Young Elmer was born in Washington, Maine in 1880 to Sadie McCurdy in unfortunate circumstances. His teenage mum wasn't married and in the interests of decency she gave her son to her brother George and his wife to be raised in a conventional family. This should have given young Elmer a reasonable start in life, but it proved to be the first of a series of very unusual events.

There is little more known about Elmer's early life other than he was pretty peeved when he was eventually told the truth of his circumstances. On discovering the deceit he turned to drink in an effort to make sense of his perceived predicament. What is clear is that alcohol didn't help, in fact it helped him to decide to run away aged only 15 and become an unintentional celebrity.

Life of Crime

Elmer tried his hand at a few things like plumbing and mining before enlisting with the army. He served for three years and gained some practice with explosives before leaving to pursue other interests.

Alcohol continued to fuel Elmer's dreams so, unsurprisingly, having failed miserably in finding a suitable occupation he began to look for an easier route to fame and fortune.

Elmer, with his friend Walter Shapelrock, embarked on a mission to relieve the locals of their possessions which landed them both in court on burglary charges. In what should have been a stroke of luck, Elmer was let off, but while awaiting trial he became acquainted with another Walter. This one, Walter Jarrett, had prospects as a bank and train robber and came complete with his own gang.

Jarrett introduced Elmer to his cronies as an explosive expert and his fate was settled when they embarked on a series of comedic attempts at safe-blowing. Nitroglycerine was their safe-key of choice; unfortunately, this resulted in comments like 'You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off'.

Yes, safe-blowing just wasn't as easy as blowing things up with the army had been, and Elmer, or Missouri McCurdy as he was then known, was a spectacular failure. Most of his attempts resulted in the money being blown to smithereens or, in one case, the silver coins being melted together in a clump.

Jarrett, McCurdy and the gang's last big job proved to be another comedy of errors. They did successfully board a train and tidily blow the safe - to gain the embarrassing sum of $40. The train they were aiming for containing $400,000 wasn't due until a full 24 hours later. This should have been the sign that Elmer needed to realise he was in the wrong line of work; but instead he decided to drown his sorrows in Oklahoma.

Unfortunately for Elmer, the drinking session ended with him unconscious in the upper storey of a barn where he was easily tracked by a pursuing posse. Having little or no time to consider an escape plan, he followed the trail of many before him and decided on the shoot-out. Not surprisingly this ended abruptly with him catching a bullet. His body was taken to Mr Johnson, the undertaker at Pawhuska where it was embalmed and stored to await a family member to claim it, pay for the service and bury it.

That should have been the end of the story for Elmer McCurdy, born 1880, died 7 October, 1911 - but like everything in his life, if there was a plan, it didn't come to fruition.

What the...

Fast-forward now to 1976. Lee Majors was the star of the popular TV show The Six Million Dollar Man, which had quite a following among the children of the day. He also provided considerable eye-candy for the ladies, but what does the story of Elmer have to do with Lee Majors? In truth, very little; but the production of the show has plenty to do with it.

In 1976 the show was preparing a shoot at the Nu Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California. One of the production hands was adjusting an exhibit in the Laff In The Dark Funhouse when the lower arm of the mannequin came off in his hand. Not normally a problem, this particular hanging exhibit had a skeleton within its luminescent orange  skin, and no-one was laughing.

The police were called and the exhibit removed to the coroner's office for examination.

Fortunately, the body had been delivered to Dr Noguchi - a sort of Quincy to the stars - and he wasn't going to be thwarted by the state of the remains. It was indeed the mummified body of a man, complete with a nice little package of internal organs. Closer examination revealed that a previous autopsy had taken place and a bullet had been removed, but the victim remained a mystery. X-rays were unreadable due to the damage caused by the amount of arsenic used in the embalming. This was a significant clue, since that method ceased to be popular after the 1920s, so it dated the corpse to before then. The police breathed a sigh of relief.

The remains also gave up some other clues, a 1924 penny and some old ticket stubs from a Los Angeles Museum of Crime. This gave the investigation somewhere to start and further investigations revealed that the remains probably belonged to Elmer McCurdy.

Dr Noguchi was a stickler for detail, though, and wasn't prepared to sign-off on this corpse until he was satisfied that identification was definite. A stroke of luck produced some photographs taken shortly after Elmer's death, and these were sent to the laboratory where comparison overlays were made with photos of the corpse, and bingo! The painted orange exhibit was, beyond doubt, the late Elmer McCurdy. Cause of death homicide, albeit legal homicide.

Life After Death

It transpired that Elmer's family hadn't been too keen to collect his body from the Oklahoma morgue, and he stood propped in the corner there for quite some time. Rumour has it that the undertaker even took to charging a nickel a peep in order to recoup his costs, but being a professional he refused steadfastly to sell the body to the carnival.

Some five years later two 'brothers' turned up, paid up and removed the body, but they were in fact the owner and manager of the Patterson Carnival Show. Elmer was on show around the West for some years. The remains were eventually sold to Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime. Mr Sonney charged the public a quarter a time to view his Museum. Some years later the remains were deemed 'not lifelike enough' and sold on¹ to continue their travels until their discovery in 1976.

After many paint jobs the corpse had become less human-like and more like the mannequin it was assumed to be, but the good folks of Oklahoma owed Elmer a burial. He finally came to rest in Guthrie's Summit View Cemetery, Oklahoma in 1977 where the grave was covered in cement to ensure it would remain his final resting place. His grave is in the north-east corner of the cemetery alongside another outlaw in their very own 'Boot Hill'.