Big Nose George Parrot

Now here’s an outlaw whose end simply begs to be made into a Takashi Miike movie: Big Nose George Parrot. Jailed for killing a Wyoming deputy sheriff and a Union Pacific detective, Parrot was sentenced to death. Not content with waiting for the authorities to do the job, a lynch mob numbering around 200 people snatched Parrot from jail and he was promptly hung from a telegraph pole. In a series of increasingly suspect medical studies, Parrot’s body suffered the following indignities:

• The top of his skull was sawn off.


• The piece of skull was presented to medical assistant Lilian Heath, then 15 years old.


• Heath used the cap as an ashtray, pen holder and doorstop.


• Skin from Parrot’s thighs and chest was removed.


• Together with his nipples, the skin was tanned and made into a pair of shoes and a medical bag.


• The dismembered body was stored in a whiskey barrel for about a year.


• Parrot was finally buried in the yard behind the office of one of the doctors who mutilated him.