McNairy County, Tenn.–After exhuming the body of Pauline Pusser some 60 years ater she was buried, investigators have released new information implicating her husband, the legendary Sheriff Buford Pusser, in her death.
At a press conference today, Mark Davidson, District Attorney for the 25th Judicial District, said the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has “produced evidence sufficient to create probable cause.”
He said further that “more likely than not,” if Sheriff Pusser were alive today, an indictment could be presented to the McNairy County Grand Jury for the murder of his wife.
Davidson said evidence suggests that Pauline Pusser’s death was not accidental and instead was a ‘deliberate’ act. Sheriff Pusser had claimed that he and his wife were both shot in an ambush during an early-morning call in which she accompanied the sheriff. The sheriff also was shot and seriously wounded.
“It’s been said that the dead cannot cry out for justice, it is the duty of the living to do so,” Davidson said. “In this case, that duty’s been carried out 58 years later.”