On this edition of Parallax Views, true crime author Synova Cantrell joins us for a riveting discussion of an organized crime syndicate known as The Dixie Mafia. If you’ve ever seen the Walking Tall movies The Dixie Mafia are the antagonists of tough southern Sheriff Buford Pusser (portrayed in the movies by Joe Don Baker, Bo Svenson, and, in the remake, “Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). But the story of Buford Pusser and his battle against The Dixie Mafia wasn’t just the stuff of action movies. Pusser was real and so was the Dixie Mafia. In fact, the Pusser story is only one part of the Dixie Mafia saga. Synova Cantrell, in her book Silenced by the Dixie Mafia: The Anderson Files, tells not only the story of Pusser and the Dixie Mafia but a cold case that has led one woman, Phyllis Anderson, on quest for justice over the course of multiple decades. It’s a story of that encompasses arson and murder-for-hire plots, police brutality and police misconduct, racist groups like the KKK, lawless southern-fried criminality in rural America that was arguably more vicious than the Italian mob, moonshine, poverty, villains resembling more serious versions of The Dukes of Hazzard characters Boss Hogg and Roscoe, Southern belles gone bad, and even the break-up of the the Allman Brothers band!
We delve into a number of these areas including:
– The origins of the Dixie Mafia by way of the Stateline mob
– The brilliance of the Dixie Mafia and characters like Towhead White as well as the structure of the Dixie Mafia
– The Dixie Mafia, “The Godfathers of Southern Rock” the Allman Brothers, and the RICO act
– The real Buford Pusser and the mythology of the Walking Tall movies; Buford “The Bull” Pusser’s one-man war against the Dixie Mafia and his fight to the death with Towhead White
– The vicious and seductive Louise Hathcock, the Queen of the Stateline mob- And much, much more!
Source: The Dixie Mafia, the Real Buford Pusser, and an Unsolved Murder w/ Synova Cantrell
