On October 6, 1916, a man calling himself “Aver” contacted Joseph Johnson claiming to be Elmer McCurdy's long lost brother from California. Aver had already contacted the Osage County, Oklahoma sheriff and a local attorney to get permission to take custody of the body and ship it to San Francisco for proper burial. The following day, Aver arrived at the Johnson Funeral Home with another man calling himself Wayne, who also claimed to be McCurdy's brother. Johnson released the body to the men who then put it on a train, ostensibly to San Francisco. It was instead shipped to Arkansas City, Kansas. The men who claimed to be McCurdy's long lost brothers were in fact James and Charles Patterson. James Patterson was the owner of the Great Patterson Carnival Shows, a traveling carnival. After learning from his brother Charles about the popular "Embalmed Bandit" exhibit, the two concocted a scheme to take possession of the body in order to feature it in Patterson's carnival. McCurdy's corpse would be featured in Patterson's traveling carnival as "The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive", until 1922 when Patterson sold his operation to Louis Sonney.