Futility Closet - 118-The Restless Corpse of Elmer McCurdy

Episode Date: August 22, 2016

  In 1976 a television crew discovered a mummified corpse in a California funhouse. Unbelievably, an investigation revealed that it belonged to an Oklahoma outlaw who had been shot by sheriff's deputies in 1911 and whose remains had been traveling the country ever since. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the postmortem odyssey of Elmer McCurdy, "the bandit who wouldn't give up." We'll also reflect on a Dutch artist's disappearance and puzzle over some mysterious hospital deaths. Intro: In 1922, mechanical engineer Elis Stenman built a summer home with walls of varnished newspaper. Winston Churchill's country home Chartwell must always maintain a marmalade cat named Jock. Sources for our feature on Elmer McCurdy: Mark Svenvold, Elmer McCurdy, 2002. Robert Barr Smith, "After Elmer McCurdy's Days as a Badman, He -- or at Least His Corpse -- Had a Fine Second Career," Wild West 12:1 (June 1999), 24-26. United Press International, "Amusement Park Mummy Was Elmer McCurdy, a Wild West Desperado," Dec. 10, 1976. Associated Press, "Died With His Boots On," Dec. 11, 1976. Associated Press, "Wax Figure Maybe No Dummy, May Be Old Outlaw's Mummy," Dec. 12, 1976. Associated Press, "Elmer McCurdy Goes Home to Boot Hill," April 23, 1977. Listener mail: Alexander Dumbadze, Bas Jan Ader: Death Is Elsewhere, 2013. Jan Verwoert, Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, 2006. Brad Spence, "The Case of Bas Jan Ader," www.basjanader.com (accessed 08/18/2016) (PDF). Rachel Kent, "Pun to Paradox: Bas Jan Ader Revisited," Parkett 75 (2005), 177-181. Wikipedia, "Bas Jan Ader" (accessed 08/18/2016). Richard Dorment, "The Artist Who Sailed to Oblivion," Telegraph, May 9, 2006. (We had referred to a collection of Ader's silent films on YouTube. Unfortunately, this has been pulled by Ader's estate.) This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Steven Jones. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a house made of paper to an immortal pussycat. This is episode 118. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. This is episode 118. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross.

In 1976, a mummified corpse was discovered in a California funhouse, and an investigation revealed that it belonged to an Oklahoma outlaw who had been shot in 1911. In today's show, we'll trace the surprising post-mortem adventures of Elmer McCurdy, the bandit who wouldn't give up. We'll also reflect on a Dutch artist's disappearance, and puzzle over some mysterious hospital deaths. I have to thank listener Scott Brooks for suggesting this one. In December 1976, a TV show called The Six Million Dollar Man was shooting on location in a funhouse ride in an amusement park in Long Beach, California. In the episode, an East German rocket scientist was planning to shoot down an American plane using a ground-to-air

missile that had been installed in a carnival ride, which tells you pretty much everything you have to know about that show. The carnival ride was called Laugh in the Dark, and it was a pretty standard horror ride of that time in which guided cars would pass through the dark past an assortment of horrors. One of these was a mannequin hanging from the wall with a noose around its neck, and the whole mannequin had been painted this strange day-glow orange color. And the workers on the TV show who were setting up to film in the amusement park ride found that it was very light, this mannequin, and stirred in a slight breeze. Someone guessed that it was made of paper mache, and a worker named Chris Haynes pulled on one arm, and it came off in his hand, to his

surprise. Underneath, the exposed area was not plastic, as you'd expect to find in a mannequin, but dark and textured, and at the center of it was something that looked like bone, and in fact, it turned out that this body was a completely desiccated, mummified human body, which shocked and horrified everybody. A police detective took this severed arm to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner and presented it to a senior deputy medical examiner there named Joseph Choi, who determined that, in fact, it was a human arm. He judged it based on its dark brown color to belong to someone of South American, Indian, or Mexican extraction, but couldn't be sure.

He thought that perhaps it had been smuggled across the border and sold to a medical school at some point. No one even knew how old this thing was when it was discovered. At his order, they collected the whole body from the funhouse and delivered it to the coroner's office, and they did an autopsy on it. At the autopsy, Choi wrote that the nose and facial features appeared to be Caucasian, and that the decedent had been in his mid-30s or 40s at the time of his death. And then a whole laundry list of very strange things came out in the autopsy. First of all, there was a Y-shaped incision above the clavicle, which showed that the body had already been autopsied at least once previously. No one knew when. He also noticed a

small dimple just to the right of the right nipple, which at first they thought might have been made by a chest tube from a tuberculosis patient, as the body seemed to date from about the 19th century, so that may have happened to him at some point. But it proved in fact to be a gunshot wound. They never found the bullet, but they did find the copper jacket belonging to one, and that turned out to be of a type that had first been used around 1905 and last used just before World War II. So there's this growing window of evidence or shrinking, I suppose, that tells them when the body must have been killed. And interestingly, they tried to x-ray the body but found that it was opaque. At some point,

it had been packed with a radio-opaque material, which turned out to be arsenic, which it turns out was once used in embalming and isn't anymore, so that helped them further narrow the window of when this man had died. It turned out then that he'd been shot apparently in the chest sometime between 1905 and 1930. The bullet had traveled, had entered his chest, but then traveled down through his abdomen, so he'd either been fired on from above while he was standing, or he'd been lying down and the bullet had been traveling horizontally. But that's all anyone knew.

A couple more oddities. In his mouth, they found a penny dated 1924, as well as several ticket stubs, one reading, Louis Sonny's Museum of Crime, 524 South Main Street, Los Angeles. It sounds like a bad detective novel. Sounds like an incredibly bad detective novel.

This occasion, they reported this to the public, and they occasioned a whole lot of newspaper coverage, as you can imagine, and some people speculated some connection to an unknown Oklahoma outlaw whose name had been Elmer McCurdy. McCurdy had been born in Washington, Maine, and discovered at the age of 10 that he was illegitimate, which his family said made him unruly and rebellious. He'd made a promising start as a plumber, but lost work in an economic downturn and eventually

headed west from Maine and reached Iola, Kansas in 1903. A local paper described him as, quote, an industrious young man who had gained access to the better society circles of Iola and classed among his friends many of the well-known people of the town. But his employer at a plumbing shop there noted his addiction to drink, and during one drunken conversation with another plumber, he admitted that he was living under an alias because he'd killed a man in a barroom brawl in another state. This may not have been true, but it was enough to get him fired.

So he bounced around through a succession of other occupations. He mined zinc in Missouri, then joined the U.S. Army in November 1907, was stationed back in Kansas. In 1910, he got an honorable discharge and started to apply. He'd worked with explosives in the Army and started to apply those to a life of petty crime. He participated with varying success in the robbery of a general store, a bank, and a train. A lot is made of his career as an outlaw just because it makes the story better. He was not much even of an outlaw. He robbed only two trains altogether in his career. The first train holdup was planned in Oklahoma with a small gang of men and took place just over the Kansas line near Coffeyville.

That went relatively well, so they recruited some more men and tried to hit another train, and this one they bungled a bit. tried to hit another train, and this one they bungled a bit. What they had hoped to do was rob a train that carried a periodic payment from the United States to the Indian tribes in Oklahoma. They undertook this on the night of October 6, 1911 in northeast Oklahoma. They stopped the train, uncoupled the engine and the express car from the rest of the train, and then searched it and found only $46, which even in 1911 wasn't much money. It turned out they'd stopped the wrong train. They should have waited a little bit longer. So they just gave up the whole thing as a bad job, and McCurdy fled through the Osage Hills, drunk and ineptly covering his tracks. The train's conductor reported the attempt,

and a posse of men and bloodhounds tracked him to the farm of Charles Rivard, where he, by that time, was sleeping in a barn, and three sheriff's deputies who found him there decided just to wait until morning before they confronted him. There are a lot of different accounts of what happened that morning, some of them more glorious than others. Some say he said, you'll never take me alive and things like that. I think probably the most accurate is the most mundane one. This is a quote from a deputy sheriff. It began just about seven o'clock. We were standing around waiting for him to come out when the first shot was fired at me. It missed me and he then

turned his attention to my brother, Stringer Fenton. He shot three times at Stringer and when my brother got undercover, he turned his attention to Dick Wallace. He kept shooting at all of us for about an hour. We fired back every time we could. We do not know who killed him. But one of them did kill him. One of these whizzing bullets happened to hit him, and eventually he stopped firing, and when they approached the barn, they found that he was just lying there dead. He was taken to the funeral parlor in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, which curiously didn't bury him. The owner of the funeral home, Joseph Johnson, later claimed that he was holding the body in lieu of payment for services performed. But the fact is that in those days, the bodies of outlaws were seen as outside the law and were often exhibited, photographed, and otherwise placed on public

display. It was sort of accepted that you could do that with someone who had been a criminal in life. As I said, the media made more of McCurdy than he was after he had died, and he became a sort of post-mortem celebrity. Hundreds of people trooped through Johnson's undertaking rooms to view the body, and no one identified him. At this point, no one knew for sure who he was. Johnson said, quote, Every showman or street carnival that came to town tried to buy the body for show purposes, but they were advised it was being held in the hope that relatives could claim it.

That may be so, but it was also great free advertising for Johnson, who had hundreds of people trooping through his otherwise empty funeral home. Johnson photographed McCurdy lying in a wicker basket and added a quantity of arsenic to his embalming fluid, which was enough to preserve him for decades, as we have already learned. So it's like he was more successful in death than anything he'd managed to do in life. Yeah, it's a strange story. His life was pretty unremarkable. Yeah. But it gets very remarkable now. Life was pretty unremarkable.

Yeah. But it gets very remarkable now. Finally, William Root, who was his old employer from Iola, Kansas, the one who had fired him for claiming to have killed a man, identified him, came down from Kansas and identified him. And Johnson dressed him in formal wear and combed his hair. And they took a second photograph sort of officially presenting him with his now acknowledged identity and saying he'd been shot by a sheriff's posse near Pawhuska in October 1911. And the case was closed. So at least now they knew who he was. But they couldn't really bring themselves to bury him at this point, I guess because it was still so lucrative as an attraction.

Six months after the shootout, Johnson's son noted that they, quote, saw the body could be stood on its feet, and as the embalmed bandit, they had already become an object of local interest. We dressed him in the clothes he had worn in his last fight and stood him in the corner of our mortuary. So he's past invisibility over this. Instead of being perceived as a dead person who's headed eventually for the grave, now he's just a perpetual curiosity. He's just an exhibit.

Yeah, exactly. And in fact, his body lay, or rather stood, in the Johnson Funeral Home for five years and just became a local celebrity there. In 1916, two men arrived, one claiming to be McCurdy's long-lost brother, who was weeping and said he had come to honor the dying wish of their mother to bring home her wayward son back to Maine. They somehow got the approval of the sheriff and the county attorney, so Johnson had to give them the body. In fact, they turned out to be James and Charles Patterson, the owners of the Great Patterson Carnival shows, A Traveling Carnival, and they took him, instead of taking him to Maine, they took him to West Texas on the road with the carnival, which was a caravan of

rides and human curiosities. They billed him as the Oklahoma outlaw and toured the country with him, in fact, covering about 6,000 miles each season, and he was viewed over that time by tens of thousands of people. In 1921, carnival owner Louis Sonny, whose ticket stub was eventually found in his mouth, obtained the body as security on a $500 loan that was never repaid. Sonny bought a casket in which to display him as part of a traveling wax museum of crime. That was successful, and Sonny toured him up and down the West Coast for a few years. By 1927, he'd been on the road for more than a decade, and Sonny got tired of touring, so he established a wax museum in Los Angeles, and McCurdy was displayed there, and when money was tight, he was toured up and down

the West Coast a few more times. In 1928, Sonny added McCurdy to the sideshow accompanying the Bunyan Derby, which we told about in episode 102, which again, if you haven't heard that one, was a transcontinental foot race from the West Coast to the East across the United States in 1928. That foot race brought with it a little, by all accounts, pretty pathetic sideshow that they would exhibit in the evenings as a way to make some money to cover the food and shelter expenses that they were spending on the runners. In that sideshow, McCurdy was dressed in outlaw garb and placed in an upright coffin alongside other sideshow exhibits, including a five-legged pig and a dog that talked with its ears. It just gets more and more undignified. Two years after that race,

McCurdy was spotted in Southern California by Joseph Johnson, the old undertaker's son, Luke, who was on a business trip. He was in a carnival in Ocean Park, and the pitchman said that McCurdy had drunk poison, which had fused with the acids in his body, mummifying it. So at this point, people are just making up stories about him, whatever will sell it. They might not even know. Yeah, that's true. So Luke had the goodness to correct him, and the pitchman changed his pitch, but they kept just exhibiting him for money. In the early 1930s, Luisani's museum in downtown Los Angeles went into decline, and he moved instead into exploitation films and deployed McCurdy's body in a film called Narcotic, warning audiences against the perils of drug abuse. In fact, they placed the corpse for a time in the lobby of theaters as a, quote, dead dope fiend who'd killed himself while surrounded by police after he'd robbed a drugstore to support his habit.

Oh, wow. It's not clear to me whether anybody regulates these things. This was in the 19... He was used in exploitation films from the 1930s through the 1960s. And it's an actual human body that's been embalmed with arsenic, but is just sort of being treated

to this object that anyone can sort of do anything with. Yeah. You'd hope these things would be... Some of this stuff would be illegal. He was kept in a storage room behind filmmaker David Friedman's office throughout the mid-60s after Narcotic.

He appeared in a few more films, one of which was called March of Crime, another called She-Freak. But mostly now he was used for children's Halloween parties and for practical jokes around the office. In 1968, he was bought by three Canadians who were displaying a collection of wax figures outside the World's Fair. Some accounts say that he was, they took him to South Dakota to display near Mount Rushmore. In fact, one of them told one author that he was too gross to display, and they left him behind in California. But in 1971,

they came back and assembled a haunted house of wax at the New Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, which is where we came in. One of them wanted to rig the body to twitch in its coffin in front of the house, so he took a drill to the foot. Quote, when I drilled a hole in the foot, some yellow, almost gooey stuff came out on the drill. And of course, at that point, I thought, my God, what have we got here? But he went ahead anyway. So they didn't actually realize that this was a cadaver. That's an interesting question.

In the beginning, way back in the beginning, when he was displayed in the Undertaker's parlor, it was explicitly presented as the body of a dead human being. But by the time he gets to the funhouse, certainly when the TV crew discovers him, no one imagined that this figure the body of a dead human being right but by the time he gets to the fun house certainly when the tv crew discovers him no one imagined that this figure had ever been a living human being so there's this invisible threshold he crossed at some point when people stopped understanding that this was a human being right and they thought it was like a wax figure or paper or something yeah but it's not at all clear to me even having researched this where that threshold is yeah i mean in the 1960s he

was displayed in theater lobbies as explicitly a dead dope themed so people thought that at least at that time true although they could have just still just thought he was a very good uh yeah that's your replication of a dead body i guess i don't know i guess different people yeah stopped realizing it at different times uh anyway this this man went ahead anyway and rigged up the body to twitch on the boardwalk, and that he did build as the 1,000-year-old man for a few more years. By 1972, the business was abandoned as the operators fled in default of unpaid rent, and the amusement park confiscated the body and put it for a year in the closet of an electrician named Ray Scott, who couldn't possibly have thought it was a real body by that time.

You would hope. He shared his apartment with McCurdy for about a year until the amusement park decided to revamp its laugh-in-the-dark funhouse using McCurdy as a prop, and that's where we came in. The electrician hung him near the ceiling, painted him day-glow red, and installed a switch that triggered a blue light. And he hung there for four years, until 1976 when universal

studios finally discovered him anyway after he was finally identified the corpse was returned to oklahoma and he now lies in guthrie oklahoma the old territorial capital under a couple of cubic yards of concrete to prevent anyone from resurrecting him again we run into that a few times they did with lincoln yeah uh and finally was accorded some measure of dignity after all these years from a newspaper account of McCurdy's April 1977 burial is this excerpt. A black glass-sided hearse drawn by two white horses took McCurdy's body from a funeral home in Guthrie, about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City, to the windswept cemetery where he was buried among several other Old West outlaws, including Bill Doolin and Little Dick West. That was in 1977.

So if you add all this up, altogether, Elmer McCurdy spent 65 years in freak shows and dusty warehouses. In other words, that's about more than twice his active life. His career after death, just wandering around the earth, was twice as long as his actual life. And I think if there is an afterlife anywhere, he must have spent 65 years just watching all of his body go through this whole parade of indignities. So I hope he's finally found some rest. This episode is brought to you by our patrons and by Harry's. You know how razor companies keep putting out new models and raising their already high prices? Well, our friends over at Harry's don't believe in upcharging. They've just made a bunch of improvements to their razors, and they're keeping prices exactly the same.

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for less. We've partnered with Harry's to give you $5 off your first purchase with promo code CLOSET. Go to harrys.com right now and enter code CLOSET at checkout to claim your offer. That's harrys.com and enter the code CLOSET. In episode 114, Greg told us about the disappearance of Donald Crowhurst, who set out on a solo round-the-world boating race and ran into significant difficulties, after which he attempted to fake his voyage and apparently began losing his sanity and likely committed suicide. Elliot Johnson wrote, Hello, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. I'm a big fan of your podcast and was delighted to hear your inevitable retelling of the Donald Crowhurst story. I wonder if you are aware of a Dutch artist named Bas Jan Otter, who in 1975 set out on a solo

voyage from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Falmouth, England, as part of a performance art piece called In Search of the Miraculous. Radio contact was broken three weeks into his trip, and he was never seen again. Several months later, a copy of The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst was discovered in his faculty locker at the university where he taught in Southern California. Thanks again for your incredible podcast and website. We didn't know about this and the connection to Donald Crowhurst, but this was an interesting story. Otter was from the Netherlands, but had emigrated to the U.S. in 1963 when he was 22.

He was a conceptual artist, and according to the 2006 article by Richard Dormant in The Telegraph, he was more of an artist's artist with limited popular appeal. In July 9, 1975, at age 33, he set off in a 13-foot sailboat on a solo transatlantic voyage that was intended as a piece of performance art. As Elliott noted, radio contact with him was lost after three weeks, and he was never seen again. His partially submerged boat was discovered off the coast of Ireland the following April, but it gave no clues as to what had happened to him. Brad Spence, an artist who curated the first U.S. retrospective for Otter in 1999, said, Initially, Otter's disappearance met with nearly unanimous

skepticism. Even those close to the artist interpreted the event as a fabricated stunt perfectly in keeping with his sly cryptic approach to art and life. Spence notes that Otter was known for being enigmatic and that he had been described as one part prankster and one part brooding melancholy European. Finding the copy of The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst in his locker added to the speculation that Otter's disappearance was either a hoax or perhaps an intentional suicide. Otter's widow said that after Otter's disappearance, someone wrote that Otter had said he might disappear for three years and then return. She didn't believe that that's what was going on, but in the back of her mind,

she kept thinking that she would give him three years to show back up, and if he didn't, then she would finally believe that he really was dead. Other sources note that she was always convinced that Otter had intended to reach England. She said that he had thoroughly researched his trip, had taken with him navigational books, a camera, a tape recorder, and notebooks to record his experience. Also, the voyage was only part two of a three-part performance piece. There had been a choir performance of sea chanteys the night before he left, and Otter had arranged a similar

performance to take place in Amsterdam after his arrival there as the final piece of the whole work. She also reported that they had had several conversations about the trip while he was planning it, and he had repeatedly insisted that his intentions were straightforward. In Dorman's article in the Telegraph, he notes that some of Otter's works can seem clown-like or absurd until you know more of his biography. For example, one of Otter's works consists of two photographs shown side by side. In the first, he is standing in a forest clearing looking directly at the camera. In the second, he is lying face down on the forest floor.

Another is a photograph of all of his clothes randomly spread on the roof of his house. Dormant notes that Otter was born in 1942 in Northern Holland. His parents had used their home to hide Jews from the Nazis, and when Otter was just a few months old, his father had been arrested and taken into the woods and shot. Dormant says that with this knowledge, the photos of Otter in the forest look like a reenactment of his father's execution. Otter's mother wrote a book about her life during the war and wrote that the Germans gave her 15 minutes to gather her things and leave the house, during which time she ran through the house flinging

clothes out of the window with the hopes of returning for them later. Dormant says, knowing this, the photo of Otter's clothes thrown onto the roof of his house no longer looks like a piece of whimsy, but an act of homage to his mother. That really changes everything, but you have to know it. You do have to know it. And I wonder if you know that was some of Otter's limited appeal in his lifetime was you just see these things and don't know what to make of them necessarily, unless you know this whole biographical underpinning possibly.

Otter's mother also wrote that when Otter had realized that his father wasn't ever coming back, he said to her, Mama, please don't leave me. And this may explain one of Otter's pieces of installation art that basically consisted of his scrawling the words, please don't leave me on a gallery wall. And again, that wouldn't really maybe make a lot of sense unless you know the history. But if you do know it, it's really poignant. Otter also made a number of silent black and white films. In one, he sits on a chair perched on the peak of his roof and allows himself to fall, rolling down and off the roof. In another, he hangs from a tree branch until he loses his grip and he drops into a stream

below. There's one of him steering a wobbly bicycle into a canal, one of standing in a strong wind that eventually blows him over, and one of him struggling to lift and then hold a heavy rock until he eventually drops it. Another film titled I'm Too Sad to Tell You is several minutes just of Otter crying. Dormant says, whatever else is true about Otter, I think it is safe to say he was a profoundly depressed man. It is in this light that we should see the films in which he falls from a roof, a tree, or into a canal. In order to fall, you have to let go, to lose control, just as you must if you allow yourself to feel the full force of overwhelming grief.

In a superb documentary film, Rene Daldor has made about Otter's life and work, it is suggested that the act of crossing the Atlantic in such a small boat was another way to lose control to place himself at the mercy of a force greater than himself perhaps he let go of the steering wheel surrendering himself to the ocean as he had surrendered to the force of gravity we will never know and we it's funny too that the title of it you said was, was In Search of the Miraculous. I mean, that's sort of ambiguous, too. That is, yeah, In Search of the Miraculous. And I wonder what you were intended to read into that. It could be a piece of performance art, or it could be suicide, or it could be both.

Yeah. I mean, his wife felt pretty convinced that it wasn't a suicide. But, I mean, I wonder what you classified if it's sort of an unintentional or only semi-intentional suicide i mean if you set off on this little teeny boat i don't know yeah if it was just an accident that's terribly ironic then that well it's like his artistic background that it would look ambiguous you know yeah yeah well i mean and like dormant said perhaps he just let go of the steering wheel and let go, you know, whatever would happen would happen, sort of like some of the films that he made. It is always frustrating to just have to say, well, we'll just never know.

Yeah, but I suppose we won't. Some of Otter's silent films are on YouTube, and we'll have a link in the show notes to one collection of them for anyone who wants to see. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. And if you have any questions or comments, please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd sounding situation and I have to figure out what's actually going on, asking only yes or no questions.

This is from listener Stephen Jones. Okay. There are a number of mysterious deaths in a hospital. After someone in the hospital dies of natural causes, however, the mysterious deaths stop. Why? Okay. Did this actually happen? Sounds like it did. No, he says it's based on an urban legend. Ah, it's based on an urban legend. Okay. There are a number of mysterious deaths in a hospital. Does it matter, were the deaths affecting a particular demographic group? I'll say no. Okay. You know, like newborns or the elderly or women versus men. I think I'd have to say no. You didn't? Okay. The people that died, did they have any characteristic in common among all of them? Yes. Okay. Were the people who were dying hospital patients? Yes. Oh, okay. Hospital workers were dying. That would have led off to

so many interesting things. Okay. So some of the hospital patients are dying in what's considered mysterious circumstances. Yes. And then somebody dies naturally, the person who was the perpetrator? Oh, okay. The person who died, was that a hospital worker? The person who died of natural causes? Yes. Yes. Yes. So somebody was contributing to all of these deaths, and then that person died of natural causes, and the mysterious death stopped. For that reason, yes. Yes. Okay, so I have to work out. Okay.

Do I need to know what job role the person who died of natural causes had? Yes. Yes? Of course you do. I don't know how you do this. Yes. Was it a doctor? No.

A nurse? No. Somebody in administration? No. A nurse? No. Somebody in administration? No. A cleaning person? Somebody who would be responsible for cleaning? Yes. Okay.

Was the cleaning person doing something accidentally? What even led you to ask that question? You said a doctor, a nurse, someone in administration, and then went immediately to a cleaning person. Anyway, yes. Well, because I'm trying to think like who could potentially... Well, I'm just imagining scenarios in which a cleaning person could do various things that would actually lead to deaths. Carry on. Okay. So just to be clear, the cleaning person was doing something unintentionally? Yes.

Okay. Right. Wasn't purposely going around poisoning people or something. Okay. So see, I came up with in my head lots of things you could do in a cleaning capacity, so now I just have to figure out which one. Okay, were the deaths caused by some form of poisoning? No. Were the deaths caused by some form of electricity being cut or diverted from important equipment? Yes. Okay, so the cleaning person was like unplugging plugs

that shouldn't have been unplugged. You're laughing at me. Do you know how long it would take me to solve this one? I thought I had one that would slow you down. Go ahead. So the cleaning person was unplugging something that shouldn't have been unplugged. Yes.

Like to plug in a vacuum cleaner or something. Yes. Okay. Three minutes and 11 seconds. Is there more to it? Do I need... I mean, the cleaning person was unplugging vital... Unplugging what?

Life support equipment to plug in a vacuum cleaner. Yes, that is exactly right. Stephen writes, this is based on an urban legend. A janitor working at the hospital was, unbeknownst to him, unplugging patients' life support systems in order to plug in his vacuum cleaner. After the janitor died of a heart attack, of course, the other deaths stopped. You just zero right in on these things. I don't understand how you do that.

I don't always. I just do sometimes. Well done. Well, thank you for sending in that puzzle to us. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, whether or not anybody dies, we managed to find a very fatal puzzle, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. If you've been finding that lethal lateral thinking puzzles are an enjoyable part of your day and you'd like to chip in and help support our show so we can keep on bringing them to you,

please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. We are really grateful to everyone who pitches in to help keep Futility Closet going. If you're looking for more quirky curiosities, check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample more than 9,000 sapid beguilements. At the website, you can see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the always impressive Doug Ross.

Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.