Departures of note

Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw killed in a 1911 shootout in Oklahoma, spent the next 65 years as a traveling exhibit. His embalmed body, preserved with arsenic, was displayed in funeral homes, carnivals, and sideshows before ending up as a 'wax mannequin' in a California funhouse, where it was discovered by a television crew in 1976.

McCurdy was born in Maine in 1880 and raised by his aunt and uncle after his unmarried teenage mother gave him up. He worked as a plumber and miner, but alcoholism made it hard to hold a job. In 1907, he joined the U.S. Army, where he was trained to use nitroglycerin for demolition—a skill he later applied to robbing banks and trains.

After his discharge in 1910, McCurdy turned to crime. His robberies were often botched: he used too much explosive and destroyed a safe's contents, failed to breach another safe, and once stopped the wrong train, escaping with just $46, whiskey, and a conductor's watch. In October 1911, a posse tracked him to a ranch near Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and killed him in a shootout.

Undertaker Joseph Johnson embalmed McCurdy's unclaimed body and put it on display, charging visitors a nickel to see 'The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up.' Two men posing as his brothers later took the body, and it passed through carnival owners, a wax museum, and finally to The Pike amusement zone in Long Beach. After its discovery, forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow positively identified the remains, and McCurdy was buried in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1977, with concrete poured over his casket to prevent further theft.