When I Found the Gun that Killed the Outlaw that Became the Mummy

Or My Buddy Elmer

In the course of a week, in March 2013, three people approached me for information: a man in the museum, the proprietor of a Bed and Breakfast who offers a murder mystery weekend, and the producer of a T.V. show. In my time at the Oklahoma Territorial Museum, Elmer McCurdy is second only to the Land Run of 1889 in visitor questions. I knew the basics: a posse killed Elmer after a train robbery, the mortician over embalmed him with arsenic, a production crew found his mummified remains in a funhouse, and he is buried under cement in Guthrie’s Summit View cemetery. I needed to know more about him and his story.

The producers wanted to know if we had any artifacts associated with Elmer McCurdy. I knew we didn’t but found out that in 1995 we received a donation from the grandson of Stringer Fenton, one of the posse members who ran McCurdy to ground and killed him. One of the artifacts, a 7.65mm Luger automatic jumped out at me and I knew we had the gun that killed McCurdy.

I read all the articles that the museum staff had collected over the years telling the tale of the bumbling outlaw who a sheriff’s posse had killed in the Osage Hills with a shot from a .32-20 rifle. I read the autopsy report from the Los Angeles county morgue mentioning a “Gas-Check” of approximately .32 caliber lodged in the mummy’s pelvis. I read in The Career of Elmer McCurdy, Deceased: An Historical Mystery by Richard J. Basgall that McCurdy had been shot by a “automatic revolver.” It all made sense, 7.65mm is approximately .32 caliber; a Luger automatic pistol could be the mentioned “automatic revolver.”

I started to wonder how much of the story was wrong. Was McCurdy the bumbling fool he had been made out to be in the books, articles, and web pages, I had read? Or was there more to a man who used five aliases? What kind of person has five aliases? I think someone less than virtuous would have five aliases

.

I pulled the vertical file on McCurdy and took down the two books in our research library on the story and started reading. One book mentioned that McCurdy had been shot with an automatic revolver. The L.A. county autopsy report noted that it was approximately .32 caliber. The director of the museum told me that we had a collection of artifacts from the family of Stringer Fenton, a member of the posse. I immediately pulled the accession file and poured over the list; pictures, documents, and guns. One gun grabbed my attention, a 7.65mm, 1900 “Commercial” Luger. 7.65mm is approximately .32 caliber. Did we have the gun that killed Elmer McCurdy?

The Gateway to Oklahoma History is an incredible resource, The Oklahoma Historical Society has been digitizing newspapers since 2009, and it was instrumental in researching McCurdy and Stringer Fenton. In an October 15, 1911 issue of the Tulsa World, I found an interview of Fenton at the Tulsa train depot, where he stated “a bullet from my Luger automatic had also went through the center of one of his suspenders and nearly through the right side of his body.” I found the proof.

McCurdy has been portrayed as an inept outlaw, but research shows otherwise. who used too much nitroglycerin to blow safes and melted silver coins to the bottom of the safe. At the turn of the twentieth century the middle of America was plagued by “Yeggs” or “Yeggmen,” (safecrackers). These Yeggs traveled from place to place, used numerous aliases and robbed rural banks, post offices, and stores. They did not practice finesse, brute force, in the form of nitroglycerin unhinged safe doors, destroyed bank interiors, and melted silver coins inside the safe. The loss of some of the silver was a cost of doing business. The Yegg description fits what we know of McCurdy.

---

While filming an episode of the hit television show, The Six Million Dollar Man, entitled “The Carnival of Spies,” at the Nu-Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California, Chris Haynes, a crew member, grabbed the arm of a mannequin hanging by a noose in the Laff-In-The-Dark funhouse. The arm broke off in his hands revealing a bone. Haynes and another crew member, through close observation of the unclad body, determined it to be that of a human male.

Long Beach Police Sgt. Dan P. Sallmen and Criminalist, E. Williams arrived at the scene on December 8, 1976, twelve hours after the discovery of the body. Sallman took the severed arm to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office for verification as human remains. Dr. Joseph Choi, Deputy Medical Examiner confirmed the arm to be mummified human remains and determined to take custody of the body for identification.

C. Robert Dambacher Chief Investigator for the L. A. County Coroner’s Office accepted the body at 2:15 P. M. and designated him John Doe #255. Dambacher observed that the body was mummified and had previously been autopsied. A second autopsy would be performed by Dr. Choi the following day.

Choi found a gunshot wound, entering below the right nipple penetrating the sixth rib, right lung, diaphragm, liver, and intestine. The bullet traveled downward from left to right at a forty-five degree angle and from front to back at a thirty degree angle. The bullet was not present but a gas check (copper bullet seat used to improve accuracy) appearing to be .32 caliber was recovered from the muscle of the left pelvic region. Tests also revealed high levels of arsenic. The gas check came into use in 1905 and arsenic ceased to be used in the embalming process in the 1930’s. These findings helped narrow the time of death.

As part of the identification process the mandible was removed for dental comparisons. Inside the mouth, Choi found a 1924 penny and several ticket stubs, one reading “Louis Sonney’s Museum of Crime, 524 South Main Street, Los Angeles.” The police began a search for Louis Sonney.

Louis Sonney got his break in show business when he captured a train robber named Roy Gardner. Gardner had recently escaped McNeil Island Federal Corrections center in Puget Sound. Sonney spotted a man, his face and hands bandaged but fitting the general description of Gardner. Sonney followed the man to the Centralia Hotel in Centralia Washington and asked him at gun point if he was Roy Gardner. The man claimed to be a miner and that he had suffered burns in a mine explosion. Suddenly the man knocked the gun from Sonney’s hand. Sonney, “rassled” him to the ground and hit him with a billy-club.

In 1921, with a portion of the $5000 reward for the capture of Gardner, Sonney made the silent film “I Captured Roy Gardner,” and toured it around the country. During this same period, Sonney developed his wax museum of crime, which included statues of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Bill Doolin. Any notorious outlaw could be found enshrined in wax.

Sonney passed away in 1949, and the operation of the Museum of Crime fell to his son, Dan. Police contacted Dan, who informed them that his father had loaned $500 to a man in 1922 with the mummy as collateral. The man never returned with the money. Dan knew the mummy to be Elmer McCurdy, an Oklahoma outlaw from the turn of the 20th century.

Elmer J. McCurdy was born in Washington, Maine, sometime in January, 1880, to a seventeen year old unwed mother, Sadie McCurdy. His father remains unknown but may have been Charles Davis, a cousin living with the McCurdy family. Sadie’s oldest brother George and wife Helen adopted Elmer and raised him as their own. Sadie took over the care of Elmer when George died of consumption in 1890.

Elmer moved west to Kansas in 1903, using the name Frank Curtis, whether to avoid Irish prejudice or the law is not known. Elmer worked as a plumber in Iola, Kansas under the name Frank Curtis, and as a miner in Webb City, Missouri as Elmer McCurdy. In 1907 Elmer enlisted in the Army under his own name.

After leaving the army in 1910, McCurdy ran afoul of the law in St. Joseph, Missouri. The St. Joseph Gazette ran a story, “Police Think They Nabbed Two Yeggs.” A yegg is a burglar or safecracker. Police charged McCurdy and an army buddy, Walter Shapilrock, with possession of burglary tools. A jury acquitted the pair on January 30, 1910.

While in jail in Missouri, McCurdy met Walter Jarrett, a career criminal. Within a year and a half, both men would meet bloody ends. A month after his acquittal, McCurdy caught up with Jarrett in Oklahoma and formed a gang which included Walter’s brother Lee, Albert Conner, and Billy Brown. They intended to rob the “Iron Mountain” train near Lenapah, Oklahoma, six miles south of Coffeyville, Kansas. The robbers netted an estimated $450 of the potential $20,000 in the safe. McCurdy’s nitro-glycerin charge melted $4000 into a corner of the safe and blew the remainder into shrapnel. McCurdy did relieve the mail clerk H. J. Pinckney of his gold watch, which he would have in his possession when killed by the sheriff’s posse.

A few days after the Iron Mountain robbery, McCurdy engaged in a knife fight with Lee Jarrett as the gang drove to Coffeyville, Kansas. Jarrett sliced McCurdy on the left wrist, his brother Walter across the face, and Billy Brown on the head and neck. Police arrested McCurdy, Walter, and Billy and fined them for disorderly conduct. The scar would help identify McCurdy later.

When law-enforcement officers found out that Walter had returned to the area, they descended on the Jarrett home. Officers retrieved stolen goods from the General Store robbery in Centralia, explosives matching ones found at the scene of the Iron Mountain robbery, and under the floor in a Mason jar they found McCurdy’s army discharge papers. They arrested Abe Conner and Glenn Jarrett at the scene and Lee Jarrett the next day hiding in the woods.

McCurdy made his way to Pawhuska, Oklahoma and formed a new gang. He met Amos Hayes, who had recently been acquitted of the charge of murdering the man who murdered his brother. Hayes introduced McCurdy to his cousin Lige Higgins and the three men robbed the Citizens State Bank of Chautauqua, Kansas on September 21, 1911, splitting $150.

On October 4, 1911, McCurdy, Hayes, and probably Dave Sears flagged down the M.K. & T. (KATY) #29 outside Okesa, Oklahoma, expecting to find a $400,000 Osage Indian royalty payment. The robbers forced the crew to uncouple the passenger cars and steam a mile down the track where they forced the express agent to open the safe. They escaped with $46, the mail clerk’s watch, a Cravenette (waterproof) coat, and two demijohns (bottles) of whiskey. They missed a jewelry salesman’s sample case and $250 that a man threw in a spittoon. In the hours after the robbery a posse of fifty men with bloodhounds began tracking the robbers.

After a gun and whiskey from the robbery were found at Dave Sears home, he led the posse of Dick Wallace, Bob Fenton, and his brother Stringer to the Revard ranch where McCurdy had taken refuge. The three men positioned themselves around the barn where McCurdy slept and waited for daylight.

At about 7:00 a.m. the shooting started. McCurdy took a shot at Bob Fenton then three at Stringer before turning his attention to Wallace. The battle went on for an hour with McCurdy often changing positions inside the hayloft. Stringer took aim with his 7.65mm Luger automatic pistol and fired, no more shots came from inside the barn. Fearing that McCurdy may be playing possum, the posse sent a young man from the ranch into the barn to see if he was still alive. He was dead, a pellet from Dick Wallace’s shotgun in his neck and a bullet from Fenton’s Luger had passed through his right suspender and into his chest.

After the killing of McCurdy, Deputy Sheriff Smith Lounsberry discovered a cache of nitro-glycerin, dynamite caps, and fuses in an abandoned broom factory outside Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Federal and State law-enforcement and Railroad detectives were convinced that an organized gang was operating in North-Eastern Oklahoma and South-Eastern Kansas.

Amos Hayes and Dave Sears stood trial for the KATY robbery, a jury acquitted Sears of all charges, and Hayes received twenty-five years.

Stringer W. Fenton was born June 15, 1865 near Lexington, Virginia. Fenton moved to Oklahoma from Kansas in 1893 with the opening of the Cherokee Strip. He settled on a farm outside of Newkirk before taking a job as a government official on the Osage reservation. He served as a deputy United States marshal under “Catch’em Alive Jack” Abernathy. In 1907, he was appointed by Governor Charles N. Haskell as a State Enforcement Officer, to enforce the state prohibition law. In 1911, he became special agent for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, and the shootout with McCurdy happened during this time. In 1913 he was elected chief of police of Cleveland, Oklahoma. He was reelected in 1915. In 1910 Fenton tracked down and arrested the bank robber Henry Starr in Arizona. A life-long law enforcement agent, Fenton was shot on three occasions in the course of his duties.

The Luger 1900 “Commercial” chambered for the 7.65 mm cartridge was the first version of the famed Luger automatic pistol available to the public in Europe and the United States. The armies of Germany and the United States tested the 1900 Luger and found the 7.65 mm to not have sufficient knockdown power for combat, leading to development of the 9mm and the .45 caliber Colt 1911.

On a cold Winter Saturday in 1976, a group of men, members of the Indian Territory Posse of Oklahoma Westerners met for coffee in the office of Guthrie Daily Leader editor, Bill Lehmann. According to banker, Ralph McCalmount, Lehmann brought up the story of the mummy. Author Glenn Shirley, without hesitation stated that it had to be Elmer McCurdy. Shirley, a lawman and noted western historian, told the story of McCurdy’s death, mummification, and sideshow career to the assembled men. Fred Olds, Director of the Oklahoma Territorial Museum was concerned with what would be done with the body. Lehman stated that being in California; it would most likely be burned. Olds was determined to do something and with the encouragement of McCalmount and Lehman, Olds picked up the phone and dialed the operator to get the L. A. County Coroner’s office phone number. Being very early morning on a Saturday, Olds had to leave a message with the only person on duty.

Dr. Thomas Noguchi returned Olds’ call and decided if they could prove it to be Elmer McCurdy and no other family came forward and the body would not be made a spectacle, then he would release the body to the Oklahoma State Medical Examiner. With the help of forensic anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow, who used his newly developed medial superimposition technique (where a picture is projected onto a skull to see if they match) to help identify the mummy. McCurdy’s Bertillon records (criminal identification system) also showed the scar on his wrist form the knife fight with Lee Jarrett. Everyone ultimately agreed that the mummy was in fact Elmer McCurdy.

On April 22, 1977, a horse drawn black hearse, bearing the body of Elmer McCurdy rolled through the streets of Guthrie. A cortege of gun totting horsemen, buggies, and antique cars followed as the hearse made its way to the “Boot Hill” section of Summit View Cemetery. A crowd gathered around the open grave as Glenn Jordan, the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Historical Society and a lay preacher began the graveside service with Psalms 103: 15–16 and Luke 6:37. Jordan reminded the crowd that the service was a solemn event despite the publicity surrounding it. He recounted what was known of McCurdy and offered him forgiveness and understanding. The pallbearers lowered him by lariats into the grave. “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”