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Robert Leroy
Parker (Alias Butch Cassidy) in Wild Bunch Group Photo, Fort Worth,
Texas, 1901.
Butch Cassidy
Mugshot When Imprisoned at Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie,
Wyoming.
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Life as a Criminal
1880-1887 — first incidents, becoming a
robber
Parker's first offense was minor. About
1880, he journeyed to a clothier's shop in another town only to find
the shop closed. He entered the shop and took a pair of jeans and
some pie, leaving an IOU promising to pay on his next visit.
However, the clothier pressed charges. Parker was acquitted at a
jury trial.
He continued to work on ranches until
1884, when he moved to Tellurid, Colorado, ostensibly to seek work
but perhaps to deliver stolen horses to buyers. He led a cowboy's
life in Wyoming and in Montana, before returning to Telluride in
1887. There he met Matthew Warner, the owner of a race horse. The
men raced the horse at various events, dividing the winnings between
them.
1889-1894 — early robberies, going to
prison
The same trio, together with an unknown
fourth man, was responsible for the robbery on June 24, 1889, of the
San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride in which they stole
approximately $21,000, after which they fled to the Robbers Roost, a
remote hideout in southeastern Utah.
In 1890, Parker purchased a ranch
near Dubois, Wyoming. This location is close to the notorious
Hole-in-the-Wall, a natural geological formation which afforded
outlaws much welcomed protection and cover, and so the suspicion has
always existed that Parker's ranching, at which he was never
economically successful, was in fact a façade which operated to
conceal more clandestine activities, perhaps in conjunction with
Hole-in-the-Wall outlaws.
In early 1894, Parker became involved
romantically with female Old West outlaw and rancher Ann Bassett.
Bassett's father, rancher Herb Bassett, did business with Parker,
supplying him with fresh horses and beef. That same year, Parker was
arrested at Lander, Wyoming, for stealing horses and possibly for
running a protection racket among the local ranchers there.
Imprisoned in the state prison in Laramie, Wyoming, he served 18
months of a two-year sentence and was released in January 1896,
having promised Governor William Alford Richards that he would not
again offend in that state in return for a partial remission of his
sentence. Upon his release, he became involved briefly with Ann
Bassett's older sister, Josie, then returned to his involvement with
Ann. |
1896-1897 — Leaving prison and forming the Wild
Bunch
Upon his release he associated himself with a
circle of criminals, most notably his closest friend Elzy Lay,
Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan, Ben Kilpatrick, Harry Tracy, Will "News"
Carver, Laura Bullion, and George Curry, who, together with others,
formed a gang known as the Wild Bunch, and with this his criminal
activity increased considerably. Despite the Wild Bunch often being
portrayed as mostly non-violent, in reality the gang was responsible
for numerous killings during their robbery activities.
On August 13, 1896 Parker, Lay, Kid Curry and an
unknown fourth man robbed the bank at Montpelier, Idaho, escaping
with approximately $7,000. Shortly thereafter he recruited Harry
Longabaugh, alias "The Sundance Kid", a native of Pennsylvania, into
the Wild Bunch.
In early 1897, Parker was joined at "Robbers
Roost" by his off and on girlfriend Ann Bassett, Elzy Lay, and Lay's
girlfriend Maude Davis. The four hid out there until early April,
when Lay and Parker sent the women home so that they could plan
their next robbery. On April 21, 1897, in the mining town of Castle
Gate, Utah, Parker and Lay ambushed a small group of men carrying
the payroll of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company from the railroad
station to their office, stealing a sack containing $7,000 in gold,
with which they again fled to the Robber's Roost.
On June 2, 1899, the gang robbed a Union Pacific
overland flyer near Wilcox, Wyoming, a robbery that became famous
and which resulted in a massive man hunt. Many notable lawmen of the
day took part in the hunt for the robbers, but they were not
found.
During one shootout with lawmen following that
robbery, both Kid Curry and George Curry shot and killed Sheriff Joe
Hazen. Noted killer for hire and contract employee of the
Pinkerton Agency, Tom Horn, obtained information from explosives
expert Bill Speck that revealed that they had shot Hazen, which Horn
passed on to Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo. The gang escaped
into the Hole-In-The-Wall. Siringo was assigned the task of
capturing the outlaw gang. He became friends with Elfie Landusky,
who was by then going by the last name Curry alleging that Lonny
Curry, Kid Curry's brother, had gotten her pregnant. Through her,
Siringo intended to locate the gang.
On July 11, 1899, Lay and others were involved
in a train robbery near Folsom, New Mexico, which Parker may have
planned and may have been directly involved in, which led to a
shootout with local law enforcers in which Lay, arguably Parker's
best friend and closest confidante, killed Sheriff Edward Farr and
posseman Henry Love, leading to his imprisonment for life in the New
Mexico State Penitentiary.
The Wild Bunch would usually split up following
a robbery, heading in different directions, and later reunite at a
set location, such as the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout, "Robbers Roost",
or Madame Fannie Porter's brothel, in San Antonio, Texas. The
Hole-in-the-Wall hideout has been assembled at Old Trail Town in
Cody, Wyoming. It was built in 1883 by Alexander Ghent.
Failed attempt at
amnesty
Perhaps as a consequence of the loss of Lay,
Parker appears to have approached Governor Heber Wells of Utah,
which had joined the Union in 1896, to negotiate an amnesty, but
Wells appears to have recoiled from this, advising Parker to instead
approach the Union Pacific Railroad to persuade them to drop their
criminal complaints against him. Possibly because of bad weather,
however, this meeting never took place. The Union Pacific Railroad,
under chairman E. H. Harriman, did subsequently attempt to meet with
Parker, through Parker's old ally Matthew Warner, who had been
released from prison. On August 29, 1900, however, Parker,
Longabaugh and others robbed a Union Pacific train near Tipton,
Wyoming, violating Parker's earlier promise to the governor of
Wyoming not to offend again in that state, and effectively ending
the prospects for amnesty.
Meanwhile, on February 28, 1900, lawmen
attempted to arrest Kid Curry's brother, Lonny Curry, at his aunt's
home. Lonny was killed in the shootout that followed, and his cousin
Bob Lee was arrested for rustling and sent to prison in Wyoming. On
March 28, Kid Curry and Bill Carver were pursued by a posse out of
St. Johns, Arizona, after being identified as passing notes possibly
from the Wilcox, Wyoming, robbery. The posse caught up with them and
engaged them in a shootout, during which Deputy Andrew Gibbons and
Deputy Frank LeSueur were killed. Carver and Curry escaped. On April
17, George Curry was killed in a shootout with Grand County, Utah,
Sheriff John Tyler and Deputy Sam Jenkins. On May 26, Kid Curry rode
into Moab, Utah, and killed both Tyler and Jenkins in a brazen
shootout, in retaliation for their killing of George Curry, and for
the death of his brother Lonny.
Parker, Longabaugh, and Bill Carver traveled to
Winnemucca, Nevada, where on September 19, 1900, they robbed the
First National Bank of $32,640. In December, Parker posed in Fort
Worth, Texas for the now-famous Fort Worth Five Photograph, which
depicts Parker, Longabaugh, Harvey Logan (alias Kid Curry), Ben
Kilpatrick and William Carver. The Pinkerton Detective Agency
obtained a copy of the photograph and began to use it for its latest
wanted posters.
Kid Curry rejoined the gang, and together with
Parker and Longabaugh they robbed another Union Pacific train near
Wagner, Montana. This time, they took over $60,000 in cash. Again
the gang split up, and gang member Will Carver was killed by one
pursuing posse led by Sheriff Elijah Briant. On December 12, 1901,
gang member Ben Kilpatrick was captured in Knoxville, Tennessee,
along with Laura Bullion. On December 13, during a shootout with
lawmen, Kid Curry killed Knoxville policemen Willian Dinwiddle and
Robert Saylor, and escaped. Curry, despite being pursued by
Pinkerton agents and other law enforcement officials, returned to
Montana, where he shot and killed rancher James Winters, responsible
for the killing of his brother Johnny years before.
1901 — media
exposure, travel to South America
As Rural Bandits Parker and
Longabaugh then fled east to New York City, and on February 20,
1901, together with Ethel "Etta" Place, Longabaugh's female
companion, they departed to Buenos Aires, Argentina, aboard the
British steamer Herminius, Parker posing as James Ryan,
Place's fictional brother. There he settled with Longabaugh and
Place in a four-room log cabin on a 15,000-acre (61 km²) ranch that
they purchased on the east bank of the Rio Blanco near Cholila,
Chubut province in west-central Argentina, near the
Andes.
1905 And his
last years—his biggest robbery, evading the law
On February 14, 1905, two English-speaking
bandits, who may have been Parker and Longabaugh, held up the Banco
de Tarapacá y Argentino in Río Gallegos, 700 miles (1,130 km) south
of Cholila, near the Strait of Magellan. Escaping with a sum that
would be worth at least US $100,000 today, the pair vanished north
across the bleak Patagonian steppes.
On May 1, the trio sold the Cholila ranch
because the law was beginning to catch up with them. The Pinkerton
Agency had known their location for some time, but the rainy season
had prevented their assigned agent, Frank Dimaio, from traveling
there and making an arrest. Governor Julio Lezana had then issued an
arrest warrant, but before it could be executed Sheriff Edward
Humphreys, a Welsh Argentine who was friendly with Parker and
enamored of Etta Place, tipped them off.
The trio fled north to San Carlos de Bariloche
where they embarked on the steamer Condor across Lake Nahuel Huapi and into
Chile. However by the end of that year they were again back in
Argentina; on December 19, Parker, Longabaugh, Place and an unknown
male took part in the robbery of the Banco de la Nacion in Villa
Mercedes, 400 miles (650 km) west of Buenos Aires, taking
12,000 pesos. Pursued by armed lawmen, they crossed the Pampas and
the Andes and again reached the safety of
Chile.
On June 30, 1906, Etta Place decided that she
had had enough of life on the run and was escorted back to San
Francisco by Longabaugh. Parker, under the alias James "Santiago"
Maxwell, obtained work at the Concordia Tin Mine in the Santa Vela
Cruz range of the central Bolivian Andes, where he was joined by
Longabaugh upon his return. Their main duties included guarding the
company payroll. Still wanting to settle down as a respectable
rancher, Parker, late in 1907, made an excursion with Longabaugh to
Santa Cruz, a frontier town in Bolivia's eastern
savannah.
Death
The facts surrounding Parker's death are
uncertain. 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 by mule when he was attacked and
robbed by two American bandits. The bandits then proceeded to San
Vicente where they lodged. Three nights later, on November 6, their
lodging house was surrounded by a small group comprising the local
mayor and some of his officials, and two soldiers. A gunfight then
ensued. During a lull in the firing, a single shot was heard from
inside the house, followed by a man screaming, and then another
single shot. The locals kept the place surrounded until the next
morning when, cautiously entering, they found two dead bodies, both
with numerous wounds to the arms and legs, one with a bullet hole in
the forehead and the other with a hole in the temple. Both bodies
were removed to the local 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 grave,
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 yet been
discovered.
However, there were claims, such as by Parker's
sister Lula Parker Betenson, that he returned alive to the United
States and lived in anonymity for years. In her biography Butch
Cassidy, My Brother, Betenson cites several instances of people
familiar with Parker who encountered him long after 1908, and she
relates a detailed impromptu "family reunion" of Parker, their
brother Mark, their father, and Lula, in 1925.
In 1974 or 1975, Red Fenwick, a diligent,
reliable senior citizen columnist at The Denver Post, told writer
Ivan Goldman, then a reporter at the Post, that he was acquainted
with Parker's physician, a woman. Fenwick said she was a person of
absolute integrity. She told Fenwick that she had continued to treat
Parker for many years after he supposedly was killed in Bolivia.
There is no mystery as to why Parker's father might deny he had been
visited by his fugitive son after 1908.
There is anecdotal and circumstantial evidence
that Longabaugh also returned to the United States and died in
1937.
In his Annals of the Former World, John
McPhee repeats a story told to geologist David Love (1913-2002) in
the 1930s by Love's family doctor, Francis Smith, M.D., when Love
was a doctoral student. Smith stated that he had just seen Parker,
that Parker told Smith that his face had been altered by a surgeon
in Paris, and that he showed Smith a repaired bullet wound that
Smith recognized as work he had previously done on
Parker.
Western historian Charles Kelly closed the
chapter "Is Butch Cassidy Dead?" in his 1938 book, Outlaw
Trail, by observing that if Parker "is still alive, as these
rumors claim, it seems exceedingly strange that he has not returned
to Circleville, Utah, to visit his old father, Maximillian Parker,
who died on July 28, 1938, at the age of 94 years." Kelly is thought
to have interviewed Parker's father, but no known transcript of such
an interview exists.
While Kelly said that all correspondence from
both Parker and Longabaugh ceased after the San Vicente incident,
some correspondence has been published that is dated 1930, 1937 and
1938 and said to have been written by
Parker. |
