THE MEN WHO WEREN'T THERE: BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID

 

(8,000 words)

                                                         ==================

 

Can we pierce the fog and fish out the facts of their shadowy careers without mixing too many metaphors?

 

      In the early 1900’s two North American bandits with hefty criminal records “led active lives” in South America. Their main turf was Patagonia, the continent’s southern fringe. They had a part-time accomplice, “a most beautiful woman.”

La señora norteamericana was no dilettante, yet had trouble adapting to the outlaw lifestyle. She spoke polished Spanish but never took to South America. She disliked the isolation and instability that went with dodging lawmen from two continents, and she eventually left the two men to their fate.

Their fate has spawned countless arguments, articles, books and documentaries. Plus a hit movie.

 

 i: THE THREE                                                            vi: THIS IS AN OUTRAGE

 ii: HERE’S THE PLAN, BOYS                                   vii: FADING INTO A BOLIVIAN

 iii: DOWN IN PATAGONIA                                         viii: MEMORIES, MEMORIES   

iv: THINGS CHANGE                                                  ix: THE BANDIT INVISIBLE  

v:  THE EVANS-WILSON TRAJECTORY  

 

             (i) THE THREE

 

        The boss was Robert Leroy Parker (1866 – ?). The Parkers were Mormons from Lancashire and Scotland. “Bob”, the oldest of thirteen kids, shared Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. He inherited his mother Annie’s eyes and jawline. He was genial, fond of books about medieval England, Scottish clans and anything by Charles Dickens. But by 1884, chafing against his native Utah’s economic and religious boundaries, Bob went rogue.

He started small. A petty theft here, a little cattle rustling there. His crimes were interspersed with periods of good conduct as a reliable ranch hand. Then he escalated to big-time robberies – banks and trains.

In Wyoming he was imprisoned for buying a stolen horse. To spare his Mormon family the shame of his imprisonment he claimed to be a New Yorker without kin (Religion: None). After his release he used a variety of aliases before settling on the permanent nom-de-crime Butch Cassidy.

“Butch” came from an early job in a Rock Springs, Wyoming butcher-shop. “Cassidy” originated with an early hero-figure, Mike Cassidy.

Parker/Cassidy founded the most successful train-robbing “gang” – actually a loose band of comers-and-goers  – in U.S. criminal history. It went by various names, but "The Wild Bunch" stuck the longest.

 

Butch the boy

 

     Unusually for the 1890’s, Cassidy enforced absolute sobriety among his accomplices during robberies. Each crime's planning phase afforded him genuine pleasure. Despite his easygoing image, Cassidy researched the details with rigorous precision. He insisted the perfect robbery resulted in (a) nobody getting hurt and (b) no arrests. Meticulous about the getaway phase, Butch stymied the pursuing lawmen by cutting the telegraph lines and pre-positioning supplies and fresh horses along the planned escape routes.

This was key. Knowing when trains or banks held the maximum cash and how the security worked was all vital. But what was the point if you got caught?

Cassidy targeted railroads, cattle barons (“dudes”) and banks, never ordinary folks. This endeared him to the masses. And it provoked high-powered enemies.

 

     His longest-serving associate was the tall, taciturn Pennsylvanian, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (1867 – ?).

Longabaugh’s German grandfather was Conrad Langenbach, back when names and spellings were more flexible. The Longabaughs knew poverty, but young Harry’s library card let him escape into fantasies about famous outlaws like Jesse James. He yearned to go west. Aged 15 he did just that, adapting to frontier life with remarkable ease and becoming an expert horseman. Playing down his East-coast origins, he comported himself as a true son of the West.

Longabaugh called himself The Sundance Kid, commemorating his first serious crime at the age of 20: stealing a horse and gun near Sundance, Wyoming. If he were alive today he’d have 18 tattoos (one for every month behind bars).

Unlike Butch, he was not given to deep analysis. He shunned complexity. While Cassidy’s research aimed to prevent on-the-job hiccups, Sundance didn’t mind them. They gave him an excuse to pistol-whip some poor son of a bitch, something he enjoyed.

Harry Longabaugh was normally standoffish. He rarely smiled, although he might simply have wished to hide a flashing gold tooth, which he later replaced with a porcelain tooth once the big money rolled in. Plus he had chronic catarrh (excessive respiratory mucus), so all that snorting, sniffing and spitting was unlikely to transform him into The Sunshine Kid (or endear him to dentists).

Despite their popular image, Butch and Sundance were not bosom buddies. They somehow clicked, despite temperaments as different as cheese and chalk. But only the lure of big money drew them together and kept them together.

 

The Wild Bunch in 1900

(Sundance front L, Butch front R)

 

     Their part-time accomplice – Sundance’s lover – was the most mysterious. Her biography remains a thicket of question marks, frustrating generations of researchers. One commented: It’s as though she had no identity before she met Sundance and no identity after they separated.

Every statement about her is speculative. Every question is a stab in the dark. "Leads develop," wrote one researcher, "only to dissolve into ambiguity."

Was Etta (Ethel?) Place a Colorado schoolteacher? Perhaps. Other research traces her to Texas bordellos. That's not out of the question. Was her name really C-A-P-E-L? Or Platz (“place” in German)? Longabaugh’s mother was Annie Place. Did that make Etta his cousin?

She was Sundance’s lover until she left South America in 1905 (or possibly1906). She may have rejoined him later, but at some point she abandoned South America forever (perhaps) and her trail went stone cold (for sure).

Some research suggests she lived out her days in Colorado. One source claims her daughter was the bank robber Betty Weaver, who was finally nabbed in Kansas in 1932. Another claims Etta ran a sucessful sanatorium in Arizona. Or maybe, as some believe, she simply “went underground” in San Francisco.

One researcher attests Etta spied on Cassidy and Longabaugh for the U.S. Secret Service and that she was assassinated in California in 1915. Other research has her returning to South America and (a) committing suicide in 1924 or (b) being murdered in 1922 by Mateo Gebhardt, her Argentinian lover or (c) living out her days in comfort as the wife of a wealthy Paraguayan.

And some research points to Etta living until 1966, just three years before the Hollywood movie Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid hit the world’s screens.

 

 

           (ii) HERE’S THE PLAN, BOYS

 

           The year is 1900 and the times they are a-becomin’ different. The heat is hotting up for The Wild Bunch. Law enforcement has now become uncomfortably sophisticated.

Lawmen in the West were spirited and hardy. They had to be. But their resources were often limited, their adversaries just as spirited and hardy, and the West’s vast stretches of wilderness hindered pursuit.

Now the Pinkerton Detective Agency tipped the balance.

It was once the world’s largest private law-enforcement and detective agency. “Pinkertons” formed Abraham Lincoln’s personal bodyguard. Government agencies hired Pinkertons for special investigations. Railroads used them to guard payroll-carrying trains. And huge profits accrued from locating WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE outlaws.

The agency’s detection-for-profit ethic and its multitude of agents, undercover operatives, archivists and part-time informants made it a formidable outfit. Its voluminous cross-referenced files on every known criminal in America covered a host of details. What are his aliases? Where are his known hide-outs? Who are his known associates? What is his preferred weapon? Which does he prefer, cigars or a pipe? Any visible scars? Is he left-handed? What about missing digits? Does he limp? How are his teeth? And so on.

The Pinkertons operated 24/7, accepting any assignment with a reasonable chance of success. That, and their famous “all-seeing eye” commercial logo, gave rise to the slang term “private eye” (a detective for hire).

 

They outcopped the cops

 

     This all hurt The Wild Bunch. They’d steal a payroll, only to find the Pinkertons had recorded and telegraphed the banknotes’ serial numbers – promising rewards for actionable leads – throughout the area. So spending that cash risked blowing their cover.

Cassidy had to think outside the box. He reasoned thus: Our luck will run out one day, and maybe soon. So why not try something unexpected? Like Argentina.

The Argentinian government was giving – giving! – virgin farmland to North American settlers. While the Italian, German and Slavic immigrants fueling Argentina’s booming economy were still welcome, norteamericanos – with their proven expertise in transforming wilderness into productive farmland – could get land in the country's south (Patagonia) for free.

Boys, here’s the plan, Butch announced. We get us some free farmland in Argentina. The Pinkertons won’t think to look for us way down there. We walk the straight and narrow. Then we don’t have the law breathing down our necks. And we get rich from farming beef.

Who’s in?

Only Harry Longabaugh/The Sundance Kid and Etta Place were in. Fine, said Cassidy. Then just us three will go. ¡Adios!

 

 

           (iii)  DOWN IN PATAGONIA

 

           Riding some of the very trains they’d previously robbed, they rendezvoused in New York in February 1901, after Longabaugh visited his family’s new residence in New Jersey. The trio bought stylish clothes (always a priority for Sundance), attended the opera, experienced the kinetoscope (moving pictures) and sailed to Argentina aboard the British ship Herminius.

The trio embarked on February 20th as Mr. and Mrs. Harry A. Place. Cassidy became Mrs. Place’s brother - “James Ryan” - the same name as the sheriff who’d arrested young Longabaugh back in Wyoming.

In Buenos Aires they took rooms at the luxury Hotel Europa. Señor Place soon opened a bank account with US$12,000 (what the average white U.S. male might earn in 20 or so years). They established themselves as people of substance, desirable additions to Argentina’s burgeoning population.

They visited the Land Department after scouting potential places to settle. 5,000 hectares of pristine Patagonian land outside Cholila, near the Chilean border, fell into their laps. On behalf of the group the young señora asked the Director, ¿Hay bandidos en esa zona? They were relieved to hear their area was bandit-free.

By June their cottage, resembling the Parker home back in Utah, boasted lace curtains, brass lamps and spittoons, plus perfumed wash basins. A Cholila policeman named Humphreys befriended them, but came perilously close to risking Sundance’s vicious wrath by displaying an unseemly interest in the señora.

 

The Kid & Etta hit New York

 

     On August 10, 1902 Cassidy/Ryan wrote to Matilda Davies in Utah. She was the mother-in-law of Ellsworth (‘Elzy’) Lay, his closest friend. Lay was behind bars for killing two lawmen in a New Mexico shoot-out. Butch addressed her as "my dear friend," but such affectionate terms were really meant for Elzy, who’d receive that letter himself in due course.

Cassidy and Lay were old pals and brothers-in-crime. They’d both been romantically involved with the Bassett sisters. As we’ll see later, Josie Bassett later swore Butch was alive and well in 1920’s and was back in the States.

I was restless and … wanted to see more of the world, Cassidy wrote. [One] of my Uncles died and left $30,000 to our little family of three … So I took my $10,000 share and I located to South A.

The death of his “Uncle” was actually the $33,000-haul from The Wild Bunch’s robbery of a Nevada bank in 1900. That was equivalent to about $1,000,000 today. The “little family of three” was himself with Etta and Longabaugh.

Their Patagonian homestead pleased Butch: I have 300 cattle, 1500 sheep and 28 good saddle horses, and 2 men to do my work, also a good 4 room house, a wearhouse [sic] … But he regretted having to cook for himself. He confessed to loneliness: I am alone all day, and … besides the only language spoken in this country is Spanish, and I don’t speak it well enough to converse on the latest scandals so dear to the hearts of all nations…

Cholila was good agricultural country … and it can’t be beat for [stockraising]. The new trans-Andes road to Puerto Montt opened up the lucrative Chilean market for beef and provided easy access to cheaper Chilean products.

Southern Argentina’s climate pleased him: The summers are beautiful, never as warm as [Utah], and grass knee high everywhere and lots of good cold mountain water. But [in] winter… it rains most of the time…[S]ometimes we have lots of snow, but it don’t last long.

 

     Cassidy’s letter was all I-me-my: “I took my $10,000…”. “I have 300 cattle”. “2 men do my work”. He never mentioned Longabaugh and Etta. They were currently away, leaving the always gregarious Butch bereft of company (and without a cook). Why didn’t he mention them? Most likely he wanted to conceal their presence in case the letter was intercepted by law enforcement.

The three settlers' new lives assumed a patina of respectability. Cholila embraced the newcomers, even the throaty, rather standoffish husband with his made-to-order shirts, expensive vests and masses of silk handkerchiefs, Señor Enrique (“Clothes maketh the man”) Place. And the charming señora‘s witty conversation and excellent Spanish put some Cholila homesteaders – especially the well-to-do British expats – to shame.

The Places and Señor Ryan – the shorter, congenial fellow with the infectious laugh – were welcome additions to the community. So welcome, in fact, that nobody objected to the two men always carrying guns. Or to the elegant young señora displaying such masculine skills with horses (skills no Argentinian lady would ever wish for herself).

The territorial governor visited Cholila, and Enrique Place kindly entertained His Excellency on the guitar. The three norteamericanos made such positive impressions that nobody around Cholila suspected their dark secrets.

Life can be good. But it don’t last long.

 

Their home on the range

 

            (iv) THINGS CHANGE

 

             What most people “know” about Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid derives from the 1969 film starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katherine Ross. It depicts The Wild Bunch dissolving after they decide honest outlaws can no longer make a decent living. Butch, Sundance and Etta head to Bolivia, not Argentina. Etta’s unhappy there, predicts this whole thing will end badly and returns to the States. Cassidy and Longabaugh resolve to stop robbing Bolivian banks and “go straight.”

They become mining company security guards. But the Devil whispers in their ears. They revert to banditry. One day half the Bolivian Army corners them in the remote, godforsaken hamlet of San Vicente.

Wounded but undaunted, they discuss their next destination once this minor difficulty is resolved. Butch suggests Australia: no language barrier, Australian banks are bursting with cash and there are unlimited spaces for bandits to disappear into. They draw their weapons and make a dash for it, but they’re blasted to smithereens after only a few strides.

 

That scenario mined – and wildly distorted – Arthur Chapman’s anonymously-sourced magazine article from 1930.

Chapman (1873-1935) had the pair heroically resisting the Bolivian troopers on their trail. In November 1908 they made a last stand in San Vicente (altitude 4,500 meters /15,000 feet). But far from planning an Australian crime spree they couldn’t even plan an escape. Cassidy and Longabaugh were wounded and down to only two bullets. Butch shot Sundance in the head and then shot himself.

 

Australia here we come!

 

     Both versions are unsubstantiated.

Research on the San Vicente “siege” has unearthed so many contradictory versions, all differing in every conceivable detail, that now only the most irredeemable fantasists cling to the idea that Butch and Sundance died in that Bolivian hamlet.

In any case, the Bolivians’ – and the outside world’s – willingness to believe they died there must have proven to be wonderfully convenient.

What better cover for outlaws than to be assumed dead?

 

     It is certain the trio farmed in Cholila between 1901 and 1905. During those years “Enrique and Etta Place” visited the U.S.A. three times. In 1902 they stayed in New York, Atlantic City – where Sundance introduced the Longabaughs to his “wife” –  Buffalo and Denver..

Their visit to Buffalo, an unlikely destination for that couple, has been plausibly explained as a confidential visit to a renowned venereal disease clinic. They arrived back in Buenos Aires just before Cassidy wrote his letter to Elzy Lay.

Their second trip was in April 1904. Ignoring the risk of Pinkerton agents catching their scent, after Atlantic City they visited Fort Worth, Texas. Its brothels were always high on The Wild Bunch’s list. Etta probably had connections there. Then they took in The World’s Fair (which included the barely promoted Olympic Games) in St. Louis.

The third trip – arranged hurriedly – was in 1905 (although some researchers believe it was 1906). Etta claimed to have an intestinal problem. Expressing distrust in local doctors, she demanded treatment in the United States. They sailed from Chile to San Francisco.

Longabaugh soon returned to Cholila but Etta stayed on. One suggested explanation for this was that her “intestinal problem” was a pregnancy for which Longabaugh wasn’t the father. This had to remain secret at all costs. She needed to get away before her baby bump showed. A nearby homesteader named John Gardiner made a sudden unexplained departure to his native Britain at the same time.

Whatever the case, a separation ensued. Some evidence suggests Etta may have returned later.

 

     Warned by the local lawman Humphreys that the Pinkertons had discovered their whereabouts and were closing in, the Americans suddenly sold their homestead to an Anglo-Chilean. They reverted to crime, crisscrossing the border, robbing banks. This was late 1905.

Cassidy and Longabaugh acted on this information at once, so they must have regarded it as credible. As we'll see later, they weren't entirely wrong to do so.

Eyewitnesses reported the wandering bandits had a female accomplice. Her impressive horsemanship and male disguise could not conceal her feminine beauty.

Unless there was another beautiful yanqui expert horsewoman in cahoots with the bandits, and unless these eyewitness reports were actually dozens of hallucinations, she must have been Etta. Meaning she must have returned by 1906 at the latest. Meaning Etta tagged along because she and Sundance had rekindled their relationship.

But eventually - when and why no one can say - Etta dropped out of sight, leaving Butch and Sundance to their fate.

But what was that fate?

 

Which was a lot of money in

those days

 

 

         (v) THE EVANS-WILSON TRAJECTORY 

 

         Much of the mystery surrounding Butch and Sundance’s fate arises from them being not the only bandidos yanquis in Argentina. American outlaws couldn't resist Argentina’s rich pickings, undistinguished police standards and lack of Pinkertons.

W. C. Jameson’s Butch Cassidy: Beyond the Grave (2014) explained:

To compound the identity problems, the number of North American outlaws … operating in … Argentina was increasing, and it is likely that several robberies committed by them were attributed to Cassidy and Longabaugh. Robert Evans [from Montana] and William Wilson [from Texas] were committing crimes in the area in much the same manner as Cassidy and Longabaugh, and were often mistaken for the more famous duo. (p.103)

Indeed, Evans and Wilson knew Butch and Sundance. They’d almost certainly visited their homestead. Their appearance and personalities were known to resemble Butch and Sundance’s. Evans, the shorter one, shared Cassidy’s gregarious nature. Wilson had Nordic features and was taciturn like Sundance (but was free of catarrh.)

It’s probable that the Montanan and Texan exploited these resemblances by sometimes posing as Cassidy and Longabaugh to confuse the police.

And we cannot rule out the possibility that Butch and Sundance posed as Evans and Wilson.

The claim that Evans and Wilson were Butch and Sundance limped through the decades. Then in 1970 (following the movie’s release) a 104-year-old man named Pedro Peña told interviewers he was in the Frontier Police patrol which killed Cassidy (or Evans) and Longabaugh (or Wilson). That was in southern Argentina in 1911.

Now, said the death-in-Bolivia doubters who yearned for something substantive about the outlaws’ fate, now we’re getting somewhere. And the Evans-Wilson narrative did seem credible.

 

       It’s December, 1909 in Arroyo Pescado, an affluent wool-producing area southwest of Cholila. Two Welsh immigrants ran the local general store: Llwyd ApIwan, the owner, and Bobby, “a soft-headed religious maniac.”

“Evans” and “Wilson” entered the store, ostensibly as customers, but actually intent on stealing the gold sovereigns in the safe. The bandidos forced ApIwan to open the safe but found it empty. The expected gold consignment was late.

Wilson covered the Welshmen as the bandits backed their way out. His spur caught on the rug and he fell backwards. ApIwan tried to wrestle the gun away but Wilson shot him in the chest. Then the pair escaped.

 

     The local Police Commissioner, Milton Roberts, aware that the Pinkertons believed Butch and Sundance were in Argentina, sent detailed descriptions.

Evans was “about 35 years old, height 5 feet 7 inches [170cm]”. Stockily built, he had red hair, although Roberts surmised this was a wig or a dye job. The man known as Wilson, he wrote, was “about 25 years old”(!),  height 5 feet 11 inches (180cm). He was slim with fair hair.

Roberts never saw them himself, so the descriptions depended on soft-headed Bobby’s observational powers. Their descriptions more or less matched the outlaws’. The age discrepancy – Cassidy and Longabaugh were over 40 in 1909 – was explained by Bobby being not too bright, the shock of it all and everything happening so quickly.

The Pinkertons sat on this information and did nothing. We’ll learn why in Part viii.

 

 

       (vi) THIS IS AN OUTRAGE

 

       The scene moves south to their camp near Río Pico. It’s March 1911. A kidnapping now proves significant, leading to Pedro Peña’s story.

 

     Luis Otero was an eccentric loner from a wealthy Buenos Aires family. He avoided women, dressed badly and loved Patagonia’s solitude. One day he and a servant were driving a buckboard to his farm. Two riders approached. One smiled and waved Otero on, giving his buckboard the right of way. But the other rider suddenly grabbed the passing buckboard’s reins.

The horsemen – now identifiable as English-speakers – took them to their camp, tied them up and built a crude prison cell with tree trunks and rawhide. Otero noted the taller, fair-haired bandit left most of the heavy work to the shorter fellow.

The two bandidos had English-speaking sidekicks. They let the prisoners out twice a day for exercise and bodily functions. After two weeks of this routine one gringo accidentally dropped a match. Otero scooped it up, surreptitiously lit a small fire and burned through the rawhide.

That night the prisoners heaved aside a log, squeezed out and escaped. Otero made hysterical accusations, claiming his brothers had orchestrated the kidnapping to poison his affection for Patagonia. His family assured the police that he was not a mentally well young man. Nobody believed Otero’s story until the police investigated the site. Then the kidnapping scandalized Argentina.

 

    The Ministry of the Interior took the heat.

We can imagine the Minister at his desk, bewailing all the negative publicity Otero’s kidnapping and other recent abominations had sprayed on Patagonia in general and on his ministry in particular.

Here he is, venting to an assistant after digesting the latest newspaper reports and editorials:

Minister: Fabris, this is outrageous! Outrageous! Absolutely outrageous! I’m … I’m …

Fabris: Outraged, Your Excellency?

Minister: Outraged! Yes! How did things down in Patagonia get so bad? Just look at these headlines. Kidnappings! Marauding outlaws! Bandidos yanquis acting like they own the place! I mean, how did it get like this?

Fabris: Well, I hesitate to use the word misappropriation, but Your Excellency will recall those funds earlier allocated to the improvement of law enforcement in Patagonia…

Minister: Er … y… yes.  Er ... We have to do something, Fabris. Not only do something, but be seen to do something. I’m ordering a huge increase in police manpower down there. Let’s beef up the Frontier Police. With luck they’ll make some juicy arrests and embarrass those sons of whores who run the newspapers. I’ll rub their noses in it. See to it at once, will you?

So the funds earmarked for the suppression of banditry in the south of the country magically rematerialized. Patrols were stepped up. Evans and Wilson laid low.

 

 

      (vii)  FADING INTO A BOLIVIAN

 

     Back in 1906 Cassidy, Longabaugh and Etta meandered north, reaching Bolivia (without Etta). From Cholila this was about the same distance as Miami to Montreal.

As “Santiago Maxwell” and “Enrique Brown”, they walked the straight and narrow – to some extent – as employees of the Concordia Tin Mine.

Their American boss, Percy Seibert, liked Cassidy/Maxwell, describing him as “a gentleman … pleasant … charming … Women invariably liked him”. Longabaugh, however, was “distant and difficult to befriend.” They became reliable workers, and Seibert was glad to have them.

Cassidy eventually revealed their true identity, but their recent excellent conduct gave Seibert no reason to make an issue of crimes unrelated to his beloved tin mine. While Sundance trained the company’s mules, Butch was entrusted with delivering valuable payrolls. He soon became Concordia’s golden boy.

(Seibert wrote Butch had told him Etta was a great housekeeper. And what a cook! But she had “the heart of a whore”. Cassidy didn’t elaborate, and Seibert thought it unwise to pursue the subject.)

 

Sundance's students

 

     There were reports that Cassidy and Longabaugh robbed other Bolivian mines themselves.This backfired on them: caucasians stood out in rural Bolivia’s largely indigenous population. Every robbery produced more eyewitnesses. Butch feared trouble was coming. And his partner became problematic.

During 1907 the tedium of training a tin mine’s mules unhinged Sundance. He hit the bottle.

Longabaugh’s drunken boasts of the robberies he and his amigo had pulled in Argentina and Chile prompted one cantina owner to summon the police. They made a speedy exit.

The crunch came on a visit to Santa Cruz. They saw a Spanish-language Pinkerton poster of themselves. Cassidy now sported a beard and Longabaugh – no longer slim – had a booze-hound’s puffy face and double chin. Luckily, nobody connected them with the Wild Bunch-era faces on the posters.

Sundance sobered up and they quit the mine in 1908. They may then have worked briefly as stagecoach drivers for a Scottish immigrant.

Then they vanished. November 1908 saw that San Vicente shootout involving two caucasians.

Seibert did his ex-employees a kindness by identifying the corpses as Cassidy and Longabaugh.

That’s it, said the Bolivian authorities. Case closed.

Butch and Sundance were now good to go.

 

         (viii) MEMORIES, MEMORIES

 

          But all this time the Pinkertons had not entirely forgotten them.

In 1902 an agent visited Argentina following reports that three yanquis in Patagonia matched the outlaws’ and Etta’s descriptions. It was a long shot, but he alerted the local authorities, reminding them that generous rewards were still available. But nothing happened.

In 1903 Agent Frank Dimaio (1864 -1954) arrived in Argentina with orders to get the ball rolling again. Bruce Chatwin's book In Patagonia mistakenly depicted Dimaio as a nervous fellow, endlessly delaying his search for the fugitives after somehow forming an image of Patagonia as a snake-infested jungle full of crocodiles and fevers.

In fact, Dimaio was an Agency hero. One of the few Italian-American Pinkertons, he had volunteered to infiltrate Sicilian gangs in a New Orleans prison. One slip-up and Dimaio was a goner. But he pulled off this perilous undercover mission with exemplary skill and courage.

Dimaio sent Spanish-language wanted posters throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and Chile. Yet unexplained dawdling by the Argentinian authorities and U.S. consular officials now confounded him.

Then Pinkerton HQ suddenly informed Dimaio that this investigation was deprioritized.

The Union Pacific Railroad and the American Bankers Association, gratefully accepting the Pinkertons’ contention that these fugitives had relocated to Argentina, were now perfectly satisfied to let them be. Look, they said, if they’re down in South America they can’t rob our banks and our trains. Reward money? Forget reward money. Repeat: forget reward money. Forget Cassidy and Longabaugh.

The case remained open but dormant. Then in 1911 the Uruguayan police reported killing three bandidos yanquis, two men and a woman, in a shoot-out. This was music to the Pinkertons’ ears. That’s it, they said. Case closed.

 

Dimaio (1864-1954)

 

     Word spread: Butch and Sundance were pushing up South American daisies.

But not everyone was convinced.

Poppycock! said Cassidy’s old friends back in the States:

Butch dead in a South American shootout? Old Butch? Never! He hated goddamn shootouts.

Why, I seen Butch running guns for Pancho Villa in Mexico! (Possible but unlikely.)

A Mormon family named Bowman swore Cassidy skillfully negotiated them out of a serious jam with Mexican troops in Chihuahua in 1910. Years later Butch visited them in Texas. They sent his photo to his folks in Utah. (But what became of that photo?)

Butch went gold-prospecting in Alaska with Wyatt Earp. But the climate disagreed with Butch so he come on back. (Alaska: possible. Earp: nope.)

I met old Butch at a Wild West show in San Francisco. (Not impossible.)

After South America Butch went to Paris, France, Europe. He had surgery on his face. Now he looks real different. (Considerable doubt surrounds this. See Part ix.)

Old Butch? He got himself a Model T Ford and drove all around the West. (This was supposedly Cassidy’s sentimental journey to his preferred brothels from Nevada to Texas.) (Memories, memories.) And he’s gotten rather fat.

 

So you're the Butch Cassidy!

 

     Other return stories:

A Rock Springs, Wyoming bartender, Bert Kraft, alleged that during the 1920’s Elzy Lay and Cassidy entered his saloon. Lay had been incarcerated in 1899, but was pardoned in 1906 for helping to end a prison riot. He straightened himself out, remarried and moved to California.

Kraft knew them both from the old days. He mentioned that Elzy’s old flame, Josie Bassett (whose sister was Butch’s old flame) lived nearby.

Butch, Elzy and Josie reminisced for hours. She later claimed she’d met Butch twice in Johnnie, Nevada. Josie added he’d worked for a mining company there, where he died “in the 1940’s.”

 

     Then there’s the account given by Lula Parker Betenson, Cassidy’s youngest sister.

 

     In her book Butch Cassidy, My Brother (1975), Betenson described the autumn day in 1925 when “Bob” – as the Parkers remembered him – appeared in Circleville, Utah.

A shiny Ford stopped on the road where Mark Parker was repairing a fence. After some confusion Bob’s identity clicked and the brothers embraced. They drove Bob’s car to the house where old Maximilian (“Maxi”) Parker – with his distinctive shock of white hair – and youngest daughter Lula (aged 41) still lived.

“Bob” was 59 and hadn’t been home in over 40 years, but Maxi knew immediately his firstborn had returned. Lula – too young to remember him – observed the stranger had her mother Annie Parker’s eyes and jawline. He was her long lost brother.

Bob expressed grief at how his wicked ways had broken his dear mother’s heart. He described the day in ’84 when he left home. His mother packed some food in a blue blanket. She and the family dog, Dash, watched him ride past the poplar trees his mother had planted years earlier.

He declared he and Sundance had sincerely tried to “go straight” in Argentina and Bolivia. But he blamed corrupt local lawmen and Pinkertons for hounding them, forcing them back into criminality. The family believed him.

Accepting they weren’t kids anymore and enough was enough, Cassidy and Longabaugh abandoned the outlaw life in 1909.

(If true, this casts fatal doubt on the outlaws in Bobby’s, Otero’s and Peña’s stories being Cassidy and Longabaugh.)

For safety the ex-outlaws separated, planning a future reunion and a joint return to the United States. A scorpion sting made Cassidy miss the scheduled rendezvous. He eventually reached Mexico, finding employment here and there along the way. In a cantina Butch suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. He froze, fearing a zealous lawman had identified him. But the hand belonged to Etta.

Sundance was with her. The trio shared two convivial days. Sometime later, Bob told his relatives, he prospected for gold in Alaska. But the climate aggravated his many old injuries and he settled in the Pacific Northwest (not – as Josie said – in Nevada). There he hoped to live out his days.

His family promised never to reveal his whereabouts, allow outsiders access to his letters or divulge his burial place.

Lots of Lula’s blueberry pie (but no coffee in that Mormon household) later, he departed. Lula – “forthright and energetic into her nineties” – wrote: “Bob died of pneumonia in the Pacific Northwest in 1937”.

 

 

           (ix)  THE BANDIT INVISIBLE

 

           While Lula’s memoir contains nothing impossible, much of it is plausible but unverifiable. Did she "massage" the facts to protect Cassidy’s anonymity and reputation? Perhaps. But we must balance that against her religious scruples and her stated wish to set the record straight.

Another memoir exists. A never-published manuscript, The Bandit Invincible, surfaced in the mid-1930’s. It claimed to tell the truth about Cassidy, by Cassidy, using the pseudonym William T. Phillips.

 

     What can be said about William T. Phillips (“WTP”)?

Nothing for certain before 1908 (when Butch and Sundance were still known to be in South America). WTP died in 1937 – as Lula reported about Butch-  but his death certificate puts his birthplace in Michigan in June 1865, ten months before Butch was born in Utah.

Michigan’s 19th-century census records are intact, but no records exist for either WTP or his “father”, “L.J. Phillips”. The records for the “mother” show she was a 12-year-old in 1865.

 

     The first appearance of WTP in any official record is his wedding certificate issued in Adrian, Michigan on May 14, 1908. He gave his age as 34 (but he must have been pushing 43). His profession was “mechanical engineer.” He took his asthmatic wife Gertrude to the healthier climate of Spokane, Washington (the Pacific Northwest), where he worked for a utility company and then a typewriter manufacturer. WTP quit temporarily to prospect for gold in Alaska.

Acquiring his own company, he took time off for a trip – alone – through Wyoming and Utah in 1925 (the year Lula reported Bob's visit).

In 1930, as the Depression hit, WTP went to Wyoming to find some Wild Bunch money stashed decades earlier. He failed.

During another trip in 1934, WTP’s companion, a young Spokanite, heard WTP’s accounts of daring robberies, travels throughout the West, narrow escapes, brushes with death, adventures in South America and much more. WTP all but admitted he was Butch Cassidy, complaining of decades-long harassment by lawmen. “When they get a man down they won’t let him up” was his constant refrain.

Urged to write his memoirs as soon as possible, WTP obliged by pouring out plodding prose in pencil.

 

     He obviously wrote in haste. WTP was his own worst editor. The questionable chronology and frequent misspellings (emaculate; only heresay) attest to that. WTP wrote in the third person (Butch knew…; Cassidy was…) but occasionally slipped and used  I/me/my. Names, dates and places were changed, either because of memory lapses or to hide incriminating details. These “errors” led many reputable researchers to dismiss The Bandit Invincible as a failed fraud.

But. The misspellings, idiosyncrasies, faulty grammar and quirky punctuation are close to what’s found in Cassidy’s early letters. While not a perfect match, the handwriting is too similar to be coincidental. Whatever differences were found could have been due to advanced age.

The Bandit Invincible includes intimate details which its defenders claim only someone living in Cassidy’s shadowy world would know. It describes long forgotten saloons which subsequent research showed had briefly existed as the author portrays them. Obscure South American locales appear with details that only those who'd been there would know.

 

      Without editorial comment, here’s what The Bandit Invincible says:

Parker wasn’t Butch’s original surname. As a runaway he was adopted by a George Parker. WTP ignores his childhood experiences and goes straight to Butch’s nascent criminality. His petty crimes eventually escalate.

Cassidy’s unjustly imprisoned for a minor crime, resulting in a lifelong grudge against the presiding judge. A model prisoner, he’s released – with that judge’s official apology – after seven months of an 18-month sentence. He works various straight jobs, but frequently backslides into crime.

Butch’s increasing boldness leads to notoriety. He forms The Wild Bunch, a loose coalition dissolving and coalescing with the circumstances. With western lawmen on his tail, Cassidy heads east. In Chicago and Michigan he dispenses largesse, survives close calls, coincidentally encounters Western lawmen (even inadvertently sharing accommodation with one), works for a circus and later steers a Lake Michigan boat. He also visits Central America but is unimpressed.

 

     Butch returns to Wyoming, associating more with Dick Maxwell – Harry Longabaugh – who’s never called The Sundance Kid. Maxwell and his girlfriend, Betty Price, maintain a fierce mutual loyalty.

The pressure surges. After more narrow escapes Cassidy and Maxwell decide to “go straight” and become Patagonian farmers. They arrange to rendezvous in Montevideo, Uruguay in September 1901. Butch heads to Montreal, then Liverpool, the Canary Islands, Madeira and Brazil. He arrives in Uruguay in July.

Maxwell arrives. Before Betty’s arrival they purchase a homestead near the Rio Negro, nowhere near Cholila. After an uneventful three years they encounter an ex-Wyoming lawman – now a Patagonian stock buyer – named Apfield. Alarm bells ring. Apfield knows them from “the days of your.” They abandon farming and revert to banditry.

 

     Two yanquis – Fowler and Haines – join them. Betty tags along. In northern Argentina Butch spreads the word they’re leaving Argentina forever. Respectable job offers arrive from Chile and Peru, but he declines: staying anchored to one spot increases his vulnerability. Entering Bolivia, they rob trains for chicken feed.

Their crimes become bolder. Betty’s unhappy. Maxwell sends her to Buenos Aires with all his money.

Bolivian troopers pursue them. In a vicious firefight Cassidy, Maxwell and an unexplained partner named Billings kill 17 Bolivian troopers. Billings dies. Maxwell’s hit. Sinking fast, Maxwell’s last words are: Good-bye, Butch, my old pal. Don’t forget Betty. Take my [money] belt with you if you can get away and send it to little Betty and she will know I died fighting and thinking of her.

Butch skedaddles before the troopers realize he’s survived, heading to Brazil by horse, riverboat and foot. He sends Maxwell’s belt to Betty without an accompanying letter. She’ll understand. From a Brazilian port he sails to Liverpool, then heads straight to Paris for three weeks of face-altering surgery by an unnamed doctor in an unnamed hospital.

Butch returns to the States. The Bandit Invincible ends.

 

(((o)))

 

Q:  What are we to make of all this?

A:  Firstly, compared to Invincible, Lula’s account is far more credible, I’ll say that much.

Before we tackle The Bandit Invincible itself, consider WTP’s timing.

There’s a signed letter from Cassidy to Concordia’s top management, sent from Tres Cruces, Bolivia on February 16, 1908. It says nothing about leaving. Yet three months later WTP’s already abandoned Bolivia, has already settled in Michigan, has already courted Gertrude and is already saying “I do” at the altar.

Q:  And the manuscript's similar handwriting, misspellings and grammar?

A:  Did a relative or associate who’d seen his letters copy his writing style? Maybe. But that does remain a nagging problem, as nagging as everything else in that story.

I must admit I don't know. I doubt anyone else knows, either. This whole thing reminds me of how researchers who've tried to pin down Lee Harvey Oswald's history say that each answer just creates more questions.

Q:  Invincible‘s defenders point to many details that only Cassidy could have known. For example, he refused to shake hands with the judge who imprisoned and later released him. Only Butch was there, so…

A: This episode’s recorded by that judge in Wyoming’s public records, so it was not something only Butch could know.

Consider this: What if the text said The night before, Cassidy had dreamed about his family? Should we take this as true? You'd think only Butch could remember Butch’s dreams, right? But with such broad, unprovable statements you can say pretty much anything because nobody can prove you wrong.

Anyway, even a cursory reading of The Bandit Invincible raises the following issues:

*The book's description of the hero’s picaresque Michigan adventures was surely intended to create links between Cassidy and Michigan, to make WTP/Cassidy’s sudden presence there in 1908 more plausible.

*Remember his weird sea-routes to and from South America? The first - sailing to South America via Canada and Europe -  is explicable by a natural desire to conceal his true final destination. But the return-trip’s Paris episode was necessary to explain why WTP and Cassidy looked so utterly unlike each other.

 

No kidding: Butch & WTP

 

*Also, how did he reach Europe and the States after barely escaping with his life in Bolivia? How much money could he carry? Enough to cross Brazil, reach England, spend three weeks in Paris, pay for a series of surgical procedures then sail to the States and start afresh?

*Invincible ignores Cassidy’s spell in Mexico. Lula’s book didn’t. There’s nothing about the Bolivian tin mine. Invincible asserts Longabaugh died in Bolivia but Cassidy told the Parkers they'd met in Mexico. There’s nothing at all about Cassidy’s new life in America.

The similarities may certainly be striking but the discrepancies and omissions are glaring.

*Plus, The Bandit Invincible‘s depiction of Cassidy is questionable. Butch’s character combines Robin Hood and Indiana Jones, with a dash of Huckleberry Finn.

Q:  What about the “Evans and Wilson were Butch and Sundance” idea?

A: Dubious. The chronology’s odd. And if Cassidy and Longabaugh left Bolivia around 1908, why would they head right down to Patagonia - where they were still wanted by the police - of all places?

Q:  Finally, here's something many people ask: Cassidy dominates the narrative. Longabaugh always played second fiddle. Why isn’t there more research on Sundance‘s fate?

A:  It seems people just aren’t that interested in Longabaugh. Butch was charismatic in many ways. Sundance stayed a shadowy, silent figure, except when he was drunk in Bolivian cantinas. There were never many details to go on. Nobody except Butch and Etta knew much about him for sure.

I suspect that's how he must have wanted it.

 

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Published on  February 25th, 2024