When the Seattle city council voted to ban commercial cadaver displays like “Bodies: The Exhibition,” you had to wonder if Bellevue’s city council would have done the same. Of course, the issue hasn’t come up around here so far. There have been occasional traveling displays of taxidermied animals, mounted fish, dead bugs and dried flowers on the Eastside, but none of human remains.

Which brings to mind the tale of Elmer McCurdy, a real person who met his end almost 100 years ago. At least, it was sort of the end.

McCurdy had been a not-very successful train and bank robber. Once, McCurdy and his gang tried to rob a train that he heard was loaded with money. Unfortunately, they robbed the wrong train – and only collected about 25 bucks. The next day, a local newspaper stated: “The haul made by the robbers was one of the smallest in the history of bank-robbing.”

That had to hurt Elmer’s feelings, but what hurt more was the bullet that a law officer eventually plugged him with. And so, in a small Oklahoma town on that October day in 1911, Elmer McCurdy’s life came to an end.

But his story got a lot more interesting.

His body lay unclaimed at a local funeral home for six months – and since the undertaker had done such a good job of preserving him, pretty soon someone noticed that it was possible to stand Elmer straight up. For the first time, the crook was a stand-up guy and became a local must-see attraction.

Eventually, he became part of a traveling carnival.

Over the years, Elmer began to shrivel a bit, but that just added to his intrigue.

In the early 1970s, he somehow wound up as a prop on the Universal Television lot during the filming of an episode of the “Six Million Dollar Man.” Apparently everyone on the film crew assumed that Elmer was made out of paper mache’ and glue. But when McCurdy’s arm accidentally fell off, the astute director realized that papier mache’ figures usually don’t have real bones inside.

The authorities were contacted, a medical examination was done, and eventually the mummy was identified as the long-ago outlaw and sent back to Oklahoma for a proper, if somewhat delayed, burial.

The argument could be made that for a lousy robber, things turned out OK for Elmer. After all, he was in show business for over 60 years. Let’s see if Justin Bieber can last that long. Especially when he starts to shrivel.