[music playing] NARRATOR: The word
"outlaw" conjures up images of an evil man in black,
a killer of innocent women and children, a crude
character who would sooner shoot a man than look at him. If there ever was
a man who defied this definition of an
outlaw, it was Butch Cassidy. ROGER MCGRATH: Butch Cassidy
was one of the great leaders in the West. He attracted men, women,
all people of all ages. He had this great, avuncular
kind of personality, friendly, everybody seemed to love him. He was adventurous,
generous, loyal. They said he had an infectious
grin, just almost irresistible, an ingratiating way about him. NARRATOR: It was perhaps
because of this endearing charm that Butch and Sundance
circulated among some of the highest levels of society
on the frontiers of North and South America. Ranchers, bankers, lawyers,
and other provincial elite were their friends. [music playing] Butch and Sundance
may have been outlaws, but they were never scoundrels. Butch, for example, was a
man of great talent and skill who could have succeeded
at many other professions. JIM DULLENTY: He certainly
could have been a rancher if he had wanted to follow
that pursuit because he was a cowboy on various ranches
throughout Utah and Wyoming, and even Colorado, during
his outlaw career and a very good one. And we do know from the
testimony of many ranchers who hired him who-- who knew
him and who liked him just how good he was and every one
of them would have said, we'd like to have him back. NARRATOR: But the
leaders of the Wild Bunch could never settle down to
the tedium of a cattle ranch for more than a short time. The call for adventure
would inevitably beckon. Once they chose the
path of lawlessness, they could never turn
back, forever destined to life on the run. [music playing] By the 1890s, the West
was changing fast. The century was about to
turn, and old ways were dying. Even bands of Outlaws were being
pulled into the modern world. Butch Cassidy's Wild
Bunch was the last of the great Western
desperado groups, but rather than going
quietly into the night, they clashed with
the modern world using daring
innovation and cunning. Cassidy was a different
breed of Outlaw. Where others bragged of being
the meanest, the fastest, the toughest,
Butch is remembered as the funniest, most
popular, least violent, and brainiest of all the
West's legendary bad men. Sidekick gunslinger Harry
Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, on the other hand, rarely
won popularity contests, except maybe amongst
the women, especially the West's great mystery woman,
the beautiful Etta Place. Together with one
foot in the Old West and the other in the modern
world, they brought to a close the area known as the Wild West. It all began with Butch, though. Born Robert LeRoy Parker in
Beaver, Utah on April 13, 1866. He was the first child of Mormon
parents Maximilian and Ann Parker. It is perhaps
an irony that a-- an Orthodox Mormon family
could produce a young fellow who became as renowned an
outlaw as did Butch Cassidy. NARRATOR: Following their
dream of a prosperous frontier homestead, the Parkers moved
to Circleville, Utah in 1879. A contested land dispute
involving his father and another settler may
have started Butch's souring against society and
all authority figures. Well, it went
into a Mormon court where church officials
decided most of the disputes. Well, Butch and
his families felt they had absolute
right in that property, but his father,
Maximillian Parker, was something of a
Jack Mormon, not really in great favor with the church. And therefore, the local
bishop, as the family felt, decided against
Maximillian Parker. Well, this led to
many a conversation around the family dinner
table of the great injustice and how they had been wronged. NARRATOR: This setback
sent the Parkers scratching for a living, working not only
their own reduced acreage, but also any odd jobs in the
community they could find. Butch was expected
to pitch in too and took a job at the
nearby Marshall Ranch. It was here he met
outlaw Mike Cassidy. ROGER MCGRATH: Mike Cassidy
took Butch under his wing, in effect, training
to be an expert horseman and an excellent shot. It was said by the time that
Mike Cassidy got through with Butch, that Bush could
right at full gallop around and around a tree and empty a
revolver into a 3-inch target and never miss. NARRATOR: Mike Cassidy
also introduced him to the outlaw lifestyle. Associating with
disreputable men didn't seem to
faze the young boy. Nearly anything was
better than the almost hand-to-mouth existence
of his parents. JIM DULLENTY: Living on a
farm in the 1880s and '90s in states like Utah, Colorado,
and these Western states was a very dreary existence and they
had a real struggle to survive. And these were intelligent,
high-spirited men who liked to gamble,
who liked chasing women, liked to do all the
things that you just don't do as a farmer on
a small farm or ranch, and so they left home. NARRATOR: After several minor
run-ins with the law in Utah, he set out on his own,
heading for the mining town of Telluride, Colorado. In Telluride, a whole new
world opened up for him. Some claim the town got its
name from a quick pronunciation of to hell you ride. If so, young Parker
was a willing traveler. The Mormon farm boy's
head was quickly turned by the boom
town's dance hall girl, plus the fast lifestyles
of the Lucky Strike miners and fancy gamblers
who paraded up and down the streets. The boy took a straight
job at first hauling ore down the mountainside,
but what really attracted him was anything out of
the ordinary, anything with excitement. Being a great
horseman, Butch started racing around Telluride
and other parts of Colorado and Utah. JIM DULLENTY: Horse racing was
one of the big entertainments on the Western frontier,
and Butch Cassidy, if he was nothing else, he was
a great judge of horse flesh. In fact, throughout his career,
one of the reasons he was such a successful outlaw was that he
always chose the best horses, so he always
outfoxed the posses. NARRATOR: Through
the horse racing, he met future Wild Bunch members
Matt Warner and Tom McCarty. Together, they hatched
the daring scheme of robbing the Telluride Bank. Horse racing was fine, but if
you wanted the kind of money the high rollers
played with, a bank was the fastest way to get it. The robbery took
place June 24, 1889. JIM DULLENTY: As with
all of their robberies, they did a real good
job of planning it. They robbed the San
Miguel County Bank in Telluride of a given
amount of money, $28,000. They made their getaway. They all headed to Matt
Warner's cabin in Browns Park, but they did it by
roundabout routes. NARRATOR: The die was
now cast for Butch. Little did he know it,
but from this moment on, he would spend the
rest of his life running. JIM DULLENTY: Butch Cassidy
crossed the great divide in-- in June of 1889 when he
robbed the bank at Telluride because bank robbing puts you
in a whole different league of outlawry. And once he'd done that, he knew
that he could never turn back, and he never did turn back. [music playing] NARRATOR: Brown's Hole Utah was
the perfect den for thieves. Many of the wildest
characters in the West had drifted in and out of the
Hole at one time or another. ROGER MCGRATH: One of
the hideouts for outlaws was Brown's Hole,
perfectly situated where Utah, Colorado, and
Wyoming all meet, a deep river valley with river terraces,
good grasslands above the Green River. That had become a
haunt for outlaws since at least the early 1860s. There, an outlaw could
enter Brown's Hole by only two or three
routes, and that meant any lawman
coming into the area could be seen coming
from miles away. Then it was very
easy for outlaws, if the lawman was from Utah, to
cross the line into Colorado. If a lawman are from Colorado,
cross the line into Wyoming. Any combination of
the above, and they can do it within a few minutes,
leaving these lawmen trailing them thoroughly frustrated. Furthermore, any lawman
entering Brown's Hole did so often at the
price of his own life. NARRATOR: At some point
following the Telluride robbery, it appears young Parker
decided to change his name, some say because he didn't
want to bring disgrace to his family,
especially his mother. He took up the name
Cassidy about that time in honor of his early
mentor, Mike Cassidy. The nickname Butch came
perhaps a bit later. The Butch may have
come from the time he served as a
butcher's assistant at a meat market in Wyoming. NARRATOR: With the thousands
of dollars netted in the bank robbery, Butch decided
to lay low for awhile, hiring out as a ranch hand
on several Wyoming and Utah spreads, as well as running
some cattle himself. People who saw him during
this time were impressed. It seemed everywhere he
went he made a big impact. His personality seemed
to overwhelm people. ACTOR AS GEORGE STREETER: Butch
Cassidy was the best natured man I ever met. He was a crack shot and the
best there was with a rope. He never was much
of a hand to drink, and he used less
liquor than average. George C Streeter, Ogden, Utah. He was certainly one of the
most exceptional men that ever became an outlaw. He had a great deal of
charm, a great deal wit. ROBERT UTLEY: Butch
Cassidy is remembered as a very considerate and humane
person toward all of humanity except those that
had crossed him or offended him in
one way or another. Usually, those were big
cattlemen and bankers and sheriffs and
abusers of power. NARRATOR: These qualities
could have propelled him to enormous success
in the straight world, but Butch was always a sucker
for life outside the law, especially if it meant he
could defy power structures and authority figures. This weakness led to the biggest
mistake of his young outlaw career. In the Old West that Butch
Cassidy was growing up in, it was really very much a gray
area between cattle rustling and mavericking. If you found stray
cattle without a brand, you put your brand on
them and took them back to your homestead. Well, the big cattle
barons, of course, claimed that all these
strays were theirs. This led to a number of disputes
with small homesteaders. Big cattle barons also closed
off waterholes and access to stream banks. So there's quite
a bit of animosity towards a lot of the
land barons in the West. Butch Cassidy and many of
the other small homesteaders, and cattle rustlers in Utah
rationalized their theft of cattle. They felt that they were simply
taking these excess cattle from enormous herds
of the cattle barons who had tied up
much of the land. Butch also rationalized
it by rustling from what he thought
were religious hypocrites after the injustice his family
had suffered at the hands of a Mormon bishop. NARRATOR: The big ranchers soon
targeted Cassidy as a rustler. Some say they used their
political muscle to set him up. What they did is they sent
another cowboy with one or more horses that they knew to be
stolen and sold them to Butch. And of course, Butch
should not have entered into this transaction. I think he got the
horse or horses for $5. And he should not have done
it without getting the papers. And they captured him. Took him back to Lander
and put him on trial, and that's how he ended up in
prison on a framed up charge of horse theft. NARRATOR: He was sentenced
to serve two years in Wyoming State Prison in Laramie. Evidently a model prisoner,
he served only 18 months and was released. The time in prison seems
to have changed Cassidy. He retained his old charm,
but the experience turned him bitter and ambitious. If he was a minor outlaw
before he went to prison, upon release, he
seemed hell bent on making a big
name for himself. Now, he was determined to
become a big time outlaw, organize a gang of experts,
crooks, bank robbers, and train robbers. He organized what became
known as the Wild Bunch. NARRATOR: The Wild Bunch
would be a professional outlaw organization aimed only at big
time crimes, crimes that would strike back at the money
establishment controlled by those who sent him to prison. Big ranchers,
banks, and railroads would be the primary targets. Butch was so businesslike
about his venture that he thought of calling
the group the Train Robbers Syndicate. He personally handpicked
the members of the group and expected excellence from
those who rode with him. There was much more to being
a member of the Wild Bunch than just being willing
to break the law. JIM DULLENTY: He raised
robbery, bank and train robbery, into a fine art. And there's no
question about this. As far as attracting
men to him, he only seemed to attract the very best
on the range, men who, if they had been other than outlaws,
they would have been successful businessmen. And you have to only look
at who some of these men were to see that I'm telling
you the truth about that. Who was his first
great compatriot after he got out of prison? It was Elzy Lay. Elzy went West to seek adventure
and ended up with Butch Cassidy as an outlaw, but he was a very
imposing kind of individual. NARRATOR: Although
Cassidy himself had a non-violent nature and
considered the use of guns only as a last
resort, the one man he could count on
in the Wild Bunch to do the dirty work when
it was needed was Kid Curry. ROGER MCGRATH: Probably the
deadliest of the Wild Bunch was Harvey Logan or Kid Curry. He and his brothers had
come West from Missouri sometime in the 1880s
and quickly became notorious outlaws. Harvey Logan was said to be
not only a deadly marksman, but would kill upon
the least provocation. He was quiet when
sober but often loud and vicious when drunk. NARRATOR: And of course, there
was the Sundance Kid, Harry Longabaugh. ROGER MCGRATH:
Longabaugh actually came from a prosperous,
respectable family in Pennsylvania where he grew up
reading novels about the West. As a teenage boy,
he was so thrilled with these exciting
frontier tales that he ran away from home. In the West, he became a
cowboy, an expert horseman, and a deadly marksman
with a six shooter. His shooting was legendary
throughout the West, although Butch Cassidy is said
to have been almost as good. He got the nickname the
Sundance Kid after having Spent some time in
the Crook County Jail in Sundance, Wyoming. From then on, he went
by the Sundance Kid. He enjoyed dressing
in expensive clothes. With Butch and other close
friends, he was very open and enjoyed fun. But with most people,
he was reserved almost to the point of rudeness. NARRATOR: The Wild Bunch
had a rotating membership. Men came and went depending upon
the job Cassidy had planned. In addition, he also retained
one of the best lawyers in the West in case things
went bad out on the trail. Early in his life, Butch
Cassidy in a saloon brawl had saved the life of
one Douglas Preston. Preston later on became a
famous attorney in Wyoming. He would go on to become a
state legislator, and then the attorney general of
the state of Wyoming. Well, Douglas Preston, after
having his life saved by Butch Cassidy in a saloon
brawl, told Cassidy, if you ever get in trouble,
I'll defend you for free. And in fact, he did defend
Butch Cassidy again and again, and other members of
Cassidy's gang as well. NARRATOR: The Wild Bunch's
robbery of the Montpelier Bank in Idaho was a perfect example
of a Cassidy-planned heist. It included the use of
a set of strategically placed horses along
the escape route to speed up the getaway, sort
of an outlaw Pony Express. JIM DULLENTY: His
contribution to outlawry was this single thing. He knew that to get
away from the posses, he had to organize relays, fresh
horses at certain distances. He knew how far a
good horse could run at its maximum
ability, and then he would have a man
holding horses there, and then there would be another,
possibly a second relay, even a third. So the contribution that
Butch Cassidy made to outlawry was in having fresh
horses at various relays away from the robbery site. Why other outlaws hadn't thought
of doing this, I don't know. NARRATOR: With their saddlebags
now bulging with cash, the Wild Bunch headed for the
safe haven of the outlaw trail with its legendary
strongholds Hole in the Wall and Robber's Roost. [music playing] REPORTER: If the robbers succeed
in reaching Hole in the Wall, they will find friends
who will fight for them and stores of food
and ammunition. The region is so wild
that nothing less than a systematic
attack by an army of men will drive out the bandits. "The Denver News." NARRATOR: One of the Wild
Bunch's main strongholds was the legendary Hole
in the Wall located in central Wyoming. One of the great names
in Western history, Hole in the Wall. It conjures up tremendous images
of outlawry and hiding and-- and that sort of thing. NARRATOR: Like
Brown's Hole in Utah, the Wall drew bandits because
of its strategic geographical location. Besides being some of God's
most remote territory, it also could be
defended with ease. JIM DULLENTY: It was so
easily defendable you could-- two men could stand off an
army in that little place. It was such a wonderful place
that Butch Cassidy homesteaded there. The Blue Creek Ranch in the
heart of the Hole in Wall is Butch Cassidy's ranch, and he
lived there for several years. NARRATOR: Surprisingly, the Hole
really is not a hole at all. Instead, it's a narrow
path along a cliff. If an outlaw knew
where it was, it would give him a shortcut and
an edge over any lawman who were in pursuit. Hole in the Wall was just one
stop on a much bigger bandit thoroughfare known
as the Outlaw Trail. For over 20 years,
wanted men would ride across this clandestine route. Along with Hole in the
Wall and Brown's Hole, the third great stop
on the outlaw trail was Robber's Roost in Utah. The Wild Bunch used
the trail regularly because Cassidy always figured
it in as a fallback position. Let's say they were robbing
a bank or a train someplace outside of the Outlaw Trail. They would head towards it then
up it because they did have provisions along the trail so
that they could change horses, they could get food, they knew
who would feed them, and so on, and they could
make their escape. There's no question that
this outlaw trail existed. NARRATOR: The law stayed
away from the trail because the odds were
in favor of the outlaws. Another reason may have been
that a smart lawman knew that the trail was so rough
that attrition and the elements might do his work for him
without ever having to fire a shot. The trail wasn't
all rough, though. Occasionally, women with
a weakness for outlaws accompanied their men
into the wilderness. One such woman was the
beautiful and exotic Etta Place, one of the West's
great mystery women and girlfriend of
the Sundance Kid. ROGER MCGRATH: She was
tall, slender, elegant face and manners, auburn
hair and green eyes, and simply a knockout
in today's vernacular. She could ride with
the best of them, and also shoot with
expert marksmanship. ROBERT UTLEY: No one seems
to know where she came from. No one seems to know what
her station in life was, whether she was a prostitute or
an accomplished woman who fell in love with Harry Longabaugh,
or where she went after she disappeared from their lives. She is truly a mystery woman. NARRATOR: Even with an
occasional woman in camp, things sometimes got a
little tame for the men. Boredom was usually
cured by another robbery. One of Cassidy's
masterpiece payroll jobs was thrown at the Castle Gate
mine in Utah on April 21, 1897. Cassidy and Wild Bunch members
waited while the payroll train rolled into town and
then boldly struck in front of a crowd of miners. JIM DULLENTY: They must have
looked somewhat out of place as two cowboys on fast horses
in the center of a bunch of foreign miners, and most of
these miners were foreigners. What are they doing there? But apparently, nobody asked. So when the bag of
coins and the payroll was taken off the train
and the paymaster started towards the shack,
Elzy and Butch grabbed it, got on their fast
horses, and got out of there. NARRATOR: Bold exploits like
this against big business concerns that Cassidy on the
course towards becoming a folk hero. ROBERT UTLEY: We have in this
country what modern scholars call social bandits. These are outlaws who
are perceived, even in their own time,
by the population to be battling in
behalf of the little guy against the big
moneyed interests. And so in Butch Cassidy,
you have a criminal rogue, a likeable guy, who was
driven into crime, at least in his own perception, by
the big moneyed interests. NARRATOR: Cassidy's rise
as a folk hero falsely brought with it a belief by
some that he was a Western Robin Hood. ROGER MCGRATH: Legend says
Butch Cassidy was a Robin Hood. Well, that might be
a bit of a stretch. Butch was known
for his generosity, but he robbed from
the wealthy and the powerful, robbed from the
rich for the Wild Bunch. Now, he would spread his
money around rather liberally with the small ranches and
homesteaders and merchants, but he didn't rob from the
rich to give to the poor. NARRATOR: The Wild Bunch's real
specialty was train robbery. Perhaps their most fabled
heist was the Willcocks job when they stopped a Union
Pacific train on June 2, 1899. ROGER MCGRATH: At that point,
they turned their attention to the express car. They knocked on that
Express car door, and a messenger inside,
one Ernest Woodcock, refused to open it. In fact, he said,
come in and get me. Well, with that, Butch
lobbed a stick of dynamite under the car. In fact, blew the car
apart, blew Woodcock from one end of the
car to the other and left him stunned and
groggy, but otherwise uninjured. Well, with that, they
jumped into the car and Harvey Logan
cocked a revolver and put it to Woodcock's
head for having caused them that trouble, and Butch
interceded and stopped Logan saying that, a man
with that kind of nerve deserves to live. Well, with that, they then
turned their attention to the safe and dynamited that. However, the Wild Bunch used
a bit too much dynamite. Not only blew the safe up,
but blew the money sky high. This left the Wild Bunch
scurrying about grabbing government bonds and
cash out of the air until they had
collected some $30,000 [music playing] NARRATOR: By Union
Pacific standards, Butch and Sundance had done
their jobs a little too well. The Wild Bunch method
of train robbery go over the next few years
became so effective that the railroads decided
to fight fire with fire. The railroads, therefore,
turned increasingly to their own detective forces
and also to private detective forces in order to help
guard their trains. The most effective of those
private detective agencies in that time whilst the
Pinkerton National Detective Agency. They organized a special
posse known as the Union Pacific Mounted Rangers, and in fact,
they developed a special train, a powerful locomotive with
a special car with stalls for horses, hay and grain,
another special dining car, another car for
sleeping quarters for these mounted rangers. These mounted rangers
were expert horsemen, deadly marksmen. They had horses specially
trained for pursuit. And this train was kept
on the ready at all times. Should Butch strike again, this
train was launched into action. NARRATOR: At first,
Butch was unconcerned. He still ruled the Outlaw Trail. Surely the posse wouldn't enter
Hole in the Wall or Brown's Hole, and they especially
wouldn't follow him into Robber's Roost. If the Outlaw Trail
itself was isolated, then the Roost was probably
the most remote and impregnable hideout on the whole
Canada to Mexico route. REPORTER: No officers have ever
gone there for the reason that to do so would simply
be to go into a trap where death would be as
certain and swift as if plunged into the mouth of a volcano. "Utah Utonian," April, 1897. ROBERT UTLEY: They could
take refuge and be hidden from virtually anyone
who happened to pass by, and if the need arose, could
be defended very easily because of the constricted nature
of the approaches to it. JIM DULLENTY: It was the
perfect hideout for the members of the Wild Bunch. There's such vast distances. When you get down
into those canyons, they all look the same. Very difficult to try to
find an outlaw in there. And that, of course,
the outlaws knew that, and they used it for a
period of about 20 years. NARRATOR: The outlaw lifestyle
had to be constantly refinanced by ever-increasing
bank and train robbers. Over a period of
years, the Wild Bunch lifted hundreds of
thousands of dollars from Western trains and banks. But now, with a super posse
breathing down his neck, Butch started to feel the heat. He still had a clean record
in several Western states and he was a
nonviolent criminal. Possibly, a deal could be struck
between him, the government, and the Union
Pacific Railroad that would allow him to go straight. Through the use of his
high-powered attorney, Douglas Preston, an amnesty
meeting was set up to try and work something out. ROGER MCGRATH: Perhaps if
they negotiated with the Union Pacific, and if Butch met
with the Union Pacific and promised them that no
longer would he ever hold up any of their trains,
and perhaps even be a special messenger and a
guard for the Union Pacific, well, then, they could
work something out. A meeting was arranged,
but Butch Cassidy, always aware of treachery on the
part of government officials, had his attorney,
Douglas Preston, accompany the Union
Pacific and the government officials to the meeting place. Butch got there early
at the rendezvous and waited and waited. Well, the hour for the
rendezvous came and went. Butch waited for a time
more, and finally, he thought he'd been double-crossed. He wrote a note, put it
under a rock, and left. ACTOR AS BUTCH CASSIDY:
Damn you, Preston, you have double-crossed me. I waited all day but
you didn't show up. Tell the Union Pacific to go to
hell, and you can go with them. Butch Cassidy. ROGER MCGRATH: Actually, there
hadn't been any treachery on the part of his
attorney, Preston, or on the part of the Union
Pacific Railroad officials. The train had been delayed. And they had gotten to the
rendezvous honestly, but late. [music playing] NARRATOR: Butch now
angrily went back on the Outlaw Trail
with a vengeance, but was too brainy not
to see what was coming. The Wild West was
dying fast and he would be dying with it
if he didn't come up with a new plan quick. JIM DULLENTY: You began
to have telegraph lines. You had the telephone coming in. You had electric
lights coming in. You-- the law enforcement
began to become more effective and they had better means,
and of course, pretty soon, roads and cars began
appearing in the early years of the 20th century in the West. So law enforcement began
to get much stronger. There's no longer so
many wide open spaces. NARRATOR: In the
back of his mind, Cassidy started to think about
South America, a place where they surely had never heard
of him or the Wild Bunch. JIM DULLENTY:
Argentina, at that time, the vast Patagonia plains,
the Pampas in Argentina, the cattle industry was
beginning to grow there in a-- a way, and Butch heard
the stories of how you could get rich down there. And what did he know but cattle? That's what he knew. So it occurred to him that
he could raise the funds through a couple of
more good robberies, and that's exactly
what he did do. By 1900, stage the
Tipton robbery, which occurred in the summer of 1900. And by September, 1900,
he staged another one. That's the Winnemucca robbery,
the bank robbery in Winnemucca, Nevada. [gun firing] NARRATOR: Cassidy now had the
money for the South American adventure. Plus Sundance and Etta
had agreed to go with him. Yet some said the trip was
just big talk on their part and that they would
never make it South. But then, because of
the Wild Bunch's vanity, the trip almost
became mandatory. Posses, guns, and prisons
hadn't stopped them, but a photographer in
Fort Worth almost did. ROGER MCGRATH:
There, at Fort Worth, they were spending
their ill-gotten gains, living a high life. They bought the finest clothes,
new boots, tailored wool suits, silk shirts, derby hats,
spending great amounts of money at the gambling
tables in brothels. And they decided to get together
at a photo studio for a group shot. And their, Butch Cassidy,
Sundance Kid, Harvey Logan, Ben Kilpatrick, and Bill Carver
sat down for this group shot in their fine dress. Well, the photographer, so
pleased with the results of his own photography that
he put this photo on display in the window of the studio. A passing lawman spotted this
photo of the-- and identified at least one of them, and very
quickly, as it turned out, notified the Pinkertons, who
then took this photo and made wanted posters from them
and plastered them all over the West, and this began
the downfall of the gang. At least now, law men
had a face to work with, because until this
time, they did not have very good likenesses
of most of them. They had Butch Cassidy's prison
photo, but some of the others, they had no picture of. And so they were able to track
these men much better than they had. NARRATOR: With
this setback, now, Butch, Sundance, and Etta almost
had to go to South America. [music playing] Before leaving
for South America, Butch, Sundance, and Etta had
one last fling in New York. We can place them there
around February of 1901. ROGER MCGRATH: There, they lived
a fine life for several weeks, taking in the sights of New York
City, and of course, passing themselves off as high society
from the Western frontier. People thought they were
great cattle barons or perhaps mining speculators. There, they also posed for a
picture, at least Sundance Kid and Etta Place, at the
Young's famous studio. NARRATOR: They set sail for
Argentina on February 20, 1901. Landing in Buenos
Aires Harbor, they made their way to the
country's rich ranch lands and set up their own spread. For several years, those
guys did make a success of-- of raising cattle on the upland
grasslands on the eastern side of the great mountain
chain in South America. NARRATOR: But old ways die
hard and they drifted back into lawlessness. JIM DULLENTY: There are
several things that probably led to their downfall. One, of course, they
probably ran out of money. They probably spent all that
they had brought with them and needed to raise funds. Second of all, the Pinkertons
began closing in on them. And Butch got word that
one of his neighbors had learned who he was and he
got very nervous about that. LEON METZ: They were doing the
same thing there that they were doing in the United
States, only in this sense, whereas in South America they
hit a few banks, down there, they were primarily
robbing the gold trains from the mines, the payroll
boxes, this sort of thing. NARRATOR: The South American
heists in both Argentina and Bolivia were executed
with Cassidy's usual flair for planning. Sometimes, they
worked undercover, even as payroll guards for
a Bolivian mining's concern. Mysteriously, during this
time, Etta disappeared, some say never to
be heard from again. The year was 1907. She disappears from
history and we do not know what happened to Etta Place. No one knows. That's one of the great
mysteries of the Old West. That leaves Butch and Sundance
by themselves continuing this lifestyle in South America. NARRATOR: Equally mysterious was
Butch and Sundance's allegedly last official heist. On November 4, 1908,
two American bandits held up a mining payroll
shipment near Tupiza, Bolivia. The bandits then headed for
the small mountain village of San Vicente. ROGER MCGRATH: There, Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came up to a small hotel. The hotel owner happened to be
a corregidor, which would be a village constable in Bolivia. And from an earlier job
Butch Cassidy apparently had with them, a mule, this
hotel owner, a corregidor recognized as a mule
of a friend of his that had been driving
a mule train that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid had held up earlier. Well, this corregidor then
slipped out of the hotel to contact the troupe of
Bolivian cavalry camped nearby. Well, the cavalry returned and
yelled for the bandidos Yankee to surrender. Well, Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid began blazing away. Sundance Kid made a
dash for their rifles and extra ammunition that
were a little distance across this courtyard. Well, he made it to the
rifles and ammunition, and on his return, bullets
dropped him to the ground. Butch Cassidy ran up and dragged
his comrade back to cover, and evidently, the Sundance
Kid expired shortly afterward. Butch, now out of
ammunition, cavalry said they heard one last shot. And they closed in and
found Butch Cassidy dead, evidently by his own hand. And of course, next to
him, the Sundance Kid. NARRATOR: For years, this has
been the traditional story, but along with
the official story have been persistent rumors
that Butch and Sundance did not die in South America. JIM DULLENTY: There were other
outlaws, American outlaws in Bolivia at the time
doing the same thing. So we do not have two men--
just two men doing it. There are many other
outlaws doing the same thing and getting killed. That's why so much confusion
arose as to whether or not this was really Butch and
Sundance who were killed. NARRATOR: Some claim they
did not die in San Vicente, but instead came back
to America and lived out the rest of their lives in
hiding under assumed names. ROGER MCGRATH: This has been
hotly disputed for years. And a number of people back
in the frontier West in Oregon and Idaho and Montana
and Wyoming and Utah have said that during the
1920s, Butch visited them. Whether this is true or not-- this would be 25 years
after he left the area. Was this a person an impostor? We really don't know. These rumors continue
until the 1930s. NARRATOR: The mystery
may never be cleared up. Even members of
their own families who claim to have been
visited by the outlaws offered confusing and
conflicting stories as to what really happened. [music playing]
