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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.
And I'm Ash. And this is M -O -R -B -I -D.
To the O, to the R -M, wait.
i was like ahhh m to the o to the r -b -i -d morbid we need to clip that shit right out pulled that up m to the o to the r - m -o I was like, whoa, we have another M.
They said mormbid. Mormbid, it's mormbid, everybody!
I was thinking D to the E to the L I C I O U S, and I was like, that's my inspiration.
Obspiration! So I was like, M to the O to the R to the B to the A to the D.
Oh my God, spelling mormbid.
Heh -heh -heh. Sometimes you're just a crazy bitch. Sometimes you are.
Sometimes you're just an illiterate bitch and this is one of those times.
You know I just I don't really know what happened.
Okay. You know it kind of fits with this wild tale that I'm about to tell.
Tell us about it? Um just the the kookiness of it all.
The misspelling of it all?
The misspelling of it all.
Oh, you know, so this is good.
Take that the fuck off.
You did it. That was such a good reaction.
I just had a sunglasses headband all day.
Do you guys ever just like do that?
You put your sunglasses on and then you go inside and you put them on your head and you never take them off.
I just remembered I had mine on my head so I just put them off.
She just slowly put them on. I was ready for you to tell me a cool case.
A cool case. She said, take those the fuck off.
You got those the fuck off.
That was the fuck off.
That was so funny. That was very decoded.
Yeah, it was very last coated.
It really was. I don't know why, we're like super goofed today.
it's just it's the end of the week you know yeah it's the end of so many things and for getting of other things good news yeah good news maybe we're just feeling a little silly goofy good news good news good news that's all they want to hear yeah uh Mac and we're gonna talk about Elmer McCurdy the outlaw mummy okay uh who doesn't want to talk about an outlaw mummy yes signed me the phone let's go girls this is a crazy one it's a wild one he was like a really bad criminal and I mean bad in the way that like he wasn't good at being a criminal oh ok no I wanted to be but he was not that's kind of fun
so that gets silly he was bad at being a criminal very bad at being bad so on the morning of December and this and here's the thing we're gonna start in the end of the story and go back, because the end is really the like, wait what?
Excuse me, yeah. I love starting at the end sometimes.
Don't we all? We haven't done that in a while.
We haven't. So on the morning of December 8, 1976, the crew - It's my half birthday - There you go.
Even the year. Yes.
You know? The crew of The Six Million Dollar Man, which was a popular science fiction series starring Lee Majors, began setting up for a day's shoot at the pike, which was, and Blanche just She was like, love that place.
She said great flick.
It was a family amusement area along the boardwalk in Long Beach, California.
The segment was going to be called The Carnival of Spies.
And it was supposed to take place inside one of the park's funhouse fright attractions - That's fun.
Which was called Laugh in the Dark.
Wall in the dark. Which also reminds me of the Are you afraid of the dark episode, which also that episode fucked me up.
With the scary clown with the cigar?
Yes. F*** that. Oh so scary.
Uh so the ride was basically like one of those little like Tunnel of Love kind of rides at amusement parks.
But, where like two people would ride through, it's dark in there.
Share a small car. Small car, but this had an emphasis on the scares instead of the romance.
Or maybe both if you're that type of person.
I love being scared.
Yeah. So that's pretty romantic to me.
There you go. You know.
I love that. Yeah. So all morning, prop master, Chris Haynes, had been loading props from, for the scenes through the back entrance of the ride and at one point he came across a mannequin and it was hanging from a fake gallows you know just one of the scenes.
he'd already heard about the mannequin from several other members of the crew because they had spotted it earlier in the week and commented that it was like kind of bizarre it had a weird glow -in -the -dark paint job and they were like it was really light like weird it just felt strange when you like moved it okay some guessed that it was made of balsa wood Others were thinking it was just paper mache, but Chris was like, I don't know about that.
Like I don't think it's either one of those things, and he's like, this looks like really real.
Which like, ugh. And he's like, I don't know if this is just like a really well done mannequin or what.
Imagine having that feeling, that's terrifying.
He was curious, so he approached the mannequin and he grabbed one of the arms and he pulled it off accidentally.
Which like if it's a mannequin that could happen.
Yeah then, okay. So at first, he's like, okay, I've got to try to put this arm back on.
So he just like went to put it back on, but then he was like, wait a second.
And he looked inside and typical prop limbs will have clean cuts, like a solid cross section.
This though, was like dark and textured.
He said it was quote, almost shredded like beef jerky.
And in the center there was something that looked like bone.
No. I have a beef jerky stick today.
I hate that you just said that to me.
fuck that! Hey so Chris Hayes brought the arm over to one of the other crew members and asked what he thought it looked like he was like I'm not gonna tell you what I think it looks like but he said and the other man was like lunch yeah he was like that looks like a human arm and he's like definitely one that has seen better days but it looks like a human arm so the two guys approached what they had thought was a mannequin before and they leaned in for a closer look and this mannequin was unclothed, and it had been hung like really high up the wall.
So, it was really hard to see any details from down below.
Especially in the dark.
But when they got a closer look, they saw that it had male genitalia.
Oh. Because it's naked.
Just dick flying? Dick flying.
And it was far more detailed than any replica they had ever seen.
Oh, honey. Yeah. In fact, author Mark Svenvold, which we're gonna...
we'll put him in the show notes, he said this was not anatomically correct.
This was anatomical.
This was anatomy, the body itself.
A completely desiccated, mummified human body.
Shit, that's a different day at work.
Very different. So realizing that they were now dealing with an actual dead human body, Chris Haynes quietly went to get the off -duty cop who was hired by Universal Studios for the shoot, assuming that this cop would know what to do in this situation.
It's at this point that the story gets like kind of crazy.
Because as far as Haynes remembers he informed the officer who then reported it to the Long Beach police but rather than take the situation seriously at all, Chris Hayes remember that remembers that the officers use the situation as an opportunity for a prank.
What? They reported the situation to the paramedics as quote.
I'm not ready. A case of severe dehydration.
We just, like, really fucked up.
What the fuck? No, Ting, can you imagine?
Your job is to do something about this, like, and you're like— It's literally your job.
Let's have a lol. And you're like, this is hilarious that this actual human being has been hung inside of a haunt attraction for how— Who knows how long?
He's mummified. Let's make this an opportunity to have ourselves a little belly laugh.
People are insane. People have always been lawless.
Just always! That is lawless.
Like that's literally lawless.
I mean he is dehydrated.
But there, so here's the thing, so there's a lot of like, there's a little like urban legend -y feels about this part of it.
Because none of the officers who worked the case remember that prank occur.
Of course they don't.
But again - I don't know if they - Yeah we did that.
Yeah, that was pretty funny.
But whether they did it or not, there was a 12 hour gap in time between when he reported the body and the body being removed to the coroner's office.
Damn, that's a long time.
So given that the body was obviously not that of a recently dead person, no one was really in a hurry to disrupt the filming process for the shoot that day.
And they didn't wanna disrupt the daily operations at the Pike or other boardwalk businesses.
In fact, when the news did finally break in the papers the next day, even the investigators working the case were pretty happy to just like minimize the whole thing.
One investigator told reporters, the owners of the fun house thought it was just a dummy.
I can't myself, too much like Vincent Price.
Now, after being removed from the fun house, this body was delivered to the Office of the Medical Examiner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi.
As LA chief medical examiner at the time, he had been in that position since the early 1960s.
And Dr. Noguchi had conducted autopsies on some of the most iconic celebrities, really, in American history.
This includes Marilyn Monroe.
Oh, I was gonna say that name does sound familiar.
It does, yeah. Janis Joplin.
Oh, wow. Sharon Tate.
Oh. Yeah. It earned him a really yucky nickname, I would say the corner to the stars okay I don't know about that like can we just have a little decorum actually I know about that I don't like it like I know about it and I don't want to know about I wouldn't want to be called that no and also like I don't know it's just I don't like it I don't like it he's just the chief medical examiner can we just do it out like we don't need to we don't need to do that to like death industry employees like be like the corner to the stars.
Just let it be the corner.
It's wild. Yeah, it's not good.
Obviously this body was likely not a celebrity, but I will say, Dr. Noguchi took the same amount of care with him as he would with any of his high profile patients, you know.
According to the information they'd received from investigating officers, the body on the autopsy table had been found by the funhouse operators many years earlier, in a defunct wax museum.
Oh, this wax museum had wrapped it in brown gauze and advertised it as quote the 5 ,000 year old man.
Is that something? Yeah.
So the medical examiner quickly was like, yeah, he's not 5 ,000 years old.
Everybody don't worry.
And they said the, the corpse shows signs of post -mortem medical examination and has been embalmed.
So Dr. Choi, another doctor on the case wrote in his autopsy report, the body is completely mummified.
The nose and facial features appear to be Caucasian.
When he was alive, they thought he would be roughly five feet eight inches tall, maybe 150 pounds.
And Dr. Choi knew that determining the cause of death would help him kind of narrow down the potential timeline of when this man died.
So during the initial examination, the doctors discovered a small hole in the man's chest. They thought this was either a chest tube or a bullet wound, which I think are pretty valid guesses.
but when they X -rayed the body, the resulting image was completely white.
So this would indicate that the body had been packed with radio opaque material, making it impossible to tell anything from X -rays.
When they opened the chest cavity, Dr. Choi discovered the source of the material.
After the man was dead, whoever embalmed him had packed the body with arsenic to prevent further decay.
This was a common practice in Civil War era America.
Oh really? yeah but it had definitely like fallen out of you know being a common practice by the early 20th century but that was another thing that helped them date this because this put this man's death somewhere between the last half of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th damn i mean so we're we're starting to narrow it This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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It was the arsenic that had prevented the x -ray machine from showing anything.
But now that they were able to open them up, organs exposed, Dr. Choi saw that there was evidence of hemorrhaging in one lung and a perforation in the other this was indicating probably that he was shot in the chest oh wow um also since there didn't appear to be an exit wound anywhere they were thinking we're gonna find this bullet in the body yeah so they traced the path of the perforation from the entrance wound in the chest through the lungs then through the liver and dr choi found it lodged in the man's hip bone yeah like ricocheted yeah the bullet fragment lodged in this hip bone was anti
it was like an antique slug basically uh and apparently it was known as a gas check um it was this kind of like a slug was mostly phased out in the earliest early 20th century uh but gas check ammunition was a non -jacketed bullet that loaded from a high -pressure rifle or magnum revolver cartridge okay according to the LAPD ballistics expert Lee Crewman the bullet was fired from a 32 -30 caliber rifle, which he said was probably manufactured starting in 1905.
That meant that however this man like however this man had died it happened sometime between 1905 and probably the start of the World War II which was 1939 because that's when that kind of bullet was phased out.
Okay. This is so interesting to me.
It is. How they're dating this.
Yeah. Cause it's like they're looking at like the packing material.
Okay, this started in this time and it phased out here.
So now we've narrowed it a little.
This is really investigative work.
Now we find the bullet that was created in this time.
It phased out here.
We've narrowed it a little more.
Yeah. It's like, this is so cool.
It is fascinating. So they've again, significantly narrowed down the window of time when the death occurred, Dr. Choi was in seeing closer to finding the precise time now.
And it was the next step in the autopsy that proved most surprising and probably the more illuminating of anything.
When Dr. Choi removed the jaw, mandible and teeth for analysis by a dental expert, he discovered deep in the back of the mouth a corroded copper penny dated 1924.
And several ticket stubs.
One with an address for the Pike amusement park where the body was discovered and another for Luis Sunny's Museum of Crime, 524 Main Street, Los Angeles.
Throughout the 1920s and 30s, it was not uncommon for side shows and boardwalk businesses, other amusement park kind of things to display the mummified bodies of supposed Wild West outlaws and other criminals.
What? Yeah, they would just be like, come look at the mummy of this crazy outlaw from the Wild West. That's cool and strange and so interesting.
We've always been an interesting species.
I can say that. Based on the tickets found in this mummy's mouth, it appeared like that prior to his life in the laugh in the dark ride, he was probably part of one of these outlaw mummy shows.
So the next day, a statement from the ME's office appeared in the newspapers around the country, giving the cause of death, obviously shot in the chest, and requesting the public's help tracking down Louis Sunny or one of the relatives who might know the origin of the body.
The story moved super fast and within a day, the emmy's office received a call from Dave Freedman, the president of entertainment ventures, which was the parent company of Louis Sunny's museum of crime.
So he exclaimed immediately when he talked to the emmy's office, it's old Elmer.
So according to Friedman, the body was Elmer McCurdy, a small -time bandit who was gunned down by a sheriff's posse after robbing a train in Oklahoma in October 1911.
The way he just knew.
He said, oh, it's Elmer!
Oh, that's Elmer! Like, what the fuck?
So Friedman claimed that since no one had claimed McCurdy's body after his death, the enterprising sheriff at the time sold the embalmed body of the outlaw to the operator of a traveling carnival for display in their side show.
In 1921 Louis Sunney, the founder of entertainment ventures, quote obtained McCurdy's body in 1921 as security on a five hundred dollar loan that was never repaved.
Instead of five hundred dollars you get this guy.
For collateral you just get this dude.
Okay. Like what the fuck?
All righty bounties were different.
Yeah a little bit. Since then Elmer McCurdy's body was displayed in various sideshow and boardwalk attractions until the practice of displaying mummified corpses fell a little bit out of favor with the public around the late 1940s I'd say.
Alright. Took us a little bit.
Alright. Took us a little bit.
We said you know what this isn't great.
I did see a crazy kind of mummified body of a clown in California at the CIA. Welcome to the CIA. I don't think the CIA is a thing anymore.
Yeah I remember you telling me about that when I was probably like 9.
Yeah that was crazy.
It had like the it had all this like cool shit I I'm sure people in California probably know what this place was or is.
Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd.
Yeah it played like it was just like chaos in there like it was just a bunch of cool and random shit like very a lot of oddities and shit and I loved it yeah and it was playing The Wizard of Oz on all the TVs and playing Dark Side of the Moon, but like backwards to, to go with it.
And the vibe was just right in there.
But in a glass case was the supposed mummified body of a clown and he wanted to be like buried in his clown makeup and shit.
It was the most unsettling thing I've ever seen.
I bet. But it's like, it's like when it fell out of favor in the 1940s, I'm like, I saw one in like 2005.
So actually? I'm like, I don't know.
Asterisk, asterisk.
I saw one in the mid -early aughts.
I mean, I suppose if that's what you want.
Yeah, if that's what you want, then go for it.
Yeah. It's up to you.
It's your stuff. Go crazy.
So according to Friedman, after being taken out of the show, McCurdy's body was moved to a storage facility in Los Angeles.
It remained in storage until Dan Sunne, Louis's son inherited the company in 1968 and sold his Elmer McCurdy's body to the Hollywood wax museum, who in turn sold it to the new Pike amusement company where it was on display until it was discovered by the film crew while shooting an episode of the six million dollar man.
The way this mummy is just traveling.
He's been everywhere.
Uh, in the days after that, Dr Noguchi and his assistant at the Medical examiner's office conducted further analysis of the body to confirm or rule out whether this was in fact Elmer McCurdy.
Since there was no DNA testing available at that time, the doctor took measurements of the bones and had a sketch artist recreate a rendering of what this man would have looked like while alive.
Based on a few existing photographs of Elmer McCurdy that were provided by the Oklahoma Historical Society, actually, the doctor and his team were able to confidently confirm that the amusement park mummy was indeed the corpse of Elmer McCurdy.
Now, in a press conference held to announce this in April 1977, Dr. Noguchi stated that once the appropriate paperwork had been filed, the body would be released to the Oklahoma Historical Society and shipped to Guthrie, Oklahoma for burial.
The Historical Society spokesperson Fred Olds told reporters, Elmer will finally be buried at an old territorial cemetery with robbers and outlaws.
He was sidetracked for a long time, but we feel like he's part of our history.
So he's just buried among his brethren.
He has. A lot of outlaws.
Took me a minute to get here.
I also think it's kind of badass that there's just like an outlaw cemetery in Oklahoma.
Like where's that? I'd like to see it.
That'd be fun. Uh the identification of the new Pike mummy, that's what it was being called, seemingly brought this mystery to a close.
But it did nothing to answer a lot of the new questions in the minds of people who have read this story.
Who the fuck was Elmer McCurdy?
Tell me everything.
How did he meet this kind of end?
How did he end up here?
So Elmer McCurdy was born January first 1880 in Washington Maine.
He's a Cappy and he was born to an unwed mother Sadie McCurdy which of course in 1880 an unwed mother.
How dare she? According to author Mark Svenvold the identity of McCurdy's father, he never got to know that that's um but it was possibly Sadie's cousin Oh Charles Davis yukka so to protect Elmer from the embarrassment of having been born out of wedlock and potentially to his mom's cousin Sadie's brother George and his wife Helen adopted the boy at an early age in 1890 when Elmer was 10 years old George unfortunately died of tuberculosis not so nice so Helen and Sadie moved to Bangor, Maine to live with their older brother, Charles.
It was at this time that Sadie started taking a more active role in caring for Elmer, and not long after the two women revealed to him that Sadie was actually his mother.
Oh, it's kind of like Ted Bundy.
I mean, it's very Ted Bundy.
Understandably, this is very traumatic.
I can't imagine. Yeah, absolutely.
He had recently lost the man who he thought was his birth father his whole life.
And now he's finding this out.
Like that's a lot for a kid.
Not only is he finding out that this woman is not his mother, but his aunt, and that his mother, his aunt is his mother.
Yeah. And that now he actually is realizing he's never even known his father and won't.
And that it was his beloved uncle who died.
Yeah. That's just a lot.
Yeah. So according to Svenvold, those who knew McCurdy said this was the point that things turned for him.
Understandable. Caused him to become unruly and rebellious.
I too might become unruly and rebellious.
So within a few years, while very much still a child, Elmer started developing a drinking problem.
Oh God. That would follow him the rest of his life, unfortunately.
The first signs of big trouble came when he was arrested at age 15 for starting a bar fight near by Belfast, Maine.
Why was he in a bar?
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Why was he in a bar?
Why was he in a bar?
So after this incident, Sadie and Helen decided Elmer needed a stronger masculine influence in his life and he was sent to live with his grandfather Hardin McCurdy.
He did, Hardin McCurdy actually really did help him, he helped him find an apprenticeship with a local plumber.
This was a lot of structure, a new routine, and it actually seemed to suit Elmer, like he liked this kind of structure.
And by the time he was 18 years old, he had become an expert.
So, this was great.
It seemed to be working well.
The grandfather was good to him.
Got him on the straight and narrow, but he was short lived.
because in 1898, just as McCurdy was settling, you know, trying to get out on his own, the American economy took a downturn.
It's always going to do that.
One thing about the economy, she always is going to crash.
She's always going to crash out, you know, recession indicators is always going to happen.
So it really hit rural areas like Banger and like banger banger, banger man.
It hit it particularly hard out in the rural areas.
Yeah. So because of this recession, a lot of businesses are closing, millions of people are losing their jobs, thousands left their small towns and villages to find any kind of employment.
So not great to be setting out on your own in this situation.
So in Bangor, Maine, Sadie and Helen both lost their jobs and this hit Sadie really hard. She always was prone to anxiety.
So losing her job in this kind of recession was just not great.
right she developed an ulcer that she really struggled to keep under control yikes and in 1900 she ended up dying when it unexpectedly ruptured oh yeah and a few months later harted mccurdy died of brite's disease which was it's like an outdated basically generic term for inflamed kidneys oh essentially wow I think we can all agree that trying to save money and managing your finances is most of the time a really big headache.
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war. In the span of 10 years, Elmer McCurdy lost his who he thought was his father, his birth mother and his grandfather.
That's a lot of all of whom had played a very important part in his life.
Up until this point, like they were all like positive things in his life.
Yeah. And to make matters worse, after working hard to learn a trade and become an expert plumber, the recession had completely fucked that up.
Like he couldn't get any job.
These definitely left him like bitter, frustrated, and he turned to drinking even more.
So he decided there was not a lot left for him in Maine.
So he decided to go find something somewhere else.
And after leaving Maine, he kind of drifted around the East coast states for a few years.
Hopping train cars from town to town, trying to find work.
Occasionally he could find like temp work as a plumber or handyman, but inevitably his drinking would get the better of him.
And he would end up just getting himself fired.
yeah in 1903 he found himself in iola a small town in southeast kansas and about a decade earlier a large deposit of natural gas had been found under the ground there oh shit which is pretty interesting and it resulted in like a boom of new industry and a big increase in the town's once very tiny population so in response to this whole thing they're becoming a successful town now the town leaders went out of their way to erase any traces of this former like Wild West identity, they wanted now to present Iola as like this up and coming, you know, hub of industry, the future of Kansas.
So within a few years of discovering the resources under the land in Iola, they had transformed this place.
I mean, they paved the roads, invested in a telephone system, built accommodations and attractions, an opera house, a local branch of the YMCA.
It was the fucking happening town.
That's a fun place to go.
They had a lot to offer someone like Elmer McCurdy who's looking to start over.
And someone who is a skilled tradesman.
It's not like he's walking in there not knowing how to do anything.
So he was psyched about this.
And honestly the town was excited to have him, which is interesting.
They basically said it.
He arrived in town that year and in an announcement of several newly arrived citizens, the local paper described Elmer as, quote, an industrious young man who had gained access to the better society circles of iola who classed among his friends many of the well -known people of the town that's fun wait as a society why do we not announce newcomers in a paper that's what i'm saying do you remember being in school and they were they were like oh we have a new kid and you were like i'm gonna find them and befriend them immediately 100 with the newcomers in town yeah i'd be like i will sit with them
at lunch like let's be friends newcomers climb on let's start people excited to be like oh i'm just Yeah, look at me, I'm industrious.
Welcome to me, to your town.
I'm new in town. I'm new in town!
He gets a John Mulaney.
That would be so fun!
Yeah, I love it. I think we should write to our town.
I think it's adorable.
Um, unfortunately, this didn't last very long because - Womp womp.
Because Elmer struggles to keep things good for himself.
He's a self -sabotager.
It happens to the best of us.
Didn't take long for him to squander the opportunities presented to him by the people of Iola.
Not long after he came into town, he did find work as a plumber, but within a couple months, his alcoholism reared its ugly head and started causing trouble.
According to McCurdy's former employer, William Root, after a long night of drinking at a local saloon, Elmer claimed that he had killed a man during a bar fight in another state.
Huh. And rumors started swirling.
He did confront him about this, and was like, dude.
You killed someone?
Did you, like, kill someone, because, like, you can't work for me.
and he was like, no, I didn't.
I was just like boasting, but he had to let him go.
I was just boasting about murder.
Yeah, you know, like that's, that's bad too.
So McCurdy left Kansas in 1905 and hopped a freight car, eventually winding up in Webb city, Missouri.
Missouri. Webb City was also experiencing a boom in industry and population thanks to the discovery of the world's largest zinc deposit located underneath the town.
Elmer got a job the Davey mine company at a time when safety standards were lax if not completely absent there were a few dangerous jobs around but none quite as dangerous as being a fucking miner could get the black lung pop yeah you're gonna uh one could make a decent enough living as a miner because like yeah because you might die tomorrow yeah it's a trade -off the Train offs not great.
We'll pay you if you show up back from the mine.
Yeah, if you live through it.
Cave -ins were very common too.
Oh, God. McCurdy was on a team of muckers, the men who would collect the loose and chipped pieces of zinc into a cart and haul them back up to the surface.
The salary was about $2 a day.
The work would have been very grueling, very back -breaking and it would require him to shovel about 60 to 100 tons of ore into the cart by hand.
To make matters worse, the conditions were not ideal.
According to Svenvold, men were crushed by rockfall or blown to bits by overzealous applications of dynamite a lot.
Whoa. Also because hard hats had not been invented yet, head injuries were pretty common. Stop it.
In order to try to stop these, the miners were pretty industrious themselves.
They would wad up newspapers under their hats to cushion the blow falling apart.
Essentially inventing hard hats, everybody.
Yeah, so good on them.
But there were also other unexpected effects.
There was like endless amounts of zinc dust that was hanging in the air all the time from the drilling and blasting.
When breathed in for extended periods of time, zinc caused silicosis or miner's consumption.
It's a scarring of the lung tissue that would eventually lead to death.
Ooh, that's horrible.
Yeah, and after less than two years in the mines, Elmer McCurdy had developed a terrible cough.
He was short of breath a lot.
he constantly struggled with lung irritations.
They were pretty debilitating and it would stop him from doing his job eventually.
So that really wasn't his fault.
Yeah, no, not at all.
So he couldn't earn a living in the mines anymore.
And he was having trouble.
He went right back to like alcohol and but his savings were dwindling.
So he joined the US army in November, 1907, and he was sent assigned to company E third infantry stationed at Fort Leavenworth and Kansas.
So, on his enlistment papers, his previous occupation was listed as minor, not plumber.
And he had way more experience as a plumber and he was much more skilled as a plumber.
Maybe because of that, he was assigned to a program that trained soldiers in demolition.
Specifically, with various forms of explosives.
In addition to his training with explosives, he served as a machine gun detachment person and generally flew under the rea - I don't know what they're called.
Artillery men. Yeah, sure.
And flew under the radar pretty much for three years.
And in the spring of 1910 he was given an honorable discharge after his initial term and he chose not to renew his contract, and he was like, you know what I have some other ways that I can make a living like that was nice, fun little thing I did for three years.
So he left the military and he was gonna look for a new job but there was still that whole thing.
So competition was pretty stiff still.
After about two weeks of unemployment, he sent a telegram to his army buddy, Walter, I think it's Chopelery.
And he asked him to get a few days of leave to help him with a job.
Okay. So Walter managed to get a week long pass from the base and joined McCurdy in St. Joseph, Kansas.
On the night of November 19, 1910, Elmer McCurdy and Walter were walking down the main street in St. Joseph Kansas when they were stopped by three special officers for Burlington train line at the time it was pretty common practice in many towns for officers to stop unfamiliar men who they suspected of being like drifters or or some nefarious kind of you know suspects of something mm -hmm so they stopped them and they questioned them and then the officers noticed the large heavy bag that Elmer was carrying the officers insisted he they opened it and they looked in and found that the bag contained
a force screw, a door jimmy, assorted drills and hacksaws, chisels, a nitroglycerine funnel, gun powder, and a gunpowder funnel.
Just your typical, what's in my bag?
Yeah, what's in my bag.
Get ready with me. These were all tools that were commonly used by burglars and bank robbers at the time.
Yeah. So Elmer and Walter couldn't super explain why they were carrying such hefty quantities of burglar tools I just love screwdrivers they were like nefarious we are not but they were like okay cool what are you and they were like not sure not nefarious can't explain it but we aren't nefarious unnefarious but the officers could see right through that shit and in the affidavit filed for their arrest the officers asserted that the men were in possession of quote mechanical devices adapted designed and commonly used for breaking into vaults and safes oh no just two weeks out of the army and Elmer
has already been I am only two weeks.
Worse than that, he was facing felony charges that carried a sentence of between two and ten years in prison.
Yikes! Broke and unable to find either a lawyer or a decent explanation for why he was carrying burglar equipment, uh, he concocted a new plan.
On November 23rd, the day of his court date, Elmer wore his U .S. army uniform and headed into court.
No. So Elmer explained that no, he was not carrying the tools of a common burglar.
What was he carrying?
It's like, come on.
He said they were parts to an invention that he and Walter were trying to patent, a machine gun tripod that allowed the user to fire the gun with his foot.
Innovative. Elmer went as far as to ask for a continuance so he could subpoena his commanding officer, Captain Charles Murphy, who he claimed would testify to the veracity of these claims. you're not in the army anymore yeah so everyone on the court was like that's bullshit like I am sure of that and unfortunately I think he like overplayed no I know he overplayed his hand here because he actually subpoenaed Captain Charles Murphy oh and I don't think he thought this would go further than that I thought he would just be like, you know, kind of like, he won't love, and that would be fine.
But to Elmer McCurdy's surprise, when the arraignment resumed a few days later, captain Murphy appeared in court, and he explained, those bits of metal would have absolutely no use in any machine gun of mine.
Yikes. In response, Elmer McCurdy jumped up from his seat and lunged at captain Murphy and had to be restrained by the officers of the court.
This outburst, with the fact that Elmer was clearly lying about the tripod machine gun that you could use with your foot was sufficient enough evidence for the judge to return an indictment.
and a trial was scheduled for January 1911.
Understandable. Like his ejection from IOLA society a few years earlier, the arrest and indictment in St. Joseph was definitely another turning point for Elmer McCurdy.
It was yet another experience that made him just think, you know what, I don't belong in the polite society.
I belong amongst the criminals.
The criminals. As Elmer sat in jail awaiting his trial, he started making friends with the other inmates because he's Elmer.
You know? He got to do something.
Talk to her. Including a man named Walter Jarrett.
At the time of Elmer's arrest, Jarrett was serving a short prison sentence for a petty burglary conviction.
But he also had some experience robbing banks and had served longer sentences in the past so he was like not to brag Like many men his age Jarrett had, Jarrett had grown up idolizing the outlaws of the Old West you know Jesse James the Dalton brothers Men who had like bucked modern society standards and made a living, you know Just robbing, shooting, and being violent and riding horses.
Exactly and once he was grown and Walter Jarrett was determined to be just like his childhood heroes, which landed him in jail a lot.
So it was Jarrett who convinced Elmer McCurdy that if he was able to get out of his current predicament, you know, the two men, Jarrett and he they could experience, you know, they could maybe like do something together like, he's like, I can rob banks.
Like I've done that.
He's like you, Elmer McCurdy, we could do a really good collab here because I hear, I think you can explode things." He said, post for post. Like you went in the army and you learned how to blow stuff up.
That's pretty good for a bank robbery.
So they were like, let's do this.
First Elmer needed...
He was like, you know, at first deal with the charges against you and then we'll talk.
We'll go from there.
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So on January 30th 1911 Elmer McCurdy's case went before a jury in what everyone assumed was going to be a pretty fucking short trial.
But within the first day, it seemed like things might actually be working in Elmer's favor?
The prosecutor was only able to find one person who would testify against his machine gun defense.
But when that witness was shown the tools McCurdy was arrested with, he couldn't identify them as being the tools of a burglar or bank robber either.
Alright. Like basically, like I can't say they are and I can't say they aren't.
He said they're just tools.
Also, Elmer was able to find US Army officials who were willing to testify that McCurdy, was the best damn soldier in the whole damned army.
Yeah. What a compliment.
In the end, it all came down to a matter of reasonable doubt, and it's, I mean, nobody knows if the jury actually believed the tripod machine gun claim, but the prosecution was unable to prove that the tools were like a bank heist tool kit, and he was acquitted of the charges.
Okay, Elmer. Yeah. Following the acquittal, Elmer was free to go and immediately sought out Walter Jarrett to begin their life of crime, let's go.
And by then, Jarrett had already talked up Elmer to his brothers, particularly his experience in exploding things.
In the spring, the gang broke into a general store in Oklahoma and stole the ammunition and tools they needed for their first big job, which was robbing the St. Louis Iron Mountain Train.
Ooh. On a routine mail run in April, the gang caused a disturbance on the tracks which forced the train to come to a stop.
Once the train was stopped, the gang opened fire, showering the express car in a hail of bullets.
As the passengers on the train panicked, the Jarrett brothers entered the engine car and held the engineer at gunpoint.
In the meantime, Elmer entered the express car to blow the safe up.
That's where there would've been this large sum of money.
unfortunately Elmar turned out to be, you know, less of an expert than they were expecting.
Because remember he went into the army with, with lots of experience in plumbing, you know, like he could plumb.
He wasn't that great with explosives.
They just were like, sure, let's have you blow shit up.
Okay. So he was not great.
And, uh, the men returned to the train car to find that the explosives had been unsuccessful in opening the safe, but determined his Elmar, we will find out is nothing if not determined.
He tried again, but he was still unable to blow it up, likely because he had no idea what he was doing.
Yes. For more than two hours, the train sat motionless on the track as the inept robbers repeatedly tried and failed to blow the safe open.
Two hours? Meanwhile, the passengers are sitting there just watching these bumbling idiots try to open the safe.
Two hours is a long time.
Finally after an unreasonable long period of time, Elmer was able to get the door to the safe open.
I think I could have done it faster.
Exactly! But by that time, he'd blown an enormous hole in the side of one of the train cars.
What? And destroyed the interior of another.
And then when they entered the car to grab the four thousand dollars in silver coins that was awaiting them inside the safe.
And was that blown up too?
They discovered that the explosives had been so hot that it fused all the coins into a single shiny mass of silver and that single shiny blob of silver was stuck to the inside of the walls and floor of the safe.
It's a real bang -up job.
The men tried desperately to pry this loose, and then they saw the lights of an approaching car, so they just had to run and they just stole some of the passengers' watches on the way out.
They were like, well I gotta do something!
Give me a watch! I need something!
I would honestly be like, you need it more than I do.
I'd be like, you know what, do you want my earrings too?
I'd be like, you really...
you tried your best. You know?
Wow! Wow. Wow. First, you do not succeed.
Try, try again. Try, try again.
So, following that robbery, if you could call it that, Elmer McCurney and Walter Baker Walter, Jer, were immediately identified as the suspects and a thousand dollar reward was offered for the capture of either of them.
All the mistakes were laid at their feet, and honestly, it was laid mostly at their supposed explosives expert, and the gang made no secret that they were pissed.
Not long after the failed heist, a knife fight broke out between McCurdy and Jerrett.
Elmer got a deep cut on his arm and Walter's face was slashed.
The resentment ended up ruining the relationship between the gang and McCurdy, and they went their separate ways.
After just a few months though, Jaret's gang was all rounded up and prosecuted for their crimes and Elmer was remaining at large because they cut him loose.
On the run. Yeah, as a criminal now on the run, Elmer passed himself off as several different aliases like Charles Davis, Frank Curtis, um, and that's the one he used in September 1911.
no longer in the company of hardened bandits, he was definitely still determined to make his name as an outlaw.
He wasn't ready to quit, you know?
And by late September, he hooked up with a new criminal outfit and formulated a new plan to get rich. Let's go.
On the night of October 6, 1911, McCurdy and his new gang stopped Katy train number 29 near Ocasca, a small town in Northeast Oklahoma.
The gang had heard a rumor that the train was carrying $400 ,000, and it was supposed to be delivered to Osage Reservation in exchange for oil, and they set their sights on that money.
That's a lot of money.
Now determined to make up for the last failure, Elmer volunteered to take Point.
He was like, I want to make up for this.
Yeah. And after stopping the train on the tracks, Elmer set about decoupling the engine and the express cars from the other cars so that he could ride the train further down the tracks and make off with the money.
Okay. at first, things were going great.
The train stopped. They were able to get the cars unhooked, moving again, no problem.
But when the gang went to the express car to collect their loot, they discovered that Elmer had uncoupled the wrong car.
And they'd left the car with the safe miles behind them.
Oh no. So instead of getting $400 ,000, the car they'd stolen, only had about $45 inside.
They were pretty pissed.
Yeah! Deeply disappointed.
He is a bad criminal.
The gang split up and went their separate ways, but not before Elmer stole the conductor's watch and a bottle of whiskey.
I love that they all lit - In that moment, they were pissed.
They were disappointed and then they all just went, Fuck y 'all, and they all just went different ways and Elmer stole whiskey and a watch and was like, Peace.
Yeah. So now separated from the gang and he's walking on his own now.
Just left that whole shenanigans.
On a sad boy walk. Oh, true sad boy walk.
Elmer fled into the Osage Hills, but the law wasn't far behind.
The long arm of the law.
The longest arm of the law.
The area where McCurdy had fled proved far more difficult to traverse than he'd expected.
Not only was he completely unfamiliar with this region, but it was dense with thickets and ravines and he was also drinking whiskey the whole time, so he was sloppy drunk.
Or nor. Um, yeah. Just she wasted.
He's not only moving slowly, but he's doing absolutely nothing to cover up his tracks as he goes because he's just lit.
And he's probably not being quiet.
In fact, at one point he dropped the completely dropped the whole empty whiskey bottle on the ground, which gave the bloodhounds that were following him an opportunity to renew their scent.
In short time the sheriff's posse caught up with Elmer at a farm along the big Caney River where he was hiding out in a barn.
It was nighttime by then, and when they approached the barn, they found him sleeping in a large pile of hay.
He just passed right out.
I mean, yeah, you would after a bottle of whiskey.
So, they were worried about losing him in the darkness if they had, like, just jumped on him.
So, they just waited there until daylight to make the arrest, and at about 7am the next morning, three deputies approached the barn door making noise, so they woke him up from his sleep.
And when Elmer looked through the hole, he saw them and he didn't hesitate.
He just opened fire on them.
Uh, Bob Fenton later said he took shot at me first. Then he took a shot at Stringer.
After that, he took three shots at Wallace before we opened fire.
Elmer McCurdy had proven a poor explosives expert.
And as it turns out, it wasn't that great with a rifle either.
All five shots McCurdy took at the men standing less than 10 feet away from him.
Missed Elmer. The deputies retreated somewhat.
And for about an hour, the group traded gunfire, until finally one of the shots found its target hitting Elmer in the chest. And it sent the bullet obviously ricocheting into his hip, where it would later be discovered, decades later, by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
So the posse collected Elmer's body and brought it back to Pahooska with them.
That is a fun town name, I like it.
Where they handed it over to the owner of Johnson's, the local funeral parlor.
Knowing that no one was going to come claim the body, the undertaker saw an opportunity to make some money.
So he treated the body with an acidic compound creating the situation that would allow the body to be mummified over time and after that Elmer was stored in the back room of Johnson's where the proprietor charged a nickel for people to come look at him as he was billed as the bandit who wouldn't give up.
What?! You know that's so nice.
It's sweet. They were like he tried, tried, tried again.
You know what he did?
He was a little bandit who could.
He was! toot -toot. We really couldn't, but, um...
Pay a nickel, you can see the bandit that wouldn't give up.
Dang. To The Undertaker's surprise, five years later, a man came into the funeral parlor saying he was McCurdy's long -lost brother.
What? And he tearfully begged The Undertaker to give Elmer's body back to him so he could give him a proper burial.
That's fake as fuck.
Not wanting to run afoul of the law The Undertaker was like, absolutely you can have the body.
Take your brother. It was only later that he learned that this long -lost brother was in fact the owner of the traveling carnival who tricked him into handing over his sideshow star.
Trickery. And so it was that Elmer McCurdy entered the carnival and sideshow circuit getting past from one traveling show to another until he finally ended up hanging in the Laugh in the Dark ride at The Pike in Long Beach. Curly Pop, that was a tale.
For the most of his life, he had tried and failed to make a name for himself.
First as an upstanding member of society, then as a hardened bandit and train robber.
but it was in his death that he finally achieved the notoriety that he felt he deserved.
Once all the paperwork had been signed and filed after he was discovered, Elmer McCurdy's body was released to the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Indian territory posse of Westerners that's the like name of it.
Yes. And in April 1977 Elmer McCurdy was finally laid to rest at Boot Hill Cemetery in Guthrie, 66 years after a bullet fired from the Osage County Sheriff's Deputy ended his life.
Wow. And that is the tale of Elmer McCurdy, the outlaw mummy.
Sister. What a journey we just took together.
I think that story slaps.
That is a slap on the story.
Wild tale. I think it's Elmer is a character for sure.
Yeah, I would say so.
So, I feel bad for his beginnings because I think it really colored the rest of his life and it looked like he got, you know, you feel like he got into the cups and it took him away from being an upstanding member of society and he just couldn't catch a break.
And don't be dramatic.
And he just wasn't good and he wasn't even good at being bad, that's the thing.
I don't think he was meant to be a bad guy.
He was destined to be good.
Yeah, he was destined to just like be Elmer, you know.
Just be a cool plumber.
But it's sad what happened to him after.
I know, it is sad. And it's really wild that that was able to happen for so long.
Sure is. So what a world.
Yeah, that's the tale.
Well, crazy tale. With that being said, we hope you can't blow some of them.
And you should because that's a crazy tale.
There's more where that came from.
And we hope you... ...keep it weird. ...but not so weird as Elma.
As Elma! But as Elma.
Come on! Don't keep it so weird as Elma!
Come on, Elma! That's crazy.
That guy is a freakin' crazy guy.
A freakin' crazy guy.
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Last year, Long Crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation.
She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe, with her car.
Karen Reid is arrested and charged with second degree murder.
The six -week trial resulted in anything but resolution.
We continue to find ourselves at an impasse.
I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
But now the case is back in the spotlight, and one question still lingers.
Did Karen Reid kill John O 'Keefe?
The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reid is innocent.
How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen?
I'm Kristin Thorne, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen the Retrial.
This isn't just a retrial, it's a second chance at the truth.
I have nothing to hide.
My life is in the balance.
And it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this.
It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen the Retrial, exclusively and ad free on Wonder E+.
