- 5 months ago
Interview True Crime Author
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00:00Welcome to the latest In My Corner with Mark Ash, and I want to introduce to you renowned
00:10author Oakley Dean Baldwin.
00:12He writes a lot of true crime stories, and he's definitely a Buford Pusser historian.
00:23So we'll maybe talk a little bit about that, and Oakley is there anything else you'd like
00:28to tell us about?
00:29What have you got coming up?
00:30Well, thank you for having me today.
00:32We have, my wife and I are actually co-authors.
00:36We have 28 books out on Amazon, and most of them are thrillers, true crimes, family mysteries,
00:42those type of books.
00:43And a couple are what we call unusual circumstances.
00:48Some folks would consider paranormal books, and we can talk about a couple of those also.
00:54The Buford Pusser story is real hot right now.
00:58The name of our book is Murder of Mrs. Buford Pusser.
01:02And my wife and I researched that book about five or six years ago, and once we started
01:10looking at the crime scene evidence, we had a lot of questions, more questions than we
01:15had answers to.
01:17So we put the book out in 2021, and last August the TBI, which is the Tennessee Bureau of
01:25Investigations, called us at my house and asked if, you know, is this Dean Baldwin?
01:32I said, sure.
01:33And he said, hey, I want to let you know I've got your Buford Pusser book, and we're enjoying
01:39it, and we actually agree with a lot of your concerns, and we are letting you know that we're
01:45going to reopen the cold murder case.
01:48And that was August of last year, and we were very pleased that in February of this year the TBI
02:01actually exhumed the body of Mrs. Pusser, who was Pauline Mullins, a distant cousin of
02:07mine, and they kept her out for two months doing an autopsy on her.
02:14So they did a very thorough autopsy, and we're waiting for the results.
02:19Hopefully soon we should know something about that.
02:23Yeah, it would be definitely interesting to hear about that.
02:26Now you know with me coming out of the professional wrestling industry, I've always known Buford Pusser
02:33was a professional wrestler at some point, but, you know, in what research I've done,
02:38I've never been able to find out anything about his career, is there any?
02:42Yeah, he started in the, I would say around 57 or 58, and he wrestled, because he got out
02:50of the Marine Corps in 56, and finished up high school.
02:54He went up to Chicago.
02:55He left Tennessee and moved to Chicago, got into the wrestling business.
03:01He was known as Buford the Bull, and he was a wrestler on the circuit, and he worked the
03:08nightclub, I think as a bouncer, and he went into a, he went into a, I'm going to black now,
03:24we'll have to edit this part, he went into, where they worked on, what's it called, with
03:31the bodies.
03:32Oh, he was a mortician.
03:33Yeah, he went into mortician school, and obviously he didn't like that.
03:39But then he met my, uh, distant cousin, Pauline Mullins, and they got married in December of
03:4659.
03:47He was still wrestling then.
03:48He wrestled, I think, for another year or two.
03:51And then, with the traveling, and the new family, uh, he decided to move back to Tennessee,
03:58to Adamsville, and ran for office to become the constable of the third district.
04:05And at that time, he stopped.
04:07So, it would have been roughly between 1957 and up to 19, maybe 61 or 62.
04:16So, I'd say four or five years, um, in the wrestling business.
04:20Yeah, interesting.
04:21Well, let's move on to your, your next book, uh, the one I'm looking at right now, um, on
04:28Jake Percy Flowers.
04:29Yep, I'm going to show this up here to everybody.
04:32This is our new book.
04:33We just released this about three weeks ago.
04:36Now, Jay is for Joshua.
04:39Joshua Percy Flowers, the master distiller.
04:42He was in Johnston County, North Carolina.
04:45He started moonshining in 1919, and got in trouble that same year.
04:51He had, um, uh, a stranger was looking into one of his mash barrels, bent over, and he was
04:58sitting in the woods watching him.
05:00And he had a shotgun with some bird shot in it, and he actually shot him in the seat
05:04of his pants, and it turned out to be the Johnson County Sheriff who he shot.
05:09So, he took off running in the woods.
05:11And, of course, he lost his first steal that he had, and that mash.
05:16So, his first run-in with the law was, uh, in 1919.
05:19And he ran moonshine up until the day he died in 1982.
05:24So, you're looking at six decades of moonshining, all up and down the, uh, east coast, all over,
05:34basically all over the country.
05:36He was, if you put all of the moonshiners that you've ever heard of together,
05:41Popcorn Sutton, Hilda Mullins, uh, Amos Owens, Junior Johnson from NASCAR fame, uh, Al Capone,
05:51uh, President Kennedy's father.
05:53Joseph Kennedy was a bootlegger of whiskey and moonshine.
05:57If you put all of them together, they wouldn't be able to touch Percy Flowers in Johnson County.
06:03And, you know, that's just a few miles from here where we're located.
06:07Absolutely, yeah.
06:08And I actually had, um, when I was a young deputy sheriff in Wake County in 1981,
06:14I had a run-in with, uh, one of his associates and chased one of his cars, um,
06:20probably several miles before he got away from me.
06:23Down near Homer Bryhopper's Club off of Pool Road and Nightdale Road.
06:28Wow.
06:29So, I've got a little personal connection to the story.
06:31But this is a very exciting story that no one's really ever heard about.
06:36And he's going to be known shortly as the largest moonshiner that's ever lived.
06:42Wow.
06:43And tell us where, here's where we get to plug you.
06:47Where, um, uh, your, your sales.
06:50Where, where can we find these books?
06:52Is there any place where do you, online?
06:54Do you have a website?
06:55Yeah.
06:56There's two places.
06:57One is if you go to Amazon and type in my full name, Oakley Dean Baldwin,
07:02all 28 of our books will pop up.
07:05We also have a YouTube channel at BaldwinStoriesYT.
07:11So, YT would be for YouTube.
07:14So, at BaldwinStoriesYT, that's our YouTube channel.
07:19Oakley Dean Baldwin on Amazon will bring up our books.
07:22We also have our books on Barnes and Nobles, Walmart, and Lulu too.
07:28So, we're out there.
07:30All you got to do is look us up.
07:32We have some very exciting true stories.
07:35And another true story that I'm going to share with Marcus here in a minute is our Sid Ease Road Lithabolia story.
07:44Oh, absolutely.
07:45Right down the road here.
07:47And hopefully after this interview, I get to take you and your wife down and show you all about it.
07:53Yeah.
07:54I'm very interested.
07:55I'm very interested in seeing it.
07:57Because like I said, you know, as a, well, I mean, it's no secret to the, probably most of the people watching this, you know,
08:03where I do independent film.
08:07And that is a story I am very, very interested in.
08:11And it's one right, literally, in my backyard.
08:14Yeah, those are the best ones.
08:15Absolutely.
08:16In your backyard, you know, where you don't have to spend a whole lot of effort or time
08:20or go somewhere and spend the night at a motel and get away from your family.
08:24Those are always hard.
08:25People don't realize the back work of what you're doing, you know.
08:29And even an author, you know, if you have to go to Pound, Virginia, we have a book called Killing Moonshine Mullins,
08:39which is the Pound Gap Massacre, which my grandmother's cousin, Ira Mullins, was pulling moonshine across the Pound Gap into Kentucky and Virginia.
08:50And they got ambushed by Doc Taylor and the Fleming Brothers.
08:54And it was, it's, it's a great chase.
08:57And the shootouts, hangings, more shootouts, more chases.
09:02It's a wild story.
09:04It's probably as good as any Hatfields and McCoys.
09:06I love the Hatfields and McCoys stories.
09:08But that's, you know, a six-hour drive from here up to Pound.
09:12Stay a couple nights doing story, telling events and book signings and those type of things.
09:18It's so much easier when you have something right in your backyard.
09:21A ten-minute drive from your house that you can get to.
09:24And, like I said, it's real important, too, as we get older that we try to spend more time with our family.
09:30You know, I'm retired now. My wife's retired.
09:33So we're full-time offers now, basically, as well.
09:36Because we do a lot of research in our books, we spend a lot of time, sometimes up to two years, researching a book before we put it out.
09:45Wow.
09:46And, like I said, I'm definitely interested in reading and hearing all the stories you can share with me about that.
09:52And we have, you know, the Maitwan massacre, which we call the Maitwan Effect Buddy Mingo book, which is the true story of the Baldwin Detective Agency, who I'm also related to.
10:05They went down to Maitwan because the local sheriff would not set out six coal miners who had joined the union against the owner's policy.
10:16And they were living in company homes.
10:18So, back in the 1920s, before the FBI was formed in 1936, if you had a local sheriff that wouldn't perform their duties, what they did is, on the west coast they would hire the Pinkertons to do the law enforcement.
10:35But on the east coast, they would hire the Baldwin Detective Agency.
10:39And that's the only choices you had before the FBI.
10:43So, the coal miner owners hired the Baldwin Detectives.
10:47They came down from Bluefield, West Virginia.
10:49And 12 of the agents came down.
10:54And they set out the six families, of course.
10:57And it was very tense.
10:59They had their weapons out.
11:01And it was raining a little bit.
11:03And they did set the women and children out into the street.
11:05You know, that really made a lot of people mad.
11:08But the police chief in Maquan was a man named Sid Hatfield, who was the nephew of Devletts Hatfield, from Hatfields and McCoys fame.
11:20So, he said that those Baldwins, when they come in town, we're not going to let them leave, basically.
11:28So, he told about 300 coal miners to go home and get their weapons and wait for his signal.
11:34So, when they came in, I don't want to give the whole story away, but they were three miles out into the county.
11:42When they came back into town, they ate dinner.
11:44And they got ready to get on the train.
11:46And there was a massacre, basically, at that point.
11:50And that's an awesome story.
11:53Now, James Earl Jones did a movie called Maquan back in 1987.
11:58And my wife and I, we love the movie.
12:01And we actually have a copy of it at home on a VHR, I guess it is, of one of those VHS's or whatever.
12:09Yeah, the old style.
12:11Yeah, the generation watching this right now probably have never seen one.
12:16Maybe not even heard of one.
12:18Yeah, exactly.
12:19And it's an awesome movie.
12:20I loved it.
12:21Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with what actually happened that day.
12:25So, our book actually clears up what happened.
12:28And here's the kicker.
12:29Our book is actually a hundred times better than that movie.
12:32I mean, as far as thrilling and the actual evidence that we present in the book from the court records,
12:38from the courthouse, from the hearings, from the trials, from the eyewitnesses.
12:43So, you know, those are the types of stories that we like to write.
12:47Good, good.
12:48Now, tell us a little about your background.
12:51I know you were telling me on the phone yesterday you got quite a resume, especially in law enforcement.
12:58Yeah, I started out with the West Virginia State Police.
13:01I worked with the state for several years.
13:04My wife and I moved down to Raleigh, North Carolina.
13:07And shortly, I found out that I missed law enforcement.
13:11So, I got back in.
13:12I went to work with Wake County Sheriff's Department.
13:15And I retired there in 2012.
13:19I had done patrol.
13:22I worked courthouse supervisor.
13:25I was the director over the pistol permits.
13:29I was the director over the sex offender investigators, weapons of mass destruction, carry concealed permits.
13:39I was the custodian of records for the sheriff.
13:42So, I have 34 years as a sworn law enforcement officer in two different states.
13:49Then, also on a part-time basis, I worked part-time 30 years for the Fairgrounds Police,
13:55which I retired out there as a captain with them.
13:58I worked 10 years with Marshall Police part-time.
14:01I worked 30 years with the U.S. Coast Guard and retired as a chief warrant officer for, as an intel officer with the Coast Guard.
14:11I love that.
14:12I was also a boarding team member on a 41-foot law enforcement boat for about 12 years.
14:17So, I have a lot of sea stories to tell with those.
14:20My wife and I have so many stories to tell, I probably won't live long enough to write them all.
14:25But, I always try to keep two or three books in the queue, waiting to go.
14:30In case, you know, I get to a point where I get to a block or get a little, I can't find what I need.
14:36I'll set one aside and then start back on one of the other ones with a fresh mind and a fresh start.
14:42Absolutely.
14:43I understand that.
14:44I've recently gotten into writing because I've been writing scripts for, you know, some of the videos for my ministry.
14:54So, that's what you see on all the social medias.
14:57And, you know, for those of you who think I'm kind of like slurring and stuttering, I'm not impaired.
15:04If you remember my crime, my Dysautonomia Support Network.
15:09So, if you visit DysautonomiaSupport.com, it'll get you to our Linktree account, which will get you to our Facebook account.
15:20And, it'll get you a one-on-one, you know, if you need one as an advocate because of everything I've gone through to get here.
15:26You wake up some mornings, this is the way you talk.
15:29It's not, and you have no control over it.
15:32So, I don't want anybody to think in any way, shape, or form that I'm impaired.
15:38And, I just wanted to give the chronic illness outreach there.
15:44Well, share about your wrestling experience also.
15:47I'm interested in that.
15:48We talked about Buford and his wrestling.
15:49Right, absolutely.
15:50Yeah, talk a little bit about yours.
15:52You know, I mean, I was born in, you know, 71.
15:56So, I grew up, you know, in the days of watching, you know, Jim Crockett Promotions here in the Carolinas as it was until it turned into WCW or in the 87, 88 era.
16:11But, so, yeah, all the greats.
16:14Ric Flair, Wahoo McDaniels, you know, superstar Billy Graham.
16:17I mean, anybody that was anybody at some point came through, you know, this territory.
16:22And, um, my grandfather, he had it on one Saturday night when I was, you know, at his house.
16:29And, you know, I was hooked from there.
16:32Um, and it was my dad being a professional musician at the time.
16:36Uh, I kind of got more into rock and roll bands.
16:39And then he played, um, you know, a lot of hotels and stuff.
16:42And he was a disc jockey during the days.
16:45Well, I'm living in Wilmington.
16:47That was a regular stop for Jim Crockett Promotions.
16:49So, we got to know, you know, guys, you know, they're my heroes.
16:54You know, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, you know, Wahoo McDaniels.
16:58I mean, whoever I wanted to meet backstage, I got to meet through the fact that, uh, he was always, his radio station always assigned him to the wrestling matches when they came.
17:08And then, plus, he moved out a lot of them for playing at the, the hotel.
17:14And, you know, and they, I mean, so I was getting to meet him and it was even better.
17:20And, um, you know, when I was getting, as I was getting older, you know, what do I need to do to get prepared for this?
17:29And, uh, I want to say it was Ric Flair that said,
17:34Rustle in high school so that when you get to, when you get to professional wrestling school, you're going to breeze through because you already know how to rustle.
17:44You know, you know the basics.
17:46That's part one.
17:48He says, now, take drama.
17:52Learn the theatrics.
17:54The less theatrics we have to teach you, the better.
17:57He says, that way we teach when you really only need to learn the ring psychology part and you will be in the ring a lot faster than if the other guy had just signed up and didn't do any of that.
18:07Right.
18:08Because there's so much that you already know we don't have to teach you.
18:12And so I did, um, you know, cause my wife, my wife and I, you know, we're boyfriend and girlfriend and back in what they call a middle school.
18:25Now it was junior high school in our days.
18:28And as a matter of fact, we took drama together.
18:32Um, um, and I was on the wrestling team, uh, went fifth in the state my first year.
18:40Nice.
18:41Um.
18:42We have a lot in common.
18:43I worked at the Dorton arena and from the late eighties into the early nineties.
18:48So I got to work almost every single wrestling match and got to meet the same heroes that you're talking about.
18:54You know, the Ric Flares, of course, and, um, um, Sting came and, uh, the, uh, Nick Foley, all these, uh, famous, these young folks now probably wouldn't know, have a clue who we're talking about.
19:09Not exactly about.
19:10But the old timers.
19:11Yeah, the old timers there.
19:13And I worked, uh, for Bruce Newnham and he was the police chief in Morrisville.
19:18And he was actually Mr. Wrestling for, um, I guess about 10 years.
19:23And everyone thought he was joking when he talked about being a wrestler until he did a fundraiser.
19:28And brought all these old timers into, uh, uh, Morrisville and set up a ring and raised money for some children who had been bit by a dog that had rabies.
19:40And they didn't have insurance.
19:41So he raised a lot of money for them.
19:43But one of the people that really stood out was the Boogie Woogie Man.
19:47You remember?
19:48Yeah, I remember.
19:49Yeah.
19:50I know, I knew Jimmy.
19:51I know Jimmy very well.
19:52Jimmy Valiant.
19:53Yes.
19:54Yeah.
19:55And of course, Bruce won the match.
19:57He had his police chief hat on and they had a free-for-all and all of them in the ring.
20:02And he got the last one out and actually won the match, which was pretty cool.
20:07Oh, absolutely.
20:08Yeah, absolutely.
20:09We, we, his wrestling business is a little weird because they kind of did him an honor because it's in most cases, if you're in your hometown, you lose.
20:19If it's your birthday, you lose.
20:20I mean, that was the way they did it when they weren't the circuit.
20:23If you're in your hometown, you lost.
20:24If it was your birthday, you lost.
20:25I mean, that was, even if that wasn't the story we were telling the night before and the night after.
20:32That's it.
20:33But those two days, the boom, you know, they, uh, they just, they, it's, it's a business that'll, uh, lure you in and chew you up and spit you back out.
20:44Cause, uh, that's why I think I got a lot of the physical problems look out of.
20:48You know, I've got a rebuilt foot.
20:50I've got hardware in my back and upper neck and it was, it was a rough business.
20:56I could imagine.
20:57Yeah.
20:58I did some, uh, golden glove boxing back in the day.
21:01And, um, after a couple of years of that, a couple of fights, I decided those trophies weren't worth, uh, getting your brains beat out.
21:09So I gave that up.
21:11Plus I was married.
21:12My wife kind of frowned on me going on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday and doing a three-day boxing.
21:17You know, so, so I gave that up after a couple of years in the early eighties, but, um, we're young.
21:25We, we learn as we get older.
21:27You know, I do have some interesting things coming up.
21:30So we definitely want to get back together.
21:32I have, uh, some things that I can't share right now that, um, are really, uh, hopefully they're going to pan out.
21:41You never know.
21:42Right.
21:43In, in that business.
21:44But my wife and I, um, are always writing new books.
21:48We have a couple.
21:49She has a wonderful cookbook that she's writing and it's almost ready.
21:53Good old country girl cooking.
21:55You know, that kind of thing.
21:56It's going to, she's from West Virginia and that's going to come out hopefully, you know, by the end of this year or first time next year.
22:03There's no timeframe on her and she, um, has a wonderful book that she's called suddenly, which when God shows up suddenly, where she went on three missions trips to other countries and God showed up and helped her on all three of them.
22:21And one of the stories were they were on a bus and, you know, when you're in a third world country and a little group of, um, men show up with AK-47s and fatigues and they board the bus and you're told to keep your head down and not look up at them.
22:39And they're talking in a foreign language and you don't know what's going on.
22:44It's pretty scary.
22:45And they didn't know if they were going to be taken captive or what, but God intervened and turned it around and they showed some papers and they were allowed to travel on.
22:56But there was a, you know, because they knew there were medical commissions, you know, they did dental work and eyeglasses and prescription meds, handed out, you know, aspirins and pulled teeth.
23:08And those type of things.
23:10So they would line up.
23:12These people were in such a need for help that they would line up for miles in their best clothes, their best dresses and their children.
23:23And they would be yelling at the buses as they went by.
23:27They would yell and be clapping and they'd yell, Blondie, Blondie, which meant American to them.
23:33And once they got there, they would stay all day and 12, 14 hours of doctors would work and the dentists and the nurses.
23:42My wife was a nurse back then.
23:44So that's going to be a wonderful book once we get that one out.
23:47I'm looking forward to that one.
23:49Yeah, I'd be interested in that myself.
23:52And I can definitely say that sounds like something my wife would be interested in.
23:56You can actually hear her smiling behind the camera over there.
24:01We have one other faith-based book called Whosoever.
24:06The next time we get up with each other, I'm going to give you and your wife a copy of that.
24:11Basically, we use common sense and science to prove creation.
24:16So it's a real cool book for someone, especially who's on the fence.
24:20They're not really sure what they believe.
24:22In fact, I'm going to donate a handful of them to your group, your Christ Search group.
24:27Thank you, sir.
24:28Thank you, sir.
24:29Yeah, because that book will really open the eyes through common sense and, like I said, through science.
24:35You know, we've had science used against us in public schools for so long that we finally are getting some footing now
24:45just by telling the truth about what science and what creation is really about.
24:51Right, absolutely.
24:53That's right now.
24:54That's why I'm so proud of the state of Louisiana, putting the Ten Commandments back in the classroom.
24:59Mm-hmm.
25:00And the rest of the state should file a suit.
25:04I agree.
25:05And, like, of course, I mean, that's probably what's going on with me a little bit.
25:12I'm exhausted because I gave quite a speech last night on the Christ Search event.
25:18And check that out on our same YouTube channel, Mark Ash Motivation.
25:24And, of course, Dean here, he's going to put it on the Baldwin Stories channel.
25:31And is there any other books or stories you want to tell?
25:35Any personal stories you want to tell us about for your law enforcement career?
25:38Well, actually, this City's Road that I'm getting ready to show you after we're done here, that's a personal story.
25:45I was on patrol when that happened.
25:48I have a book called Mayhem on the Mountain, which was my very first murder that I was involved in.
25:56And it's a real thriller.
25:58So if you really enjoy true crime and thriller books, that's basically what we've been into.
26:06And we're pretty diverse.
26:07We actually have a child's book called Camper and Katie's Constitutional Quest for Children.
26:14So we're out there with pretty much everything with romance.
26:18The market is saturated with romance books, so we're not going to be writing any romance.
26:24Even though my wife and I have been married a long time, we're working on 50 years.
26:29But that's pretty much the only thing we haven't written.
26:34Everything else in between, we have something for everyone.
26:39All right.
26:40And once again, tell us where we can find these.
26:44Yep.
26:45On Amazon, type in Oakley Dean Baldwin and YouTube channel at BaldwinStoriesYT, at BaldwinStoriesYT.
26:58Those will bring up everything that we have.
27:01Absolutely.
27:02And fans, I want to announce a guest for the next one because I'm still working on it right
27:11now.
27:12But we will definitely, once again, want to push his books here, Oakley Dean Baldwin on Amazon.com.
27:20Because these stories are awesome.
27:22And I definitely want to see these places we're about to go.
27:25And I am going to be working with my crew.
27:28I think we may be able to make a little movie out of that.
27:31That would be nice.
27:32That would be really nice.
27:34Thank you for having me.
27:35Yes, sir.
27:36Thank you for being here.
27:37I appreciate you.
27:38And hopefully we'll do this again soon.
27:40Because like you said, you've got some stuff upcoming you can't talk about just yet.
27:45So when you can, I definitely want to get you back off.
27:47You'll be one of the first ones to find out.
27:49All right.
27:50I appreciate it.
27:51God bless everyone that's watching.
27:54And you can visit our ministry at ChristSurge.com.
27:59And you get all the information.
28:01And once again, thanks for watching.
28:04Have a great day.
28:05All right.
28:21Bye.
28:22Bye.
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