The idea of the good bandit, who robs the rich and gives to the poor, who saves the widow’s farm, and whose death is unacceptable comes from Robin Hood, writes Stephen Knight in his Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (2003). An expert outdoorsman reveals his ultralight camping essentials, How to celebrate Halloween with your kids responsibly, This 3-Pack of TP-Link smart plugs is just $20.99. Sleep Under the Stars in a Covered Wagon at Utah's Capitol Reef Resort, Texas' 'Pumpkin Wonderland' is a Must-See Fall Attraction, Kacey Musgraves Get Animated For 'Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? Following the death of Longabaugh, Place disappeared. As with Long, there was no evidence that BeBee had any connection to the Sundance Kid, save what Kirby said were unspecified alleged remarks of BeBee’s that were never made public. When the image was displayed as advertising in the photographer's window, a passing lawman recognized the outlaws and the photo was distributed to the unrelenting Pinkerton Detective mercenaries who were helping to civilize the Old West. BeBee was ugly and short, not quite five-foot-three, per a 1919 mug-shot card at San Quentin, where he had done time for rolling a drunk.

They knew their equine-relief escape system would obviate any worry that they might be identified. Pointer wiggled around the marriage date problem by positing the idea that there were several Cassidys, before finally throwing in the towel when it turned out that Phillips was actually William T. Wilcox, a petty criminal who had been in prison with Cassidy in the 1890s.
“Brushy Bill” Roberts surfaced with his own bundle of contradictions in New Mexico in 1950, claiming to be Billy the Kid. But of course, the Old West was not only changing, it was disappearing as new settlers arrived, building new towns, staking out cattle and sheep ranches, as the civilizing iron fingers of the railroad stretched westward along with them. Butch Cassidy, born Robert LeRoy Parker in 1866 in Utah, robbed his first bank in 1889 in Telluride, Colorado, and fell in with cattle rustlers who hid out at The Hole in the Wall, a refuge in northern Wyoming's Johnson County.

The teenager may have intended to take advantage of the opportunities the unsettled territory had to offer, but in 1887, his future prospects took a sharp downturn after he was arrested for stealing a horse. Banditry is an unforgiving occupation that provides little room for error.

Gang member Sam Ketchum was killed in a gunfight following one of the train robberies. They traveled to Argentina followed by Bolivia, the location of the shootout that killed the two outlaws.

North Carolina State University professor Richard W. Slatta examines the storytelling tradition in The Mythical West: An Encyclopedia of Legend, Lore, and Popular Culture (2001). His nickname was inspired by a dairy ranch he worked on, owned by Mike Cassidy, combined with his time spent as an apprentice to a butcher.

The story was intriguing, because Cassidy vanished in 1908, presumably killed in Bolivia, and Phillips appeared on the scene in the United States in 1908, as if out of nowhere. In the 1890s, their exploits ?‘ robbing banks and trains in the West and then seemingly vanishing into thin air ?‘ became national news and the basis of rumors and myth.

Pictured above, officials survey the damage to an Overland Flyer train car caused by an explosion that allowed train robbers to escape with $30,000 in Wyoming in 1899. But he really got his name out there when he became one of the Wild Bunch gang members. The man thought to be the Sundance Kid was slumped against a wall with bullet wounds to his body and a gunshot to his forehead. When faced with an inconvenient fact, they roll out a deus ex machina—one after another if necessary—until all contradictions are enveloped in an elaborate web of preposterous explanations. William Henry Long, for example, is not the first man to have been volunteered as the Sundance Kid.

And when they're gone, the Wild West is gone. One of his recruits was a transplanted Pennsylvanian named Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, who fell in love with the mythology of the American West through exaggerated and often just plain fictional accounts in various periodicals. The don’t much care who it is, Joan of Arc or Jack the Ripper, just so long as they get bragging rights.

Once launched, the joke billows into legend. At the turn of the century, the Sundance Kid joined with Butch Cassidy and a girlfriend, Etta Place, and in 1901 drifted to New York City and then South America, where they set up ranching in Chubut province, Argentina. Hobsbawm might be overthinking it. Despite the posse’s bloody reputation, Cassidy did his best to discourage excessive violence and the Wild Bunch, although outlaws, were viewed as mostly friendly by the local populations.

They were eventually joined by Cassidy down in Argentina where for a while they attempted to live peacefully as cattle ranchers. Allegedly, a woman matching her description requested Longabaugh's death certificate in Chile.

These hinted, covert identities are often absurd when laid against the reality. Evidence in support of Miller’s having been Billy included private comments he had reportedly made to that effect and the fact that he had buck teeth, as did Billy. He went on to a brief career—he died in 1951—making personal appearances and working the carnival circuit, ending up at Meramec Caverns in Missouri, sharing the stage on one occasion with Billy the Kid hoaxer Brushy Bill Roberts.

At some point in the early 1890s, Longabaugh met the man with whom his name would forever be linked, fellow robber and horse thief Robert LeRoy Parker, who went by the alias, Butch Cassidy. Welcome to the kaleidoscopic universe of Wild West history, where outlaws return from the dead with vampiric regularity. While other outlaws killed bank clerks and other witnesses to keep them from talking, Butch and Sundance were not about killing. J. Frank Dalton claimed that he—the real Jesse James—hid in a stable near his house while someone else was shot in his stead. However, strangely enough, he never actually killed anyone during his time as a member of the Wild Bunch. One of his doppelgangers, William T. Phillips, took periodic leave of an unhappy marriage in Spokane to visit the outlaw’s haunts in Wyoming and take up with a girlfriend.

Bandit Resurrections: Who Was the Real Sundance Kid?

On August 29, 1900, Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry and one other gang member held up another Union Pacific train, and followed this up with the theft of $32,640 from the First National Bank of Winnemucca, Nevada on September 19, 1900. Sundance was not the only Wild Bunch member to have his identity stolen by a revivalist. David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. Remembering the controversy of the 2005 Fillmore... Toy Boat toys stolen in 'bizarre' and 'targeted' incident, says owner, Newsom's office says to keep masks on between bites when eating out, Why the rides at Disneyland are still running in a closed park, Why the world's most beautiful Taco Bell staffed up during the pandemic, California fire investigators seize utility equipment, Trump Lashes Out at His Aides With Calls to Indict Political Rivals, Fake 'progressive' mailers urge yes on Uber/Lyft's Prop. The man believed to … Refusal to believe in the robber’s death is a certain criterion of his ‘nobility’ … For the bandit’s defeat and death is the defeat of his people; and what is worse, of hope.
Nickle’s enthusiasm is not dampened by the absence of any evidence linking his great-grandfather to the Wild Bunch, or any evidence that he had ever even claimed to be the famous outlaw. The memoir was a hodge-podge of fact and fantasy, written more like a novella and told almost entirely in the third person, as if Phillips would barely allow himself to hint at his supposed identity as Cassidy.

We do know, however, that she and the Sundance Kid referred to themselves as husband and wife. Sundance Kid, byname of Harry Longabaugh, or Longbaugh, (born 1870, Phoenixville, Pa., U.S.—died 1909?, Concordia Tin Mines, near San Vicente, Bolivia? Prince Harry wears face mask by Oakland designer. But Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were actually real people before. The Wild Bunch, emboldened by their popularity with the people and the failure of authorities to catch them, carried out ever grander and bolder robberies, with one bringing in a whopping $70,000. Although they showed no intention of giving up their outlaw lifestyle, the Bolivian authorities had been warned by the Pinkerton detectives and the noose was slowly closing around the infamous pair.

The pair o…



Very little is known about the mysterious Place, mysterious to the point that even her Christian name is alternatively noted as Eva, Rita, and Ethel. He had also adopted a new nickname taken from the Wyoming town where he had first been arrested: the Sundance Kid.