Elmer McCurdy: The Wild West Outlaw Who Became a Mummy

In the lead-up to the Christmas of 1976, the cast and crew of the hit television show The Six Million Dollar Man was in Long Beach, California, shooting an episode at The Pike amusement park. One scene involved a shootout in a funhouse between the bionic hero of the show and an evil German spy. The art director, wanting to create a spookier atmosphere for the shoot, started rearranging some of the props, including an old spray-painted dummy with a noose around its head. For the previous four years, the dummy had been hidden away in a dark corner, swinging from the gallows, barely noticed by the carts full of scared passengers that rushed past him.

As the art director picked up the dummy, one of its arms snapped off. Not surprising, really. It was old and crummy and made of brittle wax…Except that it wasn’t. As the crewmember got a closer look at the fallen appendage, he noticed a real human bone surrounded by tissue poking out. The dummy wasn’t a dummy at all, but a mummified person.

This might sound like an urban legend, but it is absolutely true. The police were called in and the discovery was initially treated as a possible prank. Things only got weirder as the corpse made its way to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. It had sustained numerous injuries and mistreatments over the years, unsurprisingly, and it had shriveled down to a lean fifty pounds. But the cause of death was likely the copper-jacket bullet still lodged in its chest, dating to the early 20th century.

After about a week of unusual leads and bizarre questions, detectives uncovered the true identity of the body - he was Elmer McCurdy, a turn-of-the-century criminal who got killed in a shootout with the law after robbing a train in 1911. But that still begged the question - how exactly did a Wild West outlaw get mummified and end up as a prop in an amusement park funhouse?

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Further Reading:
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/elmer-mccurdy/
https://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/04/11/the_corpse_of_elmer_mccurdy_and_how_it_ended_up_in_a_long_beach_fun_park.html
https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/unbelievable-true-story-of-elmer-mccurdy-16507858.php
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/38/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/42/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/44/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/44/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/46/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/56/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/58/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/82/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/elmermccurdymisa0000sven/page/94/mode/2up?view=theater&q=chautauqua
https://archive.org/details/elmermccurdymisa0000sven/page/106/mode/2up?view=theater
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/elmer-mccurdy/
https://www.npr.org/2015/01/09/376097471/the-long-strange-60-year-trip-of-elmer-mccurdy
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/156/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/168/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/174/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/180/mode/2up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/careerofelmermcc0000basg/page/196/mode/2up?view=theater
https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2018/07/elmer-mccurdy-traveling-corpse/
Richard J. Basgall - The Career of Elmer McCurdy, Deceased

Mark Svenvold - Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw

https://www.npr.org/2015/01/09/376097471/the-long-strange-60-year-trip-of-elmer-mccurdy

https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2018/07/elmer-mccurdy-traveling-corpse/

https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/elmer-mccurdy/

https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/unbelievable-true-story-of-elmer-mccurdy-16507858.php

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