The Dead Outlaw Whose Mummy Became a Traveling Show Prop

In 1976, during filming at a Long Beach amusement park for The Six Million Dollar Man, a crew member attempted to adjust what looked like a glow-in-the-dark mannequin hanging from a noose. As he tugged it, the arm snapped off, revealing a real human bone.

The dummy turned out to be no dummy. It was the mummified remains of Elmer McCurdy, an early 20th-century American outlaw who had been dead for 65 years. In that moment, McCurdy’s bizarre second act came to an end and his enduring legend began.

McCurdy was born in 1880 in Washington, Maine, and raised by his aunt and uncle. He learned his aunt and uncle weren't his actual parents during his teenage years, possibly contributing to a life of discontent. For a time, McCurdy lived with his grandfather, apprenticed as a plumber and reconnected with his mother. But in 1898, he lost his job in the economic crash, and in 1900 both his mother and grandfather passed away.

McCurdy headed west, drifting through Kansas and Missouri. In 1907, he joined the U.S. Army, learning explosives skills crucial to his later crimes. Honorably discharged in 1910, he quickly to a life of crime.

Only weeks after leaving the military, authorities arrested McCurdy and another soldier for possession of burglary paraphernalia, including nitroglycerin. They convinced a jury they were just building a foot-powered machine gun. McCurdy then traveled to Oklahoma where he joined a gang of small-time outlaws.

“The Pinkerton Detective Agency published a pamphlet in 1904 about a group known as ‘yegs’,” says Michael Williams, site director of the Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library. “They were an element that grew out of the hobo community. While most hobos traveled to find work, yegs traveled to commit crimes.”

In March 1911, McCurdy’s group robbed an Iron Mountain-Missouri Pacific train. The heist went according to plan until McCurdy placed a large amount of nitroglycerin on the safe's door. The charge melted most of the silver inside.

“They [yegs] often used a large amount of explosive[s] to blow open a safe and they’d end up destroying parts of a building,” says Williams. “When people say McCurdy was incompetent, that’s not really accurate. What he was doing wasn’t unusual for the time. It was just a messy and imprecise method.”

McCurdy’s luck worsened. A September 1911 bank heist netted just $150. On October 4, 1911, he robbed the wrong train, making off with $46 and a jug of whiskey instead of $400,000.

A reward was issued: $2,000—dead or alive. In the early hours of October 7, 1911, law enforcement surrounded a barn near Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where McCurdy had taken shelter. He refused to surrender and opened fire on the officers.

“He took a shot at me first,” officer Bob Fenton told the Blackwell Weekly Sun. “Then he took a shot at [officer Stringer Fenton]. After that he took three shots at [officer Richard] Wallace before we opened up.”

When the shooting stopped, they found McCurdy dead in the hayloft. But McCurdy’s story didn’t end there.

After sitting for months unclaimed at the Johnson Funeral Home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, McCurdy’s body—preserved with a heavy dose of arsenic—remained eerily intact. Embalmed so well it could stand upright on its own, the corpse became a local attraction. The undertaker dressed McCurdy in street clothes, gave him a rifle and charged visitors five cents to see “The Embalmed Bandit,” collecting the coins through the parted lips of the lifeless outlaw.

In 1916, two men posing as McCurdy’s brothers convinced the funeral home to release the body. They were actually James and Charles Patterson, carnival promoters, who proceeded to add McCurdy to the Patterson traveling sideshow as “The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive,” becoming a grim centerpiece in a lineup of human curiosities.

McCurdy’s body changed hands repeatedly. For more than half a century, the former outlaw appeared in crime exhibits, drug awareness campaigns, haunted houses and low-budget films.

McCurdy traveled farther dead than he ever had alive.

By the 1960s, McCurdy’s body had shriveled and lost fingers, toes and even ears due to neglect. By 1976, he was painted bright red and hung in a Long Beach funhouse. On December 8, 1976, the production crew of The Six Million Dollar Man was filming scenes in the warehouse where Elmer's body was hanging. When his arm broke off, onlookers called authorities.

“One thing that can be really helpful with older cases is looking at associated items or other contextual clues as to how long ago someone may have lived,” says Jennifer Bengston, a biological anthropologist at Southeast Missouri State University. “For example, particular clothing styles, coins or other items with actual dates on them or evidence of dental treatments that are no longer common.”

Inside the corpse, medical examiners found a bullet, ticket stubs and a 1924 penny, which helped identify him. On April 22, 1977, a horse-drawn hearse brought McCurdy to the Boot Hill section of Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where he was buried alongside fellow bandit Bill Doolin and his Wild Bunch gang. Three hundred people attended the graveside service. To prevent further exploitation, two feet of concrete was allegedly poured over his casket.

McCurdy's story has inspired books, documentaries and a recent Tony-nominated Broadway musical. It continues to resonate—not because he was a great criminal but because his life and long, unquiet death forces us to reckon with the way we turn people into props, legends or curiosities.

“Elmer was still a human being,” says Williams. “On Veterans Day and Memorial Day, he gets a flag placed on his grave just like any other veteran. But we don’t often talk about that part of his story. We focus on the spectacle and forget the person. He was a flawed, struggling man, but he had a soul. It’s sad how it all ended.”