Elmer McCurdy

Elmer McCurdy (January 1880 October 7th 1911) was an outlaw killed in a gunfight in the Osage Hills in Oklahoma. A newspaper account gave Elmers last words as Youll never take me alive! His body was taken to a funeral home in Oklahoma. When no one claimed the corpse, the undertaker embalmed it with an arsenic-based preservative and allowed people to see The Bandit Who Wouldnt Give Up for a nickel, placed in Elmers mouth, which the undertaker would collect later. Five years later, a man showed up from a nearby traveling carnival claiming to be Elmers long-lost brother wanting to give the corpse a proper burial. Within two weeks, however, Elmer was a featured exhibit with the carnival. For the next 60 years, Elmers body was sold to wax museums, carnivals, and haunted houses.

The owner of a haunted house near Mount Rushmore refused to purchase him because he thought that Elmers body was actually a mannequin and not lifelike enough. Eventually, the corpse wound up in The Laff in the Dark funhouse at the Long Beach Pike amusement park in California. During filming of the The Six Million Dollar Man shot in December 1976, a crew member was moving what was thought to be a wax mannequin that was hanging from a gallows. When the mannequins arm broke off, it was discovered that it was in fact the mummified remains of Elmer McCurdy, who was finally buried in the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma on April 22nd 1977, with 2 cubic yards of concrete over his casket so his remains would never be disturbed again.