Pauline Pusser has been dead for 56 years without a suspect in the case.
On Thursday, authorities exhumed her body, the wife of hard-charging sheriff Buford Pusser, who became known as a folk hero after his death in Tennessee.
Pauline was shot to death in an ambush presumably meant to kill her husband.
An overcast day accompanied by whistling winds blew a foul stench through the cemetery in Adamsville, a small town around 100 miles east of Memphis, after the departure of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents, which oversaw the exhumation of the body on Thursday.
Disturbed dirt rests in front of her grave, adjacent to her husband’s headstone that reads “He Walked Tall.”
A recent tip prompted a review of the case, TBI said, and they discovered that an autopsy was never done after Pauline Pusser’s death on Aug. 12, 1967.
“With the support of Pauline’s family and in consultation with the 25th Judicial District Attorney General Mark Davidson, TBI requested the exhumation in an attempt to answer critical questions and provide crucial information that may assist in identifying the person or persons responsible for Pauline Pusser’s death,” TBI said.
Hellbound and Down 