08/07/2025
Ever heard the story of outlaw train robber Elmer McCurdy? An unconventional criminal, to say the least, McCurdy spent the majority of his final few years in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma – including Osage County. Born in 1880, McCurdy worked through his teenage years as a plumber until losing his job during an economic downturn in 1898. After both his mother and grandfather died a couple of years later, McCurdy became a heavy drinker and began drifting around the country.
From 1907 to 1910, he served in the U.S. Army where part of his training (a small part) included the use of nitroglycerin. After his discharge, McCurdy began a new career – in robbery. He decided to make use of his (limited) training with explosives in this new line of work, but he usually failed to calculate the correct payload, so his heists were often badly botched affairs. For instance, during one train robbery he used too much nitroglycerin to blow open the safe, melting down the $4,000 worth of silver coins inside and fusing them to the safe’s interior.
His final robbery occurred on October 4, 1911, when he tried to knock over an MKT Train carrying $400,000 in royalty payments bound for members of the Osage Nation. In what the papers later described as the “smallest train robbery in history," McCurdy and his accomplices mistakenly stopped a passenger train instead, and were only able to make off with $46, a bit of whiskey, and some trinkets stolen from the conductor. Local law enforcement caught up to McCurdy a few days later as he hid out on a ranch near Bartlesville, and the outlaw was killed in the ensuing shootout.
McCurdy’s remains were delivered to the undertaker in Pawhuska, where he was embalmed and prepared for burial while awaiting word from his next of kin. When no next of kin could be found, the undertaker stood the body in one corner of his funeral home and for the next several years attempted to recover the cost of his services by charging visitors a nickel each to see “the bandit who wouldn’t give up.” In 1916, two men claiming to be McCurdy’s long-lost brothers showed up to collect the remains and took his body with them. These men were not any relation to the bandit, however, but the owners of a traveling carnival called the Great Patterson Carnival Show.
For decades McCurdy’s co**se was sold, traded, displayed, and moved all across the country among a variety of businesses and individuals until it wound up in a Los Angeles storage warehouse. Now essentially mummified after decades of exposure and desiccation – weighing about 50 pounds and standing just over five feet tall – the body was soon found and assumed to be a wax figurine for use in film and television productions.
In 1976, the body was in use on the set of the hit series The Six Million Dollar Man when one of its arms was accidentally broken off. The presence of human bone and muscle tissue, as well as a few identifying scars found during the resulting medical examination led to the discovery that these were in fact the remains of Elmer McCurdy. The body was returned to Oklahoma a few months later, and McCurdy was buried next to his fellow outlaw Bill Doolin in the Boot Hill area of Guthrie’s Summit View Cemetery.
Having finally been laid to rest, for years McCurdy’s story was largely forgotten. Then in 2024, the premiere of the new off-Broadway musical "Dead Outlaw" brought it back to life. Directed by Tony-winner David Cromer, this dark comedy explores both McCurdy’s unproductive life as a bandit and his much more successful post-mortem career as sideshow attraction and stage prop. Dead Outlaw moved to Broadway earlier this year and has won or been nominated for more than 30 awards.
Plan your next big trip to Osage County, where you never know what kind of amazing story you might discover next! You can find information on places to stay, things to do, and more on the rich tapestry of history to be explored here at https://www.visittheosage.com/
