They Killed His Wife And Left Him For Dead – Then He Got Revenge

On August 21, 1974, Buford Pusser, American sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, died at the age of 36. An excerpt from the article:

"As soon as he was elected, Buford Pusser threw himself into his work. He first turned his attention to the Dixie Mafia and the State Line Mob, two gangs that operated on the line between Tennessee and Mississippi and made thousands of dollars off of the illegal sale of moonshine.

Over the course of the next three years, Pusser survived several assassination attempts. Mob bosses from the entire tri-state area were set on taking him out, as his efforts to rid the town of illegal activity had proven quite successful. By 1967, he’d been shot three times, killed several hitmen who tried to kill him, and was considered a local hero.

Then, disaster struck when Pauline was killed. Many assumed that the hit was an assassination attempt aimed at Buford Pusser and that his wife had been an unintended casualty. The guilt that Pusser felt over his wife’s death was insurmountable and drove him to cold-blooded revenge.

Not long after the shooting, he named his four assassins, as well as Kirksey McCord Nix Jr., leader of the Dixie Mafia, as the one who orchestrated the ambush. Nix was never brought to justice, but Pusser ensured others would be and cracked down harder than ever on the illicit activity in the area.

One of the hitmen, Carl “Towhead” White, ended up being gunned down by a hitman several years later. Many people believed Pusser himself hired the assassin to kill him, though the rumors were never confirmed. Several years after that, two of the other killers were found shot to death in Texas. Again, rumors swirled that Pusser killed both of them, though he was never convicted.

Buford Pusser Car
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Buford Pusser shortly before his death in the car that he would crash.

Nix later found himself in prison for a separate murder and was eventually sentenced to isolation for the rest of his life. Though Pusser would have considered Nix’s isolation justice served, he never got to see it happen. In 1974, he was killed in a car accident. On his way home from the local county fair, he hit an embankment and was killed after being ejected from the car.

Both Buford Pusser’s daughter and mother believed that he had been murdered, as Nix had been able to order several unrelated hits from prison. However, the claims were never investigated. It seemed, that Pusser’s long fight for justice was finally over.

Today, a memorial stands in McNairy County in the house that Buford Pusser grew up in. Several movies called Walking Tall have been made about his life that depict the man who cleaned up a town, got caught in the middle of an assassination attempt, and spent the rest of his life hell-bent on vengeance for those who had hurt his family."