Elmer McCurdy’s dead body had more fun than he did
Elmer McCurdy was only 31 years old when he was shot dead and killed by the cops after he robbed a train in Oklahoma in 1911, which was the last in a long series of botched robberies he made. After McCurdy was killed, the sheriff decided to sell his body to a carnival owner, who…mummified it. While it might sound extremely macabre (and it is actually), this was what they used to do during carnivals in the 1920s and 30s.
The carnival owner that bought McCurdy’s body would put it on display as an act called “The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive”. Unfortunately, the poor body ended up in a warehouse, where it remained until 1968. In time, people thought it was a wax figure, so the body was later sent to the Hollywood Wax Museums, and then to an amusement park in California.
However, during the production of “The Six Million Dollar Man”, which took place in the same amusement park, McCurdy was discovered, and one of the crew members discovered that the wax figure was in fact a real body.
