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Season Six: Dirty Badges: Can't be Unspun
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We are using this episode to talk about police power abuse cases in what could be an ongoing series examining more egregious cases of misconduct by law enforcement. And today we are talking about one of the dirtiest badges of all.
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature.
Exploring True Crime Narratives
00:00:03
Speaker
Listener discretion is advised.
Bizarre Case of Fraudulent Jail Release
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:59
Speaker
We've gone down this like rabbit hole with this dirty bag stuff, and I i had a couple of more stories in that vein that I wanted to touch on before we sort of wrapped up the introduction of it and that's really all this says These episodes were like an introduction to see kind of how they performed and kind of how you and I felt about them.
00:01:18
Speaker
I do have a piece of true crime news I wanted to put it in today because it's like one of the weirdest things that I've been able to look at. I got it out of Fox 8 Live podcast.
00:01:30
Speaker
which I believe is the local channel. They also had it at KPLC, which I remember as KPLC being number seven. So I don't know for sure if this is all local to the area that it's from, but I know...
00:01:42
Speaker
that Fox 8 is from the Gulf Coast somewhere. They had a September 10th, 2025 thing that they put out from their like their digital team, which is kind of everybody contributes. It says burglary suspect fraudulently released for two months.
00:01:56
Speaker
And this is from Kakasu, Paris Sheriff's Office. This guy is so ahead of the game. It's a 42-year-old man. This is out of Lake Charles, Louisiana. It says a correctional center inmate was erroneously released After a man pretended to be a judge and had his bond reduced.
00:02:18
Speaker
And I have to tell you, it takes a serious amount of like. Cajones. Yeah, balls, cojones, chutzpah.
00:02:28
Speaker
To call up and pretend to be a judge to the local jail. Or it takes none at all. It takes an idiot. It could be that, too. It could be
Investigation and Security Protocols
00:02:36
Speaker
that, too. Yeah. So it says Adrian James St. Romain is the guy's name.
00:02:41
Speaker
ah He's 42 years old. says he called the jail on April the 16th and impersonated a judge. And he had Demond Lynn Della Houssey Sr.'s seniors bond change down to released unrecognizance.
00:02:57
Speaker
This is according to the local sheriff down there. Their spokesperson, Caleb Vincent, contributes to this article. But basically, DeMond was facing an aggravated burglary charge. He gets released in June on this um this bond.
00:03:10
Speaker
So when DeMond ends up appearing in court on July seventeenth Somebody, and I'm guessing it's a clerk, they discovered he had been released under false pretenses. So he gets booked back into the jail, according to Caleb Vincent.
00:03:24
Speaker
And then St. Romain is called out on all of this. ah He reportedly had called the jail two more times in July, and he tried to set another bond for DeMond. He was not successful.
00:03:36
Speaker
ah So detectives began investigating these suspicious calls in July. And they they identify Adrian James St. Romain as the caller. deputies end up arresting him in early September with the help of the U.S. Marshals Service on a separate matter.
00:03:53
Speaker
So after talking to the deputies, he gets booked into the local jail on the first warrant, as well as attempted simple escape, assisting escape, injuring public record records, and false impersonations. Now, when I looked at this...
00:04:14
Speaker
The bond had not yet been set for him. But it said that ah Caleb Vincent said it was not unusual to have judges calling in to do bond reductions by phone, but they had protocols they had to follow.
00:04:27
Speaker
And she wouldn't provide further details for this article because she didn't want everybody to know the security protocols. But she said, we have policies in place and we've had to make changes to ensure this type of situation doesn't happen again.
00:04:40
Speaker
Uh, then the sheriff down there, Stitch Gallery, he says, this was an honest error that occurred due to lack of training. We've addressed it. We did not release any information in July. Once it was discovered to the fact that our detectives and the corrections personnel were in the middle of an active investigation.
00:04:56
Speaker
And if we'd revealed these details too soon, we could have tipped off the suspect. He said, I want to commend our detectives, corrections deputies, and the CPSO real-time crime center for the work they did. using multiple law enforcement tools and techniques to connect the dots and identify the suspect responsible.
00:05:12
Speaker
I remain committed to being transparent with our community and those we serve, even when investigations like even when situations like this occur. That's all the sheriff talking. But then they close the article out and they say this investigation is ongoing.
00:05:25
Speaker
And I'm like, wait, but if it was ongoing, you wouldn't comment on it, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, the investigation's over, and if they, ah the positive view reinforcement that was ah taken in the statement, because, you know, actually, I'm not entirely sure how much ah interaction there is.
00:05:46
Speaker
It depends on how rural it is, I guess, whether the corrections office has anything even to do with the sheriff's department, right?
Impersonation Complexity
00:05:56
Speaker
Right. I mean, except that, like,
00:05:58
Speaker
The sheriff arrests the people and the corrections officers make sure the people stay in the corrections facility. Right. right Right. So I'm not really sure, but. A lot of sheriffs run the local jail, by the way, the local detention center. And that's what i was that's what I was thinking, but i'm not I don't have any idea, actually, where.
00:06:20
Speaker
sort of statistically how many corrections officers are sworn officers versus not or whatever. And I'm just saying like, he praised the work in, in finding the person who did it and, you know, arresting them.
00:06:35
Speaker
But like, it seems like that was a serious error. It's really serious, but it's not just a serious error. Like it's a complicated plot to do something like that.
00:06:46
Speaker
Like for that guy to have the wherewithal to call up. So he had to figure out some of the security protocols, not all of them, according to what they're doing, but they're saying they changed some of the way they did it.
00:06:58
Speaker
Right. Because somebody didn't know the difference. And I would imagine, uh, Like they had to have some insider information, right? yeah Oh, absolutely. Or they'd been booked and they'd heard it happen. So they knew a piece of it and started looking into it. Something like that. Yeah.
00:07:15
Speaker
Right. And, you know, I think it's interesting ah because really um now this would have been in favor of the inmate because of it, like whatever the bond was, was changed to a signature. Right.
00:07:29
Speaker
yeah A written promise to appear, basically. Right. um And so that would be in favor of the inmate. But, you know, all the actions um that occur with regard to someones ah being someone being held for trial, it's supposed to occur in open court, right? Right.
00:07:47
Speaker
ah For the most part, like, so I think what they're referencing there is probably the thing happens in court in terms of the motion, the argument, both attorneys are heard, nothing is ex parte, the judge hears it.
00:08:04
Speaker
I think what they're referencing is that after that happens in open court, The clerk or the judge's office, depending on how it's set up, will call over and relay some of that. Where i work, it's all done electronically, and it takes...
00:08:19
Speaker
about 12 hours to see everything accurately, but the judge may call over in the meantime, or we may call and say, Hey, this change occurred. Sometimes even the DA's office will call and say, Hey, this, this change occurred.
00:08:34
Speaker
Um, so there are certain things you have to do. i just realized I should say none of those, um, just in case, but, like Once you do that, the information is it's typically like triple verified where I am. like If the defender's office calls and says something, then whoever takes that message will talk to the magistrate who will call the judge's office, or they will talk to the supervisor at the detention center, and the detention center will talk to the DA's office.
00:09:02
Speaker
So there's multiple things that can happen where it's not actually the reduction of the bond, occurring at the jail it's the reporting that it's been reduced in court that's occurring right and so it was discovered i assume because like the clerk's office is expecting somebody that's being held to show up like visit uh via uh jail transport right right but they don't because they're not in jail right and then they're like what the heck but i don't know if he showed up otherwise
00:09:37
Speaker
and Yeah, he showed up in court and got arrested, basically. Well, I was going to say, but it's and it's not necessarily his fault. I mean, so did he get charged? Did the erroneously released defendant get charged?
00:09:53
Speaker
He gets pulled back into jail, basically. not charged, Under the original conditions. Right. Like, he's not charged for it. The other person is a charge for it. There may be, there could potentially be A moment where they realize he's in on it all and gets charged with escape.
00:10:11
Speaker
Simple escape. I would fight that because like, In theory, when you are in jail, um you have little access to anything that anybody's not telling you, right? i mean 100%. And so he would just, I mean, he may have found out, like, oh, his buddy called, right? Yeah. But, I mean, is he going to, like, argue with them about it when they're like, hey, you can sign yourself out now?
00:10:39
Speaker
I mean, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. but So I'd be interested to know, ah this seems to have been caught like pretty logically as far as you know the clerk saying, oh, this person's supposed to be in custody and they're not, right? Right.
00:10:55
Speaker
So I wonder, though, has it happened otherwise? um At this place? yeah Well, yeah. Like, has he done that? Because, I mean, if that was his first shot and it was successful...
00:11:08
Speaker
I mean, that's crazy. Well, there's a couple of charges here that make me think maybe it was maybe a subsequent action. I'm not sure. Like, it's almost like they're charging him with potentially having attempted to do this before.
00:11:24
Speaker
Like, the same guy, um Adrian, ah he seems to be the one they focus on, not Demond. Demond is the person who gets ultimately let out.
00:11:37
Speaker
um i don't I don't know how that's going to shake out. I just found it interesting. like I've seen mistakes happen before, and I actually i have
00:11:49
Speaker
ah case that is in a neighboring jurisdiction of impersonation of a bondsman, which was fascinating to me, but it essentially was someone pulls up to the jail.
00:12:03
Speaker
i think it was a drug trafficking scenario in, in my opinion. None of that is like, it's all speculation, but whatever. Um, I think they, they go to basically get their runner out of jail and they pretend to be a bondsman.
00:12:17
Speaker
Um, and, from what I've seen in that instance, like they have the correct book of like the insurance stuff. It's almost like they're impersonating another person who maybe is unaware that it's happening. Like they've stolen some items to impersonate a bondsman, but I've never seen somebody impersonate a judge like this over the phone.
Theme of Escape in True Crime
00:12:38
Speaker
That's so interesting to me.
00:12:40
Speaker
It really is because it either it's somebody who's either just not smart at all, or somebody that's, Actually, i think it's probably just somebody who has nothing to lose. I mean, honestly.
00:12:55
Speaker
Right. Because otherwise, why? he' He doesn't even benefit from it, right? Yeah, i don't i don't know I don't know what the scenario is here as to why he's doing it. it's's It's actually quite strange to me that this is happening at all.
00:13:07
Speaker
um It is. It shouldn't happen. I would say that any attempt such as this would be immediately and permanently thwarted, right? Yeah. um Today we have kind of a theme, a little bit.
00:13:20
Speaker
um The theme, which is why I brought up this piece of true crime news, um it's a little bit about escape. And so I had like another piece I want to put in here that happened it's happened over the summer, but it's part of the Dirty Badges series, but it's not going to be his whole story today.
Grant Harden's Crimes and Escape
00:13:41
Speaker
It's just going to be a piece of it.
00:13:42
Speaker
And it's going to lead into something else. did And when this happened, i I'm pretty sure like I messaged you about it like the moment I heard about it. There is a documentary about like this overall case. um I have never watched that documentary, and I've not heard the entire story yet, so I've just started sort of researching it.
00:14:01
Speaker
But had you ever heard of a police chief named Grant Harden? Not before we started looking into it. Okay, so this guy is interesting for a number of reasons. um He's apparently the subject of a documentary called Devil in the Ozarks.
00:14:17
Speaker
And in May of this year, so a couple months back, he managed to escape May 25th. ah This guy, he's 56 years old. He escapes from the north central unit in Calico Rock, Arkansas.
00:14:34
Speaker
um He had been serving time there for the 2017 murder of a man named James Appleton and the 1997 rape of a schoolteacher. That's according to the public records ah at the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
00:14:48
Speaker
I think I did know about that. me I may have known a little bit about this before we started looking into it. But go ahead. I think it would have been from the perspective of the like the DNA, maybe.
00:15:01
Speaker
i think so, because it was it was crazy. Right. It was like it was wild like kind of who he was. so So Grant Harden's a former police chief, like just to get that out there and say it up front. He had been sentenced to about 80 years on the convictions for this murder and the rape of the schoolteacher.
00:15:22
Speaker
According to Nathan Smith, who is the Benton County prosecutor at some point in time, I don't know if he's from that time period, it just said former on a couple of the sources, and ah The affiliate for ABC out in Arkansas is KHBS or KHOG.
00:15:38
Speaker
ah USA Today carried some of their stuff. And he this this is what Nathan Smith had to say. Again, it's the former prosecutor, not the current one. He said he's a sociopath. Prison's not full of people who are all bad. It's full of a lot of people who just do bad things.
00:15:52
Speaker
But Grant is different. So USA Today gets into a little more. They say that Hardin pleaded guilty in 2017 to murder in the first degree for having shot and killed Mr. Appleton in February of 2017.
00:16:07
Speaker
According to his brother-in-law, Andrew Tillman, this is him talking to the Benton County Sheriff's investigators, he says he was on the phone with ah James Appleton when James Appleton got shot. So James Appleton's brother-in-law is Andrew Tillman.
00:16:25
Speaker
He like is on the phone listening to this shooting. James Appleton for his part had filed a police complaint shortly before the phone call and he had pulled over to the side of the road to complete this conversation with Andrew Tillman.
00:16:42
Speaker
That's according to an affidavit that's filed as probable cause affidavit. but Um, It was noted that while they're talking, ah James says to Andrew, car just sped by me. He said, I think it must have been a cop or something.
00:17:00
Speaker
So according to Andrew Tillman, the next thing he heard on the phone was what sounded like a loud slamming door. And that was it. A witness told investigators that he saw a white car parked behind Appleton's truck, heard a loud bang, and saw the white car speed off.
00:17:16
Speaker
The witness then turned around to check on the the truck, only to discover that James Appleton was dead. That is always absolutely horrible, by the way, ah like to walk up on someone who's just been shot.
00:17:31
Speaker
ah Andrew Tillman was the mayor of Gateway, Arkansas, when the shooting had occurred. His wife, Cheryl Tillman, is currently the town's mayor. According to Cheryl, she told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, which also ran the USA Today article,
00:17:46
Speaker
He's just an evil man, and he's no good for society. ah USA Today reached out to them for comment. They did not comment back immediately, so they just ran with the additional quotes from the other sources.
00:18:01
Speaker
Now, he gets 30 years in prison for a plea agreement on this, and a DNA test follows up this murder conviction. And it links him back to a Rogers, Arkansas, 1997 rape.
00:18:18
Speaker
That victim told investigators she was attacked on a Sunday morning, a time where she was normally working to working to prepare for her week. And she noted that there was a church group meeting in the school's cafeteria while she's working.
00:18:31
Speaker
After leaving her classroom to go to a restroom off of the teacher's lounge, she was attacked at gunpoint. The assailant was described as a white male wearing a knit stocking cap and sunglasses.
00:18:42
Speaker
This information ends up coming from an application for a search warrant that's filed for a storage unit owned by Grant Harden. So in 2019, Grant Harden ends up pleading guilty to two counts of rape, and he's sentenced to 25 years in prison for each count, and it's to be served consecutively, back-to-back.
00:19:03
Speaker
ah According to USA Today, And I think the Associated Press ran with this as well. He had bounced around between police departments before he became the chief of police in Gateway, Arkansas.
00:19:15
Speaker
He had been with the Fayetteville Police Department from August of 1990 May of 1991.
00:19:20
Speaker
The department's chief of police had said that he terminated James ah Grant Harden because his efforts fell short of the average probationary officer. So when you start being a police officer, there's a period of time that you can be let go, basically. Usually it's about a year.
00:19:35
Speaker
Some places it's two years. You're considered to be a probationary employee. But the police chief from back then said that he had a tendency to not accept constructive criticism along with indecisiveness in stressful situations.
00:19:49
Speaker
So from there, he ends up at, for sure, Eureka Springs Police Department from April of 1993 to October of 1996. But he had a lot in his record there. ah Multiple excessive uses of force, poor decisions on the job. And that department's former police chief just said it didn't work out.
00:20:10
Speaker
He ends up being the chief of police for Gateway for about four months at the beginning of 2016.
00:20:16
Speaker
Now, this Devil in the Ozarks documentary that exists, it focuses mainly on the 1997 unsolved rape. So it's it ends up being released, I think, in 2023. And if I recall correctly, it's on either HBO or Max, whatever they call it now.
00:20:34
Speaker
But the tagline that I found on IMDb said that it's about a vicious sexual assault stunning a small town ah going unsolved for two decades until a murder nearby reveals a suspect with matching DNA.
00:20:46
Speaker
I haven't seen the documentary yet. I do plan on watching it now. But I wanted to bring up Grant Harden because it's not every day that you hear about ah police chief serving time for rape and murder escaping from prison.
00:20:58
Speaker
There are always like too many examples of situations where
00:21:05
Speaker
a police officer didn't work out for cause. right like There's a reason they didn't work out. But it's almost like the not working out isn't quantified enough for the next police agency not to hire them.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, that happens a lot. That's what I was that's what i was thinking. because um And I think that this is a good example of like how bad it really is when you are talking about Like certain situations, like I would say police, because they have, you know, a gun and a badge and an authority and and possibly power, depending.
00:21:45
Speaker
um it's It's odd. it it doesn't make logical sense for somebody that didn't work out as a probationary officer to like 20 years later be the chief of anything.
00:21:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. um And like there's other professions like, you know, if a doctor really messes up and they get fired, but the hospital doesn't notate what the problem was with some sort of possible legal action or something like they can get hired at the next place. Right.
00:22:17
Speaker
And do the same stuff. Right. Yeah. And and so it's dangerous. Right. And this is a perfect illustration of that. I haven't seen the documentary either yet, but I'm totally going to watch it now.
00:22:29
Speaker
And i was trying to think like, there's so many elements that are sparking memories for me. And this, like kind of the narrative of what all happened. Right. Yeah.
00:22:42
Speaker
Did you say that Appleton filed a um complaint? Yeah. So there was a complaint that had been made against the police. And then, so we've got like, we've got multiple residents of gateway Arkansas involved, which is where,
00:22:58
Speaker
Harden is the chief of police. So he had filed some kind of complaint, probably against him. And he comes on board and he shoots him. I assume that might get answered in the documentary, which is why I wasn't the digging.
00:23:11
Speaker
Well, I wasn't going to dig deep into it here because I don't know. but Right. And so I totally, I'm going to see, but I remember. So I, You know, not getting like that heavy into it because we don't know all the details. But if you think about ah the solution of a complaint being. Now, was he chief at that time?
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah. Being you go shoot the complainant.
00:23:41
Speaker
Like, there's going to be a lot of garbage. Oh, yeah. Backing up that whole situation, right? i And again, we'll figure this out because we'll look into it.
00:23:52
Speaker
But it's interesting. ah It's noted. I'm sure it's for a reason that it's noted. um The documentary happened before he escaped, right? The documentary is from 2023. He escapes in 2025. So, yes. Yeah.
00:24:06
Speaker
Okay. It's interesting that the initial, the the notes existed somewhere or the a person who wrote the article got quotes. So they existed, right? Yes.
00:24:18
Speaker
As far as him saying that he didn't, he couldn't make good decisions under pressure and whatever else they said. Yeah. It completely contravenes like what ends up happening later. Right?
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah. And that's interesting to me because i do think a police officer, i don't know about you, i would never be a law enforcement officer. i have no interest in, like, I don't follow orders, right?
00:24:50
Speaker
So I wouldn't be a good one. But it's always, we know that a lot of violent criminals have aspirations or even been some sort of law enforcement, right? Oh, yeah. But it makes it, like, that much more sickening, right?
00:25:10
Speaker
Definitely does. Because you think about, like, wow, that's crazy that um he was able to – because if he's doing – you know, he's raping somebody in 97 then he's police chief in 2016, like, what kind of spiraling life is that?
00:25:30
Speaker
it's It's scary to me, right? It is very scary. Yes. It's not only scary, it's a little bit ridiculous. And that's one of the things, in some of the later episodes of the whole Dirty Badges thing, we're going into some pretty bizarre things that have happened with how police agencies are staffed around the country.
00:25:55
Speaker
um You brought up an interesting point, and that was, like, a lot of times when an officer is let go early in their career, the way that they're let go doesn't preclude them from becoming an officer at another agency.
00:26:12
Speaker
And I feel like that's a I feel like that's what exactly should happen, right? Unless it's literally just being let go because of, like, over staffing or something which it hardly ever is okay because you don't let good cops go like you want to hold on to them because they're so few and far between right right but when you're talking about like the bad cops ending up being the chiefs well i mean none of the none of what should be happening is happening right because it's
00:26:45
Speaker
it the chief is who should weed out the bad cops. Right. Right. And you've got something completely backwards there, but, but there is this, and my understanding, never having been a police officer or any desire to be in law enforcement whatsoever is that they still look out for each other.
00:27:03
Speaker
And in not, you know, saying this guy is completely incompetent to continue to have a career in law enforcement when they let him go. Like that's just part of the brotherhood.
00:27:13
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Like they're not going to completely ruin him. They just don't want to deal with his shenanigans at their agency. Right. Right. When in theory they should have said, you know, we do not, we're not going to give him a recommendation.
00:27:30
Speaker
i don't know. i don't know how much that would actually matter. Right. Right. It seems like, but I think if not giving a recommendation versus actually saying like, this guy is bad news.
00:27:43
Speaker
I do think that would make a difference. Right. Yeah, i you know, there's there's certain things like I'm probably straddling the fence here. I don't know how you deal with people like that. Like from the from the perspective of you can't know what he's doing in the future. But the truth is he should have been caught for that rape a long time ago.
00:28:00
Speaker
DNA testing would have done that early on. Just saying. Well, right, because, it you know, how the story unfolds, it's the DNA that got him at the eventually.
00:28:12
Speaker
Right. where Whereas like we maybe could have done that all along. I mean, I don't know that like signing up as a police officer, maybe it should be that your DNA is kept because of the propensity for officers to commit crimes like this, but also just from the perspective of contaminated crime scenes, which brings up another wrinkle because then that could have been written off if he happened to be a police officer at that time in that area, you know?
00:28:38
Speaker
Well, right, but there's no reason that his semen should be found in a rape kit. Well, I wasn't going to take it quite that far. I was just saying from the perspective of the overall people. But yes, you're right, 100%. That would have solved that and prevented James Appleton's shooting.
00:28:53
Speaker
And that's just what we know. Right. So he gets out May 25th. The way that he gets out, have you heard about this? Like what he does? escapes, right? Yeah, his escape is he basically manages to cobble together a uniform that looks similar to what the officers at the corrections facility he's at look like.
00:29:15
Speaker
So he literally just walks up to a front gate with a hat and this... thing that looks like a uniform on and and a prison guard, you know, presses a button, opens a secure fence and Grant Harden walks out and he literally is able to walk out into the nearby woods.
00:29:31
Speaker
Now he's not out for very long. They bring in Bortak. Have you ever heard of Bortak?
00:29:39
Speaker
Is that an acronym for something? It's the Border Patrol Tactical Unit. Yes, okay. They call them BORTEK. They're getting popular. They're of Fort Bliss, I think, which would be El Paso, Texas. But they bring in part of that team to look for him.
00:29:52
Speaker
They find him, I think it's June 7th, based on what I've seen. um It's either June 6th or 7th they are able to find him. He's still in the wilderness.
00:30:03
Speaker
Basically, one of the... law enforcement officers with Bortech walks up on him in the woods. And once he spots him, he's like apparently laying down or sitting down.
00:30:16
Speaker
ah He's muddy. He has no shirt on. And he's trying to figure out like what's going to happen. And the guy and Grant Harden runs. So the agent literally has to run him down. And Harden slips and and he grabs him. So he's not out there for very long. I did think it was interesting they brought in the Bortech unit because Weirdly enough, that's also going to come up later in in Dirty Badges because some of these elite units or, quote, elite units, some of them really are elite and some of them are questionable. But Bortak, this particular unit is the unit that would have been on site for the Robb Elementary School shooting in Evalde, Texas back in 2022.
00:31:00
Speaker
They're credited with having shot the gunman. even though it's just a couple of members there. But that's a whole different thing. ah You can find pictures of them like after they catch Grant Harden, and they're pretty sad. like He's <unk>s definitely very muddy and topless.
00:31:18
Speaker
And he was out for 12 days, right? Yeah, essentially he's out from 25th through the 6th 7th. Yeah, right 12
00:31:26
Speaker
right at twelve days so Right. And so that's not going to be part of the documentary, right? Because it happened later. no it's not going to be in there. Not the escape, but like the other part where he gets convicted of murder and then and that that links him to the rape. That's what's going to be in the documentary, Devil in the Ozarks.
00:31:43
Speaker
I see. Okay. And so, you know, I'm rationalizing things here. He's at a certain point in life where,
00:31:55
Speaker
Some things are what they are, right? Because he's got, what, an 80-year sentence or so? He's never getting out, right? Yeah, now he's going to have an escape on top of that. When you're sitting there in the woods, I guess, muddy.
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah. and you know, I know he looked thin, like he hadn't eaten very much because he wasn't getting any assistance, right? I wasn't i mean, I imagine this was big news everywhere, right? Yeah.
00:32:21
Speaker
And so it's not like he had anywhere to go. And so like you're rationalizing like, well, is jail really that bad? are prison? Is prison really that bad compared to like, you know, living in the mud? You have to kind of wonder, um you know, we don't see a whole lot of escapes anymore. Now, this kind of, and don't know, it kind of bites me in the ass a little bit, but this isn't a typical thing when you have a police chief a former police chief who would have a certain amount of confidence that you're, I don't think you're normal every day. Inmate probably has, right.
00:33:01
Speaker
Right. ah As far as him putting on you know, makeshift outfit that made it look like he wasn't an inmate. It looked like he was a ah corrections officer and they let him out. Right. Cause he looked like a corrections officer.
00:33:18
Speaker
That's my understanding of what happened anyway. And so he it wasn't an escape like anything. ah i mean, it was plotted, but I'm saying he didn't go through the vent shaft.
00:33:29
Speaker
He walked out because somebody was confused and didn't understand that he was an inmate. Right. Right. And so that's, you know, probably the dumbest way anybody ever escaped.
00:33:40
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And, you know, i would, if I had been the person who opened the gate for him, I would resign because I'm not good at that job. Right. Yeah. um But it doesn't completely undermine my thought on, but because part of my argument on what I don't care whether people get put to death or not is like, they're not going to escape.
00:34:02
Speaker
Right. Yes. And then we got this. So I'm just saying it's a different kind of escape. Right. Right. Well, I've gotten out otherwise.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, and it's funny that you said that. The way that you said all of that is funny because, so we've got the devil in the Ozarks movie. I think that's the rabbit hole to go down next.
00:34:24
Speaker
I may dig more into this, and Grant Harden may be a future Dirty Badges episode, because i tend to look at people that have clearly committed these two crimes that are 20 years apart, okay?
00:34:39
Speaker
Like for the sexual assault. They're really different, too. They're very different crimes. And then I go, well what happened in between? Because I want to know, like, what was he doing between 1997 2017?
00:34:50
Speaker
ninety ninety seven and two thousand seventeen So I'm sure this is going to be covered in the documentary that I'm going to watch probably when we get done recording this because now I want to know.
00:35:01
Speaker
um I have a feeling it could be nothing, right? He could have done nothing in between those two times. But I have a feeling in his sociopathic, psychopathic brain, ah he justified the shooting for some reason, right?
00:35:20
Speaker
Oh, 100%. And... and um The other thing I think about is, well, if he was... ah Because the rape victim survived.
00:35:31
Speaker
Correct. They didn't kill her. She lived. And her the evidence was put in Dakotis. And unless he was in a lot of different areas, that leads me to think, well, they're putting the evidence of sexual assaults that are unsolved in Dakotis. And they would show up as a match, right? Just like that one did.
00:35:50
Speaker
Right. And so that's one part of it. But then... Missing people in the area. I'm sorry? Missing people in the area. who Well, you wonder about that.
00:36:01
Speaker
also you wonder, like, how many people how many ah females who survive a, like, stranger rape don't report it? Right. Correct. Correct.
00:36:13
Speaker
And so those obviously nobody knows about them and they're not going to be in CODIS, right? Yeah. They're the hardest numbers to work with because they were never. Yeah. Cause they don't exist at all. They're just, it's some unknown quantity that happens.
00:36:28
Speaker
And, and it's actually like a really sad thought, right? Yes. ah But there did happen to be the one. And, you know, then if he was, um,
00:36:40
Speaker
There's a lot of unknowns there. It's possible that ah for a variety of reasons, evidence left behind as a sexual assault ah wouldn't be in CODIS at this point. But he got away with it for a really long time.
00:36:54
Speaker
And I can't, it's hard to believe unless he just had like some special, don't know. obsession with the one victim he was caught for that, uh, getting away with a rape wouldn't empower a rapist to rape again. Yeah. I don't know. i don't know what all might've happened with him. I'm just, I'm, I'm interested. i don't have like a ton of information on him. He kind of came up in passing and he has some similarities to like the main story.
00:37:24
Speaker
So I, I just brought him up here Well, and he did escape from prison for 12 days this year. Right, right. So he has a current, they sort of a current entry in terms of like true crime news. And I can't, now I can't remember if i i think I only ever heard of him when he escaped.
00:37:42
Speaker
Okay. And I think that at all all the stuff came up. And I do think, I just, I'm not sure that the DNA would have been on my radar yet, but I i think that once he escaped, and it was because it was a headline, right, for a little while.
00:37:55
Speaker
Because they didn't find him immediately. 12 days isn't long, but it also is long, right? Yeah. ah If you're living it and you're in that because he was a dangerous person. He was a violent criminal.
00:38:06
Speaker
And um so it was in the news. And I know I remember it then. And I I have questions and I'm not sure if I got him answered or not. Probably about the time.
00:38:18
Speaker
he would have been going back having been caught by the Bortak. It probably would have been resolved and I probably would have moved on because that seems about right. Yeah, so I brought this up to kind of segue because yeah there's a movie about this He escapes. He was clearly a leader in law enforcement at some point, even though maybe he shouldn't have been.
00:38:38
Speaker
i brought that up to talk about like another news event that is dirty Badge. Did you have anything else on Grant Harden right now? Not right now, no.
00:38:51
Speaker
So that guy's kind of isolated to where he is, but he is known as the devil. In the Ozarks, there is a documentary on him. The other guy has a different kind of movie made about him, but he does have an interesting piece of news this year.
00:39:06
Speaker
ah We have to go back to December 12th of 1937 for him to be born. He's not going to be here that long. And the places that he lived don't have that many people. Like when he's born, he's living in Finger, Tennessee.
00:39:18
Speaker
Finger, Tennessee, for those of you who don't know, has a population of about 200 people. um He is going to die in a place that has about 2,000 people.
00:39:29
Speaker
And that's a place called Adamsville. Now, the person that we're talking about, is he is known for a lot of interesting things. But his name is Buford Pusser, and people know his name but don't know as much about him as they think they do.
00:39:47
Speaker
He is the son of Helen Harris and Carl Pusser, and his father had been a police chief in this very small town, Adamsville, Tennessee. By all accounts, he's an athlete in high school. He's known for having played football and basketball. He grows to be very tall.
00:40:05
Speaker
ah Reports say that he was six foot six inches tall He was not he was more like 6'3", but people like gave him credit for his shoes. He wore heeled boots and and kind of did the thing that the rock does where he like makes himself up to be lot bigger, which is fine. That's what people do, particularly when they're wrestlers.
00:40:25
Speaker
and Weirdly enough, this guy was a wrestler. So he tried to go into the United States Marine Corps right as he graduated from high school, which he Doesn't do long in the Marines. He ends up getting a medical discharge right at the end of boot camp for asthma.
00:40:43
Speaker
So in 1957, when he's 20 years old, he moves up to Chicago and he becomes a ah local wrestler known as Buford the Bull. ah He gets married in December of 1959 to Pauline Mullins.
00:40:59
Speaker
And the two of them don't stay in Chicago terribly long. He ends up coming home in 1962.
00:41:06
Speaker
In 1962, he becomes the police chief of Adamsville, Tennessee, this little tiny place. um He is their constable as well for a period of time in this three-year period, 1962, 1963, 1964. And he ends up weird position in August 1964,
00:41:21
Speaker
and he ends up in a weird position in august of nineteen sixty four when at 6.15 a.m., driving north on U.S. Highway 45, about a mile from the Mississippi-Tennessee border, the front right tire of a vehicle blows out and causes the vehicle to veer off the roadway, goes down an embankment, and it kills Sheriff James Dickey, who had been the sheriff of McNary County,
00:41:58
Speaker
He was a World War II vet. He had been in the sheriff's office for six years. He had left behind a wife and two kids. But suddenly McNary County needed a sheriff. So they bring in Buford Pusser.
00:42:11
Speaker
Now, Buford Pusser becomes the youngest sheriff in Tennessee's history. And he immediately tries to make a big name of himself going after such fictional entities as the Dixie Mafia and the State Line Mob.
00:42:24
Speaker
And I say that because he's really just going after local ne'er-do-wells who are promoting gambling and gunrunning and prostitution at the time.
00:42:35
Speaker
ah Moonshine would have been a big deal back then. But ultimately, he's more in the way that wrestlers build a persona.
00:42:47
Speaker
He's building a persona more than he is being good law enforcement. I feel like that's more common in law enforcement than we actually realize. Yeah, yeah, yeah. but He does end up being kind of a local hero, and mainly because he keeps pushing this story about the state line mob. For those of you who don't know much about the state line mob, it's an association of other groups of criminal elements that were said to have operated between the 1950s and the 1960s along the Mississippi-Tennessee state line.
00:43:16
Speaker
Mainly, they operated in Alcorn County, Mississippi, and McNary County, Tennessee. So that's how they get the nickname. Right, and it's also a way to condense a narrative of a cause for law enforcement. It really is. It's a way for them to really focus in on a group of individuals they believe are organizing them together, although frequently they are not organized at all.
00:43:35
Speaker
They were known for bootlegging, gambling, prostitution, fleecing tourists, enrolling tourists, usually through the prostitution, ah robbery, murder. There were multiple members that came out of Fennec City, Alabama,
00:43:49
Speaker
And they sort of get kicked out of there because at some point, the Alabama gets sick of the people that are in these three or four groups, and and they kick them out with the Alabama National Guard trying to clean up the town, which is apropos of things happening today. But they had owned and operated multiple motels, restaurants, and clubs down there, and they just moved that operation up to the Mississippi-Tennessee state line.
00:44:14
Speaker
And they were just north of Corinth, Mississippi, when they started doing this. They basically had establishments where you could get pretty much any vice you wanted, including a lot of illegal drugs. But the illegal drug trade back then was much smaller.
00:44:28
Speaker
um The bulk of what they did was moving and fencing stolen items, firearms, and moonshots. ah But Buford Pusser focuses in on them, tells them to get out just like Alabama had tried to do He's married at this time and he starts to build this oh legend for himself with this persona he's creating as having survived multiple assassination attempts.
00:44:57
Speaker
According to several news sites, um New York Times talks about him. ah The Daily Carithian, I think, is the paper down there.
00:45:09
Speaker
They talk about him surviving various assassination attempts. February 1st of 1966, so he'd been in office since August 1964.
00:45:21
Speaker
Luis Hathcock attempted to kill Pusser during an on-site investigation of a robbery complaint at a place called the Shamrock Motel. Halfcock apparently fired on Pussler with a concealed.38 pistol, and Buford Pussler returned fire and killed Halfcock.
00:45:40
Speaker
Then a year later, January 2nd, 1967, Buford Pussler was shot three times by an unidentified gunman. This story goes he had stopped speeding automobile and ends up being shot.
00:45:55
Speaker
And he ends up being brought to sort of national attention later in the year, about eight months later, when his wife, Pauline Mullins, she's killed on August 12th, 1967. So it's three years that he's been in office as McNair County Sheriff and his wife is murdered.
00:46:15
Speaker
So according to the story, Pauline Mullins' poster was purportedly shot to death during an ambush that if you believe Buford was intended for him.
00:46:27
Speaker
And
00:46:30
Speaker
i mentioned Louise earlier, Louise Hathcock. And i just want to point out that the story that's told is that Louise Hathcock was living with a man who was considered to be her, you know common law husband, even though they weren't officially married.
00:46:50
Speaker
That person named Kirksey Nix. Have you ever heard of him? Only, ah well, I think maybe a little bit to do with the Dixie Mafia, but right mostly because of the story. yeah Right. So this guy, Nix, is allegedly contracting or putting a hit out on Buford Pusser. Now, he's alleged to be part of the Dixie Mafia and whatever,
00:47:17
Speaker
But nobody ever gets charged with the murder of Pauline Mullins. December 25th of Christmas 1968, Buford Poster shoots and kills a man named Charles Russell Hamilton. and he comes to be there because Charles Hamilton's landlord has called the police and said that Charles threatened them with a gun.
00:47:40
Speaker
Now, he can't rerun for sheriff in 1970 because of term limits that are effect. He comes back around to be the sheriff in 1972, but he loses.
00:47:53
Speaker
He blames this loss to a guy named Clifford Coleman as being kind of part of this. like I guess you can make your legend or your personality or persona too big.
00:48:07
Speaker
Does that make sense? like you can you can You can pop your own balloon, so to speak. Pop your own balloon, maybe. Right, and he was causing controversy, right? Right. So what's happened is Buford Pusser becomes this larger-than-life figure, and they base a story on him for this sort of action-thriller movie called Walking Tall.
00:48:34
Speaker
For those of you who've never heard of it, um he's played by Joe Don Baker in the movie. Joe Don Baker is known for playing, like, villains and good guys alike that are like big tough dudes uh this story is now apparently kind of fictional but but the idea was once his wife had been killed by these assassins meant for him like he becomes popular and this biographical movie comes out about him um it's a huge deal it is a great example of a persona or legend balloon getting too big
00:49:14
Speaker
He does end up being able to be reelected in the middle of all this. He's going to serve as constable for two more years, 1970 and 1972, down in Adamsville. And that was through a write-in vote.
00:49:27
Speaker
But going back on all of this, that story from Walking Tall, which told up to the point that like his wife is killed, kind of, apparently that's been rewritten recently. So that's kind of what we wanted to talk about a little bit today, and that's why I tied...
00:49:40
Speaker
i tied the other escapes and and stories to this one, because it appears that Buford Pusser might have gotten away with murder, doing his own kind of a different escape.
00:49:55
Speaker
So according to Buford Pusser, August 12th, 1967, he gets a phone call and it's about a disturbance that's happening kind of out in rural McNary County on a place called New Hope Road.
00:50:10
Speaker
He says he'll go take care of it. His wife, Pauline, is going to ride along. According to this story, they pass the Methodist Church on New Hope Road, named New Hope Methodist Church, and a fast-moving car pulls up alongside them, and the occupants open fire.
00:50:25
Speaker
And they kill his wife, and they, quote, leave him for dead, end quote. According to doctors, he is struck on the left side of his jaw by two or possibly three rounds from a.30 caliber carbine weapon.
00:50:41
Speaker
so this is The M1 carbine is a weapon that the US military used during World War II, Korea, Vietnam. It has been a mainstay in military weapons.
00:50:54
Speaker
So Pusser is going to go to the hospital and he's going to be there for almost three weeks. He's going to require quite a few surgeries to restore his appearance. And he does the thing that, you know, you're supposed to do when your wife has been assassinated and you're this big persona.
00:51:13
Speaker
And he swears and vows and declares that he is going to bring his wife's murderers to justice. He is never actually able to get Nix on any of this or any of the other people that are accused to of have been a part of it.
00:51:27
Speaker
Nix is going to end up in Angola. I think that was going to be for the murder of Frank Corso. From what I've read recently, Frank Corso was murdered Easter Sunday, 1971.
00:51:37
Speaker
seventy one But Nix does a lot of stuff behind bars that other people can't do. he orders the hit He orders a hit on a judge in 1987, which is Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife Margaret out of Biloxi, Mississippi.
00:51:54
Speaker
He ends up co-conspirating with Biloxi Mayor Pete Hallett for this. And it's said that Pete Hallett had... he was an attorney, but it's said that he was Nix's attorney and he had ended up...
00:52:11
Speaker
stealing stolen money from Nix. Does that make sense? Yep. What's interesting about him is Pete Hallett and Vincent Sherry, even though they're now a judge and a mayor, they had been law partners before that.
00:52:25
Speaker
Well, Nix was running this massive Lonely Hearts scam. It's found out along the way that he's entrusted Pete Hallett to take care of it.
00:52:37
Speaker
ah There's a quote from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and goes like this. While serving a life sentence for murder at Angola State Penitentiary, Nix built a criminal empire from which he hoped to earn enough money to buy his way out of prison.
00:52:52
Speaker
He dabbled in insurance fraud and drug dealing. Nix's primary money-making scheme had become a lonely heart scam. Guess who he targeted? Women? Nope.
00:53:06
Speaker
Southern homosexual men. Really? Yep. Nixon, his prison syndicate would place personal ads in ah different national quote, homosexual magazines.
00:53:19
Speaker
And when men would respond to these ads, they would indicate, so it's not just him, it's a whole network of people with them. They would indicate that they were having financial difficulties. And if the respondent could just wire money to this person on the outside,
00:53:36
Speaker
they're like, it would get them out of a lot of trouble. So there's a guy in this thing, Mick Gillich, who's considered to be like one of the quote underworld bosses down in Biloxi, Pete Hollett, they're all involved.
00:53:50
Speaker
Pete Hollett specifically is maintaining a trust account for Nix that like all these hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming in from the scam. But in December, 1986,
00:54:00
Speaker
Pete Howlett has to come to Mike Gillick and Kirstie Nixon say, $100,000 is missing. It's out of the office trust account. And I think that Vincent Sherry has done this.
00:54:14
Speaker
So at the time, coincidentally, Margaret Sherry is a Biloxi mayoral candidate critical of Mike Gillick's operations.
00:54:25
Speaker
So that's going to be on the other side of things from Pete Howlett. It's going to be very convenient if they go away. The prosecution overall produces evidence that these three men have arranged to have the Sherry's killed. In 1991, a jury is going to convict Nix, Gillick, Sherry, LeRae Sharp, and John Ransom of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
00:54:52
Speaker
It's going to end up finding... Nix and Gillich guilty of travel and aid of murder for hire. But in 1994, Mike Gillich is going to become a state informant. He's going to become a rat.
00:55:08
Speaker
And in 1997, a second trial is going to get convictions against Kirstie Nix, Mike Gillich, Pete Hallett, and a guy named Thomas Leslie Holcomb.
00:55:20
Speaker
Nixon's going to be found guilty of racketeering, conspiracy to violate racketeering statutes, fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
00:55:31
Speaker
And he's also going to end up staying incarcerated for the rest of his life. I'm pretty sure he's still incarcerated in FCI El Reno, which is Oklahoma, I think.
00:55:44
Speaker
Right. And so that was, um, Kirstie Nix is the guy that, um, Buford Pusser said, Hey, that's who killed my wife. Correct. So. Right. And I, I just wanted to point out really quick, you said, uh, earlier when you started talking about this particular series of events, you were like, so Pete Hallett is stealing money.
00:56:04
Speaker
from Kersi Nix that Kersi Nix had stole. From other people. Yeah. Correct. Okay. And I was going to say, and you were like, does that make sense? And I was like, yeah, that's called double crossing. Yep. Right. Yep. Okay. And in this, as we go further, like it was like double, double crossing and then triple crossing eventually.
00:56:23
Speaker
Yes. Right. And so nobody can be trusted. Yeah. You definitely do not want to have anything to do with these people. Some of them are still alive today. I'm just throwing that out there. So there's a story that runs in this thing called the Town Talk. The AP picks it up for some reason.
00:56:37
Speaker
It's down in Alexandria, Louisiana. It is, at the time, ah very small paper, but it's become known for being in the midst of all of this. It is sort of around today, if you look it up.
00:56:50
Speaker
But Kersie Nix, in a story there, says he had nothing to do with the ambush of Buford and Pauline. So on January 5th of 2024, which would be more than 56 years after Pauline was killed, the TBI announced that the criminal investigation remained an active case and they started asking for information from the public.
00:57:14
Speaker
Following several tips, the TBI confirmed that there was no autopsy on Pauline's remains during the course of the original 1967 investigation. So they put out this written statement from the TBI.
00:57:28
Speaker
By the way, it's interesting that the TBI talks about this particular case, isn't it? Yeah. um Just throwing that out there. With the support of Pauline's family and in consultation with 25th Judicial District Attorney General Mark Davidson, the TBI has requested the exhumation Pauline's remains.
00:57:51
Speaker
and this, they said, is in an attempt to answer critical questions, provide crucial information that may assist in the identification of the person or persons responsible for Pauline Mullen paul Pusser's death.
00:58:04
Speaker
So her remains are exhumed on February 8th of 2024, and they're put back in or reinterred April 2024. So August 2025, just recently, so august twenty ninth two thousand and twenty five just recently they announced in conjunction, so that's the TBI and the District Attorney General for the 25th Judicial District of Tennessee, they announced that if Buford Pusser were alive today, he would be charged with the death of his wife.
00:58:33
Speaker
According to investigators, they state that Pauline's wounds were not consistent with Buford's story, but rather were consistent with having been shot at close range, They said that her nose had been broken probably shortly before death and that the blood on Buford Pusser's car contradicted his own narrative.
00:58:52
Speaker
They also found that the wound he fought so hard to be rehabilitated from, so Buford Pusser's multiple shots to himself, was likely self-inflicted.
00:59:06
Speaker
I just want to say... I don't know that a badge could be more dirty than that. You kill your own wife in the midst of having built up this almost wrestling legend for yourself, have a movie about you, which has had multiple remakes and sequels and all kinds of nonsense.
00:59:25
Speaker
Uh, there's all sorts of songs about Buford Pusser. And I just can't imagine anything being much worse than having done this, you know?
00:59:38
Speaker
I do know. And I realized that um the way that the follow-up sort of word is, makes me think that the family ah Pauline Pusser may have been pushing for this.
00:59:55
Speaker
You think? I don't know. Cause it doesn't, you, you said like, it's interesting that TVA decides to talk about this, right? Right. this There was like, there was a narrative that was spun by One of the victims who also happened to be in law enforcement, because he's the dirty badge here. The rest of the story is kind of an offshoot. um That's why I was like summing it up by saying so.
01:00:19
Speaker
Nex had issues. There's no question. He was a prime target. Right. He was an easy target for a law enforcement officer to say, hey.
01:00:31
Speaker
that dude killed my wife. I assume based on like sort of how it made its way through media, which by the way, was a completely different situation at this point.
01:00:42
Speaker
But I presume it was just just somebody that he was aware of that he could blame it on because he was shot supposedly a vehicle when his wife was killed.
01:00:53
Speaker
He was a cop, at least at some point in his life, he was the sheriff and then the constable. And so He survived. Correct. Okay. And he was an eyewitness to the crime.
01:01:07
Speaker
Correct. This is according to his narrative, right? Correct. and He is the sheriff of McNary County at the time that this happens, and he will be sheriff until the 1970 swearing in. 1970 election, he can't rerun. So when the new sheriff is sworn and his term limits have expired for that time, he can run again after two years, but he can't.
01:01:31
Speaker
So from 1970 to 1972, he's not sheriff, and he doesn't end up like having a lot of luck with re-election after that. But at the time this occurs, When his wife is murdered, he is the sheriff of McNary County, Tennessee.
01:01:46
Speaker
And so it's obvious that nobody questioned his authority, right? Correct. And this is a small place. like Even today, there's less than 30,000 people that live in this entire county.
01:02:00
Speaker
We should not know his name. Right. exactly Yeah, exactly. But he... He designed his career that way.
01:02:12
Speaker
right Yes. I mean, you've got a semi-autobiographical. I was trying to put all this stuff together, like, because it's kind of weird the way the narrative goes.
01:02:23
Speaker
But I was trying to put it all together. So Walking Tall. Yes. I've never seen this. the original movie. Like I've never seen it. And, but it was that like after wife was killed, I'm Yeah. It in 1973. Okay. And you I know what going on, uh,
01:02:39
Speaker
okay and so you know i don't know what was going on ah With Pauline, obviously, you know, yes, he killed Pauline. It seems like that would have been painfully obvious from the beginning, which I imagine is why it gets brought up all this time later, right? Correct.
01:02:59
Speaker
um I think that somebody was saying like, hey, you know, or perhaps, I mean, perhaps it was just Nick's telling ah the town talk from Alexandria, Louisiana in 1990 that he had nothing to do with it, right? Right.
01:03:19
Speaker
I don't know. it seemed that's a long That's still, what, 34 years? Because they didn't reopen it until 24. Yeah, right. It's another 34 years, yes.
01:03:30
Speaker
Right. So I don't know. like i think everybody always knew, but there was just no one to do anything about it. Somebody had to say, like, and because her family supported the um exhumation, right?
01:03:44
Speaker
Yes. um And for some reason, somebody, i don't know, i it doesn't go into all the details. I haven't read, like, the official report or anything, but somebody got a bug up their butt, right? Correct.
01:03:56
Speaker
And they said, hey... um This is wrong, but like no new investigator, I don't think would have come upon it without some sort of tip from somebody, right? I don't know. I don't know what happened, but I find it very interesting.
01:04:13
Speaker
Because this is, I think you're absolutely right. I don't know that there could, I don't know that I've ever heard of a story with a dirtier badge than this.
01:04:24
Speaker
um As far as not only did he kill his wife, he named suspects. Right. And then, go ahead. I mean, so they were dirty con artists and they were definitely into like all of the things that you think of when you think of organized crime.
01:04:45
Speaker
But Kirstie Nix like wouldn't really be on the radar without people like Buford Pusser putting them on the radar. Well, exactly. And it makes me wonder, um,
01:04:58
Speaker
Like, did Louise Halfcock even attempt to kill him? No, no, it was probably a murder. That's why, that was one of the things I wanted to point out here. Charles Hamilton, a murder. Louise Halfcock, a murder. All of these things are probably 90% murder. And he was more than likely on the take, right? Oh yeah, 100% he would have been on the take. And that's how he, like, he's basically just like Kirstie Nix's double crossing the double crossers.
01:05:26
Speaker
Ultimately, he would have paid off Buford to go away.
01:05:31
Speaker
Exactly. Right. Except he found it convenient to blame the criminals, even though he that to be clear, these activities are criminal activities. It's just he had a gun and a badge. Right. Right.
01:05:45
Speaker
And this is not a novel situation. Right. as far as ah law enforcement through the ages, right? I mean, this happens a lot in small towns.
01:05:57
Speaker
It's absolutely insane that for me to think about because it's logically unthinkable except Like, I'm not surprised in the least, right? Right. Because it just doesn't make sense for, um you can't enforce the law while you're also breaking it.
01:06:17
Speaker
And he wasn't even trying to make a difference. He just set up an entire scenario. Now, taking it to the next level level of having the movie that was sort of about him, it makes me wonder how much of that stuff, like, did he set up to have a life That was worthy to someone else of making a movie about.
01:06:43
Speaker
That's scary. but It's 100% of it. His whole life is set up. like and And I say this from the perspective that like we know because he told us. He went to be Buford the Bull, the wrestler.
01:06:56
Speaker
He yeah wanted to be the center of attention and the hero. Right. and And most of the time, and this is a little bit from personal experience, when you have horrific things happen to you, most of the time, the last thing you want to do is have it be put in the spotlight.
01:07:16
Speaker
hundred percent 100%. And he just didn't seem to be that way at all. Right. Right. And I and i was trying to think, like, okay, so... Did he plan his wife's murder? Right.
01:07:29
Speaker
And my thought is like, he may have just killed her to kill her. Like it might not it like to, I think she was in his way. And like he, like she was probably pissed off because he's a giant asshole.
01:07:45
Speaker
And probably giving him what for because he was sick of being married to him. And he decided that he he didn't want to ruin his story. So instead of ruin his story, he would beef up his story.
01:07:59
Speaker
I mean, at the point he does this, they have been married for almost eight eight years. They've been married for almost eight years. And they have one child.
01:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, they only have one kid. Juana is her name. Juana Puzzer. um I think it's her kids that are pushing for, like the grandkids of Buford and Pauline.
01:08:21
Speaker
Well, sure, or Pauline's family, like her siblings or parents or whatever. Yeah, it could be. But D'Wanna passed away in 2018, and this all started kind of happening after that.
01:08:34
Speaker
Okay, yeah, well, they may have been trying to get to the bottom of east. Yeah, the story. Well, because like you said, in a small area... It's not like he fooled everybody. It's just a lot of times when you have these self-imposed larger than life characters that are in positions of power, it's not that people don't know. It's just they don't say anything.
01:09:02
Speaker
Right. Right. Like, honestly, like if you live in a small area like this, except for social settings, potentially, you really shouldn't know who the sheriff is if you're behaving yourself. Right. Well, and and you've voted for them, right? I mean, hopefully. right But, yeah, you shouldn't know anything about what's going on. But ah because it should just be a seamless, safe community and theory, right? Right. That's what you're thinking. That's the role anyway.
01:09:30
Speaker
that But, like, this dude made his whole life a movie, right? Luckily, Carmel's going to take care of most of Buford Password. Aside from the legend and the persona that he's built up for himself, he's not going to make it very far in life. In fact, he is going to die a couple of months shy of his thirty seventh birthday.
01:09:47
Speaker
um August 21st, 1974, is just outside of Adamsville, Tennessee, when he crashes his specially modified Corvette in a single car accident. And he is going to die from those injuries. He had been returning home that evening from...
01:10:05
Speaker
the McNary County fair, like the local fair, sort of end of summer fair. And he hit an embankment at a high rate of speed and he did not have a seatbelt on.
01:10:17
Speaker
So he was ejected from the vehicle. The car crashed and burned. It was said that earlier in the day he had contracted with the production company behind Walking Tall to portray himself in the sequel to Walking Tall.
01:10:29
Speaker
I'm pretty sure he made that up, whoever he talked to. And that person just spread that rumor From that day forward, I don't think he was actually talking to them about any of that. um There's speculation that like the car had been sabotaged and it was something related to like the steering and potentially to the tie rods on the vehicle.
01:10:49
Speaker
Well, the state trooper who responded to that accident is going to end up. So he, Buford Puzzer became sheriff because of a car accident.
01:11:00
Speaker
Right, right, exactly. That's what this sends me back to, and I wondered if they just all did this. Well, Paul Irvin is the state trooper responding to the accident. He's going to become the sheriff of McMurray County.
01:11:11
Speaker
I even wondered if Buford Buford Pusser killed the previous sheriff. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that made me think like, is that what they do? They like take out the incumbent sheriff? I think that's probably what they do. I mean, so Buford Pusser officially died because he was driving incredibly drunk with no seatbelt.
01:11:34
Speaker
ah There was no official autopsy done. ah He has this huge memorial in Adamsville, which I'm telling you, like nobody lives in this town.
01:11:45
Speaker
like There's nobody even in this county. like there's but For him to have as big a legacy as he kind of has is ridiculous. ah It was said at his eulogy memorial that he had survived seven stabbings and eight shootings in this town of Adamsville.
01:12:01
Speaker
200 people and this county of 20,000 people. And I'm just going to tell you statistically, none of that's true. Okay. And so he made himself this legend in his own time, right? Yes. Like if you're surviving seven stabbings and eight shootings, like I don't think that happens.
01:12:22
Speaker
No, yeah no, it definitely doesn't happen. And, like, why the heck are you suffering seven stabbings and eight shootings, right? Like, it just doesn't make any sense. But, you know...
01:12:36
Speaker
ah Some people inflate things just enough for them to get whatever they're trying to get out of it, right? yeah Because he wanted to be like this legend in his own time, super cop, whatever whatever you want to call it. He wanted to he was wanted to be the center of attention, which, by the way, i find it very odd. I haven't seen, maybe I'm wrong on this, but for this huge guy can...
01:13:01
Speaker
ah you know can I guess carry his own weight and he he can command the attention of a room, right? Yeah. It's weird for a guy like that to also be like, I need to be the center of attention.
01:13:15
Speaker
ah That's weird, right? little bit, yeah. Especially since he had a wife and a daughter, right? that It's just strange. and maybe I'm wrong on my view of that. It just seems like he would be like the last person who would be like, oh, I want to have have all the attention on me. And if he was a...
01:13:34
Speaker
a legit law enforcement officer that wasn't doing all these cruddy things and trying to bolster himself constantly, right? Because the only reason you say I survived seven stabbings and eight shootings when it is most likely not true is to make yourself be a hero, right? Yep. I'm a hero. I protect and serve my community. And this is how I can prove that. I've been stabbed seven times and shot eight times, right?
01:14:06
Speaker
But the likelihood, but the story probably is more like he committed ah multiple murders and he orchestrated a lot of false, quote, attempts on his life, end quote.
01:14:20
Speaker
Right, because they're, in theory, like, the garbage that was happening in the community was just that. It was garbage that, like, you know, mafia mob crap that, you know, I guess to some extent exists, but it's also, like, why would law enforcement ever even be involved in some of that, like, moonshine running or whatever? Like, who cares? The trash takes itself out, right? Right.
01:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, and ultimately he did. like a A sheriff dying in a drunk driving accident in their idiotic car is about as hilariously karmic as you can get.
01:14:58
Speaker
Well, right. And it made it seem like... um you know, the first accident that happened was some malfunction on the car of the other guy, right? Yep.
01:15:09
Speaker
This was some sort of now his, what did it say? He was driving a Corvette that was like, it had been modified for Especially, especially modified or something like that, which to me, I think they just expanded some parts on it to carry his ego around with him.
01:15:25
Speaker
Well, I was going to say like, i bet he did the modifications. um the The other thing I wondered was like, I wondered, now, what you said was interesting and possibly true. I didn't actually think about it that way, but like as far as being an actor and the follow-up of the movie that was released about him, they were going to do a sequel to it.
01:15:50
Speaker
um I thought he had over-promised something. I don't know what it could have been. he decided that He's going to exit? Yeah, and he and that would while he wouldn't be in the movie, right? No, he was not going to be in the movie. No way. But he was like giving he was going out with a bang if it did if the meeting did occur, right?
01:16:18
Speaker
I'm saying like he killed himself on purpose because he overpromised whatever it was about... that That's just what I imagine happening, right? Because this guy was full of himself.
01:16:28
Speaker
Right. And you can get by... Or at least think you're getting by to a certain extent. And then I was like, well, that must have been the thing that he over-promised on. He wouldn't be able to deliver something, right? Whatever it was. I don't know.
01:16:44
Speaker
and don't know what it was because it seemed like nobody ever questioned his authority, which is also an interesting like dynamic of these dirty badges. Yeah. is Just because someone is isn't questioning your authority on something doesn't mean they buy your garbage.
01:17:02
Speaker
Right. And i would say most of the time, especially in these um these smaller places and the time period, I think, everybody knew he was a ah rotten law enforcement officer.
01:17:19
Speaker
Everybody knew he was a dirty badge. They just let him carry on for whatever reason because nobody else wanted to do it. Right. But they didn't challenge him. And that doesn't mean that he had any respect whatsoever.
01:17:33
Speaker
Right. Right. In fact, he was probably a joke, um which I imagine is part of why this kind of came up. Right. Like, as far as they actually have said, you know, if Buford Pusser was alive today, we would be charging him with his wife's murder.
01:17:54
Speaker
You know what? If Buford Pusser were alive today, he'd probably be in charge of some section of the Tennessee State Bureau of Investigation, the TBI. Which is really scary, right? Which means it wouldn't even have been looked into, so they can take that and stick it. I have a lot of issues with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation,
01:18:12
Speaker
Over the years, I have seen them do some really horrible things and be really terrible officers and also have a lot of really terrible officers get away with shit. Well, they're an interesting entity.
01:18:24
Speaker
um it They would be – now – I'll just say that what I know about them. I don't know about it, all of it, right? But I would say that it is an investigatory body that has come to light on cases. Yes. And they are, like, loudly incompetent.
01:18:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. there I think is a nice way to put it. And I'm not saying all of them are, but like what has come to light in various things that I've seen, i wonder what the heck they're doing.
01:19:02
Speaker
um And so it's a little alarming. um I don't live in Tennessee, ah so I'm not all that concerned about it, but it's sort of like...
01:19:14
Speaker
it makes you wonder what kind of checks and balances aren't in place, right? Because a lot of the things that have happened should not have happened, and it's crazy that they did, and then it continues on, right?
01:19:26
Speaker
Well, and I looked this up because I wanted to say this so you could understand it. um In this entire county of 20,000 people in 2024, 2,300 people voted. two thousand three hundred people voted
01:19:42
Speaker
and that And that goes along with what I'm saying. Yeah. Like, it doesn't take much to control, like, nothing. It takes something to make a big deal out of it.
01:19:55
Speaker
So this guy, look, this is my final take on this particular person. I'm sorry to keep interrupting. This guy made up his entire life story.
01:20:06
Speaker
He just treated people like they were his, like, you know, figurines or Barbie dolls or GI Joe toys or whatever toys you played with as kids. He just extended that to include real human beings.
01:20:21
Speaker
it's It's really terrible. It is. Yeah. His whole life is make believe. You know, I've talked about like, could there be more to it? And, and the truth is because he only lived to be 36 years old.
01:20:33
Speaker
There's not. It's and like the, and what exists is all absolute hogwash. Right. Well, right, and it's all out there, right? Because he didn't he didn't hide anything he was doing. He just made it somebody else's fault.
01:20:46
Speaker
Correct. And so all of it is very, very visible. And, you know, I bet there's an interesting story behind why the announcement was made, for one thing, that the case was – I don't know, being revisited. i don't know what they I don't know if it was closed or if they it was just cold, but they opened it up for investigate ah to investigate more in 2024, and then they came to a conclusion, right? Yep.
01:21:14
Speaker
And something caused that. And it's I'd be interested to know, based on my experience in other ah situations where I've seen the actions ah different TBI agents take,
01:21:28
Speaker
and questioned, like, you know, what is happening here? I'd be interested to know how they, like, landed on that, right? But essentially, her murder went unsolved, right?
01:21:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's a lot of resources to put into a murder that that that is that old. I'm just, I'm not criticizing solving her murder because everyone deserves justice. But somebody had the courage at some point, like later, much later, to speak up and say, look, we don't think that that's what happened. I do imagine it, you might be right, it might be the grandkids. um It might be, ah you know, I think it's going to be on Pauline's side of the family if it's not, you know, Doana's children. I don't know, like, what the line is, nor do does it matter because, you know, they're innocent bystanders and all this.
01:22:16
Speaker
But, you it It's got to be somebody who it matters to, right? It could also be like some of these people that are accused.
01:22:27
Speaker
It could be them wanting to clear their people. Like, they're family members. Yeah, that's true. Like, me and honestly, Kirk Nix, he's still alive. he couldve He could have been the one that was like, marry ain no way that that somebody tried to assassinate him in that tiny town. And he just like yeah he just said it, and you think about it that way, and somebody who lives in Tennessee goes, wait a second.
01:22:50
Speaker
There's only 20, 25,000 people in all of McNary County in 2024. Like how many were here back then? And you get to looking and you're like, wow, there was only 4,000 people back then.
01:23:02
Speaker
Well, and think about it. If the sheriff is, you know, stabbed seven times, shot eight times, like that is probably the most dangerous place on the planet to live.
01:23:13
Speaker
And that's just not the case, right?
Chaotic Life Choices and Law Enforcement
01:23:15
Speaker
Correct. it doesn't It doesn't make sense when you think of it in the – grander scheme of things that that is even logical but see he wasn't thinking that way back then he was thinking I'm gonna make my life like super copped out and that's what he was doing and it It's interesting that um that's kind of where it landed with the TBI saying, oh, yeah, by the way, killed his wife.
01:23:42
Speaker
Well, so, you know, I think if you dig into his story, i think that you probably would find that everything he did in his entire life was made up. Exaggerated. yeah Yep.
01:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. He was a gigantic hyperbole. and know. It's interesting that like he starts out as a wrestler and then kind of becomes a real life version of a wrestler. And that is just fascinating to me that like that's the way he decided to live.
01:24:14
Speaker
ah It's interesting. it That is not a I can only imagine the turmoil. Yeah. Which it makes sense to me, somebody that lives that way dying in a drunk driving accident. That makes sense because like the balls in the air that he was juggling, right? Yeah. i don't know and don't know what you say to somebody who decides to take up a badge and then lives the way he lives his life. That is like the exact opposite of what you want to be an elected official, but also ah law enforcement official.
01:24:51
Speaker
Well, right, but he was getting away with it. And I don't know for certain that he would have been able to decipher the difference. I don't know. i
Buford Pusser's Embellished Reputation
01:24:59
Speaker
you know, i have no idea how people, in fact, my coping mechanism is they just don't know the difference. They think that this is how you do life.
01:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that. And my last thing i'll say on this is if you want to go down a deep dive, it's better to look into like the state line mob and police. this sort of Kirk C. Nicks, Pete Hallett, Dixie Mafia stuff, because all that you're going to find, i mean, this is now making everybody talk about it, but like realistically, please realize that if you go down a rabbit hole about this particular person being Buford Pusser, everything that you're reading that portrays him in any kind of positive superhero cop light is absolute complete fiction.
01:25:50
Speaker
He made it up. and Yes, it's a narrative that he spun. And you should take the facts of all of that stuff, the mafios, the state line mob, whatever. And you should apply the facts to what any researcher is coming across as the narrative, because that's probably the truth of the matter. Right. A lot of that stuff is garbage. A lot of it's garbage. Right.
01:26:14
Speaker
And so any facts you find, you can rewrite it because that would be more in line with the truth. You know, you can tell just in this, like this little blurb that we just did. I mean, we're talking about at least one movie. And then there's a whole like list of music and stuff you were talking about that he inspired. Right. He was like his life was geared towards media before that was even a thing. Right.
01:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, he was like the law enforcement equivalent of the mid-80s televangelist. yeah Sort of, right, exactly. and And so keeping that in mind, i mean, that's where the narrative comes from. And so it's all just fun to sell, so to speak.
01:27:04
Speaker
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01:27:05
Speaker
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01:27:15
Speaker
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01:27:29
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
01:27:37
Speaker
No scars. We're in trouble. We took it too far.
01:27:48
Speaker
want to go, but it's cause I'll disappoint ya. It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of.
01:27:59
Speaker
I hate the competition. This culture's like a Jimin. I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations.
01:28:10
Speaker
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01:28:28
Speaker
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