Huey: The unusual legacy of an early 20th century outlaw

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This is the story of a wild-west outlaw who swore he would never be taken alive. Elmer McCurdy was born in Maine around 1880 and raised by his aunt, but didn’t learn she wasn’t his mother until years after she died, giving him an empty useless feeling inside that may have contributed to his life of crime. Over the next year he became a plumber while living with his grandfather, and after HE died, Elmer was all alone.

So he headed west, finally enlisting in the Army Cavalry in 1907 where he learned to handle explosives, knowledge that would help him in his later criminal ventures. Then he began fulfilling that dark mission right after being honorably discharged in 1910.

Only weeks after leaving the military, authorities arrested McCurdy and a friend for possession of what we would call a burglary kit nowadays. Their lawyer convinced the 1910 version of the “O. J. Jury” that the boys were simply trying to build a foot-powered machine gun, so the panel of 12 believed him and the thugs walked free. McCurdy then moved to Oklahoma where he joined a gang of outlaws that called themselves The Oklahombres.

In March of 1911, that gang robbed a boxcar on the Missouri Pacific train. The heist was going according to plan until McCurdy placed too much nitroglycerin on the side door of the railcar causing an explosion that was so massive it disintegrated all of the cash. It was almost like, “You think you put enough dynamite in there, Butch?”

A reward was put out for McCurdy in the amount of $2,000, and that was a dead or alive offer that put Elmer’s nerves on high alert. In the early morning hours on a Saturday in early October of 1911, law enforcement surrounded a barn near Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where McCurdy and his gang were hiding out, but he refused to surrender, saying that he would never be taken alive. Then he abruptly opened fire on the lawmen.

When the battle was over, McCurdy was found dead in the hayloft with a bullet in his head, an apparent suicide, but they were never sure. That’s not the end of him though, not by a long shot. His corpse became a local celebrity having been embalmed to a point where it could stand on its own. The undertaker dressed him in a suit, put a rifle beside him and charged visitors a nickel per viewing.

Fast forward nearly 60 years to the summer of love in southern California. The Pike Amusement Zone had a haunted house in which they made things look really spooky by using movie props. When a member of a filming crew went to move one of those props, the arm broke off exposing bone and muscle tissue, so he called the cops. It turned out to be a mummified human body.

A forensic examination revealed surgical incisions from his original autopsy, the body petrified and covered in wax with layers of phosphorescent paint, weighing only 55 pounds and standing a mere 65 inches in height. Some hair was still on the sides and back of the head while the ears, big toes and ALL the fingers were gone.

Tests conducted on the tissue showed the presence of arsenic, the main ingredient in embalming fluid before 1920, and it also showed that whoever it was had been locked in the killer grip of tuberculosis for many years. Considering this incident was several years before penicillin came about, he wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway.

Further clues to the man’s identity were uncovered when the mandible was removed for a dental probe and a 1924 penny was found inside the mouth, so investigators contacted a forensic scientist who concluded it was the body of Elmer McCurdy. A forensic anthropologist did a photographic superimposition, also showing the skull to be that of the outlaw.

The mummified remains of an early 1900s bank and stagecoach robber who’d been dead for 65 years had been used as a sideshow display and haunted house relic since the day of his death. His bizarre life took a hot turn toward an unexpected end, but then his enduring legend suddenly began. Elmer McCurdy was buried on today’s date, April 22, way back in 1977 as 300 onlookers stared in disbelief at how his corpse had been abused. After his burial, the grave was filled with concrete to prevent souvenir hunters from snooping, forever preserving the outlaw who would never be taken alive.