Part 1 of 2 - Butch Cassidy

Blood and Dust : Wild West True Crime

Butch Cassidy, born Robert LeRoy Parker, was an 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. By 1900, sheriff posses and Pinkerton detectives were capturing or closing in on members of the Wild Bunch. Cassidy escaped first to New York City and then to South America in 1901. From 1902 to 1906 he owned and ran a ranch in Argentina, but thereafter they returned to outlawry. Drifting from country to country, he robbed banks, trains, and mine stations until 1909, when, according to Pinkerton agents, he was trapped by a group of mounted soldiers in Bolivia, where he supposedly 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 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, Washington, or Johnny, Nevada).