2023-04-30 17:00:00
Written by
On 30.04.2023 at 07:00
Modified on 30.04.2023 at 7:00 p.m.
The life of train robber Elmer McCurdy came to an abrupt end in 1911. However, his mummified body was the subject of real trafficking which took him to famous film sets.
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Simultaneously absurd, creepy and haunting, it’s a story that has everything of an urban legend. Yet the wanderings of Elmer McCurdy are completely true although their accuracy varies according to the sources, the main one being a biography signed by Mark Svenvold: Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw.
The life of this American born in 1880 in Maine is worthy of a real western. He grows up surrounded by his two parents but discovers at the age of 10 that his mother and father are actually an uncle and an aunt. His true parent, too young to raise him, abandoned him and his biological father did not recognize him.
This shock pushes him quickly into alcohol. He also decides to find a new family with the American army in which he engages for 3 years. Discipline, strategy, handling weapons and explosives… back in civilian life, he uses his skills to become an outlaw and join a band of Oklahoma bank robbers.
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Only, his group of robbers looks more like the Daltons than the 7 mercenaries. In their misdeeds, they plan to attack a train and seize a chest containing 40,000 dollars. McCurdy, decides to open it with nitroglycerin but reduces the entire booty to ashes. To make up for it, they relaunch the operation but take the wrong convoy and leave with the tidy sum… of 46 dollars. His head put on a price, the broken arm is tracked by the police who go back to his ranch one day in October 1911 and kill him with a bullet in the chest.
A mummy carried across the United States
For anyone, this fatal gunshot would have meant the end. But not for Elmer McCurdy whose body is not claimed by any relatives and ends up in the hands of the local undertaker. The gravedigger happens to be an expert in arsenic embalming. He decides to put his art at the service of the criminal and the work is so well done that he exhibits the mummy in his store as proof of his expertise. Even better, he charges the visit to the most curious and the attraction is so successful that it begins to attract covetousness.
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In 1916, two half-brothers of Elmer McCurdy finally surfaced to claim the remains and offer him a funeral. It’s a twist, the two relatives are actually fairgrounds and make the corpse (acquired for free) the centerpiece of their traveling circus that crisscrosses the United States. Having become a show business professional in spite of himself, McCurdy changed owners several times: a director used it as a set piece during a preview, the curator of the Crime Museum added it to his collection, a props man even gave it a horror movie role She freak released in 1967.
An arm breaks off in a ghost train
The crazy epic of the stiff ends in 1976. At that time, his journey was so dark and chaotic that everyone forgot that he was a real corpse. No one is surprised to see him emerge from the darkness on the ghost train at the Long Beach amusement park in California.
It is also the time of a cult series, the man who was worth three billionwho takes over the park for the filming of his episode Carnival of spies. For the needs of a scene, a technician decides to move what he believes to be a dummy but in the process, an arm comes off and reveals a human bone. Stupor.
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Poor Elmer McCurdy finally arrives on the table of a medical examiner who dutifully examines the body and discovers, in his mouth, an admission ticket for the Museum of Crime as well as a 1 cent coin dated 1924. These few elements have made it possible to retrace his incredible journey which ended 66 years following his death in a cemetery in Oklahoma. 300 anonymous people attended his funeral and a concrete slab was poured over his coffin to deter malicious people from relaunching his career.
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