The Wild West 12: Outlaws

 When we think of the Wild West, we conjure up certain characters in our imaginations. But none are more iconic than the outlaw.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
When you were a kid, did you ever pretend to
be a cowboy or a cowgirl? Did you play the
part of an infamous outlaw? If you did, chances are
these fantasies were inspired by a lot of fiction. The
wild West as we think of it today was very different.
In the nineteen fifties, of the whole generation fell in
love with the Hollywood version of Buffalo Bill Cody, but

(00:27):
these films weren't biopics. When it comes to movies, the
more entertaining right, and the box office responds to that,
and there's no better way to do that than to
embellish a few things. The real William Cody was born
in eighteen forty six. When he was just eight, his
father was brutally attacked, and as he watched his father
dying in bed, he declared that he wished to be
all grown up so that he could kill the men

(00:48):
who attacked his father. Most historians today believe that Cody
was a good storyteller, but what we do know is
that as an adult during the Civil War, he was
a Union scout, and then in eighteen sixty six he
married Luisa Frederici, and in eighteen sixty seven he earned
the nickname Buffalo Bill while hunting buffalo for the Kansas
Pacific Railroad, where he bragged that he killed forty eight

(01:10):
of the animals in just thirty minutes. Cody's antics eventually
caught the attention of General Phillip Sheridan, who wanted a
positive public relations spin for the US Army. He joined
Cody on buffalo hunts, and the media just couldn't get enough.
Pulp fiction magazines were already in the business of romanticizing
stories about life in the West, and it didn't take
long before a writer convinced Cody to take his stories

(01:33):
on tour. Within a year, Cody created his Scouts of
the Prairie show. It was such a success that he
ended up traveling the country with it for the better
part of a decade. By eighteen eighty three, though, the
show had evolved to something that was so large it
could only be staged outdoors. Now called Buffalo Bill's Wild
West Show, he hired cowboys, cowgirls, mountain men, and Mexican voccaros.

(01:56):
He brought an elk, bison, and even bear. At an
eighteen eighty five Annie Oakley joined, impressing crowds with her
shooting skills. By the time of the World's Columbian Exposition
in Chicago in eighteen ninety three, roughly six hundred and
fifty people worked on his show. The stage was functionally
fifteen acres of land, the grand stands had room for

(02:17):
more than eighteen thousand people. And at that very same exposition,
historian Frederick Jackson Turner remember him from our first episode
this season, was giving a speech about life on the
American Frontier. To him, the preceding few decades had been
more formative to American identity than any other before it.
As he understood it, American settlers had experienced the frontier,

(02:39):
and in turn, the Frontier had left an indelible mark
on the character of America. This is what Hollywood would
eventually pick up on. Today, when we think of the
Wild West, we're not thinking about the time and place
as it was, but the idea as it has been
formed in our imagination. But one thing's for certain. Our
image of the Wild West is almost always about people

(03:02):
and their stories, which is why they're still so interesting today.
I'm Aaron Mankee, and welcome to the wild West. Tumbleweeds,
dusty trails, cowboys, and of course outlaws and one rugged

(03:24):
gunslinger with his black hat and horse, has always captured
imaginations with his lawlessness and daring exploits. Billy the Kid
is a name that we all know. Born in eighteen
fifty nine, Billy first found trouble at just fifteen years old.
It seemed that he helped a man play a prank
by hiding clothes from a launderer. The sheriff didn't find
the joke funny and arrested Billy. Not one to be contained,

(03:47):
Billy escaped through a jailhouse chimney. While working as a
civilian teamster at the Camp Grant Army Post, Billy was
bullied daily until he reached the breaking point and shot
his tormentor. He was arrested and again escaped. At this point, though,
honest work was no longer an option for him, so
Billy joined forces with Jesse Evans and his gang known

(04:08):
as the Boys. Eventually, Billy found work in eighteen seventy
seven with a guy named John Tunstall protecting him and
his cattle. So when Tunstall was murdered during the Lincoln
County War, Billy swore vengeance and joined the Regulators, another
infamous outlaw gang. He then took on those who wronged
Tunstall in a series of gunfights, earning Billy a reputation

(04:30):
as a skilled gunslinger. Again, Billy was arrested, but in
a plea deal for a pardon, he testified against others
who participated in the Lincoln County War. Sadly, the district
attorney didn't hold up his end of the bargain and
Billy was locked up anyway, But Billy did what Billy
always did. He escaped, going on to form his own
gang called the Rustlers. In late eighteen eighty he was

(04:54):
captured yet again and jailed again. Convicted of murder, the
judge sentenced him to hang, and once again you guessed it,
he escaped, but in July of eighteen eighty one he
would finally run out of chances when he was shot
and killed by a sheriff. His story was dramatic, and
drama always gives wings to the tales we tell. So
as the stories about Laws and their gang spread, the

(05:16):
line between fact and fiction started to become more and
more blurry. Some of these characters are remembered as Robin
Hood's stealing from the rich and giving back to the poor.
Others earned sympathy by fighting against a system that had
somehow wronged them. One famous outlaw that became larger than
life is, of course, Jesse James. Born on September fifth

(05:36):
of eighteen forty seven. James grew up in Clay County, Missouri,
although his father, Robert sadly passed away just three years later,
leaving Jesse's mother, Zirelda, and his older brother Frank to
carry on. During the Civil War, the division between pro
Union and pro Confederate sentiments in Missouri escalated to violence.
Groups of anti Union bushwhackers, including Jesse's older brother Frank,

(05:59):
launched brutal attacks on anti slavery Union towns, and when
Jesse turned sixteen, he followed in his brother's footsteps. After
the Civil War, Jesse rose to lead a gang of
bank and train robbers. His legend grew with each daring exploit,
partly thanks to an ex Confederate soldier and newspaper editor
who crafted a myth of James as a heroic Southern

(06:22):
robin hood, and he played the part well, maintaining a
respectable public image. The gang's luck changed, however, when they
attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield Minnesota.
This time, the townsfolk fought back, killing two gang members
and kicking off a search for the rest. Jesse and
his brother Frank barely escaped and ended up moving to
Tennessee under false identities. But death comes for us all,

(06:45):
doesn't it, and legendary outlaws are no exception. In eighteen
eighty two, while Jesse was dusting a picture on the wall,
he was shot in the back of the head, and
so ended the colorful life of one of America's most
rugged Wild West sweethearts. By the late eighteen hundreds, the

(07:07):
thirty year period of the Wild West was coming to
an end. The eighteen ninety census showed that the once
clear frontier line that divided the settled areas from the
wild ones had become too blurry. The wild part of
the Wild West, at least according to the US government,
had been tamed. You could see it everywhere you went, too.
Streets had been laid, and the foundations for public projects

(07:28):
had been created. Jails, schoolhouses, and businesses began dotting the
landscape in a tidy fashion. Americans were becoming less interested
in expanding outward and more drawn to growing roots. The
Wild West was shrinking but it hadn't failed to sunset
just yet. That's where Elmer enters the picture. He was
born up in Maine in eighteen eighty to a teenage

(07:49):
girl named Sadie, and as you might expect, his early
life was full of hardship. So Elmer was raised by
his aunt and uncle, Helen and George, and his parentage
was kept a secret from him to shield Sadie from embarrassment. However,
after his uncle George died in eighteen ninety, Elmer discovered
the truth. According to some, it was that that left
him feeling betrayed, driving him to become rebellious as a teen.

(08:12):
His grandfather found him an apprenticeship as a plumber, but
just as life was looking up, a recession struck in
eighteen ninety eight. His aunt Helen and mother, Sadie both
lost their jobs, and then in August of nineteen hundred,
his mother passed away. That was when Elmer decided to
head west for a fresh start. Little did he know
that his journey would lead him down a path with
other Wild West legends in the most unusual of ways.

(08:36):
It began with the daring leap onto a freight train.
Every moment on those rattling trains was a dance with fate,
avoiding the prying eyes of company detectives. But after days
of heart pounding travel, he arrived in Niola, Kansas in
nineteen oh three. This bustling town was at the heart
of an industrial boom. The town had seventeen miles of
paved roads, indoor plumbing, electricity, and a public library. If

(09:00):
On arriving, Elmer adopted the alias of Frank Curtis and
took up a plumbing job at the Eagle Cornice Works
and Plumbing Shop. He worked hard, too, often ten or
twelve hour shifts just to meet the demand of the
growing town. He even joined the volunteer fire department, always
ready to battle the flames and earn a few bucks
for his bravery. Embracing the spirit of community, he became

(09:21):
a member of the local trade union and attended town meetings,
taking part in shaping the town's future. The local newspaper
sang his praises, calling him an industrious young man, rubbing
shoulders with the town's elite, and even catching the eye
of a merchant's daughter. It seemed Elmer had finally found
a place to call home. One fateful night, However, under

(09:42):
the influence of alcohol, he spilled the truth about his
alias and a supposed barroom murder. Whether or not it
was a tall tail fueled by booze remains a mystery,
but whatever the case, William Root, his boss, couldn't take
the risk and unceremoniously fired him, leaving Elmer feeling trade.
Once again, seeking new horizons, he left the town he

(10:04):
loved and headed to Missouri, where he worked in the
dangerous depths of a zinc mine. From there, he enlisted
in the US Army, where he excelled as part of
a machine gun detachment. When that military journey came to
an end, he was honorably discharged with praises for his
excellent and faithful service. Armed with those discharge papers, he
set his sights on Saint Joseph, Missouri. Unfortunately, luck wasn't

(10:26):
on his side, and after just a week of job hunting,
he found himself penniless. In his desperation, Elmer turned to
a former army buddy named Walter Schopplery. Walter took a
week's leave and rushed to his friend's aid. Almost immediately,
three police officers arrived and arrested the pair, accusing them
of possessing burglary tools. Headlines about the sensational arrest were

(10:49):
splashed all over the local newspapers. The officers claimed that
they had confiscated not just tools used by burglars, but
also a device for pulling safe combinations and a funnel
used for nitroglyphs. Elmer and Walter faced serious charges, but
Elmer decided to put his army inventiveness to use. He
spent a story that the tools were part of a
new machine gun tripod and the supposed nitroglycerin funnel was

(11:13):
just a funnel that he had made for Walter. The
trial was intense, but Elmer demonstrated his tripod invention in
front of the court, convincing the jury to return a
not guilty verdict. It wouldn't be his last encounter with crime, though,
After meeting the notorious Walter Jarrett in Saint Joseph's jail,
Elmer was lured into the world of outlaws and bank robbers.

(11:35):
For good. Jarrett's fascination with the outlaw Jesse James only
fueled their ambitions. With their sights set on robbing the
Iron Mountain Train, Elmer, Jarretts and the rest of their
gang planned to make history, but the heist quickly turned
into a chaotic mess. The safe was harder to crack
than they anticipated, and their inept use of explosives caused

(11:55):
most of the silver inside to melt and fuse to
the walls of the safe. Despite their failed attempt, word
of their crime spread like wildfire. Undeterred, the gang set
their sights on a new target, a bank in Chautauqua, Oklahoma,
but their plan to tunnel through the brick wall and
blast the vault door also backfired spectacularly no pun intended,

(12:18):
I swear the explosion they set off ended up wrecking
the bank, and they barely managed to steal a few
hundred dollars. Unwilling to give up, they plotted their next
move robbing a train that carried royalty payments to the
Osage Nation, but instead they mistakenly robbed a local passenger train,
netting them a mere forty dollars in cash, plus a
pocket watch, one coat, and roughly two gallons of whiskey.

(12:42):
Despite their lack of success, though law enforcement was hot
on their trail. Determined to bring these wannabe outlaws to justice,
they used bloodhounds to track them down. At first, the

(13:02):
man hunt looked promising as the dogs picked up the
outlaws trail into the nearby woods, but heavy rains began
to fall, washing away footprints and the scent. The media
dubbed the gang the Bartlesville Posse and reported on their
ambitious plans, describing the explosives and fuses that they found
near the crime scene. And alcohol would once again play
into Elmer's downfall. In the following days, he hit out

(13:25):
at a local ranch where he indulged in stolen whisky
while bragging to a ranch hand that he had come
from a train that had been held up. Eventually, Elmer
passed out, but the lesson here for everyone at home
is pretty clear. Don't get drunk if you've got a
crime to hide. Right as dawn broke the next day,
on October seventh of nineteen eleven, the authorities caught up
with Elmer. The men took up stations outside the barn

(13:46):
where he was sleeping off the whiskey in a bed
of hay. Around seven am, the men surprised Elmer as
he stumbled out of the barn, perhaps still a bit
drunk from the night before. Caught off guard, he fired
wildly at them and then ran back in side the barn.
Elmer and the men exchanged gunfire for nearly an hour,
but at some point they realized that he was no

(14:06):
longer firing back, so they convinced a brave ranch hand
to go inside and check on the situation, which is
how they found Elmer dead on the floor, his body
riddled with bullet holes. Now I need to be honest
here that these circumstances surrounding his final days are shrouded
in a bit of uncertainty. Reports on the events before
the shootout at the barn are inconsistent and contradictory, leaving

(14:30):
the truth behind his death forever unknown. Some have suggested
that the shootout never even occurred, and that Elmer wasn't
present when the train was robbed. Instead, they wondered if
the posse just happened to come across Elmer sleeping off
whiskey in the barn and shot him by mistake. A
few have even suggested that one of his own gang
was the one who killed him. Whatever happened, though, Elmer's

(14:51):
end was just the beginning. While his life as an
outlaw may have paled in comparison to Jesse James or
Billy the Kid. What set him apart was what came
next next. It began with the embalming process at the
Johnson Funeral Home in Pulhuska, Oklahoma. His body was treated
with arsenic, turning it into an unexpectedly well preserved corpse.
But with no one coming forward to claim the body,

(15:13):
the undertaker came up with an idea. He dressed McCurdy's
body and bannedit attire, armed it with the rifle, and
then put it on display, charging visitors to view the
macab exhibit. You see. Back then, laws related to corpses
were a lot more lenient, and displays like this were
not uncommon. Several years went by until some carnival owners

(15:34):
approached the undertaker, eager to purchase Elmer's body. He refused,
so they concocted a story posing as the dead outlaws
relatives and tricked the undertaker into handing over the corpse.
After that, Elmer's well preserved remains were featured in various
carnivals and sideshows all over. Then, in nineteen twenty two,
a guy named Lewis Sonny, the head of an entertainment company,

(15:57):
acquired the body. And placed it in his traveling show
The Museum of Crime. After that, Elmer's corpse became a
prop in a couple of movies, after which it was
stored in a warehouse in Los Angeles. And at this
point most everyone had forgotten that this prop was actually
a human corpse, which is why in the mid nineteen seventies,
Elmer's body could be found hanging from a fake gallows

(16:19):
in the Laugh in the Dark Funhouse at the New
Point Amusement Park in Long Beach, California. Strange, right, But
hold on, because it only gets worse. When the hit
TV show The Six Million Dollar Man came to the
amusement park to film and episode, the production crew mistook
the corpse for a mannequin and accidentally broke its hand off,

(16:40):
revealing real human bones inside. As you might imagine, everyone
pretty much freaked out, so the police were called and
the coroner's office examined the body, finding a copper jacketed
bullet and early nineteen hundreds embalming fluid. Eventually, with the
help of Oklahoma historians, they identified the remains as Elmer McCurdy,
noting that his mouth was stuffed with carnival ticket stubs,

(17:04):
and there you have it. Clearly, in life he was
nowhere near as infamous or successful as other outlaws like
Jesse James or Billy the Kid. But in death his
ability to stick around eclipsed all of them quite literally.
Oh and one more thing. Billy the Kid's final resting
place might be a mystery, but Elmer mccurty's sure isn't.

(17:25):
In the spring of nineteen seventy seven, someone kindly offered
up a free plot in the legendary boothill section of
some View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma. It was a chance
to give him a proper burial, although a pretty delayed one,
to be honest. When the day finally arrived for Elmer
mccurty's final journey, it was a horse drawn hearst that

(17:45):
solemnly carried him toward boot Hill. Inside a plain pine
coffin held the well traveled body, ready to lay him
to rest sixty six years after his death, and the
cemetery that day was filled with hundreds of people, all
gathered to bid farewell to the failed outlaw who unintentionally
became a legend ever since. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave

(18:15):
his famous speech at the World's Columbian Exposition in eighteen
ninety three. The notion of the West, at least the
one that folks like Buffalo Bill Cody, Jesse James, and
all the rest painted for us, has embodied the American spirit.
This belief lived on from generation to generation, becoming woven
into American identity. In the end, whether fact or fiction,

(18:36):
the American Frontier's myth continued to shape a nation's soul,
inspiring its people to dream, explore, and believe in the
power of the untamed, uncharted future ahead. As the West's
physical landscape changed, the Wild West simply relocated from the
wide open plains to the minds and hearts of Americans,
where it remains to this very day. For many of

(18:59):
our cowboys and out laws, the stories that fed their
folklore were deeds done in life. But Elmer McCurdy's legend
was formed post mortem, and he finally got something that
he could only have dreamed of in life, a spot
on Boot Hill, a famous burial ground for gunfighters who,
as they say, died with their boots on. As his
coffin was lowered into the earth. That day, authorities poured

(19:22):
ample amounts of concrete on top of it, ensuring that
mccurty's days of macab travel were at an end. It
seems that he had finally earned his spot alongside the
outlaws of old and a place in our imaginations. The

(19:43):
Wild West has always been a real life cinematic universe,
full of textured characters and major events. It's neat and
tidy that way, but hopefully today's exploration of some of
the more colorful characters helped you spot a favorite or
two amongst the bunch. And if Elmer McCurdy's prop store
core was the one that caught your fancy, you're in
for a treat. We've got one more grizzly tale of

(20:04):
life after death in the wild West to share with you,
and if you stick around through this brief sponsor break,
my teammates Ali Steed will tell you all about it.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
George's good luck continued from there. When the train was
stopped at Carvin County, a mob of people, furious at
the murder of the lawmen, dragged George off the train
and prepared to hang him. George pleaded for his life,
and for whatever reason, the crowd let him go. Not free,
mind you, they just put him back on the train
so somebody else could hang him. He was tried and

(20:42):
found guilty on December fifteenth, eighteen eighty, and in the
spring of eighteen eighty one, the judge sentenced him to hang.
George had no intention of being executed. In March, George
attempted to escape. He succeeded in brutally subduing his jailer,
but not his jailer's wife, who forced him back to

(21:02):
his cell. Incensed over the attack on the jailer, residents
stormed the jail and dragged George outside, where they intended
to string him up from a telephone pole. The first
two attempts were gruesome failures, but as they say, third
time's the charm. Can you believe that's only the beginning
of our story? George's corpse wasn't exactly laid to rest.

(21:25):
With no family to claim the body, it fell into
the hands of doctors Thomas McGee and John Osborne. Curiosity
at the criminal condition led them to examine his brain,
but all they found was that George's brain was no
different from a normal one. Doctor Osborne molded a death
mask of George's face, and, in a gruesome twist removed

(21:48):
the skin from his thighs and chest. He then sent
the skin to a tannery to make a pair of
shoes and a medicine bag. Yes, you heard that right,
shoes and a medicine bag made from the skin of
an outlaw. After receiving his new duds, Doctor Osborne entered
the political arena, becoming the first Democratic governor of Wyoming.

(22:11):
It said that he even wore the infamous shoes to
his inaugural ball in eighteen ninety three. Later, he climbed
the political ladder further, becoming the Assistant Secretary of State
under President Wilson. Meanwhile, his young assistant, Lillian Heath, held
on to Big Nose George's skull cap. She went on
to become the first female doctor in Wyoming, an incredible

(22:35):
trailblazer in her own right. Big Nose George seemed lost
to history until one day in nineteen fifty, workers at
a construction site found a whiskey barrel filled with human
bones and a sowd off skull in Wallin's Wyoming. The
shocking discovery sparked curiosity and speculation. A crowd gathered to

(22:57):
witness the grizzly remains, and some remembered that Lilian Heath
might actually have a piece of the puzzle. Eighty years later,
Lillian confirmed the match between the skull caps she had
kept as an ash tray and the skull found in
the barrel. DNA testing later verified the results and the
mystery was solved. These were indeed the remains of Big

(23:20):
Nose George. Today you can see the death mask, skull
and infamous skin shoes displayed at the Carbon County Museum
in Rollins. The museum attracts visitors from far and wide,
eager to get a glimpse of the wild West's most
bizarre outlaw. Outlaws might have been rough and tough characters,

(23:41):
but in poor George's case, the vigilantes really kicked it
up a notch.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Grim and Maud Presents The Wild West was executive produced
by me Aaron Manky and hosted by Aaron Manky and
Alexander Steed. Writing for this season was provided by Michelle Mudo,
with research by Alexander Dristide, Sam Alberty, Cassandra de Alba,
and Harry Marx. Fact checking was performed by Jamie Vargas,
with sensitivity reading by Stacy Parshall Jensen. Production assistance was

(24:10):
provided by Josh Stain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
To learn more about this and other shows from Grim
and Mild and iHeartRadio, visit Grimandmild dot com