Elmer McCurdy

Elmer McCurdy was born in Washington, Maine, on January 1, 1880. He was the son of 17-year-old Sadie McCurdy, who was unmarried at the time of his birth. The identity of McCurdy's father is unknown; one possibility is Sadie's cousin, Charles Smith (McCurdy would later use the name "Charles Smith" as an alias). In order to save Sadie the social stigma of raising an illegitimate child, her brother George and his wife Helen adopted Elmer. After George died of tuberculosis in 1890, Sadie and Helen moved with Elmer to Bangor, Maine. Sadie eventually told McCurdy the truth about his parentage, which caused McCurdy to become "unruly and rebellious". As a teenager, he began drinking heavily, a habit that would continue throughout his life.^[3]

McCurdy eventually moved in with his grandfather and became an apprentice plumber. He was a competent worker and lived comfortably until an economic downturn in 1898. McCurdy lost his job and, in 1900, his mother died of a ruptured ulcer and his grandfather died of Bright's disease within the span of two months.^[4] Shortly after his grandfather's death, McCurdy left Maine and began drifting around the eastern United States, as a lead miner and plumber.^[5]

McCurdy was unable to hold a job for an extended period due to his alcoholism.^[5][6] He eventually made his way to Kansas, where he worked as a plumber in Cherryvale. McCurdy then moved to Iola, Kansas, where, in 1905, he was arrested for public intoxication.^[7] He then moved to Webb City, Missouri.^[5]

In 1907, McCurdy joined the United States Army.^[5] Assigned to Fort Leavenworth, he operated a machine gun and was trained to use nitroglycerin for demolition purposes (the extent of this training was likely minimal). He was honorably discharged from the Quartermaster Corps on November 7, 1910.^[8]

Following his discharge, McCurdy then made his way to St. Joseph, Kansas, where he met with a friend from the army. On November 19, both men were arrested for possessing burglary paraphernalia (chisels, hacksaws, funnels for nitroglycerin, gunpowder and money sacks). The St. Joseph Gazette reported that during their arraignment, McCurdy and his friend told the judge the tools were needed to work on a foot-operated machine gun they were inventing.^[9] In January 1911, a jury found McCurdy not guilty.^[10] After his release from county jail, McCurdy embarked on a career in robbery.^[11]

McCurdy decided to incorporate his training with nitroglycerin into his robberies, targeting banks and trains. However, he often failed to correctly determine the proper amount to use, and his robberies were often bungled affairs. After relocating to Lenapah, Oklahoma, in March 1911, McCurdy and three other men decided to rob the Iron Mountain–Missouri Pacific train No. 104 after McCurdy had heard that one of the cars contained a safe with $4,000.^[5] They successfully stopped the train and located the safe. McCurdy then put nitroglycerin on the safe's door to open it, but used too much. The safe was destroyed in the blast, as was the majority of the money.^[5] McCurdy and his partners managed to net $100–$500 (equivalent to $3,400–$16,900 in 2024) in silver coins, most of which were melted and fused to the safe's frame.^[12][5][11]

On September 21, 1911, McCurdy and two other men attempted to rob The Citizens Bank in Chautauqua, Kansas. After spending two hours breaking through the bank wall with a hammer, McCurdy placed a nitroglycerin charge around the door of the bank's outer vault. The blast blew the vault door through the bank, destroying the interior, but did not damage the safe inside the vault. McCurdy then tried to blow the safe door open, but the charge failed to ignite. After the lookout man got scared and ran off, McCurdy and his accomplices stole about $150 in coins that were in a tray outside the safe and fled.^[13][14][15] Later that night, the men hopped a train which took them to the Kansas border. They split up and McCurdy made his way to the ranch of a friend, Charlie Revard, near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He stayed in a hayshed on the property for the next few weeks and drank heavily.^[16]

McCurdy's final robbery took place on October 4, 1911, near Okesa, Oklahoma, targeting a Katy Train which contained $400,000 in cash that was intended as a royalty payment to the Osage Nation.^[17] However, McCurdy and his two accomplices mistakenly stopped a passenger train instead. The men were able to steal only $46 from the mail clerk, two demijohns of whiskey, a revolver, a coat, and the conductor's watch.^[18][19] A newspaper account of the robbery later called it "one of the smallest in the history of train robbery" owing to the minimal amount of money stolen.^[20][21]

McCurdy was disappointed by the haul and returned to Revard's ranch on October 6, where he began drinking the whiskey he stole.^[7] By this time he was ill with tuberculosis, which he had developed after working in mines. He also had a mild case of pneumonia and trichinosis.^[11] McCurdy stayed up drinking with some of the ranch hands before going to sleep in the hay loft the following morning.^[22] Unbeknownst to McCurdy, he had been implicated in the robbery and a $2,000 reward for his capture was issued.^[7]

In the early morning hours of October 7, a posse of three deputy sheriffs, brothers Bob and Stringer Fenton and Dick Wallace, tracked McCurdy to the hay shed using bloodhounds. They surrounded the hay shed and waited for daylight.^[22] In an interview featured in the October 8, 1911 edition of the Daily Examiner, Sheriff Bob Fenton recalled:

It began just about 7 o'clock. We were standing around waiting for him to come out when the first shot was fired at me. It missed me and he then turned his attention to my brother, Stringer Fenton. He shot three times at Stringer and when my brother got under cover he turned his attention to Dick Wallace. He kept shooting at all of us for about an hour. We fired back every time we could. We do not know who killed him ... (on the trail) we found one of the jugs of whiskey which was taken from the train. It was about empty. He was pretty drunk when he rode up to the ranch last night.^[23]

McCurdy was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest which he sustained while lying down.^[19][24]

McCurdy's body was taken to the undertaker in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where it went unclaimed. Joseph L. Johnson, the owner and undertaker, embalmed the body with an arsenic-based preservative typically used in that era to preserve a body for a long period when no next of kin were known. He then shaved the face, dressed the body in a suit and stored it in the back of his funeral home. As McCurdy lay unclaimed, Johnson refused to bury or release his body until he was paid for his services. Johnson then decided to exhibit McCurdy to make money.^[25] He dressed the corpse in street clothes, placed a rifle in the hands and stood it up in the corner of the funeral home. For a nickel, Johnson allowed visitors to see "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up" (at various times, McCurdy was also called "The Mystery Man of Many Aliases", "The Oklahoma Outlaw" and "The Embalmed Bandit"). "The Bandit" became a popular attraction at the funeral home and drew the attention of carnival promoters. Johnson received numerous offers to sell McCurdy's corpse but refused.^[26]

On October 6, 1916, a man calling himself Aver contacted Johnson claiming to be McCurdy's long-lost brother from California. Aver had already contacted the Osage County sheriff and a local attorney to get permission to take custody of the body and ship it to San Francisco for proper burial. The following day, Aver arrived at the funeral home with another man calling himself Wayne, who also claimed to be McCurdy's brother. Johnson released the body to the men who then put it on a train, ostensibly to San Francisco. It was instead shipped to Arkansas City, Kansas. The men who claimed to be McCurdy's siblings were in fact James and Charles Patterson, the former of whom was the owner of the Great Patterson Carnival Shows, a traveling carnival.^[27] After learning from his brother Charles about the popular "Embalmed Bandit" exhibit, the two concocted a scheme to take possession of the body in order to feature it in James' carnival. McCurdy's corpse would be featured in Patterson's carnival as "The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive" until 1922, when Patterson sold his operation to Louis Sonney.^[28]

Sonney used McCurdy's corpse in his traveling Museum of Crime, which featured wax replicas of famous outlaws such as Bill Doolin and Jesse James.^[29] In 1928, the corpse was part of the official sideshow that accompanied the Trans-American Footrace. In 1933, it was acquired for a time by director Dwain Esper to promote his exploitation film Narcotic!^[30] The corpse was placed in the lobby of theaters as a "dead dope fiend" whom Esper claimed had killed himself while surrounded by police after he had robbed a drug store to support his habit. By the time Esper acquired McCurdy's body, it had become mummified; the skin had become hard and shriveled, causing the body to shrink. Esper claimed that the skin's deterioration was proof of the supposed dope fiend's drug abuse.^[31]

After Sonney died in 1949, the corpse was placed in storage in a Los Angeles warehouse. In 1964, Sonney's son Dan lent the corpse to filmmaker David F. Friedman, resulting in a brief appearance in Friedman's film She Freak (1967).^[32] In 1968, Dan sold the body along with other wax figures for $10,000 to Spoony Singh, the owner of the Hollywood Wax Museum. Singh had bought the figures for two Canadian men, who exhibited them at a show at Mount Rushmore. While being exhibited there, the corpse sustained some damage in a windstorm; the tips of the ears, along with fingers and toes, were blown off. The men eventually returned the corpse back to Singh, who decided that it looked "too gruesome" and not lifelike enough to exhibit.^[33] Singh then sold it to Ed Liersch, part owner of The Pike, an amusement zone in Long Beach, California.^[32] By 1976, McCurdy's corpse was hanging in the Laff in the Dark funhouse exhibition at The Pike.^[34]

On December 8, 1976, the production crew of the television series The Six Million Dollar Man was filming scenes for the "Carnival of Spies" episode at The Pike. During the shoot, a prop man moved what was thought to be a wax mannequin that was hanging from a gallows.^[35] When the mannequin's arm broke off, a human bone and muscle tissue were visible.^[29]

Police were called and the corpse was taken to the Los Angeles coroner's office. On December 9, Dr. Joseph Choi conducted an autopsy and determined that the body was that of a human male who had died of a gunshot wound to the chest. The body was completely petrified, covered in wax and layers of phosphorus paint. It weighed approximately 50 pounds (23 kg) and was 63 inches (160 cm) in height. Some hair was still visible on the sides and back of the head while the ears, big toes and fingers were missing. The examination also revealed incisions from his original autopsy and embalming. Tests conducted on the tissue showed the presence of arsenic, which was a component of embalming fluid until the late 1920s.^[36] Tests also revealed tuberculosis in the lung, as well as bunions and scars that McCurdy was documented to have had.^[6][20] While the bullet that caused the fatal wound was presumably removed during the original autopsy, the bullet jacket was found. It was determined to be a gas check, a device first used in 1905 until 1940. These clues helped investigators pinpoint the era in which the man had been killed.^[36]

Further clues to the man's identity were found when the mandible was removed for dental analysis. Inside the mouth was a 1924 penny and ticket stubs to Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime.^[32][37] Investigators contacted Dan Sonney who confirmed that the body was Elmer McCurdy.^[32] Forensic anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow was then called in to help make a positive identification. Dr. Snow took radiographs of the skull and placed them over a photo of McCurdy taken at the time of his death in a process called superimposition.^[38] Snow was able to determine that skull was that of McCurdy.^[39]

By December 11, the story of McCurdy's journey had been featured in newspapers and on television and radio. Several funeral homes called the coroner's office offering to bury McCurdy free of charge, but officials decided to wait to see if any living relatives would come forward to claim the body. Fred Olds, who represented the Indian Territory Posse of Oklahoma Westerns, eventually convinced Dr. Thomas Noguchi, then the Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, to allow him to bury the body in Oklahoma. After further testing to ensure proper identification, Olds was allowed to take custody of the body.^[37]

On April 22, 1977, a funeral procession was conducted to transport McCurdy to the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma.^[17] A graveside service attended by approximately 300 people was conducted after which McCurdy was buried next to Bill Doolin.^[40] To ensure that McCurdy's body would not be stolen, two feet (60 cm) of concrete was poured over the casket.^[41]

• Jeremy Bentham, whose mummified remains were put on display, in accordance with his will.
• Jonah Hex, a comic–book character whose post-demise exploits in The Last Jonah Hex Story echo McCurdy's posthumous fate.