The Ride
McCurdy
Born in Washington, Maine on January 1, 1880, Elmer is the son of 17-year-old, unmarried Sadie McCurdy (his father is unknown). To save the mother, child, and family the embarrassment and shame of raising an "illegitimate" child, the boy is adopted by Sadie's brother George and his wife Helen, and grows up believing his mother is his aunt (a scenario that will one day also beget serial killer Ted Bundy). The truth of Elmer's origins are exposed when George dies of tuberculosis in 1890, truth that suddenly turns McCurdy into a rebellious and unruly youngster that has a drinking problem by the time he is a teenager. Despite issues with his birth, moving in with his grandfather, Elmer becomes an apprentice plumber and competent worker until he loses his job in 1898, his mother dies of a ruptured ulcer in 1900, and a month later, his grandfather passes away from Bright's disease. Leaving Maine, McCurdy wanders the East Coast, taking jobs as a lead miner and plumber that he inevitably fails to keep due to his alcoholism. Eventually he drifts out west, finding plumbing jobs in the Kansas towns of Cherryvale and Iola, and in Webb City, Missouri. In 1907, he joins the United States Army and is assigned to Fort Leavenworth, where he is made a machine gun operator and trains in the use of nitroglycerin for demolition jobs. Honorably discharged by the Quartermaster Corps in 1910, having difficulties once more in finding and holding down a job, in St. Joseph, Kansas, with an ex-Army friend, McCurdy decides to go into the burglary business, but is arrested before the pair pull off a single job. Found in possession of chisels, hacksaws, funnels for nitroglycerin, gunpowder, and money sacks, the men are put on trial, but elude jail time when they claim the items are needed for the foot operated machine gun the pair are trying to invent. Released by a jury in 1911, McCurdy changes criminal directions and decides he is a train and bank robber ... occupations at which he proves to be a total failure.
McCurdy
Incorporating his supposed talents with nitroglycerin into his robberies, in March of 1911, trying with three other bandits for a $4,000 payday from the Iron Mountain-Missouri Pacific railroad, Elmer uses too much explosives on the safe of the train and destroys most of the money inside, leaving the outlaws only $450 in silver coins, most of which have been melted together by McCurdy's blast. In September of 1911, the explosive "expert" and two bandit buddies attack the Citizens Bank of Chautauqua, Kansas, taking two hours to break into the business. Inside, an inept Elmer this time doesn't use enough explosive on the targeted safe and the outlaws flee with only $150 in coins. Hiding out in the hayloft of a friend (Charlie Revard) on a ranch outside of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, drunk almost every day, McCurdy is back in action in October, near Okesa, Oklahoma, this time after a $400,000 royalty payment for the Osage Indian Nation carried in the safe of a Katy Train. A bungled job again, instead of hitting the correct Katy, McCurdy and two confederates hit a passenger train and leave with $46 they steal from a mail clerk, two demijohns of whiskey, an automatic pistol, a coat, and the train conductor's watch (a local newspaper will call the job "one of the smallest in the history of train robbery."). Returning to his previous hideout after the job, McCurty, now with a $2,000 reward on his head, is unaware that a posse is on his trail (in no small measure due to Elmer drinking the contents of the stolen demijohns). Tracked to the Oklahoma ranch by bloodhounds, on the morning of October 11, 1911, Sheriffs Bob Fenton, Stringer Fenton, and Dick Wallace surround the hayloft and demand Elmer's surrender. Drunk, sick with tuberculosis (which he has developed from his mining days) and a mild case of pneumonia and trichinosis, McCurty instead fires on first on Bob Fenton (a single shot that misses), then sends three shots at Stringer Fenton (all misses), before firing at Dick Wallace (again missing). Battle on, for the next hour the lawman exchange bullets with Elmer, before someone finally gets lucky and stops the badman with a round that finds the outlaw's chest. Dead at the age of 31, Elmer is brought to Pawhuska, Oklahoma and turned over to undertaker Joseph L. Johnson for embalming and burial ... an end that is actually a beginning for McCurty.
McCurty
Embalmed, shaved, dressed in a suit and ready for burial, instead of going into the ground, when no one claims the body and Johnson finds himself unpaid for his services, the undertaker decides to make some money by displaying the body in his funeral home holding a rifle (it costs a nickel to look at the corpse). Billed as "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up" (the failed desperado over the years will also be called "The Oklahoma Outlaw," "The Mystery Man of Many Aliases," and "The Embalmed Bandit"), the money making cadaver eventually gets the attention of various carnival operators that seek to buy the body, but Johnson refuses to sell. In 1916 however, he releases the body to McCurty's long lost brothers, Aver and Wayne for transportation to San Francisco and burial there, two gentlemen that prove to actually be con artists James and Charles Patterson. Beginning an odyssey that will have the corpse visit more of America than most living people do, instead of going to San Francisco, Elmer is routed to Arkansas City, Kansas where it becomes a featured attraction of the Pattersons' traveling carnival (the Great Patterson Carnival Show) until 1922. Sold to Louis Sonney in 1922, Elmer next goes on display as part of another traveling show, this time one called the "Museum of Crime,' featuring wax dummies of famous outlaws like Bill Doolin and Jesse James. In 1928, McCurty becomes part of the official sideshow that accompanies that year's inaugural Trans-American Footrace (199 runners that leave the Legion Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles on March 4, 1928 at 3:30 in the afternoon, bound for Madison Square Garden in New York City ... a destination only 55 runners will reach). Acquired by director Dwain Esper, Elmer next surfaces in movie lobbies showing Esper's exploitation film, "Narcotic," as an example of what a "dead dope fiend" looks like (by this time the body is mummified). Still belonging to Louis Sonney, when the carnival promoter dies in 1949, the body goes into storage in a Los Angeles warehouse. The year 1964 sees the body lent to director David F. Friedman and McCurty makes a brief, uncredited appearance the movie maker's 1967 film, "She Freak." In 1968, Sooney's son Dan sells the body and other carnival artifacts for $10,000 to Sapuran "Spoony" Singh Sundher of the Hollywood Wax Museum, who in turn, sends Elmer off to be exhibited by two Canadian men at a show at Mount Rushmore. At the national memorial, in an unexpected windstorm, McCurty loses the tips of his ears along with his fingers and toes. Returned to Singh, the body is deemed now to be "too gruesome" for exhibition, and is soon sold to Ed Liersch, a part owner of the Long Beach Pike. Covered in wax and paint, name for the moment forgotten, Elmer is shocking "LAFF IN THE DARK" riders by 1976.
Elmer
Singh And Wax Marilyn
Identified, several local funeral homes offer to bury McCurty free of charge, but officials decide to wait to see if any living relatives will put in a claim for the corpse. None do, but when Fred Olds, representing the Indian Territory Posse of Oklahoma Westerns puts in a claim. the outlaw is released by Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the head of the Los Angeles Coroner's Department, to the state. On April 22, 1997, a funeral procession takes McCurty to the Boot Hill section of Gutherie, Oklahoma's Summit View Cemetery, where the fallen outlaw is interred next to outlaw Bill Doolin's grave before roughly 300 witnesses. And to make sure he stays there and goes on no more journeys, Elmer has two feet of concrete poured over his casket. Life rotten and dead travails pretty crummy too, hopefully Elmer is now finally resting in peace.
Noguchi
Tombstone
No comments:
Post a Comment