When His Death Was Stranger Than His Life

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I was watching some videos on YouTube the other day and became fascinated by something I heard so I began to research the life but even more strange death of Elmer McCurdy. Elmer was born to a single mother in 1880 In Maine. He was raised by his uncle. By the time he was a teenager he was an alcoholic. He had many arrests, mostly for being drunk. Tired of going to jail he decided at age 27 he would join the Army. This was the first time in his life that he actually did pretty good at something. He learned about explosives while in the service. After 3 years he was honorably discharged. He moved west and settled in Oklahoma. He decided with his new learned skill of explosives he and his posse would rob trains and banks. Problem was Elmer didn't know everything there was to know about explosives. Could be his drinking hindered his memory of how to use them. In one robbery attempt he blew the safe up burning all the money inside it. In another attempt, the explosives didn't explode so he grabbed a handful of coins from a register and left. He thought maybe he would have better luck robbing trains. He and his posse set their eyes on a train coming in that had government money, $400,000 to be exact, on board. Problem was Elmer read the train schedule wrong so when the first train came in, they boarded it and realized it was the wrong train. This train had mostly whiskey and some scared passengers. They left with the whiskey and $46. His posse split and Elmer took the whiskey and hid out in a farmer's barn. Awakened by the sound of bloodhounds Elmer vowed he wouldn't be taken alive to go back to jail. In the midst of a gun fight with the police, Elmer was fatality shot and killed. He was 31 years old. His life was sad, filled with bad choices. But after he died, he didn't fade into obscurity. No, no, Elmer's bad luck in life certainly followed him in death. Going to the funeral parlor, the mortician decided he would use a special embalming fluid which will keep a person looking like themself for a longer period of time, knowing Elmer had no next of kin in Oklahoma that he knew of. He was right, no one came to claim Elmer's body, no family, no friends. The mortician was proud of the job he did on Elmer, so one day he propped Elmer up in a standing position in the corner of the parlor. He noticed people came to gawk at the outlaw and he began to charge a nickel to take a look at him. In time two men claiming to be brothers of Elmer showed up to claim his body. Problem was Elmer was an only child, he had no siblings. The men were James and Charles Patterson who owned a traveling carnival show. They made Elmer one of their top shows. Elmer wound up in California. The Patterson brothers would eventually sell Elmer's corpse to a company that used him in a traveling museum of crime, propping him up in movie theaters. In time people became less interested in seeing the corpse of a dead outlaw. So Elmer wound up in storage for about 20 years. You think this would be the end for Elmer. Not yet. The Hollywood Wax Museum bought his remains and would display him. But he was caught in a windstorm and parts of him began to fall off, his fingers, toes and such. In 1976, 65 years after his death, Elmer found himself on the set of The Six Million Dollar Man. While recording an episode, a crew member noticed that an arm had come off a dummy they were using. Shock and horror overcame the man when he realized what he had was an actual human arm, not a mannequin. The producers did research of where this "dummy" came from and realized they had bought the human remains of Elmer from the operator of the ‘Laff In The Dark’ ride in Long Beach, California. They would send Elmer's remains back to Oklahoma in 1977 to Boot Hill where other outlaws were laid to rest and held a funeral for him. For the first time in his life, and death, Elmer was shown true love. Have you heard of this story before? Have you read any true strange stories lately? I have always been fascinated by these stories.