Who is butch cassidy

By the end of , concerned that the Pinkertons had discovered their location, the American outlaws sold their livestock and left the property, later finding work at the Concordia Tin Mines in Bolivia. Throughout their time abroad, Cassidy and Sundance continued to carry out heists, although South America was home to other U. Some accounts hold that on November 4, , near the town of Tupiza in southern Bolivia, two men thought to be Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed a payroll as it was being transported to the Aramayo mine.

Three days later the supposed bandits arrived in San Vicente, Bolivia, but after villagers became suspicious that the strangers were connected to the robbery, Bolivian soldiers were called in and a shootout ensued. During the shootout, the Bolivians reportedly gunned down the suspects, or one of the outlaws killed his partner then turned the gun on himself.

Afterward, the bodies were buried in unmarked graves in a San Vicente cemetery. In fact, there is no conclusive evidence linking Cassidy and Sundance to the robbery and shootout. More than a century after their presumed deaths, the true fate of Butch and Sundance remains a mystery. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. Moving from rustler, for which he served a two-year stint in a Wyoming jail from to , to master planner of the robbery of trains, banks, and mine payrolls came naturally for Cassidy.

With his quick wit and native charm, coupled with his fearlessness and bravery, he never lacked for willing companions to assist in his plans. By his gang had dubbed themselves the "Wild Bunch. Operating around the turn of the century, Cassidy and his partners put together the longest sequence of successful bank and train robberies in the history of the American West.

Successfully eluding the law became ever harder as the West grew more populated and law enforcement became better organized, however. After a few short years of trying to make it as honest ranchers, the pair again turned to easier methods of obtaining money. The Pinkertons learned from a postal informant that Frank D.

Aller, the U. Late that year, the outlaws returned to Argentina on business. With several posses chasing them, they slogged west over rain-drenched pampas and the Andes to safety in Chile.

A few months later, Sundance briefly visited Cholila to sell some sheep and mares he and Butch had left with their friend Daniel Gibbon, a Welsh rancher. Sometime after selling the livestock in Cholila, Sundance alias H.

Sundance worked awhile breaking mules at the camp, then joined Butch at Concordia, where their duties included guarding payrolls. He found Sundance somewhat taciturn, but grew quite fond of Butch. After Seibert became the manager at Concordia, they were his regular guests for Sunday dinner. Having been forced to give up his quiet life in Argentina, Butch still wanted to settle down as a respectable rancher. The bandits quit their jobs in , after an inebriated Sundance bragged publicly about their criminal exploits.

Although there is no proof of their having been anything other than model employees during their tenure at Concordia, Seibert credited them with several holdups in Bolivia. He said, for example, that they had robbed a railroad-construction payroll at Eucaliptus, south of La Paz, in The payroll was actually robbed twice that year.

Later that month, they turned up in Tupiza, a mining center in southern Bolivia. Intent on robbing a local bank, perhaps to finance their retirement in Santa Cruz, the outlaws needed a place to lie low while making their plans.

They found a perfect hideout at the camp of British engineer A. Francis, who was supervising the transportation of a gold dredge on the San Juan del Oro River. Their legendary charm soon won Francis over, and they wound up bunking with him for several weeks.

While Sundance stayed with Francis, Butch made frequent forays into Tupiza, casing the bank and formulating his plans. At a. Dressed in dark-red corduroy suits, with bandannas masking their faces and their hat brims turned down so that only their eyes were visible, the bandits had Colt revolvers in their holsters and Browning pocket pistols tucked into their cartridge belts, which bulged with rifle ammunition.

Sundance kept his distance and said nothing. Perhaps as compensation, he took not only the packet of money but also a fine dark-brown mule that belonged to the company. Another messenger took the note from Salo to Chajrahuasi, and the alarm went out via telegraph to local authorities in surrounding communities, as well as to Argentine and Chilean officials in all the nearby border towns. Military patrols and armed miners whose pay had been stolen were soon combing the ravines, watching the roads, guarding the train stations, and looking for strangers in villages throughout southern Bolivia.

In the meantime, Butch and Sundance had made their way south, through rough, uninhabited terrain. They skirted Tupiza under cover of darkness and arrived at Tomahuaico after midnight. Butch was sick and went to bed at once, but Sundance stayed up late, telling Francis about the holdup. The next morning, a friend hastened to Tomahuaico to warn the bandits that a military patrol from Tupiza was headed in their direction.

Butch and Sundance packed their belongings and saddled their mules. Fearing that he would be caught in the cross-fire if the soldiers overtook them, Francis nervously led the bandits south and west along the San Juan del Oro, then north through a narrow, twisting ravine to the village of Estarca.

Francis arranged for them to spend the night in a room at the home of Narcisa de Burgos. Early the next morning, Butch and Sundance thanked Francis for his help and let him go, with instructions to tell any soldiers he encountered that he had seen the bandits making for the Argentine border. They paused for directions in Cucho, 10 miles north of Estarca, then followed the long, rugged trail to San Vicente, a mining village in a barren, dun-colored bowl 14, feet up in the Cordillera Occidental.

At sundown on November 6, , they rode into town on a black mule and the dark-brown Aramayo mule, stopping at the home of Bonifacio Casasola. Cleto Bellot, the corregidor chief administrative officer , approached and asked what they wanted. An inn, they responded. They asked Bellot about the road to Santa Catalina, an Argentine town just south of the border, and the road to Uyuni, about 75 miles north of San Vicente. They then asked where they could get some sardines and beer, which Bellot sent Casasola to buy with money provided by Sundance.

When Bellot took his leave, he went straight to the home of Manuel Barran, where a four-man posse from Uyuni was staying.

The posse, made up of Captain Justo P. Concha and two soldiers from the Abaroa Regiment and Inspector Timoteo Rios from the Uyuni police department, had galloped in that afternoon and had told Bellot to be on the lookout for two Yankees with an Aramayo mule.

Captain Concha was asleep when Bellot reported the arrival of the suspects, but Inspector Rios and the two soldiers loaded their rifles at once. Torres responded with a rifle shot and retreated to a nearby house, where he died within moments.

The other soldier and Rios also fired at Butch, then scurried out with Bellot. The guards remained at their stations throughout the bitterly cold, windy night. When he reported that both Yankees were dead, the captain and the surviving soldier went inside. They found Butch stretched out on the floor, one bullet wound in his temple and another in his arm, and Sundance sitting on a bench behind the door, hugging a large ceramic jar, shot once in the forehead and several times in the arm.

From the positions of the bodies and the locations of the fatal wounds, the witnesses apparently concluded that Butch had put his partner out of his misery, then turned the gun on himself. The outlaws were buried in the local cemetery that afternoon.

The Aramayo payroll was found intact in their saddlebags. Once their possessions had been inventoried and placed in a leather trunk, Captain Concha absconded to Uyuni with the lot, leaving the Aramayo company to battle for months in court to recover its money and its mule. In July , Frank D. In May , a Missouri carpenter named Francis M.

With the aid of the American Legation, Lowe established that his was a case of mistaken identity. In filing a report on the matter, an official at the legation advised U. Shortly before Lowe was detained, William A. Indeed, in , Mr. Butch Cassidy had been with him but got away and is supposed to have returned to the Argentine. For more great articles, order your subscription of Wild West magazine today! Before fleeing to Argentina with the Sundance Kid and Etta Place to start a new life early in the 20th century, did Butch Cassidy offer to give himself up to the authorities and seek amnesty?

The evidence that he did is persuasive. That tale is a little shaky. There are two similar but slightly different versions of the surrender offer. Powers, a prominent Salt Lake City attorney. The man asked Powers if what he was about to tell him would be held in strict confidence. I figured it was a good time to quit before I got in any deeper. He was not your typical outlaw. In fact, he was not unlike the character portrayed by Paul Newman in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

For once Hollywood might have gotten something right. Butch could be amusing and disconcerting, and at times self-deprecating—traits that would seem out of place for a turn-of-the-century criminal. Butch was hardly cut out to be a fugitive.