Ouflaw Hits Comeback Trail Conf. From Page One when he and three other men halted a Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroad near Okesa, in Osage County. The robbers forced the engineer to separate the locomotive and mail and express cars, took $4C from a mail clerk and fled with "considerable m c r -ehandisc," according to newspaper accounts of the time. Bloodhounds and a few n o s y neighbors helped nab one of Elmer's confederates who led sheriff's deputies to Elmer's hideout on the "old Charles Ravard place" near the Big Ca-ney River. Glen Shirley, a noted Western historian in Stillwater, s a i d he found this account of McCurdy's death in a clipping from the Paw-huska Journal: Ravard wont lo Mc-Curdy in his perch in a hayloft in Rnvard's barn and gave him a message from the pos.se come out or die. McCurdy refused, saying he wotdd not be taken alive and opened fire on the posse that had surrounded the barn. A 30-minute gunbat-tle raged, ending when Elmer was picked off by a bullet in the head. From there Elmer does not surface again till 1925. Dan Sonney. of En-lertainment Ventures. Inc.. in Los Angeles, must pick up the story line here. Sonney said his father, a travelling showman, bought Elmer's mummy from another remember is. some where where on the coast, maybe Seattle," Sonney said. Sonney said his fa-I her was told the corpse was that of El-mer ,1. McCurdy, Okla-homa outlaw. How the corpse came to be embalmed and made a sideshow exhibit after the Osage County shootout is not known. But Shirley, a noted authority on outlaws and law enforcement in the Indian Territory and earl y statehood phase of Oklahoma history, saifl it was net unusual for "bad men" to be mummified or embalmed and put on display by shows and even lawmen. Sonney said he and his father didn't know if the mummy was a mummy or not. but they covered the figure with painted wax, laid it in a coffin and placed alongside other wax dummies in the travelling show of villains. Sometime near 3940, McCurdy was pul in a warehouse, left in rolled dm;l and moths with only his past making him different from the other figures that went wax. But Elmer was made of hones and something leathery akin to Jlesh and his special place in h i s t o r y was vet to come. Long after Sheriff II.M. Frcas of Osage County and his posse passed into the great maw of human events, Elmer J. McCurdy was biding his time for a return. Sonney said he sold the old wax figures to a man named Spooney Sing about six years ago. Sing operates a wax museum on Hollywood Blvd. In lxs Angeles and Elmer was in show business again, his true character still concealed in the para fin of fantasy. The mummy was discovered during a filming of a scene from the television series, the "Six Million Dollar Man, at the Nu-Pike F.lnvr was hanging Irntu a noose on a makeshift gallows. His was ftU- ' o v c r i n painted an orescent red. E 1 m e ) s lime had ii m e. A technician moved the body and an arm fell off. He was preparing to glue it. hack on when one of. Elmer's bones popped into view. The rest of the wax was remove tl and bones began appearing with an all-loo familiar shape. The wax dummy was a mummified man and an examination by the Los Angles County Coroner's office determined the man had been shot. A trace of the owners by police led to the identification by Sonney. Now Elmer ,T. McCurdy, also known as Frank C u r t i s. also known as Frank Davidson, will turn to the ashes, the ate promised to all. He will be cremated unless someone claims the body, according to Ihe coroner's office.