Robert LeRoy Parker was born on April 15th, 1866 in Beaver, Utah. He was the son of Mormon pioneers and raised on a ranch in Circleville, Utah. Young Roy, as he was known at the time first got into trouble for petty theft and while still a teenager was taken under the wings of a rustler named Mike Cassidy and soon thereafter left home to ride the range and become an outlaw.
BUTCH CASSIDY:
Robert LeRoy Parker left Utah and wandered Wyoming working on various cattle ranches in the territory, but tiring of the hard and thankless job as a migrant cowboy turned back to rustling. In order to spare his honest family embarrassment he decided to take the first name Butch, and in honor of his mentor he chose the last name of Cassidy.
Butch Cassidy continued to rustle cattle and steal horses as a way to make a living. He had contempt for large cattle ranch owners who were trying to push out the small ranch owners by controlling the price of beef with various methods and he felt the small western cattle farmers were at a huge disadvantage.
In 1894 Butch was arrested and convicted for rustling and spent nearly the next two years confined in a Wyoming prison where he met an assortment of unsavory characters and although he promised to go straight and become a model citizen he began planning bigger and better ways to disrupt the establishment and profit from his pilfering ways.
THE WILD BUNCH:
When Butch was released from his Wyoming prison in 1896 he began to recruit and assemble an impressive gang of outlaws, including Harry “The Sundance Kid” Longabaugh from Pennsylvania and Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan.
The Wild Bunch launched the most prolific and successful string of bank robberies, and train raids in the history of the American west. Butch was a master planner and calculated hold-ups in various states including the famous robbery of the San Miguel Bank in Telluride, Colorado in 1889 where the gang fled with over 21,000 stolen dollars.
The gang continued to commit robberies in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and even as far west as Winnemucca, Nevada. They established famous hideouts throughout the territories such as, “The Hole in the Wall” in Wyoming and “Robbers Roost” in southeastern Utah.
THE GANG DISBANDS:
By the year 1900 the Pinkerton Detective Agency along with every prominent law official in the west were hot on the trail of the “Wild Bunch” and one by one the gang was either killed or captured, with the exception of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.
In 1901 the pair fled the U.S. and took what ill-gotten gains they had left and ended up in Argentina where they made an attempt at being ranchers by purchasing a 15,000 acre ranch in Cholila near the Andes Mountains.
THE DARING DUO CONTINUE THEIR CRIME SPREE:
By 1905 their fortunes were turning bad and they once again turned back to larceny by pulling off their biggest and richest heist yet. Two foreign, English speaking bandits held up the Banco de Tarapaco in Rios Gallegos and fled to Chile got away with currency equal to 100,000 U.S. dollars. The duo sold their ranch and continued to commit robberies and in December they robbed the Banco de la Nacion in Buenos Aires and walked away with 12,000 pesos and once again fled to Chile.
When things got too hot for them in Argentina and Chile they relocated to Bolivia where they hi-jacked a silver mine payroll. This robbery would be their last one. In a small Bolivian town called San Vicente on November 3rd, 1908 an enraged posse caught up with them. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were killed in the shootout that ensued thus ending one of the most successful crime sprees in North American history.
For more information on Butch Cassidy visit media.utah.edu
and also see wikipedia.org
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