The Long Goodbye
THE OVERLOOK
By Tom Clavin
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I recently saw an advertisement for Dead Outlaw, a musical that will begin performances on Broadway in April. It is based on the life of Elmer McCurdy. This made me wonder if the idea came from my book The Last Outlaws, published two years ago, in which McCurdy is a minor but fascinating character. From the book:
During the next few weeks, accompanied initially by his son Albert, Heck Thomas focused on tracking down Bill Doolin. Let other deputy marshals try to find Clifton and the like, Heck wanted the head guy. Along the way he added to his posse and asked questions wherever he stopped for supplies. A tipster told him that Edith Doolin had returned to live at her father’s house near Lawson. To Thomas, that meant Bill Doolin was also in the area.
Once in Lawson, according to a letter written to Bill Tilghman and dated September 3, 1896, Thomas received some “fresh news” which led him and his posse to stake out the Ellsworths’ house. For several hours, the veteran deputy marshal gazed through what he called “field glasses,” hoping for a sign of Doolin.
Inside the house, Bill and Edith Doolin had dinner with her parents. He vowed that he was quitting the outlaw business and he and his family were going to relocate to West Texas or possibly as far as New Mexico. He had a wagon of their possessions ready to go. Finally, about 8 p.m., Heck Thomas saw a tall man step out of a stable on the property and begin walking in bright moonlight down the lane.
It was definitely Bill Doolin, and he held out in front of him a Winchester rifle. “He was walking slow,” Thomas wrote Tilghman, “looking first on one side and then on the other.”
When Doolin had come close enough, Thomas called out to him to surrender. Instantly, Doolin raised the rifle and fired. That bullet missed as did the second one, while Thomas was having trouble firing his shotgun. Another member of the posse fired and the bullet struck the Winchester. Doolin dropped it and pulled out his pistol, firing once. “At about that time,” Thomas reported, “I got the shotgun to work and the fight was over.”
Edith Doolin had heard the shots and she ran out of her parents’ house and down the road, shouting, “Oh, my God! They’ve killed Bill!” Heck Thomas caught and restrained her before she could see her husband’s body.
The slain outlaw was loaded into a borrowed spring wagon and brought to Guthrie. In the wagon behind it was a distraught Edith Doolin. In Guthrie there was the obligatory taking of photographs of the body. Beth Meeks reported, “The town went wild in celebration, relieved at the death of the noted desperado.”
During the embalming process, 21 buckshot holes were counted in Bill Doolin’s body. The embalmer was also the owner of a furniture store and he had to repeatedly shoo away the curious crowds who climbed all over his goods to try to observe the procedure. He later lamented, “I could have made plenty of money if I had charged 25 cents admission to view the body of Bill Doolin.”
Speaking of money: In a bizarre bit of fundraising, Edith, with some help from her brothers, wrote a poem about her husband and printed it with one of the photographs of his perforated body on postcards that were sold for 25 cents each. The proceeds went toward burial expenses. Perhaps embarrassed by the ploy, Oklahoma authorities stepped in and picked up the tab for burial of Bill Doolin in the Boot Hill section of the city’s Summit View Cemetery. A rusty buggy axle was driven into the ground to mark the grave.
Heck Thomas was well-compensated for finding and finishing off the remaining leader of the Doolin-Dalton Gang. The Wells Fargo Company gave him $500 and the same amount was soon paid by the State of Missouri, and the railroads came up with an additional $300. Of this $1300 total, Heck kept $400 and doled out the rest to the members of his posse and to Tilghman, who had not received any reward for tracking Doolin down the first time because it required “arrest and conviction.”
Buried next to Bill Doolin in 1977 was Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw who was killed in a shootout with police after robbing a Katy train in October 1911. Where was the outlaw’s body for 81 years?
In mummified form it was first put on display at an Oklahoma funeral home and then became a fixture in traveling carnivals for decades. After changing ownership several times, sometime in the 1960s the late robber’s remains wound up at The Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California. Eventually, they were discovered by a film crew of the TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man,” and were positively identified in December 1976.
Five months later, Elmer McCurdy was finally laid to rest, probably for good, becoming Doolin’s neighbor in Summit View.
Producers: I’ll take two orchestra seats, please!
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including Bandit Heaven and, with Bob Drury, Throne of Grace. To purchase copies, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.