 When young Robert LeRoy
Parker, who went by the name of Roy, stole a pair of blue jeans from
the local general store sometime in the 1880s, he, too, launched a
career of crime. He actually left a note saying that he would return
later to pay for the jeans, but that didn't matter.
Roy soon worked at a ranch with a cattle rustler known as Mike,
who became Roy's mentor. For you youngsters reading this at home,
there's a lesson to be learned here: Don't choose cattle rustlers as
your mentors.
A few years later, when Roy was rustling cattle himself, he
changed his last name to Mike's last name. Nearly every American
knows Roy's nickname, yet very few of us know his real name. Until
now.
After Harry Longabaugh met Roy Parker, the two outlaws soon
become famous, and the results were never pretty for anyone on the
business end of their robberies. The duo would become two of the
West's most notorious outlaws, hunted on two continents by the law
and the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
In June of 1889, Roy committed his first major crime when he
robbed the San Miguel Bank in Telluride, Colo. He and his partners
stole $20,000.
He continued robbing banks and also once worked as a butcher.
After spending a few years in a Wyoming prison, he put together a
gang known as the Wild Bunch, which included Harry Longabaugh.
By the time Roy and Harry's Wild Bunch gang robbed $70,000 from a
train in New Mexico, the law was closing in on them. Realizing that
their days in the West were numbered, Roy, Harry and Harry's
girlfriend moved to South America.
When a former Wyoming deputy went looking for them in South
America, the end was near for this famous duo. Or was it?
On Nov. 4, 1908, two men robbed a mining company's payroll in San
Vicente, Bolivia, which led to a shootout in which they were both
killed. They had taken one of the company's mules with them after
the robbery, and the mule was branded with the company's insignia.
It's hard to believe that experienced outlaws such as Harry and Roy
would do something that careless.
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 Earlier I mentioned that Harry Longabaugh had stolen a horse from
a Wyoming ranch in 1887. Where in Wyoming?
It was a little town called Sundance, which is where he got his
nickname. And Roy Parker, who once worked as a butcher, had taken
the last name of his cattle-rustling mentor, Mike Cassidy. The pair
became known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
But there's more to this story.
The famous shootout that supposedly claimed the lives of Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid may have involved two different
outlaws.
Butch's younger sister, Lula Parker Betenson, claimed that the
two men did not die in the San Vicente shootout as was widely
claimed, and that Butch had come back to visit her. This could be
true because, as Ms. Betenson claimed, it was Butch's friend Percy
Seibert who identified the bodies from the shootout in San Vicente,
and he may have intentionally misidentified them as Butch Cassidy
and Sundance.
As the story goes, Butch later worked as a trapper and prospector
under the name of William Phillips until he died somewhere in the
Northwest in 1937. To add more confusion to the mystery, there was a
man named William T. Phillips living in Spokane, Wash., during that
same time period.
As for Harry "the Sundance Kid" Longabaugh, there were stories
that he may have gone by the alias of Henry Long and lived until
1936. Like Harry, Henry also had a wife and daughter.
There has been no evidence to prove or disprove that it was Butch
and Sundance who were killed in the South American shootout. One
thing's for sure, though: They're both dead by now.
[By
PAUL NIEMANN]
Paul Niemann may be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2008
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columns) |
