S4|E8: The Real Buford Pusser | Part 2

Summary

Gone South: S4|E8 – The Real Buford Pusser | Part 2

Host: Jed Lipinski
Release Date: November 20, 2024
Publisher: Audacy Podcasts

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Overview

In the eighth episode of Season 4, "The Real Buford Pusser | Part 2," host Jed Lipinski delves deeper into the enigmatic life and legacy of Buford Pusser, a figure long celebrated as a Southern crime-fighting sheriff. This episode uncovers unsettling revelations that challenge the heroic image Pusser has held for decades, presenting a compelling narrative of potential corruption and deceit.

Unraveling the Legend

Mike Elam’s Investigation
The episode continues Mike Elam's relentless investigation into Buford Pusser's past, particularly focusing on the circumstances surrounding the death of Pusser’s wife, Pauline.

• Initial Doubts and the Facebook Revelation (00:36 - 03:32): Mike Elam recounts how, by 2015, persistent digging led him to question the established narrative of Pusser's heroic persona. He created a Facebook page titled "Buford the Other Story" to gather alternative accounts, which quickly attracted contributors with varying degrees of direct involvement.

  “People telling about what they heard that morning, what they saw that morning... it began to grow and grow.” — Buford Pusser [03:32]

Challenging the Established Narrative

Lavonne Plunkett’s Testimony (03:32 - 07:17)
Elam meets Lavonne Plunkett, who provides a startling account that contradicts Pusser’s version of events.

• Contradictions in Plans: Lavonne reveals that Pauline intended to leave Buford, a fact that Pusser's story does not acknowledge.

  “She was going to pick up her kids and leave.” — Lavonne Plunkett [05:06]

• Gunshot Incident: Lavonne describes hearing a gunshot and witnessing Pusser pulling Pauline into his car, raising suspicions about the authenticity of the ambush claim.

  “She heard a single gunshot.” — Buford Pusser [05:57]

Diane’s Account (07:17 - 09:07)
Diane, Pauline’s daughter, shares her terrifying memory of the night, further implicating Pusser.

• Witnessing Pusser’s Actions: Diane recounts seeing Pusser dragging Pauline to his Plymouth Fury, contradicting the idea that the ambush was solely against Buford.

  “Diane was convinced that Buford had killed Pauline.” — Buford Pusser [08:59]

Revisiting the Evidence

Blood Spatter and Ballistics (09:07 - 13:45)
Elam explores inconsistencies in the physical evidence, such as blood spatter patterns and ballistics reports, suggesting the possibility of foul play by Pusser himself.

• Self-Inflicted Wound Theory: Analysis of gunshot residue implies Buford might have inflicted the wound himself, contradicting the ambush narrative.

  “It just doesn't add up to me that she was killed in an ambush meant for him.” — Buford Pusser [13:45]

The Exhumation and Its Fallout

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) Steps In (16:44 - 20:15)
In a significant turn, the TBI decides to exhume Pauline Pusser’s body after six decades, heightening tensions within the community and among Pusser’s supporters.

• Community Backlash: Steve Sweat, a staunch Pusser historian, expresses outrage at the decision, fearing it tarnishes Pusser’s legacy and harms the community.

  “They thought it was terrible and just got mad about it.” — Steve Sweat [20:30]

• Support for the Investigation: Contrarily, relatives of Pauline view the exhumation as a step towards closure and justice.

  “They were pretty happy to hear that they would finally get some closure after 56 years.” — Dean Baldwin [27:51]

Potential Outcomes and Reflections

Possible Revelations (28:22 - 28:56)
Dean Baldwin, a retired deputy sheriff, discusses the potential findings of the autopsy, which could either validate Pusser’s story or expose him as an accomplice or perpetrator in his wife’s death.

“If she had defensive wounds on her arms... then we know that he was part of it.” — Dean Baldwin [28:56]

Parallels with Public Figures (29:24)
The episode draws comparisons between Pusser’s tarnished legacy and that of Lance Armstrong, emphasizing how powerful narratives can overshadow uncomfortable truths.

“Who was your investigation into Pauline's death going to help?... It is to hurt those who believe the story.” — Mike Elam [22:21]

Current Status and Awaited Conclusions

As of the episode's conclusion, the TBI's autopsy results remain pending, leaving the community and listeners in suspense. Mike Elam speculates on potential findings, particularly focusing on Buford’s Plymouth Fury and its relevance to the case.

“The TBI had dug it up and were now analyzing the bullet holes to see if they matched Buford's story or told a different story entirely.” — Mike Elam [28:56]

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Conclusion

"The Real Buford Pusser | Part 2" serves as a gripping continuation of Mike Elam's quest to uncover the truth behind a Southern legend. By juxtaposing firsthand testimonies with scrutinized evidence, the episode invites listeners to question the veracity of heroism and the complexities of human nature. As the investigation progresses, the podcast sets the stage for potentially groundbreaking revelations that could redefine Buford Pusser’s legacy.

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Notable Quotes:

• “One thing you never do is take your spouse to a disturbance call.” — Buford Pusser [00:46]
• “They don't want to see that done. They thought it was terrible and just got mad about it.” — Steve Sweat [20:30]
• “If you have defensive wounds on her arms... then we know that he was part of it.” — Dean Baldwin [28:56]
• “Who was your investigation into Pauline's death going to help?... It is to hurt those who believe the story.” — Mike Elam [22:21]

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This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the episode’s narrative and investigative elements.

Transcript

[Jenna Fisher]

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[Mike Elam]

Previously on Gone South.

[Steve Sweat]

At some point, they called Buford's home in the early morning hours and told him there was trouble there on the state line, that he needed to come down there.

[Buford Pusser]

One thing you never do is take your spouse to a disturbance call, and.

[Steve Sweat]

That'S what put her in the car with him that morning.

[Buford Pusser]

He said that he was sitting in the car, that they pulled up close enough that they were right next to him.

[Steve Sweat]

He didn't realize they were on him before the shots, you know, came through the car.

[Buford Pusser]

Of course, the perception that America has is that Buford was a real hero, that he cleaned up the state line and that he sought revenge for his wife's death. But, you know, there's a whole nother story that needs to be told. How would an ambush party know that he would even take that route? All of the blood spatter on the outside of the car leads you to believe that someone was actually standing in front of that car when they were shot, not on the inside.

[Mike Elam]

Did you ever learn about why the autopsy was never performed?

[Buford Pusser]

It is possible that Buford absolutely did not want an autopsy done. Makes no sense otherwise.

[Mike Elam]

By 2015, Mike Elam had been digging into the story of former McNary County Sheriff Buford Pusser for years, sharing his discoveries in online chat rooms, boring his wife to tears. It seemed clear to him that Buford was lying about the ambush that killed his wife Pauline, and that he may have covered up his own involvement in her death. It was a depressing thought for someone who'd grown up worshiping the man. For you personally, how did it impact you? I mean, you're someone who idolized him as a young man. You became a sheriff. You looked up to the guy, as did so many people in law enforcement over the years. Like, how did it impact you personally as you were discovering these things?

[Buford Pusser]

You know, when I first started to examine the evidence, I got so discouraged. I just wanted to stop. I was that disappointed because a man that I thought was a true hero turned out not to be. But then I got to Thinking about the whole thing, the whole story, that there was such a much, much bigger story here than there was in just the legend. I mean, no one expected to hear what the story was saying when they look at the evidence, as I did.

[Mike Elam]

From what Mike could tell, no one had publicly challenged the established narrative of Buford Pusser's life. The books that did exist were mostly hagiographies that promoted the Pusser legend. Mike saw an opportunity to rewrite history. So Mike created a Facebook page. He called it Buford the Other Story. He envisioned it as a kind of fishing hole, a way to attract people with information. He quickly built a following. Some had direct ties to the story. Over time, they began to speak up and tell him what they knew.

[Buford Pusser]

People telling about what they heard that morning, what they saw that morning, people that were involved in telephone conversations at night, and in some cases, direct conversations with people that were in the story. So it began to grow and grow. And after a while, I was getting a lot of information that I realized that the authorities never had.

[Mike Elam]

Then, a year after he created his Facebook page, Mike met a woman who changed everything. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South. Not long after Mike Elam created his Facebook page, he was put in touch with a woman named Lavonne Plunkett. Lavaughn had been married to Petey Plunkett, one of Buford's most trusted deputies. She was also one of Pauline's best friends. As she told Mike, she was with Pauline the night before her death. The supposed ambush had taken place at around 4:30am on a Saturday morning. In Buford's version of events, he and Pauline were supposed to visit Pauline's family in Virginia later that day. But LaVaughn told Mike that wasn't true. In fact, Pauline and Buford had been separated for months. They weren't planning on visiting family in Virginia. Pauline was planning to leave Beaufort, take the kids and move back in with her parents. The night of the ambush, Lavaughn said she dropped Pauline off at her house. Pauline wanted to pick up some clothing and personal items before the trip.

[Buford Pusser]

And the kids were there at the house. She was going to pick them up and they were going to leave. Pauline invited Lavaughn into the house, and Lavon said that she turned down the invitation to go inside because she was afraid of Buford and afraid of what he might do if he came home and saw her there with Pauline because he had told Pauline not to be associating with Lavon.

[Mike Elam]

So Lavaughn parked down the street. She told Pauline to flash the porch lights when she was ready to leave.

[Buford Pusser]

And I'll come down and get you and the kids and put all your belongings in the car and we'll be gone. She hadn't much more than got her car parked until, she said, Buford passed by. He went in the house, and while she was sitting there, she heard a single gunshot.

[Mike Elam]

At the sound of the gunshot, lavaughn froze. She didn't know what to do.

[Buford Pusser]

She knew that she couldn't call the sheriff's office because Buford's dad, Carl, was the dispatcher and jailer that night. So she couldn't talk to him. She couldn't call her husband, Petey, because he was in tight with Buford. And she figured that Petey would probably lie for Buford. And she had kids to raise and she needed her husband there. She didn't need him to get in trouble, so she knew she couldn't call him.

[Mike Elam]

So, against her best instincts, LaVaughn drove back home.

[Buford Pusser]

She was sitting there at her home that morning, trying to think of what to do when Petey called her and said, well, Pauline just got killed in an ambush meant for Buford.

[Mike Elam]

Mike was blown away by the story. LaVaughn was in her 80s at the time. Mike asked if she'd ever reported it to the police.

[Buford Pusser]

She said she had not. And the reason being that you have to understand McNary county was very small back then. Total population of the county was only around 18,000 people. And you also have to understand that law enforcement, especially back in those days, was a brotherhood. And you weren't going to have one cop say anything bad against another. So she knew that if she did talk, it was just going to create problems for her. So Pauline was gone. She just kept it to herself.

[Mike Elam]

Of course, Lavon's story was only hearsay. An 84 year old woman's memory of a 50 year old event. Some of Lavaughn's own family said they'd never heard this story before. Mike didn't jump to any conclusions. Instead, he went looking for other clues. According to Mike, there were three children inside Buford and Pauline's house when the alleged gunshot went off. Two of them, Mike and Diane, both in their teens, were from Pauline's first marriage. And the third was Buford and Pauline's six year old daughter, Duana. Through his Facebook contacts, Mike learned that over the years, Duana had been asked about the night of her mother's death, but she had no memory of it. And the two elder kids, Mike and Diane, had both passed away. But Mike managed to track down people who knew Diane. It turned out Diane had spoken to them about what she saw that night.

[Buford Pusser]

All of them basically told me the same story, that she was awakened that night and she said, buy a popular. And she heard movement outside. Now, Diane was afraid of Buford, so she wouldn't go in the living room to see what was going on. But she heard the front door open. She went over to a window, looked out, and she saw Buford half dragging, half carrying Pauline to his Plymouth Fury. He put her in the front seat, walked back toward the house, and Diane would tell her friends that I thought he was coming back to kill me next.

[Mike Elam]

Instead, Diane told her friends that Buford had stopped halfway to the house. She said he picked up Pauline's shoes, placed them on the floorboard of the front seat and drove off.

[Buford Pusser]

Diane was convinced that Buford had killed Pauline. That was the last time she saw her mom.

[Mike Elam]

It was a lot for Mike to absorb. It was a lot for me to absorb too. So, to recap, first, Pauline's friend Lavon says Pauline was planning to take her kids and leave Buford the night of her death. But when she drops Pauline off at the house to collect her things, Buford comes home and she hears a gunshot go off. Pauline's daughter Diane, who is inside the house, allegedly hears the same gunshot. And when she hears the front door open, she sees Buford dragging Pauline to his Plymouth, the same Plymouth that will soon be riddled with bullets in an apparent ambush. This was all on top of the damning evidence Mike saw in police reports. The blood spatter on the outside of the car when Buford said they were inside the car when the attack took place. The shell casings on the side of the road, not the middle of the road where they should have been. The circuitous route Buford took that night instead of the faster, direct one. Mike couldn't avoid the thought that Buford had killed Pauline at some point that night and and staged an ambush to cover up the crime.

[Buford Pusser]

Everything is just shouting that Buford has told a tale that was turned into movies and books and it's all a false story.

[Mike Elam]

But why would he want to kill Pauline, the mother of his six year old daughter, Duana? Yes, the two of them were separated and yes, Pauline was threatening to take the kids and leave. But was that enough of a motive to kill her? Mike had asked some trusted members of his Facebook group the same question, and they suggested some other reasons Buford might have wanted Pauline dead.

[Buford Pusser]

I do believe it's important to point out that Buford had had multiple affairs while he was married to Pauline. One of the women prior to the ambush allegedly said that when he indicated that he was wanting to have a long term relationship with him, she made some comment like, well, what about Pauline? You're married. And his comment was, well, Pauline won't be a problem much longer.

[Mike Elam]

Mike also learned that Buford, contrary to his upright image in Walking Tall, was directly involved in the corruption he claimed to be fighting. According to Mike's sources, Buford was taking payoffs from beer joints and dance halls throughout the county, allowing them to sell hard liquor and operate after hours.

[Buford Pusser]

From what I've learned from others who told me their bits and pieces of the story, Buford realized that there was a good chance that Pauline was going to talk about his corruption, and she had threatened to do so. And he was overheard telling her that if she did, she wouldn't live to see the light of day again.

[Mike Elam]

It was mostly hearsay, but taken together, it painted a compelling picture. Not of a vigilante hero, but of a corrupt potential murderer who'd concocted a story about his wife's death, then sold it to Hollywood and embraced his new image as an American hero. The theory that Buford killed Pauline and covered it up wasn't new. Apparently, it had been a closely held rumor in Adamsville since day one. But there was still one thing that made that theory hard to the grisly gunshot wound to Buford Pusser's face. The police report said Buford was shot twice in the left jaw with a.30 caliber carbine. In his biography, Buford said his chin was, quote, hanging down to his chest. Photographs taken after the ambush show a gaping hole in his cheek and bandages covering his face. The Hollywood version portrayed in Walking Tall suggests the ambushers blew half his face off. Mike closely examined other photographs taken of Buford after the ambush. They were old and grainy, he admitted. But Buford's chin is still there, and the photos appear to show what looked like gun residue and powder burns on his face.

[Buford Pusser]

And that appears to suggest that the barrel of the gun that was used to shoot him in the face was fairly close, because usually you get powder burns if the barrel is just within inches of your face.

[Mike Elam]

Had the ambushers shot Buford from a Cadillac flying down the road in the dark, it would have been from a distance of at least a few feet, not nearly close enough to cause powder burns. It caused Mike to think that Buford's gunshot wound, as odd as it sounded, was likely self inflicted. That helped explain another puzzling part of the ambush story, that Buford, the intended target, who was sitting directly in front of the attackers, sustained only a wound to the jaw, whereas Pauline, sitting beside him in the passenger seat, was shot twice in the head.

[Buford Pusser]

It just doesn't add up to me that she was killed in an ambush meant for him.

[Angela Kinsey]

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[Jenna Fisher]

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends and together we have the podcast Office Ladies where we rewatched every single episode of the Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs.

[Mike Elam]

Guess who's sitting next to me?

[Jed Lipinski]

Steve.

[Jenna Fisher]

E. And I have grown in the studio. Every Wednesday we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the Office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus on Mondays we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jed Lipinski]

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[Mike Elam]

In 2020, on the advice of his Facebook followers, Mike self published a book about his findings. He also created a YouTube channel, Buford Pesser.

[Buford Pusser]

He spent three terms as sheriff doing battle with the State Line mob. Well, that's what Walking Tall would have you believe. What is a real story about the State Line?

[Mike Elam]

By this point, Mike had collected reams of circumstantial evidence and eyewitness accounts. But he lacked any direct physical evidence, something that might convince the authorities to officially reopen the investigation. Then, in the summer of 2023, he caught a lucky break.

[Buford Pusser]

Now, with the Facebook page, the book, and the YouTube channel all working for me, I got a call one day and it was probably the biggest piece of information that I'd received yet. This individual was saying that he thought he had the gun that might possibly have been used in the ambush.

[Mike Elam]

The individual in question had been following Mike's Facebook page anonymously for years without leaving a single comment. Mike assumed he was a Pusser fan lurking on the site.

[Buford Pusser]

And he told me, he said, I finally decided that you're the real deal, that you want to know the real story.

[Mike Elam]

Mike got the guy on the phone. He knew the gun that shot Buford was an M1.30 caliber carbine, the type of semiautomatic rifle used by the US military in World War II. Through the grapevine, Mike had heard that Buford owned at least one gun of this type. He started peppering the man with questions.

[Buford Pusser]

But when he said he had the gun, he described it, but more importantly, described the background of how he obtained the gun. That was what was really the clincher to me.

[Mike Elam]

I asked Mike who the man was and how he'd come into possession of Buford's gun. But Mike said he wanted to remain anonymous and couldn't reveal any details. That fall, Mike visited the man to see the gun for himself.

[Buford Pusser]

So I went over, got all the information off the gun, found a way to run it when it was made, serial number, you know, the whole nine yards. And it just checked all the boxes.

[Mike Elam]

Mike and the man decided to share information about the gun with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Not long after the TBI Sent a few agents to interview them. They took the gun into custody. A few weeks later, an agent called Mike back.

[Buford Pusser]

TBI really reached out to me and said, hey, we'd appreciate anything that you've got that can help us with this investigation. So that's when I started just sending them whatever I had. Interviews, recordings, documentation, everything.

[Mike Elam]

Months passed with no News. Then, on February 8, 2024, the TBI announced that they had exhumed Pauline Pusser's body from the Adamsville cemetery.

[Jenna Fisher]

So the TBI saying a new tip has led them to dig up her grave. Brianna Hamblin joins us live from the TBI headquarters.

[Mike Elam]

And Brianna's Mike was exhilarated by the news. The TBI had kept details of their investigation confidential, but Mike felt certain that Pauline had been exhumed based on information he gave them.

[Buford Pusser]

I didn't know when it was going to happen. I didn't know if it was going to happen, but I just suspected it would. And I think there was so much here that the TBI realized that they couldn't ignore that. And I was glad that they've done it because it's going to tell them so much that they probably did not know before.

[Mike Elam]

Not everyone shared Mike's enthusiasm. Steve Sweat, the unofficial Buford Pusser historian from the previous episode, was appalled by the TBI's decision to exhume Pauline's body after 56 years. He said the Pusser supporters in Adamsville were equally upset.

[Steve Sweat]

Well, they were infuriated. You know, nobody around Adamsville, you know, the. What I'd call the Reginald Pusser family community. None of them wanted to see that done. They thought it was terrible and just got mad about it.

[Mike Elam]

What does that crowd think of Mike Elam?

[Steve Sweat]

You think he needs to keep his mouth shut?

[Mike Elam]

Steve Sweat was already familiar with Mike Elam and his digging into the Pusser case. Years earlier, a Memphis TV reporter who had apparently been spending time on Mike Elam's Facebook page came to Adamsville to interview him for a story. The reporter wanted to know what Steve thought of the, quote, new information that Buford Pusser may have killed Pauline.

[Steve Sweat]

Now, this was 15 years ago, and, you know, nothing surprises me about the store. So, you know, I was ready for whatever he threw at me. So I sat there and looked at him. I said, well, I'm not aware of any new information. And I said, as far as I'm concerned, that ambush went the way the sheriff said it went, because he was there, we weren't. And they said, okay. And they turned the camera and microphone off, and they went back to Memphis. That was the end of that interview.

[Mike Elam]

In Steve's view, Buford was the ultimate authority on the ambush. He was the only eyewitness. He told the cops what happened. He was never arrested or charged with a crime. Evidence might one day prove otherwise. But for now, as far as Steve was concerned, the ambush happened the way Buford said it did. Everything else was needless speculation. For decades, law enforcement seemed to ship Steve's perspective. But by 2023, Mike Elam had swayed them too. Months before Pauline was exhumed, an agent from the TBI had shown up at Steve's body shop.

[Steve Sweat]

And he was telling me that this cold case had been opened, you know, into that ambush of Pauline. And he said, it's going to be big. He said, it's going to blow the doors off of McNary County. And I said, well, why would you want to blow the doors off McNair County? And he couldn't answer that. And I said, look here, I could tell the way he was talking that they were hoping to put some kind of negative spin on it. And I said, if you put a negative spin against Buford with this story in this investigation, I said, you're going to hurt three things. You're going to hurt law enforcement, you're going to hurt McNair county, and you're going to hurt what's left of the Pusser family. And who are you going to help? Nobody.

[Mike Elam]

In Steve's mind. By exhuming Pauline, dredging up 50 year old rumors, and suggesting American hero Buford Pusser may have murdered his wife, you were only going to hurt people. And none more than Pusser's surviving family, who had recently suffered terrible losses. Buford's daughter Duana, who was close to Steve, committed suicide in 2018 after a long battle with cancer. Then in June of this year, Dejuana's daughter Otoye died in her home at age 46, leaving two young sons behind. But Steve left out another group that would suffer from the fall of the Pusser legend. People like him and the Rock and the legions of Buford Pusser fans out there, people who saw Walking Tall and got inspired to stand up to challenges in their own lives. By claiming that Walking Tall was based on a lie, Steve Sweat seemed to be saying you were robbing people of that inspiration. The day Steve learned that Pauline was being exhumed, he told his wife, we're going to the graveyard.

[Steve Sweat]

We realized that through Facebook or something, someone sent us a message that they were over there. Exhuming her right then. So I told my wife, I said, okay, we're going. I said, I'm not going to stop, but we're going to go see it for myself, you know, my own eyes to see it. And we did.

[Mike Elam]

Pauline is buried in Adamsville Cemetery. Her grave sits just feet from Buford's, whose headstone reads, He Walked Tall. The day of Pauline's exhumation was overcast with a high wind. As Steve and his wife drove past, they saw TBI agents and a few members of Pauline's family standing solemnly by the grave. Steve kept driving. As the Buford Pusser historian, he felt he needed to see it, but he decided he'd seen enough.

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[Mike Elam]

Steve had told the TBI agent that reopening Pauline's case would only hurt people, but that wasn't really true. According to Mike Elam, the newspaper reports and a few people I spoke with, reopening Pauline's case would Help the surviving members of Pauline's family. After all, a good number of them had spoken willingly to Mike Elam for years, and they'd approve the TBI's request to exhume her and finally perform the autopsy. Members of Pauline's immediate family declined to comment until the results of the autopsy are made public. But I did speak with one of Pauline's distant cousins, a man named Dean Baldwin, who knows Pauline's family well. Dean is a retired deputy sheriff from North Carolina. A few years ago, he'd interviewed around a dozen members of Pauline's family for a book he wrote about Pauline's case called the murder of Mrs. Buford Pusser. Dean told me that when Pauline's family learned the TBI plan to exhume her, they celebrated.

[Dean Baldwin]

Yeah, they heard about it from me. I actually was in contact with them, let them know that that was happening. And they were pretty happy to hear that they would finally get some closure after 56 years. You have a brother and sister that's still living. You have first cousins that are still living, nephews and nieces, grandkids. And they deserve to know what happened one way or the other.

[Mike Elam]

Will the autopsy and the TBI's investigation actually reveal what happened? No one knows. The TBI declined my requests for an interview. But Dean Baldwin, the former deputy sheriff who spent decades as a crime scene investigator, said it could reveal quite a bit. It could show that Buford merely exaggerated what happened that night and that the core of his story checks out. It could prove inconclusive. Or it could reveal that Buford played a direct role in Pauline's death, in which case a grand jury could posthumously indict him for murder.

[Dean Baldwin]

If she had defensive wounds on her arms, or if she had been strangled, or if she had been injured or shot with a smaller caliber weapon, not including the shots that she took to her head, then we know that he was part of it. He either did it himself or he is an accomplice to the murder. So we'll let the facts fall and let the chips fall where they will.

[Mike Elam]

The story of Buford Pusser brings to mind stories of other powerful men whose legacies have been tarnished or shattered by scandal. As I reported this episode, the person I kept thinking about was Lance Armstrong. Obviously, lying to the public about performance enhancing drugs and allegedly killing your wife are two very different things. But Lance and Buford's stories have a lot in common. Lance's story of overcoming cancer to become a seven time Tour de France champion resonated deeply with the public. His Livestrong foundation raised millions for cancer research. It solidified his status as an American hero. And so when the doping allegations first surfaced, many of his fans were skeptical or downright dismissive of the claims. Bono and Matthew McConaughey leaped to his defense. Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist for the Washington Post and the co author of Lance's autobiography, was one of his most vocal supporters, even as the evidence against him mounted. Like the legend of Buford Pusser, the legend of Lance Armstrong was so powerful that people clung to it, even when confronted with facts that plainly contradicted it. And you can't really blame them. It was such a good story, it inspired millions. For someone in a life or death battle with cancer, seeing Lance not only beat it, but go on to win the Tour de France could mean the difference between giving up and continuing to fight. Lance Armstrong's story helped people. Which brings me back to Steve's question to that TBI agent. Who was your investigation into Pauline's death going to help? It's an interesting question. To me, it suggests that if a story helps enough people, we should ignore the facts behind it. To do otherwise is to hurt those who believe the story. But what if the story is a lie, as it was with Lance and as it may be with Buford? While I was working on this episode last summer, I kept waiting for the results of the autopsy to come in. After all, Pauline's body had been exhumed months earlier in early February. Mike Elam and others had expected the TBI to announce the results on 12 August, the 57th anniversary of Pauline's death, ensuring maximum media exposure. But 12 August came and went with no news. In September, I called Mike back and asked him what he thought was taking so long. As usual, he had a few theories. The most intriguing one to me had to do with Buford's car, the 1967 Plymouth Fury he was driving at the time of the alleged ambush. Rumor had it that Buford had the car buried outside Adamsville before his death. Mike speculated the TBI had dug it up and were now analyzing the bullet holes to see if they matched Buford's story or told a different story entirely. Of course, Mike stressed that this was only a theory. He had no idea what the TBI had found. For now, he said, all we can do is wait. If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email [e-mail] that's GonsouthPodcast. Gmail.com we're on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram @gonSouthPodcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is An Odyssey Original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman, Maddie Sprung Keyser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lipinski, Maddie Sprung Keyser and Joel Lovell. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basil and Andy Jaskowicz. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Reese, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hilary Schuf. If you want to hear more of Gone south, please take a few seconds to rate and review the show. It really helps.

[Jenna Fisher]

You might think financial crime is all about money, but sometimes it ends in murder. I'm Nicole Lapin, host of Money Crimes, a Crime House Original podcast. Each episode features a thrilling story about the dark side of finance and how to protect yourself from it. Follow and listen to Money Crimes, An Odyssey podcast in partnership with Crime House Studios. Available on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.