a lot of his Hollywood portrayals, Pusser's stick was a movie prop, but one he was stuck with on the promotional tour circuit. The resentment of McNairy County residents over their representation in the movie and the fictionalized accounts of Pusser's crime-busting tactics ended his political career in 1972 when he lost his last race for sheriff. The museum is hokey, but the story that spawned it remains compelling. Pusser killed two suspects in the line of duty - a bootlegger and reputed madam named Louise Hathcock at the state-line Shamrock Club in a 1966 shootout, and an ex-convict named Clarence Russell Hamilton during a domestic disturbance call on Christmas Day, 1968.

Mississippi and Tennessee authorities suspected Pusser in the murder of Dixie Mafia crime figure Carl Douglas "Towhead" White on April 3, 1969, at the El-Ray Motel in Corinth, but no charges were ever filed.

With a little prodding, the tour guide at the Pusser Museum explained one strange afterthought of a photo of an old maroon-and-white Ford Thunderbird parked in front of a red-brick motel.

"Buford had ordered this car from a man who owned this motel, but he was killed in the wreck before it was delivered," she explained.

Driving home on old Hwy. 45 from Adamsville in 1996, I stopped near the state line at the red-brick ruins of the Shamrock club with the motel built on the Tennessee side of the line and the nightclub built on the Mississippi side. Parked in front of the Shamrock motel, just as it had been in the museum photo, was the hulk of a maroon-and-white 1974 Ford Thunderbird.

So just what was Buford Pusser doing engaged in a car transaction at the site of one of his infamous battles with the bootleggers on the Tennessee-Mississippi state line? The answer remains an enigma, just as the alleged link of reputed Dixie Mafia figure Kirksey Nix to both the reputed Pauline Pusser ambush in 1967 and, years later, to the 1980s Mississippi Gulf Coast murders of Vincent and Margaret Sherry.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.