Steve Sweat

And a lot of people speculate about that being an arranged hit, you know, to get rid of him.

That's just speculation, just kind of the way it seemed.

No, there was no foul play. It was just mainly speed. You know, he was 36 years old, had a big engine, 74 Corvette, and he loved to go fast. And that's pretty well it. You know, that's pretty well what happened.

And he came here out of respect for Buford. He wanted to see where Buford walked and worked, he said. He said, I want to see where he actually worked.

And we had the sheriff and chief in front of me and five marked units behind us and with lights and sirens. We didn't stop at any red lights, any intersections. And we ran like 80 miles an hour down the highway here. He rode in my back seat with his elbows on the front seat and, you know, just like a five-year-old kid, you know, trying to absorb these stories.

And he told us, he said, that was my dad and my favorite movie when I was a little fella. And he said, and in my life, he said, all the times I had the opportunity to take the wrong path, he said, I would think of those walking tall movies and I wanted to walk tall.

That's what he said.

I tell people there's nobody on the face of the earth that has studied this story and been as involved in it as I have, you know, for 60 years. And everybody in Magnet County knows that.

And, you know, people got to call me the Pusser historian. And, of course, that's how I've been described in the newspapers for probably 20 years.

You know, Buford, he was just like Matt Dillon. When he got on the scene, there wasn't no arguing back and forth and this and that. In a matter of seconds, you know, the situation was under control.

The story goes that someone had called the jail. And, of course, Buford's dad was the jailer, Carl, and dispatcher. And he felt like this call, you know, getting somebody to come to the state line was a bogus call. He never did even bother Buford with it.

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

And supposedly she told him, she said, I'm going to go with you so you'll get back. And that's what put her in the car with him that morning.

Their lights were off. It was just breaking day, and he didn't realize they were on him before the shots came through the car.

He gunned that Plymouth that he was in and drove approximately two miles, and it was two miles just right on the money, and pulled over to see about Pauline.

He drove seven miles further with his chin gone and gum, lower gum and teeth gone.

We didn't have social media and cell phones, but you can't imagine how fast word spread of things like that in this area back then.