Dubbed "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up", his mummified body was first put on display at an Oklahoma funeral home and then became a fixture on the traveling carnival and sideshow circuit during the 1920s through the 1960s.

After changing ownership several times, McCurdy's remains eventually wound up at The Pike amusement zone in Long Beach, California, where they were discovered by crew members for the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and positively identified in December 1976.

In order to save Sadie the social stigma of raising an illegitimate child, her brother George and his wife Helen adopted Elmer.

[4] Shortly after his grandfather's death, McCurdy left Maine and began drifting around the eastern United States, as a lead miner and plumber.

On November 19, both men were arrested for possessing burglary paraphernalia (chisels, hacksaws, funnels for nitroglycerin, gunpowder and money sacks).

The St. Joseph Gazette reported that during their arraignment, McCurdy and his friend told the judge the tools were needed to work on a foot-operated machine gun they were inventing.

After relocating to Lenapah, Oklahoma, in March 1911, McCurdy and three other men decided to rob the Iron Mountain-Missouri Pacific train No.

[5] McCurdy and his partners managed to net $100-$500 ($1300-$16500 as of October 2024) in silver coins, most of which were melted and fused to the safe's frame.

After the lookout man got scared and ran off, McCurdy and his accomplices stole about $150 in coins that were in a tray outside the safe and fled.

[16] McCurdy's final robbery took place on October 4, 1911, near Okesa, Oklahoma, targeting a Katy Train which contained $400,000 in cash that intended as royalty payment to the Osage Nation.

[20][21] McCurdy was disappointed by the haul and returned to Revard's ranch on October 6, where he began drinking the whiskey he stole.

[7] In the early morning hours of October 7, a posse of three deputy sheriffs, brothers Bob and Stringer Fenton and Dick Wallace, tracked McCurdy to the hay shed using bloodhounds.

[22] In an interview featured in the October 8, 1911 edition of the Daily Examiner, Sheriff Bob Fenton recalled: It began just about 7 o'clock.

[26] On October 6, 1916, a man calling himself Aver contacted Johnson claiming to be McCurdy's long-lost brother from California.

Aver had already contacted the Osage County sheriff and a local attorney to get permission to take custody of the body and ship it to San Francisco for proper burial.

The following day, Aver arrived at the funeral home with another man calling himself Wayne, who also claimed to be McCurdy's brother.

[27] After learning from his brother Charles about the popular "Embalmed Bandit" exhibit, the two concocted a scheme to take possession of the body in order to feature it in James' carnival.

[28] Sonney used McCurdy's corpse in his traveling Museum of Crime, which featured wax replicas of famous outlaws such as Bill Doolin and Jesse James.

[30] The corpse was placed in the lobby of theaters as a "dead dope fiend" whom Esper claimed had killed himself while surrounded by police after he had robbed a drug store to support his habit.

[33] Singh then sold it to Ed Liersch, part owner of The Pike, an amusement zone in Long Beach, California.

[34] On December 8, 1976, the production crew of the television series The Six Million Dollar Man was filming scenes for the "Carnival of Spies" episode at The Pike.

On December 9, 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.

Snow took radiographs of the skull and placed them over a photo of McCurdy taken at the time of his death in a process called superimposition.

Several funeral homes called the coroner's office offering to bury McCurdy free of charge, but officials decided to wait to see if any living relatives would come forward to claim the body.

[37] On April 22, 1977, a funeral procession was conducted to transport McCurdy to the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma.