HIS COLD DEAD HAND!

So I recently heard an awesome story about Elmer McCurdy. He was the bastard offspring of a single 17 year old girl who had sex with her first cousin. He loved to cause trouble and booze it up, in 1911 after robbing a train and vowing to "not be taken alive" he was shot by a rival posse. He netted 46 dollars and two bottles of whiskey in the blundered robbery. He was embalmed but no one claimed the body and the mortician discovered the embalming was eerily lifelike and he could be propped up to stand on his own two feet. He displayed Elmer in his shop for a few years with people paying by putting a nickel in his mouth. He made so much money that touring sideshows always tried to buy the body. Eventually, the mortician was scammed out of the body and it toured the country as the "OUTLAW THAT WOULDN'T GIVE UP." What does this have to do with pop culture, you ask, oh it gets better. The body traveled states and changed owners a few times and eventually was sold to Hollywood as a prop, a very realistic wax figure. It was seen in a few movies and even on display at the Hollywood Wax Museum. Eventually, it fell into the hands of a House of Mirrors type house of fun, called Laff in the Dark a glow in the dark house of fun, how 70s. By this point, the body had been painted florescent day-glo and hung there for 4 years as the Hanging Man.

The Six Million Dollar Man rented the place to shoot an episode and in moving the "prop" his arm fell off and they saw a bone inside! The LA County Coroners office determined that he was no wax dummy, but a man from the 1800s. Dude!!! What a kick ass death. I mean it is sad he was forgotten, but how cool. Think if all the people he came in contact with who had no idea that he was a real live dead body!
Here is a good link: http://www.sideshowworld.com/tgodmummy.html