The Macabre Afterlife of Kansas Outlaw Elmer McCurdy Begins

Of all the outlaws that called Kansas home there is one that may deserve our pity over anything else. I am of course talking about Elmer McCurdy a Kansas outlaw who was unlucky both in life and death. He was a bumbling outlaw whose afterlife became a macabre journey around the United States.

Elmer McCurdy was born on New Years Day 1880 to an unwed 17-year-old mother named Sarah A. McCurdy in Washington, Maine. He would never know who his father was, and he became known as a drunkard in his teens. His mother died at the age of 37 in 1900 when Elmer was 20 years old, after which he began traveling around the eastern United States. Eventually he would find his way to Kansas working in Cherryvale and then Iola as a plumber and a miner. He even attempted to go into Teddy Roosevelts occupation of the Philippines, but he missed the application deadline and didn’t get to go. Then in 1907 he joined the U.S. Army and was stationed at Fort Leavenworth where he was trained in the use of weapons and nitroglycerine. He served three years and received an Honorable discharge in 1910.

Then, in late March 1911, he and two others tried to rob a train on the St. Louis, Iron Mound, and Southern Railroad just outside of Coffeyville, KS. Unfortunately, Elmer was inept when it came to explosives and so when he attempted to blow the safe, he used far too much and destroyed almost $4,000 in silver which melted into molten slag. They made away with only about $100.

Months later, in September 1911, McCurdy and two other men attempted to rob the Citizens Bank in Chautauqua, KS. Again, Elmer used too much explosive and blew the safe through the vault door. This made the vault door fly through the front of the solid brick building and into the street. The noise of this calamity scared the three robbers away with only $150 in silver taken from the counter charger. October 4, 1911, would be the last time that Elmer attempted a brazen robbery.

On that day Elmer and two other men tried to rob what they thought was a train carrying $400,000 to the Osage Tribe. The Katy train robbery took place near Oaks, OK but instead of robbing the train with the large sum of money they stopped the wrong train. The train with the money was two hours behind the one they robbed. They got away with just $46 which was taken from the station agent in Osage Hills, OK. After this failed robbery Elmer hid in a barn hayloft on a farm near Osage Hills. Three days later, on October 7, 1911, three deputy sheriffs—Bob Fenton, Stringer Fenton, and Dick Wallace—went to the farm and surrounded Elmer while he was sleeping. After a shootout, 32-year-old Elmer McCurdy was dead from a shot to the chest and a shotgun pellet to the neck. Sadly, even in death Elmer could not escape his bad luck. His body was taken to a funeral home in Pawhuska, OK and there his body was preserved and embalmed. Elmer’s body sat unclaimed for six months when an observer noticed that he was perfectly embalmed and so the director of the funeral home Joseph J. Johnson decided to display Elmer. He dressed Elmer up with a rifle and charged 5 cents calling it a look at “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up.”

Five years later, in 1916, two men pretended to be Elmer’s long-lost brothers coming to take their sibling home to put him to rest. However, these men were imposters and were actually Charles and James Patterson who were behind a carnival called The Great Patterson Shows. From 1916 to 1922 Elmer’s body was exhibited as “The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive.”

In 1922 he was acquired by Louis Sonney, head of an entertainment company in California and put into another traveling show called The Museum of Crime. Elmer would then be pawned off from gig to gig over the next several years before eventually ending up in Hollywood. In 1933 he was used as a promotional tool for the film Narcotic for which he was displayed in the lobby of movie theaters around the country. He was rented out from time to time including to an amusement park near Mount Rushmore.

When Sonney died in 1949, Elmer was placed in storage in a warehouse in Los Angeles and there, he stayed forgotten for two decades. He was rediscovered in 1964 and in 1967 he appeared as a prop in David Friedman’s film “She Freak.”

In 1968 Elmer’s body was sold to the Hollywood Wax Museum (now defunct) and billed as the “1,000-Year-Old Man.” When the museum closed later that year, he was mixed up with a bunch of real wax dummies and sold to the Nu-Point Amusement Park in Long Beach. Once there he was covered in fluorescent red paint and hung from fake gallows in a spooky ride in the Laff-in-the-Dark Funhouse. He stayed at the funhouse for nearly a decade.

It was here at the funhouse in December 1976 that an art director for the show “Six Million Dollar Man” attempted to move what he thought was a wax dummy prop during the filming of the episode “Carnival of Spies.” When he moved the mummified body, an arm broke off revealing its macabre secret.

It is interesting to note that they could not tell that Elmer was a real person the entire time as most people who encountered him over the years believed his body was nothing more than a wax dummy.

After this discovery the body was taken to the L.A. County Coroner’s Office and though he was petrified, shrunk to fifty pounds, covered in wax and layers of paint, they found enough evidence to identify Elmer’s body. The first clue was the bullet wound in the chest where a copper bullet jacket was found. The type of embalming fluid used dated to the early 1900s. A ticket from the Museum of Crime and a 1924 penny were found in his mouth which is where patrons would place payment to view Elmer’s mummified body.

The coroner’s office held the body hoping that a surviving family member would come forward and claim it but when it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen the body was released to a man named Fred Olds who represented the Indian Territory Posse of Oklahoma Westerns. He brought Elmer McCurdy back to Oklahoma where on April 22, 1977, 300 people gathered to watch the horse drawn hearse with the plain coffin bring Elmer to his final resting place in the Boot Hill section of Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, OK. He was buried next to another old west outlaw Bill Doolin of the Wild Bunch. To ensure that Elmer stayed put, two feet of concrete was poured over his casket.

Elmer’s story may have been one of bad luck and macabre misadventures, but it has left a legacy that is truly one of a kind. It is thought that his story was the inspiration for the DC Comics character Jonah Lex whose backstory is oddly similar. Many books have been written about Elmer and his unusual afterlife including 1979 –The Life and Afterlife of Elmer McCurdy: A Melodrama in Two Acts by renowned anthropologist Clyde C. Snow and 2003- Elmer McCurdy: The Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw by Mark Svenvold. Elmer’s story has inspired movies, books, plays, musicals and has been the subject of many tv shows all over the United States and the world.