The Outlaw Who Became a Prop

Elmer J. McCurdy (1880–1911) was an American outlaw and drifter who became famous—or infamous—not for his life, but for his bizarre afterlife. After a troubled turn toward crime, McCurdy was killed by law enforcement in a shootout in Oklahoma in October 1911 following a botched train robbery.

Because no one claimed his body, the undertaker in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, embalmed it using heavy arsenic-based preservatives and put the corpse on display at the funeral home as “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up,” charging visitors a nickel to view him. The preserved body proved popular, and over the next several decades McCurdy’s mummy passed between carnival shows, sideshow exhibits, wax museums, and other attractions across the country.

By the 1960s and ’70s the body had become so neglected that most people assumed it was just a realistic mannequin. It eventually ended up painted and hung as a spooky prop inside the Laff-in-the-Dark funhouse at The Pike amusement zone in Long Beach, California.

In December 1976, while a crew was filming an episode of the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man at The Pike, a stagehand noticed that a hanging “mannequin” was strangely brittle. When he moved it, an arm broke off, revealing real human bone and muscle. Investigators confirmed it was a mummified human body—the long-lost remains of Elmer McCurdy.

When investigators examined Elmer McCurdy after his body was discovered in the Long Beach funhouse, one of the most unsettling findings was inside his mouth. Wedged deep in his jaw were foreign objects placed there during his sideshow years—including coins that had been stuffed into his mouth by carnival handlers

After identification, McCurdy was finally buried properly in April 1977 at Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma, ending a strange journey in which his corpse had traveled far more widely than he ever had in life.

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