The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 69 - Very Dead Elmer McCurdy

Episode Date: March 25, 2015

Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine Oklahoma criminal Elmer McCurdy and his travels. SOURCESTOUR DATESREDBUBBLE MERCHPATREON

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read a story from American history to my friend Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is about. Nor does he know his name. Gareth. Gareth is my fucking name. Gareth is my goddamn mother fucking name. Gary! God do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary, Gareth.

Dave, okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to tickle you quite good. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle.

And do what? Hi, Gary. No. I see you've done, my friend. No. No. No. Um, good.

Good for you. Way to keep that. So that's a good order to do it in. That was good to be on top of things like you just were. Thank you. And what's nice is I know you mean that. January 1st, 1880. Oh, the 80s.

Elmer McCurdy was born to an unwed teenage mother 17-year-old Sadie McCurdy whose family gave the infant Elmer to her brother George and his wife to raise okay so what you did back then yep hide the shame give him a horrible name give him to your brother George died of tuberculosis in 1890 awesome so when he was 10 that's cool for him when he was a teenager Elmer was told was a 10 30 on the 6th oh shows at 10 30 on the 6th 10 30 p.m. but he was a teenager Elmer was told his aunt was actually his mom which he did not take well most don't McCurdy grew resentful and became quote unruly and rebellious he began to drink heavily

and eventually ran away okay he tried several jobs working as an apprentice plumber and then with his grandfather's as a plumber okay he was into the pipes yep so he must have come back but then an economic downturn came and he was laid off then in 1900 his mother died of a ruptured ulcer not soon after his grandfather died of kidney disease so everyone's just fucking toast this fun time for him he left his hometown and started drifting around what else are you gonna do yeah names Elmer you've got no one fucking drift he got jobs as a plumber and a minor but he had a hard time holding down a job because of his

drinking I like Dave I'm gonna say this right now mm-hmm I like the elements that are in play so I'll come together I like what I'm hearing yeah there's always there's always a weird a weird death in the family a death of someone at a young age yeah always leads to something super impactful at a young age that's negative and then it leads to drinking and then it leads to fun and there's gonna be good good decisions made I'm excited to hear what Elmer's doing in 1905 he was arrested for public intoxication which how hard is it in 1905 to get arrested for public intoxication have to be oh my god fucking a

liquor bottle yeah so drink my drink whiskey in 1970 joined the US Army like that's next what else is he gonna do that's what you do bro he was assigned to Fort Leavenworth McCurdy was a machine gun operator and was trained to use nitroglycerin for demolition purposes okay I will just say again uh-huh there's a buzzword yeah I think we're gonna be talking about soon he was honorably discharged on November 7th 1910 after leaving the Army McCurdy and friend Walter Shappell Rock were arrested for possession of tools used for burglary those tools included chisels hacksaws funnels for nitroglycerin and gunpowder

and money sacks wow I mean money sacks is like they just read a comic book I assume that it's just a big sack with a dollar sign on the side if it's not I'll be extremely let down and on the other side it says for stealing yeah yeah for stealing money McCurdy and his friend told the judge the tools were not intended for burglary purposes but were tools they needed to work on a foot operated machine gun they were inventing is that the chisels hacksaws funnels for nitroglycerin gunpowder and money sacks but is that even like I'm just gonna but I'm just gonna go back one more time chisels yeah hacksaws funnels

for nitroglycerin and gunpowder and money sacks so they were using that yeah they're my divers dude they'll figure it out McCurdy was found not guilty by a jury in January 1911 God bless our legal god bless it awaiting trial he met a man named Walter Jarrett after being released McCurdy met up with Jarrett Jarrett gave McCurdy the nickname Missouri McCurdy which he was under the impression rhymed they set out to be bank robbers but they were not very good at it they often blew up the money with the nitroglycerin used to blast open the safe it turns out McCurdy had only received minimal training with nitroglycerin

when he was in the army can you imagine be like the bank manager comes in the next day just like did they just blow it up blew up the money well everything's blown up just anarchists in March 1911 McCurdy and three men decided to rob the Iron Mountain Missouri Pacific train they successfully stopped the train and located the safe McCurdy then put nitroglycerin on the safe's door to open it but he used too much Jesus Christ just a little dab bro the safe was destroyed and the in the blast as was the majority of the money wouldn't you err on the caution yes on the side of caution with you can put more on yeah

you can put more on after yeah McCurdy and his partners managed to net $450 in silver coins most of which were melted cool you guys take melted money y'all take chunks yeah yeah alright so right here you can see I have about a dollar and a quarter this is about this is about 50 coins now they're all one here and how much of this melted silver for a pack of smokes and September 1911 McCurdy and two men robbed the citizens bank in Chateau Kansas lovely they spent two hours breaking through the bank wall with a hammer okay so far I like the plan yeah McCurdy then placed a nitroglycerin charge on the vault the blast blew the

vault door through the bank destroying the interior of the bank but did not damage the safe inside the vault oh god McCurdy then tried to blow the safe door open with nitroglycerin but the charge failed to ignite then the lookout man got scared and ran off that's a good lookout man right there I don't like what I'm looking out for I would be watching it going yeah I'm out of here I would be I would be like this man has only burned money I'm not going with him McCurdy and his accomplices stole about a hundred and fifty dollars in coins that were in a tray outside the safe jackpot baby this is the score we've been

talking about the coin thieves one more of these and we could buy something like a TV they don't lack bills yeah later that night the men hopped a train which took them to the Kansas border they split up McCurdy made his way to the ranch of a friend Charles Charlie Rivard in Oklahoma he stayed in a hay shed on the property for the next few weeks and drank heavily nice that's the guy you want out there in the hay shed yep just a just a drunk so maybe the house is at the right place for you how do you feel about just getting blackout drunk in the hay shed for a couple weeks go ahead and lay out there in the in the there's hay

there's whiskey more hay there's hay so you could just be there in October 4th 1911 in Oklahoma McCurdy and two men plan to rob a train after hearing that it contained $400,000 in cash oh dude that's a hundred fifty yeah right there ready to go hundred fifty bucks it was intended as a royalty payment to the Osage nation to the what American Indian tribe but the men stopped a passenger train instead so they got they stopped the wrong train cool cool man everything's coming together the spectacular robbery netted them $46 whoo two Demi Demijons of whiskey which is I think like five

gallons dude that's like 200,000 right there an automatic revolver a coat and the train conductors watch a coat and a watch boom boom that's worth it same thing is 400k that's the same thing well I don't know I there's not much of a difference really McCurdy was disappointed by the hall why and returned to Rivards Ranch on October 6th where he began binge drinking the Demijons of whiskey so he's back so he's back in the hate the hate it is it is a little telling that the biggest thing the best thing he stalls stolen so far was two giant things of whiskey yeah and that coat and the coat right by this time he

was also ill with tuberculosis a mild case of pneumonia and trichinosis I know what trichinosis is where you convince your buddies that you know how to rob and you actually don't isn't the thing where you pick it yourself all the time is that what it is I don't know no no that's picanosis he stayed up drinking with some of the ranch hands before going to sleep in the hail off the following morning in the early morning hours of October 7th the posse of three sheriffs tracked McCurdy to the hay shed using bloodhounds yeah who smelled bourbon they were like fine bourbon find alcohol

dogs they surrounded the hay shed and waited for daylight sheriff Bob Fenton recalled it became just around 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 then he turned his attention to my brother stringer felton 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 by a fire back every time we could we do not know who killed him we found out we found one of the jugs of whiskey which was taken from the train it was about empty he was

pretty drunk when he rode up to the ranch last night McCurdy was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest which he sustained while lying down he was dead at the age of 31 quite a quite a run do you like that story from top to bottom quite a run wait huh well what there's more but no one ever claimed Elmer's body he had no family he didn't even have any friends who cared enough what is him a memorial what's what what's there and so Joseph L Johnson a funeral director took his body preserving it with a huge amount of embalming fluid laced with arsenic effectively mummifying him

Johnson was so proud of his handiwork that he stood Elmer up on two feet right in his funeral parlor and charged people money to come see him five cents what the fuck five cents to see the body of Elmer McCurdy imagine going into a funeral and seeing an embalmed standing man I'm here to bury my mom hey if you're looking at that give me a nickel come on now buddy no stealing looks Elmer the payment was placed in Elmer's open mouth I'm sorry that's where you put the money it's like a it's like a slot except it's a human man's mouth okay well there's different kinds of slots the idea it's the idea that you

could have something more fucked up following the fact that there's a standing embalmed dead person in a funeral home okay well you're not fun I'm not fun you're not fun I'm not fun I'm not the kind of guy you want to go put nickels in dead people's mouth I don't put nickels in corpses heads okay well don't come to one of my parties I'm not going to the undertaker the undertaker named him the bandit that wouldn't give up at one point Johnson's children oh god put roller skates on Elmer no and rolled him about chasing smaller children as a prank I mean come on Dave that's pretty great so

now it's weekend at Bernie's we're like yes we're having a really weekend at Bernie's roller skate around have you met my friend Elmer oh close his mouth or the chains will drop out eventually a man claiming to be Elmer's long-lost brother showed up at the funeral parlor incensed demanding to get his brother's body back so he could give him a decent burial and preserve his tarnished dignity and he took Elmer away but Elmer didn't have a brother who who do we root for now no two weeks later Elmer popped up as the main attraction at a carnival in West Texas wait wait wait so this fucking asshole huh just go yeah

uh-huh just goes to the funeral home yeah gets pissed yeah he's like on a moral high ground yeah he takes it and he's just like I'm gonna do the same thing but I'm taking on tour yeah man cool just wanted to catch up these are carney rules yeah which are great rules Elmer then went on a tour throughout the country as an attraction with a carnival known as great Patterson shows he was often displayed as the same the bandit who wouldn't give up or the famous Oklahoma Outlaw Elmer made the rounds on a side show and carnival circuits headlining next to bearded ladies and five-legged pigs headlining yeah he was

a headliner okay and while he was subjected to a number of injustices during the tour including the time a guy ripped off his arm and chased his secretary around the office with it what time was this okay this was this is not all right I'm just kidding oh I got you the look on your face when I almost hit you with that dead bandits arm Elmer was achieving a type of immortality he went down in history as a cowboy and a train robber and even though he'd never successfully blown a safe in his lifetime Elmer's hard wrinkled body was placed next to the exhibit of Billy the Kid this is the time that you went and looked at dead people yeah but that's just because now we have photos online yeah his time in side shows went on for

years tell the late 1960s that's real that's a real by this time Elmer had been passed from hand to hand his value lessening each time as a traveling freak show carnivals had become gimmicky and unfashionable it's bullshit he's that he's like that he's having like a bad career now like he he was a popular corpse and now people like I've seen it I put nickels in his mouth what else is oh what another corpse oh here we go Jesus Christ I get it I can take your arm off your freak show is bullshit eventually one of his new owners drill the hole into the back of his neck oh my

god they say yellowish goo seeped out when they did so I mean Elmer was put into a contraception in a haunted house where he'd appear to twitch and jiggle when cars rode by this is a human man they called him the 3,000-year-old man and a thousand-year-old man sorry they would have him twitch well they'd be twitching on the little he'd be hanging and then they'd have a thing that would make him like I mean you jiggle a little bit yeah okay he jiggle a little bit you'd ride by in the car and it already jiggle oh that's cool that human man won't ever get closure on living then he was moved to a crime museum in

Los Angeles so let me let me run down let me run down a little bit of where he was yeah you want to plug any upcoming dates he has in 1928 he was part of the official sideshow that accompanied the transamerican foot race which was run from Los Angeles to New York this so he was like the the official corpse of the transamerican foot race we found our dead guy in 1933 he was acquired for a time by director Dwayne Esper to promote his exploitation till narcotic exploitation film Alma was placed in the lobby of theaters as a dead dope fiend who Esper claimed had killed himself while surrounded by police after he

robbed a drugstore to sport his habit oh my god could you imagine going to the arc light no body there no no I cannot imagine that when the owner of Elmer died in 1945 49 Elmer is a very unfair term Elmer was the owner of Elmer disagree of course of course you do when the owner of Elmer died in 1949 Elmer was placed in storage in the Los Angeles warehouse in 1964 Elmer was lent to filmmaker David F. Friedman he eventually made a brief appearance in Friedman's 1967 film the freak or she freak in 1968 Elmer was sold along with other wax figures for $10,000 to Spoonie Singh the owner of the Hollywood Wax

Museum oh god the wax so so the wax cut it's a man it is a man it is not I'm not sure about that it's not fair sing had bought it sing had bought Elmer for two Canadian men who exhibited them at a show at Mount Rushmore while there Elmer sustained damage in a windstorm the tips of his ears along with his figures and toes were blown off oh my fucking god the man what is like at what point does he sort of lose value he's not even a man anymore he's an earless toeless fingerless fucking embalmed corpse the man eventually returned McCurdy back to sing who decided that the corpse looked too gruesome and not lifelike enough to

exhibit sing then sold Elmer to Ed Learsh owner of the Pike an amusement park in Long Beach, California there McCurdy's corpse was spray painted oh god in the laugh-in-the-dark funhouse exhibit at the Pike and hung there for four years on December 8 1976 the production crew of the television shows six million dollar man were filming scenes for the Carnival of Spies episode at the Pike during the shoot a prop man went to move what he thought was a paper maché mannequin that was hanging from the gallows the crewman grabbed him tried to pull him down from that hangman's he grabbed him and tried to pull him down

but the hangman's arm ripped off everyone laughed at first until they took a closer look inside the arm was a human bone the hangman was real a mumfied corpse the police were called who then called the paramedics reporting a case of severe dehydration oh boy get the IV Charles it's men's thirsty when the paramedics showed up everyone had a laugh the completely bizarre scenario made it easy for people to poke fun but this was a corpse of a real man who had read a real life the Los Angeles County Coroner's office attempted to pin down exactly who this man was Dr. Joseph Choi conducted an autopsy and determined that

the body was that of a human male who had died of a gunshot wound to the chest with bullets from the turn of the century and strangely they also had a found a croted penny in the man's mouth dated 1924 and several ticket stubs to wax museum and the Museum of Crime in his mouth his fucking mouth well that's the slot yeah I know it's the slot the body was completely petrified covered in wax and layers of phosphorus paint it weighed approximately 50 pounds and was 63 inches in height something pow some hairs were still visible on the sides and back of his head while the ears big toes and fingers were missing yeah hey

big deal right the examination also revealed incisions from his original autopsy and bombing tests conducted on the tissue showed that the presence of arsenic which was a component of embalming fluid in the late 1920s tuberculosis was found as well as scars the magic sorry the bullet jacket was found and it was determined that type was used between 1905 and 1940 investigators then contacted the son of the man who had owned the Museum of Crime who confirmed the body was that of Elmer McCurdy the news of what happened to Elmer was on TV radios and in newspapers funeral homes called and

offered to bury him for free but the LA corner decided to wait to see if any relatives would come to claim his body no don't play the relative claim body game with this fucking thing anymore that's how it all started yeah that's what got us into this mess no Fred Olds who were represented the Indian Territory Posse of Oklahoma Westerns eventually convinced the corner to allow him to bury the body in Oklahoma on April 2nd 1977 a funeral procession was conducted to transport McCurdy to the boot hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma a graveside service attended by approximately

300 people was conducted after which McCurdy was buried next to another outlaw Bill Doolan whose corpse Elmer had spent time with inside shows that doesn't make them friends well but yeah I think it might no it doesn't I think it's nice that they're not embalmed corpse pal it was nice they were finally put back together his tombstone reads Elmer pennies in my mouth his tombstones reads Elmer McCurdy shot by Sheriff's Posse in Osage Hills October 7th 1911 returned to Guthrie, Oklahoma from Los Angeles County California for burial April 22nd 1977 that's 66 years of fun and also that's bullshit the tombstone

should be very frank with what happened but it should just be like here lies Elmer a man who was recently buried and carried on us as an embalmed side show for 60 years never stop working Elmer wouldn't quit cool would not retire we tried but his arm had just rip off we tried to get him to retire to ensure that McCurdy's body would not be stolen two feet of concrete was poured over the casket it's just this poor guy it's all or nothing yeah but what's the difference wouldn't I would love to have my body out there torn around what's the big deal well you got to think about bodies like I also wouldn't mind being thrown in a

body farm no but I like I did a bit about how I want to be stuffed yeah and I want to have my catchphrases on a little sort of like key chainy button on my chest oh yeah but no no there's not there's and I look when I'm dead whatever you know keep me up fuck me do whatever the fuck you want okay I'm not weird now maybe I'm off record on don't fuck but it doesn't really matter but when you hear this it's just it there's no morality there's no great it's not great there's no like how nobody at any point was like isn't this fucked up to just be using him to make money I don't think so I mean his defense that took

him on a carnival roadshow I think it's pretty great story I think it's a story that any man would want no for their corpse also it is bullshit when people are starting to be like I know kind of over the body thing I think you see a lot of parallels in yourself in there and that's what's really upset it's a classic Los Angeles tale one minute the next minute you got no toes fingers are ears you're out you're hanging in a long a long beach fun house yeah all right well that's McCurdy dude thank you so much for teaching me about him you are welcome that's really a sweet tale and I think again it just

illustrates how normal and good we always are and happen totally agree okay man good talk good talk thanks so much I'm gonna get some whiskey you bet you thank you