1000+ images about Ancestry : Butch Cassidy on Pinterest | The wild bunch, Utah and Denver Forward Etta Place was a companion of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), both members of the outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch. Principally the companion of Longabaugh, little is known about her; both her origin and her fate remain mysterious. Despite Longabaugh and Parker's fame, by the mid-20th century, it was the mysterious vanishing of Place that sparked the most interest, which continues to the present day. See More Butch Cassidy Virtual Photo Tour Butch Cassidy Of all Western outlaws, none are more fondly remembered in story and folklore than the "Robin Hood of the West," Butch Cassidy - the alias of Robert LeRoy Parker. Parker was born 13 April 1866 in Beaver, Utah, and was raised by Mormon pioneer parents on a ranch near Circleville, Utah. While a teenager, Parker fell under the influence of an old rustler named Mike Cassidy. Parker soon left home to ride the outlaw trail.

For the first several years after leaving home, Parker rode the fringe between being an outlaw and a migrant cowboy. He worked several ranches as well as one time in a butcher shop at Rock Springs, Wyoming, from which he took the name "Butch"; and to not bring shame upon honest parents, he added the name Cassidy, most likely in respect for his old mentor. Moving from rustler, for which he served a two-year stint in a Wyoming jail from 1894 to 1896, to master planner of the robbery of trains, banks, and mine payrolls came naturally for Cassidy. With his quick wit and native charm, coupled with his fearlessness and bravery, he never lacked for willing companions to assist in his plans. By 1896 his gang dubbed themselves the "Wild Bunch." This gang consisted of several notorious Western outlaws including Harry Longabaugh, known as the Sundance Kid; Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Ben Kilpatrick, the Tall Texan; Harry Tracy, Elzy Lay, who was Butch's best friend, and several others.

Operating around the turn of the century, Cassidy and his partners put together the longest sequence of successful bank and train robberies in the history of the American West. So many myths and legends surround the life of Butch Cassidy that it is difficult to sort fact from fiction. One popular story tells of the time when sixteen-year-old Harry Ogden from Escalante spent his savings to purchase a good horse and a sixty-dollar saddle. Young Ogden went out riding along the border of Robbers Roost in 1898, an outlaw on a jaded mount forced young Ogden off his horse, gave the boy a quick kick in the pants, then rode off on Ogden's animal. About three weeks later, Ogden received visitors at his home in Escalante. One of the men was Butch Cassidy, another was the outlaw who had stolen Ogden's horse and was still riding it. When Cassidy asked Ogden if he had lost a horse, the boy quickly identified it.

Butch Cassidy then ordered the outlaw off the horse and told him "to start walking." He then said, "We don't have any room in this country for a man who will mistreat a young boy." One of the first major crimes attributed to Cassidy is the robbery of the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride, on June 24, 1889. Matt Warner, Tom McCarty and Butch Cassidy got away with $20,750 by thoroughly casing the joint first. The bandits then made their way to a Hideout in Brown's Hole, along the Green River at the Utah-Wyoming border. The first robbery credited to the Wild Bunch was the August 13, 1896 holdup of a bank in Montpelier, Idaho. This robbery showed the trappings of what would become the Wild Bunch signature holdup: a well-planned attack. The bandits made off with $7,165. The gang next executed perhaps their most spectacular robbery when they stole the $8,800 payroll from the Pleasant Valley Coal Company in Castle Gate. This was the gangs one and only major holdup in Utah.

On April 21st, 1897 the train from Salt Lake City entered Castle Gate carrying the payroll for the Pleasant Valley Coal Company. Men carrying the money were making their way through town towards the company office when they were robbed of the $8,800 they were carrying and then fled to Robbers Roost, cutting telegraph wires along the trail to prevent the news of the robbery from spreading to lawmen along their escape route. Their next target was the Overland Flyer train near Wilcox, Wyoming. The gang pulled the job on June 2, 1899 and pilfered $60,000. There was a shootout, but the Wild Bunch got away. Next to experience the wrath of the Wild Bunch was a Rio Grande train near Folsom, New Mexico. On July 11, 1899 the gang hit what would become their ultimate prize when they made off with $70,000. The gang next robbed the Union Pacific train at Tipton, Wyoming on August 29, 1900. The gang made off with $55,000.

The robbers were identified by passengers on the train as Butch, Sundance, Kid Curry, Tall Texan, and Bill Cruzan. By this time Butch had begun to formula a plan of going to South America. To finance the plan, he took the Wild Bunch to Winnemucca, Nevada to rob the bank. On September 9, 1900, they stole $32,640. The last holdup attributed to the Wild Bunch was the $65,000 robbery of the Northern Pacific Train on July 3, 1901 near Wagner, Montana. After that, the Wild Bunch scattered. Successfully eluding the law became difficult as the west grew more populated and law enforcement became better organized. When the railroads hired the Pinkerton Agency to chase down Cassidy, he and Harry Longabaugh, along with Etta Place, went to South America and purchased a ranch in Argentina. After a few short years of trying to make it as honest ranchers, the pair returned to easier methods of obtaining money. After robbing banks in several South American countries the trail of the pair grows mystical. What happened next is the mystery surrounding Butch Cassidy.

Some claim he and Sundance were killed when trapped by Bolivian soldiers, others emphatically believe that another pair of outlaws were killed by the troops and that Cassidy and Longabaugh purposefully let it be known they had been killed. The oft-told stories relate that the pair returned to the West and lived out their lives under alias names and identities. Like many other Western figures, Butch Cassidy has become larger than life. His name still generates fond recollections from many Utah old-timers who love to tell stories about him. Whether he died in South America or died of old age under one of the several identities that are attributed to him may never be fully proven.

Article courtesy of Shane Burrows from Climb-Utah.com Copyright © 2009-2017 Visitor Information Center, Town of Circleville, Utah Butch Cassidy | American outlaw | Britannica.com American outlaw Alternative Title: Robert LeRoy Parker Butch Cassidy Kid Curry Butch Cassidy, byname of Robert LeRoy Parker (born April 13, 1866, Beaver, Utah , U.S.—died 1909?, Concordia Tin Mines, near San Vicente , Bolivia ?), American outlaw and foremost member of the Wild Bunch , a collection of bank and train robbers who ranged through the western United States in the 1880s and ’90s. Butch Cassidy, 1893. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-10772) Robert Parker took his alias from Mike Cassidy, an older outlaw from whom he learned cattle rustling and gunslinging (1884–87).

Thereafter—except for two years of chiefly cowboying (1891–92) and two years (1894–96) in Wyoming State Prison—he was teamed up with a succession of outlaws. His favourite friend and confederate was Elzy Lay , with whom, alone or in a gang, he helped rob a number of trains, banks, and paymasters and rustled horses and, less often, cattle. The year after Elzy was arrested and imprisoned (1899), Cassidy teamed up with Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid . By then, sheriff posses and Pinkerton detectives were capturing or closing in on members of the Wild Bunch, and Cassidy and Sundance (with Sundance’s girlfriend, Etta Place) escaped first to New York City and then to South America (1901). (Etta Place returned home in 1907.) From 1902 to 1906 they owned and ran a ranch in Chubut province, Argentina , but thereafter they returned to outlawry.

Drifting from country to country, they robbed banks, trains, and mine stations until 1909, when, according to Pinkerton agents, they were trapped by a group of mounted soldiers near San Vicente, Bolivia, where Sundance was mortally shot and Cassidy shot himself. Another story puts their death in Mercedes, Uruguay, in December 1911, cut down by soldiers during a bank robbery . Still other stories have Cassidy (either alone or with Sundance) returning to the United States, drifting about from Mexico to Alaska, and dying in obscurity in 1937 in the Northwest or in Nevada (possibly Spokane, Wash., or Johnny, Nev.). Learn More in these related articles: Read More in Wild West Magazine Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!! In May 1913, a Missouri carpenter named Francis M. Lowe was arrested in La Paz on suspicion of being George Parker (Butch’s real name, according to the Pinkertons’ wanted posters). With the aid of the American Legation, Lowe established that his was a case of mistaken identity. In filing a report on the matter, an official at the legation advised U.S.

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan that ‘certain Englishmen and others here assert that a man known as George Parker [whom the La Paz police were seeking] had been killed in one of the provinces two or three years ago while resisting’ arrest. Shortly before Lowe was detained, William A. Pinkerton had heard about the San Vicente shootout, but had dismissed ‘the whole story as a fake.’ The agency never officially called off the search for Butch and Sundance. Indeed, in 1921, Mr. Pinkerton told an agent that ‘the last we heard of [the Sundance Kid]…he was in jail in Peru for an attempted bank robbery. Butch Cassidy had been with him but got away and is supposed to have returned to the Argentine.’ Needless to say, the Pinkertons never caught up with the pair. This article was written by Anne Meadows and Daniel Buck and originally appeared in the February 1997 issue of Wild West. For more great articles, order your subscription of Wild West magazine today! Featured Article Cassidy: I’m Butch Cassidy. Powers: Well, what can I do for you? Cassidy: I’ll tell you.

There’s a heap of charges out against me and considerable money offered for me in rewards. I’m getting sick of hiding out; always on the run and never able to stay long in one place. Now, when it comes to facts, I’ve kept close track of things and I know there ain’t a man left in the country who can go on the stand and identify me for any crime. All of them have either died or gone away. I’ve been thinking. Why can’t I go and just give myself up and stand trial on one of those old charges? Powers: No use. You’ve robbed too many big corporations in your time. I do not doubt what you say, but if you were ever to go on trial you can depend on it, some one of those companies would bring someone to the stand who’d swear against you. No, you’ll have to keep on the run, I’m afraid. In substance, the two versions vary little, and had either author paraphrased the conversation, the slight differences would have likely gone unnoticed. However, both Kelly and Greene chose to report the conversation verbatim. Even then, the most notable difference concerns how Butch Cassidy was dressed.

Kelly says ‘well-dressed,’ which suggests city clothes, while Greene says ‘overalls and a blue denim jumper,’ as if Cassidy had recently come off the trail. Granted, this is a minor inconsistency, but it does raise one’s curiosity. Something else in Kelly’s version is bothersome. He says Butch introduced himself to Powers as ‘George’ LeRoy Parker. Cassidy’s real name was Robert LeRoy Parker, a fact later verified by his family and by church records. It’s true that during his outlaw career Butch did use the name George Cassidy, and throughout his book Charles Kelly mistakenly refers to him as George. However, if Butch chose to bare his soul to Powers and seek his help, would he not have used his real name? Again, this minor discrepancy would mean little if it were not that Kelly was purporting to provide a verbatim account of the meeting. Partly because of this slip, I chose Greene’s version over Kelly’s for my book on Cassidy, reducing Kelly’s account to an endnote reference. Another reason I favored Greene is that he had been a contemporary of Cassidy’s and might have even known him personally.

What’s more, it’s rumored that Greene was related by marriage to the John Simpson family, who were Butch’s neighbors and close friends when he had his ranch near Dubois, Wyo. As minor as these discrepancies were, I couldn’t let them alone, so recently I dug a little deeper into the matter, hoping to find the source (or sources) of the two accounts. Thanks to a tip from Wild Bunch writers Dan Buck and Anne Meadows, it did not take long to learn where Greene’s version came from. He took it word for word from Frederick R. Bechdolt’s 1924 book Tales of the Old Timers, a source that I had failed to track down when I was writing my biography of Cassidy. I was aware of the Bechdolt book at the time, but it had been out of print for years, and after a brief search for a copy I gave up looking. Frankly, I was put off by the title, thinking it was just one of those many potboilers on the Old West cranked out in the 1920s.

After all, Bechdolt was primarily a novelist and short-story writer whose stories occasionally had been adapted by Hollywood for early two-reel Westerns. I had underestimated Bechdolt. It seems he also turned out some decent frontier history. So, if Bechdolt’s book was the first published account of the story of Butch’s offer to surrender, what was his source? Bechdolt’s Tales of the Old Timers was mostly about southwestern frontier characters. He devoted only one chapter to Butch Cassidy. Like Charles Kelly and A.F.C. Greene, he did not include footnotes or endnotes, but he did provide a single page of ‘Acknowledgments.’ Among the names mentioned there with a connection to Cassidy were W.A. Richards (Wyoming governor during part of Butch’s outlaw career), Will Simpson (prosecutor at Butch’s trial in 1894) and James Simpson (Will Simpson’s son). Governor Richards and Will Simpson were at least possible sources for Bechdolt’s account of the Cassidy-Powers meeting. However, neither man was on the scene at the time of the meeting nor even indirectly involved in the incident. But what about Bechdolt himself?

Although born in Pennsylvania, Frederick Ritchie Bechdolt (1874-1950) grew up in the West and attended the University of North Dakota and later the University of Washington. Following graduation from the latter in 1896, he was hired as a reporter by the Seattle Star. He soon moved on, and for the next 10 years he wrote for major newspapers in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. Reporters find ways to dig out information. Being on the scene in Salt Lake City, possibly during the same year the Cassidy-Powers meeting took place or at least shortly thereafter, it is possible Bechdolt could have obtained the story, maybe even a stenographer’s record of the meeting. (Despite an obligation to keep information confidential, attorneys will tell you off the record that law offices can become leaky places when famous clients are involved. It was probably no different in those days.) Thus Bechdolt’s proximity to Powers could explain his version of the meeting, as well as give his account some credibility, but what about Kelly’s version? It is possible that he also might have had contact with persons who had known Powers.

Although Kelly was not around at the time of the Cassidy-Powers meeting, he did spend many years in Salt Lake City. In 1919, following discharge from the Army, he married and settled down there. However, at that time his primary interest was music (he played the violin and cornet), not writing. It would be another 10 years before he published his first book and nearly two decades before publication of The Outlaw Trail. Of course, it is possible that Kelly simply rewrote the Bechdolt version. Kelly’s acknowledgments in the second edition of The Outlaw Trail reveal that he also had access to Bechdolt’s book when he wrote the first edition. In fact, in 1939, a year after the first edition was published, Kelly admitted in a letter to Cassidy’s prosecutor, Will Simpson, that Bechdolt was one of his ‘principal authorities’ for The Outlaw Trail. But if he simply used Bechdolt’s version, why did he change it? Kelly was not averse to repeating verbatim earlier writers’ work, including Bechdolt’s (which he admitted in his letter to Simpson).

However, he might have already lifted sizable portions of Bechdolt’s material on other aspects of Cassidy’s career and perhaps decided that he should give the conversation between Cassidy and Powers his own interpretation. In any case, Cassidy was no doubt discouraged when he left Powers’ office that day in 1899, but he was not ready to give up. He knew of someone else in Salt Lake City who might help him, someone who might be more receptive to his pursuit of a pardon and, more important, someone who had even better access to Utah Governor Heber Wells than attorney Orlando Powers. That man was Parley P. Christensen. In his book, Charles Kelly describes Parley Christensen as a former sheriff of Juab County, Utah, a man who knew Butch Cassidy in his early years. However, when I checked with Juab County officials, they could find no record of a Parley P. Christensen having ever been sheriff of that county. Local records did list a town marshal by that name for the city of Nephi, the Juab County seat, but he was not appointed until 1914. Further digging revealed that the Parley P.

Christensen from whom Cassidy sought help might have once been a sheriff, but by 1899 he, like Orlando Powers, had become a prominent Salt Lake City attorney. A graduate of the University of Deseret (later the University of Utah) and Cornell University School of Law, Christensen was a rising star in Republican politics and a familiar sight in the halls of the Utah Capitol. He and Governor Wells, also a Republican, were well acquainted, having both served as delegates to the Utah State Constitutional Convention in 1895. Christensen, in fact, had served as secretary of the convention and was later elected to the state Legislature. (During that same fall, Christensen was elected Salt Lake County attorney and seemed destined for the governor’s office, but several years later he had a falling out with the Republican Party and eventually joined the Progressive movement. In 1920 he ran for president of the United States on the Farmer-Labor ticket.) Cassidy found Parley Christensen much more encouraging than Powers about his chances to obtain some form of clemency. Christensen quickly arranged an appointment for him with the governor.

According to Kelly, after listening to Cassidy’s offer, Wells told him that if there were no murder warrants out for him, he thought something could be worked out. However, when the governor had his attorney general check the warrants on Cassidy, a murder charge did turn up. During a second meeting, the governor informed Butch that he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do for him. Cassidy insisted that he had never killed a man in his life, but that wasn’t the issue. The governor’s condition had been that there could be no murder warrants out for him, and one was found. Frankly, Butch should have expected as much. After all, for the previous three years, when a bank or train robbery occurred in Utah or the surrounding states, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch usually topped the list of suspects. If a bank or express car guard had been killed in one of those robberies, it is not surprising that Cassidy’s name was on a warrant. According to Kelly, at this point attorney Orlando Powers reentered the picture. He had come up with a novel idea. What if Cassidy agreed not only to give up his life of crime but also to go to work for the Union Pacific Railroad as an express guard?

If so, perhaps the railroad would drop all charges against him. As a full-time employee of the railroad, Butch could not get away with much; his whereabouts would usually be known. Moreover, Powers could argue that, when other outlaws learned the famous Butch Cassidy was guarding the Union Pacific’s express cars, they might be hesitant to attack the train. Author A.F.C. Greene does not mention Powers’ idea. Lula Parker Betenson, Butch’s younger sister, does refer to it in her book, Butch Cassidy, My Brother, but Kelly was probably her source. Frederick Bechdolt briefly discusses a variation of the story. He says Butch asked for a meeting with John Ward, sheriff of Uinta County, Wyo., at a mountain pass on the Denver & Rio Grande line. There, the wanted man informed Ward that he could ‘tell the railroads that they could take their gunmen off the trains,’ that they ‘ain’t going to need ’em’ anymore, because nothing ‘was going to come off, and you’ve got my word for that.’ Bechdolt, however, does not mention that Cassidy would ask for any kind of deal. What could Butch have gained from such an arrangement?

Actually, not a whole lot. The Union Pacific officials could only forgive him for robberies on their line. At the time, the states of Wyoming and Utah wanted him, and Butch was also a suspect in bank or train robberies in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Montana and New Mexico. The Union Pacific officials could not grant amnesty for any of those offenses. But what does give some legs to the story that Cassidy might have accepted Powers’ suggestion and offered to work for the railroad company is a letter found in the Utah State Archives’ collection of the correspondence of Governor Wells. The letter, addressed to Wells, was dated May 30, 1900. The writer was W.S. Seavey, then general agent of the Denver office of the Thiel Detective Service. Seavey wrote, ‘I desire to inform you that I have reliable information to the effect that if the authorities will let him alone and the UPRR officials will give him a job as guard, etc., the outlaw Butch Cassidy will lay down his arms, come in, give himself up, go to work and be a good peacable [sic] citizen hereafter.’ What adds to the letter’s credibility is that W.S.

Seavey was not an ordinary part-time gumshoe. If Seavey considered his information as ‘reliable,’ it probably was. Seavey might have been a careless speller, but he was an experienced lawman who, before becoming a Thiel general agent, had served eight years as chief of the Omaha Police Department. Kelly tells us that Powers presented the offer to the Union Pacific, and ‘after some discussion the railroad officials agreed to the plan and authorized Powers to get in touch with Cassidy.’ The author says Powers then wrote to Douglas Preston, Cassidy’s personal lawyer since the early 1890s, requesting that he get the word to Cassidy. He did, and, according to Kelly, Preston arranged to meet Cassidy in 10 days at ‘Lost Soldier Pass’ in southwestern Wyoming and bring along the Union Pacific’s chief detective and’some officials with power to make an agreement.’ The meeting at Lost Soldier Pass never came off. As Kelly told it, Cassidy showed up, but there was no Douglas Preston and no railroad officials. After waiting all day, Butch rode back to his hideout.

Preston later claimed that he and his party were delayed by a storm, and when they finally did arrive and found Cassidy gone, Preston, ‘disgusted with his fruitless effort, savagely kicked at a flat stone [that was] lying under the lone cedar where the meeting was to have taken place.’ Underneath the stone he found a piece of paper on which Cassidy had written: ‘Damn you, Preston, you have double-crossed me. I waited all day but you didn’t show up. Tell the U.P. to go to hell. And you can go with them.’ It is not difficult to believe that Cassidy was tired of running and wanted to surrender, and that at the urging of Orlando Powers he would have considered working for the Union Pacific Railroad in exchange for amnesty. Unlike most outlaws of his day, Butch did not appear to have an aversion to honest work. Although he had committed his first bank robbery in 1889, there is no evidence that he was involved in another major crime for more than seven years, not until the bank robbery in 1896 at Montpelier, Idaho, to obtain money to help his friend Matt Warner.

It’s true that more than once during those seven years Cassidy probably helped himself to a rancher’s straying cattle, but among cowboys in Wyoming during the early 1890s, plucking a beef off the range was considered something akin to a part-time job. Butch also probably stole a few horses, which was looked upon more seriously (and for which he went to prison for 18 months). And of course Cassidy has been credited with several major robberies during the last half of the 1890s; however, when he walked into lawyer Powers’ office that day in the fall of 1899 with the idea of surrendering, he had spent the previous year doing honest work, as assistant foreman and trail boss on the New Mexico Territory ranch of an Englishman, William French. It was hard, boring work ramrodding herds in the parched Southwest, but Butch Cassidy (known to rancher French as Jim Lowe) apparently enjoyed it. When the job of foreman opened up, he told French he wanted to take it, but by then the Pinkertons had come nosing around, and Butch felt it was wiser to leave.

Years later, French had only good things to say about the man he knew as Jim Lowe. Therefore, it is not difficult to believe that Cassidy probably would have succeeded as an express car guard. However, to think that the railroad would have actually hired him for that position is another matter. This is not to say that the idea was new. Hollywood writer-producer Glen Larson, who used just such an arrangement as a continuing plot for his 1970s Western TV series Alias Smith and Jones, claimed he got the idea from a reference to a similar arrangement he ran across while looking for story ideas in the files of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. And in telling of the incident, Butch’s sister Lula (or her co-author, professional writer Dora Flack), while admitting that the idea of an outlaw becoming a railroad guard sounded pretty far-fetched, insisted that in Butch’s case it was no ‘fairy tale’ and was ‘a plan familiar to lawmen.’ On the other hand, looking at such an arrangement from the railroad’s side, chances are the Union Pacific’s board of directors could not have stomached it.

This group of investors had shelled out $110 million to purchase the line in 1893 and would have been more than a little nervous putting a known criminal on speeding trains that frequently carried thousands of dollars in bullion, coin and currency. Moreover, it is difficult to believe that E.H. Harriman, then president and a major stockholder of the Union Pacific, would have gone for such a deal. Harriman was a problem solver, not a deal maker. For example, the previous year his answer to a flurry of train robberies was to station ‘posse cars’ (gutted baggage cars loaded with experienced railroad police and former lawmen on fast horses) at strategic points along the line, ready to be dispatched at the first word of a holdup. And the plan was apparently working. Furthermore, according to W.H. Park, then the Union Pacific’s general superintendent, at that particular time he and Harriman did not consider Butch Cassidy the most dangerous member of the Wild Bunch. They felt Harvey Logan deserved that title.

Therefore, if presented with a plan for Cassidy to become an express car guard, Harriman and Park might have wondered just how much help Butch would be if a Harvey Logan-led gang of outlaws attacked one of their trains. In addition, implementing such a plan would have been a major problem. With an outlaw on the railroad’s payroll and possibly in position to learn of shipment dates and security details, it is likely that Union Pacific officials would have accepted the deal only if they could have been assured that Butch would be kept under surveillance night and day. Was that possible? Probably not. Also, the truth of the story of the aborted meeting between Cassidy and representatives of the railroad has been put further in doubt by recently discovered evidence. The ‘Damn you, Preston’ note Butch allegedly left under a stone at Lost Soldier Pass might have been a forgery. Although Kelly spelled out the contents of the note in his book, it was assumed that the original note no longer existed–until sometime in the 1980s, when it mysteriously began circulating among rare document dealers.

This caught the interest of writer Dan Buck, who, after several weeks of dogged detective work, discovered that the note might have been a creation of the notorious forger of Mormon documents, Mark Hofmann. It appears that Hofmann, or someone, might have written the note to conform to the story told by Charles Kelly. Although Buck hasn’t conclusively nailed down Hofmann as the culprit, he puts little faith in the note’s authenticity, as well as in the tale of the attempted rendezvous itself. In writing about the note and the alleged meeting, Buck, in the spring 2002 issue of The Journal of the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association, raises several questions. Preston was Cassidy’s old friend and defense lawyer. If he had failed to show up for a meeting, which, after all, was out in the middle of nowhere, would Cassidy have immediately accused him of a double-cross? Preston and his party were supposed to have been delayed by a storm. Would not Cassidy have weathered the same storm? The letter was written in ink. Would Cassidy have been carrying a pen and a bottle of ink in his saddlebags?

And the note was not scribbled as it might have been by someone dashing off a message, perhaps using his saddle to write on. Instead, the handwriting was careful and neat, as if written on a desk. Cassidy supposedly hid the note under a rock, which just happened to be the rock that Preston, disgusted over Butch’s departure,’savagely kicked.’ Although Charles Kelly’s account of Cassidy’s aborted arrangement with Union Pacific officials now seems suspect, we should not come down too hard on Kelly. In The Outlaw Trail, Kelly did his best with the information he had, whatever the source. As tenuous as some of his facts might have been, Kelly provided a valuable starting point for subsequent research on Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. And to his credit, in the first edition of his book Kelly admitted that his information was sometimes conflicting and indefinite, and because of this he invited his readers to write him if they had additional ‘facts,’ so he could correct errors in future editions. Dan Buck and Anne Meadows, in their introduction to the University of Nebraska Press’ 1996 reprint edition of The Outlaw Trail, aptly describe the challenge Kelly faced in telling Butch Cassidy’s story.

They quote former Western Publications editor John Joerschke, who, in addressing a 1994 gathering of outlaw history aficionados, cautioned his audience: ‘If you want to write a true story, write a novel,’ because the truth, the precious metal we seek, must be mined from ‘a mountain of lies, legends and missing clues.’ This article was written by Richard Patterson and originally appeared in the February 2006 issue of Wild West. Richard Patterson devotes his time to legal writing and frontier history. His books Butch Cassidy: A Biography and Train Robbery: The Birth, Flowering and Decline of a Notorious Western Enterprise are recommended for further reading, along with Frederick R. Bechdolt’s Tales of the Old Timers; Lula Parker Betenson’s Butch Cassidy, My Brother; and the introduction by Dan Buck and Anne Meadows to the 1996 reprint of Charles Kelly’s The Outlaw Trail: A History of Butch Cassidy and His Wild Bunch. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today!

More Butch Cassidy Articles Interview With Author Mark Smokov Author Mark Smokov brings Wild Bunch outlaw Harvey Logan (aka Kid Curry) out of Butch Cassidy’s shadow. Book Review: He Rode With Butch and Sundance, by Mark T. Smokov Author Mark Smokov makes the case that Harvey Logan (aka Kid Curry) was not just another member of the Wild Bunch under Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Book Review: The Last Outlaws, by Thom Hatch Author Thom Hatch delivers a dual biography of Butch and Sundance, notorious outlaws as inseparable in life as in death. Letter From Wild West – April 2013 Con man Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith II stirred up trouble on the frontier and still sparks controversy today. Butch Cassidy - Piute County, Utah Butch Cassidy Piute County Legendary Outlaw Butch Cassidy Circleville boasts of their famous (or infamous) Robert Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, who spent his youth there during the 1870s and 1880s. His boyhood home still stands near U.S. 89, two miles south of town.

In the summer months it is open for visitors. Piute County is Butch Cassidy Country in more ways than one. Here he is thought of with a little more kindness and tolerance than one might expect. It was in Circleville that he grew up, and here that he learned how to change cattle brands and evade the law. In the Globe newspaper, the following item was written and published on December 20, 1988. You can't believe the movies! Butch Cassidy died in bed. Romantic outlaw, Butch Cassidy, didn't die with his six guns blazing in a murderous shootout with soldiers in Bolivia, as many historians believe. He passed away peacefully in bed with his boots off. Cassidy's nephew, John Betenson, says his uncle and his fast-draw partner Harry Longabough, the Sundance Kid, spread the story about their deaths so that detectives, who were hot on their trail, would call off their manhunt. "There was a battle with soldiers and two men did die that afternoon, explains Betenson, a 68-year-old retired rancher in Circleville, Utah. It was two lesser members of the outlaw gang who bit the dust.

Butch and Sundance simply assumed their identities. "The Bolivian soldiers who captured them were told they had killed the infamous train robbers, and the troopers were happy enough to believe it. The trick worked, and once the trail was cold, Butch and Sundance rode off in to the sunset and anonymous retirement. I know that's the chain of events, says Betenson. My mother, who died in 1980 at the age of 96, was Butch's sister, and he visited her in 1925, when I was just five years old. I remember that if the subject of my uncle came up at the dinner table, we were taught to act as if we had never heard of him. Of course, everybody around these parts knew he was my mother's brother. True of false, the Bolivian shootout provided a rip-roaring finish to the smash-hit movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Betenson told Globe that Butch was using the alias William Phillips when he died of cancer in 1937. But he won't say where the outlaw is buried for fear that trophy hunters might try to unearth his remains.

My uncle's real name was Robert Leroy Parker, he says. An outlaw named Mike Cassidy took a liking to him when he was 16 and showed him how to shoot. He was so fond of Cassidy that he took his last name. Betenson adds, Butch told my mother he had run into the Sundance Kid in Texas a few years before, so we know both men escaped death in South America. Copyright ©2007-2012 Piute County Chamber of Commerce Butch and Sundance: the photo gallery | Arnold Zwicky's Blog Arnold Zwicky's Blog The cell phone of 1922 » Butch and Sundance: the photo gallery (First in a series on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in real life, in the movies, and in my magic-realist fiction. Not much about language in the series.) A few photos, two from real life and one from the 1969 movie, with additional movie images in a link.

First, brief background: Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (1867 – November 7, 1908), better known as the Sundance Kid, was an outlaw and member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch in the American Old West. Longabaugh likely met Butch Cassidy (real name Robert Leroy Parker) after Parker was released from prison around 1896. Together with the other members of “The Wild Bunch” gang, they performed the longest string of successful train and bank robberies in American history. After pursuing a career in crime for several years in the United States, the pressures of being pursued, notably by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, forced Longabaugh, his girlfriend Etta Place, and Cassidy to abandon the United States. The trio fled first to Argentina and then to Bolivia, where Parker and Longabaugh were reportedly killed in a shootout in November 1908. ( Wikipedia link ) Robert Leroy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was a notorious American train robber, bank robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch gang in the American Old West.

( Wikipedia link ) The famous posed picture of (some of) the Wild Bunch: (#1) Front row left to right: Harry A. Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, Ben Kilpatrick, alias the Tall Texan, Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy; Standing: Will Carver, alias News Carver, & Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Fort Worth, Texas, 1900 (There are other photos of some of these men, mostly unposed shots in which they’re very hard to make out. But here they are in sharp focus, proud and tough, in their best clothes.) Then there’s Etta Place. From Wikipedia: Etta Place (born circa 1878, date of death unknown) was a companion of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), both members of the outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch. Principally the companion of Longabaugh, little is known about her; both her origin and her fate [she simply disappeared] remain shrouded in mystery.

Sundance and Etta: Butch Cassidy: American Bank Robber and Outlaw | The Western Online Published on Friday, September 4, 2009 Butch Cassidy - Robert Leroy Parker American Bank Robber and Outlaw By Matthew Pizzolato Although he started life as a small time outlaw, Butch Cassidy eventually became an American legend due to the circumstances surrounding his death. Butch Cassidy was born Robert Leroy Parker in 1866 to Mormon parents in Utah. During his teenage years, he became friends with a rustler named Mike Cassidy. The young man enjoyed the outlaw life so much that he followed his mentor out of Utah and into Colorado in 1884. For a two year period, Cassidy worked for a mining company in Telluride, Colorado. Shortly thereafter, Cassidy began participating in robberies with the McCarty gang, which operated in Colorado. The gang robbed both trains and banks, the most notable banks being the First National Bank of Denver and the San Miguel Bank at Telluride. His nickname "Butch" came from the brief stint he worked in a butcher shop at Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1892.

He added the last name of Cassidy to honor his old mentor and began rustling. He was arrested in Wyoming and served two years for rustling and was released in 1896. Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch After being released from prison, Cassidy migrated to Brown's Hole, a known outlaw hangout, and was also seen at the Hole in the Wall. It was at these two places that he formed what would become known as The Wild Bunch. Notable gang members include: Kid Curry, Harry Longbaugh, better known as "The Sundance Kid," and Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum. The Wild Bunch operated across the country in states from South Dakota to New Mexico. Pinkerton agents and lawmen across the country tried to derail The Wild Bunch but to no avail. The gang became so prosperous that they even hired their own lawyer. From 1897 to 1901, Cassidy and the Wild Bunch robbed trains and banks throughout all of the mid-West. As the long arm of the law caught up with the gang and the pressure became too great.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Cassidy and Sundance fled to Latin America in 1901 with a woman named Etta Place, where they passed a quiet few years. In 1906, Etta Place became ill and returned to the United States. The two outlaws worked for a mining company in Brazil for a time, but apparently couldn't stay away from the outlaw lifestyle. After a series of bank and train robberies in Brazil, they were both reportedly killed by army troops in the village of San Vincente, Bolivia in 1908. It was at this point that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid became American legends. The real circumstances surrounding their deaths may never be known. According to their families, both men escaped from the trap in Bolivia and returned to the United States where they lived out their lives in relative peace. Cassidy is said to have died in Spokane, Washington in 1937. And Sundance reportedly married Etta Place and lived quietly until 1957 and was supposed to have been buried in Casper, Wyoming.

However, given the lifestyle of these two men, their inability to live quietly in Brazil, it is highly unlikely they passed the remainer of their lives in the United States without a single holdup. More than likely, they were both killed in Bolivia, but recent excavations failed to confirm the identity of the men buried there. Source: Lamar, Howard R, ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven and London, Yale University Press. Front row left to right: Harry A. Longbaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, Ben Kilpatrick, alias the Tall Texan, Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy; Standing: Will Carver & Harvey Logan 1000+ images about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. on Pinterest | The wild bunch, Photographs and Fort worth Forward The Sundance Kid (Henry Longabaugh) earned his nickname when he was caught and convicted of horse thievery in Sundance, Wyoming. Despite his reputation as a gunfighter, he is not certain to have actually killed anyone. After his release from jail in 1896, he and Robert LeRoy Parker aka “Butch Cassidy” formed the gang known as the Wild Bunch.

They were responsible for the longest string of successful train and bank robberies in American history. Due to the pressure of the Pinkerton Detective… See More Sundance Kid Sundance Kid Harry Alonzo Longabaugh 1867Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, United States Died November 6, 1908San Vicente, Bolivia Alias(es) Edit Block Sundance Kid and Place before they headed to South America Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (1867 – c. November 6, 1908), better known as the Sundance Kid, was an outlaw and member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, in the American Old West. Longabaugh likely met Butch Cassidy (real name Robert Leroy Parker) after Parker was released from prison around 1896. Together with the other members of "The Wild Bunch" gang, they performed the longest string of successful train and bank robberies in American history. Early life and career Edit Block Longabaugh was born in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, in 1867. At age 15, he traveled westward on a covered wagon with his cousin George.

In 1887, Longabaugh stole a gun, horse and saddle from a ranch in Sundance, Wyoming. While attempting to flee he was captured by authorities and was convicted, being sentenced to 18 months in jail by Judge William L. Maginnis. During this jail time he adopted the nickname of the Sundance Kid. After his release, he went back to working as a ranch hand and in 1891, as a 25-year-old, he worked at the Bar U Ranch in Alberta, Canada, which was one of the largest commercial ranches of the time. Longabaugh was suspected in 1892 in a train robbery, then again in 1897 in a bank robbery along with five other men. He became associated with a group known as the "Wild Bunch" which included his famous partner Robert Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy. Although Longabaugh was reportedly fast with a gun and often referred to as a "gunfighter", he is not known to have killed anyone prior to a later shootout in Bolivia, where he and Parker were alleged to have been killed.

He became better known than another outlaw member of the gang dubbed "Kid", Kid Curry (real name Harvey Logan), who killed numerous men while with the gang. It is possible that often the "Sundance Kid" was mistaken for "Kid Curry", since many articles referred to "the Kid". Longabaugh did participate in a shootout with lawmen who trailed a gang led by George Curry to the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout in Wyoming and was thought to have wounded two lawmen in that shootout. With that exception, though, his verified involvement in shootouts is unknown. Longabaugh and Logan used a log cabin at what is now Old Trail Town in Cody, Wyoming, as a hide-out before they robbed a bank in Red Lodge, Montana. Parker, Longabaugh and other desperados met at another cabin brought to Old Trail Town from the Hole-in-the-Wall country in north central Wyoming. That cabin was built in 1883 by Alexander Ghent. Historically, the gang was for a time best known for their lack of violence during the course of their robberies, relying heavily on intimidation and negotiation, but nevertheless if captured they would have faced hanging.

However, that portrayal of the gang is less than accurate and mostly a result of Hollywood portrayals depicting them as usually "non-violent". In reality, several people were killed by members of the gang, including five law enforcement officers killed by Logan alone. "Wanted dead or alive" posters were posted throughout the country, with as much as a $30,000 reward for information leading to their capture or death. They began hiding out at the Hole In The Wall, located near Kaycee, Wyoming. From there they could strike and retreat, with little fear of capture, since it was situated on high ground with a view in all directions of the surrounding territory. Pinkerton detectives led by Charlie Siringo, however, hounded the gang for a couple of years. Parker and Longabaugh, evidently wanting to allow things to calm down a bit and looking for fresher robbing grounds, left the United States on February 20, 1901. Longabaugh sailed with his "wife" Etta Place and Parker aboard the British ship Herminius for Buenos Aires in Argentina. Death Edit Block The facts concerning Longabaugh's death are not known for certain.

On November 3, 1908, near San Vicente in southern Bolivia, a courier for the Aramayo Franke y Cia Silver Mine was conveying his company's payroll, worth about 15,000 Bolivian pesos, by mule when he was attacked and robbed by two masked American bandits who were believed to be Longabaugh and Parker. The bandits then proceeded to the small mining town of San Vicente where they lodged in a small boarding house owned by a local miner named Bonifacio Casasola. When Casasola became suspicious of his two foreign lodgers (a mule they had in their possession was from the Aramayo Mine, and was identifiable because of the mine company logo on the mule's left flank) Casasola left his house and informed a nearby telegraph officer who notified a small Bolivian Army cavalry unit (the Abaroa Regiment) stationed nearby. The unit dispatched three soldiers, under the command of Captain Justa Concha, to San Vicente where they notified the local authorities.

On the evening of 6 November, the lodging house was surrounded by a small group consisting of the local mayor and a number of his officials, along with the three soldiers from the Abaroa Regiment. When the three soldiers approached the house where the two bandits were staying, the bandits opened fire, killing one of the soldiers and wounding another. A gunfight then ensued. At around 2 a.m., during a lull in the firing, the police and soldiers heard a man screaming from inside the house. Soon, a single shot was heard from inside the house, after which the screaming stopped. Minutes later, another shot was heard. The standoff continued as locals kept the place surrounded until the next morning when, cautiously entering, they found two dead bodies, both with numerous bullet wounds to the arms and legs. One of the men had a bullet wound in the forehead and the other had a bullet hole in the temple. The local police report speculated that, judging from the positions of the bodies, one bandit had probably shot his fatally wounded partner-in-crime to put him out of his misery, just before killing himself with his final bullet.

In the following investigation by the Tupiza police, the bandits were identified as the men who robbed the Aramayo payroll transport, but the Bolivian authorties did not know their real names, nor could they positively identify them. The bodies were buried at the small San Vicente cemetery, where they were buried close to the grave of a German miner named Gustav Zimmer. Although attempts have been made to find their unmarked graves, notably by the American forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow and his researchers in 1991, no remains with DNA matching the living relatives of Parker and Longabaugh have been discovered. This uncertainty has led to many claims that one or both survived and eventually returned to the United States. One of these claims was that Longabaugh lived under the name of William Henry Long in the small town of Duchesne, Utah. Long died in 1936 and was buried in the town cemetery. His remains were exhumed in December 2008, and testing was performed to determine whether he was Harry Longabaugh, but the results did not support the William Long theory. Aliases Harry A. Place (his mother's maiden name was Annie Place) Harry Long

Question: By which other name (alias) was the American outlaw Robert LeRoy Parker better known?
Answer: Butch Cassidy