7/31/2023 0 Comments Elmer mccurdy![]() ![]() As there was no next of kin, McCurdy’s body lay unclaimed, with the undertaker, Joseph Johnson, refusing to bury or release the body until he was paid for his services. His body was embalmed by an Oklahoma undertaker with arsenic, as was common in that era when a body needed to be preserved for a long period of time. McCurdy’s story was just beginning, however. Authorities caught up with McCurdy on October 7, 1911, and after a shootout at the hay shed where McCurdy was staying, he was shot dead by a single gunshot wound to the chest. The hapless criminal picked the wrong train to rob, however, choosing a passenger train instead and stealing just $46, a gun, some whiskey and the train conductor’s coat. McCurdy’s final robbery was of a train in Oklahoma that was supposedly carrying $400,000 in cash. When McCurdy went to blow up the safe doors with nitroglycerine, he destroyed most of the money along with the safe. Unfortunately, McCurdy was pretty inept, as evidenced by his robbing of a train in Oklahoma in March 1911, in order to steal a safe holding $4,000. McCurdy was trained in the army as a nitroglycerine expert, and used the substance during his robberies. Then he began his brief and explosive criminal career. Army, and was stationed at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was honorably discharged in 1910. Elmer set off for points west, drifting around, working as a plumber and a miner until eventually heading to Kansas. Not long after that, according to Svenvold, Sadie told her son that she was actually his mother, news that apparently so disturbed McCurdy that he began to fall apart, getting into trouble and, eventually, starting to drink heavily.īy the time McCurdy was 20 years old he’d lost his job as a plumber, and his mother had died Sadie McCurdy is buried in Mt. After George died of tuberculosis in 1890, Sadie and Helen moved to Bangor with Elmer. ![]()
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